Happy to let the subject drop now that he'd made his point, Aiden flew them through. A slight ache at the back of his head alerted him to passing through the rift, which must've been a slightly longer jump than usual, and the main display shifted to show the planet they'd come in a safe distance from. As well as the space around them swiftly being populated by the beacons of ships approaching and leaving the station in orbit around it, as Ali and the ship's computer used the sensors to identify them.
“Transponder and authorization transmitted to the station,” the companion said smoothly. “They're giving us an approach vector now.”
Aiden locked in their course along the designated route, then swiveled his chair to face Lana, trying not to look at the gunner sitting between them. “On the subject of meals in the galley, would me and Ali be intruding?”
The gunner noticeably stiffened, and somewhere behind him, Aiden heard Belix practically hiss. Lana gave him a surprised look, then smiled warmly. “I think that would be wonderful,” she said.
“Do you?” Belix demanded.
The young woman hesitated. “I mean, I think we can work something out, can't we? For all our sakes?”
“Maybe I can alternate meals with Miss Ishiv,” Aiden offered. Lana gave him an unhappy look, obviously not liking that idea, and judging by Belix's protesting screech she wasn't in the mood to share. He shrugged uncomfortably, wondering if he really wanted to put up with the elfin woman's spite just to try to socialize with Lana. “I promise I'll be more pleasant company than Barix.”
“Could you possibly set the bar any lower?” the slight man asked, apparently over his earlier pique and sounding amused by this entire subject. Aiden turned to glare at him, and he once again hunched his shoulders. “What, now I can't even insult myself?”
“You insult yourself every time you open your mouth,” Aiden said mildly. Surprisingly, Belix snickered at that, in spite of her outrage at the prospect of having to share Lana and the fact that she despised him.
“Or maybe you just don't have the wit to understand my clever repartee,” Barix countered, sneering. “For which you have my full sympathy . . . it constantly baffles me how you can stand to muddle through life at your intelligence level. If I was as stupid as you I'd probably kill myself.”
Aiden gave him a toothy smile. “So you're saying if I ever get sick of listening to your smug, condescending voice, all I have to do is whack you in the head a few times with a wrench and you'll finish the job for me?”
“After which you'll beat your chest and hoot triumphantly at the nearest females? A solution worthy of your simian cranial capacity, Captain.”
The comment didn't seem worthy of response, so Aiden pulled out his cauterizer and began doing basic maintenance on it. Just in case they ran into trouble in this system.
A slightly more comfortable mood settled on the bridge: Lana and the gunner were talking quietly in their corner, the twins were both busy on their displays, and Ali was focused on parsing information. It was almost pleasant, to be around so many people with nobody saying or doing anything nasty.
Maybe that was why Lana had begun the tradition of group meals. He looked forward to the next one, to see what it was like to actually socialize with his crew. How long had it been since he'd done that?
After about a half hour he finished tuning and reassembling his weapon. “Picking out anything interesting from the chatter?” he asked Ali as he idly buffed its focusing lens on his sleeve.
She cocked her head. “Potential employment. Novvis is offering a substantial bounty plus full salvage rights to any ship willing to solve a problem with pirate activity in their system and the nearby trade routes. It appears to be a group of at least four ships, one of them a heavy cruiser or possibly even a frigate.”
Aiden frowned. “Might be worth investigating. Just how substantial is this reward?”
“Wait,” Lana interrupted. “I thought your big thing was fighting Deeks. Now we're going after pirates?”
He turned to her, trying to hide his irritation. Did she really have a problem with him rescuing star systems from murderous pirates? “Just because these systems are under the Movement's thumb, that doesn't mean they deserve to suffer. Traders are mostly just innocent people doing their best to get by in the universe, and piracy makes their lives more difficult.”
“Yeah, what's your problem with that job?” Barix asked, amused. “It's honest pay for honest work.”
The young woman's brow was furrowed. “What about the Deek traders you attack? Aren't you just making their lives more difficult?”
For the love of- “That's different,” Aiden growled, ignoring the Ishivi's disbelieving snickers.
“Why?” Lana pressed. “Are they transporting weapons? Funding the Movement's military?”
Where were these questions coming from? Blank Slates weren't supposed to be this contemplative, were they? Then again, she'd been a lot cooler towards him ever since he'd told her the gunner's story; not quite holding a grudge, but he wasn't exactly getting any starry eyed hero worship from her, either.
“A lot of them are directly aiding the Deek efforts to oppress mankind,” he replied curtly. “We try to go after those ships specifically when we can find them, but any ship that operates in the Movement's name is part of the problem . . . even hitting Deek trading ships carrying cheap fertilizer constitutes a symbolic victory. One which furthers our goals.”
To his irritation, the girl still wouldn't drop it. “How do symbolic victories further your goals when the enemy has already won the war and controls the entire universe?”
“Because people notice!” Aiden snapped. “For the same reason we've got a bounty on us big enough to buy a colony world, even though the Deeks think we're just mundane pirates. We're a symbol of resistance, and any victory against them, no matter how small, grows our reputation and increases
