Time moved at two settings on any ship: glacially slow or at hyper-speed. Over the next few days, Max barely had time to exchange words or stolen kisses with Inrit. Between her engineering and maintenance duties and his job in security, they were working on inverted schedules and busy at all hours.

While Max was the main muscle on the ship, he was not the only crewman responsible for security, and he’d taken to training with his team at all hours. They drilled for pirate attacks and rogue fleets, for aggressive merchants and stranded military vessels. The risks to one craft flying alone were myriad and from his time at Nina Station, Max had heard of too many accidents and skirmishes to count.

The glitching progressed, but there had been nothing as catastrophic as his first meeting with Inrit. The closest was during a sparring session with Symes. She moved quickly for a human and between one second and the next, she’d laid Max flat with a punch he should have easily avoided.

She thought she’d gotten lucky. When Inrit saw him a few hours after the match, she’d known something was wrong. They’d stolen away into their room for a few moments where she took the time to smother him with an anti-bruising cream. Regen gel was too precious to use on such a superficial wound.

She’d had to leave him to see to an issue with one of the water treatment cells. With no pressing responsibilities, Max decided to head for med bay. While his wounds needed no treatment, Kayleb was still recovering from his injury. While the Detyen hadn’t been welcoming of Max’s presence at first, Max wasn’t going to let that bother him. Krayter wouldn’t leave his brother alone and it had become an unspoken duty among the crew to give him excuses to go to the canteen or take enough time to shower.

Max placed his palm on the scanner outside the med bay and waited for the door to open. When it did, he caught sight of Tessa standing beside Doc Grxa, the man who couldn’t be bothered to save Kayleb as he was bleeding out on the hallway floor. Kayleb didn’t seem to hold anything against the doctor, so Max had vowed to forgive and forget.

He was still working on that part.

An Oscavian woman sat on a bed, a swaddled infant cradled in her bright purple arms. This must have been the woman the doctor had been treating when Kayleb was injured. Max kept his distance. Something about babies… disturbed him. They were so small, so fragile. He’d been made too strong to care for them directly. He wouldn’t risk injuring one by misjudging his own strength.

Not to mention the glitching.

For a moment, he imagined that it was Inrit in that bed and the child was their own. Something stirred deep in his chest, a sense of pride and belonging and oh so desperate want that he clenched his fist to keep from reaching out.

He was a broken man and that life was not for him. He’d sacrificed it long before any nascent dream of woman or family could form. Now he had one mission, bond with Inrit and ensure her safety. All else was secondary to that.

Max shook his head and turned to enter the small patient chamber tucked away in the side of the room. Kayleb was sitting up in bed, reading something on a tablet while Krayter slouched in a chair, head thrown back in a very uncomfortable looking sleep.

“I’m starting to think that he’s the one we should be concerned about,” Max said, nodding towards Krayter.

Kayleb smiled and gave his brother an exasperated look. He picked up a napkin off the table beside his bed and tossed it at Krayter. The soft brush of cloth sent him shooting up, ready to jump into action.

Krayter’s eyes darted around the room and he vibrated with restrained energy. When he caught sight of Max he took a deep breath and let go of the tension. These boys had been through some shit, Max could tell. Normal people didn’t wake up ready to fight.

Max leaned back against the opposite wall and acted like nothing strange had happened. Making Krayter self-conscious about his responses wasn’t going to help anyone. He turned his gaze to Kayleb. “You’re looking a lot better.”

It was true. His color had returned and he was the same rich teal as his brother. The shadows under his eyes would disappear with rest and food, and Max was sure the man would make a full recovery.

“The doc’s even letting me move around a bit. I’m allowed to walk all the way to the toilet and back,” Kayleb said wryly. The toilet was a mere five paces away.

“You’ll be running around the ship in no time,” Max promised.

“As long as I’m better by the time we get to Honora Station, I’ll be happy. I’m not letting this trip to Earth get ruined by a stupid piece of metal.” He scowled and glanced down at the sheet that was covering his chest.

“You’re going to Earth?” That was a long way away, and it was a backwater. But it was full of humans. Of course, Max wouldn’t be surprised if Earth was soon playing host to dozens, even hundreds of Detyens clamoring to find mates. If the women there were their only hope, then they’d travel all the way across the galaxies for the chance at survival.

Max kept silent about his connection to Inrit. It occurred to him that with Detyen women so rare, the fact of her mating—eventually—with a human would not go over well.

Neither of the brothers picked up on Max’s thoughts. Krayter sank back down into his seat and kicked his legs up so they were resting on Kayleb’s bed. “Our cousin, Ruwen, is… married to a woman from Earth,” said Krayter.

“You mentioned that he was recently mated,” Max said.

Kayleb nodded. “Lis invited us to accompany them to Earth. They’ve been mated for several months now and she wants to take Ru home to meet her friends.” Kayleb shifted on the bed and grimaced as he pulled against something. He settled back and a trickle of sweat dotted his forehead. “What’s Earth like?” he asked.

Max shrugged. “I’ve never been. I was born in the Consortium.” It was a collection of planets that had been colonized by people from Earth thousands of years before. For millennia, cast-offs who’d been taken from Earth or left it willingly ended up there. It wasn’t perfect, but it was home.

Kayleb looked disappointed. He opened his mouth to speak, but the doc popped his head in before he could say a word.

“Captain called you to the bridge,” he told Max. “Said to make it quick.”

