“Welcome to the Haven, Didi Badini. I am Captain Nueva of the Starfarers.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a few excess … children, or females … or even that sort of male type … I could relieve you of?” Acorna said.
“We’ve … sort of … relieved ourselves of the excess.”
That was when Acorna realized she and Calum were in big trouble. Maybe she should have remained Acorna DelszakiHarakamian, and worth a sizable ransom.
“Really,” she replied as if amused at such a mutual circumstance, “then, if you’ll just return my … my little friend, we’ll be on our way. I really do need to find a few replacements, you know. Tastes get jaded so quickly.”
Nueva made a motion, and two of the guards behind her grabbed Acorna by the arms. She could have thrown them off easily enough, being far stronger than she looked, but unless she also had Calum, displaying any of her discreetly concealed abilities was futile and possibly dangerous to them both. As she was turned and taken off in the direction Calum had been hauled, she saw that the AcaDeckl was tightly held by deck clamps fore and aft.
“Let’s see how quickly your tastes jade,” Nueva said, with an unpleasant laugh.
Over her shoulder, Acorna saw Nueva signal a waiting group of men and women, carrying various kinds of testing equipment and tools, to board the ship.
Acorna didn’t think that Calum would have forgotten to disable the AcaSecki before he’d opened the hatch. Of course, a personality like Nueva-and she made Kisia Manjari seem angelic in comparison -would have ways of extracting the information she -wanted.
Nor was she, as she had half hoped, flung into the same cell as her guardian. Five of the doors on the narrow aisle she was pushed to were blue with force-field lights. So another timeconsuming puzzle would keep her from being totally jaded. Insane, maybe, but not jaded. Did they fill the cells in order? Or had Calum “een pushed into the first empty one … since this Nueva person had boasted of relieving herself of excess personnel? After using the sanitary appliance, -with a deft but concealing shift of her pantaloons, Acorna unfastened one of the two slabs and lay down on it. She also decided to keep in character. She didn’t doubt for a moment that anything she said would be monitored. So why had they separated her from Calum? Two people in the same fix would certainly exchange information. Oh, dear, perhaps she had laid it on a bit thick that Calum was useless. At that moment she would have given anything to be comforted by her “uncle.”
She was roused from a restless sleep by a hissing noise and, as she lay prone on the comfortless slab, her face was turned to the metal ceiling … and the open vent. A thin, mournful face was framed within the vent. A grubby thin finger was placed across the lips of a tear-stained and very dirty face. But Acorna was not in a mood to quibble; she welcomed any friendly contact right then.
The child slowly let a rope down through the opening. She stood on the slab, thinking to assist by being closer to the vent. But instead the kid made violent gestures for her to refasten the slab to the wall.
As if she’d never been there. Good thinking. There seemed to be just enough rope to reach her outstretched hands.
If this if all the’ve got, we’ll never reach Calum even with the slab down, she thought.
She heard a soft, interrogative “Mmm?” from above, as if her rescuer was afraid to say out loud, “Come on, what are you waiting for?” Somewhat dubiously, Acorna gave a tentative pull on the rope. The thin youngster who was her unexpected savior couldn’t have enough muscle to pull her up, light as she was. But he had tied the rope to something reassuringly secure. Hand over hand, she pulled herself up, grasping his hand as she reached the frame and angled her shoulders to the diagonal of the vent. Despite that, she scraped her arms badly getting through.
There was only the light from the narrow vent to see with. It reflected off a tube wall that wasn’t very big, so she had to sort of slither the rest of her body out of the cell. Her rescuer quietly replaced the vent grill, screwed the fasteners back in, and began to re-coil his rope. Once more he put his finger to his lips, then began to wriggle along the tube, looking back once to indicate she was to follow.