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it up in front of her eyes. It wasn’t any of those things.
    She sipped some more coffee and smiled. “How long was I out?”
    “You arrived three days ago, but we were on a mission, so we had to wait until we got back to open the box.” Ralos smiled.
    She blushed. “I was just dropped off like a parcel?”
    Ralos chuckled. “The ship was bringing a few other Terrans to areas of the Imperium. They had places to be, so they set you up, plugged you in and alerted us to your arrival.”
    She didn’t ask what they were doing. Previous missions were none of her business. One by one, they finished their breakfast and patted Jekross on the shoulder as they took care of their dishes.
    Dot ate as much as she could and lifted her plate to take it into the kitchen. The men had disappeared, and it wasn’t until they returned to the kitchen did she realize that they were going out in full battle suits. Even Loxin was wearing body armour that clipped onto the top edge of his wings and protected them.
    They came to her and shook her hand, one by one. As they headed out, they lowered the visors to their suits until no features were visible beyond the inky black wings of Loxin.
    Dot followed them and watched as they took off in a shuttle to the coordinates that they had worked out from her description. She only hoped that whatever gave her the voices had given them enough.
     
    * * * *
     
    Loxin shivered with the reaction of the slight touch of Dot’s hand. In the heavy glove, he could still feel the warm caress of her hand.
    Jekross turned to him. “Is it bad?”
    “No. I can deal with it. She is just more than I was anticipating, and she is not yet whole. Trying anything in the nature of intimacy would not be appropriate.”
    “Your people do work on instinct. Maybe hers don’t. She might need a more overt display of interest.” Jekross was treading on dangerous ground.
    One was in need and the other wasn’t, Loxin knew it. It made things harder for Jekross because he couldn’t give Loxin what he needed.
    When Loxin was a child, he had been shown the image of his mate. The local matchmaker had knelt next to a pool of silver and her fingers had caressed ripples into the surface that had formed into the image of a woman with solemn blue-green eyes, a wave of golden hair, and the look of someone who carried a great burden. He had sought her on twenty worlds and to have a Terran insisting that she needed to be on Nixos was bizarre. To see her in the projection had shocked him to his core. He had needed to pause the interview to explain his reaction to the others posted at Guardian Base Nixos. They were understanding, and when he had regained his composure, he had invited her to show up.
    His clock was ticking. Now that he had found his mate, ten days were his limit for control. They were on day six. He really hoped that today’s work went off without any issues. He had to get back to reading about Terran courtship rituals. They were varied and complicated. Not something that he needed in his current hormonally distracted state.
    The Clearik Dam was ahead of them and Jekross slowly brought the ship down in a meadow near enough for them to make a quick appearance and far enough that the average citizen would not be panicked by the sight of them.
    Jekross opened the com so they could listen to the opening ceremony for the dam, and Ralos watched the skies.
    They waited until they heard the words that Oracle had told them to wait for, and with the practice of partners in many disasters, they sprang into action.
    The Niandi ship came down, but it was not an attack ship, it was a ship in distress. Smoke billowed out of the ports as they fought to make an emergency landing. Ralos was reaching the dam at the moment that the ship hit the water and caused a catastrophic wave to slap the new construction.
    Loxin took to the air and aimed for the spectators. If he couldn’t stop the wave, he could do what he did best and protect those in