Dathan groaned. “Do you have to?”
“It’ll be easier for Eos.”
“I see we have a visitor.” The feminine voice echoed through the room. “Isn’t someone going to introduce me?”
Eos looked around with a frown, and saw Dathan roll his eyes.
Niklas straightened. “Eos, I’d like you to meet, BEll. BEll, this is Dr. Eos Rai.”
“Ooh, some class for a change,” BEll said. “Lovely to have a doctor on this hunk of space rock.”
Niklas frowned. “I’m a doctor.”
“You don’t count.”
Eos leaned forward, not certain where to look. She settled on the holo-table. “You’re sentient?”
“Yep. And smarter than these three put together. Lucky, because I keep them out of trouble.”
Dathan leaned against a table. “Pity you weren’t less chatty.”
“Aww, you’ll hurt my feelings.”
“You don’t have feelings.”
Eos crossed her legs, her gaze zeroing in on Dathan. “You have a sentient computer. I thought they were only theory.”
He held up his hands. “Ta-da. One experimental sentient computer who can think for herself, talks too damn much, andbutts in where she isn’t wanted most of the time. A BE II, or BEll for short.”
“BE—” Eos’ eyes widened and she shot to her feet “She’s a Biocomputerized Entity.”
“A Biocomputerized Entity Mach II,” BEll added.
A computer with integrated biological components. As far as Eos had heard, all attempts at creating biocomps had failed. “How the hell did you end up with a working biocomp?”
Dathan scratched the back of his neck. “It’s probably something you don’t want to know.”
“Dathan stole me.”
“BEll—” A warning tone.
“Sorry.” The computer’s tone was the opposite of chastised. “He won me in a game of Crossfire.”
A card game. Eos scrubbed a hand over her face. “Okay, don’t tell me any more.” She held up her hand, finger raised. “I have the info here.”
Dathan reached for her hand and ran the pad of his thumb over her finger. She swore the air around them heated.
“You have an integrated chip,” he said.
“I didn’t want to keep it on something that could be stolen.” She pulled her hand away. “BEll?”
“Press your finger to the screen, Dr. Rai,” BEll said.
Eos touched the cool screen and cleared her throat. “Can you please display file 11B-03?”
“Coming right up.” The holo-table flashed as the star maps displayed.
The men leaned over the table. Zayn tapped a point on the map. “I bet you a million e-creds it’s in this area.”
