Page 17 of Solomon's Ransom

“Not at the moment. But you can handle it, right?”

He hadn’t ever seen or worked with a cloaking device, but sure, okay. “Probably. Depends on how broken it is. Six days?—”

“That’s all the time we’ve got. The whole plan falls apart if you can’t fix it.” Denna’s face said exactly how much shit Remma would be in if he couldn’t. “So get to it.”

An impossible task, but that was Remma’s whole life, wasn’t it. “I’ll hop right on it, boss.”

“Great. I’ll have someone bring it to your room later today.” With that, Denna turned and gestured to Nerri. Remma had been dismissed.

Okay. Time to start reading about cloaking devices.

* * *

Remma knewhe should go visit Sol again—probably visit every day, just to make sure he was doing all right, and to keep him company. Sol would get bored stuck in that room with nothing to do. He had probably been bored within the first half hour, and it was Remma’s fault. He owed it to Sol to visit him, even in the face of his justified displeasure. But it sure wasn’t fun to see Sol look at him with distrust and anger instead of the usual—well. It was probably wiser not to put a name to the way Sol used to look at him.

Sol was his biggest regret in all of this. He hadn’t meant to put any of the colonists in harm’s way, but Sol in particular was important to him. Impossible for him not to be after months of fooling around together. That was only normal.

He had lost Sol’s regard, probably for good. That was a blow, but even worse was knowing he had put Sol’s life in danger. And even worse than that was knowing he wasn’t cunning enough to come up with a brilliant scheme to save Sol and get him home again.

At least it didn’t seem to be an imminent problem. Denna was too focused on the Yesserchao job to do anything about his human cargo. Remma just had to get through the next week or so, and maybe by then the whole situation would work itself out.

The cloaking device, at least, wasn’t going to be a problem. It wasn’t broken at all—just switched off. A few minutes with a screwdriver and a small probe and he had the thing up and running again, letting out a low hum on the surface of his desk.

Now the question was whether it wouldkeeprunning, and keep running when they launched it out with the EMP bomb. But Remma couldn’t do anything about that right now.

He put his tools away. He needed to go see Sol.

The ship was a lightweight support fighter of some type and had no formal prison, so Denna had stashed Sol at the far end of an unused passenger wing. A single guard sat outside Sol’s door, bored, with a gun resting on his lap. The guard was a problem, and so was the gun, but Remma could think of something, surely, if he set his brain to work on the problem. He was smarter than Denna, although admittedly far less crafty.

The guard gave him a half-hearted sneer. “Boss know you’re here?”

“No,” Remma said. “Are you going to stop me from going in?”

The guard shrugged. “I’ve got no orders to keep anyone out.”

Remma didn’t like the idea of anyone on the ship having full access to Sol at any time, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. If he told the guard to keep everyone else out, he’d just get laughed at.

The door slid aside without a sound. Sol was in bed, under his blanket. When Remma came in, he scrambled around and turned onto his side to face the wall.

“Hey, Sol,” Remma said.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Sol said. He craned his neck around to peer at Remma. His face was flushed and he seemed a little out of breath. “You can’tknock?”

“Were you masturbating?” Remma said, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice and probably failing horribly.

“That’s not—any of your business,” Sol said, which meant he absolutely had been. “Remma! We’re beinglistenedto.”

“Are we? I don’t think so. There’s no monitoring in passenger rooms, and that’s all this is.”

“You were being really careful not to tell me anything specific the last time you were here.”

“Habit, I guess. Were you really jerking off?”

Sol didn’t answer. He looked mulish.

“Not much to do in here,” Remma said sympathetically. “You must be pretty bored.”

“I wasn’t doing anything,” Sol said, a weak protest if Remma had ever heard one.