He’d never intended to take the Aegis all the way. He’d merely wanted to use it long enough to get the Warborne’s attention all the way out at Praxis-Four.
“You have a crew member called Beauty?” Sparky leaned on the arm of his chair, watching Zero avidly. “Now either she’s a stunner or a ten-pinter. Which is it?”
“Ten-pinter?” For once Zero’s innate ability to decode “human-speak” deserted him and he looked at the tall human blankly.
“Ten-pinter,” Eris supplied, shutting down the weapons console. “AKA, a potential sexual partner who requires the intake of a certain amount of alcohol, in this case, ten pints, before they become attractive enough to bed.”
Zero’s eyebrow winged up toward his hairline. “Ah… pleasant. No, Beauty’s neither. In fact, I’m not sure how he got his nickname… his real name is Altav.”
“You all have nicknames?” Sparky demanded. “What’s yours? Tinman?”
“Ha-fucking-ha!” Zero flipped him the bird. “Actually, Zero is my nickname. My real name is too long and complicated to be translated correctly.”
Not entirely true. He didn’t have a name, just a serial number that showed in a tattoo across his cheek if he let it. Not that he planned on telling the piss-taking human that.
“The only one of us who doesn’t have one is T’Raal.”
“Oh?” Eris asked as he unclipped himself from the pilot’s chair. Now they weren’t in combat, he didn’t need to be there. He could pilot the ship from anywhere. “Why is that?”
He shrugged, heading over to her. Reading his expression, she’d started to unclip herself, reaching her arms up around his neck as he plucked her from her seat. “No idea, just the way it is.”
There was a clunk, and the deck shifted sideways a fraction of a millimeter. The humans wouldn’t have felt anything but to Zero, it was like a tectonic plate movement.
“How about you ask him yourself?” he suggested and then hid his smile as her arms tightened around his neck, an apprehensive look on her face.
“They’re here. Now?”
❖
Eris had never met an actual alien before. Not one that wasn’t human in origin anyway. And Zero didn’t count because he looked so human she couldn’t tell the difference between him and Allen. But as soon as she saw the leader of the Warborne, T’Raal, standing in the airlock, she knew instantly he wasn’t human.
“Your eyes were different when you came to Tarantus before,” she blurted out as Zero walked across the boarding tunnel between the ships. And they were. On the security footage they’d been blue and human-like. Now, it was like looking into a cat’s eyes. No, it was like being studied by a blue-eyed lion on two legs. The man was a predator through and through, of that she was sure.
“Contacts,” he replied, an easy smile on his lips. “Welcome aboard the Sprite…”
“Eris Archer,” she supplied quickly, holding out her hand.
“Eris sustained neural damage operating an armored suit to get us off the station,” Zero added. “Her suit needs recovering from the aft airlock and bringing aboard. I’ll need Talent… did you manage to get the medbay fixed?”
“We did. Try not to blow it up this time,” the large Warborne leader replied with a quirk of his lips. Then his gaze slid past them. “Jayce Allen… why am I not surprised? You’re like a magnet for fucking trouble.”
“Hey, hey!” The ex-con held his hands up, palms out. “These two found me. I was trying to stay out of it but noooo, they insisted on my help. Probably wouldn’t’ve made it without me.”
“Yeah yeah…” Eris broke in as T’Raal motioned them through the door ahead of him, triggering the airlock and tunnel retraction.
“You still didn’t explain why you know so much about SO13… or why you ended up in Mirax Ruas,” she added, nodding toward the tattoos around his upper arms. Each marked a year in the most brutal prison in the human systems, where life expectancy was less than eighteen months. Anyone with those tattoos was considered a cross between the grim reaper and the bogeyman.
“Crimes against fashion,” he supplied promptly, his expression serious. “Apparently spots and stripes don’t go together.”
She sighed, shaking her head. She should have known she wouldn’t get a straight answer from the smart-mouthed ex-con.
“Well,” T’Raal said, “welcome aboard the Sprite. Sparky, your room assignment is the same. Just don’t make too much noise, Red and Fin are back aboard and either of them will squish you like a bug.”
Sparky grinned. “You finally got some more crew? Good on you!”
T’Raal sighed, rolling his eyes