“I have made it clear to him that I find that course of action unacceptable,” she said slowly, choosing each word with care.
EJ recognized the lawyer training immediately and bit back a nervous smile. If Violet was confident things would be fine, she wouldn’t be so careful about not saying they would be fine. “Give it to me straight. We don’t have time for hedging.”
Violet’s expression soured. “The son of a bitch is stubborn and this is his ship. I can’t physically stop him from sending you over. I told him if he does, I will immediately signal my old crew to pick me up and he would never see me again. But he... is stubborn.”
Gemma twisted long auburn hair around her fingers, watching EJ with intense eyes. “Why were you really put on that ship? Violet tried to explain but it doesn’t add up.”
Which they all knew. EJ’s heart sank. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it in front of the males, just in case, but surely she could trust other Earthers and females...
Her hesitation made it clear the deeper story waited. Violet sat on a nearby crate and made a ‘get on with it’ gesture. “The truth. And talk fast, in case Nokx sends Wyzak or Harzt or someone to lurk outside the door and eavesdrop.”
“Bunch of gossiping nanny birds,” Gemma muttered, studying her fingernails as she scowled. “Can’t have a damn conversation on our own. If I had a credit for each time Wyzak showed up with ‘Faros told me Violet said’ and other nonsense, I’d have my own damn ship.”
“Hush,” Violet said. “We can complain later. Now we need EJ to talk. Fast.”
So EJ did. She took a deep breath, wound up, and spilled her guts so quietly that the other women closed ranks around her to make sure they could hear. “I moonlighted doing work for a crew that rescues females from slavers and traffickers and gets them to safe planets. They used to work in and around Caihiri but there was a kerfuffle a while back and the Slasu moved their operations to the far reaches of the Dreomia system. I wasn’t linked in really tightly with their crew, but I fed information back to them, kept an eye out for places they could potentially stash stuff. That kind of thing.”
Neither Violet nor Gemma spoke for long enough that EJ’s nerves flared. Did they not believe her? Granted, she’d glossed over a lot with the ‘that kind of thing’ comment. She cleared her throat and tugged at the hem of her pants. “And there may have been a few occasions where I sabotaged some surface vehicles. And some space launch. And maybe other stuff that was going toward the Slasu. Or the Fleet. Or... others.”
They didn’t have enough time for her to list every single odd job she’d done for Bula and her team of like-minded aliens. She’d run across the super-intense, avian alien at a particularly low point in her life after years on the run from the Fleet. Bula had helped her out of a sticky spot and only asked that EJ repay it when she could. So EJ did—in spades.
She never met anyone but Bula, and didn’t know anything about who they were or who else was involved or where the money came from. She received messages occasionally asking about a certain location or a particular vehicle, and the context was enough to figure out what needed to be done.
EJ’s heart beat faster and her mouth dried out as she watched Violet. She hadn’t even considered that the lawyer might object from a purely law-and-order standpoint. The woman lived on a pirate ship, after all. She didn’t have any room to criticize EJ’s past.
Gemma muttered, “Interesting,” and went back to frowning at EJ. Debating something, though EJ couldn’t tell what.
She couldn’t take Violet’s silence and finally blurted out, “I know it probably wasn’t the best thing to be doing and technically some of the charges are correct but it wasn’t like I actually had a trial or formal verdict, they just—”
“Einstein’s mustache, you are such a pirate,” Violet said, sighing. But there was a glint in her eyes that EJ took as a good sign. “You sound just like Faros when he tries to justify what he does, as if he’s some kind of spacefaring Robin Hood.”
EJ wasn’t sure how she felt about being compared to the odious captain, but figured if it kept Violet on her side, she could learn