He shook his head wildly. “No! No. Well, not really. But it's a damned war! Some of the things we might have to do and some of the people we might have to deal with, well, they wouldn’t be very nice.”
“ Nice!” she almost shouted. “ Nice! Why you pompous, ego-inflated… what do you think I am, anyway? Some oversensitive debutant?”
Cale started to answer, and then paused. Actually, ‘oversensitive debutant’ was not far from the mark. “Look, Dee,” he started in a determinedly reasonable tone. “I know you’re the daughter of a priest. I don’t know much about your morality; but I do know how you reacted to the idea of leaving those pirates behind. From what I’ve seen, your moral standards are pretty high. There's nothing moral about a guerilla war. If some of my ideas work out, even before we go to Ilocan we’re going to have to deal with some rough places and some real lowlifes, and we’re going to have to look and act just as rough and just as low. It could be dangerous for you, and we won’t be able to take care of you or deal with your sensibilities. Please, wait here on Angeles, where you’re safe.” He said this last in almost a pleading tone, as he noted the dangerous glitter in her eyes.
“Bastard!” She hissed. “All this time. All these weeks we’ve been together. All this time I thought you respected me, that you, that you cared for me. And all the time you’ve been thinking I’m some sweet little goody- goody weakling! Who the hell do you think chewed holes in that pirate’s bridge and killed all those people while you were punching neat little holes in their engines?”
She jumped to her feet and grabbed his shirtfront in her fist. “I don't know anyone on Ilocan, but they've been attacked, Captain. Invaded! And my morality that bothers you so much means I’m not going to let some two-bit mystery man keep me from helping them!”
She suddenly realized that everyone in the restaurant was now watching her scene. With massive dignity, she released Cale’s shirt and returned to her seat, patting her lips with her napkin in an exaggeratedly ladylike manner.
Cale was gaping. Finally, he regained control of himself. “Uh, perhaps we should continue this in a more private place?” he suggested meekly.
Dee started to rise, paused, and then settled back into her chair. “No, I don’t think so. I think we’ve danced around this for weeks, now, and it’s time we deal with it.”
“Uh, deal with what?” Cale was afraid he knew.
“With the secret of you, Captain, that’s what. Every time the subject of you, your past, comes up, you change it, or duck it.”
Panic surged in Cale’s chest. “There’s no real secret, Dee,” he began. “I was born on Warden’s World; I’ve knocked around some pretty rough places with some pretty rough people.” He tried a disarming smile. “I guess I’m the kind of man your mother wouldn’t want you to date.”
Dee shook her head, unsmiling. “No. there’s more than that. How do you know so much about pirates? How come you know about fighting a starship? For that matter, how do you come to own your own starship? They’re fabulously expensive. How come you don’t have a trade route all mapped out?”
Cale took a deep breath. How could he lie to Dee? Could he lie to Dee? No, he answered himself. Dee deserved the truth, even though it would mean the end of their budding relationship. “All right,” he began. “I know about pirates because I was one for awhile. But first, I was a slave. I escaped with a bunch of other slaves. We were starving, and hijacked, pirated an ore carrier. We became pirates. Then we found out it was just another kind of slavery — a horrible kind. I witnessed, I did, horrible things, until I could escape. As for how I got Cheetah, I stole her. I ran fast and far, and changed her identity and mine. That aunt I mentioned was mine; but she won't recognize me now. Cheetah 's legal now, though, and legally mine. I’m still running. But I hate what they did to me, what they made me, with a depth of hatred I hope you never experience.” He slammed a hand on the table. “I’ll never be that kind of animal again, even if it means being enslaved again.”
He sighed. “And I don’t have a trade route mapped because I’m not a trader. I no longer know what I am.”
He looked at her stunned expression, and all his hope for the future died. Once again, his pirate past had killed a promising love. “Now, get out of here,” he said gruffly. “Zant and I have some plans to make, and they may not be pretty!”
She started to rise again, and then stopped, and settled once more into her seat. “No,” she said simply.
Cale’s eyebrows rose. “No?”
“No,” she repeated. She was regaining control of herself, and her expression firmed. “I can’t even guess what it must be like to be a slave, if even piracy looks like salvation. But I can imagine a slave grasping at any chance to escape that horror.”
Her firm expression became even harder. “But I must know one thing. Did you, personally, ever commit murder?”
Strangely, the question caused some of his tension to abate. At least he would not have to lie. “No,” he replied honestly. “I have killed three men. All were armed, and all were trying to kill me.”
She nodded soberly. “Thank you for your honesty. I have observed you very carefully these past weeks. You have never behaved with anything but honesty and integrity. Faith cared nothing about what happened to me once we lifted off. If you had cared to, you could have raped or killed me, or even sold me into slavery. Instead, you treated me with courtesy and respect. I’ve seen your hatred and fear of the pirates, and the courage and imagination with which you dealt with them. You could have restrained me or even killed me to avoid having to come to Angeles. Instead, you pandered to my naive opinions, and took the chance of having your identity or that of your ship revealed.”
She shook her head. “No matter what you have been or done in the past, in my experience you have been an honest and honorable man. You have nothing to fear from me.”
She straightened and raised her eyes to meet his. “That is, you have nothing to fear unless you try to keep me from helping you help Ilocan, and make me demonstrate that I can outfight you any time!”
'Maybe,' he said in a droll tone. 'But I wasn't really concerned about your fighting ability. I'm more concerned with whether you could butcher a hog or survive being out of reach of a spa. You’ve led a very sheltered life as the daughter of the Primate, or whatever it was.”
Dee’s frown evaporated as she struggled to suppress a giggle. “Not ‘Primate’, ‘Prelate’. A primate is a monkey.”
The smile Cale was trying to suppress grew into a grin. “And the difference is…?”
This time the giggle burst forth, and turned into a full-throated laugh. “Now that you mention it…,” she replied, before being carried off by laughter again.
And so it was understood that Dee would go with Cale. He still had misgivings, but he realized that she had the right to make her own decision.
Cale struggled to regain his composure. True, he had minimized his pirate experience, but he took comfort from the fact that he hadn’t actually lied to Dee. She knew! She actually knew he had been a pirate, and she had forgiven him! Perhaps he had hopes of a future after all!
“All right, Dee,” he said. “We’ll talk to Zant together. But I still think you should wait for me here.”
She shook her head. “Not a chance!” A sudden smile blossomed. “You mentioned some people and places Zant might know that may not be 'nice'. There’s no way I’m going to miss seeing an honest-to-God Den of Iniquity!” Cale could hear the capitals in the last phrase.
He grinned and shrugged. “You asked for it. I’ll get Zant.”
When they were all together again, Cale explained their decision, and then turned to Zant. 'How about you, Zant? You want to go get your fool head blown off in somebody else's war?' He sobered. 'Seriously, if you're not interested, I'll understand. And I'll still give you a lift to any planet between here and there. Except Santiago, of course.'
Zant snorted. 'Except for losing my partners' money, I haven't done a damfool thing for quite a while. I'm about due. But both of you need to understand,' he continued, 'I've been in a war. There's nothing glamorous about what a disruptor can do to your closest friend. You'd both better think real hard before you volunteer to let unfriendly strangers shoot at you.'
Cale slammed his fist on the table again while shaking his head. 'No, Damn it!' he said. 'I've been fighting for nothing. It's time to fight for something. Something important.' He turned to Zant. 'I think I'd like to talk to this 'underground newsie' you mentioned. Do you happen to know how we could track him down?'
The newsie proved helpful, once Zant began acting like a street tough. He gave them the coordinates of the
