Pixie's voice cut off as I shut the TalkBox off, but there were snickers and laughter all over the room. Even the big crustation chucked, and this time it actually sounded like he meant it.

I shook my head and then motioned to Brand to lead the way, and he nodded, cutting his laughter off. Everyone else in the room stopped at the same time as him, and silence settled in again as we walked out of the room.

​​

I was curious about what Brand wanted to talk about, but I also was pretty sure that I knew what it would be regarding. I was about to put myself on auto-pilot and slip into my mind again to think about what else needed to be done, besides my wife, but Brand spoke up, and I looked up.

"In here, this is my office," Brand told me as a door slid open, and he walked inside.

I followed him into a spartan room that looked no different than the place that I was just being held with a single table and two chairs. The only difference was that this room was covered in grey plates, but the table and chair were still both white.

"Sorry, I don't really have an office, so this will have to do. I spend most of my time in the barracks or the main flight deck, so there is no need for me to have an office," Brand said as we both took the two seats.

"It's fine. What did you want to talk about?" I asked, not being able to read the threads this time as well.

It was like he refused to make his questions part of his conscious thought. I was still able to see the things that were on his mind.

That didn't help me in any way because all that this man seemed to think about was one thing. I seemed to consume his life; the extermination of the Wasp Folk.

"Weapons, I did some studies of the Drones that you have, and I can see that you didn't make them, but you have been working on some other ideas. I am sorry, but I went through your office, and I have to say you are a visionary! I think that if you would sit down with my engineers, we could make some big things happen around here!" Brand said, leaning forward, but I was trying to keep myself calm.

My office was like my bedroom, where I kept my most important notes and ideas and thought that this man went through them all. This was not right, but now was not the time to deal with that.

Weapons, he must have been looking at some of the designs I was working on. Maybe the ones for the ship I was developing or the Levi-Stone rifles concepts I had made.

I was not going to give these people any more than they had already taken. They knew too much as it was.

"No, I have more than enough to do right now as it is. My Queen is missing, and our ship has been offline for a day now, and there are many other things that I will need to take care of," I said to Brand and nodded to my surprise, but then added something that made my blood boil.

"Sure, no problem. I get that you are a busy guy, and I don't want to waste your time. I will just send one of my engineers to shadow you and maybe learn a thing or two. Considering the situation that we find ourselves in, I am going to insist that you take someone with you," Brand said as he leaned back as stretched casually.

All of me was left without words, but fury started to bubble up. I would make sure that the Queen knew about everything that happened, and I would have to keep most of my essential thoughts inside my head.

"Fine, but I want to be sent back right away. As I said, I have many things that I need to take care of," I said, with a little bit of my frustration slipping out.

Brand smiled broadly like he had just won, and he had. I had nothing that I could say to prevent this from happening, and getting upset wasn't going to solve anything.

I would just have to make a plan to get around this. I could devise some make-work projects for him and then take care of the more important stuff.

"Good, I will send Jess down with you! Come, I will introduce the two of you, and then we can get you back to your ship with her," Brand said as he stood up, but I was a little slower to rise.

"Girl? What do you mean? Don't you have a male that is going to come and follow me?" I blurted out, making all eight portions of my mind mentally facepalm.

I wasn't expecting the person to be a female, but maybe the woman would be some quiet workaholic? I really didn't need distractions right now, and I was horrible with women.

"Jess is one of our top engineers, and she is also one of the most creative when it comes to building explosive weapons. She is the one that I think will do the best with you," Brand said with a knowing smile that I didn't like as I followed him out of the room.

I spent the ten-minute walk surveying the ship and trying to draw a mental map of most of the areas of the ship that I could see, but it was hard. Even with my mind, the ship's layout was confusing with stairs going up and down at random places, but then I saw a set of stairs move from going up to going down.

"Don't bother trying to map the ship out. If you don't resonate with my Sky Whale, the creature will prevent you from getting anywhere you are not supposed to be. While it may look like a big massive creature that we have tamed, that is not the case. Sky Whales are some of the oldest creatures on this planet, and only a special few can communicate with them," Brand said as we arrived at a doorway that opened up into a very messy workshop.

I looked around, but I couldn't see anyone in the place, but that could just be because it was so cluttered and messy. Suddenly, there was an explosive, and parts flew everywhere, including towards us.

My mind sped up, and I prepared to dodge a metal pipe and a hail of nuts and bolts. I coiled my muscles and was about to dive out of the way, but then I noticed the General.

Brand put up a hand, and a chromatic shield formed around us. The parts were all deflected, and then Brand dropped his hand, and the shield as something rose from the smoke and walked out waving her arms and coughing.

"It worked!" The soot-covered woman with a curvaceous body shorted in triumph after she was done coughing.

No… No… No, no, no! This woman was going to be a walking time bomb! She was going to destroy my organized mess, and this Otter Folk woman was absolutely gorgeous, even covered in ash!

You Otter Bee kidding me! Pixie is going to kill me!