Page 20 of Solomon's Ransom
“I guess that makes sense.”
“It’s not true, anyway. I do like you.”
“Okay,” Remma said, as if he didn’t quite believe Sol’s bullshit.
Sol swallowed down his embarrassment. He owed Remma some vulnerability. “I won’t tell you I liked you right away. I was suspicious of you. I thought you were scamming us, and turns out I was right.”
“Sol—”
“No, that’s not my point. You won me over, okay? And it didn’t take all that long. I liked talking to you. I thought you had interesting things to say. And the first time we went out together, you were helpful and followed my lead and didn’t generate any nonsense. So then I decided you were okay.”
“I’m helpful,” Remma said. His mouth quirked sideways. “So that’s why you decided to start fucking me?”
“I’m really bad at this, okay? I’m not used to talking about—” Sol gestured to his chest. “You know. Feelings. I just thought it was nice to spend time with you. I liked you. I was attracted to you. I don’t know, why does anyone like anyone else? Sometimes you just meet a person you get along with.”
Remma smiled at him. “Yeah, I get what you mean. That’s how I felt about you, too. That you were easy to talk to and easy to spend time with. I guess it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.”
Good: so they had worked it out, and without Sol having to reveal anything mortifying, like exactly how deep his feelings ran—far deeper than he wanted to acknowledge. He was a coward, but that was okay. Remma didn’t need to know.
“I’ll like you more if you can get me out of here,” he said, to steer the conversation back into safer waters, and Remma groaned and reached over to smack him with the pillow.
EIGHT
The ship had three hardsuits for spacewalking, only one of which fit Remma, and that one wasn’t working. He spent most of a day helping Torru, informally the ship’s engineer, make the necessary repairs.
“Hasn’t been used since the last time you were out in it,” Torru said. “How’d you fry the circuits this badly?”
“I didn’t,” Remma protested. “Something must have happened to it in storage. It was working fine last I knew.”
“Mice,” Torru said. “Space mice.”
“For all I know! I’ve been off-ship for more than a year, you can’t blame me for whatever’s happened in the meantime.”
“Hmm.” Torru folded his arms. His mouth was twitching. “I suppose you have a point.”
“Thankyou,” Remma said, and went back to his soldering.
He had two major objectives, which he mulled over as he worked. The first was to survive this job in Yesserchao. The second was to convince Denna to head back to Mirolasor system afterward, and subsequently to convince him to return Sol to his colony. The problem was how to do that. If he gave Loden enough warning, she could maybe get a loan from another colony, but he didn’t know how to give her the advance notice she needed without tipping his hand to Denna. Loden was smart, so maybe she wouldn’t need any warning. Denna’s initial efforts to extract a ransom from her would be enough to let her know what was going on. By the time the ship landed, she would have made arrangements.
Hopefully. He had to hope.
He met with Denna about the logistics of the job, a boring presentation to the members of the crew who would be most involved. Remma forced himself to pay careful attention. Missing some minor detail was how even the most thoroughly planned jobs went awry. This one seemed straightforward enough. Freighters had some defenses and usually some armed guards on board, but nothing Denna’s pirates couldn’t handle. None of that was Remma’s problem. His only task was making sure the bomb worked.
“Your suit will be dead in the water from the EMP blast,” Denna said to him, drawing looping circles on his presentation screen that signified nothing, as far as Remma could tell. “You’ll have enough air left for about half an hour. Torru will send a shuttle out with a grapple to bring you home. Should be plenty of time.”
“Half an hour doesn’t give much room for error,” Remma said. He did not want to get in that suit. Could not think of anything he would enjoy less.
“Scared?” Denna sneered. “I thought you’d welcome the chance to put your skills to use again.”
As if Remma hadn’t been doing anything of worth on Sol’s moon, despite having received that assignment directly from Denna. “I’ll be exerting my skills to make sure your cloaking device works. My skillset doesn’t involve hanging out in a dead spacesuit for thirty minutes, praying my rescue arrives in time.”
“That sounds suspiciously like complaining,” Denna said. “Never thought I’d hear that coming from you, Remma.”
Remma clenched his jaw. There wasn’t anything he could say in response to that.
“I’ll get you back, friend,” Torru said to him. “Once I get you and the bomb launched, that’s the only thing on my agenda.”
“Just have the shuttle ready,” Remma said, and nothing further.