Page 29 of Star Defenders (My Alien Mates 2)

"Right," I said softly. I nodded my thanks to Luuvor and rose as Slek appeared to take the dish of dead nanobots.

"Do you want me to carry those?" I offered. I eyed the screen, which now showed Danec awake and looking wistfully at the door.

"I'll be all right as long as they stay dead," Slek said lightly. "Doctor, the isolation room walls are a highly compressed plastic, not metal at all. It might be best to swap out the bed with a plastic or timber one, but he's safe enough while the bots are dormant."

Mazic nodded. "I'll see to that at once, thank you, Engineer." The relief on her face was clear.

"He'll be safe then," I said. "No metal for them to eat."

"Exactly." Slek smiled sideways at my gown. "I like this new look. Especially the back." He tried to peer around while I grabbed hold of the sides.

"I'll get changed and come with you to engineering," I said.

"Or come with meinengineering," he said with a sly smile.

"You want to take the risk of there maybe being a live nanobot in there?" I asked. "It might crawl up your cock and live in your balls."

His eyes widened in horror. "I'm sure Doctor Mazic got them all." He squared his shoulders.

“I could get scanned again, just to be sure," I said.

He brightened. "Would you? I've always been in favour of safe sex. And not having ball bots."

"Ball bots bad," I agreed. "Let me get changed first."

I hurried off to do that, before the infirmary got inundated with passengers and crew wanted to assure themselves they were nanobot-free. Hopefully it wouldn't take long. It would be all too easy for hysteria to take hold. When it did, people might start to watch for strange behaviour and point fingers at each other. That would turn ugly fast.

"Okay," I stepped out of the cubicle I'd used to get changed. "Let's do it."

I tried to ignore the dish in Slek's hand as I climbed back onto the scanner bed.

This time, the scanner found nothing out of place.

"Not even a healed bone," Slek remarked.

"What can I say, I didn't start living until recently," I said. That wasn't untrue. I felt as though I lived in a cocoon until I stepped foot on the shuttle and left Earth. I thought I enjoyed life, but now I knew what that really meant.

"That doesn't mean I aim to break a bone," I added quickly.

"But you will abseil the underground caverns of Blarvius with me, won't you?" he asked.

"Abseil?" I shot him a doubtful look. "That sounds more like something Zarex or Danec would be into."

"We would keep you safe," he promised. "After that, we can free-glide off the peaks of Frey-T, and swim in the thermal lakes."

"Now thermal lakes sound like my jam," I replied. I didn't know what free-gliding was, but it sounded terrifying. Not as scary as the clumps of dead nanobots. I didn't know much about them, but I knew broken tech could be fixed. If that was the case, then…

I shuddered.

"Maybe I should carry those," I offered. "Just in case."

Slek had the dish up to his face and was eyeing the clumps with a mixture of fascination and caution. Mostly the former, which was worrying.

"To think, no one has studied nanobots for fifty years since the IF banned them," he said.

"Except whoever made those," I said.

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't count. They did it illegally." He handed me the dish.

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