Page 20 of Relyn (Warriors of Etlon #6)

Nora

“ W e’re back on course,” Bright said. She sat back in her chair and refused to make eye contact with Nora.

“I think the most pressing issue is the ‘if versus when’ of encountering pirates,” Nora said.

“I told you it was a possibility,” Bright began.

“Oh, yes, especially when one drives the ship directly into their path and asks to dock,” Nora said.

“You fly a ship. You don’t drive it,” Wendy inserted.

“You are not being helpful,” Nora said, going into teacher mode.

Catching teenagers in a lie was her specialty.

Hopefully her current target would be just as easy.

“Is your name Bright, or is it Gale? Because he seems to think it’s Gale,” she said, pointing at Relyn who seemed content to let her lead.

“I have never met him before,” Bright said.

“You are not answering the question,” Nora said.

“I have not met her before, I will say that. It is Rutra that called her Gale,” Relyn said.

“You are not being helpful either, big guy,” Nora said.

“I had been known to Rutra and Alana as Gale, but my name is Bright. It has always been Bright.”

Nora looked at Relyn. “So why does Rutra think Bright knows where Alana is?”

“From what I can gather, Rutra and Alana had a bad break, and now Rutra is determined to find Alana in any desperate attempt he can,” Relyn said.

“He put a beacon on the ship,” Bright said. “The scans show that it’s on the outside of the ship, so we’ll have to land somewhere if we want to take it off.”

“So he can track us?” Nora asked.

“The beacon is likely a decoy. He is expecting Grom to alert him when we make contact with Alana.”

“And that begs the question,” Nora began, “does Bright, or Gale plan to try and find the elusive Alana?”

Bright was silent. Nora was pretty sure that was an affirmative silence, and not a “considering it” silence.

“Why does that make me feel like we’re not going to have a choice in the matter?”

Bright sighed and her hair changed from pink to green and then to white. “The Suhlik must be dealt with. They’ve encroached on our territory and their spies are trading freely.”

“And Alana will help you with that?” Nora asked.

“No, Alana is the Suhlik spy,” Bright said. The venom in her voice told Nora exactly what she thought of Alana.

“What about Rutra? What connection does he have?” Relyn asked.

“I don’t know. I was just going to make brief contact. Offer to deliver cargo, or pick up a small job on my way.”

“So you boarded that ship on purpose?” Nora clarified.

“You were not in any danger,” Bright said. “At least until he mucked things up.”

“I did nothing but protect her,” Relyn objected.

“By starting a fight. With a thing three times your size,” Bright said.

“He started it with me. And Rutra had banned any females from the ship. Who knows what he would have done with you if I hadn’t forced the issue,” Relyn said.

“None of that tells me why we suddenly trust him,” Wendy said, pointing at Relyn. “Or the see through dude. He was trying to get handsy.”

“He’s just a kid,” Relyn said.

“She’s just a kid,” Nora said.

“Old enough for a lottery, I’d expect,” Relyn said.

Nora punched him in the arm. “Okay, can we all agree on a new plan? One that preferably does not involve any more pirates?”

“There’s a station a few days from here. Big enough to dock the ship, remove the beacon and continue on our way,” Bright said.

Nora looked at Relyn and back at Wendy. Why did she trust him?

He had been on a pirate’s ship for goodness sake.

He’d done nothing but fight and threaten to kill Ketle, but her instincts were telling her that he was good.

Maybe she’d watched too many old vids. As if he were Han Solo, and just a good woman could turn him into a hero instead of a guy who was just out for himself.

Bright interrupted her thought. “I am a good judge of character.”

“Trust, but verify,” Nora said. It was her motto with students.

She trusted the stories at face value and allowed the students to give excuses and plead their case.

Then she went and did her research. Most of the time, the story panned out, and she learned very quickly which students she could trust, and which to double check any of the work they turned in for cheating.

She’d lost her new teacher optimism after watching kids turn in the fifth cheated assignment for the term.

Most of the time they were so bad at cheating, that it was obvious.

Only some of the good cheaters were rare, and impressive.

If they just applied their brains toward doing the assignment instead of cheating, they would have gotten an A.

Relyn did not strike her as a cheater. He wasn’t a good liar, at least she had not caught him in a lie. He always told the truth, but told it slant, as Emily would say. And he was bad at that. She could read into what he was not saying.

“What about the walking amoeba?” Wendy repeated.

