Ariston stopped in front of the open hatch. Three yellow-suited individuals stood inside the airlock. One stood in the hatchway with a palm out toward him while another pointed a small weapon at the ground in front of him.

He stepped aside so Mick could talk to her people. He wasn’t sure why he assumed she was in charge, rather than being some security officer who had been sent out to scout, but he felt confident that she was.

“Captain?” the one with the gun asked as Mick stepped up beside Ariston. “Is he coming in, or…?”

“Where’s Dr. Garcia?” a second man asked, pointing at his shoulder with the hand that wasn’t blocking Ariston. Whatever that yellow suit was for, it wasn’t blocking weapons fire. An en-bolt had sizzled through the material, probably cutting through his flesh too.

“Dead,” Mick said grimly.

“Dead?” All three suited people said at once.

“The thugs that jumped out of that first shuttle shot him before I could do anything to stop them.” Mick sounded disgusted with herself.

It wasn’t logical—she couldn’t have been expected to win against so many—but Ariston understood the feeling. His wife had been like that. Commanders—good commanders—felt responsible for their people and didn’t forgive themselves when subordinates were lost under their command.

“Thugs?” One man looked at Ariston.

He clenched his teeth but didn’t say anything in his own defense, reminding himself that it would be better if these people didn’t know who he was. He would stick to the story he had given Mick.

“Let’s go inside,” Mick said, glancing toward the ruins. “We’ll discuss everything in there.”

“All right. You’ll have to wait while we shower.” The injured man backed fully into the airlock. “We’ll go first, and then you come in.”

“Shower?” Ariston looked at Mick.

“There’s a decontamination shower that we installed in the airlock chamber, but there’s only room for two at a time. Maybe three if you’re especially nerdy and scrawny.” She eyed the injured man.

“Better than being thuggish and illiterate,” he muttered, eyeing her right back. Then he stepped inside, joining the other two people, and yanking the hatch shut with a clang.

“I don’t understand,” Ariston said. “The atmosphere here is sufficient to keep out harmful radiation, and there aren’t any toxic substances in the air.”

“It’s to get rid of any alien microbes that could be harmful.” She shrugged. “That’s what they told me when they insisted on installing a decon shower on my ship for this trip. I admit I’ve never heard of such a thing on Dethocoles or other planets in the Confederation. Do you people use them? I admit, I haven’t gone exploring on remote planets before.”

You people? If she wasn’t from the Confederation, where was she from?

Ariston had heard of the discovery of Gaia a couple of years ago, but he’d also heard that the inhabitants didn’t have ships that could get them out of their system yet, and this was clearly a Dethocolean craft.

“Our medical scanners keep records of the bacteria that should be in your body and remove any foreign ones that appear after missions to suspect planets,” Ariston said. “There’s nothing inimical on the planets that the Wanderers chose to seed human civilizations on. As I’m sure you know, this is one of those planets.”

She stared at him through her faceplate. “I didn’t know. Maybe they did.” She waved to indicate those inside her ship.

He was sure someone did. Why else would they have come to loot the ruins?

Artifacts from the early days on each of the human worlds were always desirable, with some collectors paying fortunes for them. Artifacts from a world where humans had been placed and long ago died out? Even more desirable. As far as Ariston knew, this was one of only two such planets. Tynyar had been looted thoroughly and destructively soon after its discovery, causing the Confederation government to place it and this one under their protection.

Until Ariston had arrived, he’d assumed the stories of hauntings had been circulated by the government to deter thieves. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He’d seen several of the men react to things that weren’t there, and Mick had also done that in the ruins. He himself had experienced a few instances of seeing movement out of the corner of his eye when nothing was there. He also had a dull headache starting up, but he supposed he couldn’t blame that on ghosts. This whole situation had him uncomfortable, and he wasn’t sure he had done the right thing in letting the away team run off without chasing them down.

