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“No, they have total respect for their females. I heard bonding is tricky and means they’re struggling to survive. It’s done on a biological imprint rather than let’s go on some dates, bone a few times, and see if we still like each other after three months.”

I gently shoved her. “Where’s the romance in any of that?”

“My last romantic bone died when a date puked on my favorite shoes and called me the wrong name when we fucked.”

“You fucked him after he puked on you?” Tambi asked.

“Before. I have standards.” Monica shrugged. “I didn’t say they were high.”

“How big we talking?” I asked Doc.

“Not ogre big.”

“Not a real thing,” I muttered.

“Ogres are so a thing. We’ve just not met them yet. There’s a planet full of ogres just waiting to meet you, toss you over their brawny shoulders, and ravage you senseless.” Doc laughed at my scrunched-up face.

I stepped closer to the edge of the docking bay, eager to get a better look. The fog on the far side of the glass shifted, revealing a hand pressed against the window.

“Well,” I said, mostly to myself. “For two point six million, there have to be catches Rennick isn’t telling us. That foggy shit must be it.”

The hand on the glass didn’t move.

Chapter 2

Rennick

The mess hall cupboard slammed open again and took a strip of skin off my knuckles. Glasses hit the floor, and the thermostat display flipped from twenty-eight degrees to four and back again.

“Pick a temperature and stick to it,” I growled to nobody, since my last damned crew had fucked off in the dead of night with no warning.

The cupboard slammed shut on its own. Again.

Three crews had walked off this ship before I’d even finished her first run. They were soft, planet-side morons who didn’t know a resin hull from a hole in the ground. But word had spread about the Hollow Chorus and her problems, and no matter what I offered as payment, no one would accept a position.

My uncle, Navarre Nogea, had been stunned when I’d told him I’d bought a damaged ship, almost making me regret my choice. He’d been my legal guardian since my parents died when I was a child, so I appreciated his input.

Not this time.

I’d had to buy her. A sentient ship with no crew to bond to would rot, and that was a tragedy. One I could prevent.

I didn’t doubt that she came with complications. These beauties took years to make, so you didn’t toss one onto the auction pile for no reason, but I could make her mine.

There was also a stubborn, unkillable part of me that wanted to prove my uncle wrong. I could make a mark without his name and influence infiltrating what I did. As I’d gotten older, I’d learned not everything the Nogea family did was legit, and I wanted nothing to do with that. I intended the Hollow Chorus to be my first solo ship. One I molded around my business. A business that had nothing to do with my uncle.

I was strong enough to break most problems apart with my hands, but you can’t out-muscle a fight you can’t see, and something on this ship had been fighting since I signed the deed of ownership.

The automated comm crackled down from the bridge, thin with the ship’s intermittent power. “Docking in two minutes. Airlock protocols engaged.”

I wedged the cupboard shut with a maintenance bar and went for the airlock. The corridor fought me the whole way there. Lights guttered, cold hit my chest, and for a second, the ship’s interior iced, waiting to see what I’d do about it.

I whacked the release button as we slid into the dock on Eden Shore. Nothing happened. “Come on. Open.” The repair crew was waiting. Dead Stick Salvage was an odd name for a crew, but everyone I’d asked had said they were talented specialists, and they’d better be for the fee the fierce female with the silver hair had charged me.

The amount didn’t matter. I could afford it. I just needed the Hollow Chorus happy, and to stop trying to kill me or freeze me to death.

I thumped the button again. The mechanism creaked, and the ramp dropped without warning. What felt like a boot in my back shoved me out. I didn’t fall so much as get kicked.

The airlock cycled open beneath me, and the ramp jerked back, leaving nothing to stand on. Fuck.