The Officer's Mess (Warriors Book 3)

by L P Peace

  Kentor hadn’t placed the food in the centre of the table as he usually did; instead, he served up plates filled with food and then added the dishes to the centre of the table. Aerdan wasn’t the only one who looked at him confused or bemused as he sat down, but he simply stared back, an inscrutable look on his face.

  Aerdan looked at Danielle and opened his mouth to ask a question.

  ‘Aerdan, when are we expected to arrive at our destination?’ Sidha’s face looked almost as inscrutable as Kentor’s.

  ‘Err, in a few rotes. I’ll let everybody know when we’re due to arrive.’ With that, he turned to Danielle.

  ‘Any word on the plan?’ Sidha interrupted him before he could speak.

  Aerdan narrowed his eyes at Sidha. ‘Same plan as it always is in these circumstances,’ Aerdan said, his voice tight. ‘We get to the rendezvous site and ambush the slave ship.’

  ‘We’re going to ambush the slave ship? Isn’t that suicide?’

  Aerdan turned his dazzling smile on Danielle, delighted she’d asked a question. ‘Not at all. We’ve done this before. We’re very good at it.’

  Danielle stared into his eyes, and he wondered what it was she was seeing. Hopefully, confidence, arrogance even. Not the anxiety that he felt in his core. No matter how many times they’d taken down one of these ships, he always felt it the night before.

  ‘But… they’re slavers. Wouldn’t it be better to just stay away from them?’

  Aerdan could see the fear in Danielle’s eyes. He leaned towards her, cursing that Kentor was between the two of them. ‘It would be, undoubtedly, Danielle. But they won’t stay away from us. So, we’ll deal with them our way.’

  ‘Our way,’ Haddis said, nodding his approval.

  ‘What is “our way”?’ Danielle asked, looking from Aerdan to Haddis.

  Aerdan put on his best teasing smiled. ‘You’ll see in a few rotes. It’s impressive, even if I do say so myself.’

  ‘You act as though you do it all yourself,’ Bedvir growled.

  ‘No, just that the idea was mine.’ Aerdan flashed another grin at Danielle and winked. Danielle’s face, so pale compared to his, had an olive undertone, but when he winked, her face turned a delightful shade of pink. Aerdan’s eyes tracked it greedily, wanting to know where it disappeared to under her clothes, how widespread it was, wanting to trace it with his tongue.

  Something of his intent must have shown on his face because the pink tone turned a furious shade of red. ‘Are you distressed, Danielle?’ he asked, genuinely worried she might fall down from whatever it was that raged inside her.

  ‘No,’ she squeaked, shaking her head but not looking at him. Beside her, Sidha reached out and patted her hand in a reassuring gesture that got under Aerdan’s skin. Again, it should be him reassuring her.

  ‘Don’t fear, Danielle,’ Aerdan said, fixing his cockiest grin to his face and leaning back in his chair to regard her. ‘Compound Errors will be victorious.’

  Danielle stared at him for a moment with a slightly confused expression on her face. ‘Wait… Compound Errors?’

  ‘The ship,’ Aerdan said, his hand gesturing proudly towards the walls. ‘My ship.’

  ‘You called your ship Compound Errors? That’s the worst name for a ship I’ve ever heard.’ Almost immediately, a look of shame appeared on her face. ‘I’m so sorry, Aerdan. I didn’t mean that.’

  Aerdan shifted in his seat and glanced at the rest of the crew. ‘All is well,’ he reassured her. ‘I take no offence. Perhaps we should share how the ship got her name?’ he said, feeling uncertain for the first time in a long time.

  ‘Okay,’ Danielle said, nodding with faux enthusiasm.

  Aerdan hesitated to speak, worried that Danielle would not find the story funny, which was ridiculous. He’d regaled his people with the story dozens of times, and it always had them in fits of laughter.

  ‘We used to have another ship,’ Bedvir said, taking over, his voice sounding like grinding gears. ‘It was a Luadaal ship we found on a Luadaal colony called Venzes. Piece of durv engine never worked right.’

  ‘Or you never knew how to work it right,’ Haddis snapped. From where he was sitting, Aerdan could see the humour in his eyes.

  ‘I can work any engine. That engine was durv.’

