The OOPS overalls are still pooled at his hips. He has been bare from the waist up this entire time and appears to have no intention of correcting this, and in the amber lockdown light the green of his skin is doing something that no skin should be allowed to do without a permit. The iridescence doesn’t just catch light. It holds it. Bronze and copper and gold threading through the emerald, shifting when he breathes, shifting when he reaches for the console, shifting when the muscles in his back realign as he leans over the display.
I have seen hot aliens before. I dated a Seraphim for three months on Outpost Velar. Gorgeous wings. Generous wingspan. Absolutely foul temper. The relationship ended when he threw my comm unitat a wall because I laughed at the wrong moment during an argument about whose turn it was to clean the air filter, and I left, and the wingspan was not sufficient compensation for the temper, and I learned something about the difference between a male who is beautiful and a male who is good.
Jazil Ereux is making a security call in a lockdown with his shirt off and his forearms resting on the console so the ridges catch the amber light, and he is calm, and he is professional, and he brought me water and he opened it first. The Seraphim opened nothing for me. The Seraphim never noticed when my hands were shaking.
That’s not the same thing. That’s not a comparison. I am not comparing a three-month relationship that ended with a wall-mounted comm unit to a male I have known for an hour. Stop it.
I stop it for approximately eight seconds, which is how long he takes to finish with the console and cross the hold and drop onto the crate beside mine. Not across from me. Beside. Close enough that when the crate settles under his weight, his knee bumps the outside of my knee and stays there.
The contact stays.
It stays the way a sentence stays when nobody can think of how to finish it, and I am not moving my knee, and he is not moving his knee and the part of my brain that should worry about my employment status has been reassigned to knee-monitoring duties without my approval.
“The pod,” I say, because I need to say something, and the pod is safer than the knee. “What’s in it?”
He tips his head back against the crate behind him. The movement exposes the line of his throat and the bead of sweat at his collarbone,and I am looking at neither of these things. I am looking at neither of these things with tremendous focus.
“Vrennak,” he says. “Salvaged. Mid-belt research outpost pulled it off a derelict that drifted into their sector. No manifest. No origin. Sealed under a power signature nobody recognized.”
“A derelict.”
“Ghost ship. Empty. Just the pod.”
“Who puts a Vrennak in a pod on a ghost ship?”
His eyes meet mine. Blue, steady, and for the first time since the klaxon, not amused. “That’s the question,” he says. “That’s why Morrison called SNAG.”
The distinction lands. Not hard — quiet. OOPS found the pod. OOPS contained it. OOPS flagged it and moved it and is delivering it, because that’s what OOPS does — competent, professional, done. But the question ofwho put it there and why— that’s SNAG. That’s the job I am on probation for. The job that hires people to walk into bays and deal with the thing the courier brought in.
OOPS delivers the problem. SNAG opens the box.
“HORATIO,” Jazil says. “Pod diagnostics. Full readout.”
“Already running, Captain. The stasis field is holding on main power, cycling normally. The pod’s backup system is — a moment. The pod’s backup system is nonstandard. The power signature does not match any cataloged manufacturer. I am unable to identify the containment protocol. The unit was hand-built or significantly modified.”
“Modified how?”
“The stasis parameters are calibrated for sustained dormancy well beyond standard transport duration, Captain. Whoever built this pod did not intend for the contents to wake up. Ever. The sedation markersare — Captain, the sedation markers suggest the Vrennak has been in stasis for a minimum of six years.”
Six years.
Jazil’s jaw tightens. The almost-smile, the ghost of amusement that has been living on his face since I sat down, is gone. He looks at the pod across the hold — matte gray, diagnostic lights pulsing green-green-green, stable, contained — and whatever ease was in him has left.
“Six years in a pod on a ghost ship,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“With a power signature nobody can identify.”
“Yeah.”
“And SNAG is the organization that deals with that.”
“That’s what they’re for.”
That’s what WE’RE for. That’s what I signed up for this morning in a too-tight top and a jacket from the Finder’s Market. The modified containment. The nonstandard power. The ghost ship with no manifest. Someone was keeping a living predator unconscious indefinitely, and I signed the chain-of-custody, and this pod is mine.
My hands are still flat in my lap. My knees are still shaking. The knee that is touching his knee is shaking slightly less than the one that isn’t, and I will not think about why.
