“I almost couldn’t believe it? The silly chit refused me. Twice!”

Jason was thoroughly done with this conversation.

Hell, he was done with the party as a whole. Unfortunately, as the ‘Hero of Gurathu’, he had expectations to meet. Which in this case, meant acting as vapid and disinterested as humanly possible while his ‘date’ for the evening lamented the surprising moral fortitude of a border patrol Captain.

Countess Hraft was supposed to be a minor noble from an equally minor border world. A fact that she was attempting to hide with garish amounts of gold and jewelry scattered about her faux armour.

Not that the woman was alone in being a total fashion disaster.

Most of the nobility scattered about the party were clad in just as much of the precious metal or more. Even the aliens – few that there were – seemed to have bowed to the local norms and clad themselves as such. He could even see some kind of plant woman who looked wilted by the sheer number of jewels dangling from her leaves.

He himself was one of the few exceptions. His handler had been avidly against it, but he’d managed to swing the idea that he’d make more of a splash in his dress uniform than if he went dressed like the contents of a jewelry box.

“So, you had to pay a fine?” one of the women in Hraft’s circle said dryly, clearly as bored of the woman’s diatribe as he was. “A fine that was less than what you were offering to pay for the bribe?”

Hraft rolled her eyes condescendingly at the other woman. “Yes, but it’s the principle of the thing. One can’t be seen to be losing face when they are part of the higher circles.”

Jason had to resist the urge to scoff. His date could only get away with saying that because she’d somehow managed to corral those few other attendees of the party who were lower ranked than her. Those second daughters who had been sent in place of the head of the household or heiress.

“I’m sure,” the woman who had spoken said, a hint of bitterness in her tone, before her gaze finally switched to him. “But enough about this upjumped peasant, you simply must tell me how you managed to snag the Hero of Guarathu for your date.”

Hraft seemed a little annoyed at the change in topic, but her proverbial ruffled feathers were quickly assuaged by the reference to her ‘conquest.’

“Oh, him?” Hraft said. “I happened on the poor dear after a rather nasty breakup in a little café. Needless to say, he was positively smitten with me.”

Jason resisted the urge to frown as he felt the seven foot tall woman’s arm wrap possessively around him, nearly forcing his head into the side of her breast.

Instead, he forced a smile. “Yes, I was drowning my sorrows when Hraft swept in and swept me gallantly off my feet.”

He had a feeling his delivery came out a little wooden, but he was an engineer not an actor. Or a secret agent. Not that it mattered a whit. Even if none of the women present believed that he genuinely liked Hraft, they’d still be impressed by the woman’s ability to ‘get’ him by crook, if not hook. Shil’vati courting habits could be cut-throat like that.

“Off his feet and onto his back, I’m sure.” A woman at the back laughed, causing the many jewels about her person to jingle.

Beside him, he felt Hraft stiffen slightly. Likely due to the fact that they hadn’t actually done anything of the sort. Much to her poorly hidden disappointment. And saying as much would no doubt shame her in front of her nominal peers. After all, what kind of woman couldn’t score with what was commonly agreed to be the randiest species in the universe?

“Ah, actually-” Hraft started to say.

“Don’t be shy. I’m sure it didn’t take long, if half the rumors I’ve heard about Humans are true.”

His date blushed slightly as the other three women continued to laugh, before glancing at him pleadingly.

Really? he thought. You really need this?

He sighed. Well, one way or another, after this evening it would all be over. So with that in mind he didn’t argue with the group, instead he simply gave them a thin-lipped smile rather than protest as a Shil’vati male might have. Which was all the confirmation they needed in their minds. He was Human after all.

He ignored the titters and guffawing, even as he felt Hraft sag in relief.

Yes, one way or another, tonight’s the last time I’m going to do this.

Which was why he stiffened his back, and continued to gaze about in a vapid manner as Hraft seized on an opening to speak.

“So, I’ve told you about my troubles with trying to get things done recently,” she said. “What about you enterprising young ladies?”

“Oh, I don’t know if I…” One of them started to say, glancing around, before her eyes landed on Jason. “Well, I did have this little run-in with a customs agent a few weeks back.”

Jason resisted the urge to smirk. It was almost too easy. Shove a pretty boy in front of a lot of these girls and they practically tripped over themselves to show off.

-----------------

“I hope you know that tonight was the last night,” he said as soon as the pair of them made it back to Hraft’s fancy rented apartment, watching the woman shut the door behind her.

Hraft scowled at him, before scoffing, her earlier high class accent dissolving into something altogether more coarse. “…Fine. A deal’s a deal.”

Jason cocked an eyebrow as the woman pulled at the adhesive stuck to her face, transforming from the ‘illustrious Countess Hraft’ to the much more familiar Agent Pernora.

“And you don’t have the authority to overturn my new orders from up-top,” he said.

The Interior agent just shrugged, slinking over to the fridge in a way that Hraft never would. Although he’d never say it, he was always a little impressed when Pernora did her transformation into her cover identity. It wasn’t just in the way she looked and talked, but in the very way she moved.

