Seven . . . six . . . five . . . Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Rorkken, Brit counted the decks, willing them lower and faster. The ride in the lift from the command offices at the Ring’s topmost deck down to where the Unity was docked at the gangway level was interminable, but Brit had never known how long mere minutes could stretch. Each one was an eternity. In the long hours since lunch, after all their briefings and meetings, her reaction to the warleader hadn’t faded. Finnar Rorkken radiated what could only be described as presence. She could close her eyes and know he was there.

Unacceptable, of course.

Finally, the descent was over. The door slid open with a soft hiss. Brit strode out first, hands locked behind her back, trying to employ a purposeful stride instead of running away. Instinct urged her to flee from Rorkken; attraction made her want him at her side. She boiled with self-loathing and lust, hating that she thought of him—a Drakken—as a man at all.

Heavy boots caught up with her. She gave Rorkken a sidelong glance, if only to remind herself of what he was. Not an object of attraction. A Drakken. Skin peeked out from under his worn leather straps—the curve of muscle, bone, and scars. She sped up.

Rorkken easily maintained her pace. He smelled of leather and clean skin, spicy sweet and faintly of that peculiar odor that all Drakken carried. She wanted to retch. She was used to Drakken stinking like animals—they all had that underlying smell that she couldn’t define. All she knew was that it lingered, wherever they were and wherever they’d been.

“Shall we tour the bridge first?” he asked. “Or belowdecks?”

“The bridge.”

“I’d hoped you’d say that.”

She stiffened at the deep, almost intimate timbre of his voice. How many like him had purred in similar tones as they’d slit throats or raped or murdered little children? Don’t think of that. She gritted her teeth until they ached. Her life on the Arrayar Settlement had been a long time ago and hardly seemed to ever have belonged to her. But it had.

Rorkken’s armor creaked, and the beads in his hair tinkled. A Drakken with Seff’s eyes. She couldn’t look at him.

You have to. He’s your first officer. You can’t talk to his boots. Only she didn’t trust what he might see in her eyes. Control, Bandar. You didn’t become an admiral because you’re soft. No, she had to rise above her emotions. They had no place in this job.

“Admiral Bandar.”

Brit’s heart leaped in relief at the reassuringly familiar voice of Lieutenant Keyren. The young woman had an open, honest face that concealed too little, a misfortune on which they were working. Hadley glanced from her to Rorkken with clear concern and amazement. The only other times she’d seen Brit and a Drakken this close had been during prisoner-of-war transfers.

“Warleader Rorkken, this is my executive officer, Lieutenant Hadley Keyren.”

They exchanged greetings. “Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Hadley said.

Her executive officer was calling a Drakken pirate “sir.” The galaxy had changed overnight.

Her next sight underscored that thought. The gangway was crowded with dozens of Drakken laboring to upload their supplies and equipment to the Unity. Rorkken’s “trusted and tried” crew. Hairstyles of all descriptions, jewels and tattoos, outfits of leather and frayed fabric that could be considered uniforms only in the broadest sense—the sight of them hit her senses at the same time as their stench. Rorkken’s was faint, almost undetectable, but these Drakken reeked.

She halted, Hadley bumping up against her. “Sorry, Admiral.”

The Drakken in the corridor turned to stare. “Stick your eyes on your work,” Rorkken growled.

They went back to loading but stole glances at her and Lieutenant Keyren. Hadley watched as if the scene was a badly edited horror holo-feature. Rorkken’s second, Zurykk, marched this way and that, growling orders in a raspy voice, stopping to grab a spacer by the sleeve and shove him along. Brit had met the woman earlier that afternoon. Her graying hair was cropped on top and on the sides, with a thin, silvery braid snaking down her back. Feathers were attached to the end, pale and gray—an understated adornment compared to the rest of the crew. Perhaps in their new Triad uniforms, the Drakken would look less like Drakken, and more like . . . braided, be-ringed, tattooed, and feathered Drakken in Triad uniforms.

Brit suppressed a groan. “I’ll hold you responsible for any contraband brought aboard the vessel.”

“Onto the Unity?” Rorkken’s eyes glinted with laughter, as they did each time she refused to call her ship such a wimpy name. She despised that she amused this man. Did he have to be so damn attractive?