“Where are you from?” Ariston asked, figuring he should get more information from Mick while he could. The hatch remained shut. He wondered how long the decontamination shower would take. His people took such measures when dealing with high-radiation planets or exploring new worlds—the medical scanners weren’t perfect—but he doubted it was necessary here.

“Arizona—Earth.”

“Gaia?” He thought he remembered hearing that the Gaians called their world that, but he’d been busy on a mission of his own when all the news had broken about the planet’s discovery two years ago. He only remembered it at all because one of the more famous Star Guardian captains, Sagitta of Dethocoles, had been involved.

“Yeah.”

“You fly a Dethocolean hunter-class ship. A ship favored by… bounty hunters.” He’d almost said criminals.

Not all bounty hunters were criminals, technically, but their methods weren’t approved by the Confederation government. The government preferred to have its own law enforcers take care of hunting down criminals. But each planet within the Confederation had its own laws and some of those without huge police forces paid for criminals to be brought in. Some governments didn’t care if those criminals were brought in dead or alive. In the Confederation, there was no death penalty. The archons kept trying to get other planetary governments to climb on board with that system, but it hadn’t happened everywhere yet.

“I won it in a Kapti game,” Mick said. “Well, technically, I just won the down payment for it.”

He found that unlikely, but all he asked was, “How did you get out into the system from Gaia?”

“My sister came and got me. She was one of the original women kidnapped from Earth—Gaia—a couple of years ago. She’s training to be a pilot now. In the Confederation space fleet.” She looked at him. “You have any problems with soldiers?”

“No.”

He wished she were one. She was competent enough in a fight that she could be. But she had confessed to having illegal equipment in her ship, so he doubted she was. He wasn’t sure if he should believe her story about the sister or not. And winning a ship in a gambling game? That seemed highly unlikely. Where had she obtained the currency to play if she was from Gaia? Their money wasn’t even on the galactic exchange. And how had she gained the familiarity and skill with Kapti in such a short time?

He wasn’t sure how to read the considering look she was giving him. Did she think he was a criminal? Since he’d arrived with the salvage crew? Or had he somehow given away that he was on the side of the law?

“As long as soldiers don’t bother me, I don’t care what they do,” he added, trying to sound indifferent.

Since her crew was taking its time with the shower, Ariston headed to the rear of the ship to survey the damage it had received. He would need to look inside to see the damage the engines and generators might have taken, but he could already tell it wasn’t operable in its current state. He hoped she had extra hull plating panels.

“Once we get inside,” Mick said, “we can—”

She spun abruptly, dropping her hand to her weapon. She stared toward the ruins. “What was that? One of the salvage guys?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Ariston said, following her gaze.

Deep shadows lay among the ruins now that the planet’s orange sun had drifted behind the volcanos on the horizon. She fingered her weapon.

She cocked her ear toward the ruins. “Seriously? You didn’t hear that?”

He shook his head. He might have thought she was crazy if he hadn’t witnessed others having similar experiences.

“I hear moans,” she said. “They’re similar to what I heard coming from the people in the wreck earlier.”

“The wreck?”

“The ship your people shot down.”

He bit his tongue on an impulse to claim that they weren’t his people. As far as she knew, they were.

“Nobody in that ship survived the crash,” he said instead.

“No kidding. I saw them.”

“I mean, nobody was alive after it crashed. We scanned the ship on our way down. There couldn’t have been anybody moaning.”

She’d been gazing out into the ruins, but now she turned to look at him again. For a long moment, she didn’t speak. Then she quietly said, “We saw two life forms on our sensors. That’s why the doctor and I went out there.”

“You saw them before the ship crashed?”

“After.”

Ariston shook his head. “That’s when we ran our scans. There was nobody left living then.”

“Maybe your equipment was faulty.”

“Or yours was.”

“Both my ship’s scanners and my armor’s?”

He spread his arms, not knowing what to say. But he was growing more and more convinced that there might be more to the stories of hauntings than he’d believed.

“Earlier,” Mick said, “I was thinking that there was no way I wanted to spend the night on this planet. With that shuttle gone and my ship damaged, I suppose there’s no chance of that not happening now.”

