This was addressed to the Kraffts, but they failed to answer, looking thoroughly confused, wondering who was in charge of this operation, no doubt.
‘Hold it right there,’ Stella said, clearly believing she was.
‘No,’ Bel said, ‘Jo’s right. We’re pilots, not assassins. They go in the pod with the crew and the techs.’
‘Not the techs,’ Stella said, shaking her head. ‘They have data we need: they’re part of the package. The techs come with us. I won’t budge on that.’
Which meant she’d conceded regarding the others. And that was good enough for Jo.
Cheetah came in right on schedule, and the two League corvettes took off in the opposite direction without a shot fired, just the way scout ship crew liked it. Bel had the helm and nav, Jo had prox, and Stella had com, explaining to the cruiser there was no need to ferry over additional crew – there were two Alliance pilots aboard, and Chrysalis was ready to depart. This was the reason Stella had wanted Bel along, of course: a fast exit before League reinforcements could arrive.
‘Detaching the pod,’ Bel said.
Eli was aboard, having made her choice. Jo had mixed feelings about that, but it was out of her hands now, for good or ill. She watched the screens, seeing the two dots drift apart. She was suddenly aware that someone had said something and she’d missed it. Not good, that, in a crewmember. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was miles away. It won’t happen again.’
‘You okay?’ Bel asked.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Still thinking about Eli?’ Stella asked.
‘Actually, no, I was thinking about Nina, and Malka and Ben Vesely, and a few hundred others.’
The ‘few hundred’ included Ruth, and Nathaniel, and the plump woman, Joanna, and everyone else she’d come into contact with; including, oddly enough, the Harpies, who were victims too, in a way.
‘We could take the bloody place ourselves,’ she said tightly. ‘They have sticks, not guns. We could borrow a handful of troopers from Cheetah and take Paradise just like that.’
‘Maybe,’ Stella said cautiously, ‘and maybe not. Just because we didn’t see any real troops doesn’t mean there aren’t any.’
‘Cheetah’s captain would never go along with it,’ Bel pointed out. ‘Not without orders, he wouldn’t.’
They were right, of course, but it still left Jo with a bitter taste in her mouth. ‘So what do we do?’ she asked. ‘Just leave them there?’
‘For now that’s exactly what we do,’ Bel said. ‘We go back. We report. We wait for orders, then we carry them out. That’s the way it works in the military; right, Jo?’
Jo said nothing. She knew they were right – it wouldn’t be as easy as she was making out. People would get killed, including them, maybe. She knew, too, that Bel and Stella weren’t unsympathetic. They’d suffered on Paradise, more so than Jo, but they were military through and through, the pair of them, and charging in without a plan – without orders – just wasn’t the way you did things.
Jo was military too, but she made herself a promise even so. One way or another she was going back to Paradise to see those people set free.
Also Available
Cover
Front Matter
Title Page
Publisher Information
Introduction
Planet of Pain
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Also Available