It’s two in the morning and I’m trying to find my quarters. The corridors are deserted, the lights turned down to save energy. Light strips along the floor illuminate my footsteps. Reflective tape around bulkheads warn me against head-butting. I find myself closing my eyes every few steps. I need a bed. Christ, I’m so tired, a maintenance closet will do.

I know I’ve got quarters on the ship. I got a message about it this morning. 489-something. Which means deck 4, starboard side, aft. Port is odd numbers, starboard is even. I look at the number on the door nearest to me. 485. Oh, good. I’m close. Aha, there it is. I slap my hand on the entry plate. It’s keyed to my hand print. The door slides open.

I am immediately irritated to find the room occupied.

My brain registers two things right away. First, the woman sitting on the edge of the bed exudes the deadly grace of a predator. Second, sensual curves beneath a satin, leather, and chrome getup guarantees her a place in my I Want to Unwrap That outfits of all time. Her dark eyes lock on to me and she rises to her feet and starts my way. I have trouble not staring at the slow rock of her hips instead of checking her hands to see if they’re empty of weapons. I wouldn’t be the first coach to get killed this way. If this is it, if this is the moment, I hope I get the girl before the girl gets me.

The door snaps closed behind me. Like the trap door on one of those Have a Soul traps that lets you release your prey into the wild. So they die of exposure or by getting eaten by a larger predator, instead of you having a soul in the first place and flushing them straight down the toilet. The sound jars me to my senses. “That’s close enough,” I tell her, and she stops her advance. “Who’re you?”

“My name is Jint,” she says.

“Jint what?”

She smiles at me without showing any teeth. “Jint is good enough. You’re easy to get to, Stern. Easy enough for me, easy enough for the Veeni.”

“They tried today already,” I say. “Beat you to it. The bastard got a power drill through the skull. How you would like to go?”

“Your wife isn’t here to save you.”

“I didn’t ask for her help. She did it pro bono. I’m sure she’d do you for free, too.”

Jint steps closer. “I’m sure she would.”

“You want to tell me what you’re doing here, or should we just get straight to the fighting part?”

“Fighting?” Jint asks, slithering up to me until she’s so close I catch a whiff of light perfume. It smells like the woods and light rain, of all things, almost enough to mask the scent of oiled steel. She twists her sinuous body around mine without touching, her head tilted back so she can stare up at me through thick eyelashes. “I don’t want to fight you, Stern.”

Bullshit. I grab her by the throat, lift her off the floor, and slam her against the door. I block her first kick with my free arm. I catch her leg on the rebound and turn and hurl her across the room with as much force as I can muster.

Jint lands on her feet on the other side the bed. She should have hit the wall. She should have bounced off and hit the floor in a crumpled pile. She should have been down long enough for me to get out of there. Instead, she straightens and grins at me.

“That wasn’t very nice, Mr. Stern. I almost thought you were aiming for the bed.”

“I was. I got carried away. I saw the leather and buckles and figured you were into that sort of thing.”

Jint massages her neck. “You’re very fast. And strong.”

I shrug. “You’re nimble. Everybody’s got their talents. You want to tell me what you’re doing here? And you can stay on that side of the room with those knives of yours, thanks.”

“Knives? How do you know about them?”

Them. I figured at least one and asked to see if she’d confirm it. Sounds like she’s carrying more than one. It’ll cost me some blood to find out how many. “X-ray vision.” I lie. I make some pretense of checking her out. Even though I can’t see through her clothes, I imagine that I can. I hum my happiness.

“Liar,” Jint says. “We know that’s not one of your implants.”

“Hmm? Who’s ‘we’?” I stop humming. “Echelon.”

I stop humming. Part of me expected this visit. Well, not this exact visit, but one with the same questions I know Jint is about to ask me. Questions I don’t feel like answering. Echelon is the colloquial name for Fleet Intelligence. Lots of law-abiding humans trying to make the universe safer for all species. At least, that’s what the brochure said. Now they’re trying to make up for the rather awkward event of not seeing an Edochian attack coming. They’ve lost the good fluffy parts from the brochure, and are now very much the bogeymen.

I look around for someplace to sit down. There’s a small dining nook and two slide-out chairs on my left. I commandeer a chair, open the tiny fridge and inspect the contents. Lots of booze, but some water packs and – you’ve got to be kidding me – a Fast Fruit bag. I pull out the water and the fruit bag. There are three apples inside.

I bite into an apple and turn back towards Jint. She sits down on the corner of the bed and tries to hide her envy of my snack. I toss her one of the extra apples.

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Jint catches it with one hand without taking her eyes off me. She smiles at me, holds up the fruit in thanks, and then takes a bite. “Mph, this is really good!” She wipes the juice off her chin with her thumb and sucks on it. “I hear this is pretty much the real thing.”

“Franchise options are available. Says so on the bag. So, Just Jint, I didn’t realize I was cool enough to show up on Echelon’s radar.”

“You’re not. It’s your wife we’re interested in.”

“Oh,” I say, a bit crestfallen. I remind myself that this is a good thing and my ego should go take a nap. “Why are you interested in Laura?”

“I think you know.”

“I’m sure I don’t.”

Jint watches me watch her, and the silence draws out between us. I go back to wondering how many snaps and buckles it would take to get that outfit off of her. At least four. Five maybe. There’s some sort of buckle and zipper contraption in the back. I’d noticed it when I tossed her across the room. I’m not sure how many that adds to the count. Is it one buckle and one zipper, or a super buckle that counts as two?

“Four,” she says.

“What?”

“Four buckles. I can see you counting.”

“What about that thing at the back?”

