“Oh god, we are in so much trouble.”

Rennox was not having a good day. In fact, he hadn’t had a good night, and it had just spilled over into today, bringing nausea and a soul-crushing headache along for the ride. Worse, they were in the brig. He groaned as he dropped his head into his hands.

There was the scrape of metal on the floor and a bucket appeared in his line of sight, pushed there by his companion’s booted toe.

He groaned again and tried not to throw up. “The captain’s going to kill us.”

“Pfft,” Lieutenant Kovash snorted. “For a little bar fight? Raan not hypocrite.”

Rennox lifted his head just enough to look at her over his arm. She didn’t seem at all bothered at their current predicament, stretched out on the bench next to him, arm over her eyes to block out the relentless light currently trying to bore a hole through the back of his skull through his eyes, like she hadn’t a care in the world.

“What?”

She turned her head slightly to look at him. “Raan fight when drunk. Seen him clear entire bar before.”

Rennox blinked at that. He couldn’t imagine the captain getting drunk and starting a fight in a bar. Not like last night anyway. His memories were a little hazy, but there had been a disagreement over the pool table, and then someone had said something unpleasant to the girl he was trying to charm and it had gone to hell in a handbasket from then on in.

“You shouldn’t have gotten involved,” he grumbled at Kovash, even though by the point she’d intervened he’d been about to get his backside handed to him on a plate. “Now you’re in trouble as well.”

She grunted and shrugged. “Raan shout. Then be all ‘captain I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed’,” she said, drawing air quotes. “Then he get over it.”

Rennox just looked at her. He still couldn’t get over her using the captain’s given name so easily, even if they had known each other for years.

“Be fine,” she announced, folding her arm up over her eyes again. “Raan not like bullies. He understand when you explain.”

“Me?” Rennox squeaked, then quickly coughed and made sure his voice was deeper when he carried on. “Why do I have to explain?”

She lifted her arm to look at him again, amusement in her orange-yellow eyes. “Duuuh, Raan know me, remember? He not believe me if I say I not start fight.”

Oh… shit.

She read his expression and grunted again. “See? Better from you. He like you.”

He did blink at that, even if the thought did make a warm, fuzzy feeling spread out from the centre of his chest. “What? You’re like… friends. I’m just his yeoman.”

“Just yeoman… yeah, right. Arriana? Frontier Day? Raan keep you close. Under wing. Look after you. No?”

He leaned over the bucket, his stomach churning. What the hell had been in those drinks last night?

“Yeah… I guess,” he muttered, hoping like hell that Captain Mason remembered that when he came to fetch them…