“Looking forward to it.”
She leaves the kitchen, trailing vanilla scent and unconscious chaos.
I stand alone, patterns blazing along my skin, temperature approximately fifteen degrees above optimal, my carefully maintained control fracturing like degraded hull plating.
“For the record, Terraforming Specialist,” Pickles’s voice emerges from the comm system with suspicious smugness, “I calculate a 97% probability that you’re experiencing what humans call ‘being in trouble.’”
“I’m aware.”
“Excellent. Self-awareness is the first step toward accepting the inevitable.”
“What inevitable?”
“Captain Foxton has been trying to outrun attachment for nine years. You’ve been hiding in atmospheric data for three. I calculate you’re both failing spectacularly at your respective defense mechanisms.”
“You’re an AI. You don’t understand relationship dynamics.”
“I don’t need to understand the mechanics to analyze the data, Terraforming Specialist. And the data suggests you’re approximately four days away from a significant emotional development.”
I close the comm channel before he can continue his analysis.
Four days away from significant emotional development.
Ridiculous. I’m a professional. I maintain control.
The bioluminescent patterns along my skin are still blazing despite no one being present to observe them.
When Dove meets me at the lower maintenance level access point forty-five minutes later, she’s changed into fitted work coveralls that should not be more attractive than the borrowed shirt but somehow are.
I’m doomed.
“Ready when you are,” she says, pulling her hair back into a tie that won’t last—several strands escape immediately. “What’s the access situation like?”
“Confined. The maintenance crawlway is designed for single-operator efficiency.”
“So we’ll be cramped.”
“Extremely.”
Her eyes widen slightly—awareness, heat. “Well. I’m sure we’ll manage.”
We are going to die in that maintenance crawlway. Not from system failure, but from me losing whatever remains of my control.
“The primary access is here,” I say, because professional competence is all I have left. I open the panel, revealing the narrow space beyond. “I’ll go first, establish the work area.”
I squeeze into the crawlway, immediately regretting every life choice that led to this moment. The space is warm—heat from the processing systems—and lit only by work lamps that cast strange shadows.
Dove follows, and the confined space becomes exponentially more problematic.
She has to squeeze past me to reach the sensor housing, which involves her body pressing against mine for several eternal seconds. Soft curves against my chest and arm. Her breath catching.
My claws betray me again before I force them to retract.
“Sorry,” she breathes. “Tight squeeze.”
“Yes.” My voice has dropped to harmonic registers. “The access design is... suboptimal.”
“Suboptimal. Right.” But she’s not moving away, trapped by the space constraints. “Should we make this work somehow?”