“I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for the oddities people are experiencing,” Ariston said.

“That’s what Dr. Garcia said, and now he’s dead.”

“Not because of hauntings, though.”

“No, because of assholes.”

He thought she might skewer him with another glare, but she clenched her gauntleted fist and scowled at the ruins again.

“While I work on repairing the ship, our scientists can figure it out,” she said.

“I can help with the repairs,” he offered. Interesting that she’d called them scientists again. Had she brought archaeologists to help identify valuable artifacts to extract from the ruins? If so, that made her a very organized relic raider. “I have a background in engineering.”

“You’re an engineer?” she asked skeptically.

“I used to be. That’s why the salvage crew captain hired me.”

That was true enough. If he’d shown up, asking to sign on as one of the fighters, Ariston doubted Eryx would have considered him, but his current head of engineering had made enough booty in his career that he was ready to retire. Ariston felt a twinge of guilt. Mrook had been so excited to have an experienced apprentice, one who might take his spot sooner rather than later. The engineer hadn’t said as much, but Ariston had sensed Mrook hadn’t cared for the “extraneous” salvage missions that Eryx chose.

“You don’t seem nerdy enough for that,” Mick said. “I haven’t met any engineers who would throw themselves into fights with the odds six to one against them.”

“There were six opponents to my one, assuming we don’t figure you into the equation, since at the time, I didn’t know you would open fire on them. Odds are another way of saying probability, and they’re calculated based on the various abilities and advantages of the parties in question, not simply on numbers. Based on what I knew of those men and my assessment of myself and my armor’s attributes, I estimated the odds to be roughly two to one. Not in my favor, perhaps, but not statistically impossible to beat.”

“That sounded nerdy. Maybe you are an engineer.”

He might have responded, but her comm came on, and he heard a woman’s faint voice. “We’re done scrubbing our pits. You and your new friend can come in.”

“He’s not my friend,” Mick said.

Ariston could only agree with that, since they’d only known each other for thirty minutes and she was likely a criminal. But for some silly reason, he felt a twinge of disappointment at the words. He had helped her out. Twice, now. What did it take to win her friendship?

“No? Doctors Lee and Woodruff say he’s not their friend, either. I thought someone had to have befriended him because it didn’t otherwise seem like a good idea to invite him aboard.”

“Just open the hatch, Dev.”

“If you’re sure.” The woman sounded like she wasn’t. “He looks a lot like the people who’ve been trying to kill us and destroy the ship. They fired at us without warning, you know. The shields took a ton of damage and then collapsed.” Her voice lowered so much that Ariston almost couldn’t make out the next words. “I don’t think we can take off again, Mick.”

“That’s why I’m bringing this guy in to help. He’s an engineer.”

“Oh?” The woman—Dev—sounded less distraught at the statement. “How do you know?”

“He told me. And he says nerdy things.”

“I say nerdy things all the time, and I’m a soil scientist, not an engineer.”

“Ariston promises he has no interest in soil,” Mick said, sounding exasperated. She looked at him. “Right?”

“Correct. I’m quite indifferent to it.”

“Really,” the Dev woman said with what came across the comm as a haughty sniff.

Finally, the hatch swung open.

Mick hopped into the airlock, and Ariston moved to follow her in, but she paused on the threshold and looked at him. With her standing in an elevated position, they stood eye to eye.

Several long seconds passed as she considered something. Him, presumably. Maybe she wondered if it was safe to invite him in. She’d seen him fight, so she had to know that he could pose a threat to her crew. What would he do if she jumped in, closed the hatch, and made him stay outside? Sure as Hades’ spit, Eryx wasn’t going to send a shuttle down for him. He might send shuttles to hunt him down, firing at him from above and not giving him a chance to fight back.

Now he wished he hadn’t told Mick that she was his prisoner. He should have claimed to have been a prisoner of the salvage ship, using this opportunity to escape. Then maybe she’d have been more likely to see him as someone on her side. Of course, she would have been suspicious that a prisoner had escaped in full combat armor. Gods, he was bad at lying.

