“Relax, newbie,” Glider murmured as she opened up the comms. “It’s just another picket ship. Though I’ve got no idea what they’re doing out here.”

Jason very much did not relax, given that he was reasonably sure that Hela had at least one of the picket ship’s around Gurathu on her payroll.

Still, he felt a little better as Glider pressed a switch on her dashboard, one that would have Tisi heading up to the bridge. Standard protocol in the event of a ship entering the system, regardless of their purpose or origin.

Thoughts raced through his head though as Glider opened communications with the other ship.

Should he tell Glider about his suspicions? Keep it to himself? Surely Hela wasn’t so coldblooded as to offhandedly murder her old friend – as well as the entirety of the Whisker’s crew – at the first hint of suspicion? Was she?

Hell, he hadn’t even done anything that suspicious. A single slightly odd comment and a conversation with Pernora at a bar ‘he just so happened to be at’ did not scream suspicious.

Unless, Pernora had been captured. Or worse, turned on him.

Though, was there anything to turn on? He’d made some comments about ship design. That was all. Sure, he wasn’t exactly a master spy or a master of subtlety, but his suggestion had seemed innocuous enough to him!

The ship was hovering just outside of weapons range, as protocol demanded, but that could change in an instant. Fights between Shil’vati – and anyone else to be honest – tended to be more akin to lightning-fast jousts at just under FTL speeds rather than slugging matches. Given that energy shields weren’t a thing, the next best defense was speed and maneuverability.

Which was why most weapon systems aboard Shil’vati crafts were slaved to computer targeting systems rather than relying on a crewman’s sense of aim. The role of weapons system operator aboard combat craft was to set priority targets for said systems, rather than aim them themselves.

“Imperial Ship Olfactory, this is Imperial Ship Whisker requesting to know the reason for your presence within this system,” Glider said in an entirely workmanlike, if not a little bored, tone.

They were already transmitting video, and it didn’t take long for the screen in front of them to light up with a transmission from the Olfactory.

While he wasn’t particularly surprised to see an older Shil’vati woman standing front and center in the video, a somewhat grim expression on her face, he was surprised to see Pernora standing in the background of the shot.

As was she to see him apparently, given the way her eyes widened at his presence.

Which he tentatively took to be a good sign. If Pernora had flipped on him, or already been on Hela’s payroll, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him.

Quietly, he slumped in his chair, aborting his plan to immediately confess everything to Tisi the moment she got on the bridge.

Perhaps not the world's most elegant plan, especially with the comms open, but he’d been admiring the blackness of space just moments ago. He really hadn’t expected this situation to come to a head quite so soon.

Which perhaps, was foolishly naïve of him… and not something he really had a defense against. He was an engineer! Not some kind of secret agent. This whole thing with the possibly missing colonists was so far outside of his wheelhouse it wasn’t even funny.

“Classified and classified,” Pernora interrupted before the Olfactory’s captain could get a word out. “This is an Interior operation and thus above your clearance.”

The captain of the other ship scowled at the interruption, but didn’t say a word to gainsay the other woman.

Pernora continued. “We just need your captain to give us- ah, there she is.”

Sure enough, Tisi strode onto the bridge with a stride so purposeful he’d hardly have known that the woman had been sleeping until about a minute ago. With a single glance, she seemed to take everything.

“Sitrep?” she asked, looking to Glider.

“We have an Interior-seconded vessel on a classified assignment requesting use of the refinery.”

Tisi’s head cocked only slightly as she slipped into her command seat. “Codes?”

On screen, Pernora tapped a few keys onto a nearby console. “Sending.”

Tisi studied her command console for a few seconds before nodding. “Whisker receives. You have permission to use the refinery.”

“Acknowledged,” the other captain said, her first words since her arrival.

With that, the screen winked out.

“That was quick,” Jason noted as the symbol on his console representing the Olfactory started burning toward the refinery.

Glider shrugged. “We usually deal with civilian craft. Military exchanges tend to be more to the point.”

