Dante sighed. “He exaggerates, but I do need to find a space suit. We should get you into one as well.”
“The alarms haven’t sounded.” The Kowri’s ears folded back until they were pressed tight against his skull.
Dante caught the boy by the arm and guided him out of the room. “No harm in being prepared. The gods might be providing a little challenge.” The boy’s eyes grew larger and his skin whiter. Kowri knew how dangerous their gods could be, so that wouldn’t have comforted him.
Dante tried again. “Ter can protect this level. Let’s get to the emergency supplies and then you can get your family and bring them back to this level. Now, where are those supplies?”
The boy studied Dante’s face. He was almost as tall as Dante but this close, Dante could see the roundness in his face that suggested that he was young... too young to be in this ship while alien mines tried to destroy them. He swallowed. “This way.” He turned, and Dante closed the door on the control room before hefollowed. The corridors were eerily quiet as the young male led Dante to the room where racks of thick, gray space suits were organized by size. “We’re not supposed to touch these.”
“Except in emergencies. The other adults don’t understand it yet, but this is an emergency. We both need suits, and then you need to show me where to find weapons.”
The kid took a quick step back. “Weapons? Why?” He projected his fear and Dante wished he had time to reassure him, but he moved to the racks, searching for a suit that would fit him from the enormous racks.
“The engineer can show me how to disrupt the weapons that are attached to the hull if I have an energy weapon,” he explained. At least, he hoped so. He reached for a suit, but the boy came over and pressed his hand against an indented square. The suit at the front of the rack turned and the back opened.
“How?” the boy asked.
“I have no idea. I’m not an engineer.”
The Kowri boy looked at him oddly, but maybe Dante had said something right because he went to the smaller suits and chose a row, pressing his hand to that indent before stepping into the suit.
The second his feet settled into the boots, the fabric tightened around them, and then the rest of the suit did the same, adjusting to him so that in seconds he was in a space suit that fit well except for the gloves that had a sleeve for an extra thumb on the opposite side of his fingers. That bit of fabric dangled.
“Good, now you need to show me where the weapons are. Can you do that?”
The Kowri straightened. “Yes.” He headed for the door, hit his shoulder on the edge of the entrance, spun himself around and fell to the floor.
“Are you all right?” Dante hurried to him as fast as he could with the stiff fabric wrapped around his arms and legs.
“I would consider it a favor if you pretended that you did not see that,” the boy said, his voice muffled by the suit.
“I can do that.” Dante helped the boy back to his feet and then followed him back into the corridor. Two doors down, the boy stopped again.
“This is the weapon section. I can’t open it, but adults assigned to the ship can.”
Dante took a deep breath. Right. If the acolytes who served in the temple had done their jobs and recorded him as an adult, the door would open. Otherwise, they were all screwed. Dante pressed his hand to the door’s indented square, the one that looked like the one in the space suit room. It slid open.
Dante sent up a quick prayer of thanks. That was step two of about fifty that had to happen if they were going to survive. Dante had not survived months of slavery and torture, fought his way out of the wilderness of a Kowri world and confronted aliens that terrified him only to die before finishing his first date with Regi. That was not how his life would end. It wasn’t. He would come back from the dead and haunt Divashi until he drove her mad if she ever thought about letting him die this way.
“Can I go now?” the Kowri asked.
“Go. Get your family,” said Dante. The boy lifted his hands toward his head as though he was trying to do the traditional farewell gesture, but the suit was too stiff. He turned and clomped his way down the corridor, hopefully to evacuate this area.
“Do you have a weapon yet?” Ter’s voice came through the helmet. Dante shrieked and might have fallen down if he hadn’t hit a wall.
“Why are you screaming at me?” Ter demanded.
“How did you connect to my communicator?” Dante asked while his heart rate slowed.
There was silence for a few seconds. “Does your species lack a sufficient taboo against incest?”
“What?”
“I am an engineer. Have you found a weapon?”
“I’m in some sort of weapons locker now, but I don’t recognize anything well enough to know what I’m looking at.”
“You are useless.” Somehow the simple insult devoid of Ter’s flare for dramatics and elaborate metaphor felt even more cutting than usual.