“Where did you learn to fight so well?” Mick asked.

Lie? Tell the truth? He wasn’t sure she had believed his earlier lies, and if she detected a lie now, that might be all it took for her to slam the hatch shut on him. Oh, he could catch it first and force his way in, but then what? Hold her at knife point and demand her crew let him in? Or else?

“I was a space fleet officer for more than fifteen years,” Ariston said, leaving out that he’d transferred to the Star Guardians after the war. No need to mention them. “Until my captain—my wife—was killed in the Battle of Amarr, one of the few skirmishes since the Territory Wars with the Zi’i.”

Ariston didn’t know why he’d added such personal information, other than that it might humanize him in her eyes. But he immediately regretted sharing it, making himself vulnerable to someone he might have to arrest. He shouldn’t have given her anything she could use against him, and even after four years, Zya was very much a lever that could be applied to him. Friends and family back home had told him often that it was time to move on, to find someone else, but he hadn’t wanted anyone else, and he had never stopped lamenting the loss of the person who had completed him.

Mick kept gazing at him, her expression unreadable. If she was more sympathetic toward him now, she didn’t show it.

He cleared his throat. “If there’s a booger hanging out of my nose, I can’t do anything about it as long as my helmet is on.”

She snorted. “Yeah, I guess that’s a good enough reason to let you in.”

She stepped into the airlock chamber, making room for him to come in behind her. The hatch clanged shut, and they stood in darkness for a second before a red light came on. Machinery hummed, and he imagined ultraviolet radiation killing the bacteria on their armor.

The lights flashed twice, and a computerized voice said, “Stage one complete. Remove your clothing for stage two.”

“Uh, what?” Mick said, turning to face Ariston and frowning at him, as if this was his idea.

As he’d told her, there was little to fear from the bacteria on this planet.

“Remove clothing for stage two decontamination,” the computer said.

“Dev, are you there?” Mick asked. “You didn’t have to get naked for this, did you?”

“Yes, we all did. Dump your armor on the deck and spread it out so everything can be decontaminated to the best of the system’s abilities. Normally, your clothing would be destroyed afterward, but that’s not practical here.”

“Destroyed? You don’t destroy combat armor.”

“Right, just put it aside for a scrub down, please. The shower’s designed not to let you out until it’s run through its cycle.”

“How did I let this fascist thing be installed on my ship?” Mick demanded.

Dev did not respond.

Mick sighed, giving Ariston another exasperated look.

“Do you want me to go back out?” he asked, though he was reluctant to do so. Given time, she might decide to leave him out there, after all. “Dethocoleans aren’t particularly shy, but I know humans on some other planets have qualms about nudity.” He also figured she might not be comfortable being naked with him, since they were, by her words, not friends.

“No, I’m not shy, and I don’t have qualms. I just don’t want to be naked if your buddies show up again and start attacking the ship.”

He nodded. “Understandable.”

“The sooner you shower and wash your armor, the sooner you can put it back on,” came Dev’s voice over the comm.

“Yeah, yeah, tyrant.”

Mick turned her back to him and undid the fasteners for her helmet. Ariston shifted so that he wasn’t looking at her—not that there were a lot of other places to look in the small airlock chamber—and did the same.

He grimaced at the fresh dents and scorch marks adorning his armor, and he also thought of Raztror, the one crewman he had unintentionally killed instead of subduing. Star Guardian undercover operatives were given a lot of latitude and were trusted to make decisions that would help them complete the mission they’d been assigned, but he wondered if this time, he was in the wrong. Eryx was the one responsible for slaying people—his crew was simply following orders.

After he removed the last of his armor and peeled off his undershirt and underwear, he bent to lay the pieces on the deck so the shower could spray them, and he accidentally bumped butts with Mick. She, too, had removed everything and was spreading her gear out.

“Sorry,” he said, by habit glancing at her to apologize.

