“I have no idea,” Dante said.
Ter scoffed at him. “Hands are the tools of the mind. A species with asymmetrical hands likely has underdeveloped logic and malformed brains. It’s the only explanation for yourability to be minimally reasonable one moment and a dolt the next.”
“Insulting Dante is unacceptable,” Regi snapped. “Are you telling me you have an operational objective that you’ve kept from me despite my position as head of security?”
Ter frowned at Regi. “If we were a simple patrol ship, why would we have so many security and science personnel on board? I assumed you understood we were something other than a patrol ship. Given my own expertise, wasting my time on a security patrol would be a level of idiocy that even the command structure of the Coalition could not manage. Show one ounce of intelligence between those two fuzzy ears of yours.”
With that, Ter stomped away. Dante scrambled to avoid a sharp elbow, but Vk honked in pain as he caught her in the ribs. Ter didn’t even glance at her; he grabbed the rail of the ladder with one hand and stepped off into nothing. He vanished, sliding down the handrail. Dante didn’t hear any screams of pain, so he assumed Ter landed safely despite his scrawny legs.
Regi looked to Cota. “Is it true?” His voice was soft and dangerous. “Why was I not informed? Am I still distrusted because of my birth planet?”
Cota held his hands low. “Of course we trust you. I trust you. The Coalition would not have you as the security officer on such a scientifically important ship were you not highly trusted. The amount of vetting you underwent assured us that you had no ulterior motives.”
“Then why was I not informed of the ship's real mission? Had I been, I could have spoken with the temple about the sensitivity of our computers. And then, if Bekdi had done this,” Regi swept his arm toward the exit with a jerky motion, “I could have cited our mission. But now... You excluded me and made my job infinitely more difficult. If I tell them this version of truth, they will accuse us of lying.”
Cota stood straighter. “We respected our last security chief, yet he sold our flight schedule to the Belfin Empire who nearly captured the ship. It is not a matter of trust. It is a matter of minimizing how many people understood the nature of our mission.”
“And as head of security, I was on the list of people who needed to know.” Regi growled the words before stomping away. A few random black and gray hairs floated on the gentle breeze created by the air circulators.
Cota tangled his fingers together, the digits twisting around each other in a complex knot that made Dante a little nauseated because it looked as though his fingers were breaking. “Security Officer Vk, please let Security Chief Regi know that I would like to speak to him at his convenience.” He then walked off, but when he reached the first ladder, he descended into the engineering levels, the opposite direction Regi had chosen.
Vk’s nose was drawn up tight to her face.
“You didn’t know, either, huh?” Dante asked.
“I should not know. I am not the security chief. Regi is...” Her nose got even tighter to her face.
She was offended for Regi, and she should be. Keeping a secret like that from the one person who was supposed to keep the ship safe felt like an idiotic choice. And now Ter might pay the price because Dante couldn’t see the Kowri believing any story Regi brought them after the fact. Dante was starting to wonder if any of them were going to get off this world alive.
He also wondered if stupidity was a commonality of all sapient life. So far, the evidence pointed to yes.
Chapter Four
Regi sat in his office staring at the wall. He should complete his Coalition paperwork or go to the temple and explain the situation. However, he stared at the computer display. Most of the Coalition ships he’d served on had outdated equipment. Cota’s ship was the first time he’d had a computer that worked each time he’d loaded a program. Coalition ships were sound, but lights would flicker, and engineering would have dozens of floor tiles pried up at any given time as they tried to trace wiring or crystal errors. Before his most recent Coalition ship had fallen into a black hole, it had never required a visit to a station for emergency repairs. He was an idiot for not seeing the pattern.
His door chimed—an obnoxious sound that made him lay his ears back. He triggered the opening mechanism to find Dante. After the trauma Dante had suffered, the threat of a Kowri mob would, no doubt, cause considerable concern.
“Are you okay?” Dante asked before Regi could ask the same question.
Rather than dismissing the question as he would had any of the crew asked, Regi considered his answer. “I’m uneasy given Bekdi’s fury, but Kowri say that a warrior may win the day through expeditious action or plodding progress, but one who takes a moderate route will fail. Since Bekdi appears to be moving quickly, I have chosen to take the cautious path. I am hopeful I can minimize the damage.”
Dante blinked at him.
“We are safe,” Regi promised. He only hoped the gods found wisdom in his words.
Dante came in, triggering the closing sensor with an easy wave. “I’m going to ignore that obvious lie because I’m more worried that your crew seems to have kept secrets.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Regi opened a security program.
“It does.” Dante took the chair opposite Regi. “It’s crappy of them not to tell you, and it has put us in danger.”
Regi winced at the reference to bodily function. Sometimes Dante sounded too much like Ter. “Why do you make references to scatological processes?”
“‘Scatological’?” Dante looked confused.
“References to excrement, or in this case, crap.”
Dante’s face developed an impressive number of new wrinkles. “Why would the translator know that word?” He sighed. “Richard. That man did have an impressive vocabulary. And now the rest of the universe knows more English than most English-speakers.”
