Chapter Twelve

R egi stopped outside the safety window marking the boundary of Ter's territory. The view covered most of the engineering area, and Ter had his head tilted upward, but what concerned Regi was that Dante was dangling from support struts with his head closest to the floor and his knees hooked over the beam. He wasn't wearing any safety equipment, and he was least seven feet above the decking. Regi's legs went numb as fear coursed through him.

"You might as well give up. If Divashi is determined to keep us on the planet, she's going to break anything you fix," Dante said.

Captain Cota tried to charge past Regi, but Regi caught the captain by the arm, unwilling to startle Dante. The best course was to ease into engineering and allow Dante to notice them without causing alarm or making him fall from that precarious perch.

"If I can find that oversized menace you call a god, I'm going to surgically remove all her finger bones and leave her with flapping bits of flesh hanging from her hands," said Ter. He moved to a new console and started typing. No other engineers were around, which meant no one was near enough to catch Dante if he fell.

Regi might murder Ter.

"I dare you to say that to her face," Dante told Ter.

"I am more than willing to do exactly that. If she were willing to kill sapient creatures, she would have long ago determined that I am the greatest threat to her plan, and she would have removed me and my prodigious ability to repair technology. She hasn't. Therefore I am safe in expressing my desire to pull her liver out through whatever orifice she uses to birth young."

"Vivid."

Ter whistled. "Generic insults and threats are impotent. I am not an impotent man."

"Except when it comes to fixing this ship," Dante shot back.

Regi eased into the room, watching as Dante grabbed the strut and pulled himself up enough to poke one of the secondary displays. Now he was hanging by a hand and a leg, which was not a significant improvement. Huumans were a fragile species. This was unconscionable behavior on Ter's part to allow this.

"Have the numbers changed?" Ter asked.

"Yep. Goat head, striking snake, umbrella, chair, tiny dot, parallelogram, starburst," said Dante. The words made no sense to Regi, but Ter typed away.

"Regi!" Dante exclaimed. He grabbed the strut with both hands and dropped to the decking, landing in a crouch.

Regi jerked forward, and then forced himself to still when Dante rose without visible signs of damage.

Captain Cota pushed past Regi now the risk of startling Dante into falling had passed. "Engineer Ter, you have endangered the life of a medically fragile individual, and one that is under the auspices of the Coalition sanctuary. Explain yourself."

Ter didn't even turn around. "If he wants to crawl around the struts, he should make himself useful. Somehow, the primary and secondary systems have been decoupled. This makes no sense. Regi, if I can find your goddess, I am going to conduct a long series of fusion experiments on her atoms, ripping the molecular bonds to shreds as I accelerate her atoms into each other."

"I volunteered to read the secondary displays," said Dante. "It's no higher than the trees I grew up climbing."

Bile gathered at the base of Regi's throat as he considered an immature Dante putting himself in such danger.

"Now if you would simply learn the proper placement of numbers instead of describing their shapes in some bastardized version of language, I might stop calling you a moron," Ter told him.

Dante grinned. "Hey, you can get me calling it a goat head or risk me confusing a three for a seven."

Ter finally turned around. "A goat head is a four, you moronic offspring of half-sapient primordial ooze."

Captain Cota drew himself up in aggravation. "Dante has sanctuary with us. He is not an engineering apprentice you can order about."

"I would never mistake him for one. Even a three-day-old infant with aspirations in engineering would not mistake the shape of a goat head for a seven." He scoffed.

Strangely, Dante appeared amused by Ter's insults. Regi wondered if huumans had a flawed ability to perceive insults. Some species did, and that would explain his continued preference for spending time with Ter.

"And even a three-day-old human infant is wise enough to avoid making the same mistake three thousand times in a row, yet you continue to fix this ship knowing it will just break again." Dante crossed his arms, leaned against the wall, and pinned Ter with an almost amused expression.

Ter's tail lashed the air.

Before more insults could get flung across the room, Regi spoke. "Ter, we have received warning that a number of exalteds wish to come here and question you regarding the incident with the thrown tile and the accusations that you destroyed data to hide espionage."

Ter slapped his hand down on the flat of the console, clear of any buttons. "I do not have time for stupidity, and assuming I would spy on people who have a history of violence would be stupid, especially when their idiotic gaseous gods keep breaking my ship."

"Do you think they are gaseous, though?" Dante asked. "I assumed they were in another dimension or something."

