“Where are your spectacles?” Havik asked.
“I couldn’t keep them in place. I should get a strap or safety glasses if gravity goes out often,” she answered.
“It does not,” Ren said from below, offense obvious in his tone.
“This is a hazardous environment. Return to your room,” Havik said.
“I’m not blind. I just can’t see the fine details or read what’s on those monitors.” Thalia waved a hand to the monitors on the wall. “But I want to help.”
“Are you an astromechanic?”
“No.” She was barely anything.
“Then you cannot help. Return to your cabin.”
She lifted her chin, smarting from the blow of his harsh words. “Come on. I’m small. I can get into places you can’t.” She wiggled her shoulders, miming how she would shimmy through the…whatever. Ducts. Service tubes. And she wouldn’t even need the lube.
That sounded wrong, even to her.
Ren poked his head up. He exchanged something that looked like a high-tech probe for Havik’s very low-tech wrench. Astromechanics made no sense.
“I have a drone to access what is too small for me,” Ren said, before ducking below.
“I can do your running and bring you tools,” she said.
“You do not know the tools’ locations or their description. In the time it took to explain what I needed and where to find it, I could fetch it myself.” Havik said.
“Then let me watch. I want to learn.”
“Why?” His eyes were dark, almost black. The length of his braid drifted out to his left, and Thalia strongly considered strangling him with it.
A thousand reasons. Because she wasn’t useless. Because sitting in her cabin was boring and she had caught up on all the Galactic Queen episodes. Because she needed to make a living. Because this was a freaking spaceship and she knew nothing about spaceships.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno. Maybe I want to do what you do, as a career.”
His eyes narrowed. “And what is it you think I do?”
“Run cargo.” If he was going to be an ass, all he deserved were asshole answers.
“This vessel is too small to turn a profit with cargo.”
“Space cop?”
“No.” He crossed his arms over his chest, his biceps flexing.
Damn. Unfair.
“Space marshal.”
He did not respond.
“Space cowboy.”
He blinked. “A what?”
“Gangster of love?”
“You are putting random words together that convey no meaning,” he huffed, all teeth and bad attitude, but Thalia saw the corner of his mouth twitch.
This was so much fun. “It’s a song. You know, there’s a surprising number of songs with that title. But my point is that I can help. You clearly need help with public relations. I can’t imagine that,” she wiggled her fingers at his face, “opens a lot of doors.”
The clanking intensified below, followed by cursing. “I have to go down a level. Try not to let your flirting get in the way of this crisis. It’s fine.”
“We are not flirting,” Havik snarled.
She totally was. One hundred percent.
Thalia rested her chin on her folded arms over the back of the chair. “You’re on a secret mission from Earth, right, to catch the human traffickers—”
“Sentient being traffickers.”
“I know how criminals think.”
“Because you are one.”
His words stung, but she refused to let him see that. If he thought being nasty would drive her away, he had the wrong idea.
“If you think you’re not flirting, you are so wrong.” She winked. “Anyway, you can deputize me. That’s cool. I don’t mind starting at the bottom as long as I get a gun.” She mimed finger pistols, complete with sound effects.
His tail lashed from side to side and he growled.
“No projectile weapons! A stray shot could damage a critical system. The consequences could be disastrous.”
“I wouldn’t be aiming for a critical system. I’d aim for a critical organ,” she said, sarcasm dripping off every word. “If you don’t use guns or blasters, then what weapons do you use? I’m guessing you don’t calmly make for the nearest planet for a duel at dawn.”
For a moment, she imagined Havik in the starched cravat and the overly formal clothes of a bygone era, like out of a historical romance, and she really liked that picture. Like, a lot, a lot, especially that red tail peeking out from under a fitted tailcoat. She needed to get him into a cravat, pronto.
“Hand to hand and blades, mostly.” His hand moved to the knife strapped to his thigh, then shook his head, as if remembering that he found her annoying. “Leave. Now.”
“I want to help. Let me help.”
“You are a distraction. You cannot.” What little warmth his voice held vanished. He glared at her with hardened, cold eyes.
The mood in the room shifted. Thalia shivered. She enjoyed teasing him and she thought he enjoyed their verbal sparring. Apparently, she read the situation wrong.
“Fine.” She pushed off the chair a little harder than necessary. Havik had an ex-wife. He didn’t talk about it and she hadn’t asked, but she could understand how his grumpy ass had an ex-wife. “For the record, I’m not useless, I’m not helpless, and I can do a hell of a lot more for you than pretend to be bait.”
Holding out a hand, she touched the ceiling and redirected herself toward the corridor. She underestimated the force of her push and rocketed into a wall. Frustrated, she kicked the panel. Only then did she see that the panel held onto the wall with one loose screw.
The panel wobbled and broke free, heading right toward her at an alarming velocity.
Havik
This female. She smiled and teased and promised many a delightful distraction, none of which he deserved or desired.
The faster they completed this mission, the better.
She kicked at a panel. It broke free, every edge jagged metal, harboring bacteria her immune system had no capacity to fight.
Unacceptable.
He moved too fast for his mind to question why he identified the hazard and why he disliked the idea of her inevitable injury. This was why she could not be trusted to do more than lure sentient being traffickers into a trap. In an instant, he pushed her out of the way