  ‘So we got picked up by slavers,’ Aerdan said, both for the shocked look and gasp from Danielle that greeted his sentence and to cut to the quick.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, leaning closer to the table.

  ‘We were taken to a slaving compound on a space station and locked in a cell,’ Bedvir said. ‘Where this one fell in love.’ He pointed at Haddis.

  ‘I didn’t fall… I bribed the guard,’ Haddis said.

  ‘Into sneaking you out of the cell so you could make love.’ Aerdan grinned.

  ‘I didn’t…’ Haddis shook his head. ‘I bribed the guard into releasing me, and he thought I wanted something else.’ The crimson tint of Haddis’s eyes flared slightly with frustration. ‘I knocked him out,’ Haddis said, ‘and went back to release the others. Only, I’m not an engineer.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Danielle asked, looking from him to Bedvir.

  ‘He triggered the alert system and locked the whole cell block down,’ Bedvir answered, a smirk on his face.

  ‘Which helped,’ Haddis said quickly. ‘Because there weren’t any guards in there at the time, so we had the place to ourselves.’

  ‘To ourselves,’ Aerdan confirmed, ‘and thirty other slaves, most of whom were Raqhan, and they wanted a piece of us as well.’ He turned back to Danielle. ‘We’re back in the cell trying to keep the Raqhan out while Bedvir’s using a tool he found on the guard to pry the floor open.’

  To Aerdan’s delight, Danielle started giggling.

  ‘Kentor and Haddis are arguing about how he managed to pay the guard for sex and not get the sex.’

  ‘Still think he should have paid more,’ Kentor interrupted.

  ‘Vrok off, you uncut korosh,’ Haddis snapped, still sensitive about the whole ordeal. Kentor roared with laughter, making Danielle jump a little.

  Time to get the story back on track.

  ‘The Raqhan are getting through the door, but Bedvir managed to pry through all the deck plating, and we drop into the level below.’

  ‘The brothel,’ Haddis finished.

  ‘NO!’ Danielle rocked in her seat, covering her mouth with her hand.

  ‘Where all the guards are, of course.’ Bedvir shook his head.

  ‘We can’t fight the guards,’ Aerdan said. ‘It’s a Fedhith facility, but the guards are mostly Potuun because Fedhith males are considered too fragile to work in places like that.’

  Danielle went white. Things had taken a turn in her mind. ‘So we send Haddis back to the cell to open it and taunt the Raqhan through the deck to the brothel,’ Aerdan said, distracting her from her thoughts.

  ‘Their natural environment,’ Haddis interjected.

  ‘Indeed,’ Aerdan agreed. ‘Raqhan are among the worst. They believe in sacred slavery. To them, the best use of a slave is sexual. But they’re big. Bigger than Potuun.’

  ‘We lure them down into the brothel and escape while the prisoners and guards are fighting one another.’ Haddis grinned.

  ‘And then you found the ship?’ Danielle was laughing.

  ‘Not quite,’ Aerdan said, giving her a sheepish look. ‘We escaped into a closed vent, dropping us down into the next level.’

  A slave auction,’ Bedvir said, closing his eyes.

  ‘What on Earth?’ Danielle gasped, her hands covering her face.

  ‘No, it wasn’t on Earth,’ Haddis said, frowning. ‘It was on the space station.’

  ‘You are such a charvosh sometimes,’ Kentor said, shaking his head at his older brother.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A very full slave auction,’ Aerdan added, waving his hand to quiet Haddis. ‘At first, no one noticed us, so we snuck along the back wall trying to avoid
detection. Then just as the auctioneer notices us and points us out to the guards, Bedvir finds a coolant vent and vents it.’

  ‘Everyone ran,’ Haddis said, picking up the story. ‘Everyone but the slaves, who’re still chained up at the top of the room.’

  ‘And we’re not leaving them,’ Bedvir said, his voice firm and full of passion. ‘So I locked out the room, and I managed to get their manacles off while these two find the air ducts leading down into the bowels of the station.’

  ‘We managed to escape through the ducts with no food or water and almost thirty slaves. We were completely lost for three rotes, being hunted by the slavers, running for our lives.’ Aerdan shook his head, remembering how hard it was to keep everyone going, everyone motivated. ‘We’re either too hot or too cold and filthy.’