Their eyes met briefly, and her mouth opened—maybe she’d been about to say something too. But she closed her mouth and simply waved an acknowledgment, then turned away from him again.

He quickly turned his back again to give her her privacy, and to hide the Star Guardian tattoo on his forearm, but not before he got an eyeful of… just about everything. Enough to know that she was as sexy as the Sirens.

Mick wasn’t entirely different from what he had expected under the armor, with a lithe muscular form that spoke of athleticism as well as femininity, but he hadn’t anticipated her full, amazing breasts. They were the kind a man wanted to hold in both hands while alternately burying his face between them and sucking on those pert pink nipples.

His cock swelled, growing hard and erect in record speed. Shit.

He faced the outer hatch more fully, hoping to the gods that she wasn’t looking over at him. What kind of dumbass got a hard-on in a decontamination shower?

He tried to banish thoughts of breasts, not to mention the rest of her body, from his mind and willed his cock to soften. The last thing he wanted to do was stroll out to meet her crew of archaeologists with his penis emulating a rocket ready to launch.

The water came on, spraying from two nozzles that were clear after-market additions to the airlock chamber. The splatter that hit his chest and shoulders was tepid. Damn, he’d been hoping for cold.

He planted his hands against the hatch, dropped his chin to his chest, and again tried to think unsexy thoughts. The ruins, the pyramid, the dead men outside. He definitely didn’t want to think of Mick or the way he could see her bare feet and calves under his armpit as she nudged her armor pieces around, flipping them with her toes to expose both sides. Beads of water trickled down her muscular calves, following their appealing curve. They were perfect for the warrior woman she clearly was. And he couldn’t look away. Nor could he get his cock to do anything but stiffen further.

It wasn’t his fault that he’d always gotten aroused by the warrior woman type, nor was it his fault that he had no trouble imagining turning around, jamming her against the wall, and pressing himself along her length, feeling her every delicious curve against his body. Then tasting her, his mouth taking hers while she—

“Shit, are bolts waterproof?” Mick asked.

Ariston blinked. Since his people used bolt as a penis euphemism, it took him a second to realize what she meant.

“The bolt bows?” he asked, making sure his voice sounded normal and didn’t reveal any of the lurid thoughts stomping through his brain. “Yeah, they can fire in space and underwater. They’re sturdy. It takes something like molten lava to destroy one.”

“All right, good.”

A soft clunk sounded as she leaned her weapon against the bulkhead under her shower.

Ariston drew in a slow breath, looking down at his armor while he wrangled his libido under control. Hearing her voice had helped, reminding him that she was a virtual stranger, that he had no romantic interest in her. His foolish body didn’t particularly care about romance or stranger status, knowing only that it hadn’t had sex all that often in the years since Zya had died. There had been a handful of one-night dalliances at space stations, but he didn’t care for those, having always wanted to have a partner and confidante, not a temporary bed mate. His one-nighters had only happened when he’d been drunk and lonely and feeling sorry for himself. None of those things were happening now, so this teenage horniness was uncalled for.

The water shut off, and the red light disappeared.

The hatch opened almost instantly, as if Mick had been standing by the controls, longing to escape as soon as possible. Gods, she hadn’t seen his stupid hard-on, had she? If so, she would be understandably alarmed. She had no way to know he was an honorable man and wouldn’t do anything unwelcome to a woman.

“I’ll find some towels,” she said, and rushed out, disappearing into a well-lit corridor.

He gathered up his gear, draping his long-sleeved undershirt over the tattoo on his forearm to hide it, and took a step after her, but he realized he still had a problem. He frowned down at his penis, which seemed to think it should stay rigid until he attended to it. He was half-tempted to masturbate while he was alone in the dark airlock chamber, but he didn’t want to explain that if she or her crew opened the door while he was in the middle of it.

“You’re forty-three,” he muttered to it, “not thirteen. Knock it off.”

Despite the admonition, his penis refused to droop. This was what he got for not making more frequent drunken, lonely stops at space stations.

He artfully rearranged his gear in front of himself and strode into the light.