Her hand found his this time. He found it comforting, but only after he forced his confusion aside. He noticed Lizzie look over to Ling and found that the large man was looking back at her. Klous smirked and returned his attention to Kira. “Just try not to kill anybody else without giving them a fair shake first? Yes we were pirates and yes, we’ve done bad things…but other than Cooper none of us done it just because it was fun. Money? Yes. Revenge, maybe. Fun? No.”
Kira nodded.
Jeff broke the somber conversation by standing up with some assistance from Sharp. He moved his neck and arm about, then grimaced. “It’s better, I think. Doesn’t hurt as much to breathe and I don’t feel as weak anymore.”
Sharp clapped him, lightly, on the shoulder and turned to the others. “Let’s head back. Rain’s keeping the animals in hiding but our lights are sure to draw something out sooner or later.”
Klous looked at the lights and frowned. If they brought in more predators like the chickasaurus why where they using them? “Sharp, why not put them out?”
“ Only thing worse than letting the jungle know where we are is stumbling around in the dark and not knowing what might be coming for us.”
Klous nodded. The reasoning was sound and, after what he’d seen, he’s rather take his chances than trust to blind luck.
They walked back through the jungle, moving quicker now that Jeff was improving almost by the minute. The stream was another small one that ran through the jungle and was located only a few minutes from Treetown. They made it back without incident, aside from Lizzie slipping on the muddy ground. She twisted her ankle in the process but Ling was there to help her up and carry her back. Sasha and Klous shared a knowing look as they walked.
“ Hey Sharp,” Klous asked at the base of the ropes that led up to Treetown. “We put a salvage beacon out in orbit around this planet. We called it Vitalis, but if you’d like we can change it when somebody comes and finds us.”
Sharp looked at him for a long moment, then offered what looked like a genuine smile. “Vitalis is just fine. Come on up, we’ve got some expansion to do in the next few days if you guys are going to be comfortable.”
“ A beacon?” Kira asked.
“ Yeah, probably be a few years at best though. We did what we could to jam your signal then when we got here we figured on the potential of the place. Figured it was undiscovered, but if we marked it we’d claim it under salvage law. No telling what we might get out of it.”
“ You can’t salvage a planet!” Eric blurted out. “What, you plan on strip mining the place?”
“ The Terran Coalition has been searching for a habitable world for over two hundred years, since before they even reached Earth’s moon!” Aran interrupted. “Even with ten of us we could still all be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams!”
Klous nodded. “He’s right, we figured if you were still here we’d eliminate you and stake our claim on it.”
“ So why tell us now?” Klous noted the barrel of Tarn’s plasma rifle just happened to be pointed in his direction as the big man asked his question.
“ Like Aran said, there’s enough to go around, besides that, you guys saved our ass out there.”
Sharp chuckled. “Not being stupid again, are you?”
“ What? I don’t think so.”
“ You’re a pirate!” Kira spat at him. “You never cared for what other people had or did unless you could take it from them or use it to your advantage.”
Klous felt something snap in his brain. It wasn’t an epiphany but rather confusion threatening to make his knees buckle. “How does that make me different from you?”
Kira stared back at him, her expression stony for so long he thought the storm might pass before she so much as blinked. “Come on, let’s get under cover,” Sharp suggested.
“ Wait, he’s right. I was like that. It’s complicated, but I’m not that person anymore. I can still do what she did, like make you cry like a baby, but Emily Bradford is gone.” Kira turned to look at her crew and then at Klous and his. “This place has a way of changing people, whether they want to or not. Even Tarn’s less of an asshole than he used to be.”
“ Hey!” Tarn protested.
“ She’s right,” Sharp silenced him. “Here I was figuring you was the one that sold us out, but the way you’ve been — the way we’ve all been down here had me doubting. Now we know it was Emily, but it looks like she’s already been taken care of.”
Kira’s eyes found Eric’s for a long moment until she bit her lip and smiled. He returned it, allowing her face to return to the blank mask of business Klous had become accustomed to on her. “Either we kill them now, if they’re going to be trouble, or we stick it out and see. Besides that, we’re light years outside of Coalition space, we may never see another person again. If we want to survive as a species here we need as large a gene pool as we can get.”
Tarn’s mild scowl shifted slowly to a grin. “I like the way you’re thinking!” He said with a chuckle. “I learned to never volunteer for nothing in the Marines, but I’m willing to break that rule. I’ll set up the schedule for the breeding program!”
“ Tarn!” Sharp snapped.
Klous snapped his jaw shut. He chuckled in spite of himself, but the chuckle died on his lips when he caught the cold glare Sasha gave him. “Yeah, well, we’re all stuck here together, maybe I don’t know much beyond running a ship but I know that if we work together we got a better chance than if we don’t.”
“ Good enough for now,” Sharp said. “Now let’s get up there, we got work to do. Rain should be gone by morning then we can make Treetown big enough for all of us.”
“ Best idea I heard yet,” Sasha muttered, moving past the rest of them to one of the vine ladders. “Let’s go Captain, I feel like a drowned rat and look worse. I need to get out of these wet clothes and get warmed up.”
The pirate Captain looked at her, then stumbled when a laughing Tarn clapped him on the shoulder. “She ain’t getting any warmer just standing there!”
Klous nodded and stumbled after her. “Maybe I could get used to a place like this,” he mumbled to himself, staring up after Sasha as she climbed ahead of him.
