“Better you than me, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.”

“Nicest?” Welch glanced over skeptically, but Thompson looked as unapologetic as ever. “I really don’t think that adjective belongs in the same language as low-planet drops, much less the same sentence fragment.” True, she would have thought the same if his dropship had picked up the latest mission, but she would have kept it to herself. Probably.

“Avoiding insult, you need practice with.” Riska didn’t bother to look up from the gun she was cleaning, but the Khriss was clearly amused rather than annoyed. The Alliance was still new and they’d learned to overplay their cues when working in mixed teams. It was too easy for humans to miss the subtle dips of ears and tail twitches that served to clue in the other species. “Sharp is lacking, apparent.”

Of course they still spent a good portion of the time just trying to figure out what anyone was saying.

“I think she means you aren’t real witty,” the cat-sized Quan learned languages as fast as they were spoken, but the cut and paste nature of their mimicry was rather disturbing. Welch counted at least five voices in the once sentence, one of which clearly wasn’t human. She wondered what had ever made a Holst say ‘witty’ with such alarm.