[b]Under guard[/b]

      For the first week and a half, Jeremy fumed. 

      The guards, there were always two of them, escorted him from this quarters to engineering, and back. He didn't really know any of them. They were familiar to him, after all these years everyone on the ship was, but he didn't think he'd interacted with them before. He was certain Gral picked them on purpose, he didn't want anyone Jeremy was friends who would cut him any slack.

      They made the point when he tried to go to the shops, they needed spices and sauces for the meats. His guards wouldn't let him go. They guided him to his apartment, and he had to get Gral to get them. Jeremy had been angry enough that night that he wanted to go sleep with a friend, rather than in his own place.

      Of course the guards wouldn't let him. So he'd tried to sleep on the couch, but found that for all his anger, he missed having Gral next to him. He'd gone back to their bed, and while not talking to him, he'd curled up against him.

      The next two weeks he simmered. He acted like his guards weren't there. He didn't try to lose them, or go where he wasn't suppose to, he just didn't acknowledge they were there.

      Then he spent a week trying to become friends with them, but they wouldn't have any of it. Jeremy had no idea what orders Gral had given them, but by the looks they gave him in response to his attempt they were afraid of disobeying them.

      After that he sulked for a while. By the end of the sixth week, which he'd spent mostly in contemplation, he realized that with all the screaming, arguing, fuming and other emotions he'd gone through, there was one thing he hadn't done.

      Jeremy closed the door to their bedroom. The cubs had been sleeping for a few hours now, and the two of them had kept busy separately. Gral was already naked, sitting on the edge of their bowl shaped bed. Jeremy took a breath and turned to face him.

      "I'm sorry," he said. Gral tilted his head. "I'm sorry I killed those Taournians, I'm sorry I tortured that human. You're right, I know better, and I've been trained better than that." He needed to pause steel himself again. "I'm sorry I endangered the ship, and the operation. I'm sorry I endangered us."

      Gral indicated he should move closer, and Jeremy stepped forward until he was right in front of him. Gral rested his head against Jeremy's chest, and wrapped his arms around him. "Thank you," he said softly.

      Jeremy was still looking down at him, perplexed, when Gral finally looked up, eyes damp. "That's all I wanted," he said. "I just needed you to acknowledge you'd been wrong."

      "Are you saying that if I'd apologize back then I could have avoided the guards?"

      Gral looked him the eyes. "Would you have meant it?"

      Jeremy looked back into the deep amber pools, Gods he'd missed loosing himself into those eyes. "No, I wouldn't have." He didn't even consider lying to him.

      "I need to know something," Gral said, "you know that what you did to that human was wrong, but how do you feel about it?"

      Jeremy had to look away for a moment. "I want to do it again," he whispered. "I know it's wrong, and you were right. It wasn't all about getting him to answer my questions. I wanted him to suffer."

      "Like you suffered?"

      Jeremy nodded.

      Gral let himself fall back into the bed, pulling Jeremy along with him. The shape of the bed almost forced them to end up curled up together in its center.

      "I'd like you to talk to Lieha. She's trained to help with the kind of trauma you went through."

      "I will," Jeremy answered. He had already been planing on going to talk to her.

[b]Conspiracy[/b]

      Jeremy entered Leiha's office, and she motioned for him to sit.

      "I'm happy you decided to come see me," she said.

      "I would have come earlier, but I was under house arrest."

      "You don't sound too angry about that."

      "I was, but ultimately, I realized Gral was right in punishing me, I really screwed up, and endangered the crew. Also, I realized that he didn't do it as lightly as I initially thought he had."

      She tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

      "It hurt him to do that to me. I didn't realize that at first. I was too angry to see it."

      "And now?"

      "Now, I know that it wasn't easy for him to . . .." Jeremy stopped talking, mouth opened. "Did you really start analyzing me before we were done greeting each other?"

      "I did. Your comment about being under house arrest didn't have the emotional strength I expected, based on what I heard."