“They were also on a classified assignment,” Tisi pointed out. “The code I just got effectively told me to shut up and stay out the way.”

“All that from a code?” Jason asked.

“I’m paraphrasing,” Tisi said as she rubbed an eye. The only hint that she was still suffering from having just woken up. “The policies and procedures manual will have something to the effect of ‘Do not interfere, do not contact, scrub from records’.”

She looked to Glider. “Speaking of which…”

The pilot tapped away at her monitor. “Records scrubbed. We didn’t see them. We didn’t hear them.”

Tisi’s gaze flicked back to him. “Same goes for you too. As far as the rest of the crew – or anyone else is concerned – this didn’t happen.”

Jason nodded slowly. “Aye, ma’am.”

It felt a little odd to see Tisi this way. While she could certainly be stern when off ship and in public, she always tended to loosen up when they were out on patrol. It was a bit of a dichotomy to his senses to see ‘The Captain’ rather than ‘Tisi’ while they were aboard the Whisker.

Seeing that he understood, the woman nodded and stood up. “Alright, the bridge is yours again Glider. Stay well clear of our new friends until they’re gone.”

“Will do ma’am,” Glider said without turning from her screen.

Jason watched the captain go before turning back the pilot. He couldn’t blame her for leaving so soon. It was technically the middle of the ship’s night cycle. He and Glider would only be up for another two hours before their shift on watch was over, at which point Rocket and Yaro would be taking over.

“I can’t help but notice that you don’t seem particularly interested in what this is about?”

He knew, if he didn’t already have some idea as to what this was about, he would be. Classified or not. After all, the Whisker’s patrol were pretty boring things. He could say beyond a shadow of a doubt, that beyond his not-really-a-boarding of the Nighkru diplomat’s vessel, this was the most ‘exciting’ thing he’d seen in the months he’d spent on the Whisker.

For her part, Glider just shrugged, her long elf-like ears bouncing slightly as she did.

“Ignoring the not supposed to talk about it thing Tisi just told us,” she said, aiming a slight glare in his direction, to which he flushed slightly, “it’s really not that interesting.”

“Really?”

“Really,” the woman deadpanned. “This ain’t the first time that Interior agent’s done this. Every few months she gets a hint of something and goes raring off after it. Even seconded us once for the job.”

“Is that so?” he asked.

“It is,” the woman said. “But given that said assignment was also classified, even if it came to nothing, I didn’t tell you that.”

Jason nodded as they lapsed into silence once more. Instead, he turned his gaze to where the Olfactory was now docking with the refinery, the automated systems within beginning to pump precious hydrogen into the ship.

He knew from previous experience that the process would take about twelve minutes for a ship of the same class as the Whisker. For larger ships it could take up to an hour.

Once more he was stuck with little to do but stare out into space. Which was rather underwhelming to be honest. It wasn’t like he’d wanted a pirate attack to happen. Quite the opposite.

…But at least it wouldn’t have been boring.

---------------------

One would think that, being a space ship, the Whisker would require pretty round the clock care and maintenance.

Sea-bearing ships certainly did.

Of course, that was the key difference. Sea-bearing against void-bearing. Given that, as a rule, ocean water did not generally mix well with… just about anything really. It eroded. It rusted. It shorted. It just generally tried its level best to destroy just about anything put in contact with it. By contrast, the void was the void. By definition, empty.

Of course, that wasn’t strictly true. Space was filled with things that might ruin an enterprising void capable crafts day.

Micro-meteors being the most pressing.

A few grams of space rock might not seem like a big issue to a ship like the Whisker, until those grams of space rock were traveling at speeds more commonly encountered in objects fired from a railgun.

After all, an object once in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force. And with space being – for the most part – empty, those outside forces might not be encountered for a while.

So rocks were a bit of problem.

Or they might be, if the Shil’vati didn’t have a way around it, Jason thought as he glanced idly at the screen on his right from his cross legged position.

