"I'm not. You're just huge."
He shrugged. "I thought female humanoids liked that."
Even through the fabric, he saw her mouth open in shock. She pulled away from him.
"Just so you know, that was crude and a terrible way to speak to someone of my station."
He shrugged again. "I have been told I can be crude. But I get the job done."
"Well, that is always helpful." She started walking away from him. "What was your name again? Jerrick?"
"Jedriek, Ambassador."
"Lovely. Jedriek." She clapped her hands together. "We need to get moving if there's incoming, as you say."
"There are."
"A lot?"
"It seems a squad is circling the moon, looking I speculate, for our ships."
"Then let us go." She glanced at his ship. "Will we both fit?"
"In my ship?"
"Well, we certainly won't fit in the escape pod, and it won't fly again, anyway."
"We can try. You're so tiny, it might be okay."
"I am not tiny, by my people's standards, just so you know."
"By my measurements, you are. You barely come to my chest."
"That does not diminish my importance."
"Nor my protocols," he said. He reached his ship, looked inside the piloting compartment, then back at her. "You will have to lay on me."
"Excuse me?"
"There are no seats. We lay flat in the ship. You will have to lay on top of me to fit."
"For how long?"
"Until we reach a safe place to wait this out."
"What do you mean, wait this out? What is coming? Surely we were just going to go to your homeworld. Isn't it just a moon away?"
"It is not that." he pointed to the sky. The gas giant was lining up. Already the sky was darkening because of the coming eclipse. "It is the eclipse. I do not know if we will make it off the moon in time before the eclipse hits."
"Surely, it does not take that long to travel between your moons. They looked fairly close together on the maps."
"Maps can be deceiving. And there are many ships out there who will want to hinder our progress." He gestured to his fighter. "We really must be moving. We can discuss this as we fly. I do not want to be on the ground when we have enemies in the sky."
"Right. Of course."
He took the bag she'd brought. "We don't have a great deal of room. What is this?"
"Survival gear. Rations and water."
