Page 62 of The Captain's Bounty
“We’ll be hunted by everyone, including other pirates.”
“So what else is new?”
“This ship! We won’t last two months in this piece of shit.”
“If we don’t get water and food, we won’t last ten days.”
“It wouldn’t be a piece of shit if we could find even a halfway decent garage and hole up for a while.”
“Hole up where? For how long? I remind you we have no water! We have three days at most to figure this out.”
“So we go back to Cutirut I and resupply! Sell a gun, fix the leak and the recyclers, jump to the next place, fix something else, jump again.”
“That’s a lot of jumps.”
“We have a whatsis! A quantum scrubber! All we have to do is stay ahead of the hunters until?—”
“All we have to do, she says. Oh sure. That’s all.”
“What do you want to do, just give up?”
“No, I want to live! Not just today or tomorrow or until the next bounty hunter comes along! I want a life!”
He listened while they argued, but he already knew what he was going to have to do. Demin didn’t want to risk Cory. He found himself in the awkward position of not wanting the same for Lissa. He didn’t like the way just the thought of it made him feel. He had no business feeling that way about her, especially when this all started because he wanted to sell her.
He didn’t like the way thinking about that made him feel either.
“Me,” he said darkly. He had to repeat himself twice to be heard over the top of everyone else. Eventually they did hear him though, and the arguing petered off to silence.
“You?” Demin echoed. “You, what?”
“I’m the one you’ll sell.”
The comm was dead silent for several long seconds, and then everyone erupted all at once.
“They’ll arrest all of us!”
“I will not risk my bondmate!”
“I’m not risking everybody else. I’d really rather not risk the captain either… shocker though that might be.”
“Cory and Lissa will turn me over to the Collectors,” Bruwes began.
“To be taken themselves?” Demin roared.
“They will wear the old crew’s suits,” Bruwes calmly explained over the top of his protests.
“The ones on the old crew’s bodies back on the Raider?” Vullum asked pointedly.
“There’s two spares. They won’t be recognized. They’ll just be scavs.”
“That won’t matter! You know that won’t!”
“The rest of you will be in hiding. They’ll want to do a down and dirty trade. Money for the prisoner, exchanged at the airlock.”
“Are you insane?”
“Prisoner? You’re talking about you!”
