by Cara Bristol
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to come sooner, but I had duties…”
“I understand.” She hugged Sparky tight, and jealousy stabbed at him. Over a bot! “Would you like to come in?” she asked politely.
Not the warm welcome he’d expected, but he’d take it. “Thank you,” he said.
“How have you been?” she asked.
“Fine,” he replied. “You?”
“Fine.”
The distance in their conversation knotted his stomach. They sounded like two strangers. Had he put too much emphasis on the kisses they’d shared? Had she decided he was too old, too cold, too machine-like to love? That she obviously loved Sparky, who was a canine robot, had given him hope that maybe she could love him, too. He scrutinized her face for signs she was glad to see him. She looked guarded.
“Your face is healing well,” he commented, relieved the slash the alien had inflicted was on the mend.
“Medical worked wonders,” she said. “You’re completely healed. You’d never guess you were injured.”
“A benefit of being a cyborg.” One of the few. Other times being part human, part machine was a curse.
She set down Sparky and pointed to his pad. “Sit,” she ordered. He trotted over and docked himself. “What can I do for you, captain?”
Captain again. He jettisoned what’d he’d been about to say. What was the point? The kiss had seemed so promising. Whether mutual attraction could have developed into a deeper, lasting connection was an open question, but it had been worth pursuing. Except the opportunity appeared to have passed. In the interim she’d probably realized how badly he’d failed her. She’d insisted people were missing, and he hadn’t given her concerns his full attention. As a result, she’d been attacked again, and Tyranians had killed more colonists. If she blamed him for what happened, it was no less than he deserved. His spirits sagged.
“I thought you’d want an update on what we discovered,” he said. The information wouldn’t improve her opinion of him.
“Have a seat.” She gestured to a bunk and then sat opposite him.
“We found the bodies of twenty New Utopians—including the liaison—and four crew members besides Lieutenant Commander Brack.”
“Good galaxy!” She clapped a hand over her mouth.
“And, we captured and destroyed four Tyranians.”
“Four?” she gasped. “Are you—are you sure you got them all?”
“Yes. Every individual’s identity has been confirmed.”
“How did they get on board? We were scanned!”
“I believe when the Crimson Hawk arrived on Verde Omega and the aliens retreated, they abandoned a few comrades who ultimately killed Lieutenant Commander Brack and three colonists and assumed their forms. With one of them posing as my second-in-command, they were able to walk on. If a bio scan occurred at all, it was rigged.”
Once aboard, the aliens had gone on a killing spree, assuming identities as needed. “We learned how they shift,” he said. “Humans have a liver enzyme which gives the aliens the ability to take their form. Eating the liver enables them to shift. That’s why they’d disemboweled some victims.”
Her face froze with horror. “Althea had been disemboweled. You’re saying she was an alien when she came to my cabin?”
He nodded.
She pressed a hand to her throat.
“We got them all.” He wanted to hold her, reassure her she would never be threatened again.
“How can you be sure? We thought we were safe before! Can the bio scanners detect a shifted Tyranian? How certain are you of the accuracy?”
“The scanners are about ninety percent, depending on how much of the enzyme the alien ingested. It’s the enzyme that turns out a false positive.”
She waved her arms. “Ninety percent isn’t good enough!”
He pointed at Sparky. “He’s 100 percent.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s one reason why we kept him so long. We discovered your K9-500 bot is dead-on accurate in determining human from alien. He found a Tyranian our scanners had missed. So we ran him by every single person on board. I don’t know who programmed him—”
“My father,” Miranda said. “He was a geneticist as well as an AI engineer. Sparky was actually a prototype he wanted to manufacture.”
“We would like to further study his coding, and adopt it for our bio scanners.”
“If it will help, of course! But we’re leaving tomorrow. We’re arriving at the space station, right?”
Dante nodded. “The other New Utopians will be disembarking. I would like you to remain on board. I can offer you a civilian position as an archivist on the Crimson Hawk.”
“So you can study Sparky?”
“That’s not the only reason.” He glanced at his boots before lifting his gaze to hers. He inhaled. “I had hoped the feeling between us was still mutual, and you’d stay—to spend time with me.”
“You mean you still care? I waited and waited. And when you didn’t come, I thought you’d started to regret…”
“I’m sorry. I wanted to see you so much, but duty intervened. And when we discovered the bio scanners weren’t completely accurate, we had to run the whole process over again with Sparky—and thank goodness we did—then—”
“Yes! I’ll stay!” Miranda flung herself into his arms, and they toppled over onto the bunk.
He kissed her with all the longing he’d had to suppress in the past week. When he released her, she was breathless. He couldn’t stop grinning. He brushed the hair from her face and stared into her eyes.
“I didn’t think permanent non-military personnel were allowed on warships,” she said.
“We have civilian contractors on board, and exceptions are sometimes made for others if there’s a significant need.”
“Like with Sparky.”
“Like with Sparky. You to need to be aware what you’re getting into. We could be in space for months between furloughs and space-station stops. Duty will demand my time—”
“Dante?”
He arched his eyebrows.
“I want to stay.” She thumped his chest. “Stop wasting time and kiss me.”
Heat flared within him, and his heart swelled as if it would burst. He claimed her mouth in a long, deep kiss. He didn’t know what the future would hold, but with Miranda at his side, he couldn’t wait to find out.
The End