"Oh yes," said Ter with an excess of sarcasm, "and your species is so far advanced that we should take your assumptions into consideration. These gods can affect our world; therefore, they must have atoms that can interact with the atoms of this dimension, and invisible implies gaseous."

Regi's arm fur stood on end at the sheer audacity of Ter's irreverence. "I would ask you to avoid speculating on the nature of our gods."

"Good science starts with speculation," Ter protested.

"So does being dragged out and shot," Dante said.

Ter paled. As much as Regi would have phrased it more delicately, Dante had a point.

Captain Cota belched before giving both Dante and Ter a hard stare. Dante held his hands palm forward before remembering that others perceived that gesture as hostility and holding them low in a silent apology. Ter stared.

"I will not lie. If they want to execute me for a technician's inability to duck, that speaks more to their decision-making process than it does to my temper." Ter's elbows jutted out at awkward angles that made his elongated limbs appear even longer.

Dante frowned. "But the temple decided—"

Regi cut Dante off. "The more serious charge is espionage. If you can convince them that you have no interest in Kowri technology, the issue of your temper will be far easier to handle." Regi could never argue that Ter was innocent, but he might be able to convince them to allow the captain to handle discipline since Ter was under his authority. And he did not want Ter knowing that the temple had dismissed the assault charge. It would only encourage him to throw more equipment.

"It's not as though Kowri will listen to logic when xenophobia will serve their purpose." Ter's elbows jutted out farther.

"I would ask you to avoid aggravating them," Captain Cota said. "Sometimes being conciliatory is the best way to achieve a goal."

Ter snorted. "Dante, get your useless sack of flesh and under-calcified bones up there and check the tertiary display."

"He will not," Regi said.

Dante narrowed his eyes in Regi's direction. "And why not?"

Regi felt off-balance in the face of Dante's aggravation. "Working in engineering requires safety equipment."

Dante pushed off from the wall. "Are you suggesting I'm going to kill myself if I fall six feet?"

"You might."

Dante scoffed. "I've fallen twice that far and walked away. No one has ever died of a bruise."

Regi's fur rippled with horror. "Many individuals have died of internal swelling caused by blunt-force trauma. I have investigated far more deaths of that nature than those maliciously killed by more direct means."

Dante blinked. "It's a saying. It means I think you're overestimating the danger. I've been on this ship for a long time, and I know my limits. More than that, you don't get to order me around. We're both exalteds of Divashi."

Regi felt the flush of shame. Dante didn't answer to him in either the temple hierarchy or the crew, and Regi had no right to pretend otherwise. Still, he hated the idea of Dante dangling from the ceiling, and Regi did have authority to enforce rules on the ship. "There are safety protocols for everyone who works in engineering." And since Dante's people were not in the database, the most restrictive rules would apply, not that Regi felt the need to explain that different individuals had to obey different rules. "Ter, if you allow individuals to operate outside the required safety measures, I will file an official complaint."

Ignoring Regi, Ter focused on his computer. "Now that you know I supervise experimental technologies, I'm sure you understand how pointless such a complaint would be."

Captain Cota tapped his communicator. "We have a delegation of Kowri asking to speak with Engineer Ter. I assume we can all be civil and avoid antagonizing our hosts."

Ter scoffed. "I will try to die at the hands of small-minded and paranoid Kowri without bringing too much inconvenience to your position." Ter stood so fast that Dante started. Thank all the gods he had not been dangling from a strut when that happened. However, Regi refrained from saying as much as Ter strode past, elbows and knees protruding into the space around him.

The captain followed Ter, leaving Regi alone with Dante. Expecting Dante to demand an apology, Regi tried to sort the best words to communicate his regret at overstepping his authority without retreating from his essential position that Dante should not risk his health or life to assist Ter.

"Your people won't execute him, will they?" Dante asked.

Regi had not prepared an answer for that. "I hope not," he said. "If the exalteds insist on believing that he attempted to steal Kowri technology, that is a serious charge given that our technology was gifted to us by the gods. That is why we should be present." He gestured to the door.

"Us being there will not stop Ter from saying something stupid," Dante said as he exited.

Regi didn't answer because Dante was correct. His mother thought speaking to Ter would clarify the course they should take to achieve justice, but Regi feared that Ter would make any mercy his people might possess wither in the face of his sharp tongue. Ter did inspire homicidal feelings in the kindest of species, and Kowri were not kind.