The ship's gravity-repulsor field was in fine form. Sure, it might not have been capable of truly stopping anything large, but it was more than capable of keeping things like micro-meteors from hitting the ship by subtly nudging them off course.

Which again, with space being otherwise mostly empty, meant that the ‘round the clock maintenance that might be required on a seaborne ship, just didn’t happen.

Which meant that he and Kernathu occasionally found themselves with free time.

“Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if you humans are some goddess’s practical joke on us,” Kernathu murmured to his left.

“What makes you say that?” he asked, turning to the woman who was sitting cross legged on the floor next to him.

Kernathu sighed, dropping her controller to the floor with a clatter, as the screen in front of them rang a jaunty little victory tune.

“Because all my life I’ve wanted to meet a guy I could play video games with,” the woman scowled. “And when I finally do, he’s capable of destroying me without even paying attention.”

Jason smirked, putting his own controller down with a great deal more delicacy than his fellow engineer had, before sitting back with a satisfied grunt of pleasure. Something that Kernathu was quick to notice, given that his upper torso was clad in little more than a vest, having unzipped and peeled off the top half of his jumpsuit a half hour ago.

Ignoring the woman’s ogling he shrugged. “I wouldn’t say I’m destroying you.”

He wasn’t.

Sure, the game had been similar enough to most shooters from Earth that he’d picked up the basics pretty fast, but there was no getting around the fact that the controller he was using was built for Shil’vati hands. Which meant that while he could run and shoot, he could not run, shoot and throw a grenade. A finger had to come off a joystick or a button for that to happen.

He was still winning though.

Human reactions for the win, he thought with not just a little satisfaction.

“Ugh,” Kernathu grunted, having apparently grown tired of discreetly leering at him, as she slumped to the metal deck of the engineering room.

Which again, with said location being the engineering room of a ship, one would assume was loud. It was not. If anything, the massive physics defying machinery with which they shared this space, gave off little more than a soothing rhythmic hum.

It was also rather clean, again, likely due to the fact that they were in space, and the Whisker had automated cleaners that were essentially roombas on steroids. Which was why both of them had felt totally at ease sitting on the – admittedly hard and metal – deck to play some video games.

Or at least, Kernathu had shyly suggested doing so, and he had rather eagerly accepted, much to said woman’s mixed joy and confusion. Because as she had mentioned, guys were apparently not normally interested in said things.

Of course, said joy had diminished over the last half hour as he had rather handily, wiped the floor with her.

Because, as mentioned, human reflexes were apparently ‘broken’.

“Tired of gaming?” Jason asked cheekily.

The purple woman glared at him from her prone position. Given that she was easily six foot, which while short for a Shil’vati was still pretty damn big, one might think it intimidating. It was not. It was like being glared at by a kitten.

More to the point, he couldn’t help but feel some joy at the fact that Kernathu could glare at him. It hadn’t been all that long ago that the woman could barely look at him without blushing up a storm.

“Yes,” Kernathu finally answered. “I, Kernathu Helt, am tired of gaming with the hot human guy.” She rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling. “You know, I can almost feel thousands of my brethren crying out in disgust at me.”

Jason chuckled. “Really?”

“Really.” The engineer nodded. “You have any idea how many girls would give their left breasts to be able to spend an afternoon playing games with a hot guy? A hot guy who’s not just playing, but actually into said games? Who’s only wearing a vest?”

Jason shook his head in bemusement as he stepped over to turn off the game they’d been playing. As he did, he glanced back at Kernathu’s prone form. Just like him, her bodysuit was unzipped and rolled down, leaving her in little more than a tank top.

...More to the point, said top was riding up, exposing a swathe of toned feminine stomach.

“I think I can imagine,” he said.

“I don’t think you do,” the woman muttered, completely ignorant of the fact that he was checking her out. “What we were just doing? It’s pretty much every girl's fantasy.”

The ship was hot. By choice, given that hot was just how the Shil’vati liked it. Still, the engine room tended to be just a tad hotter than even that, which was why Jason swallowed as just a hint of moisture formed on the woman’s purple skin, before sliding delicately down her side.

