Chapter 18 #2
Tumoro didn’t look convinced but didn’t question her further. He gave her a respectful nod then moved back to the food prep area to retrieve another plate and take it over to Malsum.
She let Zeph feed her. He needed all the reassurance and comforting interactions. Besides, she was starting to like it. Was that weird?
Had Zeph unlocked a new kink?
Probably, and she was going to enjoy it!
After eating, everyone quieted down. It seemed humans weren’t the only ones who got sleepy after a big meal.
Of course, all the tension and worry probably wore everyone out too.
Using his Ident, Zeph dimmed the lights. There was some teasing as everyone figured out where they were going to sleep. Han figured she and Zeph would take whatever spot was left over.
Tumoro insisted Malsum had to stay on the bunk. The adultette was reluctant but couldn’t argue against Tumoro’s gentle but firm determination. Han felt bad the bunk wasn’t big enough for both of them.
Sandar and Rensom stayed in the nest with the kids nestled between them. It made Han intensely happy to see that.
Tumoro bedded down between the nest and the bunk. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but Han assumed he wanted to stay close to Malsum.
There wasn’t much room left. The only place long enough for Zeph to stretch out was in front of the cleansing unit door. If they put their bed there, they ran the risk of being stepped on if someone needed to use the facilities.
Every other spot was either too short for him, not wide enough for the two of them, or would’ve had them bent at an angle.
“I have the answer,” he said.
“Answer?”
“You’re trying to figure out where we’re going to sleep,” he said. “You have that scrunched expression. It’s your thinking face.”
She huffed out a laugh. “Gee, thanks. Every girl wants to be described as having a scrunched face.”
“Then I’ll tell you every rotation,” he said.
It took her a moment to realize he was joking. She stifled a laugh because she was sure almost everyone was either asleep or almost there.
“You’re going to fit in on Inneeko just fine,” she said. “Tell me about your supposed answer to my sleeping arrangement question.”
“I might not be as good at making plans as you,” he said, “but I do know something significant about this ship.”
She pretended to look around. “Is there a hidden room? A spare bed stowed in the ceiling? Oh, I know. You’re going to turn off the grav-pusher and we’ll all float around to sleep.”
He sounded an amused rumble. “You mock me now, but I think you’ll praise me in a moment.”
He dropped a hand down, and she heard him fiddle with something, then the chair started moving. A long footrest extended at the same time the back reclined. The sides widened slightly, and the entire thing lifted a little.
After the chair was done shapeshifting into a bed, she sat up with one leg on either side of him. There wasn’t enough room for them to lay side by side, but he probably liked that she’d need to sleep on top of him.
“Perfect,” she said. “You get a chair as a bed, and I get you as a bed.”
He rumbled with amusement and urged her to settle on top of him. She snuggled against him with his purring turning him into a vibrating bed.
Her body was tired, but suddenly her mind was fully awake. “I’m going to ask you a question, but you don’t have to answer.”
“I’m prepared to share every detail of my life and thoughts with you,” he answered promptly.
“Well, this is about your past,” she warned him.
“You want to know about my parents?” he asked. “Or about my time in the cresh?”
“I want to know what you did to have such a huge bounty put out for you.” As she expected, he went quiet. After a few minutes, she tried to retract her question. “Never mind, I don’t need to know.”
“I’m willing to tell you. I’m only trying to figure out how to reduce a complicated story into one I can tell you without putting you to sleep.”
What could he have done that was so involved? Could Talins create Ponzi schemes?
“Oh, well, start with what got your crime labeled as treason.”
“I stole a fleet of ships.”
She waited. He didn’t say anything else.
“More,” she demanded.
He let out a long breath. “Until I became a criminal, I was in the empire’s military with the rank of logistics general.
It was becoming clear that we were close to winning the war with the Orloks.
That’s when they decided to blanket bombard a massive swath of inhabited planets, stations, and outposts. ”
“Blanket bombard?”
“That’s when a military sends out waves of bombs with the expectation of destroying everything to the point of even making planets uninhabitable.
The empire didn’t have much time to respond and mostly had to pull our people back until the bombardment had exhausted itself.
It was clear that was the last effort of the Orloks, but our military decided to do the same inside Orlok territory.
I know they were our enemy at the time, but it felt like revenge instead of strategy.
They were about to surrender, we all knew it.
Sending the bombardment into their space would’ve ended billions of innocent lives. ”
“You said would have. Does that mean you stopped it?”
“At the time I was the highest logistics officer in the area. It was my duty to get the bombardment ships into place so they could all fire a coordinated attack. Instead I sent them all to the same empty moon and had them land and secure to the moon's surface. I told all the crews they were being replaced and picked them up in a transport ship and unloaded them at a station then immediately left. I’ve been on the run ever since. I sold the transport ship and bought this one for much less. I’ve been surviving on the money I had left from the sale. ”
“They didn’t find the ships?” she asked. “To do the bombardment thing?”
“I made sure to pick a noisy solar system,” he said. Noisy solar systems contained anomalies that made them uninteresting or dangerous to explore. Blackholes, condensing nebulas, unstable asteroid belts, or a star ready to become a super nova.
Not only were these places inhospitable for long-term habitation, but they also tended to create a lot of “noise” that confused long distance sensors. The perfect place to hide a bunch of stolen ships!
“I’m sure the ships are still there. To keep it all secret, I only gave the crew one leg of their journey at a time.
Even someone with the best memory wouldn’t be able to retrace the journey because it was so many steps.
I also shut down the UniBase on the transport so they couldn’t use their Ident’s to figure out where they’d been or were going. ”
“You saved a lot of lives,” Han said. “I’m proud of you.”
“Even though an entire empire would like to see me punished and probably executed?"
“If I could, I’d slap your empire across the face,” she growled.
“That’s an interesting concept,” he murmured.
“Anyway, to end the story, Sandar managed to get hold of me through a Leemron company that didn’t know about my crime.
She didn’t know either; she was simply using them because nothing was coming back from trying to use the empire’s system.
When I got the request for supplies, I thought that would be a good time to use the last of the wealth I’d gotten from selling the transport and say goodbye to my sister. You know the rest.”
Han made a happy sound. All her wildest dreams were about to come true. “That is a good story. No, that’s a great story. We’re going to write that down and sell it to an Ugarian soap opera and be rich. Well, richer.”
He sounded a rumble of amusement. “Richer?”
“Yes, richer, because we’re going to have so much wealth we could probably buy an entire planet.”
“Where is all this wealth going to come from?” he asked, obviously still amused with her.
“Those ships you stole,” she said. “We’re going to sell them!”