Free Tarik: Entry Level Warfare by K. A. Kerr

fucked up the return sensors which originally didn’t even have a problem. If any of these pilots had flown that they’d probably not make it back. It wasn’t a huge deal, I caught the mistakes and fixed them but she’d needed to know. We were sitting here and I brought it up, I wasn’t yelling or being mean, just telling her what was going on.” Daze took a deep breath before she went on. “I guess she thought I was trying to embarrass her, she started yelling about how I was nowhere near as good a mechanic as her, which isn’t a big deal, then yelling about how I wouldn’t even have a job if it weren’t for my father.”
    “Wait, who is your father?” Tarik asked with a puzzled look on his face.
    “Dav is my father, sorry thought you knew that.”
    “Shit.” Tarik said under his breath.
    “No, it’s not like that. My father is the most logical man on the ship; he didn’t just give me a job. I earned this job, I was raised on this ship. If my father thought I wasn’t doing my job he’d have no problem firing me.”
    “Okay so your father is the boss, we’ll come back to that later. Continue on with the story please.”
    “Oh, so she stood up and started yelling in my face . She was drunk and does that sometimes. But then she grabbed me by my hair and pulled my head back. She yells a lot but this is the first time she’d ever grabbed me like that. I tried to pull her hand away but she had a good grip and started to shake me by my hair, all while screaming inches from my face.” Daze looked down like she was disappointed in herself. “I punched her in the face. I shouldn’t have but I just lost my temper and wanted her off of me.”
    “Sounds to me, like you were defending yourself.”
    “I was but it only made things worse, Bink ran over and pulled Rye away. Drang, or Lamb as you probably have to call him, came over and pulled me away.” She looked him in the face “That’s when you came in; nobody thought she would go after someone else, but she was mad and drunk.”
    “I’ve had two encounters with her so far, both of which she was drunk and threatened me.” Tarik said feeling himself getting angry again. “I’ve never even been able to introduce myself.”
    “I know, it’s unfortunate, she can be really sweet when she is sober.”
    “So I hear. I also hear that is a rare occurrence.” Tarik said not wanting to hear excuses for Rye.
    “Nobody expected her to come at you like that, you are still an unknown  here, and you would think you’d be innocent in her eyes. Even more nobody expected your reaction, we’ve all seen your assessment, and you would have destroyed her.” Daze was mostly using her hands to talk.
    Tarik couldn’t disagree with that, he wanted to hurt her. If he hadn’t been stopped he had no idea what the outcome would have been but Rye would have been hurt one way or the other.
    “Nobody blames you.” She went on “If I was full Northern European and she said that to me I think they would still be holding me back.” She smiled trying to make light of the situation. ”Dav has decided to not have a talk with you, he doesn’t think it's necessary, he does however need to fine you.”
    “Fine me? For what?” Tarik asked, shocked at the thought.
    “For the inappropriate touch on the ship leader. It’s a formality really, he has to or it would void out your contract completely. Normally something like that you’d be working free for six  months. He’s reviewed the security footage and decided to only fine you the minimum of one hundred points. If the incident didn’t need to be logged with our parent company he would have probably let you off with a warning.”
    “Well at least, he’s not angry with me.”
    “I wouldn’t say that, I think he wants you to control  yourself more. I should say he wants you, Rye and me to control  ourselves more. We’ll be getting more cleaning duties over the coming month. Rye is banned from drinking, so that should