Jason froze midstep, wide eyes meeting Hela’s own as she trailed off.

Her phone was still pressed to her ear as she watched him from behind her desk. Of course, that moment of surprise didn’t last long for the woman.

“I’ll have to call you back,” she said, ending the call before whoever was on the other end would have had a chance to respond.

Her gaze remained firmly latched to him as she put down the device. “So, why are you here?”

“I’m here to give you that message you said you’d deliver for me,” he said, raising the storage device in one hand, while he finally let go of the door with the other, allowing it to swing shut behind him.

“Did you?” Hela asked rhetorically. “Interesting, but I was specifically asking why you’re in my office?”

“The guard on the door let me in?” He shrugged. “Guess she didn’t know you were on the phone.”

The merchant tsked irritably. “I’ll have to have a word with her about that after you leave.”

Jason felt himself wince in sympathy for the unfortunate guard as he regarded Hela’s dark expression. He had no idea what punishment she had in-line for the slightly flustered militia-woman he’d just walked past, but he couldn’t imagine it would be pleasant.

Hela, for all her valley girl mannerisms, did not strike him as a personeasily forgave mistakes.

Which was made all the more terrifying by the fact that the thinly veiled anger that was on clear display disappeared almost instantly as she glanced at the hard drive in his hands. “Enough about her though, toss that over would you?”

He didn’t. He very explicitly walked over and handed it to her, drawing a roll of the eyes from the woman. Not that he cared. It had taken three attempts for him to record that message, he wasn’t about to risk a fourth attempt for a few milliseconds brevity.

“You couldn’t just message me the file?” she asked as she took it, her hand rather deliberately rubbing against his own as she did.

Jason ignored it. “Given the relatively illicit nature of the file, I figured it was best that it didn’t show up on any mail servers.”

Hela just laughed as she slumped back into her seat. “You think anyone’s going to care enough about some recruit’s mail to go snooping through it?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve been pretty consistently surprised by how much attention I’ve drawn since showing up on this planet. I figured it was best to err on the side of caution at this point.” He glanced at the expensive furnishings all around him. “Plus, I might not be important enough to investigate, but can you claim the same?”

“I’d like to meet the auditor with the tits to demand access to the computer servers of a Helrune Dynasty ship,” Hela scoffed.

Jason felt an uncomfortable tingle in his stomach at the woman’s words. Fortunately, Hela chose to continue rather than remain on the uncomfortable topic.

“No Tisi or Yaro today?” she asked, glancing over his shoulder – as if either woman could possibly have hidden behind him.

“Busy,” he stated simply. “And given that I only came to drop off that hard drive, it didn’t seem worth dragging them both over for such a short meeting.”

He supposed he might have brought Kernathu – if only to get her outside for a few minutes - but the engineer was overseeing the delivery of more parts for the mech.

…and playing with his new mouse. He’d barely had the thing for more than a few minutes before the engineer had seen it, asked about it… and then stolen it.

One would think getting something back from a girl as shy as Kernathu would be easy.

One would also be correct on most accounts. The exception lay in those situations that involved tech, gadgetry or anything else of a technical nature.

Unfortunately for her, he was much the same. Hence why he intended to return and reclaim his mouse.

Through any means necessary, he thought.

…After he made a short stop.

Again, his stomach twisted uncomfortably.

“How courageous of you,” Hela said.

The words brought his attention back to the situation at hand.

“Courageous?” he prompted flatly.

“What else would one call it?” Hela continued, her gaze turned distinctly predatory. “Given the way our last meeting ended?”

She stood up, finger idly sliding across the smooth wood top of her desk as she slinked with a big cat’s grace around it toward him.

“Yet here you are,” she continued, a smile straining her cheeks as her eyes roamed up and down him. “You’ve walked right back into the Frynx’s den. Into my den. Unarmed.”

Jason regarded her with motionless detachment as she strode up to him, one finger moving to slide across his chin. “You know, a girl could make some assumptions about a boy who does something like that? She might assume they were playing hard to get? Dancing just beyond reach.” The tall alien leaned forward, lips resting near his ear as she whispered. “Asking to be chased.”

