Lost Change

Chapter 97

"Can't we just blow the thing up?"

I tried my best to keep from laughing as Ivy's question popped into my head. "I don't think they'll appreciate that very much." I paused and thought back to the general attitude of the Ilrivians over the last few days, and all the different hassles they had caused us. "So yeah, I vote we do it."

I felt a sense of laughter come across the mindlink from Ivy.

It was eight days after I had been released from the hospital, and Minna and I were waiting on a shuttle while it approached the Ilrivian freighter.

The inspection had not been going well, and the last eight days had all seen us grow incredibly frustrated. Our handlers were all doing their best to help us, but... there was only so much they could do.

From what Ivy told me, Alec's original schedule had involved us each working twelve hour shifts. Adding in the trip from the ground to the ship meant we would have spent about fifteen hours on a shift. It was a lot longer than a regular day, but we had a lot of ship to check and there was a lot of pressure from the freighter's crew to get done quickly.

That schedule had been scrapped for one that was much more relaxed and slower-paced.

The Kymari had been very close to expelling the Ilrivians over what had happened to us. Only the fact that we had all managed to recover - and some very skilled diplomats - allowed them to get a second chance at completing the inspection and continuing to have access to Kymari worlds.

But the Kymari weren't taking any more chances with our safety.

The Ilrivians weren't able to purge the chemical from their ship - or, as we all privately thought, weren't willing to - but Senica and the other veterinarians had determined we should be able to withstand the fumes for about four hours before we began suffering ill effects. So our new schedules had been built up around that.

The twelve hour shift was reduced down to a total of six hours on patrol, and that shift was split in half with a two hour break in the middle of the shift. We spent that break on one of the two military vessels escorting the freighter, and we all got mandatory checkups and some nasty chalk to chew on from one of the Kymari doctors while we were resting.

The other dragonets didn't enjoy that part very much - it seemed to remind them far too much of the things done to them by the scientists in the lab they had been trapped in - and the Ilrivians seemed to like it even less. I got to hear a lot of complaining, both from the dragonets who resented being restrained for check-ups and from the Ilrivians who resented even being there.

Minna's responses to the Ilrivian complaints had been one of the best parts of the last few days. She was not happy with the people who had put me in danger, and had absolutely no patience for them at all.

In a supposed concession to the Ilrivians our shifts rotated out through the day. In theory this was meant to speed things up, since at least one of us would be on a patrol shift at any given point through the day... but in reality, we still spent the exact same amount of time searching the ship as we would have had we all been on the ship at the same time, so we didn't actually get anything more done in any given day.

It seemed to make the aliens happy, though. Or at least, it made them less insistent that we do more.

But I learned from Tom that the real reason was that the Kymari just didn't trust the Ilrivians with more than two of us on the ship at any one time. Tom and Serena took the first shift, Ivy came up after they finished, I joined in halfway through Ivy's shift, and the final 'tame' dragonet - whose name I still couldn't remember, but was far too embarrassed over forgetting to ask Ivy to remind me of - came up halfway through my shift to take over for Ivy.