Loka’s heart warmed as he saw the smile on Heather’s face.

“Of course, I’ll help. I didn’t want to get in your way. That was why I was hanging back.”

Loka appreciated that. He understood her caution around him. He’d been unkind to her the last time they’d been in the lab. He passed her a pair of protective gloves. “Wear these. Some of the materials we handle are toxic to human skin.”

Heather pulled on the gloves without comment, snapping them into place and looking at him expectantly.

He had to admit her smile was a lot sweeter to look at than Hoan’s. “Do you know how to prepare molecular material for a petri dish?”

“We did it back in high school,” Heather said. “Show me how to do it again. I’m a quick study.”

“This won’t take long. I might as well start these tests again while we’re here.” Loka set out twenty samples, each with their own petri dish. He extracted the first sample. “Take a single drop, squeeze it onto the gel in the petri dish, and then seal. Mark each with a number, starting from one and add the date. Do this for all twenty samples.”

“Got it.”

Loka watched Heather for a few seconds. She was confident in her work. He felt himself relax. His research was safe. Although they’d been set back a few weeks in their progress, they could continue with their mapping program. The testing of the biological samples from the fragments of rock they’d extracted was a tiny part of their work, but he needed to be thorough.

The mapping of the Milky Way would ensure Loka made a name for himself. Then he could pick his own project anywhere he wanted. He might even stay in this galaxy. His gaze slid to Heather. There were appealing aspects to remaining here.

“While you’re doing that, I will take a look at the code you discovered in the system. It looks like some of the internal monitors are active.”

Heather didn’t look up from her careful pipetting. “It looked alien to me.”

Loka smiled. “I am alien.”

She paused and glanced at him. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. Simply that I didn’t understand it. On Earth, we use HTML code. Most other aliens use a similar system.”

“The Intergalactic Coding Language.”

“That’s the one.  But this was well, alien.”

Loka brought up the code and studied it. “It does indeed look alien. This lab has a built-in coding translator, so our systems integrate. This is new to me.” A series of swirls and dashes had been placed into the system’s coding structure. No wonder the space station was malfunctioning. It was trying to decode a language it had no understanding of.

Loka puzzled over the code for some time. All the while, Heather worked quietly in the background.

He found her presence soothing. She only asked questions when she needed to. He already preferred her company to Hoan’s, who talked too much and not always about work.

“I’m all done with the samples.” Heather date stamped the last one and turned to Loka. “How are you getting on with the code?”

“Come take a look.” He moved to the side to allow her to see the screen.

She scanned the code. “That’s odd. You’re looking at the My Single Alien coding. I recognize this.”

“I’ve been tracking the origins of the code.”

“Someone at My Single Alien planted this code?”

“I believe that is where it originated from.”

“You think the code began in the My Single Alien database?”

“Perhaps someone accessed your system and planted it there.”

Heather shook her head. “Our security systems are as good as anybody else’s. There’s no reason to target the matchmaking agency.”

“Have you noticed any glitches in the data you’ve received?”

Heather tugged at her bottom lip. “Yes. The last few batches of pairings have been awful. I even looked at the algorithms to see if there was a problem with the coding. That’s when I first spotted the odd coding.”

Loka scratched the base of one horn. “Could it be somebody is manipulating matches?”

“If they were, they wouldn’t get far. Every match is checked by human eyes. We have the final say on whether a match goes through. I was ready to turn down almost all of the last batch.”

“It’s possible an alien race who wants fertile human females could try to jump the queue. I know there is general disharmony about how long it takes for an alien to find his match.”

Heather frowned. “We have high standards. Most of our matches are a success. There are very few separations. That’s thanks to us doing a good job. If we didn’t scrutinize every match and induct every alien, there would be a lot more chaos. There would also be far fewer babies.”

Loka raised his hands as he saw the passion in Heather’s eyes. “It was not meant as a complaint. I was suggesting that could be the reason My Single Alien was targeted. Whichever race implanted the code meant to target you and ensure they got themselves a match. Perhaps the code took on a life of its own and infected the whole station.”

“Let’s see if I can pull up My Single Alien’s database from here. If there is a particular alien intent on upping the number of matches they get, it will be easy to spot.”

Loka watched Heather work, her fingers skimming over the keys as she expertly skipped around the system.

“I can’t get onto the live system, but I’ve got my history up. Let’s take a look at last week’s matches. We had seventy cases come through.” Heather glanced up at Loka. “We have to match ten aliens a day to suitable females.”

“You have high targets.”

“Tell me about it. When you have a boss as scary as Diadora, you find an incentive to keep on working.”

Loka nodded. “It would explain why you spend so many hours working.”

“You notice all the overtime I do?”

Loka shrugged. He hadn’t intentionally kept tabs on Heather, but somehow, he knew her movements almost as well as he knew his own.