“I’m not,” he answered frankly, taking one measured step back.

“So you’re not saying that you’re asking for this?” Hela grinned, looming over him.

He regarded her flatly.

“Un-armed,” he slowly enunciated.

To her credit, Hela didn’t recoil in any way, but there was a notable jerkiness to her movements as she stood up slightly straighter. “Useless as they might be, I’m pretty sure my guards aren’t so careless as to let someone walk into my office armed.”

He shrugged, as if the topic were of little interest to him. “Perhaps they wouldn’t if I was a woman. But as you said: I’m just a weak ‘defenseless’ man. Proper security checks are for real threats. Not the boss’s new squeeze.”

“Squeeze?”

“Demeaning word for lover,” he specified.

“Strange thing for you to say, given that you have – and are – rebuffing my advances,” Hela stated, her previous valley-girl persona sliding away as the businesswoman he’d seen so seldom came to the fore.

He shrugged. “I know that. You know that. Do your guards know that? Not made any claims about how you’ve been fucking – or been going to fuck— the human into a puddle?”

It was small, just a tiny twitch of the eye, but he caught it. He was on target. Which was only to be expected really. A rich girl like Hela? It was practically guaranteed that at some point she would have bragged to someone that she was going to score with Gurathu’s only human.

“So,” he continued,” the question is, do you trust your guards to place security over the possibility of offending the boss’s new sex toy by giving them a proper screening?”

This time he got nothing. Hela’s face was an iron mask, giving no indication whatsoever as to what was going on in the heiress’ mind.

The tension built between them as the silence continued to stretch.

Then a chink formed in her expression. Just a tiny twitch, but that was apparently enough to bring the whole thing crumbling down.

Hela laughed. A long and loud belly laugh.

Jason just watched, stony faced as the young woman dissolved into giggles of mirth. The whole thing gave him a serious sense of déjà vu, as it reminded him of their last meeting.

“Ah, human,” the heiress said, wiping a stray tear from her eye. “If only the woman I was on the phone with earlier had half the tits you do.”

Jason deliberately didn’t comment on the strange turn of phrase. Nor did he remove his hand from it’s position in his jumpsuit pocket.

“Got a woman too meek for a job?” he asked with deliberate nonchalance. As if what had just transpired hadn’t affected him in any way.

“Too meek for vacation,” Hala chuckled as she moved back to hop onto the edge of her desk, feet sticking out daintily as she crossed her legs. “As you know, sometimes I transport passengers. And Gurathu’s a prime hunting safari planet.”

Jason felt something run up his spine.

“Yaro suggested that most Shil’vati disdain hunting?” he said with feigned casualness.

“Because that furball is so very worldly and has such a great grasp of the hobbies and pastimes of the rest of Imperium?” Hela scowled, her earlier humor souring. “Color me surprised if she’s ever left this miserable iceball.”

The sudden shift in moods caught him off guard. “What’s your problem with Yaro?”

He was also surprised by just how hostile his own tone turned in response to the woman’s words. Was he… getting offended on Yaro’s behalf?

“Nothing at all. I was just stating facts.” Hela smiled at him, but it held little in the way of humor. “Though I will admit to being a little offended that you took up with that overgrown fur coat over myself. Can’t say I’ve ever had anything like that happen to me before.”

Again, Hela had that plastic smile on her face, but there was no missing the heated anger that flashed through her eyes.

Not that Jason cared much about the woman’s bruised ego. Much. He still needed her to deliver and receive his messages after all.

“How the fuck do you know that Yaro and I are…” he trailed off, before sighing. “Tisi?”

“Tisi,” Hela acknowledged with a smile.

That was annoying. Unfortunately, it wasn’t like he could complain about it. Tisi and Hela were friends. It was obvious they’d talk. And while he might wish his captain might have been a bit more circumspect about his relationship status, it wasn’t like it was a secret she was obligated to keep.

Hell, it wasn’t even really a secret anymore.

“So, is Yaro wrong?” he asked, returning to the topic at hand.

Hela frowned, seemingly at the reminder of the Rakiri crewwoman.

