Chapter Seven

The reunion with Asirzi did not go at all like Saracasi had imagined. At no point did their eyes lock, nor did they rush into each other’s arms. There was no spontaneous, passionate first kiss.

To be fair, Saracasi thought there was a certain romantic quality to waking up to find Asirzi tending to her. Getting stunned didn’t really require much in the way of medical attention, but that just made it more romantic.

When Saracasi opened her eyes and saw Asirzi, she was surprised at how beautiful she still thought the Liw’kel was, even though the injuries she had suffered during the Olan prison break were in clear evidence. Her right arm ended in a mechanical replacement, and her right breast lay flat next to her left one.

Despite those deformities, Saracasi still saw the beauty she had first been attracted to. The woman’s face was lit by a friendly smile that made everything else seem unimportant.

Unfortunately, her brother’s presence ruined things somewhat. Once he knew she was okay, he wanted them to get started on repairing the Cutty Sark.

After only some basic conversation with Asirzi, she was sucked into the world of engineering. Her next few days were quickly consumed by repair work and design discussions.

During a discussion about the status of the mining freighter, Chavatwor mentioned his idea of converting the ship into an escort carrier. Maarkean immediately latched onto that idea, so Saracasi and Chavatwor started on a design for the conversion in addition to the repair work.

For Saracasi, Chava’s original excessive estimates for the repairs started to make sense—not only did Chavatwor work more thoroughly, but she started to suspect that he had had a few upgrades in mind from the start.

This work, which would prove to take up the next few weeks, was quite enjoyable. She had always found comfort in working on the Cutty Sark, and Chavatwor insisted on giving them some upgrades in addition to the other work.

Seeing her home begin to come back to life, better than ever, gave her a nice sense of pride.

The design work on the mining freighter challenged her in ways she had not experienced in years. Living the life of a smuggler provided unique challenges, but they didn’t provide much mental exercise. Trying to figure out how to turn an old, beat-up freighter into a combat-capable warship required careful planning and ingenuity.

She much preferred this way of thinking to the make-it-up-as-you-go kind that survival required.

The most pleasant of several interruptions to her work came several days into it, when she finally got to have a true reunion with Asirzi.

One evening, while sitting on the balcony of the headquarters building and going over some calculations, Saracasi noticed Asirzi come out to join her. The two were alone—something she had hoped for since arriving.

Trying to decide what to say, Saracasi was relieved when Asirzi spoke first. “Nice evening.”

The night air had a chill to it. Their hemisphere on Kol was currently in the early stages of autumn. That meant the days were tolerable and the nights relatively comfortable.

“It is. Last time I was here, it was well into summer. This is much nicer,” Saracasi replied.

“Not as nice as my home on Sulas was. The summers never got very oppressive, and the winters didn’t see that much snow. You could almost say it was nice during every season. It’s also far too dry here. I miss the humidity the most.”

“What made you decide to come here instead of returning to Sulas?” Saracasi asked, putting her datapad down beside her.

Asirzi turned from her position overlooking the balcony to face Saracasi. “There wasn’t anything for me back on Sulas. My family returned to Kel several years ago. They saw what was happening. But I was born and raised on Sulas.

“At the time, I didn’t want to leave. When Chava originally made plans to return to Sulas after Olan, he offered me work as a sales representative. So when he decided not to stay there after all, I came with him.”

Leaning back on the balcony railing, Asirzi tilted her head as she spoke. “What about you? Why didn’t you go back to life as a smuggler once you got free?”

Saracasi shrugged. “Smuggling was never my dream. But I probably would have if my brother hadn’t come around to the idea of opposing the Alliance.”

“Are you going to join this army that’s being formed?” Asirzi asked, her voice quiet.

The question gave Saracasi pause. A few months ago, she would have answered with an emphatic ‘yes.’ She still believed in the cause, and she still wanted to see the Alliance fall. But after Perth, the idea of going back into battle worried her, and not for the obvious reasons.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. She dropped her eyes to her lap. She felt she could talk to the other woman, and she tried to find the right words to unburden herself of her secret, but she was unable to look at Asirzi as she spoke.

“Opposing the Alliance is something I’ve believed in for years. I still do. But I don’t know if I can fight anymore. I never wanted to bring about change by a war.

“Sometimes I thought it might be necessary, and at the time, I said that would be okay if it was the only way. But now that I’ve seen war, seen the bodies of the dead, I don’t like what it does to me. I still want to see the Alliance defeated. I think the fighting is necessary. I just don’t know if I should personally do it again.”

She wasn’t sure if she had made herself clear, and she was worried about how Asirzi would respond. It startled her when she felt an arm go around her shoulder.

She looked to her side to see Asirzi sitting in the chair beside her, putting her one real arm around Saracasi. The Liw’kel woman had a comforting smile on her face.

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with that,” Asirzi said. “I feel the same way. The Alliance needs to be opposed, and things have happened that make a fight inevitable. I just know that is not something I am capable of doing. The idea of killing someone …I don’t know if I could live with it, either.”

Saracasi felt cold inside, but she nodded in response. She hadn’t managed to make Asirzi understand. Her secret was still inside her, and now she couldn’t bring herself to further clarify it.

She sighed and put it aside. “What worries me now,” she said, “is that I can’t leave my brother alone to go fight a fight I pushed him to start.”

“So don’t,” Asirzi said. “You and Chava are working on turning the freighter into a combat ship, right?”

Saracasi nodded, and Asirzi continued, “Stay here and work on that. That’s an important thing for the fight, having some warships. Someone has to build them. You’d still be helping your brother; you just wouldn’t have to do any of the actual fighting.”

The idea appealed to Saracasi. She also got the feeling there was an unsaid second component to Asirzi’s suggestion. That added no small amount of appeal for Saracasi.

