Uh oh. His tone touched off my spidey senses. This was going to be trouble. What hadn’t the shiny little shithead told me this time? Swinging my legs back onto the floor, I rubbed my face to spark semi-alertness. “You have my attention. What is it?”

“That was a rousing speech you gave, about fighting the Kristang with everything you have, to your last breath.”

“You’re keeping me awake to compliment me on my speech?”

“No, truthfully, as a speech, it was third rate at best. Totally derivative. You’re talking about the potential of going into humanity’s first space battle, and the best you can do is lame clichés? You could at least have thrown in some warmed-over quotes from Patton, or something.”

“For Christ’s sake, Sk-“

“My point is, you may intend to fight with everything you have, but one thing you won’t have to fight with is this ship. I need the Dutchman to contact to Collective. I won’t allow it to be put at risk. And since I need a human, a live human crew to fly it for me, I won’t allow you to send everyone away to fight. Especially if it is likely that you would lose.”

Shit. I gritted my teeth to answer. “What do you mean, you won't allow?”

“If you want to do something stupid that will put the Dutchman at risk, or deprive me of a crew, I won’t cooperate in running the ship. That means I won’t program jumps, or load courses into the autopilot, or prepare and target weapons. Captain Desai has only learned to minimally maneuver this ship in normal space, and I can lock out those controls also. By going through the wormhole and then shutting it down behind us, I’m taking a risk that you might decide not to help me find the Collective after we resupply at Earth. We have a bargain, Joe, I expect you to keep it.”

“Fuck.”

“Such a multi-purpose word, Joe.”

“I meant it as, fuck, yes, I remember our bargain. I will absolutely keep my end of it. You have any genius thoughts on how we’re to resupply, if the Kristang have a major task force of ships in earth orbit?”

“That scenario is unlikely, given the price the Thuranin have been charging the White Wind clan for shipping to and from Earth. I expect the Kristang have garrisoned only a minimal force on Earth, their technological advantage is so overwhelming they would not need many troops to hold your backwards planet. Thuranin communications that I have intercepted indicate they have major fleet elements setting up for a battle around a wormhole cluster at the other edge of this sector. Their attention is focused elsewhere.”