“Vivid.”
Ter whistled. “Generic insults and threats are impotent. I am not an impotent man.”
“Except when it comes to fixing this ship,” Dante shot back.
Regi eased into the room, watching as Dante grabbed the strut and pulled himself up enough to poke one of the secondary displays. Now he was hanging by a hand and a leg, which was not a significant improvement. Huumans were a fragile species. This was unconscionable behavior on Ter’s part to allow this.
“Have the numbers changed?” Ter asked.
“Yep. Goat head, striking snake, umbrella, chair, tiny dot, parallelogram, starburst,” said Dante. The words made no sense to Regi, but Ter typed away.
“Regi!” Dante exclaimed. He grabbed the strut with both hands and dropped to the decking, landing in a crouch.
Regi jerked forward, and then forced himself to still when Dante rose without visible signs of damage.
Captain Cota pushed past Regi now the risk of startling Dante into falling had passed. “Engineer Ter, you have endangered the life of a medically fragile individual, and one that is under the auspices of the Coalition sanctuary. Explain yourself.”
Ter didn’t even turn around. “If he wants to crawl around the struts, he should make himself useful. Somehow, the primary and secondary systems have been decoupled. This makes no sense. Regi, if I can find your goddess, I am going to conduct a long series of fusion experiments on her atoms, ripping the molecular bonds to shreds as I accelerate her atoms into each other.”
“I volunteered to read the secondary displays,” said Dante. “It’s no higher than the trees I grew up climbing.”
Bile gathered at the base of Regi’s throat as he considered an immature Dante putting himself in such danger.
“Now if you would simply learn the proper placement of numbers instead of describing their shapes in some bastardized version of language, I might stop calling you a moron,” Ter told him.
Dante grinned. “Hey, you can get me calling it a goat head or risk me confusing a three for a seven.”
Ter finally turned around. “A goat head is a four, you moronic offspring of half-sapient primordial ooze.”
Captain Cota drew himself up in aggravation. “Dante has sanctuary with us. He is not an engineering apprentice you can order about.”
“I would never mistake him for one. Even a three-day-old infant with aspirations in engineering would not mistake the shape of a goat head for a seven.” He scoffed.
Strangely, Dante appeared amused by Ter’s insults. Regi wondered if huumans had a flawed ability to perceive insults. Some species did, and that would explain his continued preference for spending time with Ter.
“And even a three-day-old human infant is wise enough to avoid making the same mistake three thousand times in a row, yet you continue to fix this ship knowing it will just break again.” Dante crossed his arms, leaned against the wall, and pinned Ter with an almost amused expression.
Ter’s tail lashed the air.
Before more insults could get flung across the room, Regi spoke. “Ter, we have received warning that a number of exalteds wish to come here and question you regarding the incident with the thrown tile and the accusations that you destroyed data to hide espionage.”
Ter slapped his hand down on the flat of the console, clear of any buttons. “I do not have time for stupidity, and assuming I would spy on people who have a history of violence would be stupid, especially when their idiotic gaseous gods keep breaking my ship.”
“Do you think they are gaseous, though?” Dante asked. “I assumed they were in another dimension or something.”
“Oh yes,” said Ter with an excess of sarcasm, “and your species is so far advanced that we should take your assumptions into consideration. These gods can affect our world; therefore, they must have atoms that can interact with the atoms of this dimension, and invisible implies gaseous.”
Regi’s arm fur stood on end at the sheer audacity of Ter’s irreverence. “I would ask you to avoid speculating on the nature of our gods.”
“Good science starts with speculation,” Ter protested.
“So does being dragged out and shot,” Dante said.
Ter paled. As much as Regi would have phrased it more delicately, Dante had a point.
Captain Cota belched before giving both Dante and Ter a hard stare. Dante held his hands palm forward before remembering that others perceived that gesture as hostility and holding them low in a silent apology. Ter stared.
“I will not lie. If they want to execute me for a technician’s inability to duck, that speaks more to their decision-making process than it does to my temper.” Ter’s elbows jutted out at awkward angles that made his elongated limbs appear even longer.
