Ariston chewed on his breakfast, one of his uninspiring ration bars, and walked up to the cockpit to see if anyone was monitoring the comms for planet-to-orbit chatter. The meteorologist, Sven Safin, had been up there earlier, but Ariston had dozed for a few hours and wasn’t sure if the man was still there. Ariston slept lightly—especially when among potential enemies—and thought he would have heard Sven walk through the dining area if he’d done so, but he couldn’t be sure.

He had woken when Mick had walked in earlier, stopping to look at him without brightening the lights. He hadn’t stirred, or opened his eyes to more than slits, wanting to see what she would do. A silly part of him had hoped she would take her clothes off and join him under the blanket, but the rational part of him had known that was unlikely.

He remembered all too well how her eyes had widened when he’d hinted that her people were down here illegally and that some help might win her leniency. That had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, one he’d regretted almost immediately. But he’d hoped she would jump at the chance to offer her ship and her full assistance to apprehend the relic raiders. He’d wanted to be on the same side she was, but he should have known she would only be uneasy if he revealed himself as a Star Guardian.

True, he hadn’t exactly done that, but she’d probably read between the lines.

She’d whispered his name to wake him from several feet away, not getting close, perhaps thinking he would lash out if he were startled awake. Then she’d run a medical scanner over him, saying they were checking everybody. He’d lain there without objecting, though he’d made sure the device was a scanner. It had crossed his mind that she might want to knock him out and dump him outside of the ship.

But all she had done was take the scan and return to sickbay. He hadn’t seen her since. Of course, he’d been sleeping since.

He found Sven in the cockpit, also sleeping, his head back in the chair, his feet on the console. If there had been comm chatter, the man wouldn’t likely have heard it.

Ariston sighed and settled into the co-pilot’s seat. The sensors showed the storm still raging outside and dawn less than an hour away.

The lights were dimmed in the cockpit, but the glow of the displays allowed him to see well enough. A deck of Kapti cards with scenes on the back from the ranching planet of Kressin rested on the console.

Maybe Sven had been entertaining himself with a solitaire game. Or maybe it was Mick’s deck. She claimed to have won that down payment playing Kapti, after all. He wondered if there was any truth to that, or if she’d acquired the ship by illegal means.

If the latter, she should have another reason to want to work with him, so he would speak on her behalf, and they could request a pardon. But could he promise that? He didn’t know if the courts would pardon that large of a crime. Stealing a ship, or money for a ship, was a lot worse than trespassing.

He thumbed through the deck. He knew the game of Kapti reasonably well. Even though cards weren’t a traditional Dethocolean pastime, he’d served with crew from all over the Confederation, and such games were popular on many other planets. On his last ship, he’d played numerous times with two other engineers, the helm officer, and the doctor. He hadn’t been the best at bluffing, but he’d been good at calculating odds and counting cards, so he’d won more often than he’d lost.

Soft footsteps sounded behind him, and he looked back as Mick walked in.

“I came to check on the status of the storm.” She quirked her eyebrows at the snoozing Sven before shifting her gaze toward the view screen. Since it was smothered with snow, there wasn’t much to see.

“Still raging.” Ariston ran his thumb along the edge of the deck, ruffling the cards. “I have the comm alert turned up to high, so even sleeping people will hear it if someone starts talking on Eryx’s channel.”

“You’re sure?” She looked at the meteorologist again—his eyes were twitching under his lids. Then she noticed the cards in his hands.

“Play a game while we wait?” he offered nonchalantly.

“Is that a hobby of yours? I thought you might do push-ups or sit-ups in your down time.” This time, her quirking eyebrows seemed to point toward his chest.

Ariston had donned his underwear and his mostly dry black shirt, the long sleeves hiding the telltale Star Guardian tattoo on his forearm. He wasn’t sure yet if he should confirm to her that he worked for the organization. She might already know, but she might also suspect him of concocting an elaborate ruse and still being associated with the salvage ship.

As if his ruses were that elaborate—or good.

He wished they could lay all their cards out on the table with each other. He was tired of the half-truths and games, games he wasn’t good at. But he had a job to do. Even if she and her ship weren’t his assignment, he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t seen them. Ideally, he should find a way to bring them in, for questioning at the least, in addition to Eryx and the salvage ship.

