Page 41 of Solomon's Ransom

“Well—I suppose I could abort, but it’s much easier to just go ahead and finish the jump,” the ship said. “The math gets complicated. If you don’t mind?—”

“That’s fine,” Sol said. “We have time.” He smiled at Remma. “We have all the time in the world.”

“Yes,” Remma said. Heart galloping, he held Sol’s hand.

* * *

Sol wokein Remma’s arms. The lights were off in the room, and he didn’t know what time it was, but he felt rested.

“You awake?” Remma asked. He pressed a kiss to the back of Sol’s neck.

“I seem to be. How long have you been lying there?”

“Not sure. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“All night, then,” Sol said, half amused and half touched. Remma had lain awake for hours, just holding him. He couldn’t say he didn’t like the thought.

“We’re still in hyperspace,” Remma said, “according to the ship. For another two days or so.”

Sol sat up. Remma’s hand slid down to rest on his hip. “And the pirates are gone?”

“Long gone. The shuttles don’t have hyperspace drives. Someone will pick up their distress signals, I would imagine.”

“If they’re close to an inhabited system.” Sol snorted. “Good luck to them. I don’t really care what happens.”

“Some of them were my friends,” Remma said mildly.

“Right. Sorry.” Sol grimaced, feeling guilty now about his ready dismissal. “They’ll be fine for a few days. Maybe we can contact the authorities in Bensotonai and see about having them rescued.”

“It’s more than Denna deserves, but I’d rather not sentence the whole crew to a slow death. Let’s try to send someone after them.”

“You have a good heart,” Sol said. “Better than mine.”

“You weren’t exactly treated well. I don’t blame you.”

“I was treated fine. Nobody abused me. They just kept me locked up here.”

“And planned to sell you for your liver. Denna was going to turn you into the human equivalent of a scrapyard.”

“That’s just Denna, though. I’m sure some of them were innocent.” Sol reached out to touch Remma’s cheek. “So what do we do until then?”

“Breakfast, I think,” Remma said, and Sol laughed.

They left the room behind, and that whole wing of the ship, and Sol hoped that was the last he would ever see of it. His captivity had been a torment only in that it was boring, but even so he didn’t intend to ever revisit these weeks. The ship was empty and felt uninhabited, as though it had been vacant for weeks or months instead of only a few hours. The corridors were silent as they walked, aside from the persistent low hum.

Sol didn’t know where they were going, but Remma led him to what turned out to be the mess hall. In the attached kitchen they scrounged for some breakfast. The Tozren food on offer was a lot of fish paste in tubes and other suspiciously aquatic things that Sol couldn’t identify and probably couldn’t eat. They’d been feeding him rice, mostly, and fish and vegetables, and he found some cooked rice in the fridge and added a few jarred artichoke hearts. It would be edible, and that was about all he could say for it.

The mess hall had a huge window that looked out onto the stars streaking by too fast for his eyes to follow. He sat as close to it as he could, to watch hyperspace smear past.

“It’s something, isn’t it,” Remma said, sitting down beside him with his bowl of black spiky things that definitely didn’t look like any sort of food. “When I first went to space, I spent as much time as I could looking out the windows.”

“And then you got used to it?”

“It’s still beautiful, but the awe wears off after a while.” Remma smiled at him. “It’s nice watching you see it for the first time.”

Sol squirmed a little in his chair. He was still getting used to the idea of Remma havingfeelingsfor him, which was so unexpected but so welcome. He had grown more attached to Remma than he wanted to admit to himself, and when the ship proposed its scheme to get rid of the pirates, his first thought had been that Remma would go back to Tozra and Sol would lose him for good.

“Are you really going back to Mirolasor with me?” he asked.