‘That means, the second I saw you, in the bar, you were using yourSsignakhtto control the cobra?’
‘Mhmmm,’ her man grunted. ‘I might have added more of a spectacle to it that night.’
‘Why?’
‘My prescience told me they’d be a woman present I’d need to impress.’
‘So that entire show was for my benefit?’
‘The whiskey drinking and flying through the air, perhaps,’ her man said with all nonchalance.
‘The hell?’
‘I wanted to gain your attention.’
‘Where’s the serpent now?’
‘It came of its own volition because I asked it. After we were done and fed it a meal, it left. As far as I know, it’s sunning itself on a rock by the sea.’
‘You utterfokkin’rogue.’
‘It worked, didn’t it? You haven’t stopped thinking of me since.’
Sheba cursed as Idan’s shoulders shook with amusement.
The beast he was still communing with chose the moment to bellow and harrumph.
‘He doesn’t want me to leave,’ Idan translated, in a timbred rasp. ‘If I am departing, he insists on accompanying the pack.’
‘Honey, we cannot fit a six-eyed basilisk on a high-speed corvette,’ Sheba exclaimed, her hands flying to her hips in a gesture of pure, aghast frustration.
Mirage appeared at the top of the ramp, her eyes gleaming as she scanned the three-ton biological bull occupying the loading zone.
She rolled her eyes, her posture radiating reticence.
‘We can, from a weight ratio perspective, and we even have a hold for him,’ Mirage conceded. ‘But the issue is what will we do with him when we reach the docking port on Eden II?’
‘Leave that to me,’ Idan murmured. ‘I’ll call ahead to Molan and have him fix me a storage compartment.’
Sheba tut-tutted and shook her head, exchanging a weary stare with Mirage.
Idan ignored their protests. He lightly slapped the bull’s rump and guided the massive creature toward the secondary cargo enclosure.
He spent the next hour hauling bales of mountain hay and fresh straw into the bay, stacking the fodder high against the bulkheads.
Shuaqagec stomped through the metal cavern, his heavy breathing echoing off the alloy walls as he harrumphed with resonant approval, claiming the space as his new territory.
The smear of hyperspace bleeding through the viewport cast a spectral glow over theIgnis’ galley.
The scene might have bordered on romantic if not for the utilitarian water bulbs and the cardboard trays of reheated lasagna.
Idan leaned back in his chair, sippingkahawafrom a tin cup, his focus on Sheba as she shared yet another hilarious story from her nursing life.
Her attention snapped to her comm-tab, which trilled with a message.
‘One moment,uso’m.’
She tapped the holographic interface, her pupils tracking the scrolling text of a high-priority dispatch from the Joint Pegasi Health Consortium.
