The Ashes of Worlds - Kevin J. Anderson [83]
When she landed the Curiosity, BeBob was there with a huge grin on his face. He greeted Rlinda with enough enthusiasm to satisfy even her. “I’ve been waiting for you! I got my ship back, good as new, and I’ve already put her through her paces. We can fly out together again, the Blind Faith and the Voracious Curiosity, just like old times.”
“Not exactly like old times, BeBob.” She kept her arms locked around him, refusing to release him from the hug. She had already gleaned reports of General Lanyan’s clumsy attack on the shipyards here, as well as BeBob’s encounter with the Klikiss at Relleker. “Not until the Chairman gets his head out of his ass and lets us get back to business as usual.”
He looked deeply serious. “So is it bad on Earth?”
“Not so much bad as annoying. I met with Sarein, and even she’s fed up, but I’m pretty sure she’s too scared to do anything about it. She thinks she has a chance to keep the Chairman on the straight and narrow. I actually feel sorry for the poor girl.”
BeBob snorted. “She chose the Chairman as her playmate. Now she has to live with him.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Holier-Than-Thou Roberts? I chose a few bad partners in my life, too. Didn’t mean I couldn’t get over it.”
BeBob was unable to cover his smile. “And sometimes you find yourself back with somebody who was a good idea in the first place. You can be taught.”
“I’m still reserving judgment, so make sure you keep behaving yourself. Now, then, would you prefer a squabble, or are you going to offer me a shower and a bed, preferably large enough to fit the two of us?”
“You mean the shower or the bed?”
“Both.”
Later, they went together to the mess hall. Rlinda sniffed the air. “I want to make sure these shipyard chefs still remember how to cook.”
“It always tasted good enough to me,” BeBob said.
“Cardboard tastes good enough to you. That’s why you need me around.”
While BeBob accepted his plate of noodles and protein cubes mixed with the sauce of the day, Rlinda leaned her elbows on the serving counter and consulted the chefs about the spices they used, how they stretched their ingredients, what they could produce directly from hydroponics labs and what had to be imported.
“Well, it just so happens that while I investigated trade opportunities on Earth, I stocked my cargo hold with certain items, such as fresh chili peppers, ginger root, long curls of cinnamon bark, and saffron — I have a kilo of saffron that cost almost as much as a tankful of ekti. Ever had saffron?” The server shook her head, overwhelmed by Rlinda’s enthusiasm. “I’d be willing to part with some of my stash, so long as I’m here to make sure everything is prepared properly. Your cafeteria food will never taste the same.”
Rlinda followed BeBob to a table and took a seat across from Tasia Tamblyn and Robb Brindle. Instead of EDF uniforms, the pair now wore Roamer jumpsuits on which they had embroidered the new logo of the Confederation. While she wasn’t close with Brindle or Tamblyn, Rlinda had met them back on Theroc while consulting with King Peter on setting up the new government.
Rlinda inhaled deeply of her plate of food, took several bites, and pronounced the meal “adequate.” Tamblyn, as usual (according to BeBob), needed little incentive to get on her soapbox about the threat of the Klikiss. She and Brindle seemed to have personal axes to grind. “So, then, I take it you’ve both had some personal experience with the bugs?” Rlinda asked.
“Shizz, you could say that,” Tamblyn said. “Too damned much experience.”
“As hosts, they’re about as pleasant as the hydrogues were,” Brindle added. They described their struggles on Llaro and how only a few of them had gotten away. “Davlin Lotze and Margaret Colicos bought us time to escape.”
Rlinda looked quickly at BeBob. “Did you say Davlin?” The last they had seen of the “specialist in obscure details,” he’d been aboard BeBob’s original Blind Faith when the EDF destroyed it. “I knew it was a trick! He got away. He’s still alive.”
“He was alive when we left