Krystal looked up; lips pursed. “All right, so I looked. Is there anything wrong with that?”
Laila’s smile dropped, and leaning forward, she braced her forearms on the table. “Krystal, I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
Krystal straightened in her seat. “What makes you think I’ll get hurt?”
“Don’t get testy. T’arq has a reputation, that’s all.”
“Oh?”
Laila shrugged. “He has a lot of… partners.”
Krystal fought not to laugh at the uncharacteristically prudish statement. “You mean he likes sex?”
Laila sat up and glared at her. “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. No need to be so blunt.”
Krystal couldn’t help but laugh. “And why do you think I will get hurt?”
“He doesn’t do relationships, Krystal.”
“And I do?”
“Well, have you ever had a boyfriend? A girlfriend? Any kind of love interest?”
Krystal shook her head. “You know I haven’t. Well, apart from that one guy in college who I realized was just using me, so I would do his homework for him.”
“See what I mean? You are inexperienced and he is—”
“The exact opposite?”
“Yes!”
“So why wouldn’t I want him to help me get experience?”
Laila’s mouth dropped open, eyes wide, and the blood drained from her face.
“It was a joke!” Krystal patted her sister’s hand reassuringly, the role reversal not lost on her. “It’s not as if he even knows that I exist. And I’m smart enough to know to avoid the playboy type.” She used her fingers to make air quotes as she said the word playboy.
Laila breathed a sigh of relief.
They sat in silence for a minute, each sipping their drinks.
“So, you were telling me about that cloak you’ve been working on?” Laila broached.
Krystal brightened at the change in topic, quickly catching Laila up on the work she had been doing and how she thought it might help.
When she had finished, Laila regarded her.
“Oh. What’s that look for?” Krystal asked, arms crossing over her chest.
“I have an idea. Meet me in hangar bay nine before your shift tomorrow morning.”
* * *
When Krystal arrived at hangar bay nine the next day, it was to find Laila and a small group of Taureans standing around a stealth ship. Or what Krystal assumed was a stealth ship, as she hadn’t had the chance to work on one yet. The problem with being a human civilian contractor to a Taurean military starship was that they barely gave her anything interesting to work on. She was a glorified maintenance worker, fixing cleaner bots and replicator units. She wasn’t allowed near anything that flew.
But she had needled and nagged until she had been allowed to work on the one thing that her boss had assumed she could not fix—the cloaking problem. In her own time, of course.
Krystal crossed the busy hangar, dodging and weaving out of the way of small automated robotic carts and groups of Taureans so tall they seemed like giants. Would she ever get used to simply how big they were?