Both women moved with confidence, but to his mind Hraft moved with the confidence of a bull in a field, utterly ignorant of any dangers that lay beyond her small domain. By contrast, Pernora moved more like a tiger in bushland; confident, yes, but it was a confidence tempered by a certain degree of wariness about her surroundings.

As evidenced by the fact that her eyes were flitting about the confines of the safe-house they’d been pseudo-living in for the last few weeks, even as she cracked open the fridge.

“Yeah, there’s that, too,” she admitted totally shamelessly, as she grabbed a beer from the fridge – another thing Hraft would never partake of. “If I could, I’d have you out there for at least another few months helping me ferret secrets out of those little idiots.”

Jason grunted as he pulled off the bronze hauberk that acted as Shil’vati dress uniform. “Surely another male would do just as well?”

Hell, even another human might do. He’d seen a few of them in his short two months on the Shil’vati homeworld. He hadn’t spoken with any. Somewhat hypocritically, his first instinct was that they were traitors. People who had sold out to the alien invaders.

Sure, he’d done the same thing, but he’d mostly been forced into it. Most of the people he’d encountered on Shil had been politicians or corporate leaders trying to curry favor with the Imperium.

Which was why he’d actually seen them, given that they’d been attending the same sorts of events he was. A few had tried to approach him, possibly to trade off his own budding reputation, but he’d shut that down with all the tact he was known for. Much to both ‘Hraft’s’ and Pernora’s consternation.

“Perhaps,” Pernora admitted as she sank into an oversize sofa-chair. “But of the other males available to me, none have your… pedigree.”

He snorted. “I can assure you, anything that you might have heard about my prowess in the bedroom could be easily replicated by any other dude about my age and in decent health.”

“Not that,” the alien snorted, a drop of her drink dribbling down her tusk before she carelessly wiped it away with the back of her hand. “Damn horny Human. No, I need you because you’re famous. The Hero of Gurathu. As many girls out there are thinking with their cunts, just as many are trying to win you over because it would raise their esteem in the courts. Which is why most of these girls are tripping over themselves to impress you. It’s because they think they might have a chance of stealing you away from a lowly Countess like me.”

Jason cocked his head, as he shrugged on a jacket. “Are you actually a Countess?”

The woman reclined in her seat, staring up at the ceiling. “Not yet. Bust a few more of those prissy nobles though? Well, we’ll see.”

Jason shook his head. There it was. The Pernora ambition. The same ambition that had seen her take what was barely a clue and use it to try and arrest the daughter of one of the most powerful mercantile families in the Imperium.

Not even getting blown up in the process and spending nearly an hour floating around in the void of space, with the debris of the ship she’d just occupied, until rescue showed up had blunted that ambition.

Unfortunately for her, the investigative work she’d done to catch said merchant heiress had been kind of overshadowed by his single-handed capture of the woman and her ship. Sure, she had no doubt she’d gotten some grudging claps on the back behind closed doors within the Interior, but it was abundantly clear that Jason was the hero of the hour in the eyes of the media.

Which was why he’d barely been on the world a week before the agent had shown up out of the blue and demanded he aid her in an ongoing sting operation.

Never mind the fact that he’d nearly died and had wanted nothing to do with the fame that had come with his ‘daring operation.’ In Pernora’s eyes, all that mattered was that he’d earned prestige from the whole affair, and thus he owed her.

Fortunately for her, said offer of secondment under Interior command had come with more than just an unearned sense of entitlement. No, the Interior Agent had known how to leverage the stick as much as the carrot.

Which was why he offered her what might have been something close to a fond smile as he slipped a hooded jacket over his head and reached for the door.

“Well…” He paused, momentarily stumped for what to say. “It was… interesting working with you, Agent. I hope things go well for you in future.”

The woman in question simply let out a loud burp before waving vaguely in his direction. “Just get out of here, human. Go see those girls of yours.”

He chuckled, pulling open the doorway to see his escort for the evening standing where she always was. Or at least, where she usually stood on those evenings where he wasn’t forced to stay at ‘Hrafta’s home’ in an attempt to lend credence to the idea that they were courting.

“Oh!” Pernora shouted just as he stepped out the door and into the warm night air. “If you have any hot Human friends who fancy a job as a secret agent, send them my data-net details.”

He just laughed as he shut the door behind him. That done, he turned to the silent militia woman who was dressed in casual clothes.

“Shall we?” he asked.

The woman just nodded, before they silently took off through the streets of the Shil’vati capital. Which was, rather confusingly, also named Shil. A bit like the way Rome was both an Empire and a city.

“Will you miss me, oh silent watchwoman?” he asked as they walked along the mostly empty streets.

The woman gave no indication of a response, to his complete lack of surprise. As far as he was aware, the militiawoman was on permanent loan to Pernora, and in the entire time he’d known her, he’d never heard so much as a single word beyond the occasional positive or negative grunt from her.

