"I'm not sure if that's a good idea. The malfunction could work out to our advantage against the Hareema. Maybe the best course of action is to stay sealed in here and wait it out."
Ontarii shook his head. "Ridiculous. We must take action, not sit up here like cowards."
Brook looked closely at her handsome companion.
His body was visibly trembling. He was extremely upset, which was nothing like the man she’d been dealing with thus far.
Ontarii was not afraid to express himself, but he’d kept a cool head through everything they’d faced so far. Why was he so disturbed now?
You’d be disturbed too if your life came down to fuck or die.Brook swallowed.The mating frenzy. Of course.
Taking a deep breath, she pitched her voice low and soft as she moved closer to him and placed a hand on his arm. “Ontarii, take a deep breath, and let’s think about this.”
His face warred with emotions, but she wouldn’t let up. He finally relaxed a little, taking deep breaths through his nose, which caused his wide chest to rise and fall rhythmically. The tension seemed to dissipate a little as she stood there, refusing to let him go.
“You said you ran into the FIDOs. What happened, exactly?”
His muscles stiffened, so she began to rub his arm, trying to soothe him. It seemed to have the intended affect.
“Your Hareema twin freed me from the airlock and told me the robots had malfunctioned. Then she led me to the cargo bay and when they spotted us, they began firing on us. I zapped them with my bioelectricity and it knocked them out.”
Brook nodded. It sounded like what had happened when they’d turned on her earlier as well. “I don’t understand how this malfunction started. One moment the FIDOs were obediently following me around, the next they were shooting at me.”
She thought through what had happened, talking out loud while she did. “I entered the cargo bay and discovered what I thought was my engineer going at the escape pod hatch with an ax. Then the FIDOs started in on their ‘Intruder alert’ shit and targeted Talia.”
“But not you?” Ontarii’s voice was rough. His eyes were watching her hand as it slowly slid up and down his arm.
“Not at first. It wasn’t until Talia jumped on me.” In fact, even then they hadn’t fired on her. Even after it had transformed into Brook’s double. Then the thing had kissed her and—
“Wait!” Brook thought the kiss had to be significant. What reason would an alien imposter have to lock lips with a spaceship captain? “They didn’t start to target me too until after that thing kissed me.”
His arm turned to stone.
Brook was so surprised that she stopped rubbing and looked up at him.
“It kissed you!” Ontarii’s face was a mask of hate. He grabbed her arms and squeezed until it hurt. Brook didn’t cry out, though, not wanting to show weakness. “You let that thing put its lips on you!”
“I didn’t let it, and technically, it put my lips on me, since it was wearing my face at the time.” Her joke fell flat. Like pancake flat.
His eyes narrowed, his grip tightening until she couldn’t help letting the pain show on her face.
He must have seen her expression because he dropped his hands immediately and turned away. Brook watched as he struggled to get ahold of himself. After a few moments he turned around to face her. His expression was neutral, his breathing less rapid.
“So the Hareema kissed you, and then your robots could no longer differentiate between the two of you?”
Brook nodded. “That’s what it seemed like.”
He adverted his eyes from her. “This could be the break we’ve been waiting for.”
“What do you mean?”
His emotions were flitting by so fast, she couldn’t keep up.
I guess that’s why they call it a frenzy.
“We’ve never been able to track Hareema when they’ve taken on a form. We can get trace DNA from their actual shape, but that doesn’t help when they’re not in their gelatinous form.”
He paced in front of her, his huge body taking up so much space that he’d only get a few steps before having to turn around again. “It seems like your FIDOs are able to sort Hareema from human.”
