It took Alex three days to finally make it to the part of the ship Anders called his own. That was mostly spent working up his nerve, finding it was easy. With the internal sensors talking to the central system, the directory could now find anyone on the ship.

    Alex hadn't told any of his friends he was doing this, he didn't want them trying to talk him out of it. It didn't feel like a good idea to be going to the enemy's stronghold, and it wouldn't take much for Alex to abandon this plan.

    Anders had the section near the hold, twenty or so rooms of various sizes that he and his group used. He'd checked the layout, and a few were quarters, but most were too large for that, meeting rooms? Or places to hang out when they didn't want to mix with the rest of the crew, except Alex hadn't noticed any of Ander's gang acting like they were better than the others.

    Even Anders was cordial with the others, except for Alex.

    Alex was wearing what he'd decided was his 'Crimson uniform'. A gray engineer's jump suit he'd found at one of the clothing stores on the dock. It was loose enough to let him move freely, something Anna insisted on as part of her training. It was made of sturdy material, and had enough pocket to keep even Will happy.

    Alex hesitated at the door. There was nothing marking it as the entrance to Ander's domain, but behind it was the hallway connecting all the rooms. As of a minute ago, according to the directory, Anders was in the third room, along with a dozen of his people. The directory had given him a list of names, but Alex hadn't looked at it.

     With a deep breath, he entered and went straight for where the sounds of laughter and conversation was coming. It took a moment for them to notice him, standing a few steps in the room, and silence fell.

    "You've got balls," Anders said. "I'll give you that." He was sitting on the edge of a table. He was wearing a black shirt with silver thread running at the cuff and neck. He had a gold chain going into the shirt. Alex had never noticed that before.

    Everyone was looking at Alex, and he wanted to turn around and run as fast as he could. Instead he forced himself forward. He didn't consider himself particularly brave, but if he didn't do this, he wouldn't be able to rescue Jack.

    He stopped a few feet away from the other man. "I want to work for you."

    "You what?" Anders had clearly not expected this.

    "I want to be part of this-" Alex gesture to encompass the other men and women in the room. "-group."

    "My team?"

    Alex nodded, and Anders laughed. Alex had expected that. "You want to join my team," Anders stated, once his laughter died. "You do know I hate you, right?"

    "I do. I'm hoping this proposition will fix that."

    "If you're part of my team, you have to do everything I say."

    "I'm not sleeping with you," Alex stated.

    Anders snorted. "Don't worry, you're not my type." So Will had been right.

    Anders looked him over. "I guess I could find a use for you."

    "I'm also not sleeping with any of your team."

    Anders waved that aside. "But we're going to have to do something about you. I'm going to have to find someone to train you. Everyone on my team is-"

    "No."

    Anders raised an eyebrow. "I don't think you get what 'doing what I say' means."

    "Do I look stupid to you, Anders?"

    The man smiled. "Well, you have put yourself in the middle of my team without a way out, that doesn't speak highly of your planning skills."

    Alex fought the urge to look over his shoulder. There'd be someone blocking the door.

    "I let one of your people train me, and it'll be nothing for you to see to it I have a training accident. You don't like me, remember? Anna's training me."

    Anders thought it over. "Okay, she's competent enough. You have anyone handling weapons?"

    "Rebecca's showing me how to shoot. Nartoro knife fighting."

    Anders scoffed. "Nartoro? That guy couldn't cut himself out of his clothes. Zeph, you teach him, and make sure you don't hurt him, too much."

    Alex considered protesting, but he couldn't object to everything Anders said, not if he wanted to survive this.

    "Look, Anders, your problem with me is that people are looking up to me, rather than you, right?"

    The man's eyes narrowed, and Alex saw that his genialness was act. Anders was no happy at all right now.

    Alex raised his hands to placate him. "I didn't set out to do that. All I've ever wanted was just to make it to Samalia. Now all I want is to survive this trip. I know you're the guy in charge here. That's why I'm here asking to work for you. Everyone on the ship that looks up to me, they're going to see that I came here, of my own free will, that I respect you enough to want to be part of your team. That's got to mean something, right? They'll have to see that I'm not looking to take your place."

    Anders' anger faded slightly as he considered Alex's words. Finally he nodded. "Okay, you're not as stupid as I thought." He stood. "Alright, if you're part of the team, you train like we do. We're going for a run."

    "A run?" Alex asked. A few of the others groaned.

    "You think all we do is sit here and tell stories? We're an assault force, we need to stay in shape, and right now, that means a run."

    * * * * *

    Alex was enjoying the quiet of the hold. He didn't feel like being around other people right now, or being in his room. Since they didn't have any cargo yet, there was no reason for anyone to come here, so he'd taken to walking around there.

    Training was taking a large part of his days now, and Alex was throwing himself in to that. Anders was making sure Alex did plenty of work for him. He'd talked the ship's system into giving Anders' command priority over everyone except the captain. Alex had informed the captain of that, and all he'd requested was that Alex setup an override command so Anders orders to the ship could be countermanded with one word.

