Loka’s heart raced as he continued his fruitless search for Heather. She wasn’t in any of the cells. Every one had been emptied and searched. They’d found several groups of scared humans and had set them all free, urging them to remain hidden.

They were in the last cell. Heather wasn’t in there.

Loka caught hold of the shoulder of a black-haired woman as she hurried past. “Do you know Heather Roberts?”

The woman’s eyes widened before she nodded. “I see her in the Enchanted Captain sometimes.”

“She wasn’t in the cells? She wasn’t taken?”

“They didn’t bring her here. I haven’t seen her. Sorry.”

Loka dropped his hold on her shoulder, and she raced off after the others.

“We will find Heather,” Hoan said. “She will be here somewhere.”

“She must have been in that cell we discovered,” Loka said. “That’s the only explanation. Somehow, the females overpowered the cyborgs and escaped.”

“Wherever she is, we can help the most by fixing the station and getting it back under our control,” Hoan said. “It will be easier to find her then.”

“I need to find her now.” Loka massaged his forehead, his claws scraping across his skin.

“If this place blows up, then there will be no chance of that happening,” Hoan said. “Let’s get internal comms back online. We’ll be able to scan for Heather, and we can send a message asking her to join us.”

Loka looked along the corridor again, desperately seeking Heather, willing her to be standing in front of him with her cute smile.

“As entertaining as it is to watch your heart control your head, this is the best course of action.” Hoan clapped a hand on Loka’s shoulder. “Sometimes, logic and science need to supersede emotions.”

Loka scraped his hand down his face. “I am not emotional.”

“You sort of are. It’s fun to watch. I’ve never seen you like this before.”

“I have complete control of myself.” Loka knew those words were a lie. His heart wasn’t beating out a normal rhythm. It was all to do with Heather. He’d feel better once he saw her again.

“Come on, brother. Let’s make our way to engineering. We will find your female. Science will rule the day, once again.”

Loka shook his head, a tiny smile on his lips as he followed Hoan. He made sense. It was the right course of action, but every part of Loka told him he should keep fighting and searching for Heather.

This love business was tricky. It wasn’t letting him think rationally. Getting to engineering and fixing the problem was the right thing to do, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

As they hurried to engineering, the emergency lighting flickered on and off.

“Not a positive sign,” Hoan said. “If the code is messing with the emergency systems, we’re almost out of time.”

“Then we’d better hurry.”

The doors to engineering were open when they arrived. The gap wasn’t big enough to allow Loka through, but with some not so careful forcing with his horns, he widened the gap.

Smears of blood decorated the room as they entered. It appeared engineering had put up quite a fight when they’d been attacked.

Hoan looked up from his inspection of a dead panel. “This stuff is beyond saving.”

“There must be something operational.” Loka thumped a dead panel.

The sound of footsteps had them both turning and lowering their heads in preparation to disembowel whoever was approaching.

Heather hobbled around the corner, her attention on a piece of paper in her hand.

Loka bellowed with pleasure. She was here. Of course she would be, trying to fix things and make it right for everyone.

Heather’s head shot up, her shaking hand holding out a laser. She gasped and lowered the weapon before hobble running toward Loka.

He scooped her into his arms and kissed her.

She made a startled sounding noise but didn’t object. Her arms wrapped around his neck as he pulled her closer.

When they broke apart from their kiss, they were breathless.

Loka gazed down at Heather. He was never letting her go again. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Heather grinned. “I wanted to find you too. But we have to fix the code before this whole place blows up.”

Loka nodded, proud of his female for thinking of others first. “You’re hurt.” He lowered her carefully to the ground, his gaze going to the leg she balanced gingerly on.

“It’s nothing. A cyborg got a bit handy with its fist as I deactivated it.”

Loka’s fingers hovered over her leg, longing to ease her pain. “How did you escape your cell?”

