Chapter Three

W hen Bekdi turned to the ship, striding toward his two men, Dante shoved Ter back into the room and triggered the door closed. He had the advantage of a poisonous sidekick, so he stood guard and prayed that either Regi or Cota could control Bekdi. If he bullied his way up the ramp, Dante was going to have to stop him, and he didn't want to. In fact, his stomach was in knots.

Some god, either the type the Kowri believed in or the one his grandmother prayed to, must have listened because Regi stepped in front of Bekdi before he could put a single foot on the gangplank. "You overstep yourself. Nawr is the elder for the cold weather temple. Only a plenum can override a decision already made, and the temple has decided that the ship is Coalition territory."

Bekdi looked at his two men.

One proclaimed, "The outsiders wiped all their communications and engineering data before we could retrieve our proof."

Bekdi growled at Regi before he stomped away. The crowd parted for him, but the general volume of angry voices increased exponentially. Regi said something to Vk, and she hurried up the ramp into the ship, Captain Cota behind her. They both stopped near Dante, who was still peering around the curve of the corridor.

"Where is Engineer Ter?" the captain asked.

Dante poked his thumb toward the door behind him without speaking. He strained to hear the crowd outside. Regi was out there alone.

Regi stood for a short time at the bottom of the ramp, and Dante considered going to stand next to him. Peaches tended to leave an impression. Either a rare moment of common sense or a less rare spot of cowardice made him watch from the ship. Regi waited until the crowd's complaints had quieted before he strolled up the ramp. Of course, he was still fluffy enough to ruin that fa?ade of calm.

When he reached the interior, he slapped his hand against the access panel and the exterior exit slid shut with a heavy thunk . The metal might not offer more than the illusion of safety, but Dante felt as though he could breathe.

Cota gave him an odd look before opening the door. Ter peeked around the frame. "Are they gone? Are we safe? I didn't do anything. Hrole is the one who handed me a substandard part. I'm not going to start accepting shoddy work because Regi's people are logic-impaired theologians who value superstition over quality control checks."

Regi's movements were full of deadly grace and fury. "Why would your engineers have deleted the files?" he demanded.

Vk took a step back and her nose scrunched up.

Ter, however, didn't show any fear; he thrust his elbows out. "Because that is standard operating procedure. If the ship is boarded then all research is wiped."

Captain Cota turned an alarming shade of purple and swiped his hand in Ter's direction, but Ter sidestepped to avoid contact.

Regi squared off against the captain. "I know all Coalition regulations, and there is no such security protocol in place."

"In regular ships, no, but on my—"

"Chief Engineer Ter, that is quite enough," snapped Captain Cota in an unusual show of temper.

Regi looked from Ter to Cota, his hair still on end. "Coalition regulations mandate crew behavior. The chief engineer cannot create procedures in contradiction to general orders." He sounded so calm, but still, something in his voice made cold shivers run down Dante's spine. As nice as Regi was, this dangerous edge lurked under the surface.

Ter stood taller and poked his thumbs in Regi's direction. "Oh yes, I shall take your advice to care about Coalition regulations when I am likely hours away from being executed by xenophobic Kowri who want nothing more than a good excuse to kill people."

The skin between Cota's eyes wrinkled. "I'm sure we can speak with the Kowri. Chief Security Officer Regi has been successful in soothing concerns about our presence in the past. I am sure he can smooth this over as well."

"I likely cannot," said Regi. "The Kowris' worst fear is having our gods-gifted technology stolen, and by deleting the files, the engineering staff has made it appear as though this crew is guilty of that crime. Bekdi a'Gavd will demand punishment."

"Police officers are not fans of obstruction of justice," Dante muttered. He'd learned that when he'd decided that if his father was going to make people miserable by passing crappy laws, then he would make law enforcement miserable by getting in their way while they were enforcing those crappy laws. He'd spent quite a few nights in jail before his father had threatened to start putting down horses until Dante stopped rebelling. The problem with loving something was that it gave people the power to take it away.

"Barricading justice?" Regi asked. "How would one build a barricade around justice?" He tilted his head to the side and studied Dante.

Dante sometimes wondered whether the programmers who had designed the translators had worked while drunk. Or hungover. Heaven knew Dante didn't feel particularly competent with his head pounding and his mouth still fuzzy from last night's bender. Maybe that explained today's string of silly translator errors.

"My people have a legal charge called obstruction of justice," Dante explained. "If you are trying to stop the police from finding out that you did something illegal, you might destroy evidence. But the police can then charge you with obstruction of justice for destroying the evidence even if they cannot convict you of whatever crime they were investigating in the first place."

Regi gave a single, sharp nod to show he understood. "My people do not have such a concept. If you obstruct the investigation of a crime, it is assumed you are involved in such crime, and it is automatically taken as evidence of guilt." He gave Ter a look full of displeasure.

"I'm not guilty of anything except protecting my research." Ter's elbows stuck out aggressively and Captain Cota made a shushing gesture at him.

