Cale shook his head again. 'The contract specifies two jumps. After that, I'll take you to any planet you and Tess decide upon. But even if you find someone foolish or desperate enough to smuggle you back to Faith, it would be a waste of time. You'll no longer be a heroic figure, fighting for freedom. Your writings will be banned from publication. Your speeches and interviews will be banned from the Worldnet. The government and the church propaganda will portray you as a demented criminal, a mad terrorist. You'll simply be a hunted criminal. And sooner or later, they would get you. Ekron would enjoy that, I think.'
She pounded the chair arm again to emphasize her words. 'I have to do something! I can't just let them get away with this!'
Cale's expression saddened and his voice softened. 'Yes, you can,' he said quietly. 'Believe it or not, I've been in a position very similar to yours. I said exactly the same thing, and it guided me into a course of action that very nearly destroyed me both physically and spiritually. I know it's no consolation now, but revenge is a poor substitute for getting on with life.'
She started to reply heatedly, and then stopped, eyeing Cale thoughtfully.
As she started to reply, Tess's voice intervened. 'Dinner this evening will be jackwil steaks smothered in boiled sweetgrass. At what time would you like it served, Captain?'
Cale suppressed a grin. Apparently, it sometimes helped to have a sentient ship! The interruption prevented the discussion from developing onto an argument, positions from hardening into immobility, and the relationship from becoming adversarial. There were benefits to an AI that had read over 58,000 books on human nature and psychology!
Cale hurried to reply. 'Uh, I think 1800 hours would be fine, Tess. Oh, I'm sorry, Dee. We never converted to planetary time. Ship's time is now, uh…'
'1425 hours, sir' Tess's voice supplied.
'Yes. Thank you, Tess. Dee, Does 1800 suit you?' Dee nodded wordlessly. She was on the verge of tears, and Cale hurriedly continued, 'Then perhaps you would like to return to your stateroom and work with Tess on locating a planet where you can be happy and useful.'
Struggling to hold back her tears of anger, frustration, and grief, Dee jerked a nod and fled to her stateroom.
Cale started to speak to Tess, but then decided to make a personal rule not to speak frankly to her (it?) anywhere but in the privacy of his stateroom, except in an emergency, of course.
Meanwhile, Tess's final words in his stateroom started him thinking. Was there an 'obvious attraction'? Dee was certainly attractive, verging on beautiful. But he was no schoolboy, to be deeply affected by a woman's appearance. Was he?
Of course, she was also intelligent, idealistic, and had a strong social conscience. He snorted. Don't forget bossy and opinionated, he told himself.
Finally, he compared his reactions to Dee to his reactions to Ruth. Ruth had aroused nothing in him but anger, which had faded to disgust, then pity, and finally a feeling of responsibility, similar to that felt for a dependent child. Even naked, in the confines of L'rak, Ruth had never really excited him. It had been, he decided, more like seeing a nude child, or what he suspected it would be like to see a sister nude; slightly embarrassing, but not sexually arousing.
However, Dee, now. That was a different story. He had seen her only for a total of a few minutes, and fully dressed, but he admitted to himself he'd been curious about what those conservative clothes concealed. Even now, he could clearly envision that chestnut hair, those green eyes, deep enough to swim in. He suppressed a groan. He had hoped to drop Ruth, his last complication, on Faith, and get on with his new life. But Tess was right. He was strongly attracted to Dee. Somehow, that new life no longer seemed so urgent or so important. And now it somehow seemed lonely, as well.
Cale had plenty of time to think about it. Dee spent nearly all her time in her stateroom, presumably consulting with Tess on destinations. Cale did manage to convince her to join him for meals, but for the most part, he was alone; and suddenly the solitude he had enjoyed had become oppressive. Somehow, the few minutes they shared at mealtimes had become the highlight of his day. Somehow, it had become very important for him to be able to elicit one of her blinding smiles or, even better, her tinkling laugh.
'Captain,' Tess said the next afternoon, 'I suspect we are being followed.'