And those only came in response to a comment or question from Pernora.

If they were on Earth pre-Imperial invasion, he might have suspected the woman was mute, but Shil’vati medical tech would have been more than capable of correcting such an issue.

So, instead he’d come to the conclusion that she just wasn’t much of a talker. Still, part of him had been hoping for some response. The woman had been escorting him ‘home’ for months.

Though it’s still kind of ridiculous I need an escort, he thought.

He was a grown-ass man and a sort-of war hero. More to the point, he was armed. Which held a lot more weight than the earlier point when the average Shil’vati was a seven foot tall wall of muscle. Trained Marine or not, if he was unarmed, there wasn’t a ton he could do if a group of Shil’vati females chose to push an agenda.

But he wasn’t unarmed.

Unfortunately for him, it was apparently an odd sight indeed for a male Shil’vati to be walking around without some kind of escort. Be it his wife, mother, aunt or sister. Not as a result of any kind of rule, just because… that was how it was.

And, as much as his hooded jacket served to disguise the fact that he was Human – thus avoiding being mobbed by curious aliens – nothing could hide the fact that he was male.

Hence his silent escort.

The trip didn’t take long. A bare ten minutes at a casual pace. Or at least, a casual pace for the pair of them. He’d always thought the notion of being able to tell someone was military just from a glance was bullshit, but after having spent as long as he had amongst the forces, he’d found there was some truth to it.

Nothing terribly dramatic in his eyes, like a more ‘dangerous bearing’ or more ‘noble demeanour’. No, it was as simple as having a walking pace just a tad faster than the norm, the limbs just a little more rigid. Not quite a march, but close enough to it.

In the end the pair found themselves at their destination without incident.

“Looks like this is it,” he said as he stopped at the door to a fairly-upscale apartment complex.

It wasn’t nearly as fancy as the one he’d just come from, but it was still nice enough. This was the rich part of town after all. He dared not even imagine how ruinous the rent would be, if the Interior weren’t covering the cost for him.

If he’d been secretly hoping for some final words from the militiawoman, he was disappointed, as she simply glanced between him and the door, before turning around and marching off.

“Bye?” he called after her, but the woman gave no indication of having noticed as she disappeared into the night.

Shaking his head in amusement, he flipped his key-card against the door’s lock before stepping inside.

The sight that greeted him as he did, was to put it simply, a little unexpected.

“Hello Master, do you want dinner, a bath, or me?”

He simply stared in dumbfounded horror at the sight of Yaro in an apron – and nothing else – standing in the hallway. It actually took him a few seconds to register what she’d just said.

Then he chuckled, throwing his jacket on a nearby peg. “Ladies, my life is already enough of a juvenile masturbatory fantasy as it is, please don’t actively add to it.”

Yaro straightened up with a small smile of her own, even as a loud groan of dismay came from the living room.

“Aw,” Raisha cried as she stepped out into the hall. “Everything I read on the data-net said that would drive you wild.”

He looked at her and saw that her trainee exo-jumpsuit was still on, the green and gold coloring of the Aviary emblazoned proudly across it. Which suggested that she’d just gotten back from the base herself. Of course, it was also entirely possible that she’d been back for hours and just hadn’t bothered to get changed. Both were equally plausible.

Instead of dwelling on it though, he turned his attention back to the grinning Yaro, who was somehow managing to look regal despite her current choice in wardrobe.

“It’s a little… on the nose,” he finally said.

“I have absolutely no idea what that means,” Raisha said cheerily.

“It means it’s too much,” an all too familiar voice intoned from the living room. “Which is exactly what I said it would be when you suggested it.”

Shaking his head in mirth, Jason stepped past the pair of females to see the only other male in the apartment. In the living room, Tarcil was sitting on the sofa fiddling with his omni-pad, while a slightly cliché looking romantic comedy played on the TV in front of him.

“No Kernathu?” he asked, glancing around.

The male Shil’vati shook his head. “You know how she is.”

A pair of arms wrapped around Jason’s midsection, and he found himself almost lifted into the air as he was enveloped in a hug.

“She’s back at base.” Raisha didn’t quite shout into his ear – but it was a close thing. “Working on the Jesus.”

He shook his head, even as he gently extricated himself from the amorous alien’s embrace. “I still wish she hadn’t called it that.”

“Then you would have been better served not destroying the version of the mech that was better named, according to your sensibilities.” Yaro slipped past them to sink into her chair – and may the gods help anyone who argued otherwise. “In which case our resident technician might have been more amenable to your suggestions in naming its replacement.”

Jason just shook his head as he waddled over to the TV as best he could with Raisha pretty much clamped to his side.

“Yeah, well I doubt I’ll need to destroy any more mechs in spectacular feats of heroics in the near future,” he said as he sat next to Tarcil, Raisha sitting on his other side. “Whatever these new orders are, they’re probably for nothing exciting.”

After all, he was the Imperium’s current media darling. Which meant that wherever they were sending him, it was likely to be filled with cameras, politicians, and very boring.