"Why was it so necessary for you to prevent the Kowri from seeing your research?" Regi demanded. Vk took another step back, her nose growing shorter by the second.

Ter glanced at Cota.

"Absolutely not," Cota said.

"I have no interest in being executed by xenophobic bigots who do not appreciate my unwillingness to accept substandard work from an assistant who should have been drowned at birth to prevent his many errors from infecting the world."

Cota said, "You have no authority to involve others in your assigned tasks." His pupils were narrow slits.

Ter snorted inelegantly. "I value my life more than my commission, especially when the Coalition cannot provide me with either a mechanically sound ship or backup supplies which would allow me to repair the ship. The Coalition's negligence has nearly cost me my life once, and I will not allow their policy to keep me silent on issues that Regi might use in my defense, assuming he is at least marginally effective in explaining simple matters using small enough words to convince Kowri. I'd ask Ean to defend me, only the Kowri are too stupid to respect her expertise."

"I forbid—" Captain Cota began.

Ter detoured around the captain, poking him with an elbow with enough force the captain grunted. "Your people need to understand that this was standard procedure," he told Regi. "I conduct sensitive research on the ship, and as my notes represent the leading edge of Coalition technology, we cannot allow them to fall into anyone's hands. Any incursion into the ship requires all computer memory crystals to be both wiped and damaged beyond repair. We were not trying to steal Kowri secrets. We were trying to protect our own."

Regi blinked and the silence grew uncomfortable.

"I thought you were a patrol ship," Dante said.

"Huumans lack logic," Ter snapped. "Do you believe I would have such harsh words for my engineers if they were doing nothing more than maintaining engines during a patrol? I endure engineers who believe that truth can be found in inadequate textbooks written by those with tiny and inefficient brains. I must keep these fools alive when we are experimenting with technology that would contradict known theory and require all texts to be rewritten. Would a simple patrol require so many engineers?" Ter thrust his chin toward Dante. "Would the Coalition waste my time on routine maintenance?" He fell silent.

"I have no idea," Dante said.

Ter scoffed at him. "Hands are the tools of the mind. A species with asymmetrical hands likely has underdeveloped logic and malformed brains. It's the only explanation for your ability to be minimally reasonable one moment and a dolt the next."

"Insulting Dante is unacceptable," Regi snapped. "Are you telling me you have an operational objective that you've kept from me despite my position as head of security?"

Ter frowned at Regi. "If we were a simple patrol ship, why would we have so many security and science personnel on board? I assumed you understood we were something other than a patrol ship. Given my own expertise, wasting my time on a security patrol would be a level of idiocy that even the command structure of the Coalition could not manage. Show one ounce of intelligence between those two fuzzy ears of yours."

With that, Ter stomped away. Dante scrambled to avoid a sharp elbow, but Vk honked in pain as he caught her in the ribs. Ter didn't even glance at her; he grabbed the rail of the ladder with one hand and stepped off into nothing. He vanished, sliding down the handrail. Dante didn't hear any screams of pain, so he assumed Ter landed safely despite his scrawny legs.

Regi looked to Cota. "Is it true?" His voice was soft and dangerous. "Why was I not informed? Am I still distrusted because of my birth planet?"

Cota held his hands low. "Of course we trust you. I trust you. The Coalition would not have you as the security officer on such a scientifically important ship were you not highly trusted. The amount of vetting you underwent assured us that you had no ulterior motives."

"Then why was I not informed of the ship's real mission? Had I been, I could have spoken with the temple about the sensitivity of our computers. And then, if Bekdi had done this," Regi swept his arm toward the exit with a jerky motion, "I could have cited our mission. But now... You excluded me and made my job infinitely more difficult. If I tell them this version of truth, they will accuse us of lying."

Cota stood straighter. "We respected our last security chief, yet he sold our flight schedule to the Belfin Empire who nearly captured the ship. It is not a matter of trust. It is a matter of minimizing how many people understood the nature of our mission."

"And as head of security, I was on the list of people who needed to know." Regi growled the words before stomping away. A few random black and gray hairs floated on the gentle breeze created by the air circulators.

Cota tangled his fingers together, the digits twisting around each other in a complex knot that made Dante a little nauseated because it looked as though his fingers were breaking. "Security Officer Vk, please let Security Chief Regi know that I would like to speak to him at his convenience." He then walked off, but when he reached the first ladder, he descended into the engineering levels, the opposite direction Regi had chosen.

Vk's nose was drawn up tight to her face.

"You didn't know, either, huh?" Dante asked.

"I should not know. I am not the security chief. Regi is..." Her nose got even tighter to her face.

She was offended for Regi, and she should be. Keeping a secret like that from the one person who was supposed to keep the ship safe felt like an idiotic choice. And now Ter might pay the price because Dante couldn't see the Kowri believing any story Regi brought them after the fact. Dante was starting to wonder if any of them were going to get off this world alive.

He also wondered if stupidity was a commonality of all sapient life. So far, the evidence pointed to yes.