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Her eyebrow rose a little.

“No,” he admitted.

“Right. Pilot,” she said, her lips compressing, “push for go, pull for stop.”

He nodded. It was a little bit more complex than that, but that wasn’t the point right now. “I’m a quick learner.”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “Not going to work, handsome. In case you hadn’t noticed, we are somewhat on the clock. It would take me longer to explain to you what I need you to do than to just do it myself.”

His jaw worked as he resisted the urge to just throw her over his shoulder and go lock her in his quarters before going and dealing with whatever this was himself. Then he opened his mouth—and his grandfather came out.

“I forbid you to go.”

She blinked and then barked a laugh, which was not at all what he’d expected.

“You what? I thought you said you ‘forbid’ me to go. Please tell me you’re not stupid enough for those words to actually pass your lips.”

He dug his heels in. “I said what I said.”

“Oh, handsome.” She chuckled and patted his arm as she brushed past him. “Did you think one little kiss gave you any rights about what I do and don’t do?”

8

She walked away from him. Actually walked away from him.

Rann was so surprised that for a moment all he did was blink and stare at the back of her head. Then he kicked himself in the ass and ran to catch up, just barely managing to remember to duck before the door to the corridor and avoid half-braining himself.

“I’m coming with you then.”

She snorted in amusement, amusement wreathing her expression as she cast him a glance over her shoulder.

“Good. You can carry the toolkit,” she said.

He ducked under a conduit housing as they turned a corner in the corridor not far from the airlock.

“Well, okay?”

His eyes narrowed. He’d expected an argument about him going with her. Something about the fact she was more than capable. The fact that she hadn’t argued made him suspicious. What was he missing here?

Reaching the lockers next to the airlock doors, she threw them open and he blinked. Seven suits were linked up on the hooks inside.

Six were obviously for the females aboard. They were all tiny, with name tags on the helmets and across the left side of the chest plates. But the seventh was a completely different matter. Where the other suits were, if not custom-fitted, then at the very least ordered in the correct heights and sizes, the last one was…

Deformed, maybe?

He tilted his head as he tried to work it out. The torso section was too short, with a chest plate and a crotch section made of hard gray material, and shorter ridge sections in red in between. The arms and legs were made of the same stuff; both were shortened and hung oddly from the body section.

B spotted him looking at it as she pulled her own suit down from the rack to pull it on.

“Please tell me you’ve seen a universal suit before,” she asked.

Grabbing it, he turned it over to locate the opening at the back of the waist below where the tank section attached.

“Yeah, of course I have,” he scoffed as he started to pull it on.

The ridge sections caught around his ankles and expanded as he pulled the thing up. That was when he realized it was designed to accommodate a variety of bodily shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, he also quickly realized those were human body shapes and sizes. Wriggling, he managed to cram his much larger frame into the thing, trying to ignore the hard pressure of the suit seams up behind his balls.

B looked at him as she reached for her helmet, stuffing her gloves into her belt. Somehow, while he was busy doing contortions, she’d gotten her boots and tank on.