“Duly noted,” Aiden said. The ship shuddered as laser bursts sheared away a few layers of their shields, and he growled in fierce concentration. “Get ready, the next few seconds are going to be intense.”
Lana took him seriously and wrapped her legs around the workstation's chair, clutching the handhold tightly. She still had a view of the display, and so as the ship bucked and lurched around her was able to watch as they got what seemed like terrifyingly close to the pirate ship. Then a bright flash filled the large hovering display, and alerts signaled as both ships' shields winked out.
Aiden maneuvered like a madman, keeping them away from the enemy weapons, while Dax somehow managed to target the other ship through the chaos, hitting them with not just one weapon but all three.
She wasn't sure whether to cheer or be sick when the pirate ship abruptly went up in a brilliant explosion, ripping it into three large pieces.
Lana's breath flew out of her in a giant whoosh of relief, and she let go of the chair and sagged to the floor. She heard soft sighs of relief from Aiden and Ali as well, and Dax leaned back slightly in his chair, letting his hands fall away from his weapons as he began checking his display. At his station, Barix looked a bit sullen about something as he dabbed the sweat from his forehead.
She couldn't understand how they could all be so calm about what they'd just been through. They'd nearly died. She'd nearly died! How could they walk happily into this kind of deadly peril over and over again and still want to keep doing it?
She wanted to get off this crazy ship, but at the same time, she had no intention of leaving. Maybe that was how the others felt beneath their calm, composed exteriors.
They all watched silently as the three pieces of the destroyed ship spun crazily away from each other at ballistic speeds. Lana couldn't help but feel a bit of regret about that, since even though the people on that ship had been trying to kill her and literally everyone she knew, victory still meant people had died.
Surprisingly, now that their initial relief over surviving had faded, she wasn't the only one who looked grim as they watched the pieces tumble away into space. Although it turned out everyone else had a different reason.
“Well, scrap,” Barix said sourly, to grumbles of agreement from Aiden and even Dax.
Lana made her way over to the weapons station. “Good shooting,” she told him by way of thanks for saving all their lives. Nobody else seemed inclined to mention it.
He shook his head, sternly disciplined features looking tense. “Not good enough.”
She blinked at him. “Um, you blew up their ship. How do you shoot better than that?”
“By not blowing it up,” Barix snapped from the other side of the bridge. “Did you not get that from what I said? Well, scrap, as in he just turned a potentially valuable prize, one that had a heavy missile launcher and at least one more atomic warhead, into a bunch of space debris.”
Lana looked back at Dax, whose stiff expression showed no reaction to the slight man's insults. “Well we're still alive, so that's something to thank him for.” The young man glanced her way, and although his expression remained rigidly neutral she almost thought he seemed grateful for her support.
“A fair point,” Aiden agreed, not seeming happy to have to acknowledge the contributions of his gunner. What did he have against Dax, anyway? “Even a blown up ship might have something worth salvaging, a few system components that miraculously survived the explosion intact. If nothing else, we can fill our holds with scrap metal and sell them by the ton.”
“Yes, because why live in luxury as pirates when you can be reduced to mere space debris scavengers?” Barix said sarcastically. “It was a decent sized ship, construct. What're the odds you somehow manage to hit the few cubic meters on it that contain a nuke, with a laser beam no more than an inch in diameter?”
Dax didn't respond, stonily focusing on his controls. Lana stared between him and the Ishivi, bemused. What did he mean, construct? And why did she get the feeling she'd heard the term before? Back on Midpoint, maybe?
Or maybe it was just a dig at the young man's rigid, almost emotionless discipline and military bearing. After all, Barix could always be counted on to supply an insult, usually an incisive one.
And it looked as if he wasn't about to give the weapons officer a break this time, either. “You couldn't have picked a worse time for it, either! If we'd taken those pirates intact we could've raided their galley to replace all the food we just lost! Sure, it probably would've been closer to the garbage you eat than the luxury fare I'm used to, but I'm a lot less picky when I'm starving. I can't beli-”
“Barix,” Aiden cut in quietly. The Ishivi immediately stopped talking, wary at his tone. “On my ship, on my bridge, I reprimand my crew. Not you.”
The slight man recovered some of his belligerence. “Crew? The construct belongs-”
Again, the captain cut him off in an almost dangerously quiet tone. “As part of my crew. I made that quite clear when he joined us. No slaves on my ship.”
Lana looked between the two men, then over at Dax. He was busy at his station, inspecting the aftermath of the battle for threats and probably doing other things she hadn't learned about yet. And in spite of the fact that people were talking directly about him, and not in flattering ways, his expression was carefully blank.
Even though he didn't seem to be hurting, her heart went out to him. Had he been a slave? Maybe owned