“Yes, the—” The name was too pitiful to utter. “No stolen goods. No stowaways. No hallucinogenic substances.”

“As long as sweef doesn’t fall under the category of hallucinogen, I can vouch for the contents of what they’re bringing aboard.” He wore that half-smile again, as if teasing her.

She pretended not to notice. Sweef was distilled from the berries of a type of conifer and mixed with an additive used in hydraulics fluid and the like. Cheap and easy to make, homemade stills for it abounded on military ships. Abusing it rotted the teeth, not to mention various internal organs, without nano-meds to reverse the damage. “I don’t know how you Drakken tolerate the stuff. It’s poison.”

“Aye. But sometimes, a little poison is better than the alternative.”

“And what is that?”

“Thinking. Thinking too hard.”

Something in his voice grabbed at her. She knew all about thinking too hard. She’d plunged herself into her career to avoid just that: thinking. Thinking about the past. Feeling it. Must never fall into that trap. She squared her shoulders. “Warleader, I want you to report to the ship’s physician ASAP. Arrange for a full exam.”

“I assure you, Admiral, that I’m no alcoholic.”

“I assure you, had I suspected that you were, you wouldn’t have set foot on—on my vessel.”

The Unity, his glance insisted.

“You have a cut on your right middle finger, on the knuckle.”

“Ah. So I do. I think I’ll survive without a doctor’s visit,” he added dryly.

“I should hope so. The fact that you have a healing cut at all indicates the low level of nano-meds in your system.”

“More like no nano-meds.”

Brit had never before contemplated how the Drakken warlord had treated his own citizens. In the Coalition, health care and education were universal rights throughout the queendom. Not so in the Drakken Empire, apparently, where the rich and powerful hoarded technology. The high-ranking Drakken she’d taken as prisoners over the years had all shown high levels of various nano-meds in their bodies. Yet this warleader had little or no protection from disease and injury. “You have full access to Coalition med-tech now. You and your crew will receive physicals and the proper maintenance nano-meds as well as fittings for communication bio-hardware. You first. The rest as their work schedules allow.”

“I am—we are—deeply grateful.”

“Gratitude is irrelevant. I must have my crew in top form for our mission. We can’t afford downtime due to sickness, and a physical body healing on its own is inefficient.” As well as downright primitive. To deny citizens basic care was unimaginable. A crime.

Many Drakken carried some sort of stiff fabric over their arms. A whiff told her that the fabric was the source of that terrible smell. “Those mats. The odor is filling the entire ship.”

“We call them sleeping skins. Rakkelle, give me that!” He pulled a “skin” from the hands of a thin young woman with dark hair and a pretty face and unfolded it for Brit to view. It was the texture of sausage casing, transparent, thick, and lined with grommets.

It stank. She wrinkled her nose and found Rorkken watching her with that strange look again, his boyish eyes soft.

“We hang them from the ceilings for sleeping,” he explained. “They’re then filled with blankets and pillows.”

“On a modern warship, there is no need for hammocks. There are bunks.”

“The skins are more comfortable than bunks, ma’am,” the girl broke in.

“Rakkelle,” Rorkken warned before Brit could reprimand her for speaking out of turn. “Ask permission to speak.”

Good thing that the warleader hadn’t hesitated to discipline his crew. My crew. Brit sighed quietly through her nose. Yes, they were hers too, since she couldn’t very well shove them through the airlock, as much as she would like to.

“Requesting permission to say something, Admiral Stone—” The girl reddened at her near error. “—Admiral Bandar.”

“Speak.”

“Skins move with a ship. Bunks, they’re for landfolks, rooted to the ground. A true spacer sleeps in a skin.”

“Young lady, in my military, when you speak to a commanding officer, you do so giving your name and rank.”

“My error for not instructing her, Admiral,” Rorkken interjected. “This is Rakkelle Pehzwan.”

“Doesn’t she have a rank?”

“I’m the pilot,” Rakkelle supplied helpfully.

“That’s your assigned duty. What is your military rank?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think I have one.” She looked at Rorkken. “Do I?”

Brit thought of all the excuses she had to walk away from this mission. Only, stubbornness and honor wouldn’t let her use them. Instead, she focused her trademark glare on her second-in-command. “Explanation, please, Warleader.”