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warriors!”
    “Ask Arlana to wife and I’ll make the assignment to that little whorehouse go away.”
    37
    Charlotte Boyett-Compo
    It had been on the tip of Cair’s tongue to agree but he knew his mother well enough to know that if he gave in now, he’d be forced to give every time she made demands of him.
    “No,” he said. “I can’t stand the sight of that silly twit and I’ll not be shackled to her or any woman the rest of my life!”
    “Suit yourself,” his mother had said sweetly and the Vid-Com screen went black. And stayed black until he reported to duty onboard the hated pleasure ship. The first familiar face he’d seen aboard the Foehn had been his mother’s, smirking from the Vid-Com in his quarters.
    “Did you enjoy your trip from Aduaidh Quadrant to your new vessel, Cair?” she asked in a smarmy tone that set his teeth on edge.
    This time it had been he who broke the connection, refusing to take his mother’s uplinks for well over a week until Seamus Rawls had appeared on ship, a scowl on his ugly face.
    “Her Majesty sent me to be your new Chief of Supply. Do you ken how much I hate this, boy? Being pulled away from the war to baby sit the likes of you?” Seamus had snarled in his thick Astráil brogue. “You’d best call her else she’ll redline your scrawny little ass here for another five years and me alongside you!”
    Realizing his mother had drawn out the big guns in sending the warrior who had trained him as a boy, Cair had hung his head in defeat.
    “Call your mother,” Seamus barked before trundling off to make himself familiar with his new—and despised—posting.
    Tossing the towel aside, Cair stood there for a moment with his hands on his hips. He was already late to take the bridge but he really didn’t care. The ship practically ran itself anyway, for most of the crew had been marooned there even longer than he.
    “You really have to fuck up to get sent here,” Freemohn had once observed when he and Cair were deep in their cups. “Some think it’s a cushy assignment but it isn’t. It’s boring as hell and I wish I’d been blown to bits on Sasana instead of just getting wounded. Taking my R&R here was one major, major mistake.”
    “Stop complaining or I’ll engage you to that twit Arlana. You’ll learn what boredom is then, boy,” Cair had warned him. “Besides, you’re the only one I know on this hellship who can play chess.”
    Cair chuckled as he thought of his XO. He had liked the young man as soon as he’d met him and for once his mother had been cooperative in getting Freemohn assigned to the Foehn . Since Seamus refused to sit still long enough to play chess—or any other game he considered too tame—Cair finally had someone with whom he could share a few moment’s of intelligent dialogue.
    When the two of them weren’t stinking drunk, that is.
    Dressing in the black uniform he had worked so hard to acquire at the Academy, Cair took pride in the collar insignia he pinned to his shirt. The silver crossed war 38
    Pleasure’s Foehn
    scythes superimposed upon a grinning skull marked him as one of the elite, a warrior tested by the best of them and chosen from among a field of a thousand hopefuls. Only the man graduating at the top of his class was ever awarded the scythes and only then after passing a stringent hand-to-hand combat test, pitted against five other warriors. The rank of Scythelord was not easily won.
    The Vid-Com chimed again, drawing Cair’s attention. Frowning, he hoped it wasn’t his mother again but when he opened the channel found Seamus grinning at him.
    “She found the eggs?”
    “Aye, lad, that she did,” Seamus said with a chuckle.
    “And?”
    Seamus’ ugly face turned red with his laughter. “Best you come by my office on your way to the bridge and take a look-see. This you don’t want to miss!”
    Cair left his quarters with the sound of Seamus’ hoots of laughter ringing in his ears. It wasn’t often the old soldier