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and my system collapsed.” He tried flashing one of his charming grins. “You know us pretty boys are fragile.”
    Vas knew the futility of fighting with Deven about staying in bed; he stayed in bed when he had a good reason. Being injured didn’t happen to be one of those reasons.
    Terel finally shrugged. Her eyes flashed briefly to lighter silver, the only outward sign of her annoyance.
    Vas wasn’t going to step into any battles of will between those two. Besides, she had her own issues to fight.
    “What in the hell happened?” Vas said.
    “You died.” Deven’s jaw tightened in a rare show of emotion. It vanished an instant later. “Okay, you were about a second away from dying. We were ten minutes out of town when you complained about a pain in your stomach.” He sat back on the edge of his bed.
    A phantom pain hit her low in the abdomen. “I remember.” Her voice stayed low. “I thought I’d been hit by a beam weapon.”
    “I wish.” Deven shook his head. “That would have been easier to fix. You’ve been poisoned. Someone slipped you some Larkerian drell recently. You should have been dead twenty seconds after it went active. It’s a designer poison and it can be set to activate anytime within thirty days of insertion.”
    Terel blanched at his words and slid back into her chair. Although the name meant nothing to Vas, it clearly did to her medical officer.
    “What is it and how did they give it to me?” Vas racked her brain to think of where someone could have poisoned her. Had Skrankle done it? Who knew what lurked in that slime he oozed. Except she didn’t think Skrankle could pre-plan his next meal let alone a murder.
    Which left at least fifty or more of her favorite enemies as prime suspects.
    “The drells are a class of designer poisons from the Westergail Wars.” Everyone turned to stare at Gosta. Along with being a crack navigation officer, he laid claim to being a master hacker and computer wizard. However, none of his interests usually included historical facts.
    He continued without noticing their looks. “They were one of the last inventions of the Asarlaís.” Gosta frowned; his pronounced jaw mandibles clicking loudly as he finally noticed that the others were all focused on him. “I read, people. Something the rest of you might do once in a while.”
    “But the Westergail Wars ended eight hundred years ago,” Vas said. She wasn’t happy that after twenty years as a mercenary she almost left this world thanks to a poison. It being from the homicidal and self-destructing former master race of the Asarlaís just increased her annoyance level. That the universe managed to out-survive the Asarlaís was a miracle still taught to schoolchildren.
    Gosta shook his head. “Clearly some of their creations continued. However, I’ve not read of the Larkerian drell before.”
    Deven leaned back partially on the pile of pillows on his bed. Vas couldn’t tell if fatigue had caught up to him or he adjusted himself for her benefit. “The Larkerian is a rare one. I haven’t seen it in a very long time.”
    She knew he meant to say something else. His mystery man persona was designed to increase her urge to space him. Some days resistance was harder than others.
    “So someone slipped me an ancient and obscure poison sometime in the last thirty days. We have no idea who, why, or where.” Vas wanted to go and find something or someone to beat up, but she didn’t know if she could move. Deven may have taken her off death’s path, but she’d come far too close not to feel the effects. She told herself the lump of ice in her gut was just a side effect of the poison.
    “How long will it take to go away? We do have a battle to fight, you know.” Vas picked at her med officer. She knew she was an awful patient, but it did seem to make doctors work harder to get her out of their sick rooms.
    Terel scurried over to the holo vid, humming as she did so. She hummed when agitated, happy, or sad.