Page 60 of Tracked and Taken

“Ah,” he says. Mild. “You dislike kasa.”

“I am being polite.”

“You are being polite to a Korrhai you met last night over a cup of kasa that is objectively terrible. I respect the attempt, Officer. I do not require it.”

Tael walks in with a clean shirt on and the sleeves already rolled and takes in the last ten seconds without breaking stride. “She’s a coffee human, Thane. Don’t take it personally.”

“I take nothing personally. I accept the respect. I rescind the kasa.” He removes the cup from my hand with the careful economy of a very large male handling a very small object, empties it into the reclaim, pours from his own thermos, black coffee, the smell hitting the back of my sinuses before the cup reaches the counter, and pushes it back. “I travel with both. I have had occasion, in my work, to be mistaken about what my hosts drink. I have corrected.”

The coffee is properly made. Dark roast, fresh-ground, the preparation of developed standards. I file the standards under Thane is operationally a menace.

He caps the coffee thermos and looks at the kasa one, which is empty, and at the pot on the burner, which is not.

“I will want the second brew in the flask before I go. Twenty minutes on the low plate, and it is not twenty minutes if it is hurried.” He thumbs the burner down to its lowest setting and sets a tin and a stone pestle on the counter in front of me. “Officer. The pods want crushing, not grinding, and they want it done by something with less enthusiasm than a Korrhai. Vosk watches the pot and does not lift the lid. I am going to be unsociable at the end of the counter.”

“You are assigning tasks in someone else’s galley.”

“I am assigning tasks in Vosk’s galley, which is a separate offense and one he has earned.”

He takes his datapad to the crate at the far end of the counter, sits with his back against the rock, and stops being in the room in the way only a male trained to surveil can stop being in a room.

Tael takes the pot. I take the pestle. Twenty minutes is a long time in a galley wall, a meter wide.

He has the expression he is enjoying himself more than his face is supposed to advertise. His shoulder brushes mine as he reaches across me for the kasa flask. He could have asked me to pass it. His forearm, bare where the sleeve is pushed up, passes two inches from my collarbone, and the heat of him moves across my skin, and he does not move faster than the reach requires.

“Sorry, sweetheart.”

“Mm.”

I crush pods. He watches a pot. Every third minute the galley requires one of us to be where the other one is, and neither of us routes around it. The cardamom gets into everything, my hands, the counter, the collar of a shirt I am going to be wearing for another two days, and I am, for twenty minutes, doing manual labor in a rock kitchen with a male whose hand was on my hip at dawn, and I am not unhappy.

Thane, at the end of the counter, does not look up from the datapad. The corner of his mouth moves once.

The kasa comes off the plate at twenty minutes. He fills the flask, caps it, and does not say a word about whatever has been on the screen.

Thane leaves before the hour is out.

He packs in nine minutes. Rifle checked and slung. Kasa flask in the duffel. The coffee thermos stays on the counter because, he says without turning around; he has a case to get back to and a case is faster than making coffee.

Tael walks him to the airlock. I follow.

“Thane. Flossie has room.” Thane’s hand is on the cycle. He does not turn. “Two-person outfit. Two agents so far. SPROUT runs the office. Xor runs intake. Flossie runs the heart of it. The pay is not SRS.” Tael glances sideways at me; the half-grin flickers. “The company, though, is not bad. They could do with some muscle.”

“I have heard.”

“I was serious about Xor. He carries a thing he does not talk about. His is older than yours. He would not, on first acquaintance, advertise that he liked you. On fourth acquaintance he would hand you a cup of tea and you would know the answer.”

Thane pauses, “I will think about it. One thing before I go.” His hand stays on the cycle. “Your SRS cleanup on the Velarkis circuit. The node wipes, the bonded-mate cargo, the sanitation profile. SRS runs one operator on this whole corridor. Rethlor. Tier 3, human. I have had eyes on him for three months because my Korrhai case brushes his trail. He is docked at Parr’s Anchor on a routine layover. You find him there if you move.”

Tael’s whole face changes. “How long have you been sitting on him.”

“I have had Rethlor as a name for three months. I have had him as specifically the operator you want since I cross-referenced his docking record against your scent data while you two were making kasa in the galley this morning. I am not bringing you a present, Vosk. I am paying a debt. The debt is to the case. Your move.”

“Copy. I trained with him. He’ll crack. I give him nine minutes.”

“Six. He is lazier than when you knew him.”

Thane turns, finally. The gold eyes do the thing his species does when it has finished filing.