“Not entirely,” Hela allowed with some reluctance. “I know I personally can’t see the appeal in hunting. And I’m not alone in feeling that.. Still, every society has its oddballs, and high-society has more than most. Which is good, because it means they pay me more to transport them out to this frigid rock.”

That sounded… reasonable.

“So, what was the issue?” he asked, trying to appear casual.

Which he apparently failed in, given that Hela gave him a slightly strange look.

“They ran into an animal that was slightly more dangerous than the norm and it got them spooked,” she said. “They were demanding some of my militia women be sent out to them to act as an escort.”

“Are you going to send any?”

“Not a chance.” Hela laughed. “As if I’d ever demean the Helrune name by having my militia-women act as glorified… attack-animals.”

Jason nodded slowly. “That seems reasonable. You wouldn’t want them tied to anything untoward.”

There it was again. That twitch.

“No,” Hela said with deliberate slowness. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Jason was kicking himself as he recovered his service pistol from the militia-women manning the Maw’s boarding ramp.

Something untoward? he thought as he strode down the ramp and out onto the frost covered tarmac of the space port, ignoring the staring and occasional cat-calls of the women he’d just left behind. Why didn’t I just shout ‘that’s suspicious’ in her face?

He ran a hand over his head to wipe away a stray bead of sweat. One that had nothing to do with the weather. Which only made sense, given that it was Gurathu, for whom summer was a thing that happened to other planets.

Of course, it wasn’t exactly like he had time to dwell on the meteorological phenomena of his posting. His mind was going a mile a minute. His conversation with Hela had only served to further his theory.

Which sucked.

Really sucked.

He didn’t want to have confirmed anything. He wanted to be blissfully ignorant.

How the fuck has no one else reached this conclusion before me, he thought. Because it wasn’t like it wasn’t obvious. So how had no else come to the same conclusion he had?

Because they aren’t looking, his mind instantly supplied. And even if some did decide to look, would they be willing to cross the Helrunes to confirm that theory?

Not a chance, Jason thought as he strode past the space-port’s admissions building.

Hela was influential. Very influential. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that her ship was Gurathu’s main point of contact with the rest of the Imperium.

So it wasn’t that surprising that no one was willing to upset the heiress with an investigation. Especially an investigation into the abduction of a bunch of missing colonists.

Anti-Imperial colonists.

Who might not actually be missing, but rather, had gone to ground. On account of the aforementioned, anti-Imperialism.

Jason groaned into his hands as his stomach roiled.

He hated this. He really did. He wasn’t a cop. He wasn’t a spy. He was barely a soldier – given that the last time he’d gotten involved with the politics of high society, he’d been stranded in the arse end of nowhere with an incomplete training regimen.

So really… when one looked at all that, could he really be blamed for putting all his misgivings behind him, fully zipping up his jumpsuit, and returning back to base? Where he could forget all about this.

Not at all.

And what if you ‘go missing’ tomorrow? his traitorous mind supplied before he’d even taken another step.

His stomach rolled again.

Jason sighed. He could admit that he wasn’t a hero. He – like most people - was motivated by predominantly selfish ideas. He wasn’t a monster - but he wasn’t about to go out of his way for someone he’d never met either.

Which was fine.

He was average. The point of the heroic and awe-inspiring was that they were the exceptional. In being the exception to the general rule of people being self-absorbed bastards.

Which was why, if that ‘it could be you next?’ hadn’t been nagging at the back of his mind, he could well believe that he’d already be making his way back to base and throwing this entire insane conspiracy he’d cobbled together clean out of his head.

Unfortunately, it was that notion niggling away at the back of his head – and more to the point, he realized he was already standing outside the customs office.

The next step on his investigation into an issue he really didn’t want to actually solve.

“Nothing for it,” he said, psyching himself up for what was to come next.

“For what?”

His body moved before his brain could catch up.

There was a blur of motion.

The sensation of resistance - and a cry of pain as something crunched.

And then it was over - and he found himself standing over a downed and stunned looking Scales.

Who was clutching a nose that was steadily dribbling blood from between her cupped hands.

“What the hell, Jason?” she cried, her voice edged with just a hint of shrillness and more than a dash of nasality. “You just pistol whipped me!?”

He had. He definitely had.