      Jeremy did smile, "the crew's talking?"

      "Do they ever stop?" she replied, sharing his smile.

      Jeremy shook his head, they were a close knit crew after all, it was difficult to keep things hidden among such crew. "Can we forgo the analysis? I actually came to ask you for your help, well a favor really."

      She leaned back in her seat, and studied him. "You're not here to discuss your anger toward humans."

      "No, I'm not."

      "I was lead to believe that was why you'd come."

      "I never told Gral that, I just said that I'd come see you."

      "Why are you misleading him?"

      "To protect him."

      "What are you planing, that he can't know for his own protection?"

      "And that of the crew. Before I tell you, what do you know of what humans did to me?"

      "I know they kidnapped you twice."

      "That's all you know?"

      She nodded.

      "Take a look through my memories, when I was a teen."

      "You give me permission to read your mind?" her ears tilted.

      "I do."

      She looked at him, then her eyes widened slightly. "No wonder you hate them," she whispered, after a moment.

      Jeremy nodded. "The attempt on our cubs, was to get to me. There aren't any other reasons humans would try to kidnap two kelsirian cubs."

      "You didn't tell the station master everything you found out from the human." She sighed. "You realize that I'm suppose to report anything behavior that can put the ship in danger."

      "I know. That's the favor I need. I need you to not tell him anything of what I plan to do."

      "Why Jeremy? He wouldn't approve of what you are planing, but he would try to find a way to achieve the same results. He isn't your enemy. Do you realize what you are risking?"

      "I do. But if I don't do anything, they are just going to continue to come after me. I know that he's going to be royally pissed at me for this. I'm going to end up in the brig after this, but so long as he doesn't know, he can't be held accountable. It's just me who is going to pay."

      "You know that you are wrong." It wasn't a question. "It's true that the humans will not be able to pursue legal actions directly against him, but this will hurt him, badly."

      "But he'll keep his command, he'll keep the ship."

      "And you think that will matter?"

      "It has to. I have to make the humans understand what they have to lose by targeting me."

      She looked at him. "You are making a mistake. I'm telling you this upfront. You need to tell him what you know, but I know you won't. I should tell him, but that won't solve the underlying problem." She sighed. "I will help you. I will keep your secret, under one condition. Once a week you will come see me. For one hour you will sit here and we will talk."

      "About what?"

      "Anything, everything. I will ask you questions, which you won't have to answer, but I hope you will."

      "For how long?"

      "I don't know. You know why I want you to do this. The anger you are holding isn't good for you. I hope I can help you resolve it before you are able to set your plan in motion, but even if I can't, I have to help you come to terms with what was done to you. 

      "If you agree to my term, I will keep your secret."

      "I agree," Jeremy answered without hesitation.

      * * * * *

      Jeremy, Thuruk, Ashnulem, Perrovtil and Xernial were sitting around the game table, in one of the privacy room adjoining one of the recreation rooms. The room had a large couch, large bed, and multiple chair, the table had been taken out of the storage compartment. The room, and the others like it around the ship were for when groups wanted to have some fun together, but were large enough they would disrupt the use of the recreation rooms.

      Jeremy had started the game nights once his confinement ended, as something to do with friends, he'd told Gral. It was rarely the same people from one week to the next, Gral even joined them once in a while. It was the first time these five were at the table at the same time. Arranging it hadn't been too hard, making sure that each had an idea why they were here, without revealing it to anyone else, had taken three month.

      "Why isn't Toom here?" Thuruk asked. "I'd have expected him to want to help you."

      "I didn't ask him." Jeremy replied, activating the table. "The three of us are too close. I didn't want to force him to choose between me and Gral, and if this blows up in our face, Gral is going to need Toom."

      "That'd be why I'm here then." Xernial stated. "You really think this operation can go bad?"