  ‘We found a blocked-off access panel to a section of the station that had been isolated at some earlier point and sealed it back up behind us because the slavers are getting too close.’ Bedvir grinned. ‘We were down there for a few hacri when we found an old bay access and see her.’

  Aerdan sighed. ‘A Temerin Eidsil.’ Aerdan gestured vaguely around the room. ‘One of the best Temerin ships ever designed, forgotten in some rusty, abandoned docking bay.

  ‘Charvosh didn’t know they had her.’ Bedvir chuckled. ‘The best ship ever built by Temerin hands.’

  Aerdan nodded in agreement. He’d eyed one once before leaving Temerin to reach out to the Amarans. They’d heard the Bentari were looking at them and wanted to find allies, only for the Bentari to invade before he even got halfway to Amara. He’d pleaded with the Ilan in charge at the time, the current Ilan’s grandfather, but Ilan Kadil Ascendi would have nothing to do with it. Aerdan tried to return to Temir, but his planet had been all but abandoned, and his own people intercepted him.

  Aerdan shook loose of dark thoughts and reoriented himself in the room. Turning, he grounded himself in the brown pools of Danielle’s eyes.

  * * *

  The purple one… Aerdan, Danielle reminded herself, kept giving her big purple puppy eyes, and it scared her. She swallowed down the strange feelings that rose every time she looked at him. The dread, the sickness, the… she cut the thought dead.

  Temerin were similar to humans but very different too. On first inspection, it seemed like the only differences were their skin colours and the markings of their skin. But on closer inspection, their eyes were bigger than humans; they were saturated in the same colour as the markings on their skin and the colour of their hair. Their noses were wider, as were their cheekbones. Their ears were pointed, and they had claws that were sheathed.

  ‘Do the ship's records show how they got this ship?’

  The lines of Aerdan’s face became tense. ‘They were captured several solars before we found the ship. The slavers seem to have just forgotten it was there. There were a dozen ships with it.’

  Danielle steeled herself for the next question, but she had to know what kind of males these aliens were. What kind of people. ‘If you could find them—’

  ‘We’d rescue them,’ Aerdan said without hesitation. ‘Temerin look after their own.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ Kentor agreed, pulling Sidha closer. There was something so sweet about the action. So possessive and protective. It made Danielle’s heart hurt.

  Another feeling to push down, she thought bitterly.

  They’d been eating as they conversed and as Danielle looked down, she was shocked to find that she’d almost finished, though she’d barely noticed eating it or even the flavour. On review, she believed the food was good and the after taste seemed flavourful, but just like everything else lately, she just couldn’t manage any enthusiasm for it.

  To her left, Kentor and Sidha were snuggling. Next to them, Aerdan was staring at her, and across from him, Bedvir and Haddis were watching her every move.

  This was a mistake.

  ‘Danielle, why don’t you tell me about yourself.’

  ‘Tell us about yourself,’ Haddis said, glaring at Aerdan, who seemed utterly oblivious to the correction.

  Next to Haddis, Bedvir leaned forward, watching her expectantly. Even Sidha and Kentor turned their attention to her.

  Why was it whenever Danielle became nervous, the natural state of her hands and mouth reversed? Her mouth became dry, and her palms wet with sweat!

  ‘Erm… okay. I come from a country on Earth called Australia.’

  ‘What’s a country?’ Haddis asked.

  Danielle felt a slight startle go off in her chest as she looked into his red eyes. They were big, like all the Temerin. Being red, they should have looked evil, shouldn’t they? How did they look calm, even sweet, as he watched her?

  ‘Don’t you have countries on your planet?’ Danielle asked. ‘I know it’s taken by the Bentari, but before that.’

  The Temerin looked back at her, confused. Only Sidha nodded along.

  ‘We have them on Sindaal. Though they don’t mean much of anything since the world was conquered by the Fastille family.’

  ‘Oh! That sounds terrible. Why don’t you tell us about that?’ Danielle clutched at the hope that everyone’s attention would be diverted.

  ‘We’ve already heard Sidha’s story. We want to hear yours,’ Haddis said, waving a dismissive hand at Sidha.

  Kentor reached across the table, caught Haddis’s hand, and crushed it in his. ‘Don’t act like that towards my mate.’

