[B]He was starting to think Pup’s friends had bitten off more than they knew.

  He didn’t know how much they owed the station or what their contract with the cargo was, but there weren’t that many crates. Only a couple really, not nearly as many as the pallets he had off loaded. Sure, manufactured goods had a significantly higher mark up at sale than raw materials, but they were talking ship stuff. That had to be a lot of money.

  The crates they brought on-board even proved that. He had taken to rummaging through them when people were asleep and he didn’t have anything better to do. Getting to know what existed and what was deemed important was a good exercise. Not to mention those crates had a lot of fun looking toys in them. If it had been Earth, those crates alone would probably be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dolrs. The tools alone looked like they were high quality.

  But that was the thing.

  There were three crates on the deck level. Even at his most optimistic guess, he doubted they would break a million. He might be severely misunderstanding the scale difference between the cargo and supply crates, but there were only ten crates in the hold. A tiny fraction of what it could take. Unless each crate had more than ten million bucks in goods, you were talking chump change for ships near this size. And that was for water ships. He didn’t even want to try figuring out the cost difference for a spaceship.

  If the numbers Pup had given him for the materials he off loaded were anything to go by, he doubted that those few crates would be enough to help them with a ship problem. Especially one so bad they couldn’t take that cargo themselves.

  It just didn’t take up that much room.

  ‘Maybe I can pretend that Pup earned a good sary and help out.’

  Or maybe he was overthinking it. If every one of those crates was stuffed full of gold, they might very well be worth it. Or, well, whatever space people wanted that was equivalent to gold. It just wasn’t that valuable outside of electronics if they could grab it in any random asteroid belt.

  ‘Then again, there are a lot of electronics in a ship like this.’

  Best not to think too hard. If Pup could work up the courage to hold his hand, she could work up the courage to ask for help.

  He wasn’t really sure if holding his hand on her head was a cultural thing or a Pup thing, but it seemed to take her a lot of time to work up to it.

  ‘Might be why she didn’t like it the first time. She didn’t know me well enough for that.’

  Several worrisome thoughts pushed through his head.

  ‘Crap. I hope that’s not some alien mating ritual or something. I didn’t even consider that. Do aliens look down on interspecies marriage? Is that why she wasn’t cool with it at first?

  ‘Is there interspecies marriage? Is… is there marriage at all?’

  So many concepts he hadn’t even bothered to consider before. It had all be survival before. Kitty didn’t have answers and she clearly didn’t care to philosophize with him, more interested in chattering away about whatever invaded her mind. He assumed.

  She didn’t make much sense most of the time.

  Now that there were clearly civilized beings on the ship, questions regarding civilization were starting to be more important. When a single gesture could find him starting a blood feud or getting mated for life, he needed to be careful. There clearly had to be omissions for cultural taboo, far too many species were around to not have that.

  ‘Wait. Is that even true? I have only seen four, right? Well, four if Kitty is actually human.’

  He had just assumed four meant there had to be more. Even as few as a dozen or so races would be beyond the abilities of a normal person to memorize all those cultures. But if there were only four? That changed the equation quite a lot.

  ‘I’m just going to have to make it clear that this ship works on human rules if it comes up. No harm with the others doing what they do if it doesn’t interfere with me or the ship.’

  His foot bumped something on the ground and brought him out of his head.

  ‘Huh, that looks like one of those little ray-gun toys from the 70s.’

  It was easily child sized as well. Far too small for him to get a comfortable grip when he picked it up. Though the interruption to his inner thoughts did alert him to the chirps coming from nearby. He padded forward quietly to see what was going on, sighting the toy and checking the design as he went.

  He could see the column of light at the intersection in front of him. It seemed like one of Pup’s friends was there hiding behind the wall.

  He had to give credit for that genius bit of code to whoever made the visual programing he had found in the command center. When he went looking for the lights to turn them back to automatic but with ‘conditions’, he had found the customizing options to be… plentiful. Far too much for him to parse quickly. Fortunately for his new guests, whoever made the software made it so he could create a custom program for the lights.

  Probably other things as well, but he hadn’t looked into that yet.

  It had been surprisingly easy to tell the lights to set to a percentage. He even managed to attach the profile the ship had of himself and Kitty to the program. Now the lights worked as they had when he first woke up for everyone but the two of them. Here on the deck level at least, the secret level was still at the constant level he had set. Though he had programed in a day/night timer for all the lights, so that they had different levels based on time.

  Not that a twelve-hour clock was a suitable cycle, but it was better than searing his eyes if he needed to pee.

  As he approached the intersection to see what Pup’s friend was pointing his toy at, the chirping seemed to increase.

  ‘There is clearly a lot of trash talk happening.’

  It looked like ser tag. There were three other people down that hallway. He didn’t remember there being a hallway that small on the ship and he certainly didn’t remember there being what looked like barricades set up. If he tried to go down that hallway, he would definitely get stuck. It was worse than the docking tunnel.

  He couldn’t even tell what race these newcomers were. They were covered head to toe in strange clothes, clearly some kind of gear. Though it looked like cheap cospy gear. Big old timey gsses that looked like a pair of jewelers lenses. The suits were a shiny bck, basically tex. They also had the required try hard vest that airsoft and ser tag pyers thought made them more ‘soldiery’.

  Essentially, a group with more money than sense trying to be something they weren’t.

  He didn’t see the ser sensors for the toy guns, so he assumed that was what the over-the-top lenses were for. Probably an assault scenario, hence why Pup’s friend didn’t have the ‘fancy’ stuff.