“With the help of a lot of awesome people.” Heather took hold of his hand. She nodded at Hoan, who stood just behind Loka. “We could do with your help. I’ve accessed the code, but we need to stop it, deactivate the attacking cyborgs, and return the systems to the station.”

“Just like that?” Loka smiled at Heather. She was so smart, she probably could do this all herself.

“You’re doing this alone?” Hoan asked.

“I swear, if I get one more electric shock, I’m taking a laser to this whole damn thing.”

Heather glanced over her shoulder and grinned. “I’m not alone. Most of the people in the cells have fled. We’re in over our heads. I’ve been doing things the old school way with pen and paper. Most of the systems are offline.”

“Show us what you’ve achieved.” Loka noticed Heather kept hold of his hand as she led them around the corner and deeper into engineering. He could get used to this hand holding.

“This is Nell.” Heather introduced them to a petite brunette, who was blowing on her fingers, a look of hatred in her eyes as she glared at the sparking panel in front of her.

“Hey.” Nell shook out her hand. “Heather found me hiding in the office. I’m causing a mess here, though, not helping.”

“And trying hard to set yourself on fire.” A tall, elegant woman with a razor cut bob and pristine nails smiled slyly at Loka.

Heather sighed. “That’s Ivy. She was being useful until about twenty minutes ago.”

Ivy nodded, her attention still on Loka. “Are you our saviors?”

“They’re here to help,” Heather said. “Loka is clever.”

“You’re saying I’m not?” Ivy asked.

Heather turned to Loka and Hoan. “The code is intelligent. It keeps mutating.”

“Like a virus.” Loka nodded. “We assumed it had to be operating within those parameters.”

“If it’s a virus, then we can infect it with something. Make the code sick and stop it working.”

Loka smiled. His human was so smart. “It could work. If we put a piece of viral code in the system, it will infect the program and prevent it from doing more damage.”

“Or we will make it worse and take us all out,” Ivy said.

“Ignore her,” Heather said. “Ivy likes to see the dark side of things.”

“I’m a realist.”

Heather waved a hand in the air. “The Banti must be using a trojan. They’ve snuck in through a back door and gained control of our system.”

“We can use the same method,” Hoan said. “We insert our own trojan. It will chase down theirs.”

Loka stroked a horn.  “It’s risky.” He moved to a dark screen and prodded it to try to bring it to life. It remained unresponsive. “The trojan code will need careful monitoring. As your friend over there said, it could do more damage than good.”

Ivy smirked as she inspected her nails. “I knew I was right.”

“If we keep a close eye on it, only let it into certain parts of the system, we can control it. We can stop it from doing damage. All we need to do is get the main station’s systems under our control again.”

“Is it me, or is the air in here a little off?” Hoan leaned against the side of the control desk.

“It’s not you,” Heather said. “The air filtration system is down. Every breath you take will be a little more toxic than the last. We’ve got about two hours of breathable air. Then it’s lights out.”

“Where is the engineering crew?”

“Missing. Assumed taken by the aliens.”

Hoan groaned. “This is not good.”

“We must assess the damage.” Loka finally accessed the panel in front of him, the light glowing a dull, sickly green. He ran a quick check on the systems. Air filtration was down, communications down, water and food supplies offline. All major systems had been damaged. Heather’s estimate of two hours was on the generous side.

“Are the Banti controlling the station’s navigation?” Hoan asked, rubbing his eyes and yawning as he did so.

“Everything is stable for now,” Heather said. “Once they have what they want—”

“You mean us served on a platter with a side of fries,” Ivy said.

Heather nodded. “Then I reckon they’ll unleash the code everywhere. They won’t care what happens to the station.”

“The Council of Representatives won’t be so understanding,” Nell said.

Ivy tutted. “As if they care about one outpost. They’re probably in on this.”

Loka glanced at Ivy before returning his attention to Heather. “How many Banti are still on board?”

