Chapter Fourteen

D ante followed Regi, past the corridor where his room was, and onto the level where the security office was tucked between the crew mess hall and an abandoned hydroponics lab. Regi disappeared into his office and Dante expected him to lock the office door. If he had, Dante would have accepted that as a request for privacy. But since the door opened when Dante touched the panel, he assumed that Regi didn't mind the company.

Regi was already behind his desk, his fingers flicking over the computer displays. Regi clicked something on his computer and the door locked with a snick . "Is there something you need?"

"I thought I would see if you're okay." Dante slid into a chair. "Are you okay?"

"I am unharmed." Regi looked confused. Dante could guess the source of Regi's strange response.

"For humans, ‘okay' is a term to request information not only on an individual's physical well-being but also on their emotional and psychological state. When I ask if you are okay, I am asking whether you are physically, psychologically, and emotionally unharmed."

Regi frowned. "That seems unnecessarily broad."

"The English language is not known for having an excess of logic."

Regi studied Dante as though he was trying to decide if he was making some sort of obscure joke. "If the term has three discrete and equally significant meanings, it is strange that the translator program would've focused only on its definition as relates to physical well-being."

Dante shrugged. "Not really. You have to remember that the translator was getting all its data from a bunch of slaves." Dante felt a twinge of discomfort mentioning his slavery, but at least it wasn't the knife under his rib that he used to feel every time he thought about those months. He'd survived. That was what mattered.

"I do not understand the reference."

Dante ignored the tightness under his ribs. "When we asked each other if we were doing ‘okay,' we meant physically. We knew that we were not okay emotionally and psychologically, so we avoided those topics."

Regi pressed his mouth into a hard line, but the upper lip kept twitching, flashing slivers of white fang. "The depth of my hatred for slavers continues to grow."

"I won't argue you should forgive." Even Dante's grandmother would've been hard-pressed to apply her own advice about forgiving and forgetting. Maybe she was right that that was the way to have a happy life, but slavery didn't seem like the sort of thing a person could get over easily. Regi reached across the desk and rested his hand on Dante's. His extra thumb curled around Dante's pinky. Dante studied the way the black and gray stripes followed the line of his six digits. "So are you okay?" Dante asked softly.

"Such a strange word. ‘Okay'," Regi mused. One of his thumbs rubbed a small circle over the base of Dante's thumb. "You should speak with Ean about the peculiarities of this huuman illogic. You tend to be very insightful about your own processes. She would enjoy hearing these observations."

As avoidance techniques went, that was not impressive. "Maybe. We'll have to see whether she learns to have a conversation without asking about my feelings regarding slavery."

Regi nodded, his gaze focused on their joined hands.

Struggling for some neutral topic before diving back into the issue of Regi's okayness, Dante asked, "I've been meaning to ask why it is that the Coalition and Empire share translator technology when all the other technology is incompatible." One of the biggest points in Ter's favor during his trial had been that any information he could have stolen about Kowri engines would've been utterly useless without a full set of schematics for a Kowri ship. From what Dante understood, the technologies were so incompatible it would have been like stealing the schematics for an old-fashioned gas combustion engine to put into an electric vehicle.

"The translator was originally created by Kowri when my people occasionally engaged in discussion across the border. When the Coalition stole the technology, the Empire realized the depth of the Coalition's perfidy. At least, that is the story as it is told on Kowri worlds." Regi leaned back in his chair, his fingers trailing over the back of Dante's hand.

"Given how the Kowri reacted to even a hint of technology piracy, having proof of it must have infuriated them." Dante wondered if anyone in the Coalition back then knew they were creating centuries of armed standoff. Maybe even millennia. Dante was a little fuzzy on the details. "So, are you okay?" Dante repeated.

Regi scowled at him. "Why do you continue to ask me the same question?"

"Why do you continue to avoid giving me an answer?"

"I do not wish to discuss it."

That wasn't the answer Dante wanted, but he knew how he reacted when people pushed. Hell, he would run in the opposite direction when he spotted the leading edge of Ean coming around the curve of a corridor. He didn't want to make Regi feel uncomfortable. "That's valid. I'd be shocked if I were in your place, so if you don't want to talk about it, I can sit here and offer silent support."

Regi tilted his head. "Will not Peaches be awaiting your return?"

