Olli scowled but Rollo glared at her.
‘One last thing before we clasp arms on any deal, my friend. Why did you pretend to join my crew?’
For a fraction of a second Idris caught real hurt on Solace’s face, before she covered it with her usual martial impassivity.
‘I did join your crew, Captain. I worked my passage. But you’re right, I had another motive too.’ She glanced at Idris, probably wondering if he was going to spill the beans. He wouldn’t, he decided.
She pressed on anyway, laying it all bare. ‘I was sent to make an offer to your pilot, on behalf of the Parthenon. An offer I still intend to make, when I can get him to take his fingers out of his ears for long enough. No doubt he’ll say no, and that will be my duty done. Now the Oumaru is out there too, and that changes things. I am using my discretion right now, doing what I think is best while I wait for orders to reach me. But I also want you to get your ship back, because that is fair and just. Hence this.’ A flip of the hand towards the Dark Joan. ‘Take it or leave it, Captain. I’m going anyway. I won’t say I don’t care either way, but it’s your choice.’
Rollo looked at his crew. Kittering was displaying ‘44%’ which suggested he was ambivalent in the extreme and Olli was looking outright angry. Kris was nodding, though, and Idris found himself agreeing. Left with the casting vote, Rollo let out a deep breath.
‘Then, my friend, we would be delighted to get our asses over to Tarekuma as fast as Idris can plot the course there. Assuming our asses will even fit in that pint pot thing of yours.’
Idris felt a rush of excitement. It would be grand to steal a march on the hijackers. But he was mostly thinking that he’d never, in all his days, flown a ship as elegant as the Dark Joan.
PART 3
TAREKUMA
11.
Idris
Monitor Joy, the Partheni’s stern diplomat, looked as though she might be Solace’s aunt, though she had likely been born at least a decade afterwards. And the close-mouthed Partheni technician, who came to perform some last-minute modifications to the Dark Joan, might have been the Executor’s younger sister. Her expression showed a marked difference, though; she didn’t approve of a pack of ruffians commandeering their ship. Still, she was plainly in awe of Solace and worked for two hours to get everything flight-ready.
The Partheni packet transport was indeed short on space. There were six suspension beds in a central stack within the ring of the gravitic drive, and the pilot’s seat was hard back against them. There was nowhere to be except the actual beds. Hold space was almost entirely filled by some new gear of Solace’s and Olli’s Scorpion frame. The packet transport was intended to lug data, after all, not goods. Idris wondered if Mordant House knew the things could be fitted out as emergency squad transport at a pinch.
‘Reminds you of wartime?’ Solace asked, at his elbow. ‘Berlenhof?’
‘I think we had more space in wartime.’
‘You did. You were never in the racks. Picture something like this,’ she tapped the cluster of pods, ‘but for a hundred people at a time. Civilians had luxury accommodation.’
‘I never knew. Although I’d have been too busy being scared out of my mind to appreciate it.’ He tried to look at her properly and still couldn’t, not quite. ‘Thank you, by the way,’ he mumbled.
‘Hm?’
‘For helping. For the ship. Getting us to . . . The others probably won’t say it.’
‘I’ve heard all the things they say about my people across the Colonies, Idris. Probably they think I’m a monster who’ll come and kill their menfolk and make regular humanity a footnote in our triumphal histories, right? Or else we’re sex-starved sirens who just need to meet a good man to forswear all our Amazon ways.’
‘You’ve seen some mediotypes,’ he observed.
‘Executor training means exposure to some weird stuff. I’d rather have stayed a simple myrmidon.’
Idris cocked an eye at her, squinting sidelong. Something about her was still too much like staring into the sun, and he was worried that it was because he liked her. ‘Why’d you go for it, then?’ And, in the blank pause that question evinced, he realized, ‘You didn’t, did you? They just told you. Why? Not just for me?’
She shrugged. ‘Probably not just for you. The Aspirat does some pretty twisty thinking sometimes. I think it was because I’d been through the war, so I’d met people from outside the Parthenon.’ She was closed-up, abruptly, hugging her own arms. ‘Seems kind of mad that being a soldier made me right for something completely different.’