Jenel watched Bleyk approach, though for now, she didn’t ask anything, better to leave a pause if you want honest answers, let them sweat it trying to figure out what you want and they’ll be too distracted to think up a plausible lie, (unless they were a terrific liar, and Bleyk didn’t feel like one of those, then again the good ones never did.)

She calmly checked her rifle over, making sure the cells were showing no signs of wear and tear, keeping Bleyk waiting for now to gauge his reaction, she hated doing this, it always made her feel like a total bully, but Eileen was always the type to believe the best in people, and it had bitten her on the ass more than once, and if you are going up in a conditionally vacuum proof tin can with somebody, it usually paid to make sure they weren’t the type to go all Redrum when they got stressed.

After the silence had gone on for far too long she lost the mental staring contest and spoke up.

“I’m not going to ask you straight out, is trusting you going to put these two in danger? I understand you probably have your own circumstances, and I won’t press you on that, but I need to know if allowing you to stay will put the people I love in harm's way.” She said flatly,

“I, do not think so,” Bleyk replied hesitantly. “It is in several individuals' best interests that I do not return, but so long as I stay away it seems unlikely that they would run the risk of travelling all this way to find me when they could simply await my return and kill me then. “

“Good that’s a start, She nodded approvingly. “if you had outright said for certain in this situation I’d have thought you were full of crap,”

“If I’d said yes?” Bleyk asked anxiously.

“Then I’d have gotten you off-world and then made sure we went our separate ways, not saying I trust you, yet, but the honesty was a good start, you seem decent enough, but if you put them in any danger, I mean beyond all the stupid risks they take themselves, obviously I ain’t gonna blame ya for those, then I’ll put a bullet between your eyes, and that leaves a lot of potential targets. Sure your brain may not be behind any of them, but that many holes I’m bound to hit something you need, we clear?”

Bleyk just raised and lowered slightly in a rough facsimile of how they had seen the humans nod, they didn’t quite trust themselves to speak just yet.

“That said, the girls seem to like you, so let’s work together with them hmm?” Then as if the previous conversation had never happened Jenel rolled over and went to sleep, Bleyk on the other hand for some reason found himself quite restless.

******************************************************************************

I woke up the next morning to an unexpected sight, Bleyk was close by, up until now they had kept such a distance they felt more like a zoologist watching wild animals than a companion. Hell, I had the translation software alternating his voice between David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, and Nigel Thornberry. It was all I could do to keep a straight face when it inserted the occasional “SMASHING” as if it were punctuation.

I figured Jenel must have pulled them aside for a “Chat”, But from past experience, I knew it was no use asking, all that would happen would be they would look nervous, lie about it, and flee till I stopped asking. Jenel had her open ways of dealing with things, and pressing her about it would just lead to them sulking for a couple of days, and who wants to spend a few days sleeping on the proverbial sofa?

I pulled out a few dehydrasnax, and a few spices I kept in reserve and started to cook. Sure they complained about my cooking when they were on the ship, but that’s because I could ONLY cook with rations, and nobody eats those except as a last resort. But down here they were what we had, so then it was finally my time to shine.

“Oh, crud, Eileen’s cooking,” Nara grumbled jokingly as she joined me. (I knew she didn’t seriously mean it, so all was forgiven, well except my slipping an extra couple of Chillies into her portion, what can I say? I’m the vengeful sort.)

“well, you’re welcome to eat the rations plain if you like?”

“Blech, sooner gargle bleach,” Nara snickered.

Still being in a forgiving mood (and loving chilli,) I decided to swap so she got one of the milder dishes, and keep the super spicy portion to myself.

Just then I heard an unfamiliar sound and turned to see Bleyk happily absorbing a bar, (before you ask how that works don’t bother because I have no freaking idea,) wrapper and all. While Nara looked on in horror.

“That’s inedible,” she muttered to herself, aghast.

“Yeah Bleyk, you aren’t supposed to eat the wrapper.”

“I was talking about the dehydrasnax,” Nara replied with a grin, thinking about it for a minute I tried to argue, but found that I had no counter to that, she was probably right, for a start half the vitamins listed in the ingredients didn’t exist in nature, and “natural flavourings” didn’t really help when you remembered cyanide was a natural product and tasted of something.

“Bleyk, just please unwrap them before eating.”

“But the skin is the best part” Bleyk whined. I figured at that point either he was right because they were just that bad. Or to an alien digestive system it really was the best bit, and either way it was best to just leave it be.

Once breakfast was done we resumed our exploration, going one room at a time, though one or two of the labs made me ponder the idea of throwing a grenade in, as murky fluids containing biological samples were revealed. Some looked suspiciously humanoid, but not exactly fresh enough to identify. The longer we were down here the worse a feeling I got until eventually we made it to the director’s office, suddenly my idea of nuking the place from orbit was sounding better and better, as, under the familiar flotilla flag, a familiar-looking logo could be seen.