“Leave her out of this, Thek-Ka. Your quarrel is with me.”
My scanner gives up trying to classify threats and simply displays: RUN. RUN. RUN.
Every survival instinct I possess is screaming the same message. This is so far beyond anything I’m trained for that my hands are actually shaking as I reach for my emergency beacon. I should be calling for backup, for military intervention, for anything that might level the playing field between a safety inspector and whatever nightmare scenario I’ve walked into.
But before I can activate the beacon, Crash’s hand closes over mine with gentle but firm pressure.
“Do not,” he says quietly. “Thek-Ka follows the old codes. If you summon outside interference, he will consider it dishonorable and extend his hunt to anyone who aided me. Including you.”
I stare at him. “You’re saying if I call for help, I become a target too?”
“Among the Exoscarab, honor debts transfer to all involved parties. You have already...” His golden eyes flick to where I’m standing beside him rather than behind him. “Your positioning suggests alliance. To his people, that makes you complicit in whatever dishonor he believes I have brought upon him.”
The words hit me like ice water. I’m not choosing to be part of this—I’ve already been drafted by alien cultural codes I don’t understand. “That’s insane.”
“It’s a blood-debt transfer. You didn’t run, so the debt bled onto you.” Crash’s voice carries grim acceptance. “I should have warned you sooner, but I hoped...” He trails off, jaw tight with what might be guilt or anger. “I hoped we would be gone before he found me.”
Thek-Ka’s compound eyes track our whispered conversation with mechanical precision, and that sound he makes—thatrhythmic clicking of sharpening mandibles—echoes across the platform again.
“The human female begins to understand,” he says with satisfaction that sounds almost pleased. “Good. Fear makes the resolution more satisfying.”
“I’m not afraid,” I snap, which is a complete lie, and we all know it.
“No?” One of Thek-Ka’s four arms makes a gesture that might be amusement among his people. “Then why does your scent carry such... distress?”
Crash goes very still beside me. “She is not part of this, Thek-Ka. The codes do not—”
“Article Seven of the Challenge Rites invokes the bystander clause, Golden Viper. She stands at your side rather than fleeing. She refuses to summon aid when wisdom demands it. She has chosen to tie her honor to yours.” Those compound eyes fix on me with terrible focus. “Whether she understands what she has done or not.”
This is getting worse by the second. Not only am I apparently trapped in some alien honor ritual, but I’m trapped with a male whose biology has decided I’m mate material. And judging by the way that vanilla-honey scent is intensifying around us, my presence beside him is triggering responses that have nothing to do with the tactical situation.
“Define the parameters of this ‘code.’ If I’m a participant, I want the regulations,” I manage, though my voice sounds strangely breathless. My brain is trying to bureaucratize something that has no bureaucracy.
“Single combat,” Thek-Ka says with obvious relish. “To the death. As it should have been three years ago, before the cowardly arena masters interfered with gambling concerns and profit margins. But now...” His mandibles spread in what might be a smile if smiles could strip paint from bulkheads. “Now thereare stakes beyond simple honor. Now there is... unexpected variability. A bonded pair fighting in isolation? That is rare data.”
The way he says “rare data” while looking directly at me makes my blood run cold.
Crash’s protective instincts flare so hard the air around him shimmers with heat and aggression. Not the controlled tactical awareness from before—this is the same kind of barely leashed violence that sent Logarx running for his ship.
“She is not data,” he says, and his voice carries the kind of lethal promise that makes even Thek-Ka pause. “Touch her, threaten her, or imply anything about her beyond her unfortunate presence here, and I will show you exactly why they called me the Golden Viper.”
The platform goes very quiet. Even the emergency klaxons seem to pause in their shrieking.
Then Thek-Ka makes that sound again—mandibles clicking with rhythmic precision—but this time there’s genuine satisfaction in it, the kind that suggests he’s been hoping for exactly this reaction.
“There he is,” Thek-Ka says with satisfaction. “There is the killer from the fighting pits. Three years of running packages through the Fringe, and I wondered if you had gone soft. But she brings out the predator, doesn’t she? Makes you remember what you were before you decided to play at being a simple courier.”
My head is spinning trying to keep up with the implications. Crash was more than just a gladiator—he was a killer. Someone dangerous enough to earn a reputation in whatever brutal circuits exist in the galaxy’s darker corners. And now his biology is telling him I’m mate material while an alien honor code is forcing me to stand beside him in single combat against something that could probably tear us both apart without breaking a sweat.
This is so far beyond routine safety violations that I’m starting to wonder if the universe has a personal grudge against me.
“The terms are simple,” Thek-Ka continues, his mandibles clicking with methodical precision. “Single combat. To the death. The survivor leaves. The fallen... remain as biomass.”
“No.” The word tears out of my throat before I can stop it. “I am an OOPS Safety Inspector, and you are violating seventeen different aggression statutes.”
Both males turn to look at me—Crash with something that might be respect or terror, Thek-Ka with mechanical interest.
“Then perhaps,” Thek-Ka says thoughtfully, “you would prefer to fight for yourself?”
