Alekai stared at the short stocky man who called himself Warren Paul.
For a moment, he thought about jumping the guy and running for the door. Just as suddenly though, he abandoned that idea.
There was no way to escape this place without placing Jesse in grave danger.
He needed to buy enough time for the Anastasia to depart.
Warren Paul smiled, that rat-infested smile filled with tiny sharp pointed teeth.
"I know what you're thinking in that slimy snake brain of yours. You think I don't know your girlfriend is on that spaceship and you're trying to keep her safe?"
Alekai's face was deadpan. Best to act as if he cared nothing for her. The stronger his reaction, the more dangerous it would be for Jesse.
"What are you going to do to me?"
Warren Paul shrugged. "I dunno. You have a couple of choices and I ain't sure which way you gonna choose."
He took a couple of steps closer to Alekai and chuckled as he looked at Alekai up and down.
"You really are a good-looking stud. I could sell you on the space market for seriously good star currency. You'd make some horny rich man real happy with your pretty boy face and that glossy virgin chrysanthemum."
He leaned in with his rat face. "I could also offer you a job that you might prefer, as opposed to being a stud beast for some rich old fart."
Alekai narrowed his gaze. One step closer and the rat's pointy nose would be impaled into the drywall behind him.
"Speak."
Alekai commanded in that no-nonsense dry voice of his that sounded as if he was a king, giving orders to an underling.
Warren Paul threw back his head and laughed.
"You got guts, kid. I like you. So you know what I'm gonna do?" He grinned, baring all his sharp white teeth.
"I'm gonna do you a favor and give you one choice instead of two." He held up a single index finger.
What kind of fucking favor was that? A tiny hiss emanated from Alekai's throat as he forcibly expelled air from his glottis.
"Oooooh. You're even starting to sound like a snake. Hiss some more for me, you big handsome snake hunk, you." Warren Paul laughed.
But then his countenance changed.
"The final destination on your ticket is Taranhara. Between here and there are two long years."
Alekai stared at him with a bored expression.
Of course, he was anything but bored.
Warren shot a probing glance at Alekai. "We want to cross that space in peace but it's getting more and more chaotic these days, what with the myriapods and the arachnids getting rowdier every day."
"We know that YOU," he pointed a finger at Alekai's face, "are a Striker, and we know that pretty little girlfriend of yours is a Cloaker-Shield."
Alekai held his breath and kept his face looking bored and uncaring. He didn't want to breathe because if he did, his rapidly-developing snake glottis would turn into a deadly hiss.
"Here's your only choice pretty boy snake." Warren Paul snapped his jaws together in a resounding snap.
"Come with us as part of our Deep Space Security Detail or I take that girlfriend of yours off the ship and sell her to the nearest outbound ship to Madala Karo."
He leaned in closer. "You know how much an ivory-skinned blue-eyed blonde like her would fetch on the black space market?"
"I don't give a shit about her." Alekai drawled. "What's in it for me?"
Warren Paul narrowed his eyes. "You lie quite convincingly, boy, but do you know who I am?"
He slowly morphed from a short stocky man into a short stocky Gambian pouched rat. "I am a rat with a nose that can sniff out lies and my nose is telling me you're lying."
He bared his pointed teeth. "I can smell your fear, boy. I can smell the lies from all the excretions coming out of all your pores."
He sniffed the air around Alekai. "Every time I mention your girlfriend, you excrete pheromones of lust and fear. You may look like you're bored as fuck, but you can't hide shit from me."
His face reverted to its human countenance. "Take the offer, boy. I am giving you the chance to keep her safe on her journey to Taranhara."
Alekai gritted his teeth. "What do I have to do?"
Warren Paul slowly nodded. "Good. You're easy to reason with 'cause you got a logical brain. I like that. Didn't need to break a finger or gnaw off a toe."
Alekai's face was frozen deadpan. Warren Paul may be a Gambian pouched rat, but Alekai was a snake. Didn't Warren know snakes eat rats as a snack?
Warren Paul didn't seem to be able to read minds. He continued rambling his demands at Alekai.
"First thing I want from you is that Gear of yours."
Alekai shot him a fierce look.
"Ah-ah. Don't get me wrong. I don't want it for myself. Lord knows I can't fly that thing if you begged me on bended knees. In any case, once you personalize it to your own bio-signature, nobody else can fly it either unless you give the Gear permission to add a new Striker to the bio-profile."
"What I want is to take that Gear onto the Anastasia. That way, you and the girlfriend can fly reconnaissance around the starship when we're in semi-dangerous territory."
"Do that and you've earned your passage to Taranhara."
A tick worked in Alakai's cheek. "We shouldn't have to earn passage. We paid a lot of star currency for those tickets."
"No, no." Warren Paul wagged a finger at Alekai. "Cletus and Muriel Omswick paid a lot of money for those tickets. The two of you, whatever your names are, don't have a single ticket to get onboard."
"At this moment, the only reason why your girlfriend is still on that ship is because you haven't outright rejected the offer."
"If you do, her ass is booted off the ship and you get hauled off to deep space penitentiary for identity theft and possession of a rare and endangered species of monkey."
The monkey.
Alekai had forgotten about the monkey.
Warren Paul laughed as he saw the telltale glints from Alekai's eyes.
"You think you can hide a monkey inside your jacket without me knowing?" Warren Paul cackled. "That was a plant, you idiot. We had to have some legit crime to charge you with."