The matter of his XO now settled, Zach didn’t waste time getting back to the Canterbury. As he exited the transporter room though, he spotted a familiar figure up ahead.

“Hey flyboy,” he called out. “Seems like they’re letting all the riff-raff aboard this tub.”

Darion Thayer turned around with a grin.

“You should know, since you approved my transfer, and I believe I have you to thank for this?” he said, indicating the rank on his collar. One hollow and two shiny pips.

An answering grin washed over Zach’s face as he grabbed Darion’s hand to shake, but then pulled him into a one-shouldered hug.

“Well, you didn’t have to accept, now did you?” he chuckled, slapping Darion’s back before letting him go. “How you doing?”

Darion shrugged, that lopsided grin firmly in place on his face. “You know, same old same old. Thanks for the reassignment pickup. Things on the Charnwood were getting a little… testy, shall we say?”

Zach bit back his sigh as they turned to carry on walking down the corridor. Testy meant that Darion hadn’t been able to keep his mouth shut and had pissed someone off. Again.

“Who was it this time? And what did you say?”

It had been like this since their first day at the academy way back when. The admiral’s brat and the kid from the wrong side of the tracks should have taken one look and hated each other on sight. Which, to be fair, they had. Until Zach had figured out their story was the same, just the flipside of the same coin.

Darion slid him a sideways look. “Told the CO he couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a map.”

Zach couldn’t help the snort of amusement that escaped him. “I wondered what had gotten you demoted this time. He took it bad, I take it.”

Darion shrugged. “What do you think? That…” he paused rather than cuss as they paused for a moment at an intersection, allowing two officers in yellow uniforms past.

“His ‘leadership’ and I use that term in the loosest possible sense of the word, meant we lost a lot of kids during frontier day,” Darion scowled. “And then he spent the time since bigging up his role. Way he told it for the new crew was that he was the hero of the day.”

“Ahh…” Now Zach saw the root of the problem. Darion was a rebel, for sure, but he was a stickler for facts. For rules, and regulations. Even if he liked to break them himself, he knew them inside out.

Then he clocked the way Darion tracked the female officer who had passed them like a hawk, interest written all over his face. Well, for most people it would have looked like indolent boredom, but Zach could read Darion like a book. An open one, written in a large font.

“Careful,” he leaned in to murmur as they carried on. Darion’s head was on a swivel, watching the woman until a curve of the corridor took her out of sight. “That’s our chief engineer, Bennett. Older and way, and I mean way, tougher than she looks.”

Darion arched an eyebrow as he slid a sideways glance at Zach. “Who said I was lookin’?”

Zach snorted. “Remember who you’re talking to. Okay, I need to get to the bridge. Head on up when you decide to remember where it is. We ship out at 20 hundred hours. Got a division ship to catch up with.”

He paused in the corridor, watching as Darion nodded and sauntered off. He let his friend get a couple of steps down the corridor before clearing his throat. “Senior officer’s quarters are that way, Thayer.”

“Are they really?” Darion turned, his expression innocent, and wandered the other way, shrugging as he past Zach. “These big classes, it’s easy to get lost.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Zach threw after him. The day Darion got lost anywhere was the day they put him in the ground. “Just make sure you don’t end up getting lost down in engineering. Okay? I’d rather my chief helm officer didn’t end up folded into a pretzel before we ship out.”

Darion grinned over his shoulder. “You realise that doesn’t put me off, right?”