Pictures of aliens seeking matches flashed across the screen. “There were two Dackins, a Koob, two Galaxars, and five Draxdans. The rest were Vincoles, Monomars, and Bantis, which is plain wrong.”

“I’m surprised to see Bantis using the services of My Single Alien,” Loka said. “They eat human flesh.”

“You’re not the only one surprised.” Heather rubbed the end of her nose. “They shouldn’t be there at all. I haven’t seen any of these files. If Vegas or Nell had happened across matches with Banti, they’d have alerted Diadora. They’re banned from using our services. They want to mate with us, but their overwhelming urge to have a snack afterwards, or sometimes even during sex, is too much.”

“Which means they must be behind this.”

“I don’t think so. Well, I don’t think it’s just them.” Heather slid a dozen more images onto the screen. “I remember these matches. These females should never have been matched with Vincoles. They like their females to look a specific way.”

“Why were these matches made if they are not suitable?”

“To bring the reputation of My Single Alien into question? If we had taken any of these matches forward, the Vincoles would have a legitimate reason to complain. That might have caused problems with our annual review with the Council of Representatives.”

“It’s nothing that can’t be explained away. Logs will show this code is the reason for the poor matches.”

“It’s not that easy. All eyes, human and alien, are on our work. As the only licensed agents in space to offer alien and human matches, we get a lot of questions. There are also a lot of people envious of what we do. Rival agencies can’t operate because we have the exclusive license. There’s competition out there. They just can’t go up against us. That is unless we mess up.”

“The Vincoles want to start their own agency?”

Heather pulled up a separate data stream. “I knew I’d read something about this. Here it is. The Vincole High Council objected to the recent renewal of our license. They said it gave humans an unfair advantage.”

“You are in the best position to run the agency,” Loka said. “If another alien decided on the fate of humans, you’d have no way of defending yourselves. You are weaponless.” His hand traced along a horn.

Heather’s gaze went from his horns and then to his claws. “We don’t come with our own attachable weapons. We have guns. We’d fight back if another race took over and tried to match us unsuitably or mistreated us in any way, forcing matches when they weren’t suitable. It would be messy, though.”

“You would lose. You are ill-prepared to fight another alien.”

Heather’s lips pursed. “Fine. We’re pathetic genetic throwbacks that should have been extinguished, just like the dinosaurs. Lucky for us, we were so dumb we hadn’t even invented reliable space travel when Draxdans discovered us. If we had, we’d have been obliterated in the intergalactic war you heroes are fighting on the other side of the wormhole.”

“It is fortunate for us you have nothing to do with that.” Loka’s hand skimmed over hers. “If you had, we might never have met.”

The anger in Heather’s eyes faded. “I guess not.” She turned back to the screen. “It could be that the Banti and Vincole are working together. They hacked the system, planted the alien code, and then what? What’s their next move?”

“If I were them, I’d wait until the station was suitably disabled and launch an attack.” Loka’s gaze went to the door. “Without external monitors, we cannot see if any alien craft is approaching Prodigy.”

“You think an alien invasion is coming?”

“If your theory is right, and these aliens have implanted the code for that reason, they will want to complete their mission.”

“Destroy My Single Alien?” Heather grabbed Loka’s hand. “Blow up Prodigy?”

“With you out of the way, it clears the path for a new agency to take over.”

“We need to tell Diadora,” Heather said. “Actually, no, we need to find Helga. She won’t know what’s happening. She needs to get everyone off the station. The Banti and Vincole have representatives on the Council. They will put a stop to this.”

“Providing the Council isn’t in on it.”

Heather’s cheeks grew pale. “What if they are? Could they be working on the inside to destroy us? I know both the Vincole and Banti councilors voted against us having our license renewed. Diadora ranted about it for a week.”

Another thought troubled Loka. “What if the Vincole want to destroy the agency entirely? They don’t want matches to be made. They’re not looking to take over your work.”

“We know the Banti want to eat us.” Heather shuddered. “They could start trading us as a food commodity. What do the Vincole want us for if not to set up their own business?”

“I’ve heard rumors they are interested in running a bidding war. They would put human females into an auction. Sell them to the highest bidder. It’s not about making a suitable long-term match.”

Heather grimaced. “It’s all about making the most money. That would be disastrous.”

“In particular, for any human taken by a predatory alien,” Loka said.

“We have to stop this. We need to stop this code infecting any more of the station and find out if there’s a group of hostile aliens waiting to see the space station destroyed.”

Loka looked around at the experiments. They had done half of what he’d wanted, but they needed to move on. They couldn’t let the agency or the space station be destroyed. “Let’s find Helga. We’ll tell her what’s going on and stop this attack before it happens.”

Heather nodded, already moving toward the door. As she opened the door, she jumped back.

In front of her stood three members of the cyborg security team.