Alexa doesn't smile, but the corner of one lip does tug upwards. Dearie me, we're all getting attached, aren't we? Would the Mynx of Tellus have been so caring, so desperate, as to say something so directly caring as "don't die"?

Still, keeping someone safe is nothing if not practiced for her. The VIP's safety takes priority over everything else. Dolce can't be allowed to fight, and Mynx has her own VIP to care for. Isty and herself as assets. Two powerful fighters, though mismatched in style--no phalanxes here. A narrow enough choke point could solve that issue, but also severely limit how well they could fight together. Put one of them at either end of a hallway? Risky. Two points of failure, and if either falls then Dolce and the other are stuck in a pincer. Besides, they're on a ship full of thrice-damned Hermetics--holding a choke point just means that they have time to pull out whatever esoteric they want.

So. Running. Or, for Isty's sake, tactically retreating. Not ideal, because ideally you need a place to retreat [i]to.[/i] She doesn't know the ship. They're outnumbered. She won't know whether the hermetics are herding them until it's too late. The hermetics have a ship AI coordinating their every movement, for crying out--

A choke point with only one way in. No way for skirmishers to get around. And something they can't afford to fire an esoteric into.

"Mynx," she asks delicately. "Do you think Birmingham would afford Bella a personal audience?"