    That had been easy to do, so Anders had moved to giving Alex useless orders to ensure he was busy. Over the last week he'd adjusted the life support a dozen times, since Anders was never happy with the temperature, the humidity, or both.

    Alex hated having to waste time with that, but he kept his mouth shut, he knew why Anders was doing it. The man was trying to get Alex to break their agreement. If that happened he could go back to threatening him directly.

    Alex wasn't going to let that happen. The captain had told him there was only hand full of jobs left before they reached Samalia, a few months at most.

    When Alex reached the entrance again, Terrence was standing in the doorway. Alex had learned the name of the man who'd stopped Anders from pounding him into the wall, back during Alex's first job for the captain, but he hadn't interacted with him, so he was surprised to see him there.

    Alex stopped twenty feet away, unsure why the man would be here. "Can I help you with something?"

    Terrence stalked toward him cracking his knuckles. "Yeah, you can show me what you're made of."

    Alex raised his hands to pacify him. "Look I'm not going to fight you. I have a deal with Anders."

    The man snorted. "I don't care what deal you have. I want to see if your as great as what I've been hearing."

    What had people been saying about him now? Alex wished people would mind their own business.

    The man swung at him, and Alex took a step back.

    "Come on, fight me." Another swing, another step back. 

    "No. I know damn well I can't take you on. I don't care what they're saying, I'm not a fighter." 

    "I thought Anna was training you."

    Alex took two step back in anticipation of the punch, and collided with something. Only he found out it was someone when a hairy arm wrapped around his neck.

    Alex cursed softly. He put a hand between the arm and himself and tried to pry it away. It didn't move. Fortunately it wasn't so tight to keep him from breathing. He tried to elbow the man's stomach, but he couldn't muster much strength and it was hard. Alex struggled, pulling forward, then sideways. He had no intention of letting them beat him up.

    His struggled forced the man holding him to readjust his hold and his arm moved up. Alex didn't even think, he bit down on it hard. The man screamed and pushed him away.

    "The son of a bitch bit me!" It was Zephyr. 

    "Good," Terrence said.

    Alex tasted blood in his mouth, he felt like spitting, but he didn't. He forced himself to swallow, and then not to throw up. Zephyr was holding his bleeding arm. Alex took a step away from both of them, then looked around in case there were more of them.

    "I'm glad to see you can get yourself out of tough situation," Terrence said, keeping his eyes on Alex.

    "What the fuck are you doing?" Alex growled at him. "Making sure you're going to survive your stay with us. Anders might not try to kill you anymore, but he's going to throw you into a fight at some point. I want you to survive that so you can get with your guy."

    "So what? This was a test?"

    "Yeah. You didn't fail, but you didn't pass either. Anna's teaching you how to fight, but not how to survive a fight. I intend to change that."

    Alex stared at the short man, at a loss for word.

    "The big mistake you did, was keeping your eyes on me. Unless you have your back to a wall, you need to know what and who's around you."

    "So I'm suppose to look around? I won't see what you're doing during that time."

    Terrence nodded. "Take small glances, but more importantly, move. Walk around your opponent, that lets you keep your eyes on him and see what's around you. Also, why aren't you armed?"

    "On the ship? Why would I need to have a weapon?"

    "You always want to be armed because you never know when someone is going to try to jump you." Terrence pulled his sleeve to show the knife he had secured against his forearm. "I have another one in my boot, the small of my back, and I always carry this." He pulled his shirt and revealed a small gun.

    Alex looked to Zephyr. "I don't see him with a knife at his forearm."

    "Zeph doesn't like long sleeves, so of course he won't have one there, but he has a dozen knives hidden on his body."

    Alex was surprised. He'd had three training sessions with Zephyr, and he hadn't noticed him having any knives.

    "Another thing. You need different clothing. A jumpsuit is fine if you're doing dirty work, but in a fight you need to be able to get out of what you're wearing fast."

    Alex raised an eyebrow.

    "If someone grabs you by the shirt, getting out of it gets you free. Right now, if I grab hold of your jumpsuit, I can do anything I want."

    Alex looked down at himself. "But I like the look."

    "We can recreate that, with something that won't get you killed. And finally, I'm taking over your strength training. An elbow to the stomach should have made Zeph wince, at the very least. As far as I could tell, you hurt yourself doing that."

    "He has hard abs."

    "He does, but you can't let that stop you. Again, if you can't get out of a hold, you're dead. Not everyone will be nice enough to give you skin to bite, or let you go if you bite them."

    Alex sighed. "Do you treat everyone you like this way?" 

    "No, but they can look after themselves. Once you're able to do that, I won't bother you anymore." "Fine, so when do you want to start?"

    Terrence cracked his knuckles and took a step toward Alex. "Right now."