Enzo grunted as Jaela landed an elbow in his solar plexus, and turned out of the way just before her knee had a chance to swing up and get him in the stomach. He turned again and swept her legs out from under her, but she rolled to her feet immediately and began circling him in a crouch.

“Come on, human, is that the best you can do?” She sneered, and her next hit came so suddenly Enzo didn’t have time to dodge. His lip split under her fist, but he grabbed her by the ankle as she darted away and brought her back to the ground. As always, she slipped out of his grasp. “You better step it up or Zarek’s gonna kick you off the team.”

No matter how often Jaela threatened to make Enzo join the rest of the men, make him leave his cushy place with the small bridge crew, he’d never seen any actual evidence that it was going to happen. It had been six months already, and his temporary position was looking pretty damn permanent. Which, he thought as he landed a hit in Jaela’s stomach, was a damned good thing because those fuckers were wild and unhinged.

There was a stark division, a hierarchy, among Zarek’s men. There was the bridge crew, a group of eight including Enzo, Vikali, Jaela, and a few others who were on different rotations from them. Then there were the rest, the men who truly seemed like pirates, wild, angry, restless in a way which made Enzo think that Zarek only held his position over them because of the frightening, ruthless way he ruled.

Enzo pulled on his Gift and disappeared, pushing extra energy into his feet to make them silent, and Jaela huffed. “Cheater!”

He grinned, and before she knew what had hit her he let go of his power and reappeared at her back just in time to wrap his arms around her and leap backward, dragging her with him to the floor. They hit the ground together, but Jaela slipped once more out of his arms and before he could react she had punched him in the throat and pushed the sharp end of a dagger against his crotch.

“Hey, hey! Careful with those, I need them!” Enzo held up his hands in surrender and Jaela, panting and dripping blood out of one of her nostrils, pressed just that bit harder. Enzo sucked in a breath. “You cut one off and I’m coming for you, woman, I know where you sleep!”

Jaela laughed and stowed her blade in its holster at her hip. She wiped at her bloody nose with the back of her arm and stood, and Enzo scrambled up after her. “You’re getting better, Terran, I’m impressed.”

“Yeah, well.” He gingerly poked at his bottom lip and looked at the blood on the tips of his fingers. “I think you’d have killed me by now if I hadn’t stepped up my game.”

She grinned, blood on her teeth, and Enzo thought that maybe that wasn’t such a joke. The doors to the training room swung open before she could reply, and they both turned to see the captain striding in, Echo perched on his shoulder. Enzo stood up straighter and he didn’t miss the way Jaela covered up her laugh with a cough.

The captain stopped in front of them and cocked his head to the side. “Every time I find you two together one of you is bleeding. Should I be concerned?”

Enzo threw an arm around Jaela’s shoulders, ignoring her elbow jabbing into his side. “Nah, Cap, we’re just having a friendly game of who dies first! I’ll tell you a secret - she’s gonna win.”

“Get off of me, you big idiot, you reek,” Jaela groaned, shoving him so hard he stumbled back a step. “What’s up, Zarek?”

“We’ve got a job,” the captain said, grinning in a way that told Enzo it was going to be a good haul, predatory enough to make Enzo squirm pleasantly. “You and the kid meet me on my starship in thirty.”

“You got it,” Enzo said, poking again at his lip which had begun to swell.

When the doors had swished shut behind the captain Jaela kicked him in the shin so hard he went down. Then she was dashing out the door, calling over her shoulder, “Dibs on the fresher in our room!”

“Aw, come on! I hate showering in the commons, you asshole!” Enzo groaned at her retreating back.

------

Later they were all gathered around the holodeck in Zarek’s ship so that the captain could debrief them. “We’ve worked for this guy before - that weirdo who calls himself Menagerie?”

Jaela groaned but Enzo, who had never heard of him before in his life, raised an eyebrow. “What kind of a name is Menagerie?”

“Guy collects wild animals from other planets and keeps them on display - glass cages, artificial environments - real freaky shit.” Zarek shrugged and waved his hand over the control panel on the holodeck. A holo image of a green planet flickered into their view, and Enzo had to step back because he was half standing in it. To the left and slightly over their heads a sum was hovering, and Enzo whistled when he saw all the zeroes. “He pays real well, though, so, you know, live and let live and all that bullshit.”

