Maia blinked surprised as Alicia brought up the option that Akris might actually have been a splicer, rather than a member of her race.<i>"I, ah, ...hadn't considered that. Are~, that wasn't very smart of me. " </i>Maia offered an enchanting smile to the engineer.<i>"I'm afraid I don't really know much about the human habit to splice their genes. It wasn't uncommon amongst the humans back in the university but most of that seemed far more limited than your changes."</i><br/><br/><i>"Ah, speaker. You're here already."</i>Maia noted as the man approached the trio. The royal naga sat down on her coils, leaving enough room for Alicia in case she too wished a tail-seat.<i> "Kula and Alicia are right Speaker. Things have been going badly and tensions are high. We should return to the ship after finding Zero and making contact with base camp."</i>The watery snake hadn't yet heard about either Zero's condition nor what happened at the base camp.<i>"Frankly, I'm surprised you didn't do anything to stop Berrac. I try to be tolerant of other species, but he was completely out of line... Can  we really count on him protecting us? I didn't join this research team to end up in some military guy's lonely planet harem delusion and I don't have any way to non-fatally incapacitate him if he goes out of line again."</i><div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>