They had moved away from their human forms and currently they were in the shape they most preferred, a mix of lion and human that most people found unsettling, a reminder of how magic was used to twist someone and change their very nature. The Holy Hive Mind had created its shock troops outside the laws of most civilizations. The boys didn’t go around the station as half-ers.

They watched anxiously as she gave the room a thorough examination. They’d done a more than adequate job, fixing a broken shelf and reordering the supplies. There was no trace of pickle juice or flour, and the air smelled fresh and untainted. The storeroom might actually be cleaner now than it had been before they started fighting.

Still she kept her face expressionless, dropping a single nod of approval. These two took any encouragement and ran way too far with it. She needed to remember that, no matter how young they were, barely out of their teens. They had seen terrible fights in the two years of service with her, and their presence was one of the reasons she and Dabry had figured out how to retire and take all of them outside the Holy Hive Mind’s grasp.

“Captain, after everything’s over tonight, could we go see the bioship then? It’s called You Sexy Thing, and it belongs to an intergalactic gazillionaire named Arpat Takraven and it goes to twelve leguins! That’s faster than anything we’ve ever seen.”

“No,” she said. “There’s a crate up front. Grab it and stow it in my office, then go ask Gio what he needs done still for prepping tonight.”

“Can we chop vegetables?” Thorn said hopefully. The two both loved using the long, sharp knives.

“Not tonight,” she said. “The last thing we need is one of you slicing off a finger and dropping it in the salad.”

Their whiskers sagged, but they nodded and exited to get the crate.

Niko sat down on a chair by the door, knuckling her forehead and trying to rub away the headache threatening to brew there. “Just get through the next few hours and let Dabry deliver a perfect meal,” she said to herself. “After that you can relax.”

Dabry returned before Niko got back to her office to investigate the crate. He bore a single, perfect eggplant, its skin glossy as though oiled, its color a deep purple shading to a paler white around the green stem, and its weight four and a half kilos. He did not tell Niko where it had come from, nor did she ask.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” he did say after reverently washing both it and all his hands, then drying them with a towel. They contemplated the spot where he’d placed it on the chopping block.