And what would happen to Mick if he did? And if she’d done worse things than trespassing? Fines, jail time. Or a banishment back to Gaia. She’d been correct in pointing out that Gaia didn’t yet fall under Confederation jurisdiction, but that wouldn’t necessarily save her from punishment.

“When I’m alone, perhaps,” Ariston said, remembering she’d asked a question. “But sit-ups aren’t much entertainment for two.”

“You could do them, and I could watch.” She smirked.

“I’d rather watch you do some,” he said, responding to the flirty comment before his mind considered whether he should or not. Should he be keeping a professional distance? It was easy to banter with her.

“I guess we could wager such things.” Mick waved to the cards. “Loser entertains the winner with push-ups.”

“Seems fair. How many can you do?” Ariston eyed her arms.

A long-sleeve shirt covered them, but the flimsy, lightweight material hugged her form. Not that it mattered. The memory of her naked in the decon shower had been forever burned into his brain. He well remembered her sexy mix of muscles and athleticism and curves and femininity.

“I haven’t practiced push-ups specifically in a while. Maybe sixty or seventy in two minutes.”

“That’s not bad for a woman.”

“It’s excellent for a woman. It’s not bad for a man.”

He grinned at the touch of cockiness to her words. She wasn’t wrong.

“How many can you do?” she asked.

“I also haven’t practiced push-ups specifically in a while. You’ll have to count and see.”

“Are you already planning to lose?”

“Well, I heard you were good enough at Kapti to win a spaceship.” He watched her eyes as he spoke, wondering if he might catch her in a lie, or at least detect a hint of hesitation there, a realization that she now had to back up what she’d told him.

But she smiled easily. “Just the down payment. And it’s an old ship.”

Uh huh. He was sure she’d had to put down at least twenty-five percent for anyone to let her fly it off-planet, and that would be forty, fifty-thousand drachmas easy. That must have been a damn high-stakes Kapti game.

“Then it’s possible I’ll beat you?”

“Anything’s possible, I suppose.” She turned, heading for the table in the dining area.

“How many push-ups will you do for me if you lose? Fifty?”

“I suppose. How many will you do for me?” Mick slid into one of the swivel seats bolted to the deck.

“Fifty?”

“I want a hundred. You’re a man. You should easily be able to do twice as many as me.”

“Seems reasonable.” Ariston slid into a chair across the table from her and placed the deck between them.

“Loser does them shirtless, right?”

He almost fell out of his chair.

“I see you’re excited by the prospect.” She grinned, picked up the deck, and shuffled the cards.

“Of seeing you shirtless? Most certainly.” What excited him less—and had alarmed him—was the idea of taking off his own shirt, since his tattoo would be revealed.

Did it matter? Did she already know? It was hard to imagine her flirting with him if she did.

Last night, when she’d fled the rec area, he hadn’t been certain she would speak to him again. There were few people that criminals hated more than Star Guardians.

But she’d had time to ponder his words. Maybe she had decided to flirt with him, or even have sex with him, in order to get him to look the other way after she dropped him and his prisoners off. He couldn’t do that, of course. His honor wouldn’t let him. But would his honor allow him to have sex with her if she suggested it?

The answer should be a solid no, but she had a mischievous look in her brown eyes, and an appealing quirk to her lips. He wanted to kiss them.

“Are we only playing one hand?” She pushed the deck toward him to shuffle if he wished.

“Luck plays a factor. We should play at least ten, I should think.” His ability to count cards did him zero good in a single game. It wasn’t until the players were deeper into the deck that the skill came into play and he started winning more often. Fifty-three cards. Five breeds of livestock, with ten cards each, zero through nine. Two shepherds, and one svenkar. Not too much to keep track of in the head if one paid attention. “We need some marbles to wager with on individual hands. Or I’ve seen coins used on planets that have physical currency.”

Mick nodded. “I don’t have much loose change on me, but I have something that might work.”

She disappeared into the cockpit and soon returned with her bag of candy. She doled out some of the brown beans into each of their “marble corrals.”

“So few,” he remarked. “We won’t be able to make any giant bids.”

“This bag has to last me back to Earth. I can’t put them back in after you’ve had your grubby hands all over them.”