Max had learned that when the captain said quick, he meant immediate. He said his goodbyes to the Detyen brothers and left the med bay. The bridge was directly above them, but it was quite a climb. The metal of the stairs pounded under Max’s feet and he wished this ship came installed with anti-grav elevators to move between levels.

He turned down a hallway and walked several steps when his vision went black for just a moment. Max stopped short and looked around. His ears rang and his head pounded, vision fuzzy at the edges as he came out of a glitch he hadn’t realized that he’d been caught in.

At first he thought that he’d only been out for a moment, but when he looked down at his feet, he noticed a bright blue stripe painted down the floor stretching all the way to the ends of the hall in either direction. When he’d been near the bridge, the strips on the ground were yellow. Blue put him on the other side of the ship. He’d lost several minutes, maybe as much as half an hour.

He didn’t panic. His fist clenched right along with his jaw and his heartbeat tried to kick up, but he didn’t panic. Doors dotted the walls at small intervals, but this wasn’t the crew quarters or the guest deck. While Max had taken time to memorize the layout of the ship, his mind was too occupied at the moment with not panicking that he didn’t recognize where he stood.

Stepping towards the wall, he traced his fingers along the corrugated metal as if something of the machine inside of him was calling out to the metal and mechanics of the beast they were all flying in. It was cold and hard and offered no solace.

A door whispered open down the hallway and Max drew up to his full height, pressing himself against the wall and facing outward as if he had every reason to be where he stood. He only hoped that he hadn’t somehow wandered into a restricted area.

But even before he saw the person who entered the hallway, the not-panic riding at his mind began to ease and his focus came back under control. The storage bay, he finally realized. Not restricted to crew, at least not this area.

When Inrit turned a corner, Max’s lips turned up. She came to a stop when she saw him and returned his smile. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

Somehow the distance between them dissolved, and this time Max knew that it had nothing to do with a glitch and everything to do with the bond straining to bind them together. Max raised his hand until he cupped her cheek and ran his thumb over the protrusion of her cheekbone. It was far more pronounced than in a human, sharp and darker than the rest of her face.

“I’m supposed to be meeting with the captain,” he heard himself say. He didn’t want to worry her, but he couldn’t make himself lie. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

Her arm shot out and she wrapped her fingers over his hip, digging in just enough for him to be certain of her presence. “A glitch?” she whispered. “Did anything happen?”

Max shook his head. “I don’t think so. I just walked here.” He checked his logs for any damage sustained over the last hour and found nothing. His memory banks were equally blank for the last nineteen minutes.

A nineteen minute long glitch. If it had happened in battle he’d be dead.

Her fingers squeezed and her eyes blazed red as strong emotion took hold. Concern. For him. How strange. “Are you okay?” she asked. “If you walked all the way here, it had to be bad. What caused it?”

Again, Max shook his head. He had felt absolutely fine up until the minute he came back to himself. “We can talk later. The captain said to come quick.”

Inrit’s mouth opened and then clicked shut as she pulled back whatever she’d planned to say. She leaned up and laid a quick kiss against his lips, pulling back for only a second before leaning back into him. Max wrapped his arms around her and gave himself over, heart pitter-pattering as their tongues danced and bodies melded together.

Want opened up in the pit of his stomach, swallowing up every other emotion he could conjure. With great reluctance, he forced himself to pull back and was gratified to see the same regret in Inrit’s eyes.

“We need to find time together,” he said, his forehead resting against hers.

“Soon,” she promised. She dropped her arms and stepped away from him, pulling out of Max’s embrace as he let her go. When she walked down the hallway, her hips swayed, but she didn’t look back. He’d noticed that about her—she never glanced back at him when they parted.

Max turned around and walked as quickly as he could without tripping over into running back to the bridge. The walk only took seven minutes, but he had to wipe a little sweat off his forehead. He already had an excuse cooked up that he hoped the captain would buy, if his tardiness was questioned.

When the doors to the bridge slid open, Captain Morvellan sat in his chair discussing something with their navigator. He glanced back towards the door as Max stepped through and waved him forward without a word about the delay.

Max nodded to the bridge crew and kept his stance relaxed. Several of the senior crew members seemed to have an issue with cyborgs, perhaps in part because of what had happened to the last cyborg crewman. Max was doing his best to seem non-threatening, but there was only so much prejudice that friendly expressions could overcome.

The captain brought up a planetary map on the main bridge view screen. “We’re making landfall in two days’ time. Prepare a summary of Vrinli II security and three plans for loading expensive cargo. Rumor has it some pirates lurk in these parts and our client wants his shipment safe.”

Vrinli II was a small planet that acted as a trading post for many merchants in the quadrant. It wasn’t wealthy, but they wouldn’t need to fight off anyone for their take. At least, they shouldn’t.

“I’ll have something to you shortly,” Max said. “The security crew will be available?”

“Yes,” said the captain. “And once your duties are done, give half the crew free time on planet. The other half will take it at our next stop.”

“Yes, sir.” Max waited a minute more, but the captain turned back to the navigator, the duty having been doled out.

At least he hadn’t called him a robot this time. The captain didn’t seem to like him, but he was expressing that by ignoring him. Max could live with that. Even better, a half day on planet sounded like the perfect way to spend time with Inrit away from the prying eyes of the crew.

Max walked back to his room with a spring in his step and hope in his heart, deliberately putting all thoughts of the epic glitch aside.