“Do you think you could have done better?”

Areon could tell by jump in pulse rate and the way the human’s eyes dilated that he wasn’t supposed to answer. Even after two years working with the Alliance the giant avian had problems reading human faces, the subtle changes in muscle tension were simply to vague for him to rely on.

There was a barely audible chirp from the Khriss who served as the scout ships current copilot, pitched well above human hearing, that reinforced his evaluation of the human captain’s mood. He managed to make it off the bridge without more that a slight flare of his crest feathers, which considering she had almost flown them into a dammed mountain was well within the range of politeness.

Some species should never have invented wings.