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“Is there anything else we can look at to help us figure out what happened?”
“The decommissioning report could be useful.” I accessed it. “But it looks legit. It bears the stamp of the Kelvane Vessel Authority, Regional Office Twelve. Let me run the office through the active registry to make sure nothing was missed.”
Cass settled in beside me. “Do your thing.”
I sat back after a few minutes of searching and frowned.
“Bad news?” she asked.
“Office Twelve was dissolved years ago with no forwarding authority and no archive transfer.”
“Which means?”
“A department that no longer exists signed the report.” I stared at the display. “Why get rid of that office?”
“Downsizing? Streamlining? Bots taken over?”
“There’d be a forwarding office. This is just a dead end.”
Cass stared at the screen. “Were they hiding something? Is this to do with your ship’s fake crew history?”
“We don’t know it’s fake.”
“It looks increasingly like it is.” Cass leaned closer and tapped the screen.
I huffed out a breath. “Let me try something else.”
The ship’s neural logs sat in a separate partition, encrypted and sealed. I’d tried to access them repeatedly, but Hollow Chorus rejected my efforts, so I let it slide, figuring she’d share once she trusted me.
I put my hands on the console. “Show me.”
The Chorus resisted, giving me nothing but a long, stubborn silence.
“I’m not leaving. Show me what happened. Thanks to Cass, I understand more now. You’re in trouble. We can help. Let us help you.”
Still nothing.
I growled and rolled my shoulders. “I’m not the enemy.”
“Hey, let me try, since she seems to like me so much.” Cass threaded her fingers through mine and pressed down, her face so close that our breath mingled.
Desire rolled through me, but now wasn’t the time. This wasn’t a mate bond firing. I refused to believe this was anything more. I only ever got casual, and my bond mate wasn’t a human.
The display flickered and a data stream opened, thin and corrupted, fragments pouring across the screen in no order I could read. It was all partial entries. Timestamps with gaps between them. Encrypted sections that my access codes bounced off.
But one entry came through clean. A crew manifest, predating the sale documents.
My breath stuttered, and I blinked to ensure I wasn’t seeing things. My family name was on the manifest.
Chapter 11
Cass
Rennick hadn’t moved. His hands stayed on the console, our fingers entwined, the display casting light across his clenched jaw.
“That’s a family member?” I asked.
All I got in response was an eyelid twitch.
