“High praise from you.”
“I contain multitudes. Including excellent judgment regarding romantic compatibility.”
Despite everything—the fear, the countdown, the impossible odds—I smile.
Because in thirty-six hours, collectors are coming.
But PDC inspectors are coming too.
And the woman I’m fighting for is teaching my daughter card games in the next room, trusting me to keep them both safe.
Thirty-six hours to survive.
Then she’s mine.
10
Organized Chaos
Dove
Thirtyhours.
That number loops through my brain while I stare at the ceiling of the guest quarters at 0400 hours, wide awake and vibrating with adrenaline. Thirty hours until the PDC inspection team lands. Thirty hours and five minutes until the Blackstar collectors arrive. And somewhere in that impossibly tight window, I need to make this station look like it’s run by someone who actually follows regulations—instead of lying here replaying the way Cetus framed my face in his hands and said “you’re worth fighting for” like it was a scientific fact he’d verified through peer review. Or how close his mouth was to mine before Pickles interrupted.
“Captain,” Pickles says through my comm unit, volume dialed low for night cycle, “your heart rate has been elevated for approximately forty-seven minutes. I calculate a ninety-one percent probability you are not sleeping and a seventy-eight percent probability the cause is romantic in nature rather than threat-related.”
“Can’t it be both?”
“An excellent point. I shall log this as ‘compound anxiety with romantic complications.’”
I throw off the covers and sit up. The borrowed shirt—Cetus’s shirt—rides up my thighs, and the fabric carries his scent. Clean and metallic and warm, like ozone after a storm. I’ve been sleeping in it for three nights now, and every evening he hands me a freshly laundered one without comment, and I press my face into it the moment my door closes.
“Captain, I detect you are engaging in olfactory stimulation via the Terraforming Specialist’s garment. Again.”
“I’m stretching. The shirt shifted.”
“I have thermal imaging capabilities. You are holding the collar against your nose.”
I drop it like it burned me. “We’re not pair-bonding. We’re preparing for a government inspection.”
“Shall I compile the station compliance checklist, or would you prefer another four minutes of definitely-not-smelling his shirt?”
I’m already pulling on work clothes. “Checklist. Now. Full diagnostic on every system the PDC will want to see.”
“Compiling. I should note that the station’s documentation is approximately forty-seven percent below PDC minimum standards. The atmospheric processor maintenance logs haven’t been updated in eleven months. The safety signage in Corridor B is in Lividian only. And the emergency supply inventory was last audited when the small person was six.”
“So two years ago.”
“I calculate we need approximately thirty-two hours of continuous work to achieve minimum compliance. You have thirty-four hours. The margin is tight.”
“Story of my life.”
It’s bad.
Cetus Storm is a brilliant terraforming scientist who considers paperwork a personal affront. Safety incidents are all filed under “atmospheric anomalies” regardless of whether the incident involved weather, equipment, or Tavia venting coolant into Corridor C.
“He categorized a kitchen fire as ‘localized exothermic atmospheric event,’” I mutter, scrolling.