Heather tapped the screen several times before it activated. “My hack is still ropey. The connections keep dying, but I got into the tracking system. There are two ships in the docking bay unaccounted for. There are a dozen crew assigned to each ship. And then, of course, they have control of the cyborgs.” Her expression grew pensive.

“How many?”

“The station has over five hundred, not all human-sized. Some are large spider-sized, like Ernie, but they can creep in anywhere.”

“That’s our focus,” Loka said. “Deactivate the cyborgs first.”

“This is the rogue code.” Heather dragged her fingers across the screen and pulled up rows of data. “You see here. It’s issuing commands to the cyborg station crew.”

“The Banti must be operating this code from somewhere inside the station,” Nell said. “There are no ships in orbit unless they’re cloaked.”

“I bet they’re on their ships in the docking bay,” Heather said. “They won’t have infected their own ships with the code.”

“As soon as we put our trojan virus in the system, they’ll know we’re up to something,” Hoan said.

“We need to take out the Banti ships.” Heather took a step toward the door.

Loka shook his head. “You’re not doing that. You’re injured.”

“It’s a little bruise.” Heather touched her swollen leg and winced. “Nell. Ivy. You stay here and work with Hoan. I’ll go with Loka and stop the Banti altering the code from their ship.”

“No. I’ll take Hoan with me to investigate the Banti ships.”

Heather touched Loka’s arm. “He’s needed here to protect Nell and Ivy.”

“We can look after ourselves,” Ivy said.

Loka glanced at Ivy, noticing she didn’t have a mark on her. What Heather said made sense. Ivy and Nell needed protecting if any cyborgs found them while they were working in engineering. But he loathed the idea of putting Heather at any more risk.

“I’ll help from here, but you need to show me what to do,” Nell said. “I’m no good at code.”

“You are great at eating cake, though.” Ivy went back to checking her manicure.

“I can help with the code.” Hoan nodded at Nell. “I’m better with viruses, but I can figure out what we need to do.”

Heather pulled up another screen. “This is the code I’ve been working on. It’s not half as sophisticated as the Banti code, but it should do the job. It’s fast, messy, and it mutates. They’ll be chasing it through the system for hours.”

“How do we get it to work?” Nell peered at the lines of code.

“Take this code and put it next to theirs.” Hoan slid his fingers across the screen and pasted the code into the system.

“How do we control it?” Ivy sauntered over.

“That’s the risky bit,” Heather said. “You can’t, not really.”

Ivy sighed. “I shouldn’t have agreed to help. You’re going to get us killed.”

“Either way, we’re dead,” Heather said. “If we leave the Banti to do what they like, they’ll take us away and eat us. At least, this way, we’ve got a chance. Keep on top of the code and watch where it goes. Whatever you do, don’t give our code access to navigation. It could slam the station out of orbit.”

“You make it sound so simple, nerd girl.” Ivy nudged Nell out of the way and stared at the screen.

Heather grinned at Ivy. “Sometimes, it pays to be a nerd.” She looked around the group. “Can we do this?”

Loka found himself reaching for her hand again. He grasped it between both of his. “If there is any danger, we’ll come back here. We’ll find a way of blocking the Banti safely.”

Heather stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Of course, there will be danger. We’ll handle it together. With you by my side, I know I’m safe.”

Ivy made a gagging sound in the back of her throat.

Loka didn’t care what this skinny, prickly female thought of their behavior. He grinned down at Heather. He felt the same as she did. He could do anything with Heather by his side.

Hoan cleared his throat. “As sweet as the two of you are, we do have a space station to save.”

Dropping his hold on Heather’s hand, Loka nodded. “Let’s get this code working.”

“And let’s beat the bad guys.” Nell held her hand up for a high-five.

Heather slapped her palm. Ivy ignored her. Loka and Hoan looked confused.

Loka raised his hand. “Is this an Earth custom?”

Heather shook her head and grabbed his hand. “You missed the moment. Come on. Let’s get to these ships.”