      "We're going up against a human general, with we don't know how many operatives, operating inside kelsirian space. Yeah, this thing can go bad. That why we're going to need your contacts. You have a claws in pretty much every criminal organization, kelsirian and otherwise. I'm hoping you can use them to track down a ship that is able to move within our space undetected."

      "If we can't detect it, how am I suppose to have my contact look for it?"

      "You have them look for the ripples it's crew causes on the markets," Perrovtil said. "They can't have more than a minimal kelsirian crew. I can't believe they could bribe too many of us. Even our most hardened criminals would have trouble siding with people who oppress their citizens like humans do. Since the general's people can't leave the ship without attracting attention, they are going to have to stock up on everything they need to keep the moral high, that means games, leisure, recreational drugs, I'll give you a list of what they should look for. I'm not even going to hazard a guess as to what they'll do for sex." He looked at Jeremy.

      "I don't know. If I go by the little interactions I've had with military personnel, which only happened when we had a ship dock at the station, they probably won't have sex on the ship. Every time one of those ships docked, they were out in the common areas hitting on the females."

      "Don't they have females in their military?"

      "They do, but I couldn't tell you if they have sex with them."

      The four looked at each other. "No sex," Ashnulem said, "for months at a time?" He shuddered. "They have to be insane." 

      "I can't go a week without sex," Thuruk stated.

      "According to Asarin," Xernial said, with a wry smile, "you can't go days without." The others laughed.

      "I could go a week if I had to." Thuruk insisted. "The fact that I don't have to just means I'm in a better emotional state."

      "You might have a point," Ashnulem said. "Maybe it's a human military tactic. Get their military so worked up that they'll do whatever they are told, with the promise of sex when it's done."

      "Sounds like a recipe for a mutiny, if you ask me." Perrovtil said.

      "Ashnulem," Jeremy said, "is there any way you can familiarize yourself with human computers? I'm going to need you to infiltrate theirs, when we find them."

      "You really think they are using a human ship?" Ashnulem asked. "Seems to me that would attract a lot of attention."

      "No, their ship won't look human, probably won't be either, considering they aren't being noticed in our own space, I'm guessing it's a kelsirian design. But if there's one thing I know about humans, it's that they'll never completely trust another race's computers. What we'll need to access will almost certainly be controlled by human computers."

      "I can go over the notes Jurani made when he infiltrated the station, but that won't be much. He didn't get a chance to test the serious system before we had to leave. I can play around the few human ships we'll encounter when we dock at one of the stations they are allowed on, but we don't go there often, so I'm not going to get a lot of practice."

      "Is there any way we can find our way there more often?" Jeremy asked Thuruk.

      "Up to a point," Thuruk answered after thinking it over. "We do have indication of pirates in that area, as well as smuggling."

      Xernial cleared his throat.

      "You know about them, don't you?" Thuruk asked.

      "Of course. I know everything that's going on within our space."

      "If you're willing to offer up some of them, it'll help justify our presence. Otherwise the captain will become suspicious if we always come up empty."

      "Show me what you have, when you can, and I'll tell you who we can go after without creating too much of a vacuum."

      "Good, then we all know what we need to do for now. I have some ideas to test, to help tracking them."

      For the next two hours they played, while also thinking about their tasks, except for Xernial, who seem to be able to focus completely on the game, therefor won all the rounds.

      [b]The summons[/b]

      Gral stood before the military council; Twelve people, generals, admirals, and politicians, who directly, or indirectly, controlled the careers of every officers in the kelsirian fleet. He had been summoned here, and he didn't know why. None of them were enemies of his, at least not directly, two had affiliation with members of a faction within the military that had tried to ground him multiple times, and one had a son, who was known to have en eye on Gral's ship, but he hadn't heard any indication that anyone in this room had any actual plans against him.

