“Of course, my lady. My apologies,” he said with a stiff-necked bow. “I am merely a lowly warrior, with no insight into how the shadows work. Their honor is, of course, the emperor’s command.”
“Good,” she huffed and gave him another glare for good measure before returning to Jay’s side. His lips quirked at the look on her delicate little heart-shaped face. Damn, she was gorgeous when she was mad.
“Okay, back to the matter in hand. They can’t hear us in here. They are listening to us, so they think we’re going to let something slip. But,” he added with a grin. “they’re keeping us together, which means they’ve all but discounted us as a threat.”
“So they should.” Seren’s voice was unimpressed. “We are alone, cut off without reinforcements in the middle of a larger, opposing force.”
“You’re thinking like a warrior again,” Gracie commented, her grin beginning to match Jay’s. “Okay, big guy. Adapt and overcome… what did you have in mind?”
“First we need to secure our position here.” He turned to Keris. “They’re listening and we can’t all crowd in here every time we want to talk. Is there any way we can interfere with the surveillance devices?”
She paused, her lips pursed. His gaze dropped to them and he had to ignore the shiver of heat that rolled through him. If they were anywhere else, he’d back her up against that damn door and find out if they were as sweet as they looked.
“Not here, no. But if I can access a command console somewhere…”
Nyek moved, drawing attention to himself. “I have an idea. Seren and I could—”
“If your suggestion in any way includes an assault on any part of the base as a distraction, you and I are going to be having words,” Indra cut him off with an amused look.
The Lathar’s lips compressed into a thin line, and then he looked around the small group. “Does anyone else have any ideas?”
“Okay.” Jay decided to take over before Indra stabbed her husband right there in front of them to save the B’Kaar the effort. “We’ll find a way for Keris to access a command console somewhere. Until then, we do not say anything out there. Understand?”
He glared at everyone until they all nodded, and a small sigh of relief rolled through him. At least they could keep Keris safe for a little while longer. He looked at her.
“We need… I need info on the B’Kaar. What the fuck is that glowing shit on their skin?”
“It’s called ke’lath,” she replied, arms folded in front of her chest. “A network of implanted neural circuitry. It lets the B’Kaar interface directly with their suits.”
He nodded. “That’s how they can make them walk about even when they’re not in them?”
“Exactly,” Nyek replied in Keris’s place. “It’s what makes them so feared on the battlefield. They can double their numbers with a thought and then triple them if they mobilize combat avatars as well.”
“Well, fuck me sideways,” Jay breathed.
Nyek’s expression was flat. “That is neither anatomically possible nor appealing.”
The room went silent, everyone looking at the Lathar in shock.
“Did… Mr. Stick-up-his-ass just make a joke?” Jay asked Keris.
Her lips quirked, as did the rest of the groups. “Yes. Yes, I do believe he did.”
Seren reached out and clapped the other warrior on the back. “Well done! Good to know you are actually, you know, Lathar!”
Gracie shook her head, meeting Jay’s eyes. “That’s so weird to hear. Lathar instead of human.”
“Tell me about it.” He chuckled. “Right, ladies, game faces on. Let’s get out there and show these assholes who they’re dealing with.”
“Did he just call us females?” Nyek asked Seren as they all trooped out of the bathroom.
“Yeah, it’s a human thing. Don’t worry about it.”
9
All she had to do was hack into the system and hide their activity from the B’Kaar. Simple.
Keris paused for a second as they walked into one of the big storage hangars on the base and were confronted with row on row of crates stacked to the ceiling a couple of stories above, shrouded in shadow.
The clump-clump-clump of the B’Kaar behind them made her flinch.
“This is never going to work,” Keris murmured, sticking close to Jay as they started to walk down the center aisle. The B’Kaar didn’t follow them. Instead, he took a position by the doors they’d entered through, watching them as they walked away. The skin between her shoulders itched like she had a target painted there.
“Just keep walking,” Jay whispered, squeezing her hand in reassurance. “We’re just doing what we’ve been doing all week.”
She hadn’t been here all that time, not really, so she just nodded. While she’d been uploading to her new body, the rest had been hard at work checking the base’s stores and trying to bring the inactive areas online. Tags on the crates they passed indicated that half this hangar had already been checked, which worked for them. All they needed to do was get close to the command console near the back of the large room without arousing suspicion.
“I know it’s boring, my love,” he continued, his voice louder for the benefit of the B’Kaar warrior behind them. “But I’m utterly useless with anything that remotely looks like a power tool, so we’re stuck with sorting and counting.”
They’d been escorted everywhere since the B’Kaar had arrived, even watched in the corridor between their quarters, although she had no idea what the armored warriors thought they’d do in there. There were no access points to the system and no corridors anywhere else. They couldn’t do anything, but the B’Kaar watched them anyway. Talk about paranoid.
The personal revelation, especially one that hinted at a weakness in that manner, got her attention. He was so careful to be all macho and more... Lathar than the Lathar when he was around the others, so his admission now took her a little by surprise.
“You are?” she asked, both curious about him and wanting to extend the conversation to soothe her nerves.
“You’d better believe it. Growing up back home I wasn’t allowed to help my dad with any DIY. I was useless at it.”
There was something about the way he said it and his expression that was that little bit off. Most biologicals wouldn’t have noticed it, but she wasn’t an ordinary biological. It seemed that this organic brain worked in a similar manner to her AI one, in a roundabout way. When she didn’t think about it too much, some things were just there. Like the ability to analyze his micro-expressions and realize something was wrong. The only thing stopping her from working out exactly what was her lack of knowledge about humanity.
She tilted her head and looked at him curiously.
“You’re lying. I don’t know why but you are. Is DIY so important to—” She cut herself off. The B’Kaar at the door was too far away now to pick up what they were saying, but that didn’t mean one of the others wasn’t monitoring them through the internal sensors in here.