“We’ll make it.” She stabbed the enter key harder than necessary. “We glide the approach. Cut the main drive early, use the gravity well to brake.”
“Risky.”
She shrugged. “Necessary.”
The console flickered as the sensors cycled through a passive internal sweep. Then the indicator for the hold door blinked amber. At the same time, a red icon blinked to life as the corridor defenses armed in the time it took her to take a breath. Fred had woken the turrets without being asked, which meant something was wrong.
Oh fudge.
She didn’t whip around or bolt from the chair. Instead, she set her cup down with care and kept her face blank as heavy footsteps sounded outside the cockpit, the weapons panel tracking them closer with every step.
She drew in a breath, held it, then swiveled the pilot’s chair as the door behind her slid open.
The alien filled the doorway.
He blocked the light from the corridor and made the cockpit feel very small. His dark hair had fallen loose around his face in a way that had no business looking that good on a man who’d spent hours locked in her corridor. The strands fell across his brow, dark against the sharp lines of his cheekbones, and her stupid, traitorous brain decided that now was a great time to remind her what the rest of him looked like without a shirt on.
She told her stupid, traitorous brain to shut the fudge up, because they had bigger problems than cheekbones right now.
But he wasn’t looking at her… he was studying the cockpit instead. The ceiling mounts. The secondary screens. The empty co-pilot’s chair. Every inch of it. His arms hung easy at his sides, but there was nothing relaxed about him. He looked wound tight enough to snap skin.
“I told you to stay in the corridor,” she said, keeping her tone level.
He paid her exactly no mind and stepped into the cockpit as if the turret aimed at his head didn’t exist. His gaze lifted to the speaker grille in the corner, then cut to the empty air in the middle of the room.
“You going to keep hiding?” he demanded, his voice little more than a growl.
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I’m talking to him.” He lifted his chin at the empty space, pure challenge in the movement. “The one in the walls. The one tracking me.”
The turret whined, and he spread his hands in a mocking gesture.
“If you’re going to point guns at me,” he said, his voice laced with contempt, “you should at least have the stones to stand behind them.”
She blinked, wondering if he had, indeed, gone mad in that corridor.
“A male who hides behind a female,” he snarled, voice hardening, “who lets her fight for him while he skulks behind a console isn’t worth the air he’s breathing. Step out. Face me. Or are you just a coward with a toy?”
Her eyes widened. Oh… ohhh. He thought?—
The silence stretched out.
Then the speakers crackled, and Fred spoke, “I have been monitoring your respiration for twelve hours. Your carbon dioxide output is offensive.”
The alien went absolutely still, not a flinch or a recoil, but a full-body freeze that started at his shoulders and locked him in place, as if someone had cut the power. His eyes moved first, up to the speaker grille and then down to the console, until his gaze landed on the little matte-black cartridge plugged into the data port beside her hand.
It was the size of her fist, just a box with a soft blue light pulsing on its face, and she watched him stare at it. Then he turned his head and looked at her.
She bit the inside of her cheek so hard copper flooded her tongue. Don’t laugh. If she laughed now, he’d kill her. She wouldn’t blame him either.
So she pressed her lips together and fixed her eyes on the fuel diagnostics as if the scroll of numbers had suddenly become fascinating.
It didn’t help. The corner of her mouth twitched, and a tiny snort escaped that she tried to pass off as a cough, but it was a shit attempt that wasn’t going to fool anybody.
The alien still didn’t move. Instead, his jaw clenched, and his hands curled into loose fists as he looked at the cartridge again.
His gaze cut to hers again, his expression blank. Completely blank. Whatever was going on behind his eyes was happening fast and hard, but none of it reached the surface. Then he turned on his heel and walked out.
