The Gathering Flame by Debra Doyle, James D. MacDonald

of Parezul. The energy strike had taken out not just that one shuttle but every vessel remaining on the surface at Parezul command.
    Gala turned back toward the inner recesses of the building, hoping that communications were up. Because whether they were up or not, it looked like she was going to have to fight her fleet from right here.
     
    “The problem is,” Tillijen said, after the silence in Warhammer’s common room had drawn out long enough to become awkward, “we all got shorted on our portside liberty.”
    “Damn straight,” said Nannla. “I don’t know about you, Errec, but Tilly and I had a room booked downtown for two nights—at a good hotel, too, none of your sleazy shank-halters—and somebody owes us a party.”
    Tillijen nodded. “It’ll be a while before we hit Pleyver … plenty of time to relax and make ourselves some of the fun we didn’t get a chance to have back in Waycross.”
    Errec smiled slightly. “If the captain agrees, why not?”
    “Agrees to what?” The door leading to the cockpit slid shut behind Captain Metadi. “If it’s a party you’re talking about, I say we haven’t had a good one in a long time. Somebody go tell Ferrda, and I’ll break open the grog locker.”
    It might have been a drill, Perada reflected. The ‘Hammer’s crew responded with practiced ease: Errec headed off toward the engineering section; Nannla and Tillijen disappeared into number-one crew berthing and emerged burdened with what looked like half their collection of musical instruments. Captain Metadi, meanwhile, opened a cabinet in the galley and brought out the first of a whole series of bottles. By the time he was finished, there was a small thicket of them in the center of the mess table—Felshang claret from Entibor and straw-colored spring wine from Low Khesat; amber-tinted brandy from the Galcenian up- lands; a square unlabeled bottle of something purple, stoppered with an ugly spongewood plug.
    “Quite a collection,” she said, after he had gone into the galley again, this time for a half-dozen glass tumblers. “You didn’t buy them all in Waycross, surely.”
    “Only a fool buys any more liquor in Waycross than it takes to get drunk there,” the captain said. “Most of these are souvenirs.”
    Errec Ransome came back into the common room, followed by Ferrda. The ship’s engineer carried what looked like a bundle of sticks under one arm; on closer inspection, the bundle turned out to be a kind of bellows-pipe. Perada had heard similar instruments before, at traditional-music festivals on Galcen, and schooled herself to smile—without showing her teeth—no matter how badly the Selvaur played.
    She needn’t have worried. Ferrda handled the instrument like a master. The first tune he played was one that she recognized. Nannla had been singing it earlier. Now the dark-haired woman used a small hand drum of animal hide stretched over a pottery base—Perada had seen it, tied up behind zero-g webbing in the unused bunk, and had wondered what it might be—to beat out a rhythm behind the Selvaur’s melody while the others sang.

    “After moving your cargo with infinite pains,
You find that your debts are the whole of your gains—
Just buy yourself guns with the cash that remains
And finish your life as a pirate.”
     

    “I’ll drink to that,” said Tillijen, when the song was finished. “What do you say, Captain—full glasses all round?”
    “Sounds good to me,” Metadi said. He lined up the six tumblers in a row on the mess table. “Let’s see … the Entiboran first, I think, in honor of our passenger.”
    He poured out a half dozen equal portions of the claret and handed one to Perada. “You’ll have to tell me if it’s any good or not,” he told her. “I’ve never had enough of it to judge.”
    She inhaled the scent of the claret. “It’s certainly not rotgut,” she said. She took a sip and let the taste warm her before going on. “I’m not that