“My hands were thoroughly washed in the decontamination shower. As was the rest of me.”

She glanced at his chest before shifting her gaze to the card deck. Were her cheeks a touch pink? He wondered if she’d sneaked any peeks at him while they’d been in there together, the first or second time. He still wasn’t sure if it was honorable, but he found himself hoping so.

“I’ll get something else to add to our corrals,” he said. “I haven’t finished my breakfast yet.”

He pulled out his rat bar, tore it into small pieces, and set five pieces into each of their corrals, alongside the candies.

“Winner can have the food too,” he offered, though he had limited rats so he probably shouldn’t share. Still, it wouldn’t kill him if he had to fast for a couple of days. Or eat the dehydrated whatever she’d offered him the night before.

“Uh, you can keep your—what is that? It looks like those blocks of suet you buy for birds.”

Ariston chuckled. “That’s basically what it is with protein powder mixed in.”

“That sounds like a shitty ration bar. That can’t be all you eat.”

“Actually, a lot of Sta—people who work in space favor them. Fat is calorically dense, so you don’t have to use as much space and weight to store food if you’re going on long voyages. It’s filling, too, so you eat less overall.”

“If you say so.” Mick popped one of her candies into her mouth.

If she’d noticed his slip-up, she hadn’t shown it.

“You’ve just placed yourself at a disadvantage,” he observed, waving at their respective corrals, hers now down one bean.

“You’ll need me to have a handicap if you’re going to beat me.” She grinned and waved at the deck. “Let’s play. You deal first. We’ll alternate.”

“We better make the chunks of fat worth five beans,” he said, “so we’ll have larger corrals.”

Mick wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t make those worth a fifth of a bean.”

Deciding that wasn’t a true protest, Ariston dealt them each six cards. He set the rest of the deck between them and reached for his hand. But she reached over and laid her fingers on his wrist before he picked up the cards.

It wasn’t that intimate of a gesture, but it was bare skin touching bare skin, and a little zing of pleasure—or maybe anticipation—coursed through his nerves.

“Ante up.” Mick pushed five of her twenty beans into the center.

Ariston lifted his eyebrows. Making pre-wagers before seeing one’s cards was accepted, but not typical in Kapti. That she would push out nearly a fourth of her beans surprised him. Of course, she had five pieces of his bar too.

He matched her bet and looked at his cards. They were decent, but nothing useful yet, no same-suit groupings or herds of odds or evens.

A slight smile pulled at the corners of Mick’s lips, and she pushed out two chunks of bar to go with her beans. He matched the bet and picked up the deck to deal.

“How many?”

“None for me.” Her smile remained in place.

She liked what she’d been dealt initially? Hells, he was tempted to throw his whole hand away and get new cards. Instead, he discarded three and took three new ones and studied them. A half herd of low evens. Not a nothing hand, but not a great one. And she’d gotten something good enough that she hadn’t wanted any new cards. Unless she was bluffing and her hand wasn’t good at all, or was only mediocre. Still, mediocre might beat him.

She pushed the rest of her rat bar pieces out, each worth five beans. She didn’t start out small, did she?

“You either have a great hand or a crappy hand and don’t care if you lose those rat bars.”

She grinned. “I don’t even want to touch your gross suet bars, but I do have five chocolate-covered coffee beans in play.” She spread her hand toward them.

He looked in her eyes, but he had no idea if she was bluffing, and it was too early in the deck for him to employ card counting. The odds were fairly low that she’d been dealt a good hand without taking any new cards, but his own hand was weak enough that he deemed it likely she had a better hand than he. And with as much as she’d bet, he stood to lose more than half his corral if he lost, and this was only the first hand.

“Sell,” he said, showing his cards long enough for her to see them, then tossing them face-down into the discard pile.

Sell the herd was the term for giving up a hand. One sold the entire ranch if one walked away from the table.

She laid her cards face-up on the table and swooped the winnings into her corral. A herd of odds, low odds. He would have won.

“Huh,” he said, not allowing himself a bigger show of disgust than that. In truth, he wasn’t that surprised. And he was a little pleased at this first inkling that she knew how to play the game. Maybe it was possible she’d won her down payment legitimately. He did know that women tended to be underestimated throughout the galaxy, and not just in Kapti. Men had some notion that they were emotional and easy to read.