  Haddis looked stunned but quickly recovered. ‘My apologies. You know I love Sidha.’

  Kentor was silent for a moment before releasing Haddis’s hand.

  ‘What is Australia like?’ Aerdan said, as though the entire previous exchange hadn’t happened.

  Danielle let out a deep breath. She wasn’t going to be able to get away with this. ‘Well, if you were to look at Australia from space, you’d see.’ Danielle conjured the image she had of leaving Earth for the last time in her mind. ‘You’d see a continent of terracotta red and green. It has such a range of environments, from the outback, which is arid and can get really hot, to the savannahs of the top end up north. There’s rainforests and pastoral farmlands almost like you’d see in England. Though a lot of that is in Tassie… Tasmania,’ she flushed at the slip. ‘There are famous cities filled with people, and there are roads where you can be driving hundreds of kilometres and never see a single soul.’ Danielle shook her head, noticing her accent was thickening.

  ‘The people are down to Earth. There are a lot of places where people think they’re better than everyone else, but most Aussies aren’t like that. They don’t really take to people who take themselves too seriously.’ People like me, she thought bitterly. Danielle had always struggled with laughing at herself. She knew it was because she’d been the object of mockery so much as a child. Her parents worked hard to provide for their lifestyle but spent very little on Danielle. She often went to school in the second-hand clothes of classmates. Her shoes were always hand-me-downs and often falling apart. Her parents didn’t let her have a proper bath more than once a week or use shampoo more than once a week to minimise their costs, and the other children noticed. As soon as she was old enough to earn her own money, she’d gotten an afterschool job and spent her money on clothes and personal grooming, but by then her situation at home was worse, and no one at school was willing to give her a chance. Even when she moved in with her grandparents at Sidney after her parents died, it hadn’t gotten better. She was so awkward in social situations, and the kids of the rich people in the area she lived were so cliquey she’d struggled just to talk in class, let alone make friends.

  ‘Are you well, Danielle?’

  Blood rushed to her face as Danielle realised she’d gotten so lost in thought, the table and the people she was sharing it with had simply faded away.

  She smiled at Aerdan, who’d asked the question. ‘I’m fine.’

  Mask. Cover up. Move on.

  ‘Just thinking about the wildlife we have in Aus.’ She nodded to reinf
orce the lie, but something in Aerdan’s eyes seemed to see through her. Turning her gaze, she saw Bedvir and Haddis seemed to be completely buying it. ‘Marsupials.’ She grinned. ‘Creatures that carry their young in a pouch on their belly.’

  ‘You’re making that up!’ Haddis gasped.

  ‘I’m not,’ Danielle said, feeling her smile relax into something more natural. ‘Kangaroos. We call them roos. They’re huge, and they punch.’ She laughed at the startled faces. ‘Though that’s nothing to their kick. The males' fight for breeding rights, and they’re buff.’

  ‘Buff?’

  ‘Muscly,’ Danielle managed through a genuine laugh. ‘There’s also Koalas.’

  ‘And what fearsome beasts are these?’ Aerdan asked, leaning on the table, his face masked with concern.

  ‘Cuddly little tree huggers.’ She laughed. ‘Possums are adorable, but some people think they’re a pest. But people work really hard to keep them safe. Most marsupials live in Aussie, so we try to preserve them.’ She thought about the different animals she knew. ‘Gliders. They have skin flaps between their front and back paws. They live in trees and can glide between them.’

  ‘That sounds like the Anadar,’ Kentor said.

  ‘They have flaps? What are they?’

  ‘People. Aliens,’ Kentor said. ‘Yeah, they have flaps, but the flaps tuck completely into their bodies when they’re not using them, and they have to be naked to use them.’

  Danielle felt her face light up again. She wasn’t comfortable with all this talk of nakedness.

  ‘So what about these slavers following us then?’ Danielle said, once again trying for a change in topic.

  ‘There is no need for concern, Danielle. The slavers will not harm you. Not while I’m with you.’ Aerdan reached out towards her, touching her hand and taking it in his before she could pull it away.

  ‘And me,’ Haddis said, jumping up and reaching across Bedvir to take hold of her other hand.

  ‘Or me,’ Bedvir said, taking both hands in his.