Sebastian thought that over. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Notwhen she sank her teeth into me!” Damon snapped. “In point of fact I did not enjoy any of it after that. She shoved her finger in my ass, as well.”
The men looked at him in horrified fascination. “Why did she do that?”
“How the fuck would I know?” Damon snarled. “Too see how high I could jump?”
“I do not think I would care to have anything shoved in my ass,” Lucien said thoughtfully. “I was shot in the ass once and I did not like that at all.”
“In the asshole?”
“Nay! The cheek, but I still did not like it.”
“Well that is just stupid!” Jared snapped. “No one likes to be shot anywhere!”
Lucien glared at him. “There are some places that are worse.”
“Chloe does not like to do strange things, does she?” Kane asked worriedly after a few moments.
Damon studied him warily for a few moments. “Chloe has not done the typical things enough to be bored. It is the females that have done everything or who are just plain strange that are looking for things to do that are not even in my programming—or weren’t before.”
“I think we should focus on how we are to be first in the line when Reuel puts the cards up again,” Sebastian said hurriedly when Jared looked as if he might leap to his feet again. “We are her crew. We should be first—or at least at the top of the list, gods damn it. I do not even know why they decided to put up a card for her. There are six of us. That is bad enough!”
“I think it is Reuel who decided,” Kane said. “Chloe is shy and she is always worried that we will be angry with her. I think Reuel only suggested it and she agreed because itisan issue—the fact that everyone wants to fuck and only the fucking fuck droid over there has gotten to that I know of! It was Reuel who announced it and Chloe looked very embarrassed and uncomfortable to me.”
Jared looked thoughtful. “I did not notice,” he murmured slowly.
“If you are right,” Sebastian said, “then I think that we should point out to Reuel that Chloe already has a crew and that it is completely unreasonable to expect her to accept anyone else when there are plenty of females in his own crew. There will still be more of us with her than with the others even at that.”
“I am not so certain. It did not seem to me that there wereanywho wanted to sign Salina’s dance card.”
“Well, they will have to. She istheircrewmember and if they leave her out then they have only four!” Lucien pointed out.
“Yes, but I think it isbecauseshe is their crewmember,” Thor put in. “They did not like that she challenged an officer—even a ship’s officer that was not military. They did not like that it was Chloe more than that. And beyond that, they say that she is not right in the head since the change. She is nigh as strong as they are and she had the tendency toward overkill even before she underwent the change. I think they are worried that she will try to injure them even if she has agreed to accept partners. In fact, I heard one complain that he believed she had agreed only so that she would have the opportunity to revenge herself because they did not support her when Reuel called her to account for her actions. She has been raging about it since she was thrown into the brig and threw her food tray at the guard when he took it to her.”
They all stared at Thor for a long moment, digesting that.
“Well, she is their problem!” Sebastian snapped. “I still say that we should approach Reuel.”
“And if he does not agree?” Jared asked dryly.
“Then we will need a strategy to make certain that we are at the front of the line when we are allowed to sign the gods damned dance cards!”
Jared frowned thoughtfully. “There is no vid displaying the wall where he posted before. Someone will need to adjust the angle of the view so that we know where her card is on the wall and do not have to search when we get there.”
“I can locate a small handheld monitor and program it to receive only from that camera so that we know when he posts them and the order,” Kane said.
“We will be in a good position to get out of the mess hall before most of the others, but it would not hurt to arrange interference,” Sebastian said. “We will have to make it look accidental if we trip anyone, however.”
“That may make an effective distraction,” Lucien agreed, “and I am willing to help out with that, but only if whoever makes it to the dance card puts my name on the list because I am liable to be delayed myself. And I am going to be fucking pissed off if I hold up the rush and then do not get my name on the gods damned list!”
Chapter Ten
Reuel studied the six men lined up in front of him thoughtfully. More specifically, he found himself studying their expressions and their body language. They were tense, not in the sense that they stood at attention, although they were, but rather in the manner of a fighter prepared to pounce. There was aggression in their stances that had not been there before the change. They had been designed and programmed for perfect balance, total awareness of their surroundings at all times, and absolutely perfect military posture, but it had not had any real significance to any of them.
They had mimicked aggression. They had fought with the ferocity programmed into them, but without malice. It did not matter to them whether they won or lost, whether they survived or died. They did not register pain beyond awareness of injury and even then only in the sense that they were programmed to guard their usefulness. If the injury they had sustained threatened their usefulness, they factored probabilities and made the decision of whether to fall back to allow time for repairs or to proceed.
He did not have to ask the importance of their request. The request itself was proof that logic had nothing to do with the decision, that it was emotional, personal, that it mattered. It was clear enough that they had all reached a stage in development where they had become prey to basic animal urges. He knew that much from the changes within himself, but how far beyond that had they progressed, he wondered?
