Tyson tore away from her. “I’m sorry, I … have a thing.”
“I know you don’t,” Paris said, annoyance seeping into her voice at the edges. “I maintain your schedule, remember?”
“It’s not you, this is just, very fast. I need to think.” Which was entirely true. Tyson tapped a floor panel and called up the express lift car. “I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll talk about this more then.”
“Do I look like I want to talk?” the spurned, inexplicably horny android said with a huff.
“Please don’t be angry with me.” Tyson practically fell into the lift as soon as the doors opened. He backpedaled until his shoulders hit the inside wall and the doors closed. Tyson’s knees went weak and he slid down the wood paneling inside the lift car.
“Lobby.”
What a perfectly bizarre day. From planning counterespionage to fighting off the advances of an assistant whose physical existence was measured in hours.
As the express lift started its near freefall to ground level, Tyson considered stopping at Klub Kryptonite for a carafe of his indulgent sake, but no. Paris would see him doing it on the building’s security feeds, and it was Friday night, late. There would be throngs of Lazarus’s young and beautiful drinking, flirting, dancing lasciviously, and looking to climb his ladder, in several meanings. The very last place on the planet he wanted to be just then. Tyson had perfectly serviceable liquor at home, and he needed a shower.
A cold shower.
In liquid helium.
EIGHTEEN
“Derstu! Your attention is necessitated in cavern seventy-three!”
Thuk clicked a blood-claw against the plate on the side of his thigh. “What’s the problem, Kivits?”
“The humans are trying to poison us!”
Thuk glanced across the corridor to where Captain Kamala and her pair of warrior escorts stood. They’d managed to restore artificial gravity, if only at half strength. “Susan?” he called. They’d moved to first names.
“Yes, Thuk?” The tiny mouth implanted in his ear pore spit out the translation of her words.
“Are you trying to poison us, by any chance?”
“Think no.” Even after seventy years of war, then stalemate, then pacing each other’s fences, their capacity to communicate was still hindered by clunky translations and the misunderstandings that came along with the imprecision of language and cultural assumptions. But, it sounded like a denial to Thuk. He motioned for them to follow. “Come along. Let’s see what my dulac is chittering about.”
They bounded down the tunnel in long, awkward strides under the weak gravity, for which neither species was adapted or accustomed. It was almost worse than floating, but at least it provided an up and down.
“I apologize again for the state of our mound,” Thuk said over his shoulder. “We weren’t expecting visitors.”
“[Laughing/humor]. Not was I,” the humans’ derstu said. No, not derstu, Thuk reminded himself. She was a captain. Humans did things differently, at least onboard their warships. Her power and authority among her harmony, ahem, crew, were nearly absolute, like the queens of old.
He was more than a little envious, if he were being honest. Imagine how much easier it would be if his harmony just did what he said instead of making everything into a negotiation. But then, they could hardly call themselves Xre.
“Surprise when [drone] start explode, also,” Susan said, still smiling, or what Thuk had been taught was a smile at any rate. She was probing him again, trying to get an admission to slip. Well, two could sing that song.
“Probably just as surprised as I was when our reservoir exploded. What a cursed star we orbit.”
The thin smile on the captain’s meaty, horizontal lips curled up on one corner of her mouth. “[Touché.]” His translation matrix offered no suggestions, but Thuk was pretty sure he caught her meaning anyway.
“Seventy-three is just up ahead and to the left. The dulac sounded exasperated. Be patient with him should he become dramatic.”
“I can [grapple/hold] him.”
It was almost certainly untrue, not only because she only had four limbs to a Xre’s six, but humans averaged a full head shorter. Still, they were a confident race almost to a fault that rarely passed on an opportunity for a good fight. Thuk wasn’t sure fear even occurred within them.
The entrance to the cavern in question came into view around a bend in the corridor. Five humans, two warriors and three attendants, stood outside under three of the Chusexx’s own warriors and Kivit’s unrelenting glare. As soon as he saw Thuk approach, he started gesticulating wildly, throwing an accusatory claw in the general direction of one of the human attendants holding a silver cylinder under one arm.
At the sight of the additional human warriors, everyone tensed as the balance of force in the immediate vicinity shifted ever so slightly to their visitors’ favor. Thuk knew enough about the capabilities of the weapons Susan’s warriors carried to know they weren’t particularly heavily armed for human foot troops. There had been few surface engagements in the last war, but the Dark Ocean Chorus had managed to trade, steal, or smuggle enough copies over the years to get a good sense of what they could expect from a land engagement or boarding action. These were defensive weapons, enough punch to make an enemy think twice, but not enough to wreak the kind of havoc necessary to destroy a ship from within.
Susan and her people had placed a lot of trust in Thuk and his harmony simply by being here. He would reciprocate.
“Weapons at your sides. We’re all being friendly here.”
“Derstu,” Kivits began. “These abyss dwellers tried to release a pathogen into our air tunnels!”
“Calm your claws, Kivits. We’ll dig to the truth of this soon enough. Now, I asked everyone to relax. These people came to help. Let’s not be ungrateful hosts.”
The budding standoff eased; not much, but enough. Weapons remained in hands, but pointed at the floor and with fingers
