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“More hot chocolate?”

She gazed into her half-full mug. It was tempting, but this was her second one. Too much sugar and she wouldn’t sleep. “Not tonight. Have you checked the shower? When I used it this morning, there was only cold water.” One thing she hated was cold showers.

“A scan of the system shows no problems with the thermal heating modulators.”

She glanced at Ernie. Heather was still working on his communication module. Sometimes, he sounded like one of the first-off-the-rack prototypes that used to walk awkwardly around the station and respond with one-word answers. But he was improving every day. “It must be me. I jinxed the controls. I’d love a shower before bed.”

“I can check again.”

“No need. I trust you.” She patted his head again.

“You work too hard.”

Heather grinned. She’d programmed Ernie to help with tasks around her small apartment. In addition, she’d added a few extras, so he’d remind her that there was more to life than work. Work she so often brought home and continued into the small hours.

She looked at the framed picture on the table beside her. That was her dream. That was why Heather worked so hard. Once she’d gotten her hands on her own perfect piece of land and built her dream home, then she could relax. Until then, she’d focus hard on saving and earning any bonuses she could.

Although Diadora was as scary as an undiscovered black hole, when a member of staff hit a target, they sometimes discovered a little bonus in their pay packet. It wasn’t guaranteed, but every time Heather got one, she squirreled it away in her dream space station pad fund.

Her smile faded as she returned her attention to the tablet. “Let’s see what’s going on here.” Pulling up the coding files for the matchmaking protocols, Heather spent half an hour scrolling through streams of code. She couldn’t see anything wrong, but the matches were awful, real idiot matches that would make the couples miserable if they met. There was no way any of these would work.

If Diadora saw them, she’d have a fit and blame Heather or Vegas or anyone within shouting range. If the matches failed, it looked bad on Diadora. When that happened, she went looking for someone else’s blood. With Diadora, the buck stopped at whichever sucker she could pin it on.

“What’s this?” Heather peered at an odd piece of code. She’d never seen it before. Some of it wasn’t normal coding language. It looked alien, which sort of made sense, but they used a universal coding language that all aliens and humans stuck to.

The overhead lights flickered before becoming glaringly bright.

Heather glanced at the ceiling. “I swear, one day, this place will just explode. Ernie, we’re going to be nothing but space dust if this station doesn’t get a major overhaul.”

“I will fly us to the nearest planet before that happens.”

“Of course you will. You’re my protector.” Although he was small, Ernie had a number of built in safeguards. One was a small fusion reactor. It meant his power never ran out. He also had the ability to recycle waste water into oxygen and came with a mask Heather could use if she ever found herself sucked into space with no space suit on. It was highly unlikely, but it was good to be prepared for the worst.

Ernie also had a diagnostic repair program and an intergalactic navigation system. He was her super-powered, super-efficient metallic pet. She loved him.

“Take a look at this code.” She lifted Ernie onto the couch next to her.

He plugged a portal connector from one of his legs into her tablet and scanned the code she indicated.

“Does anything look strange to you?”

Sparks shot out of Ernie. He flew backward across the couch, landing on his back with his legs in the air.

Heather yelped and grabbed him up, her heart racing. “What’s wrong? What happened?” She ran a hand over him. Ernie felt too warm, like he had a fever.

“Error. Reboot required.” Ernie twitched in her hands, his green sensor flickering on and off at an alarming rate.

Heather placed him gently on the couch, feeling guilty for asking him to look at the code. “I’m sorry, Ernie. I had no clue the code would do that to you. Do what you need to repair yourself.”

She watched him for several minutes, making sure he wasn’t going to explode or go into meltdown. When his sensor light turned amber, she relaxed a little. That meant he was in repair mode.

Heather kept half an eye on Ernie as she returned to studying the evil code that had zapped her buddy.

She wasn’t a coding expert. She was self-taught but knew the basics. What she was looking at was way beyond her understanding. Some of it was definitely not the universal language of coding geeks.

There was something in this code that had aggravated Ernie’s internal systems. Something that must have detected it was being studied and came with a built-in defense mechanism. Heather shook her head. There should be nothing like that in the matchmaking algorithms.

She tapped her chin with a finger. “Unless someone tampered with the system. Why would they do that?” She looked at Ernie. He didn’t respond. “Everybody wants alien and human matches to work. Everybody wants children.”