Berr shook his head. “This I know. Do you have any female family… a sister or daughter maybe?”
“Fuck you! Do you think I’d let any of you assholes near a kid of mine?”
Keris bit her lip. She hadn’t even thought about offspring. Could she even have them in this body? Would Jay even want offspring with her? For that matter, did he already have them?
Berr growled, half out of his seat before Risyn put a hand on his shoulder.
“If we conquer you, you won’t have any choice about that! A warrior will claim your female offspring.”
Jay didn’t back down an inch, glaring at the dark-haired cyberwarrior.
“Yeah? No problem with that. Like, he’s okay and him.” He gestured to Seren and Nyek. “It’s just you wankers I don’t like.”
Both Nyek and Seren looked stunned.
“You’d let us mate your daughter?” Seren asked in shock.
Jay waved in dismissal. “Not together and Mr. Stick-up-his-ass is already married. But yes, I would. If she wanted either of your sorry asses. But I don’t have a daughter, so it’s a moot point.”
“So no female family?” Berr asked, trying and failing to hide the thread of disappointment in his deep voice.
“Sorry, not that I know of.” Jay shrugged. “I’m adopted, so I could have, but I don’t know them from Adam.”
“Who is Adam?” Risyn asked. “And what bearing does he have on the fact you are unaware of your family?”
“Shhh, it’s just a human saying,” Gracie flapped her hand at the B’Kaar leader to shut him up. He did, looking both surprised and offended. “It means another family takes in a child. It’s common on Earth. Less so now, but it still happens.”
“Ahh.” Risyn frowned. “Human customs are strange. We can attempt to track down your biological family through the ark if you wish.”
Jay pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Don’t bother. They didn’t want me when I was born, so I don’t want them now.”
15
His translation matrix was getting much better.
Jay hefted a large bag of “big bugs” over his shoulder as he walked through the corridors, heading back to the galley. He still couldn’t read what the label said on the side of the bag, just a few letters, but it was more than he’d been able to make out even a few days ago, so that was something.
Overall, the results were hopeful that one day he might properly read Latharian, even if it was a little frustrating at the moment. Mostly because he didn’t have anyone to ask about the experimental tech. Miisan was offline and it wasn’t like he could rock up to Risyn’s office door with, “So I have some super-secret alien tech in my head installed by that AI you’re looking for. Wanna tell me how it works?”
Yeah… not happening. Not in a month of Sundays. He didn’t trust any of the B’Kaar as far as he could throw them. His instincts told him to play his cards close to his chest where the alien cyberwarriors were concerned.
“Couldn’t this place have fucking shorter corridors,” he grumbled to himself as he walked, knowing that at least one of the B’Kaar was watching him through the internal sensors. The cameras had activated in each corridor and lift he’d used on the way down and back.
He hadn’t indicated he’d seen them, not by so much as a flicker of his eyelids. They believed he was a dumb human and he was content to let them keep thinking that way. It was a tactic he’d used throughout his life and it had never let him down yet.
Quite what it said about him, that people were so quick to believe he was a little slow on the uptake he didn’t want to ponder too much. It worked, and when he was ready to reveal what he was truly capable of, gave him the element of surprise.
He hid his smile at the thought of surprising those assholes Berr and Risyn, amusing himself with thoughts of the looks on their faces when they realized their mistake as he stepped out of the lift on the VIP level and headed toward the galley.
On the way he passed the door that led down to sector four but he completely ignored it. Unlike before, it was shut, all its lights powered down. It looked like it hadn’t been opened for years and he had no doubt that if he tried, it would remain locked. Miisan had buried herself so far down into the system they couldn’t reach her, so it was understandable that she would hide that aspect of the base as well.
Tension rolled through him as he reached the next corner, a sixth sense settling in his gut and warning him something was off as he turned it. His grip on the bag on his shoulder loosened as he found Risyn pinned up against a wall by Gracie with a knife jammed up close and personal against his throat.
“No means no, asshole. Understand?” she snarled into his face.
Jay let go of the bag of bugs, letting it drop unheeded to the floor by his feet. Emotion drained from him in a heartbeat as he altered his center of balance ready for a fight. He was unarmed but he didn’t care, his expression cold and hard as he looked at Gracie.
“Problem, doll?”
She didn’t take her eyes off Risyn, and at any other time the sight of the big alien threatened by the slender human woman would have been amusing. It wasn’t. The rock steady way she held the blade right up where it would do the most damage was telling. She wasn’t going for his jugular. Instead, the dagger was angled to punch through the flesh of his throat and sever the spinal cord below the skull. As a move, it wasn’t a killing blow; it was a scorched earth policy.
And that was secondary to the hard look in her eyes. If Jay didn’t miss his guess, she’d seen combat of the down and dirty type many times before.
“No,” she replied calmly. “Mr. B’Kaar here and I were discussing a difference of opinion. He has since rethought and recanted his. With an apology. Isn’t that right?”
Jay transferred his attention to the tall alien. He’d fixed his gaze on Gracie with a cross between horror and outright lust.
“Is that correct?” The thought that Risyn’s cybersuit could come barreling around the corner any second and kill them both didn’t bother him. If that happened, they’d deal with it as and when. The fact that Risyn’s freaky internal wiring wasn’t even lit up told him it wouldn’t.
Good. That gave the two humans in the room a chance if it came to a down and dirty fight.
Risyn swallowed and then winced as the edge of Gracie’s blade nicked his skin.
“Let up a moment, doll,” Jay warned her. “Or you’ll cut his damn throat there.”
She grunted and lifted the weapon a little. Not a lot. If the alien so much as breathed the wrong way, she could punch the vicious dagger through his spine in the blink of an eye.
“Thank you,” Risyn said, his voice husky. All that moved was his mouth and jaw, his hands still held spread out to his sides. “Humans are… not as harmless as rumor had led me to believe.”
“No shit, we’re not. What gave it away?” Jay snorted. “Don’t answer that,” he added, knowing how damn literal the Lathar were. “It was a rhetorical question. Gracie, doll, you planning on slicing and dicing the guy or are you letting him go?”