      "Captain Gralgiranselhelrarvnir," the admiral seated in the center said, "I see here that you distinquished yourself in the incident at Yarvir, as well as in the take down of the taournian pirates. Your career as captain of the Viper's Bane is marked with successes, with the exception of a few failed hunt here and there, but no hunter can always succeed". He was the oldest of those here, quite comfortable in his position, and very adept at politics. Gral had information on all of them, because he liked to know who he as up against, and what they were planing. His current lack of information on their motive really bothered him.

      "It's also noted that you've been offered promotions three times," the politician seated on his left said. He didn't know how she had managed to be included in this group, as far as he could find out, she was in charge of supervising expenses relating to military purchases. There had to be more to her. She was also the one with the son gunning for Gral's job. "You turned them down, why?"

      "I'm a hunter," Gral answered. "I belong in space, on my ship, hunting those who would cause harm to us."

      "Still there are those who feel you could serve Kelser better directing others on their hunts, rather than being at the front of said hunt." Her tone was so casual, that Gral couldn't help trying to figure out what hidden meaning could be behind the words. Gods, he hated politics.

      "I have to disagree."

      "Are you saying that generalship is below you?" the General at the far right said. He'd fought hard to become a general, not on hunts, but by playing the political game. Gral knew for a fact the male had no malicious though about him, he just couldn't understand why anyone would turn down such a promotion once, let alone three times.

      "No," Gral replied, "just that it isn't for me."

      "What do you have to say about all the time you've been spending patrolling close to the human border?" The admiral asking him was young, younger than even the generals here.His name was Grallselgerbilaz, Gral had remembered his name because they were both partially named for the Hunter God. He'd gained his promotion by winning the battles at Jordanio, and by being responsible for the Treaty of the Saved. Like Gral, he'd fought against his promotion, but at some point he had been convinced to accept it. "I see that you have even traded patrols with those assigned there."

      "Can we dispense with all this talk," said a general, midway on the right. "I have better things to do then waste time here." She was one of the the affiliated with the military faction. She was well decorated, had won multiple conflict in her career, and, if the latest information Toom had gathered was correct, she was due to be promoted admiral. "Lets just promote him, and be done with it."

      "No." Gral kept his tone flat, hiding his concern. They wanted to ground him. He couldn't let that happen.

      "This is your fourth promotion," Grallselgerbilaz said. "You can't constantly refuse them."

      "I can, and I will." Gral said, wondering why he was the one pushing so hard for him to accept it. He had to see that he belonged in space, on the hunt. "I am ideally placed to patrol the human border, my Heart is human. Through him I've had more interaction with them then other hunters. We all know they are now quietly hostile to us, and we have been able to prevent a number of incursions into kelsirian space by them."

      "We're aware of your successes, captain, but if another ship had been there, they would have been the ones to capture them. This almost reads like you are trying to steal their kills to gain fame."

      "If fame is what I was after, I'd be accepting this promotion. All I'm doing, is what Gralgriran wants me to go."

      The council members looked at each other. "What Gralgriran wants?" asked one of the politician.

      Gral nodded. "He sent me in human space to find my Heart. Twice more I've been sent back there and learned a little more about what humans were willing to do to achieve victory."

      "According to your files you went back a third time."

      "Yes, but I don't think Gralgriran was responsible for that one. I think Thuruksamian wanted to remind me that not all humans are like those I've been confronting. Some are simply people trying to live their lives."

      "Have you had any seers confirm this?"

      "No, I don't have a seer on my ship. All I'm doing is interpreting the event to the best of my abilities."

      "So you could be seeing what you want to see. And using that to justify your continued actions."

      Gral could only shrugs. He had no way to argue, no matter how much he *knew* he was right.

      "Actually," said the admiral on the far right, "I think I have confirmation. My mate's daughter has the Sight, and she told me that the hunter needed to stay at the line to watch for the snake."

      Everyone looked at him, including Gral. 

      "The snake, you say?" Grallselgerbilaz said.

      "That could mean the Taournians."