“I did not,” he defended automatically, gun in hand.

“You fucking did!”

A little surprised at the profanity from the normally well-spoken ashen skinned woman, Jason automatically glanced at the weapon in his hand - which had just a dab of Scales-juice attached to the grip.

Whatever Scales is, apparently they bleed purple, his brain absently noted.

“Alright, maybe I did,” he allowed, with what he liked to think was a fairly generous amount of magnanimity. “But you snuck up on me.”

…Before immediately shifting the onus of responsibility for the aforementioned pistol whipping onto his fellow marine.

“So!?” Scales groaned. “Yaro does it all the time. You don’t pistol whip her!”

Well, he wasn’t normally terrified of being disappeared by shady women in the colors of the Helrune dynasty, and, more to the point, he didn’t think he could actually pistol whip Yaro.

Not because of some great moral qualm on his part, but because he literally didn’t think he was physically capable of the act.

The Rakiri’s reflexes were to his, what his were to a Shil’vati. And apparently… whatever Scales’ species was - which really should have come up in conversation by now.

Silence reigned between them, broken only by the whistle of the wind. Which, to be fair, was not quiet. Which was probably why he couldn’t hear the sounds of the surrounding spaceport beyond it.

“Sorry,” he allowed finally. “…Though you shouldn’t have snuck up on me.”

He knew he shouldn’t have said that last bit. Yet it slipped out.

“That had to be the world’s shittiest apology,” Scales groused as she clambered to her feet.

She winced in doing so, and Jason felt, at least on some level, guilty for what he’d just done.

“Are you ok?” he asked, belatedly realizing that he probably should have asked that first.

“I got worse from my siblings growing up,” the alien allowed. “Though I can say it’s certainly been a while since I got a shirt painter.”

“Shirt painter?” Jason asked.

She looked up at him, finally removing her hands from her face, revealing a purple mess that looked to already be freezing to her chin.

It was not pretty.

At least her nose doesn’t look too bad, he lied to himself.

One way or another, he had a feeling that Scales would need to see Cerilla or another medic in the next few hours.

“A shirt painter,” the woman stated, looking at him in bemusement. “You know? When you get hit in the nose and it paints your shirt.”

“With blood?” Jason deadpanned.

“Yeah?”

“I think that humans and - the rest of the galaxy apparently, have very different childhoods,” he said slowly, wondering for the first time if Raisha had actually been telling the truth when she’d said that she’d gotten worse from her sisters growing up than they’d received in their sparring sessions at the Crucible.

“I guess,” Scales grinned, looking far too composed and chipper for a woman that had just gotten her nose busted. By him.

He knew that if their situations were reversed, he wouldn’t have been quite so quick to forgive.

“So why are you out here?” she asked.

“I could ask you the same thing?” he pointed out.

She just shrugged. “Keeping an eye on you.”

He froze.

“You’re keeping tabs on me?” he asked, somewhat incredulously.

“Well… yeah? You were off to see Hela.”

“And that meant I need an escort?” he asked.

Scales just nodded. “Captain’s ord… suggestion. Given the way your last meeting ended.”

Jason just stared in shock and more than a little irritation.

“I do not need a babysitter,” he said.

He ignored the way the woman mouthed the unfamiliar word, before she shrugged. “Well, I’m not here to argue with you. Which was why I waited outside.”

“In this cold?” he asked.

“In a nice little café,” she responded.

Is that… better? Or worse?

Sure, being given an escort was annoying, but was an ineffective escort better? If he had actually run into trouble with Hela – which he very nearly had until he’d bluffed his way out if it - it wasn’t like Scales would have been in a position to do anything while she was waiting outside.

What was even more confusing, was that he actually was a little relieved Scales was here because she did provide some extra security for him – it just so happened to be that the reason she was protecting him was annoying. He had other, much more real, reasons to be needing protection.

Probably.

Assuming his little conspiracy theory wasn’t exactly that.

“Whatever,” he sighed, feeling totally drained. “I’m going in there to talk to someone about a thing. Come with or wait outside. Makes no difference to me.”

He was utterly unsurprised as the semi-reptilian woman jogged forward to follow after him.