“What kind of animal does he want us to pick up?” Enzo asked.

“Some kind of bug, I guess, native to a specific region of this planet called Grion.” He flicked his fingers and another image popped up next to the planet.

Enzo scoffed. “A bug? The hell does he want a bug for?” He poked the image of the creature in question, stretched it with his fingers until it was the size of the planet. It looked to him like a fuzzy pink slug with two bulbous eyes sticking out of the side of its head. There were fuzzy green antennae shooting straight up out of its head. Hardly valuable, if you asked him. “Better yet, why can’t he come get it himself?”

“It’s not your place to question the captain, kid,” Jaela snapped, always quick to jump down his throat when it came to Zarek. Enzo suspected that he wasn’t the only one who harbored a secret attraction for their captain.

“I’m not questioning him, Jael, calm down.” He shrugged. “Just saying it seems a little suspicious is all. I mean, it’s a bug. How hard can it be to pick up a bug? The pay seems disproportionate to the job.”

“Kid’s right, there’s something off about this one,” Zarek said, completely missing the way Enzo stuck out his tongue at Jaela. “That’s nothing new though, Zo, Menagerie’s always been a tricking little motherfucker. Never take what he says at face value. Still, pay’s worth it. This guy has more money than he knows what to do with, and hell if I’ll ever pass up an opportunity to get some of it.”

He held up three golden shackle-shaped things, and gave one to Enzo when he held out his hand for it. “These are for keeping it contained once we catch the bugger. Just open it up like this.” He pinched the hinge with two fingers and the cuff gave a mechanical hiss while it snicked open. “Pet it around the critter’s neck, right there, close it up and we’re on our way to one hell of a payday.”

Enzo held the cuff up to the light, examining it, noting the intricate weavings of blue light that looked almost like veins. “Sounds easy enough I guess. Do we know where to find it?”

Zarek flicked the image of the bug out of the way and zoomed in on the planet, indicating a dark patch of trees sitting in the middle of a marsh. “According to Menagerie, they live only in the canopy of these purple trees.”

“Damn - I hate heights,” Jaela groaned and Enzo turned to stare at her because what?

“You’ve got to be shitting me. Dude, you’re a godsdamn space pirate. You live in a spaceship. Literally every time you go to a planet you’re as high up as you can possibly get, and you’re gonna sit there and tell me that you’re afraid of heights?”

Jaela’s cheeks flushed purple with her blush, and she punched Enzo in the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. “Shut the hell up, Terran. It’s not the same, alright, we’re not gonna be in a ship.”

Enzo just laughed and shook his head, and Jaela huffed. She made the excuse that she needed to prepare for their landing before stomping off in the direction of the cockpit.

“The two of you argue like godsdamn children,” Zarek mumbled, concentrating on the holo of the planet, probably mapping out the best place to land. The light from the trees washed Zarek’s white face with purple, contrasting fetchingly with the black stubble on his square jaw.

“Aw, just means we like each other is all,” Enzo said. He bumped Zarek’s shoulder affectionately with his own, a gesture that gave him pause. It was something he’d often done to Kade, a quiet way of showing his affection for him. Enzo forgot himself sometimes, Terran sentiment and emotions drowning out his mercenary upbringing. It was worse when it happened like that, with Zarek, because Enzo had never quite gotten over his attraction to him. It had grown, really, and if he wasn’t careful the already precarious friendship he felt towards the captain could turn into something much more dangerous. Zarek didn’t do relationships, and Enzo knew that if he got a taste of him he wouldn’t be content with anything less than all of the captain.

“I’ll - uh - yeah, I’m gonna go get ready to land,” he said, taking his own sudden awkwardness as his cue to get out before he made even more of an idiot of himself.

A quick scan of the planet assured him that it was way too damn hot for his exosuit, so instead he put on black pants with plenty of convenient pockets and filled them with anything he thought might come in handy. He hadn’t had a lot of time to work on anything new, had spent the last six months training endlessly with Jaela, going on missions, and repairing the damage done to his exosuit on Deneb’s moon. Still, he had some things he thought might help them out.