Chapter 14

The sudden blare of a siren startled Remma out of sleep. It was the ship's emergency alarm. "Depressurization alert," a voice said from some invisible speaker in his room. "Evacuate ship. Depressurization alert. Evacuate ship."

Sol, Remma thought.

He scrambled out of bed and over to the door, scrabbling uselessly at the controls. Sleep dragged at him, bewildering him. He didn't know what was going on. Evacuate ship.

The communication module was smooth beneath his hand. Ship, what's going on? But the ship didn't answer him. Maybe the module in this room didn't work.

Remma paced back and forth in front of the door, panicked and helpless. There was nothing in the room he could use to try to break down the door. The ship was ignoring him. He and Sol were both going to die.

"Forgive me, Sol," he whispered. All of this was his fault.

The door slid open. Remma's head jerked up. Sol stood silhouetted in the doorway, grinning as though he couldn't hear the siren in the hall, even though it was loud in Remma's ears.

"Sol?" Remma said stupidly.

Sol came in and closed the door behind him. "How'd you end up in here?"

"Tried to take the guard's gun. How'd you find me?"

"The ship told me," Sol said. "Were you going to try to break me out?"

"Obviously. Sol, we've got to go."

"No, we don't." Sol hit the door controls to lock it. "It's fake. The ship's sounding the alarm to clear everyone out of here. Calm down, Remma."

"Fake?" Remma's heart was beating so hard he felt dizzy. He could barely make sense of Sol's words. "It's a trick?"

"Yeah. Nothing's wrong with the air pressure. Come on, sit down." Sol sat down on the bed and patted the mattress beside him. "Sit with me. Everything's okay. You look absolutely panicked."

"I was asleep." Remma rubbed his eyes. "I thought we were all going to die."

"Yeah, I can see that. But everything's fine." Sol caught Remma's hand and drew him down onto the bed. "We're going rogue."

"So what's the plan? Get everyone else off the ship, and then we jet away? Are we even still in Mirolasor system?"

"No, we've jumped out already," said the ship's disembodied voice. "On our way to Bensotonai. But that's no problem once we've gotten rid of the pirates. I can take you anywhere in the universe that you like."

"Wow," Remma said. "Well. Okay."

"There's nothing to worry about," Sol said. "We're going to be safe."

"All this time I thought it was my responsibility to save you," Remma said. "I'm an idiot, aren't I? Of course you were always going to save yourself."

Sol smiled at him. "I appreciate the thought, and it's very sweet that you got yourself locked up for me. I have to admit I wasn't counting on you, though."

"How'd you convince the ship to abandon the pirates?"

"Sol is my friend," the ship said. "The only person on board who's ever bothered to talk to me. Why should I care about the pirates? They've never cared about me."

Well, that was fair. Remma took Sol's hand in his lap and cradled it in both of his own hands. He felt buoyant. Like floating on the surface of a warm sea. "You can go home, Sol."

"Yes. And so can you, if you want."

Remma swallowed. "If it's okay with you—I'd like to go wherever you are."

Sol blinked at him. "You would?"

"How can you not know? All I want from my life is to spend it near you."

Sol sucked his lower lip into his mouth. "Remma?—"

"It's okay if you don't feel the same way. I understand. But I thought you deserved to know."

"I didn't know," Sol said quietly. "I thought it was just sex for you."

"It was at first," Remma admitted. "But it hasn't been for a long time."

"Wow. Okay." Sol dropped his head toward his lap. Remma could still see enough of his face to tell that he was smiling. "That's… I didn't expect that at all."

"But you're happy about it?" Remma asked, because Sol looked pretty happy, but he didn't want to assume.

"I'm really happy," Sol said, and bent over to kiss Remma's hand.

"This is very touching," the ship said, "but you should probably know that the shuttles are about to launch."

Sol straightened up. "Is anyone still on board?"

"No. All of the pirates went onto the shuttles. Even Denna." The ship sounded smug, if that was possible. "The two of you are the only ones left."

"Can you change your destination, or do we have to complete the jump to Bensotonai?" Sol asked.

"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 having feelings for 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.

"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."

"Really you have 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 expected someone to 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.