“It’s not an adventure if you don’t nearly die.”

“This is a terrible idea.“

“You just need to get into the spirit of things,” Human-Amir said. Vree might have given his words more weight if they weren’t being shot at. “Adventure is a longstanding human tradition.”

“You say that as if I am supposed to find this enjoyable,” Vree muttered, and laid his ears back so they wouldn’t get shot full of holes. “There is nothing enjoyable about having a shipload of pirates attempting to board our ship so they can kill us all.”

“Tradition,” Human-Amir repeated. He stole a look over their scant cover, more professional than Vree expected for a scientist, but humans lived to surprise. Human-Amir was no exception. “I see four of them at the bend in the hallway. How far do you think you can throw me?”

“Throwing you seems like a poor decision on both our parts.”

“Come on. It’s hypothetical. How far?”

It was never hypothetical with humans. They asked this sort of question before they did something stupid or worse, talked others into helping them.

Vree did not want to be the person who helped the human do something stupid.

Human-Amir was still waiting expectantly and Vree hissed at him. The sight of pointed canines and Vree’s barbed tongue did nothing to sway him. And he just nodded pointedly towards the pirates.

Vree popped up to get a look for himself. The pirates were right where Human-Amir said they were, tucked down where they would be difficult to shoot and more so to root out by hand.

If they had grenades…

They did not have grenades. There was no point in wishing for them.

“I could throw you about ten meters without difficulty, but less in this hallway,” Vree decided when he ducked back down. A blaster bolt sizzled the spot where his head had just been. “How far do I need to throw you?”

“See? I knew you would get on board. You have great night-vision, yeah?” Human-Amir didn’t wait for an answer. He leaned over Vree to fire several shots into the light-fixtures. The hallway went dark and the pirates hollered their confusion.

“Okay,” Human-Amir braced against the steel plating of the wall, checked his gun, and tucked it into the holster on his hip. “Throw me at them.”

“This is a terrible idea and I will not encourage you,” Vree growled in his face. “Why are you trying to get me killed? Your grandfather will chop me into little pieces and send me into the Void.”

“Not if this works.”

“The chances of this working are less than ten percent.”

“Higher than I thought. Throw me!”

Vree debated, but he could hear the pirates. They were calling for backup.

“Fine, come here,” he gave in. Human-Amir grinned, and let Vree get a good hold on him. “If you get killed, I am going to find some way to bring you back and explain to your grandfather that this was all your idea.”

“Ask Lord Petros. He knows a bunch of Hel’s priestesses. Now!”

What that meant, Vree didn’t want to know. He turned all of his considerable muscle to making his human fly. Human-Amir launched with a satisfying yell of elation.

He also lit on fire mid-air.

Fortunately for him, the pirates were just as startled by the flying, flaming human hurtling at them as Vree was, and it didn’t occur to them to go for weapons until too late.

Heat rolled over Vree and made his fur curl, but he charged in anyway, a blaster in one hand, and the other free for his metal-tipped claws.

Human-Amir had two pirates down by the time he covered the scant distance and was fighting a third. Frixst were covered in heavy scales, however, and they liked fire.

Of course, nothing liked blasters, and Vree shot it four times even as he batted the fourth, a small mammalian creature Vree didn’t recognize, into a wall. It screeched and scrambled back to its’ feet.

The Frixst went down, and Vree ducked when Human-Amir vaulted over him into the mammal. It shrieked, but died quickly.

When he stood up, Human-Amir was more serious than Vree usually saw him. He glowed with flame that died when the human closed his fists.

A scream unlike anything Vree ever heard before echoed down from the engine room. Vree clapped his paws over his ears to block it out, but to no avail. Ringing, whistling sonics reverberated through the metal of the ship and seemed to come from everywhere at once.

“Nerea,” Human-Amir said as the scream died down. He grabbed a blaster off the floor to replace his empty cartridge. A second scream followed the first, with distinct overtones of outrage. “Oooh she’s not happy. We better go back her up.”

Vree was not sure he wanted to go in a room with the angry Human-Mermaid, but Human-Amir was already trotting down the hall, wary eyes darting about in case any more enemies presented themselves.

It was so rare to see humans acting as the apex predators they supposedly were. Vree watched with interest, and caution, as his friend displayed a whole set of hunting instincts Vree never knew he had.

Well, he knew. he read the docket on humans after all, but this was his first time seeing the change from ‘cheerful explorers’ to ‘Human Galactic Empire’ himself.

A great many rumors and myths about humans made more sense now.

Human-Nerea turned out to be perfectly fine, although mussed and annoyed. There were a significant number of dead pirates on the floor, and Human-Nerea picked her way through them carefully, her bare feet graceful and silent on the metal floor.

“You okay?” Human-Amir questioned, while surveying the dead pirates. There was no question that they were very dead indeed, but also that there were probably more where they came from. “We heard you scream.”

“There’s a difference between screaming, and Screaming,” Human-Nerea said smugly. She finger-groomed her red hair back into a tail. “You?”

“The big scaly ones are fine with fire, but less fine with blasters. We’re good.”

The two humans moved into a hunting formation almost by instinct and without disrupting their conversation.

Vree noticed that some of the pirates bled heavily from the ears and put Human-Nerea’s Scream into his mental file of ‘things his humans could apparently do that no one previously knew about’.

He also noticed that, despite being larger and stronger than both of them, he was in the protected position of the formation.

Without asking he nudged Human-Amir out of the way so he could take the lead.

If there were more pirates, they would be getting far more than they expected. But first…

“I am not throwing you at enemies again,” Vree said firmly, and was not reassured when both his humans only laughed.