I had been aboard Stella's ship long enough now to start taking a lot of its little luxuries for granted.  But the couches in her common room?  I doubted I would ever stop appreciating those.

I was comfortably sprawled across one and sinking into the cushions when a nervous-looking Stella wandered in and sat down opposite me.  She proceeded to chew her bottom lip and run her fingers through her hair for a few minutes.  Time for that overdue chat, then.

I sat up cross-legged.  May as well get it off my chest.

"I call it the weft drive.  Or maybe tapestry, if that sounds less corny?  I guess both are pretty silly names though."

"Huh?"  Stella looked up at me and tilted her head to one side.

"The, um—The mods I made to your engine.  It's technically almost the same as standard warp travel, so no special engine needed, but it has a higher gravity load and needs a unique exotic matrix, so cheap engines can’t kick it off.  That's why I planned to start running tests if I could get my hands on choice enough parts, but I sort of got caught up in the moment when we were running from those imperials and just plugged the whole blueprint into your engine and your ship is so nice that she barely even felt all the little hitches that have inevitably come up, so—"

"Weaver."  

Huh?

"You lost me," Stella explained, and brushed some of her mane back behind one ear.  "It's cute when you ramble, but I may need you to summarize."

I nodded in response.  That… might take some thinking through.  I rested my elbows on my knees and my chin on my hands, and slowly swayed side-to-side for a bit.  Eventually I pieced together some words in my head that hopefully made sense.

"The short version is, uh…  I modded your stardrive to be untrackable.  Warp drives normally just squeeze through basic three-D space, but right now we're dipping in and out of the surface.  It's hard to visualize, but I like to think of it like thread floated along the backside of fabric."

Stella sat quietly with her eyes closed for a while after I finished.  What was that expression?  Was she looking expectant?  That was all I really had.

Then I was bowled over by a throw pillow.  A thrown pillow, I suppose.  I could hear Stella laughing.

"Weaver, you absolute clown!  That's not even subtle."  

She giggled as I climbed my way back up from the depths of the couch cushions, until I wondered if she was running out of breath, and punctuated with a gasp.  

"I'm not upset with you over the engines, you know," she said once she had caught her breath.  "It got us away safely, after all."

Huh.  Well, now I knew.

"So, um, what were you looking so nervous about when you came in?  I know pirates have a reputation, but I'm really not going to bite…"

 Stella shifted around, as if trying to find a more comfortable position to sit in.

"Thank you, Weaver.  I trust you, but it's nerve-wracking to say what I want to tell you.  I, um, think I mentioned my parents are high on the food chain in Galcorp?"

I nodded.  Imperial officials, in other words. I was starting to worry that she would draw blood the way she kept biting her lip.

"They're at the top, actually.  I… was the heir apparent."

Sorry, what!?

"As in you're a princess?  What, you just happened to run away and get tossed in a brig?  And let some stranger have the run of your ship?"

Had I been duped after all?  Should I bolt for the helm and hope she didn't remember our heading?  My brain started to run FTL.

"Hear me out, Weaver?"  Her tone and her eyes said the rest:  I can see you're worried, but at least give me a chance.

She had an arm outstretched toward me.  Somehow, that broke through all my panic.  I had known she was from high society before and had still decided I wanted to trust her, so how much did this actually change?  I took a few slow breaths and nodded.

"How much… imperial… news do you get where you're from?"

"It's always a few weeks old, but a lot of the sailors listen in and bring back recordings, why?"

"Then you've heard about the, um, the prince, I suppose?  The sole prince?  The one that's been missing?"  She was getting at something, but I was stumped.

"And you're…. the illegitimate sister they tracked down when he got disinherited?"

She laughed, long and hard, and the tension of the moment shattered.  She had to gasp for breath to continue speaking.

"Weaver, I was him.  It's difficult to talk about, but…"  She trailed off and gave me a look, chewing her lip again.

"...But I think I can trust you.  For a long time I was horrible, and I may as well have been living by a script.  My rude awakening, well, I don't really remember anymore what changed my mind.  Looking back, I'm tempted to imagine I was sheltered, that I didn't know what imperial worlds were like outside my own walls, but most execs know full well what they do to the little people and just don't care, or have convinced themselves it's worth it.

"But something, somewhere got it through that maybe I should care, made me start asking questions.  And some of those questions were about myself.  My parents weren't very pleased with my bank statements or public presence after that.

"They're obsessed with public image, so the news says the prince is missing but doesn't mention 'accused of grand theft, fraud, and sedition.'  I've only found the nerve for two of those so far, by the way.  But the accusation is enough.  To the imperial fleet, I'm a pirate now.

"And if I'm a pirate and not a prince, what's to stop me from, say, finding a modified medical pod and being Stella Celera instead?"

Huh.  Maybe she was kindred after all.  I had a laundry list of questions after that.

One wouldn't wait, though.

"You can do that??"

She laughed again, but nodded and winked.  I was still missing the joke, whatever it was, but she was happy enough to answer all my prodding after that.