Leaving the discards, Mick dealt out another hand. “You ever hear about anyone dying on this planet?” she asked. “Before we all got here, that is.”

“No, but I haven’t heard of anyone coming to this planet in recent years. It’s not a tourist hotspot.”

Ariston was tempted to ask her not to speak, as speaking during hands was generally considered a faux pas, but he had a feeling she was leading up to some pertinent information, something he needed to know.

Mick pushed out five more beans before they picked up their cards. “My guys say the mega volcano that the rest of the galaxy thinks killed the settlers here… didn’t.”

“Didn’t?”

“Didn’t kill them. It went off before they got here. The planet was harsh to live on when they arrived, no doubt, but the Wanderers must have thought it was a survivable place. I mean, all the other places they dropped off humans were, weren’t they?”

“Yes. There’s only one other colony that didn’t survive. The planets weren’t all paradises, but they were certainly survivable.”

“So,” Mick said, making her bets and handing him new cards when he held up four fingers, “my scientists don’t know why those people didn’t make it. And they’re a little concerned that it might have to do with our weird mental symptoms. Is it possible the planet drove those people crazy? Maybe not all at once or quickly, since they had time to build a civilization, but slowly and over time? And if so, how much time?”

Ariston frowned thoughtfully as they finished out the hand. This time, he won, but mostly because he got lucky. Mick had taken three new cards and wagered less than she had on the previous hand, so he hadn’t been at all certain how to read that. She didn’t react to the loss, merely put in a new ante and passed the deck back to him.

“Dr. Lee is up and working with Dev now,” Mick said. “They’re trying to figure out how long humans lived here. Long enough to build a pyramid—excuse me, a ziggurat—but that could have been centuries or five years. Back on Earth, slavery was typical in ye olden days, and nobody cared if the slaves lived long happy lives, so they could be worked to the bone and build massive things quickly.”

Mick won the third hand.

“If it’s possible,” she said, taking the remains of the deck to deal, “my people would like to go back out before we leave and take more samples, figure out how long people lived here. They’d also like to try to find some fossilized remains of skeletons to determine how individual people died and how long their lifespans were.” She met his eyes. “Would that be allowed?”

“Allowed by me or permissible by the law? Being here at all is considered trespassing.”

“It’s legitimate scientific research. The findings could be shared with the Dethocolean government.”

“If you’re truly just here for scientific purposes, you should have gone through legal channels and applied for a research permit.”

“I don’t think they knew anyone had a claim on this planet,” Mick said, pulling another round of winnings into her corral.

Damn, he’d thought he had a winner of a hand there. She hadn’t even looked like she was paying attention to the game.

“Who’s they?”

“Umbra, Inc., a company back on Earth. They’ve been into funding space exploration for more than a decade.”

“And that’s what you’re doing here? Exploring? Just out of curiosity? Or is that corporation looking to profit somehow? I don’t know how it works on Gaia, but our corporations aren’t all that altruistic unless they’ve screwed someone over, gotten caught, and need to buy some good publicity.”

Mick gazed into his eyes. “Who are you working for, Ariston?”

He didn’t avoid her eyes, but he didn’t answer right away. Did it matter if she knew? Honestly, he’d already blown his cover, at least somewhat, by suggesting she could receive amnesty if she helped him. She had to believe he was a law enforcer or government agent.

“You might as well tell me,” Mick said softly. “I can make a note of it in my log, so that if people’s brains start exploding and we all die down here, someone will be able to identify you if they come looking, and get word back to your family.”

Ariston snorted. “Our brains aren’t going to explode.”

“Are you sure? What’s the longest people have been stuck here before?”

“I barely even have a headache.” A new thought came to him. “Wait, did those medical scans show something?”

“Not really. I’m just speculating at this point.”

“Not really isn’t the same as no.”

“Apparently, we have some slightly abnormal brain activity. Something to do with neurotransmitters. I left the AI doing more in-depth analysis. Your brain was less abnormal than the others. You’re not some kind of half-alien mutant, are you?”

He snorted again. “That’ll surprise the hells out of my parents if that’s true. And I suspect it would have come up on the space fleet physical.”

