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Monica jumped and spun around. “Ouch! Who just pinched my butt?”
Tambi shook her head. “Wishful thinking. What do we need to do?”
“We need everything we have on the ship’s internal logs,” I said. “Rennick thinks the ship was messed with, and I agree with him.”
Tambi studied my face for a second. “You saw something that made you think these faults were caused deliberately?”
“I saw enough to know the story of why this ship got sold is bullshit.” I looked at the alcoves. “And I saw enough to know this ship isn’t trying to hurt us. She’s trying to finish something she started a long time ago, and she can’t do it alone. She needs us.”
“And we have a contract to fulfill, so let’s do it.” Tambi slapped Rennick on the back.
Doc whooped. “Let’s whip some spooky asses into shape.”
Chapter 14
Rennick
Cass sat in my captain’s chair like she’d been born to it, boots propped on the console, a coffee balanced on one knee, and her scanner feeding data into the bridge display. She’d rerouted half my ship’s diagnostic architecture in the time it took me to make coffee, and hadn’t asked permission for any of it.
I leaned against the doorframe, loving the view of this feisty female in my space, occupying it like she was born to be at my side. “You rewired my bridge?”
“I optimized your bridge.” She didn’t look up. “Your data flow was a mess. Redundant loops, two dead channels, and a partition seal so old it was basically decorative. Who set this up for you?”
“I did.”
“Huh.” She sipped her coffee. “Well, now it works.”
The Chorus hummed approval from deep in the hull. My ship had never hummed like that for me. This time, I wasn’t jealous. It felt right that she accepted Cass so easily.
“She’s showing off for you again.” I sat in the co-pilot’s seat, watching Cass map and run this ship better than I ever had.
“She knows I’ll always treat her right.” Cass pulled up the encrypted partition and spread the corrupted data stream across the display. Fragments scrolled by, timestamps with gaps, encrypted blocks my access codes had bounced off. “Okay. Your ship gave us your family name on the crew manifest. A name that shouldn’t have been there. Correct?”
My throat tightened. “It still makes no sense. Could it be a logging error rather than sabotage?”
“Let’s see if she’ll give us more, and we’ll see what kind of error we’re dealing with and where it came from. How gray does this get?”
“Either Habor was on this ship, or he wasn’t.”
“True, but was this an accidental error, or did someone in your family not want to be connected to this ship, so they fudged the information and messed with our girl?” Her steady gaze locked onto me. “That’s what you’ve been thinking, isn’t it?”
I narrowed my gaze. “You have telepathic abilities and the ability to bond with alien tech that should kill you? Perhaps I underestimated the human species.”
She snorted a laugh. “Doubtful. We’re only successful because of our overwhelming numbers and ability to generalize. But you’re not as good at hiding those big guy feelings as you like to think you are.”
I leaned closer and inhaled her scent. “What are my big guy feelings suggesting now?”
She laughed, but her gaze heated as it flicked over me, lingering on my already hardening cock. “Not in front of the ship. She has feelings too.”
“That didn’t bother you when you rode my fingers and rubbed your pussy against my hand.”
Color lit her cheeks, and she looked away. “Maybe later. Show us what you got, gorgeous.”
The encrypted blocks on the display flickered, and more entries came through, fragmented but readable.
Cass leaned forward, her eyes bright with interest. “These are crew positions on the ship.”
I read them alongside her, close enough that the scent of her shampoo cut through the recycled bridge air. Citrus and sage. My attention kept sliding off the data and onto the line of her throat, where her hair fell away from her neck.
