Alex sat before the computer, watching the recording of the incursion into the ship's system and how Asyr had fought against the other coercionist, when the door opened. He'd already checked the system, and it had fare well in his absence. He looked over his shoulder and smiled at her. She was wearing her usual red and gold jacket over a pink shirt, and today she had on black slacks.

    "You did really good," he said when she stood there, stunned. He indicated the display.

    She ran and hugged him. "I'm so glad you're out of your room."

    After a moment of surprise, Alex hugged her back. "Me too." She took a step back, blushing. "I mean Will mentioned it, but I thought he was joking, especially when he said you'd joined the crew."

    "I did, but only until I get to my destination. So, you want to run me through how you did it?"

    "Oh, I did what you told me, I looked for patterns, and used that against her. She used a lot of walls and hunting program, so I reprogrammed a few of them to attack her, she didn't realize in time, then I shielded myself to get around her walls and blocked the connection point she was at. It was pretty fun. I mean it's nothing compared to what you did, you took out their entire ship. I can't believe you managed that, you're going to have to-"

    "Asyr, please stop." Alex's voice was low, as he felt sick at the memory. "I'd rather you not bring that up again."

    "Why not?"

    Alex stomped down on his anger at the question. He knew it should be obvious why, but she lived in this culture, where killing seemed to be accepted.

    "I didn't want to kill them. All I wanted to do was keep them from catching us. Their death isn't something we should be celebrating."

    Asyr shrugged, pulled a chair away from the other station and sat. "They knew the danger when they chased us. If you hadn't done it, we'd have shot them down, we would just have taken damage, that's all."

    "It's still not a reason to congratulate me each time." 

    "You know you're going to have to kill again, now that you're part of the crew, right?"

    Alex shrugged and looked away. "It doesn't mean I have to look forward to it. I take it you've killed before?"

    "How do you think I ended up here?" Alex raised an eyebrow at her.

    "The first time I kill I was a kid, twelve, maybe thirteen."

    "Why would you do that?"

    "He took me from my family. He was the king, so it was his right, but I didn't want to go. When we got to his castle, he forced me to have sex with him. I screamed, but he didn't care. I fought him at first, so he kept me locked in his chamber, with nothing I could use to hurt him, or myself. I realized that the only way I'd get out was if he thought I was willing, so I acted like I was enjoying myself. It took a while, but eventually he let me follow him where he went, so he could use me when ever he felt like it. At one of the meal, I was able to hide a knife on me. When he took me back to his chamber, I gutted him. He screamed, so the guards came in, but I was able to run between them in their surprise. They chased me. I made it to the space port, and sneaked onto a ship."

    "What did they do when they found you?"

    "We were in space, so they couldn't do much. Obviously they didn't space me, but they passed me along another ship as soon as they could."

    "This one?"

    "No. A different pirate ship. A lot of the guys there figured they'd get to have some fun with me, but the captain's wife took me in. She protected me, gave me an education. When I was twenty, there was a mutiny, I barely made it off the ship before they sealed it. Last I heard it had been destroyed by some mercs. I managed on my own for a while, but then bounty hunters showed up and tried to get me. They'd been hired by the king's family. They wanted me back for punishment. Escaping them I ran into the captain here. He doesn't like bounty hunters so he was telling them to go away before he even asked what I'd done. He's been protecting me ever since."

    "I'm sorry," Alex said.

    She smiled. "Nothing you did, but life isn't pretty, or clean. You take the compliments where you get them, and you do what you can to be happy. The rest you make sure doesn't stick to you. You're lucky, no one knows you're the one who did it. You don't have anyone hunting you. You'll be able to walk off the ship and go back to your life. The rest of us, this is all we have."

    "Those bounty hunters can't still be after you. It has to have been decades, in objective time, since it happened."

    "The family still wants me. They aren't going to forget what I did."

    Alex was silent. "I still can't rejoice in their death." 

    "I'm not saying you do. But we're happy you did it, we're all alive because of you. That's something we get to be happy for, well, most of us. Anders' still pissed at you."

    "I know, and now that I'm part of the crew, Anders can do what ever he wants to me, the captain isn't going to stop him. I didn't even know he'd been keeping Anders in check when I was a passenger."

    "Anders can't just do what he wants. If he attacks you, we'll know he was the one doing it, so We'd make him pay. But he can arrange something like an accident. They're known to happen on a ship like this. If we can't know for sure we're not going to risk angering the captain."

    "So I'm going to have to be on my guards. That's what you're saying."

    She nodded.

    Alex really had to find a way to resolve the problem with Anders. He wished the man was a computer system, then he could just go in and rewrite his code so he'd look after him instead of wanting him dead.

    He straightened. Why not? That might work.