“Actually, he is. He’s more loyal than you give him credit for, but you can’t ask a man to erase every obligation, every allegiance, and every familial relationship he has just to follow you.”
“That’s what submission means,” Claire said coldly. The woman was much less intimidating when she was tied hand and foot in a storage closet.
“No,” Allie said, “that’s what it means to you. And as the dominant and as the older person in the relationship, you probably should have made sure you two understood each other before you slept together, much less made a commitment. Leave us alone, Claire, or you won’t like what happens.”
“I can’t say I’m thrilled with it up to this point,” Claire said, pulling her knees up so the shelf rattled as the rope grew taut.
“You’ll be even less pleased if you find yourself floating in space without a suit,” Allie said, and with that, she turned and headed for the ship. “Copta, lock it up, and let’s go. We have a ship to get off station.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Allie looked aroundthe conference room off the bridge. The ship was small, but it was designed for crew, not cargo, so the spaces were larger than those on theCandiru. Of course, it wasn’t big enough for heavy equipment like rigs, but Allie hadn’t been raised on ships, so she enjoyed any extra space she could find.
Ben stood on the other side of the holographic table, his right arm draped over Becca’s shoulder and his left hand resting against Copta’s back. Becca didn’t bother hiding her intense joy as she leaned into him, and while Copta was much more subtle, she clearly felt the same. She kept glancing at Ben and offering this little smile like all was right with her world. Maybe Copta was asexual, and maybe she wasn’t, but Allie knew one thing—she loved Ben. And given the way those little smiles and glances included Becca, she loved Becca too.
“If we want to avoid Command, we can’t go straight for the mining camp.” Allie brought up a hologram of the space between them and the mining base where they’d left Jacqs and Zeke. Most of it glowed red—bat-controlled territory. Allie typed in the coordinates of the Command ships they were tracking. A network of white threads lay between them and the planet, showing the path of recent ship travels. “Crossing that many hyperspace threads perpendicular to the ship’s trajectory would be a nightmare. I might be able to get us through alive, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“Can we fly normal space?” Copta asked.
“Sure, if you have the supplies to last us six or seven years—assuming Command doesn’t see us limping through the border and pick us up first.”
“Perhaps not,” Copta said with a sigh.
“We go through bat space,” Ben said as he studied the map.
“Yeah,” Allie agreed, “that’s what I figure. It’s the only way to get at the planet without running into certain death. We’ll have to go pretty far out of our way and travel a pretty significant distance inside bat space.” Allie studied the mess on the nav holo. Ships and hyperspace threads were everywhere. “There’s no way the bats could miss all this, so I would think they would have their own patrols out. We’re looking at an almost certain encounter with the bats.”
“Not necessarily,” Shank said. “They aren’t human. They don’t go rushing toward unknown phenomenon.”
“He’s right,” Ben added. “They tend to retreat until they have a better understanding of what’s going on. All this may actually drive them away from the area, at least temporarily.”
“Temporarily,” Allie said, “which means the longer we wait, the more likely we are to run into bat ships.”
Shank reached over and turned off the holo. “We need to prepare a transmission explaining that we’re a family ship.”
“So, we claim to be from theMitakuye Oyasin?” Allie wasn’t sure she liked that idea.