“Grom is not a threat. I can deal with him,” Relyn said.

“By dealing with him, you don’t mean kill, do you?” Nora asked.

“No. I do not intend to harm him. Perhaps leave him somewhere, but I believe returning to Rutra without his nephew would be difficult,” Relyn said.

“So you’re still going back to the pirate ship,” Nora said.

“I have not finished my work there,” Relyn said.

Well, they’d have to see about that. Decisions seemingly having been made, Nora went to the dining and kitchen aide to seek out food that did not come in cubes.

Data was there, and after a few strokes and kitty treats, he seemed to have forgiven her. Relyn stood in the doorway, staring at the cat suspiciously.

“It is a pet?”

“He. He is a pet. You can touch him. Just let him smell you first and don’t touch his belly. He likes to be pet on the head and the back. And don’t pick him up or touch his tail.”

“He seems to have a lot of rules,” Relyn said, drawing closer.

“And you have just summed up the nature of his entire species,” Nora said. She giggled when Relyn looked at her confused. He put out his hand, and Data gave it a sniff.

“So,” Nora asked. “Could you transform into Data?”

“If I had a sample, but for a form so small, I would have difficulty maintaining my mass density.”

“So you’d be a two hundred pound cat?” Nora laughed, imagining a Relyn Data stomping his way across the floor. Then she imagined him as a Great Dane, like Scooby Doo, trying to jump into her arms.

Relyn smiled at her. “Your laugh is music.”

The infatuation on his face just made her laugh harder.

Nora had never had a man stare at her like that before, with that silly grin on his face, trying to make her laugh. But she didn’t know anything about him, other than he had no family and no qualms about living and working for a pirate.

“So, what do you do in your spare time?” Nora asked casually.

“Spare? Time is never spare.”

“Okay, let me reword that. What do you do when you are not working.”

“I am always working. Rel is always working.”

“You and Rel are different?”

“Rel is muscle for hire. I am not.”

“So what does Relyn do when he is not working.”

“I like to read.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve read any Terran literature?”

“Until I met you, I did not know that Terra existed.”

“That’s a pretty good excuse.”

“You could give me a reading list. What great Terran stories are available?”

“Well, I was currently in the middle of one with my class, called Pride and Prejudice. It’s about a family of all females and the mother is desperately trying to find them husbands.”

“Why does she not just put them in the Mahdfel database?”

Nora laughed again, especially when the idea sparked her that Mrs. Bennet would have done exactly that.

“Because it was written before Terra had computers, and before we knew there was such a thing as Mahdfel.”

“So this mother goes on a quest to find proper mates for her daughters. Is the father dead?”

“No. Mr. Bennet helps, but he’s more interested in his daughters’ happiness than in getting them all married right away. He trusts them to find their own husbands.”

“That is not the way it is done. He must be a weak male to let his wife and daughters do such work.”

“You’re missing the point. The story isn’t about the father or the mother. It’s about the daughters. The two oldest daughters, mostly. The first one meets a good husband, and the second one meets an even better match, but he rejects her at first,” Nora explained.

“He knows that she is not compatible with him.”

“No, he’s prejudiced by the fact that she doesn’t have near as much money as he does.”

“That is a ridiculous reason to reject a mate. I did not reject you on such a reason. You have no money or connections as far as I can see.”

Nora rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I might be a teacher, but I’m not in the poor house either.” She was beginning to think explaining Pride and Prejudice to an alien was even more difficult than explaining it to Marco and her students.

“Never mind. Maybe I should give you Frankenstein instead. Also a classic,” Nora said.

“I shall download them on my com.”

“Right. Though maybe we should start with vids first.”

At least she hadn’t suggested starting him off with Shakespeare. Who knows what he’d make of Romeo and Juliet .

“What about you?” Nora asked. “What else do you do? What’s your favorite color? Flavor of ice cream, and well, all those other things I know nothing about?”

“I do not know what ice cream is, and I do not favor one color over another.”

Nora decided this had to be rectified immediately. She got to the replicator and ordered vanilla ice cream.

She took a spoonful for herself, and tasted it.

It wasn’t exactly the same as real ice cream, kinda like the way low fat ice cream couldn’t compare with the real thing that was so decadently bad for you.

Nora closed her eyes and savored it anyway.

Relyn was looking at her again like he wished they were back in her cabin, screwing like monkeys.

“Try it,” she said, offering him a spoon.