Chapter 6

“You want to do the honors?” Tinsley asked as they approached the Midpoint space station.

“Landing?” Dante said, surprised.

“I want to see how you handle it.” Tinsley’s eyes sparkled.

“Aye, aye, captain.” His tone was serious. He didn’t dare look at her and focused on the controls instead. Was something sexual implied in her suggestion? He really hoped so.

“Tower, come in,” he called and then gave the ship’s identification code.

“Who is this?” the tower replied. “Is this not a human ship?”

The accent was definitely Jorvlen. Dante covered his microphone and groaned. He looked at Tinsley, who nodded. There wasn’t a being in the galaxy, regardless of home planet or species, who didn’t know how much the Jorvlens hated the Lorr.

“This is the captain,” Tinsley said. “Pardon my co-captain. He’s learning. I’m bringing him along, though. I think he has potential. Only way to find out is to let him try. Right?”

She grinned at Dante, and this time, the electricity that shot through him went straight to his crotch. She was sexy as hell.

They got permission to land, and Dante expertly guided the ship into the docking station. They went to the airlock, and Dante checked it while Tinsley watched.

“Looks good,” he said. “Any… critique on my landing? Any suggestions?”

“Oh, I have some ideas,” Tinsley teased.

That is definitely implying something,Dante thought. He wanted to say something back, something very witty, something that would get her as hot as she was getting him, but then he heard the distinctive sound of the door opening on the other side.

Work now, play later, he reminded himself.

“Ready,” he said to Tinsley in a serious voice.

“Mission first, always,” she said, imitating his tone. He silently celebrated her disappointment at not heading back to the bedroom immediately and at the very least, making out. But it would be more satisfying to build up even more sexual tension before diffusing it.

He smiled, and she smiled back. Then he reached for the ship’s handle but saw no one on the ground outside. Dante assumed the ground crew had done their check and moved on. As soon as they stepped onto the flight deck, however, a strange pall fell over it. Something felt off.

Instantly a dozen pairs of Jorvlen eyes were on them. Dante knew that the sight of a Lorr warrior with a Terran female—sometimes referred to as Lutum, the human word for dirt—would disgust the Jorvlens who saw them.

His four older brothers had all taken human mates, and Dante heard all the jokes on his travels. He even had made some of them. But now, recognizing that this human was his, he felt relief that his brothers had paved the way for him.

Dante wasn’t concerned with the opinions of strangers, and certainly not Jorvlens. But his father had disowned his oldest brother for his choice of mates. He glanced at Tinsley. He would gladly follow her to the ends of the galaxy, whatever the aged king thought of his choice.

Dante spoke his next words carefully. “Now that they’ve seen us together, they see you as no better than a Lorr—not that their estimation of humans is much better,” he said quietly as they made their way across the flight deck. “I know you can handle yourself, but stay close. Okay?”

“Okay,” Tinsley agreed.

She slipped her hand into his, which thrilled him, and squeezed it. He squeezed it back gently and then pulled away. She’d be in even more danger if the Jorvlens suspected more than a business relationship between them.

“Where are we going?” she asked as they got in line to flash their credentials.

“Monitoring,” he said. Then his comm buzzed.

Check your currency balance,the message said, from Trigg. Dante needed no additional information. The money was for bribes, if needed. Jorvlens hated Lorr, but it didn’t ever stop them from taking a bribe, especially one offered in Lorr currency.

After a quick look at the station map, they headed down the hall toward the server room.

“I’ve never been to a server room,” Tinsley said. “Usually just gas and go.”

Dante explained that the monitoring server on the space station had updates from all over the galaxy. It was an immense amount of data, and new data was constantly replacing old. Old data was generally gone in less than a week, sometimes in a matter of hours.

Dante was sure his father had made arrangements to start searching digitally for the pirate ship as soon as they had the lead. The real question was how much groveling, or currency, would be required to get whoever was in charge of the server room to hand over the information.

When the door swished open and Dante saw the man sitting at the desk, he suppressed another groan. Not only was the clerk Jorvlen, but he was ancient. He looked like he’d been ordered there, probably because of some minor infraction that had pissed off the wrong superior.

His name tag read Verjeek, and Dante could see the faded outlines of old ceremonial bars that used to be on his uniform. He’d lost his dignity along with them in all likelihood. Dante supposed the only thing that kept him going was the desire to make everyone he came into contact with as miserable as he was.

The Jorvlen ignored them as they approached the desk and kept ignoring them when they stood directly in front of him. He typed busily on his keyboard, but Dante could see in the reflection of the highly polished server behind him that he was playing a grid game on his computer.

“Hello,” Dante said assertively as he stepped up to the desk.

Verjeek glanced at him and went back to his game.

“I hate to pull you away from your highly important work,” Dante said. It was hard to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but he made it believable. “We’re here on urgent business, and I’m prepared to compensate you for the interruption.”

“One thousand,” Verjeek said, holding out his comm.

“Done,” Dante said.

“Did I say one thousand? I meant two.”

Dante reached out and grabbed the Jorvlen’s wrist, squeezing it just enough to warn him. The being had been at the station so long, his bones were surely brittle.

“I can see you’re having a busy day,” Dante said. “I’ll give you fifteen hundred. Final offer.”

Verjeek gulped, as if the guy were actually swallowing his pride, and nodded. Dante transferred the funds, and they walked out of Monitoring Command with data about the pirate ship on their comms and a paper printout that Tinsley had insisted on receiving.

They went right back to the ship. Tinsley got to work checking that the ship had been properly fueled. They divided up the list of maintenance items the station had billed her for and went to each system to double-check that the work had actually been done.

“Everything looks good to me,” Dante said. “I really did think they might have ripped us off.”

“Maybe they can’t wait to get rid of us,” Tinsley said.

She reached for the ship comm and requested to be put in the liftoff queue.

“Ninety-ninth,” came the Jorvlen voice on the other end.

“Roger,” Tinsley flipped off the comm rather angrily.

“I guess not that eager for us to leave after all?” Dante joked.

“What do we do now?” Tinsley wondered.

“Nothing to do but wait.” He was uncertain as to whether he actually believed that.

“Nothing?” Tinsley said.

Her voice was husky with suggestion, and Dante made up his mind. He was going to figure out a way to act on his lust for her, which at this point was getting irrepressible.