She was looking into his eyes again. Maybe she thought she’d find the mystery of life and the creation of the universe in there.

Finally, she leaned back in her chair, surveying the cards she hadn’t yet picked up and the large pile of beans and rat bar pieces in her corral.

Ariston sighed and looked down at his own meagerly stocked corral. They’d played six hands and had the cards for the seventh laid out in front of them. Would he have enough beans to make it through ten games? If she wanted to, she could bet more than he had now, and he wouldn’t be able to match it. He would have to sell his ranch.

“You haven’t bluffed yet,” Mick observed.

“No, that’s not my strength. I usually keep track of the cards that have been played and calculate the likelihood of whether my opponents are bluffing or not. But that’s been hard since we’ve been talking.” He almost said you’ve been talking, but he’d participated in the conversations she’d started. He could have clammed up or said he didn’t want to talk. He’d deemed the information she was giving him more important than losing a bet and having to do some push-ups.

“Ah.” She leaned back in her seat and picked up her cards, as if to say she was done talking, that the rest would be fair.

He didn’t believe for a second that she’d randomly started those conversations or given him those challenging looks just because. Maybe she’d known that a nerdy engineer would be the type to count cards, and she’d been seeking to make that more difficult for him. Or maybe she’d just figured he’d make more mistakes if his thoughts were divided. Either way, she’d been right. And he believed it had been a calculated rightness.

A part of him was frustrated by tactics that he might not consider entirely honorable. A larger part of him admired that she knew how to play the game, even though she couldn’t have been familiar with it for that long. And unlike him, she was an effective bluffer. He would have to be careful with her going forward, keep a sharp eye on her. He was glad that they’d played, though, because he now believed she could play high-stakes Kapti games and win legitimately. Maybe she had won this ship fair and square.

He caught himself sneaking glances at her as they played out the rest of the hands in silence. Her face remained hard to read, but that didn’t make it any less attractive. He decided he wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on her. A close eye.

He won the next two hands—they were over half way into a second time through the deck, and his tactics were starting to pay off—but it hardly mattered. With his corral down so low, he couldn’t make large bets, so he didn’t win much, and she wasn’t making any big bets, either. With time, he might have drawn even with her again, but she seemed to have calculated what she could afford to lose and still win.

She won the last two hands, anyway. She pulled the last pot in, and he shook his head, looking sadly down at the three beans sitting forlornly on the table next to his elbow.

Mick, who had been carefully keeping the rat bar pieces and the beans segregated, pushed the cubes of fat back over to him.

“I’ll leave you those.” She pointed at the three beans. “Quick energy for your push-ups.”

“My rat bars provide sufficient energy for push-ups.” If he’d had to go run sprints for an hour, he might have taken the sugar for a boost, but push-ups weren’t that strenuous for him.

As he was about to rise, she leaned over the table and rested her hand on his wrist. His first thought was that she meant to shake hands or use some other Gaian gesture to signal the end of a game well-played. But she pushed at the cuff of his sleeve.

Realizing her intent, he grew very still.

He could have yanked his arm away or knocked her hand aside, but wasn’t she about to find out, anyway? He had agreed to shirtless push-ups.

His sleeves weren’t loose, so she had a hard time, and ended up leaning further over and using both hands. This revealed a hint of her cleavage, which he found intriguing even though he’d seen her naked before. That viewing had been oh-so-brief, and he suspected he was about to lose his chance to ever see any of her bare flesh again. As he’d noted before, criminals did not like Star Guardians.

His tattoo came into view, the winged fire-falcon-class ship flying through a wormhole gate, the mark that all Star Guardians received on their arms.

Mick leaned back in her seat, turning enough to hook an arm over the back as she considered him. Her face was as hard to read as it had been during the game, but she didn’t appear surprised.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

“I didn’t know, to be honest. I didn’t think Star Guardians did undercover work. The ones I’ve known were all part of a crew on a ship, and I thought all Star Guardians were like that.”

She continued to be difficult to read. Maybe this was all academic to her and didn’t matter one way or another. So long as she didn’t start thinking that she needed to get rid of him so nobody would be left to tattle on her people and this shifty corporation of hers.

“You’ve known many?” Ariston wondered if she’d done anything to attract the notice of the Star Guardians before.

