“Damn straight it is,” Eric said, trying to sit up. Pain flared through his stomach with an unpleasant pulling and pinching that warned him further movement was a bad idea.
“He’s a grumpy fuck when he’s ill,” a voice said from the doorway. “Just clip him across the ear if he gives you any shit.”
“Thank you, Eris. I love you too,” he snapped, collapsing back on the pillows weakly. Lifting the sheet, he looked down at himself. Naked to the waist, his torso was covered in dressings and his left arm looked like something out of an old mummy holo-movie.
“What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” Eris asked, coming into the room fully.
Talent nodded to her, wiping his hands on a cloth before throwing it at the disposal chute as he left. The medbay on the Sprite was tiny, so whenever anyone visited someone in here, the medic left to give them space.
“You didn’t need to be a shit to Tal either,” she hissed, punching him lightly in the arm without the bandages.
“Hey! Patient here!” he complained, trying to shield his right arm with the other, but it wouldn’t move correctly. The same pinching and pulling warned him that if he did, he would regret it.
“Patient smachient,” she threw back, sitting on the edge of his bed. Given the auto-unit was constructed for the bigger builds of the Lathar, there was plenty of room even with the two of them on it. “You’re an ass and you know it.”
“I’ll have you know doctors make the worst patients. It’s a well-known fact.”
“Pfft. That’s medical doctors. You’re not a medical doctor.”
“Same difference.” He glared at her. For saying they had the same coloring and lean build, they were completely different in every other way. “Did you come here just to piss me off or did you have something constructive to say?”
“Can’t I just come to see how my big brother is doing?”
He watched her suspiciously, but the look in her eyes was level and calm. Too calm. Professional calm.
“How bad was it?” he asked suddenly, holding her gaze with his.
He’d learned that over the years. People were weird creatures. He knew he missed the social cues, and he could be too blunt for them. So he’d learned to use that—to be blunt and stare until he got the answers he wanted. It worked from interns right the way up to project directors. Unfortunately, it had worked until it hadn’t, and mercenaries had come to kill him. No amount of staring could match a bullet.
But Eris was a different matter. He could bully her. She was his sister. She loved him. He knew that, even if he was confused at the way she showed it.
“Bad,” she admitted with a sigh, scooping her hair away from her face with a shaking hand.
Suddenly the conversation when he’d been half asleep made sense. He hadn’t been at Ashfield Clinic after all. That had been years ago, and his memories were muddled. He’d been here, in the medbay, all the time.
“You got hurt in the attack on the pits. You were helping one of the fighters and got hit by a bunch of Krynassis. They clawed you up pretty bad.”
He nodded, snatches of memory coming back. Dark corridors, stone ceilings above him as he was carried out. His own hand sheathed in blood. A woman’s worried face.
“Is she alright? The woman?” he demanded, reaching out to grab Eris’s wrist. His own injuries forgotten, he needed to know if the woman he’d heard screaming was okay.
“Zadaenae?” Eris frowned. “Yeah, she’s fine. She was the one who got you out.”
“Thank god.” He flopped back down onto the bed and closed his eyes as more of his memories flooded back. “I remember her screaming. Rushing through the corridors to find her. Then… nothing.”
“You pulled a full-on white knight, you daft twat.” Eris snorted. “Fuck all combat experience and you piled in there like you’ve been in spec ops for twenty years.”
“Yeah?” He perked up a little at that. “I… it worked then?”
Eris looked at him straight. “If by ‘it worked’ you mean you stopped the scaled assholes from killing the woman by letting them fill you full of holes, then yeah, it worked.” She sighed and then added, “Dipshit.”
“Uggh.” He closed his eyes, shame washing over him. He’d bet none of the others would have gotten their asses handed to them on a plate like that. They’d have taken on the lizard-men single-handedly and then swept the woman off her feet.
His eyes snapped open. “She was here. Wasn’t she? In here? She said she’d be here when I woke up.”
Eris nodded. “She’s been here on and off since you were brought in.” She looked up and to the door. “I think she went back to help at the pits. I can fetch her, though, if you’d like?”
“No!” He grabbed her wrist, stopping her movement toward the door. Well, ego told him he’d stopped her but in reality he knew that right now, he’d lose a wrestling match with a kitten. His weakness went bone deep and further. The pain feeding back from the wounds all over his body told him he should be dead.
“Please… don’t.” His gaze clashed with that of his twin. “I… don’t want her to see me like this.”
* * *
“Hey, sexy. How’s it going?”
Zad paused halfway up the boarding ramp on the Warborne’s little ship and looked up. One of the mercenaries leaned against a support strut, arms folded against his chest as he watched her. The top half of his ship suit was down and tied around his slender hips, revealing a leanly muscled torso and dark tattoos wrapped around his upper arms in thick lines. Like the male who had almost gotten himself killed in the attack on the pits, this was a smaller Lathar-like male. Now she knew they were human, like Nat.
She wasn’t impressed and let him know with a hard look back. “Really? Do you plan to flex next and show off?”
The ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “Would it help?”
“What do you think?”
He shrugged. “Well, you never know. Thought I’d try my luck.”
She arched her eyebrow. “You are aware what I am. Right?”
He grinned broadly and pushed off from the strut, walking down toward her. “Oh yes. You’re fucking gorgeous and dangerous as fuck. Just what gets my motor going.”
She rattled a warning in the back of her throat. “Touch me and I’ll rip your vaarking arm off and feed it to you.”
Unlike Eric, the male who’d almost gotten himself killed and who’d called her armor from under her skin, she had no such reaction to this one. The only thing she felt was vague irritation and an overwhelming desire to rip his head off.
“Sparky!” a female voice called out from within the belly of the ship. “Fuck off and irritate someone else. Okay? The lady’s not interested.”
“Maligned and put upon, that’s what I am!” The male grinned, apparently not bothered in the slightest as he sauntered down the ramp. “I’ll take my sexy ass where it’s appreciated!”
“You do that, Sparky,” the female called out after him. “And remember what T’Raal said. No more sexual harassment suits. Okay?”