Page 42 of Solomon's Ransom
“Well. Sure. If you’ll have me.”
“But you could go anywhere in the galaxy. You’ve got a Xerca ship at your disposal. You could go back to Tozra first, or—anywhere else you’d like.”
“Reallyyouhave a Xerca ship at your disposal,” Remma said. “Isn’t there anywhere you’d like to go?”
“Mirolasor is my home. I’m not all that adventurous, I guess.”
“Then I’ll go with you. I’ve had enough adventures. I’ll take you home to Tozra someday, but I don’t think Loden’s going to be willing to let you out of her sight for a while.”
“Yeah. I’ll send her a message once we get to Bensotonai. I’m sure she’s been freaking out.” Sol rubbed his face. “I can’t believe she gave Denna the core.”
“Yeah. But we have it now.” Remma grinned. “I bet we can sell it in Bensotonai pretty easily. Loden won’t have any idea what to do with that much cash.”
“Are you kidding? I’m sure she’s got a shopping list a mile long. There’s always something that needs repairing or resupplying.” Sol let himself imagine it for a moment: returning home to Loden in triumph, unhurt and with more money than the colony had ever seen in a single season. That would feel pretty good.
“Well, then good. She’ll be happy.” Remma put an entire spiky black thing in his mouth and crunched down. “How’d you convince the ship to jettison the pirates?”
“I didn’t have much to do with it. It said you told it what was going on, and then it kind of stewed in silence for a while. Then it woke me up and told me it wanted to get all the pirates off the ship, and we came up with a plan from there. I think it was just done. Denna pushed it too far. Xerca ships are loyal, but they expect to be treated well.”
“It switched its loyalty to you,” Remma said. “Since we were all too dumb to ever figure out what we had on our hands.”
“It’s not like anyone really knows what Xerca ships look like. Still, I’d have expectedsomeoneto have figured it out. It only took me a few days.”
“You had time on your hands. And you’re clever. Tozren aren’t as smart as humans, on average.”
“There are plenty of very dumb humans,” Sol said. “Trust me.”
Remma smiled. “I’ve met a number of them. That’s why I said ‘on average.’ Well, it doesn’t matter now, and it worked out to our advantage that Denna didn’t know. Now we can go anywhere. What do you think the ship will do?”
“It said it will go home. The Xerca will find it a crew that’s not quite so morally bankrupt. And maybe it will come visit us from time to time.”
“I never thought I’d be in the position of receiving social visits from a sentient spaceship,” Remma said. “But life holds a lot of surprises.”
“It does, doesn’t it,” Sol said, and leaned against him for a moment, head on Remma’s shoulder, before he went back to eating.
* * *
In Bensotonai,they docked at an orbital to take care of a few important matters of business before they jumped back to Mirolasor. They sold the tesseract core first thing, which brought more credits into Remma’s account than he’d ever imagined was possible. Sol bought himself some human food he claimed was more palatable than what was available on the ship, and sent a message to his mother. Remma took care of refueling the ship, and browsed the system’s message logs to see if anyone had reported picking up a few shuttles full of Tozren. No one had; they were probably still out there, then, making their slow and futile way to the nearest system.
Remma went to talk to the Bensotonai system authority, but they said the drifting pirates weren’t their problem and they had no interest in helping him. His next stop, then, was a salvage company, who said they’d be happy to rescue the pirates for the right price. Remma gave them Denna’s account number with no remorse. It served Denna right, and he ought to be grateful to walk away from the experience with his life. It was more than he would have given Sol.
“Everything taken care of?” Sol asked when Remma went to find him back on the ship.
“It’s all done,” Remma said. “I can’t guarantee the pirates will get picked up, but I’ve done what I can, and I think they’ll be fine.”
“Then let’s go home,” Sol said.
FIFTEEN
Mirolasor was at war again. When the ship entered the system, they were greeted by three aggressive warships demanding to know their flight path and intentions. Sol managed to talk them down, but it wasn’t exactly a relaxing re-entry.
“This stupid war,” he said to Remma after he switched off the comm. “I hoped they’d be done with it by now.”
“Maybe in a year or two,” Remma said. “In the meantime it’s good for business.”
“I hate to think of it that way, but you aren’t wrong.” Sol shook his head. “Let me send Loden a message to let her know we’re on our way.”
They took the ship’s one remaining shuttle down to the surface of the moon. Sol watched from the cockpit as the atmospheric haze gave way to far-below swathes of trees. As they grew closer, he could see rivers and ranges of hills, rocky outcrops, all the features of home.