Page 4 of Her Alien Spy
There was nothing for a couple of minutes.
Julia pantomimed throwing the comm across the room. In the end, she messaged back,
“Thank fuck,” Julia muttered to herself. She told Agatha good night, then put her comm back down determined to absolutely NOT look at it again, no matter what was going on.
Chapter Three
Andethor sat across from Xarek in one of the small restaurants on the station. This one specialized in Paraxian food, which tended to be hearty, spicy, and cheap.
And it often gave Xarek heartburn, which Andethor thought was hilarious. Big grumpy Altarian bastard couldn’t handle a little spice.
“Still working on the Paraxians,” he said after taking a bite of his food, keeping his voice pitched low. “They’re sticking to their neutrality.”
Xarek grunted, offering a terse nod. “The Paraxians are set in their ways. They’ve learned to stick to the shadows.”
“And it’s benefited some people. Like yours,” Andethor reminded him.
Xarek gave him a look that would have struck fear into the heart of most males. “It also worked against us. They maintained that neutrality, as you call it, by helping both sides until it became to their advantage to finally choose one.”
“So we need it to be very clear to them that being part of the Alliance is an advantage to them. They seemed ready to sign on after they helped your people.”
“They did, until their leader started getting resistance from the council. Their neutrality is their safety at this point. And they don’t trust the Alliance to keep them safe. They’ve worked against too many of us to feel secure of our goodwill.”
Andethor set his eating utensil down and thought for a while. Their past definitely made the Paraxians a target for far too many.
But that wasn’t the entire story. It was coming down to one very, very stubborn representative. One who could very well be doing something to undermine his own people in his greed. Andethor and a few other members of Bellarian Intelligence had turned their focus to him. Jax’el Xiaron.
As the humans would say: what a dick.
He was squeaky clean as far as they could tell. He’d set his public image in stone. Serving the Paraxian people like his father before him, and his father before him…
Sounded an awful lot like nepotism to Andethor, but if that’s what the Paraxian people put up with, it wasn’t his problem.
Until it was. And Jax’el Xiaron was definitely a problem. Not only would the Alliance help protect the Paraxians, it would also keep them in line. Ideally, keep them from sabotaging any of the other Alliance members at the behest of an enemy.
He and Xarek ate in silence until the Altarian got up, clapped a heavy hand on Andethor’s shoulder, and lumbered off without another word.
How the hell Maggie, who was one of the most bubbly people he knew, lived with such a grumpy bastard was beyond him.
He ate more, thoroughly enjoying the food. He needed to do some maintenance on his ship to make sure it was ready to go if he needed to be off in a hurry. Stock up on a few supplies…
…Definitely avoid going to the fitness center to ogle a certain luscious bartender who did her volunteer shifts there twice a week. He’d barely been able to stop thinking about Julia after she’d danced like that. He’d sent her food, and then felt like anidiot, but then felt like much less of an idiot after she’d started messaging him.
And it felt good to take care of her like that. To know she was eating something she enjoyed instead of whatever she would have managed to scrounge up in her exhaustion.
He wouldn’t examine that too closely. He didn’t make connections like that anymore. He didn’t have the kind of life that allowed for stable, long-term relationships. He was away too much, might have to leave at a moment’s notice, and couldn’t just talk about his day at work. Too many secrets, too many absences he couldn’t explain. It was no way to treat someone he cared about, and he’d seen firsthand how completely everything could explode after the little tensions and arguments built up too much.
He cringed. Ayza. He’d been so in love with her he’d almost walked away from the work. A job had taken him away for a few months of deep cover. Longer than he’d expected it to.
And when he got home,.. Well. It hadn’t been the homecoming he’d hoped for.
Andethor shook off memories of Ayza and took a last bite of his food, then carried his dishes and utensils to the sanitizing station before heading through the corridors to the docking bay.
This was just what he needed. Some time on his ship, which felt more like a home than most places did, now. Preparing, planning. Some Earth metal blasting. No one talking to him.
So when he drew closer to his ship and a figure stepped out of the shadows, he could have punched something. When the person stepped into the light, he straightened, his formerly-scattered attention coming back into deep focus.
