“And by kids you mean … ?”
“Maati and Thariinye,” Acorna put in. “They apparently decided at almost the same time we did to search for Maati’s and Aari’s parents on the blue world. But the Khieevi had the same idea, and had already launched an attack when we arrived.”
“Tell me, Captain, I am intrigued,” Nadhari said. “What powerful weapons do you carry on that salvage ship of yours that vanquished a Khieevi vessel?”
“Yes,” Hafiz said. “Please, tell us. If they are that effective, I will order many for the protection of our moon.”
Becker gave Nadhari a smile that urged her to wait a moment and answered Hafiz, “Well, sir, it is true that I have a bunch of very lethal weapons on the Condor. Some of them even work. Or would, if I had them assembled and installed. Which I didn’t. So then Acorna here says, what about using the tractor beam?”
A smile played at the edges of Nadhari’s mouth, which was the only thing about her with any extra flesh-her lips were sculpted but pleasingly plump, at least they were when relaxed. He seemed to recall seeing that same mouth set in a hard grim line above the jut of that firm and shapely jaw. It would have had him quaking in his gravity boots, if he thought she had any quarrel with him. But she didn’t, and RK’s tail tip flitted playfully from her shoulder bone to jawline to eartip, as flirtatious as a courtesan’s fan.
“Captain, surely you have not acquired enough cargo by now to act as another slingshot bomb with which to fell your enemies?”
“Oh, no, ma’am. Not slingshot this time. We-uh-skipped ‘em like a rock and then played crack the ship with their sorry carcass. Worked good, too, didn’t it, crew?”
“Yes, Joh. Good,” Aari said.
“Except for the survivors. We didn’t know there were two at first,” Becker said.
He regaled the table with the story of the questioning of the injured Khieevi while interweaving the story of Maati and Thariinye as if he had understood every word they spoke of their ordeal or had been with them while it was occurring. He gave it a few flourishes here and there and ended by saying modestly, “So I blew a hole through the bugger, but Aari here had already pretty much finished him off.”
“How?” Karina Harakamian asked.
“Why, by giving him a great big old hug. See, that Khieevi was so purely mortified by all that Linyaari sweetness and light Aari was extending to it just because he’s of such a highly evolved nature, that I figure the Khieevi came down with a monstrous case of sugar diabetes on the spot and it was such a shock to its system it curled up its toes and died.”
Karina clasped her plump, beringed hands over her heaving amethyst-veiled and amethyst-encrusted bosom and sighed, “How thrilling! And what a triumph for the light!” Then she glanced around at the stolid Linyaari faces, and at Becker’s determinedly innocent one. He was trying to keep his mouth from twitching. “Wait a moment. Is that true?” she asked.
“Not a word of it!” Becker exploded with laughter. Karina was exactly the kind of audience he loved. Gullible. “Well, the thing did curl up and die and it was because of something sticky as sugar, but not sweet. It was this sap stuff we picked up on some planet full of vines. But I had you going there, didn’t I?”
Nadhari shook an admonitory finger at him, “Naughty, naughty, Captain. But I must say, I’m very impressed. You and your crew of pacifist warriors vanquishing such formidable foes without so much as a real weapon among you-”
“You’re forgetting that I blew a hole the size of the cat through that thing,” Becker said, slightly offended at being lumped with the pacifists.
She shrugged like a panther rippling its muscles in preparation for a longer stretch. “Oh that. A mere coup de grace. But your ingenuity and wit amaze me. Anyone can win by force of muscle or superior firepower. But winning because of strategy and the ability to turn whatever you have at hand into a weapon, I find that-very, very impressive.”