“Really?” he asked, distractedly, glancing at the clock. “Seems a bit tame.”

I’ve got time, he thought as an idea started to form.

His fellow engineer shifted, a little uncomfortably. “Well, I say fantasy... but that’s usually just the first part.”

Jason crept closer, keeping out of the woman’s line of sight. “What happens next in these fantasies of yours?”

“They aren’t my fantasies,” Kernathu defended, stubbornly avoiding eye contact as he watched her flush blue. “It’s just… you know… a common setup…”

She still hadn’t noticed, but Jason was actually now close enough that he could smell her. Which wasn’t strictly that close, but they’d been working on the mech earlier, so they’d both worked up a sweat.

Fortunately for him, he’d long since discovered that Shil’vati body odor wasn’t entirely unpleasant to his senses. If anything, it was a little like lilac. Thatwas all kinds of crazy, and had him wondering if perhaps it had been a way for them to camouflage their scent back on Shil.

“Common setup for what?” he whispered into her ear, causing the woman to stiffen as she realized just how close she was. She didn’t move though. If anything, her reaction wasn’t entirely distinct from a deer facing an oncoming set of headlights.

Total paralysis.

“Well… uh…”

Jason was having far too much fun as he leaned in, enjoying the way the girl jolted as he took one long ear between his lips, giving it just a hint of a nibble. He could physically see muscles twitching beneath the Shil’vati’s smooth skin as she twitched in response. Itwas only to be expected, really.

Shil’vati ears were just loaded with nerve endings. They could be quite sensitive…

“Common setup for what?” he prompted again. “You said guys playing games was rare? So where was it a common set up.”

Kernathu looked like she could barely believe what was happening. Flushing dark blue, she muttered. “P-porn. It happens in porn.”

Jason smiled as he stepped back, ignoring the low sigh of disappointment from the woman. If anything, given the way she jolted up to look up at him, wide-eyed, he could almost think she thought her last words had put him off.

Disgusted him.

They hadn’t, obviously.

“So what happens next in these pornos of yours?” he asked, gripping the hem of his vest, lifting it slightly.

Part of him felt a little silly doing this. Unless one was a stripper, a guy didn’t usually do the whole strip teasing thing as far as he was aware.

Or maybe he was just a prude? He couldn’t totally rule it out. The whole thing felt just a little too close to dirty talk for him – and for all that he didn’t have any issue with it aimed at him, his own attempts to reciprocate invariably came out stilted.

Not that one would know it from the way Kernathu was staring up at him in awe and arousal. That, more than anything else, was what let him continue with something he’d pretty sure he’d never have done otherwise.

“Go on,” he prompted, lifting his vest just a little. “Tell me what would happen next in a fantasy like this?”

“Well… you’d take off your top…” the last part of that statement came out in a barely audible squeak of fast paced words.

Still, Jason obliged, honestly having far more fun with this than he’d expected when the idea came to him on a whim just a minute ago.

Slowly, he lifted the hem of his vest, sweat making it stick to his skin as he slowly peeled the garment off. When it was finally done, he flung it to the side.

To be honest, he still didn’t fully understand the Shil’vati notion of a male’s chest being in some way… sexual, but it was still amusing to watch as stared at him with a laser focus.

And he couldn’t deny that it was nice to be appreciated. He’d been a fit guy before his recruitment, but his time in the crucible had given him a level of tone that he’d never been able to claim before. Certainly, he didn’t think it was vanity to enjoy the fact that someone was appreciating the results of all that hard work as Kernathu’s gaze roamed over his toned chest and stomach.

“Then?” he prompted.

“We’d uh… kiss? No! You’d take off your pants!” The girl looked torn as she glanced about.

Jason just waited patiently, before prompting her again. “Well? Which is it? Would we kiss, or would I take off my pants?”

“…Kiss,” Kernathu said finally.

He obliged her.