Cale had been leaning backward in his chair. Now the chair dropped forward. 'What? Who?…'
'I'm not certain, Captain. I'm afraid the situation will require your expertise.'
Cale grinned sourly. 'Expertise'. He knew exactly what she meant. If this was a pirate, who better to recognize and counter the tactics? 'Okay, Tess, What makes you think so?'
'As we lifted from Faith, I noticed an Epsilon-class tramp break orbit. She assumed an identical course to ours, and identical velocity. Since we have not established a destination, I have been conserving fuel by maintaining a relatively slow delta-vee. The other ship is still matching our speed. It remains exactly 31 second behind us.'
Cale nodded. 'And if she was a real trader, she'd have passed us long before now. Time is money for a trader. But for a pirate, it's standard operating procedure when you don't know where your target will emerge from jump for a recal. Use an old ship, probably registered as a free trader, and follow them. You carefully chart their approach angle and speeds as they enter the jump point, then you send the data to a larger ship that is undoubtedly approaching by now. Then you follow them through jump. If you're lucky, you emerge in the same system a few seconds behind the target. When the larger ship arrives, you attack at the recal stop. You must have very good sensors to detect a vessel directly in your wake. For every ship I know of, that's invisible territory.'
'There is no such larger vessel driving for the jump point at the moment, Captain.' Tess replied. 'And I possess a very complete sensor suite.' Cale suppressed a smile at the obvious pride in Tess's voice.
'Okay,' he said, 'If there's no bigger ship on course for the jump point, it means we're dealing with small- timers. I wonder why they're after us? What can you tell me about the ship?'
'It is a rather typical Epsilon-class free trader, Captain.' Tess replied crisply. 'It is some two hundred meters long and seventy-five meters in diameter. No weapons are visible, but there are unusual bulges on several places on the hull. I first noticed it because it is unusual for an Epsilon-class to remain in orbit instead of grounding.'
Cale nodded. 'Yeah. They didn't want to chance a delay getting lift clearance. So those bulges probably conceal their weapons. Can you tell if the cargo doors are oversized?
'I have reviewed the images from our liftoff, Captain. The cargo doors appear to be normal for an Epsilon- class tramp, but it was nearly head-on to us, and I am unable to be certain.'
'Okay, so she probably doesn't have a really large laser. How large are the bulges? Could they accommodate an Alliance-pattern quickfirer? Or a small laser?'
Tess's voice was all business. 'I would estimate that one of them is large enough to conceal a destroyer- sized laser,' she replied. 'The other two are smaller. If they conceal a laser, it must be a small one. And they would be too small to conceal the quickfirer I carry.'
Cale frowned. 'Hmm. Probably squad-level infantry quickfirers. Small-timers for sure. But we're not a warship. They can still hurt us.
'Which brings me to another point,' he continued. 'I have not delved into the details of your current defense status. Exactly what do we have, and what can we do with it?
'We have the Alliance quickfirer that was mounted on Jackson, along with the destroyer-pattern laser also fitted there. I have run diagnostics, and both are fully functional. My shields are approximately those of an Old Empire destroyer of four hundred years ago.'
Cale grinned. 'Great! A destroyer's shields are strong enough to block anything they're liable to have, at least long enough to get our own weapons into play.'
'Yes, Captain,' Tess replied. 'However, I must point out that your comp tech was less successful than he thought. At the time, it was necessary for me to conceal my sentience, so I permitted him to think he was more successful than he actually was. Your 'cover story' was of course unnecessary, but I permitted him to believe he successfully installed it.
'Unfortunately, as I mentioned previously, my basic, unalterable programming prohibits me from injuring a human, or through inaction, to permit a human to come to harm. We have the weapons, Captain, but I am unable to use them.
“I am myself uncertain as to my capabilities concerning defense. I am permitted to defend myself, and have a somewhat stronger drive to defend my current owner, so long as I do not cause harm to a human. This drive