“My sister is dating a pilot, and I’ve met a bunch of his buddies.”

“Who’s the pilot?” He couldn’t imagine why she would lie about such a thing, but if she knew other Star Guardians, it seemed like she would have a better grasp of the laws of the galaxy, and would have known she shouldn’t have gotten involved in this mission. Or maybe she had known and simply hadn’t cared.

“Zakota.”

“One of Sagitta’s men?” Ariston didn’t interact much with the Star Guardians who were out on ships, but he knew of the legendary space fleet captain turned Star Guardian captain, and he’d seen the man at Headquarters now and then. Some of his senior officers were also well known.

“Yeah. And his buddies are Ku and Hierax. I’ve met them a couple of times.” Mick lifted her eyebrows. “Since you’re an engineer, maybe you know Hierax?”

Ariston nodded. “He’s a smart man.”

“And he knows it.”

He smiled, convinced she truly knew the men now. That made him feel better, and he even felt a sense of camaraderie toward her. But perhaps that would only make things more difficult. No matter who she knew, she was here now, and that made his position—his relationship with her—difficult. And… inadvisable.

Though she hadn’t done anything to impede him yet, and if she was telling the truth about her scientists and the corporation—and her simple role as a glorified shuttle pilot—maybe a judge wouldn’t have too much of a reason to punish her. Maybe she would only be charged a fine. Maybe not even that if she helped him finish his mission.

“You can have a couple of my detainment cells if you get those guys,” Mick said, as if she’d been reading his thoughts.

Ariston looked up, his eyes locking with hers. If she helped him voluntarily, perhaps… perhaps this could all work out.

“Providing you let my scientists look at one of those skulls you said they snagged,” she added, then lifted a hand, though he hadn’t objected. “Not to keep. Just to examine for clues. My people were hoping to colonize this world. They need to know if there’s something dangerous here, something that would make coming—or lingering—a bad idea.”

“You can’t colonize a protected world,” he said.

She shrugged. “Maybe Umbra intended to negotiate with the Confederation about that. Either way, what does it hurt to find out if it’s even feasible?”

“Why did you come?”

“I just told you. They—”

“Not they. You.” Even though he’d proven awful at reading her lies—her bluffs—he kept holding her gaze, as if he could telepathically extract the answers he sought from her mind.

She shrugged again. “Didn’t I tell you this? I had a ship, they approached me, and they offered a big chunk of money if I was willing to be the ferry service.” She hesitated. “I didn’t think we were doing anything illegal, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t let people go because they’re ignorant of the law. But if everything you’ve told me is true, the courts should be lenient with you.”

Her lips quirked. It might have been irritation or amusement.

“Are you saying, you still consider me your prisoner?” she asked.

This time, he hesitated. “We’re all prisoners of this planet right now. We need to remedy that before worrying about the rest.”

Her eyes narrowed, and he thought she might object, but she waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll agree with that. But before anything gets remedied…” Her hand shifted, and she extended it toward the open deck beside her chair. “You lost a bet.”

“So I did.” He was a little surprised that she still wanted to see him doing shirtless push-ups now that she knew what he was—and that he felt compelled to report her. He’d as much as told her that he still considered her a prisoner, someone he had to take to stand in court if he could.

He pulled off his shirt, not worrying about the tattoo. The rest of the crew was working quietly elsewhere or sleeping.

She looked at his chest, nothing shy about her gaze, and an electrical charge coursed through him as he realized something. Whatever differences they had, she was attracted to him.

He walked around the table, his cock hardening as her gaze followed him. She licked her lips. He knew he had to be careful, that she was someone who could fake an interest in him without him seeing through the deception—she’d just proven her ability to bluff—and that she might try to use him to get free of the mess she was finding herself in. But for the moment, all he could think about was that molten gaze fastened to him.

He knelt on the textured deck, choosing a spot close enough to her that she could touch him if she wanted.

“A hundred, was it?” he asked, though he would probably go until he collapsed if she wanted to see it.

“A hundred.” Mick smiled. “Don’t rush the show.”

“I never rush when I’m with a woman.”

Her smile shifted to a smirk. “I’m glad to hear it.”

He thought about offering to demonstrate but decided to let the push-ups speak for themselves.