Very well then.
"The Tsavitee home world. Where is it?"
Aeron's face betrayed his surprise. "Why do you need to know that?"
"Ah, ah." Raider shook his finger at him playfully. "We're the ones asking questions."
Aeron studied the room, noting the presence of those around him—along with the deafening absence of who should be. His eyes met Kira's in realization. "I was right. This is about Elise."
Kira's expression went cold.
The ship's engines cycled, the sound loud in the sudden silence. Their whine reached a crescendo and there was a slight jolt that came with the ship lifting off the ground. The motion was much smoother than it'd been before. Almost imperceptible as they arrowed toward the sky.
"Isn't this a pickle?" Aeron drawled.
Raider lost his temper at that, grabbing Aeron by the throat and squeezing. "I'm getting tired of your yapping. Answer the question. Where is the Tsavitee home world?"
"Raider," Kira warned.
Raider continued to strangle the other man with one hand. Long enough that Kira thought she'd have to physically intervene.
Graydon held a hand in front of her when she would have risen. He shook his head faintly in warning.
Aeron made a choking sound. A laugh Kira realized a second later as his face started to turn red.
He rolled his eyes up toward the human, still chuckling.
Raider flung him away. "Fucking weirdo."
Aeron bent forward, wheezing as he fought to suck in breath. "Sorry to disappoint but I don't really care what you do to me. I can't give you the answer you want. It's simply impossible."
Finn grabbed Raider before the human could throw himself at Aeron.
"Easy," Finn cautioned.
Raider shrugged out of the oshota's hold but didn't try to attack Aeron again. "Kira, let's go with my earlier suggestion. Throw him out of an airlock if he's not going to be useful."
Kira pretended to consider it. "What do you say, Aeron? The suggestion isn’t half bad."
While it would be a shame to kill Aeron after they'd gone to all this trouble, it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. Kira had no need for dead weight on this mission. Who knew? Maybe Raider's threat would incentivize him to stop wasting her time.
Kira wouldn't hold her breath though.
Caution finally entered Aeron's face as he saw that she wasn't kidding. "It's not that I don't want to help you. It's simply impossible."
"That's not going to work for me," Kira told him.
If he couldn't help her, she had no need for him. If she didn't let Raider kill him, she could always drop him down the deepest, darkest hole she could find. Maybe it would soften him up and allow him to see things her way.
"What about the Sye? Aren't you still working with them?" Aeron asked, referencing one of Kira's companions. The person Kira knew as Odin. Like the generals, Odin's kind was enslaved by the Tsavitee's masters. Their most trusted pets.
The Sye were a unique race that possessed minor shape changing abilities that allowed them to shift between male, female, and a third, gender neutral form that the name for their race came from. The Sye. A word that when translated roughly meant "All and none."
"Odin doesn't know how to return to your home world."
Otherwise, why would Kira have wasted all this time searching for the location? It was because Odin couldn't find their way back.
"That's why you were working as a scavenger. You were looking for star maps."
