For a second, Dante stared at him blankly and then a slow smile crept over his face. “I will admit I'm rather fond of male genitalia, but when my people use the word dick to describe a person, we generally mean that someone is being irrational and unpleasant and sort of dickish.”
“Well, that describes the Kowri,” Cota said as he headed for the door. Regi wished he could disagree.
Chapter Fifteen
Regi looked around. This wasn't the world of his birth or any of the worlds that he had visited with his parents, but Kowri lived here. Sprawling shipyards cradled gleaming white ships dedicated to Gavd. In the distance, a temple rose into a blue sky stained with green streaks from a distant thunderstorm. He hadn’t ached for home in years, but now he felt that pain in his marrow. Overhead, a bird of prey screamed and then dived down into the open top of the massive temple.
“Holy shit,” Dante said as he inched down the crooked walkway. Coalition ships used a sling system to propel them off-world, so the bottoms of their ships were rounded. But the Kowri had mastered antigravity drives, so the landing space was flat. It meant that the pirate ship tilted at a precarious angle.
“Would holy excrement be related to actual excrement?” Regi asked.
“Nope.” Dante sounded distracted. His head swiveled as he took in the shipyard. Several hundred yards away, Kowri stood near the entrance to the Gavd ship that had escorted them to the planet, but after glancing in their direction, Dante turned his attention to the broader world.
Captain Cota strode past Dante, his arm thrown out to maintain his balance. “The Coalition has heavy warships as well, but we don’t send them to patrol a peaceful border.”
These were not warships; the Empire had exactly one of those. The massive ship dedicated to Retav was retribution personified; however, no one outside the Empire had ever seen it. Regi had only seen it because he had still been too young to leave his mother’s side when Minait had been called to the rededication. He remembered the Gavd ships floating around the massive structure. However, compared to Coalition ships, Gavd vessels were enormous. Each housed families and businesses and a central temple. Regi didn’t bother explaining any of that.
Dante turned and considered the pirate ship. “Our ship looks like an upturned beetle.”
“‘Beetle’?” Regi assumed it was an animal, from the lack of translation.
“An insect with a round back. That ship looks like an upside-down beetle with its legs sticking in the air.”
“Those are navigation and communication arrays, not legs.” Ter said as he passed all of them and strode directly toward the other Kowri. “Idiot.”
“You should wait!” Regi called, but Ter didn’t even slow, forcing Regi to run after him.
“I’m too old to wait, so if they are going to kill me, I would rather get it over quickly and leave the rest of you to flail about in panic.” He walked faster. Ter had long legs, and without the confines of a ship to slow him, he was difficult to keep up with.
“Um, those other Kowri are looking unhappy,” Dante called out. Regi glanced over his shoulder to see Dante keeping pace, leaving only Captain Cota standing near their ship. This could end badly, but Regi would not sacrifice Ter. So he had to reach the Kowri first. He sprinted ahead and cut in front of Ter, holding out a hand to stop him.
“You must wait.”
Ter showed his teeth, but Regi was the head of security, in part because he didn’t back down to strong personalities like Ter and Bevti. “You will wait,” Regi ordered.
“The other side ain’t waiting,” Dante muttered. Regi took that as a warning, and he turned to face the approaching Kowri, a da-male at the front of a unit of ten, all wearing Gavd’s symbol on their sashes. “Am I the only one who thinks they looked pissed?”
