Merkiaari Wars: 02 - What Price Honour by Mark E. Cooper Page B

press charges.”
    “Charges?” Jennings said faintly and visibly wilting under the storm.
    “Charges,” Robert agreed firmly. “Your shuttle is back safe and sound, and the thief is marooned in the jungle. I suggest you be satisfied and let the poor girl go home. She’s had a bit of a shock.”
    “In the jungle you say?” Jennings said and at Kate’s nod, his face lightened. A calculating look replaced his earlier outrage at the theft. “Well I suppose… and it does appear unharmed and all. It would be churlish of me to hold this young… err lady responsible. Let’s leave it at that.”
    Kate released her pulser as Jennings went to inspect his shuttle. Her allies wandered off when they realised the crisis was over, and left her in Robert’s hands.
    “Well, can I drive you somewhere?”
    Kate thought fast. “I need a hotel. I didn’t have time to find one before…” she looked down shyly. “You know.”
    “Hey, it’s okay,” Robert said softly to console her. “It wasn’t your fault, and the bastard is history.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You marooned him. The jungle is wild. He’ll never make it back here on foot.”
    “Oh,” she said in a small voice.
    “Don’t beat yourself up about it. He deserved it.”
    “I suppose so.”
    “This yours?” Jennings said descending from the shuttle and locking the hatch. He was carrying her kit bag.
    Kate nodded and reached for it, but Robert was becoming a pest. He got a hand to it first.
    “I’ll carry it for you, Cherry. It’s heavy, what’s in it?” Robert asked hefting the bag experimentally.
    “Just girl stuff.”
    “Girl stuff?” He grinned. “Like what?”
    “Clothes and stuff,” Kate said with a disinterested shrug.
    “Ah.”
    Robert escorted her toward a row of battered ground cars. All of them were covered in dust and had seen hard use. If Kate had been alone, she might well have stolen one of them. A ground car would be useful later. There were a few ground effect vehicles at one end of the row—a truck with its own crane attached to its cargo bay, and two executive saloons that had seen better days, but most of the vehicles ran on tyres with deep treads. Wheeled transport was more common in the Border Worlds; hover vehicles had problems with uneven ground.
    “This yours?” Kate asked admiring the dirty and beat up exterior of the truck they approached. The cargo bay was full of odd pieces of junk and tools that had been haphazardly thrown inside, but the cockpit looked clean and well cared for.
    “Yeah,” he said blushing in embarrassment as they climbed in.
    Transport like this could be very useful. It wouldn’t stand out on a world where the lack of decent roads made four-wheel drive a necessity, and its battered appearance automatically labelled the owner a harvester—a useful mistake for people to make.
    “I know she doesn’t look like much, but she’s really something where it counts.”
    Kate raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Oh?”
    “Yeah,” he said with a mischievous grin and started the turbine.
    Weruuuuummm!
    Kate winced as the turbine started in a thunder of noise. The power under the hood was unexpected. These things were notoriously easy to tune, but he had more than tuned this one.
    “What the hell did you do?”
    “The turbine is straight out of a autoharvester,” he said with a another cheeky grin. “Twelve hundred horsepower on max boost.”
    Kate whistled silently and gave him the admiring look he craved. “Where did you get it?”
    “I have lots of friends, Cherry. We do each other favours.” He backed out of his parking space and then floored it.
    They accelerated along the road like a shuttle boosting to orbit. He was grinning like a kid, obviously trying to impress her. He must have decided that she wasn’t as young as she first appeared, and that he might have a chance with her. He was dead wrong there, but she wouldn’t hurt his feelings by letting him know that. The only thing in her