      "Yes, and human space is between us and them, is that the line?"

      "If it is, it would make sense to keep the captain there."

      "Only if he is the hunter of her vision."

      "Who else could it be? He's a hunter, named for the Hunter."

      "Maybe she meant Admiral grallselgerbilaz."

      "No," Grallselgerbilaz replied. "My hunting days are over, she couldn't mean me." There was definite sadness on the voice. He sighed. "Based on the seers vision, I move to leave Gralgiranselhelrarvnir as captain of the Viper's bane, and to give him a freedom of hunt along human space, or anywhere he might need to go to keep humans from attacking us."

      "I second the decision," the admiral who had reveled the vision said.

      "I also support it," the politician said, although it was obvious from her tone she wasn't happy about it.

      "Do we have any objections?"

      The other looked to each other, but no one said anything.

      "Then, captain, you are free to leave. Good hunting." 

      The council disbanded.

      Gral ran after the Admiral as he left through a side door, alone. "Admiral, did your near daughter say anything else?"

      "Hmm?"

      "Did her vision reveal any more of what I'm to do?"

      "What? Oh, no. I made that up."

      Gral stopped in his track. "What?" he couldn't have heard that correctly. The admiral looked over his shoulder and indicated he should continue walking with him. "You made it up? Does she have the Sight?"

      "Yes, she does, but she's four years old. Right now, her visions are about her getting candy and gifts."

      Gral was silent as he tried to wrap his head around someone inventing a vision. "Why?" he finally asked.

      The admiral looked at him. "Because I agree with you. You belong in space, not behind a desk, you have experience with the humans, but they wouldn't have listened to that. You make them nervous because you are seeing things from the humans they don't want to acknowledge.  They don't want to see the humans as a threat, even now that they allied themselves with the Taournians. I made the vision up because it was the only way I could get them to decide to keep you where you can do the most good."

      "Aren't you worried making up that vision might anger Syntarina? She could keep the seers from helping us in the future."

      The admiral laughed. "Really? When it helped Her favorite mate's price hunter?"

      Gral frowned. Being in space for so long he constantly lost track of the seasons. He ran the numbers in his head, and the admiral was right, it was hunting season. The time when Syntarina fawned over Gralgriran. When his time was done, She would go comfort the Slumberer, then the Lover would sweep Her off, before the Fire King showed Her true passion, and then the cycle would restart.

      "Thank you for the support, Admiral."

      "Just make sure those humans don't give us any trouble."

      * * * * *

      Thuruk and Toom were waiting in the access, when he got back to the ship.

      "What was it about?" Toom asked.

      "They wanted to ground me, but I dodged it again."

      "They let you refuse it a third time?"

      "No, and it was the fourth attempt, but I had support that tipped the balance in my favor. We even got free hunting rights, when he comes to the humans, out of it."

      "Free hunting rights? You're going to have to tell us how you managed that."

      Gral shook his head. He didn't want to have to mention a fabricated vision. The admiral might be confident Syntarina wouldn't retaliate, but Gral wasn't going to push his luck by repeating it. "What were you two up to during this time?"

      "Oh, nothing much," Thuruk said, "we just went shopping on the station." He checked his chrono, "We need to get going Toom."

      Toom was surprised by the comment, before straightening his face. "Right. I'll see you later Gral."

      Gral watched them go, wondering what they were up to. He headed to his cabin to change, then he'd hunt down Jeremy so they could have a meal together.

      He entered his room, and stopped, the door closing behind him. Jeremy stood in the doorway leading from the sitting area to their bedroom, arms resting against each side of the doorway. He was naked, with only black leather straps wrapped around his biceps, forearms, making a cross on his chest, a strap was wrapped around the base of his hard cock and balls, lifting it up slightly. There was also one around his thighs, and calf.

      Gral just looked at him. Gods, he looked amazing. He went to him, kissed him as he pushed him into the bedroom. The meal could definitely wait.