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Kaav’s arms pulled me back, and he wrapped them around my body. He was holding me tight against his chest and abs, which was good, because I would have punched Hypatia in the face if he hadn’t held me back.
“Let’s hear her out first,” he whispered. “Or do you want me to patiently explain to her why the scion of the First pack in the Breeding Swarm isn’t going to give up his fucking lifemate for a lowly spy?”
Chef smiled. “That’s not the plan. You didn’t let me finish, Weapons.”
I wanted to screech at her, but I swallowed my pride and my anger. The first time I fired a plasma pistol at the tender age of 12, I’d been terrified at how powerful it had felt. I could point my arm at anything, and with a small little twitch of the finger I could just melt it down to a molten broth. High Command had placed me as having an affinity with weapons though, and even though that first experience had scared me, I had to keep going to summer weapons camps..
I’d been angry, and getting angry made me even more afraid of holding something so dangerous. I’d had one very good drill instructor—Drillwoman Hera—and she’d taught me to control the anger. She’d used a lot of High Command-type language to teach me how to fire a gun like only a woman could. She’d said that when men used weapons, they’d always done it from anger, and that’s why on Eden we had to use them with a clear mind.
Now, even without a gun in my hand, I could almost always control my anger by just imagining I had a weapon. It was harder to do that now with all of the weird sex chemicals pumping through me. Still, I imagined I was holding an Eve Splayer, or maybe even an anti-matter grenade. That calmed me down.
“Okay,” I said, voice finally level, while also avoiding any icy or sarcastic notes. “Please finish then, Chef.”
Kaav must have sensed the shift in me, because he loosened his grip on me. It went from a “I’m protecting you from yourself” grip to simply “I’m protecting you, and I also really like to hold you up against me.” I was half-tempted to reach down and stroke his forearms, but I worried I’d be sucking on his dingdong again before we figured out how to stop Thuliak from killing him.
“High Command likes the way Weapons is working back on theRib,” Chief said.
I raised an eyebrow. “All I’ve done on here is—”
She raised her hand, and I didn’t finish the sentence. “They like the way it’s giving us leverage over the Khetar.”
“Oh,” I said.
“And they want more of that. They’re going to ask for both Eves, but we understand we’re never going to get Airlock back now. We’re not stupid.”
“So it’s even worse,” I whispered. “You want Kaav to sacrifice himself for just one other woman? Emissary is fine over there, by the way. It’s not like she really needs to be rescued.”
“We want Emissary back,” Chef said. “She’s free to decide to stay there, but wewilloffer her the real choice of coming back aboard theRib. High Command is no longer exiling any woman for what is nearly certain to happen to all women on the surface in due time. We want to make it a priority for Thuliak to at least offer her back to us. We are doing what Kaav recommended. We are making demands. This is just the start. Symbols have real power, and we want the symbolic offer from Thuliak, even if Emissary will never take it.”
“I won’t sacrifice myself,” Kaav said. He let go of me, put a hand gently on my shoulder, and then stepped past me. “I would only sacrifice myself for one woman. And it’s not you, Chief.”
“What High Command likes even more than Weapons on this ship is you on this ship.” She pointed at Kaav.
He pointed to himself and cocked his head. “Me?”
“You.”
“Let me out of the airlock then.”
“We will.”
“Let me specify which side—”
“First that side,” Chef said, pointing to the side sealed against vacuum of space, “then this side.”
Now it was me cocking my head. “What do they want him to do?”
“Kaav,” she said, “we are trying to get large blocks of women to cooperate with transitional plans by promising them early access to Khetar dingdongs, or whatever the hell you two are calling thatthingnow.”
Kaav laughed. “You’re asking me to…”
“I need you to get us more Khetar. You’ll need to get two for each woman we’re trying to buy off, for obvious reasons—”
“Stop!” I shouted. “Wait. Stop. Someone explain this part to me. Why would it take two? I feel like—”
“It takes two Khetar men to get one human woman pregnant,” Chef said. “It’s pretty straightforward—if bizarre. I do wonder why Kaav took so long to tell you that? Maybe he thought you wouldn’t like it?”
I met his eyes, and there was a small warning in his gaze. The second body. Maybe that complicated things? Or was he afraid to tell me that everything he’d led me to believe that we’d have together wasn’t real? Sure, he’d told me his other body would be joining us, but that body was stillhim. We were still two together. Just like I wanted it to stay. But in addition to his second body, was he really going to make me acceptanotherKhetar joining us? That must have been what he’d meant by the word triumvirate.
