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“Um... excuse me.” Monica jammed her hands on her hips. “I’m here as moral support and kick ass repair goddess work only. I’m not bonding to a cute but creepy sentient ship who’s looking for a new BFF while she scares us to death with her ghost aliens.”

“Don’t make her angry,” Cass warned.

“She shouldn’t risk making me angry.” Monica pointed to her kitbag. “I have fearsome tools. They cut. They grind. She won’t like that.”

The floor channels blazed white. The ceiling split open, and warm resin poured down in thick, golden sheets. It hit Doc first. She yelped and dodged, but it clung to her, warm and sticky.

Monica was backing away when she caught the second wave in the chest. “Oh, you absolute bitch of a ship! Not again. I was joking about the cutting and grinding!”

Tambi sidestepped the worst of it, and it caught her tablet instead, coating the screen in a thick golden layer.

She stared at it and scowled. “Oh, come on! This is only a month old.”

I caught resin across one shoulder and down my arm, warm and thick. It clung to my skin with the familiarity of something that knew me and didn’t give a shit whether I appreciated this style of up close and personal.

Cass stood in the middle of the room, untouched. Not a drop on her. The resin had poured around her in a circle, coating the floor, the walls, every other body in the room, and left her clean.

“Hey! I call favoritism!” Monica dragged her hands down her face. “This is absolute bullshit! Sentient ships are bullshit! I’m never again working on something that pukes resin when she has a tantrum, no matter how pretty she is.”

“The ship likes what the ship likes.” Cass grinned. “You get gooped. I get... well, unsure what it has planned for me. But it has to do with all these lights and alcoves.” Her gaze flicked to me for a second.

Doc peeled cooling resin off her neck and held it up to the light before she sniffed it and scanned it. “It’s warm and not acidic. And it’s... pulsing. This isn’t a waste product poured on us as punishment. You think the ship tagged us?”

Tambi wiped her tablet screen with her sleeve, making it worse. “Like livestock?”

“Like it thinks we’re crew.” Doc’s scanner beeped as she ran it over a heap of cooling resin. “Huh. Thought so. This baby wrote our star-damned bio-signatures into her resin. She’s registering us in the bonding matrix.”

“Then she’s made a mistake,” Tambi said. “Human and Kelvane don’t bond, right, Rennick?”

“It’s not normal. And only Kelvane can fly her,” I said. “Our DNA is uniquely coded into each ship’s matrix. Mix in human DNA and the bond could corrupt, making the ships dangerous to pilot.”

Doc pivoted toward me, her gaze narrowed. “Humans evolved from the same base DNA Kelvane came from, though. So, it’s not that out there of a proposal that a human could connect to this ship.”

“It’s never happened.” I wanted it to. I needed Cass to be the perfect fit for this ship. But that was asking too much of her. She’d never hinted that she wanted anything more than an easy hookup. I was the one with the issue.

“Is it even safe for her to hitch a ride to the best repair crew this side of Earth’s moon?” Monica squeezed resin out of her hair. “Because I want it on record that I didn’t fucking consent to being baptized in alien spunk twice in one week.”

“You look amazing.” Cass kept grinning. “Very shiny. Maybe the resin will fix your hair. You were saying you needed an oil treatment.”

“I will end you and your goopy, spunky ship if you suggest this in any way resembled a weekend at my favorite spa. Gah!”

The hum dropped to silence. The alcoves dimmed to a low, steady amber. Then the third alcove, the cold one Cass had flagged, cracked open. Cold air poured out of it, sharp enough to fog every breath in the room.

Behind it, in the dark, recessed space, there was movement.

Chapter 13

Cass

The dead walked out of the fucking alcove. At least, they looked like the dead. Ghosts. They looked like ghosts.

A shape made of fading light, taller than Rennick, trailing luminescence from the edges of its body, moved through the room. Not the aimless hovering of the cold spots I’d experienced. This one knew where it was going.

Behind it, two more ghosts pulled free from adjacent alcoves. They were smaller and dimmer. One kept flickering in and out like a signal fighting for reception. The other turned its head toward me, and I couldn’t see a face, but I felt it looking.

“Holy crap! It’s like Ghostbusters.” Monica stood with her mouth open. “And I left my proton pack at home.”

A groaning rumble shook the walls.