Planet of Pain (30 page)

‘Leave her, Jo,' Bel said. ‘We'll deal with her later. Let's finish this.'

In fact, as Stella had predicted, it was almost absurdly easy after that. Helen lured the captain and officers to the lounge with a summons supposedly from Annamarie, and once they were in custody Stella and Bel went to the bridge and rounded up the rest. They locked the engineers and all the crew bar one in the hold, keeping the second officer back to show them the systems.

Annamarie and Siggi recovered consciousness within a minute of each other. Annamarie seemed stunned by the violence, and by Helen's treachery. ‘Why, Helen?' she said faintly. ‘Whatever did I do to you?'

‘You let me grow old,' Helen answered with cold fury. ‘I used to be your “Kitten”, remember? Now look at me.'

‘But it's so expensive. Even Siggi has to compromise and—'

‘But there's always money for Annamarie, isn't there?' Helen sneered. ‘Nothing's too good for Annamarie!'

Amazing, Jo thought, that all this wealth and power could be brought down by one woman's jealousy. Eli was still clinging to Annamarie, and she turned into a spitting wildcat when Jo tried to draw her away. ‘You can't stay with her,' Jo said, not knowing how to deal with this. ‘Listen, Eli—'

‘Eli's dead! I'm
Kitten
now!'

Jo took a step back, nonplussed. She realised for the first time that what Eli really needed was a master. Nathaniel, then Jo herself, and now Annamarie, were more important to the girl in that role than as her physical protector.

‘Go with them, Kitten,' Annamarie said quietly. ‘They're going to kill me, and Siggi too. Josephine will take care of you.'

‘No!' Eli cried. ‘I'm not leaving you! Not ever!'

‘Didn't you hear what I said, child? They're going to kill me.'

‘No we're not,' Jo said.

Everyone turned to look at her.

‘Yes we are,' Stella said.

‘No,' Jo said firmly, ‘we're not. They're going in a pod and we're cutting them adrift. Eli, you can come with us or you can stay with Annamarie; it's your decision. You're not a child, even though everyone's been treating you like one, me included. You two, if I untie your feet do you promise to behave?'

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.