"I doubt it. She has been mighty testy lately. Even her little loverboy is avoiding her." Someone else might think sharing a bedroom with a poisonous hedgehog in a bad mood was dangerous, but Dante trusted her, even when she snarled at him. He just left her alone to have her bad mood in private.

"Is she ill?" Regi's hand hovered over his communicator as though he wished to call for a dop doctor. Given how Kowri respected their sacred animals, they probably had one.

"I don't think so. And if she is, she's on a Kowri world with temples full of people who will be happy to attend her if she waddles her butt into one. I'm not too terribly concerned."

Silence filled the space between them, and Dante waited for Regi to ask him to leave. He ordered himself to respect the request. However, it never came. They sat on opposite sides of a narrow strip of desk while Regi ran his fingers over the corner of the display over and over.

Dante leaned back in his chair and let the silence do his work.

Regi blurted, "It's my job to provide threat assessments in a fraction of a second, I must look at a stranger who is running at our exposed gangplank while we are docked, and I must decide whether that individual is a threat. The largest part of that analysis is understanding the motivations of others. Yet I have exhibited a fundamental inability to perform that task which makes up the bulk of my duties." His shoulders slumped.

Dante wanted to grab Regi and shake him until he stopped beating up on himself. However, that strategy didn't work, as evidenced by his grandmother's failures to shake sense into him, so Dante resisted the urge. "No you haven't."

Regi hunched his shoulders. "How can I trust my judgment when I exhibited such a fundamental misunderstanding of someone I lived with for my entire youth?"

"I'm pretty sure you answered your own question there. None of us were good judges of character when we were children. We don't understand our parents."

"That is a weak justification to excuse my subpar skills."

"Everyone on the ship, including the captain, thought that I was a big bad pirate trying to destroy you. You were the only one who did a correct threat assessment," Dante pointed out. And given that the captain's threats had caused Dante to curl up into a ball of misery and piss himself, Regi's ability to see the truth was even more impressive. From the first time Regi had offered him a shower and listened to his story, Dante had known exactly what sort of person Regi was. Well, what sort of alien, anyway.

Regi appeared thoughtful, which Dante put down as a win. "Do you think your mother is right that you would have been in danger from the gods if she told you?"

"I have not been an exalted long enough to speak on the issue. Usually one goes from being noticed by the gods to studying the will of the gods to becoming an exalted. We both skipped a vital step. However, given how Divashi has endangered the others, I cannot ignore the possibility."

"Good point," Dante agreed.

Regi studied the displays. The green glow stained his gray stripes. "I had thought my mother as offensive as your father. And now I do not know how I am supposed to speak to her or how I should soothe the wounds. She did not deserve my disdain."

"If it makes you feel any better, there are plenty of people who would say the same about my relationship with my father. If anything, they would blame me," Dante offered.

"Blame you for what?"

"For being hard to get along with. For backtalking him. For not understanding his grief when he lost his wife. For not respecting the difficulty of his position."

Regi tilted his head to the side. "From what you have said, I do not believe his position deserves much respect."

"I don't think so," said Dante, "but as much as my father is not a nice man, there are plenty of people who believe he's a good man and that he is doing everything he is doing to keep people safe."

Regi studied Dante. "You do not believe that."

"No, but that doesn't mean I'm right." Dante huffed. "Just like you and your mom. Welcome to reality where people screw up." He almost welcomed Regi to the human race, but Regi would probably take offense. At the very least, he'd be confused.

"I should not make such egregious mistakes."

Dante sighed. "You didn't want to talk about this, and I am exhausted and in desperate need of a hiding place where Ter can't find me. What do you say we grab some food from the mess hall and have a picnic?"

"‘Picnic' does not translate."

"It means you grab food, put it in a container, and go somewhere pretty where no one can find you. Then you eat in private with someone you like." That was translator safe.

Regi was silent for a time. "Neither the Kowri nor the Coalition has anything like picnic . Is this a cultural custom of huumans?"

"Definitely."

"Then I would enjoy exploring your culture. If I go into the mess hall, I will likely be waylaid. I will find a container appropriate for carrying food if you will brave the mess hall and retrieve something compatible with our biologies." They had found that Kowri and humans had very similar food restrictions and even preferences, although Dante did like more spice that Regi could tolerate. Still, they were similar enough that Dante could pick out food for both of them.

"Deal." Dante smiled, and he was even happier when Regi smiled back.