“Knife holder.”

“Ah.”

Jint reaches up and undid a buckle. “Now just three.”

I can’t help but smile. Those three remaining roadblocks to heaven might as well be in another dimension. I know it, she knows I know it, but still here she is, fucking with me. I gesture at her. “As much as I’d like to sit here and watch you not undress, I’d like to get some sleep. So, could you please get to the point so we can move this along?”

“Spoilsport.”

“You have no intention of undoing anything else so – “

Jint leans over and pulls at a long zipper down her side that ends at her thigh and shows lots of skin and no underwear. “You sure about that?” she asks. She leans over the other way and does the same with the other zipper. It makes a very satisfying sound as it goes down.

The door pops open. I look over my shoulder at Laura standing on the threshold. She’s carrying that damn pistol she shot me with. She gives me only the most cursory of glances before glaring at the other woman in my room. “Jint,” she says.

Jint straightens and pulls up her zippers. “Laura,” she says. She shifts her legs and makes to stand up.

Laura raises the pistol.

“Don’t do anything hasty,” Jint warns.

“Like you were about to do with my husband?”

I’ll be honest, I feel a flutter in my stomach when she calls me that.

“You’re separated, honey,” Jint replies. “He’s fair game.”

“This is your only warning. If I see you within ten meters of him again, you’ll have an unfortunate accident. It will be messy.”

“You can try, sweetie,” Jint says. “You might have one first, you know. Maybe get sick on some bad food? Or be in a corridor when it suddenly depressurizes?”

“I could do you now.”

“There would be questions,” Jint says. “You can shoot your husband on Freehaven, and it gets chalked up to a marital dispute. You shoot a government official on a Spaceball League practice field, with the coach in the same room, and the League might suspend him pending the investigation.”

“You willing to bet your life on that?”

“From that peashooter? Please.”

I’ve never had anybody fight over me before. At least, not while I was in the same room. It’s hot. “Careful, ladies. Keep this up and I might get an elevated opinion of my own value.”

They both snort at the same time.

“As if,” Jint says.

“Don’t talk,” Laura adds. She steps into the room and off to the side, allowing Jint an unfettered lane to the corridor. The Echelon agent takes it. She tweaks a buckle at me on her way out.

The door closes again, leaving me with Laura and a gun. This can still go either way. I sit there and let her make the first move. Laura walks over to me, grabs the Fast Fruit bag out of my hand, and fishes around until she comes up with the last apple. She sits in the other chair, puts the gun down in the middle of the table, and bites into the apple, hard.

“Thanks for stopping by.” I say it when she has her mouth full. “I mean it. That’s twice you’ve saved my ass today.”

“You’re welcome,” she says around apple bits. “Was she really taking off her clothes when I walked in?”

“I’m not sure what she was doing. She was waiting for me when I got here. She made some threats, I threw her across the room, and then she went all sultry. I will say she was wearing a pretty awesome outfit. Have you ever worn … no? Should I stop talking now? I’m just really tired and I tend to ramble when I’m tired.”

Laura takes another bite. “You ramble whenever you get a chance to ramble, Rick.”

“She said she wasn’t here for me.”

“Then why the sexy stripper moves?” Laura asks.

“You think that’s sexy? That’s damn sexy hot that you think that’s sexy.”

“I’m already aware of what you think is damn sexy hot.”

I glance at her outfit with the exhausted hope that I might get lucky, however remote. “I do see that you’re still wearing your overalls.”

“You might as well give that up.”

“Not a chance.”

“Hmm,” Laura muses. “Keep on like that and I might think you’re not serious about holding up your end of the bargain.”

“What bargain?”

“You said you’d give me a divorce.”

I must have been delirious. “Only if we win.”

A frown darkened her face. “You … You wouldn’t throw a Cup Tournament over that.”

“You sure? Maybe I’ve done some soul searching.”

“You’ve been in a hibernation tube. You can’t have been looking all that hard.”

“Maybe I’ll win you back then.”

Laura sets the apple core down next to the gun and gives me a long look. I return it and say nothing. See, I do know when to shut my mouth. I really missed watching her watch me. Those little crinkles around her eyes when she’s wondering what I’m thinking, and then filling in the blanks herself with thoughts I’m not smart enough to have. I smile at her, feeling a bit hopeful. Up until this point I was sure she was unwinnable. Now I’m not so sure.

“If Jint wasn’t here for you,” she says finally, “what did she want then?”

“She was asking about you. Why would she be asking about you?”

Her eyes go flat and her whole body stiffens. She stands up. “I should go.”

“Laura, why is Echelon interested in you?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Right. Nothing, as in getting presents from the Edochians, that kind of nothing?” Her whole body screams yes, but she still shakes her head. It’s funny how people think they can lie to the ones who know them best. “Okay, okay, I know it’s important to you, so I’ll play along. I’ll continue to run interference if Jint comes back around with all the leather and zippers. Dunno the lengths I’ll have to go to protect you, even though you won’t share this nothing with me. Must be something, this nothing.”

Laura opens her mouth to say something, and out comes a snort. “Leather and zippers? Are you trying to make me jealous?”

“Is it working?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Then yes, I’m trying to make you jealous.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Not nearly as much as you, baby.”

She picks up her gun and slips it back into the hideaway holster in her jacket. “Get some sleep, Rick. You look like shit. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

I grab for her sleeve. “Laura, wait.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” she says, dancing away. She pauses at the door and points at me. “Absolutely not, you stay right there. Don’t open your mouth, and stop looking at me like a lost puppy, you know that just kills me … No. I need sleep, too. Good night.”