“I had to, if I could. I’ll do anything I can to get back at them for my father.” He pressed his lips together as if holding back another outburst of unmanly sobs. “And they’re going to make you tell them how they can get control of that ship of yours. It’s a beauty.”
“How would you know that? “
Markel’s eyes lit up, and for a moment he seemed to have put aside his grief and his too-adult mannerisms, to be a normal cocky teenager enjoying a chance to boast of his expertise. “Oh, I know every tube and conduit in this ship. I can go anywhere, and I can even listen in on their corns. They think they’re so smart. Well, they’re not all THAT smart. I even know where they came from. They got on board the Haven by pretending to be Palomellese political refugees, but what really happened was Palomella decided to dump its worst criminals and scarnmed us into taking them on. That Nueva was running an extortion racket on Palomella, and now she’s trying the same thing on the Haven. If only I’d warned Dad before-” He broke off and swallowed hard.
Acorna realized he was fighting back a sob, but the gesture still made her thirsty. She tried to moisten her mouth by running her tongue over the tissue, but she really needed some water. She thought rather wistfully of all the water they had so casually left behind.
“You wouldn’t possibly have access to some water, would you?”
“Ha! I have access to anything I want,” Markel said. “For all the good it does …”
Acorna sensed that he needed bolstering up, needed to think more about what he could do and less about the past that he could not change.
“I’m very thirsty,” she said wistfully. “And, when I think of the floods there were down on Rushima. …”
He reached behind his back and pulled out a water bottle, complete with nipple, the kind used for free-fall supplies.
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Acorna said, and there was no need to feign pleasure for Markel’s sake. She enjoyed a long, luxurious drink of the water; it tasted stale and metallic, and she would have liked to purify it before drinking, but she didn’t want to insult the boy. “Go ahead,” Markel urged when she paused after that first restorative drink. You can have all of it,” he added with a casual flick of his ringers. “I’ve got more whenever you need it. Are you hungry?”
“Why, I am. Don’t tell me you can find food, too! Is there anything you don’t know about this ship?” She exaggerated her admiring tone slightly and saw the praise work on Markel as the water had done on her, restoring the parched tissues of his soul. “Only …” she thought to warn him before he made promises he wouldn’t be able to keep, “… I cannot eat meat; only grains and vegetables.”
Markel looked slightly relieved at this statement. “That’s as well because it’s much easier to snitch plants than anything else, like cooked food. Finish your drink. We’re not far from the ‘ponies.”
Acorna’s stomach made a joyful noise she was certain would echo down the tubes, but Markel had already turned to lead her to food. She slipped the bottle into one other boots-as long as she had to drag these things along, at least they could be useful as carriers. The laces were long … maybe if she could add them to Markel’s rope, they’d be long enough to reach Calum.
Over the other reeks of the ship, Acorna smelled vegetation: lots and lots of different kinds of vegetation, and the slightly chemical smell that her sensitive nostrils could identify as ‘ponic nutrients. She wondered wistfully if the seedling chard she had planted on the Aca^ecki would ever leaf for her.
“Be very quiet now,” Markel said, once again more mouthing words than actually speaking, as he deftly inserted a tool and withdrew the fasteners of a much larger grill.
The smells were almost unbearably enticing to Acorna, but she waited on his signal to enter after he had done a preliminary prowl round on hands and knees. The scent of chard drew her like a magnet, and it was fortunate indeed that it was nearer to her than the root vegetables he was deftly, and cleverly, harvesting. She noticed that he was careful to take only the small ones that were likely to be culled anyway. He took carrots and turnips and potatoes and several other brightly colored things that she did not recognize. Hybrids, probably. She carefully augmented his selection with chard leaves, then some lettuces, and one head of cabbage, stuffing what she could into her other boot. She was glad she hadn’t been wearing the boots for very long before using them as food and water carriers.