“Let’s just hope I can convince my brother of that as well,” she finally replied, smiling at Asirzi.

Getting back to the Chimopori proved easier than Solyss had expected. Ymp’s mercenary friends offered to escort them to the starport at no charge. They apparently had a deep resentment of Ice because Firek had stolen several of their best clients. Spite always worked as a strong motivator.

Once back on board, Solyss ordered a thorough inspection of all systems and the exterior hull. He wouldn’t be surprised if someone had installed a tracking device or bomb while they were cut off. It wouldn’t be a nice end to their escape to take off and have a squadron of fighters follow them.

“But it wouldn’t do them any good,” Zeric argued. “You can’t track anything through hyperspace. And Firek has plenty of connections with the port authority, so he can track our departure anyway.”

“True, but once we got to Kol, they’d be able to pick up a tracking beacon from anywhere and know right where we are,” Solyss countered.

“Only if they know we’re going to Kol. We’d be better off getting out of here as quickly as possible, before Firek decides to just turn our location over to the Alliance authorities.”

“Maybe. But we’re still trying to locate all of our recruits,” Solyss insisted.

When the news about Ice approaching had arrived in the cantina, their collection of recruits had scattered along with everyone else. Since they hadn’t been planning to make a stand, Solyss thought that had been a practical decision, though it did put some doubts into his mind about the caliber of the recruits.

“We’ve already located half of them. That’s actually quite an accomplishment,” Zeric said as he closed the service panel he had been inspecting and leaned against it. “To be honest, I didn’t expect to get anywhere near the number of people you did. So getting half of them to actually show up at the transport site is pretty amazing. “

Solyss nodded reluctantly. Optimism told him to hold out hope that more would show up, but practicality agreed with Zeric. The facts about the events on Enro were in a bitter battle with rumor and gossip. That level of uncertainty made it difficult to convince people.

“I guess you’re right,” Solyss admitted. “We have almost enough people to form a small platoon and even a half squadron of pilots.”

“More than we had at Perth,” Zeric said with a mischievous grin. “We should be able to take on the entire Alliance now.”

Letting out a laugh, Solyss sat down at the engine monitoring station he had just finished inspecting. “We may have to do just that. Especially if the congress doesn’t decide to form an army. ‘Course, I doubt most of these guys will hang around for long if we can’t pay them.”

Zeric shrugged. “I’ve been a pirate before. We’ll just be more discriminating.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Solyss found Zeric different than he had expected—far less serious and more relaxed than Maarkean. He had a difficult time taking the younger man seriously. Yet Zeric had led the defense of Perth, and while it hadn’t been a rousing success, the city had held far longer than he knew it should have.

Solyss knew that some of his discomfort stemmed from social conventions. The Dustlighters clearly did not come from the same family background as the Novastars. Zeric’s affection for wearing a ball cap for a hockey team, regardless of the setting, made him look unsophisticated.

Normally, he tried not to hold that kind of thing against people.

It was important to be sensitive to the cultural differences of others. But Zeric was a fellow Terran.

As if to reinforce Solyss’ belief in his social inappropriateness, Zeric asked, “You noticed anything weird going on with the Liw’kel?”

Though he had noticed the odd rivalry between Gamaly and Asheerah develop, seemingly over Gu’od, Solyss said, “No.” It was none of his business.

“Gu’od has always attracted both women and men when we’ve gone out for a night of fun,” Zeric said. “He’s always brushed them off seamlessly. But now …he’s not exactly encouraging Asheerah, but he’s not stopping her either. Even this new girl, Sienn’lyn, seems to be flirting with him. But what’s really weird is that I’ve never seen Gamaly jealous before. She knows Gu’od’s devoted to her. She’s usually just amused when people try to hit on him.”

Solyss shrugged. “Asheerah is quite attractive. And also a capable fighter, like Gu’od. Maybe he sees something appealing there.” He tried to make his comments noncommittal, without revealing his own attraction to Asheerah. He had always kept it hidden, as it wasn’t proper for a ship’s captain to have a relationship with a member of his crew.

Zeric looked skeptical. “I don’t buy it. Gamaly’s no Asheerah in a fight, but she’s no pushover. On a firing range, I’d place bets on her. But none of that matters to Gu.”

Solyss detected a deeper concern in Zeric’s question. He started to wonder what was at the heart of Zeric’s curiosity. Could Zeric have developed an interest in Asheerah, too?

Deciding that line of thinking was both pointless and none of his business, Solyss tried to think of a way to redirect the conversation. It was not his place to get involved in anyone else’s personal life. Even if he did have an interest.

“All right, once Isaxo and Kard finish the inspection of the hull, we’ll tell Captain Vellious to follow us into orbit. We’ll leave with whoever’s shown up.”

Nodding in agreement, Zeric stood up. “Excellent. Oh, let’s give them some coordinates in deep space for a rendezvous point. We’ll let them know our final destination from there. Hopefully, that will reduce the chances of Ice or the Alliance finding out.”

The practical and cautious suggestion reminded Solyss that there was more to Zeric than he sometimes thought. Though deep-space rendezvous could be difficult, it was much harder for anyone trying to follow them to calculate coordinates for the middle of nowhere. Most jumps had a destination that was relative to nearby objects: planets, stars, moons, etc. The nearest guide points in space were light years away.

“I better get started on some calculations,” Solyss said. “Maybe we should send someone to travel with them, just in case.”

Zeric looked thoughtful and then nodded enthusiastically. “Good idea. Gu’od and Gamaly can do it.”

“Why not you?” Solyss asked suspiciously.

“This way, Gamaly and Asheerah are separated. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere nearby when they finally go at each other.”

That made sense, Solyss thought, but it also kept Zeric onboard the Chimopori. And this time there would be no Gu’od to distract Asheerah.