The rec-room doors slid open and the five Marines of Alpha Squad sauntered in. Dan was grinning like a fool at Anallin, but as usual, the Hanaran didn’t seem to share the humor. And, as usual, no one could really be sure whether it did or not.

“You should have ducked,” Dan said, eyeing the blue bruise rising on Anallin’s face.

“Yes, you have told me this repeatedly and my own evaluation of my performance revealed the same idea,” the Hanaran replied.

Andy glanced back at them. “That almost sounded like sarcasm, Anallin.”

The Hanaran’s blue brow ridges rose in a decidedly human gesture, and she knew that Anallin had been spending too much time around them.

“I second the motion,” Jade said with a smaller, but still amused smile, as they found their way to the opposite side of the room, each taking their personal data-tablets and tapping in a few commands. The room filled with high-pitched beeps to note the messages that each one had gotten, as they wandered to a table to sit down and read or watch.

Andy knew that she wouldn’t be getting any messages from family. Her mother was dead, and her father was...well, the enemy. The only sibling she knew of was here on the ship with her. She did have some friends on other ESS ships that she kept in touch with occasionally, but there weren’t any messages today. She stifled a sigh as she set the tablet on the table.

She looked around at her squad-mates, taking note of each one.

Anallin’s eyes were clicking rapidly but quietly. She interpreted that as happiness or excitement. Dan was easier to recognize, because he was just grinning like an idiot again, but this time, it was a different shade of idiot.

“I think Dan got a letter from his mom,” Jade said, looking up at him without lifting her head. “He always smiles like that when he hears from her.”

Dan laughed. “You got me,” he said. “She’s just catching me up on stuff going on at home. My brother’s wife is pregnant again. This will make baby number five.”

Roxanna, Andy’s sergeant and the group’s Selerid, looked up. Her purple eyes flashed in the room’s light as she smiled. “You say that like it’s a lot,” she said, almost innocently. “I didn’t go medical, so I haven’t talked to people about their perceptions of family size.”

“Five is...a healthy number, we’ll say,” Dan laughed. “It kinda runs in my family, though. I’m one of four and my mother is one of seven. My dad, on the other hand, was one of two.”

“Only two...” Roxanna said thoughtfully. “I’m one of nine, and that’s rather small for a Selerid family.”

This wasn’t news to Andy, who knew her squad pretty well, but it never ceased to amaze her. She had been her mother’s only child, as far as she knew, and the idea of siblings, in any number, was foreign to her.

“But we usually have children three or four at a time,” Roxanna added.