  Asymmetric war games because someone was poor. Not the best, but dealing with what you had was admirable.

  Had this been elsewhere, he would have just let them have their fun. Had they asked, he would have given them a pce to py. Had they been invited, rather than begged to be here, he might have been more favorable.

  This wasn’t any of that though. This was his ship and they were moving around shit that looked heavy.

  He didn’t even know where those barriers came from, what if they were important?

  He didn’t even really step into the light, aiming from the slight corner he had on them. They were so focused on each other they didn’t even bother to look at him. It was unfortunate that the ck of recoil and the grip that was several sizes too small for him made it hard to be exact, but he still managed to hit all three near enough to the sensor. That was clear in the way they flopped over.

  He didn’t bother with Pup’s friend, he didn’t have a sensor so it obviously wouldn’t do anything. Still, the look like he had been caught cheating confirmed he knew what he had done. Pup’s friend might not be able to understand a word he said, but a stern look and a shake of his head should be clear enough.

  This wasn’t a pyground.

  Pup’s friend seemed to get the message. He dropped the toy and moved to get his companions. No idea what they were going to talk about or do, but it was good he understood. It always took so many charades to get the girls to figure out what he wanted.

  He left the group to themselves. Everyone deserved a little leniency in a new environment. He would only really interfere if he caught them being rowdy again, now that he had warned them off. They could clean up their mess in peace and console each other over the loss of things to do.

  He… might have to come up with some games to keep the others occupied. It might head off more problems like this.

  ‘I might even be able to point to this for leniency for my own cultural faux pas.’

  [D]His breath came in big huffs, his lungs desperate for more air.

  He never expected to be confronted with his past in a pce like this. His enemies really should have known better.

  When he had caught the slight vibration he recognized as a hostile docking, he had been out still searching for the bridge. From the map Christy had gotten, it was most likely located in the area he had been avoiding. That area reeked of apex pheromones and scent markers. Not somepce he wanted to go.

  He had just hoped the map was wrong.

  After he heard the vibrations, it hadn’t taken him long to find the air lock they were trying to breach. Once he confirmed it, he had turned around and intended to fetch the War-beast and something to protect himself from ser fire.

  He didn’t make it very far before he heard the beep and swoosh of an opening docking door.

  ‘They must be elites. Hacking tech like that isn’t something pirates use.’

  Not that he had seen at least.

  He was sure once everyone was captured and the ship ransacked for the data, it would be made to look like pirates though.

  ‘Hmph, they need more than nice tools for this ship though.’

  Not that he could take advantage of that now. He hadn’t gotten far enough. Another Canirean came at him fast. Faster than he was.

  ‘Not as skilled though. He’s just a straightforward thug, no tactics.’

  He would win eventually. He gnced at the commandos coming into the ship from the dock.

  ‘Will eventually be fast enough though.’

  He couldn’t focus on that. He did his best to keep his opponent between him and the snipers but otherwise ignored them. He heard more than saw a few shots pass them. Hitting metal and hissing a little. The flurry of cws and speed was too much to hit anything important.

  Which turned into a problem for them when he got a debilitating blow on his opponent. As soon as they saw him take the hit, the commandos raised their weapons to aim. He wasn’t sure why though.

  He had a shield.

  Grappling the mass of his opponent and half running half throwing it towards the commandos nearly got him in range. He even managed to knock one over with their companion’s weight. This team was well trained though. Pulling everyone back to the docking tunnel and setting up behind built in barricades.

  ‘Clearly very well paid.’

  They had top of line equipment and dedicated teams. These people meant business. He managed to dive behind the corner of the wall before they could open fire, but they pretty much had him pinned down.

  His little stunt had found him a ser rifle though. The one he knocked over must have dropped it, his opponent’s was farther down the hall.

  “You should just give up. You upset the wrong people. We can’t be hired by just anyone.”

  He nearly ughed out loud at that. They really had no idea.

  “I can say the same you know. This isn’t the pce for you.”

  “Big talk for someone about to get a ser to the face. Come quietly, we get a bonus for taking everyone alive.

  “You should feel lucky about that. We are generally a no witnesses kind of crew.”

  He didn’t even bother to respond. He was fast enough, he could get a few shots off before they could pull the trigger. Once he did that a few times they would mark his location though. He would need to make every shot count.

  He breathed in more, faster. Doing his best to raise his speed without moving. Once he was ready, he wiped around the corner as fast as he could.

  ‘So that’s what an alpha feels like.’

  He had seen the nightmare looming in the shadows out of the corner of his eye as he wiped around, the world slowed in his vision.

  The nightmare hadn’t been though.

  It moved with a fluid speed he didn’t even want to compare to. The momentum of his move let him watch as all three of the commandos took kill shots. There hadn’t even been time to aim.

  There was no question. The nightmare was so far above him, he couldn’t even comprehend it.

  ‘No wonder the War-beast is so calm. I bet it feels the same way I do right now.’

  He heard the movement and regretted it the instant he turned to look. The nightmare was looking at him. Its eyes seemed to pierce his very soul and read him like a book.

  It was clear he had been found wanting.

  A casual toss of the weapon, a shake of the head. Eyes that found him inadequate. He had done his best to avoid the nightmare and this was why. He felt like a child admonished by an elder.

  By an Alpha.

  He quickly looked down and moved to clean up the battlefield.

  Anything to escape that judgment.