“You’re an asshole. You know that?” Jay chuckled, shaking his head as he raised his s’tovik again, twirling the staff-like alien weapon around his hands. “Trying to get an emotional reaction… you think I don’t see what you’re doing? It’s not going to work.”
“Really?” Seren rubbed his jaw, spinning his weapon in his free hand. During the last week, Jay had realized just how good the alien was with the bladed staff, and he had the bruises to prove it. “So telling me to go draanth myself isn’t an emotional reaction?”
“Nah.” Jay grinned, circling the big alien and looking for an opening. “That just means I like you.”
The alien was much bigger than Jay, which he always had to take into account, and as fast as hell. They all were, a lesson he’d learned hard the first time he’d encountered them. He and his unit had been veterans, marines… the best of the best. And the D’Corr had ripped through them like they were children.
Shaking himself out of the bad memories, he looked at the alien warrior again. “If I didn’t like you, I’d be more polite.”
Seren shook his head, snorting with laughter. “You humans make no sense whatsoever. So, you’re nice to people you hate and treat people you like as if they were trallshit?”
“That’s about the size of it, yes.”
Jay nodded, creeping closer to launch a flurry of blows forcing Seren to block hard and fast. He hissed as the last strike got through. Sparks flew as he blocked with his replacement arm, and the s’tovik cut a thin line in the hardened metal.
“Fuck!” Instantly Jay pulled back. “Sorry, mate, I didn’t mean to wallop you so hard.”
The alien extended his arm and flexed his fingers. They all worked fine. The damage seemed limited to the plates of his arm. The replacement was so good, and the covering material so skin-like that half the time Jay forgot it wasn’t organic.
“War wounds need tending,” Seren said with a grin, a sly light in his eyes.
Jay’s matched his. “Oh, really now? Planning on asking a certain little lady to help you with that?”
The big alien warrior gave him an innocent look. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Bullshit.” Jay laughed, spinning the s’tovik and heading to the weapons storage rack. “You’ve been sniffing around Gracie ever since you guys pulled us off that planet with the octopus from fucking hell. Why don’t you tell her how you feel?”
For the first time since Jay had met him, Seren’s confident expression slipped and he got a glimpse of the uncertainty beneath. “I… I don’t think I’m her type. And I didn’t manage to protect her,” he admitted. “When the S’Vaan came.”
Jay’s eyebrow winged up sharply. “They shot you. Remember? Your guts were showing, mate. No one will hold that one against you, least of all Gracie. Fuck, they rattled my noggin as well. Scrambled my brains.”
And he had. The asshole alien fanatics that had stormed the base and kidnapped the two human women had hit him so hard he’d finished up with brain damage. Fortunately, it was the kind of damage that Latharian medical tech was easily able to sort out.
Seren grumbled as he put away his practice blade. “I will never get used to the way humans use that word for friendship. I am not your mate.”
“Mate, brother, bro, buddy…” Jay chuckled. “Take your pick, or we can just go with asshole?”
“Draanthic,” Seren threw back as the two of them left the practice hall, emerging into the corridors of the VIP area of the base.
It had been abandoned for years before they’d arrived, led here by an AI they’d been trying to recover. Even now, a week later, they’d still only managed to get a small section of it operational. The rest would have to wait until more ships got here, with engineers capable of assessing the damage and the systems.
Their conversation fell silent as they spotted Nyek, the commander of their little expedition, up ahead with his mate, Indra, in his arms. The two were totally into each other, so much so that neither looked up as Seren and Jay turned left toward the residential quarters.
He cast a glance over his shoulder at the happy couple. The way Indra looked at the alien speared him to the core. Jealousy hit hard and fast. Not because he wanted Indra. She was pretty and all, and he liked her as a friend, but that was as far as it went. He wasn’t interested in her romantically. But he’d give anything to have a woman look at him like that.
The problem was, the one woman he wanted to look at him that way… well, it was complicated.
“How did a stick-up-the-ass prude like that manage to land a female?” Seren grumbled when they were out of earshot.
Jay shrugged. “No accounting for taste. I mean, someone liked you enough to pop your cherry, so…”
Seren slid him a sideways glance. “Can you put that in plain Latharian for those of us who don’t speak weird-ass Terran?”
Jay grinned. “Someone found you attractive enough to fuck, bro.”
Seren punched him in the arm.
“Draanthic. Of course they did. Her name was…” His eyes went unfocused for a moment, and then he shrugged. “I can’t remember. It was at a pleasure house after my first battle.”
“Pleasure house?” Jay’s ears picked up. “Your first time was with a prostitute? Fucking lucky bastard. Mine was with Sophie Jenkins, in the back of her dad’s old car. Neither of us knew what the fuck we were doing. Barely managed to get it in before it was over.”
Seren’s laugh of amusement bounced off the metal walls as they reached the corridor with their quarters. “One day, when we’re free of all this, I’ll take you to a pleasure house. I’m sure one of the girls there will take pity on you, even if you are a runt.”
Jay flicked him the bird with a grin. “Yeah, yeah… why don’t you get your little boo-boo taken care of, asshole?”
He had a feeling that pleasure houses were not going to be a large fixture in Seren’s future, not the way the warrior’s gaze followed Gracie, the other human female in their group, around.
“Perhaps Gracie will take pity on you and kiss it better.”
He laughed and danced away as Seren swung for him again. His speed was the one thing he had going for him against the Lathar. Sure, they were shit hot warriors and fast as fuck. But he was smaller, lighter, and faster. Just. It would have to be enough.
“I might just do that,” Seren threw back, turning on his heels to head up the corridor to the main section where the lady in question would be on duty. Then he paused, swinging round. “By the way, I labeled all the raw ingredients in the galley.”
“Oh, cheers, bud. That will make it easier finding the coffee in the morning!”
He gave Seren a thumbs up, clocking the eagerness in the warrior’s step as he headed off up the corridor. Jay kept his smile to himself, only allowing it to break out as he walked in the opposite direction. But his expression fell flat as he made his way down to the lab on sector four.
Even now, more than a week since they’d found this place, it gave him the creeps. They’d cleaned out the bio-tubes, their contents flushed to space. At least, he hoped they had been. The remains had been… well, he hadn’t sure what they’d been. Some mad scientists’ version of evolution certainly. 3-D printed bodies, all different variants of the Lathar. Even a smaller version that was supposedly human. Or what would eventually have become human.