Hakon thought it was only fair, since I had been present for the mysterious damage in the engine room, that I help him test the rewiring.

“Anything?” he called out.

“No.” I'd been under the console for an hour now, waiting for one small light to turn on. But nothing; wire after wire, connection after connection.

It was almost enough to make me want to rip out the rest of it.

“What about now?”

I blinked. Finally, a flicker of light. “You're in the right area. How bright it's supposed to get?”

“Hold on, let me come down and look.”

I grumbled as I started to work my way out. Technically, there were maintenance grooves under the panels to let you go around and fix stuff without being tangled up in the wiring.

Practically, those grooves weren't designed for men the size of us.

I'd almost made my way out when my comm crackled in my ear, causing me to jerk my head and bash it into the last bit of control panel housing.

“Dammit,” I snapped. “This better be good.”

“Well, we could not tell you that Loree’s found a way to control the ship.” Nadira’s voice came through. “Does that count as good?”

“Wait, what?”

“Why don't you come up here and see if you're in a better mood when you see what we have to tell you?”

I finished crawling out and handed my tools off to Hakon. “It looked okay, but I gotta go.”

He stared at them without moving to take them. “You just don't want to test any more circuits.”

Stretching my back until it popped, I put the rejected tools down on the deck. “While it is true I don't want to do this anymore, I do have to go.”

He grunted and crawled back under the control panel to double check that my eyes hadn't failed us both.

Quinn leaned against the wall by the hatch to the secure area. “It's been like a parade, back and forth all day.”

“As long as it's a parade of our people, I'm okay with that.”

The soft voices of the women reached me before I got to Loree's door. Nadira’s voice sounded like she'd been crying and I stopped, torn. I wanted to comfort her, but if this was private, maybe I should let it be.

I glared at the wall opposite. Maybe Doc should've spent some time with us on how relationships work, instead of quite so much on tactics and strategy.

“I'll trust you to tell me when it's time,” Nadira said. “But don't wait too late, promise?”

“I won't,” Loree answered.

Humming loudly to announce my presence, I entered Loree's room. Nadira perched on the edge of the bed with a grin pasted on her face, but her eyes were bleak. I pulled her into my lap as I sat in the single chair, wishing things were quiet enough to talk. But that wouldn’t be today.

“Alright, ladies. Want to give me more details?”

Loree clutched the edge of the blanket, but I couldn’t tell if it was from nerves or she didn’t feel well. “Did she tell you about the missing room?”

My confusion must have shown enough on my face to be my answer.

“Sorry,” Nadira answered. “It slipped my mind. At the time I didn’t know if it was important, or just one more weirdness.”

Loree chuckled. “A little of both, as it turns out. It was in the schematics all along, just labeled wrong.”

She tapped the screen and enlarged.

“Auxiliary control room. We might not need to get into the bridge to get navigation back.”

This was great. But there was something else coming, I just knew it.

“What haven’t you said yet?”

“There are two problems.” She bit her lip and looked at Nadira, but I could outwait them.

“Always are.”

“First, the only way to auxiliary control is through a room with an odd cluster of heat signatures. I suspect they’re Hunters, but I haven’t been able to bring up cameras there.”

I nodded. “We’ve dealt with them all along. This time, we know where they are, and we finally have a few weapons.”

She tapped the screen again, then paused.

“The other problem is worse. You’re really, really not going to like this.”

And she was right.

* * *

You’d think Hakon wouldn’t mind a break from the repair job. But calling him and the rest of our small Pack back for a briefing was like catching spilt mercury.

“We’ve got a situation. All other tasks are on hold until we get this figured out.”

I gave Loree the nod. “Show them.”

With a flick of her screen, she sent the cam image to the holoplate on the wall where we could all see it.

“What is that?” Quinn muttered.

“Dunno, but I’m voting for setting it on fire now,” Lorcan answered.

“I don’t think you should do that.” Loree changed angles, but the image didn’t get any easier to comprehend.

A room, with what looked like a small control station running down the middle. It was hard to tell, because a sea of pink flesh, layered and striated in all directions, covered every surface.

“That’s the auxiliary control room. I think that’s how they’re controlling the ship.”

“So, no torching. Got it.”

“Not even ripping, blasting, or randomly cutting,” Nadira clarified. “We don’t know how deeply that tissue is embedded in the system.” She met my eyes, then looked away. Just because she was right, didn’t mean I couldn’t still be angry about it. “Which is where I come in.”

“When I first found the second control room, I couldn’t figure out how they’d locked the captain out from there. Surely it wasn’t designed that way.” Loree shuddered. “Then we got the cameras online.”

“With that creature?” Hakon approached the image, curiosity overcoming his innate crankiness. “They may have been able to trick`` the system into acting as if a human is at the controls. And has been, for as long as they’ve added to the thing.”

“You’re saying that’s alive? No way.” Aeden scoffed.

“In a technical sense, yes, I think it is.” In her field, Nadira was sure, confident. “Watching the room, there are pulses through the muscles. I think just enough to keep the room from shutting down, keeping the controls of the ship locked there.”

I took back control of the briefing. “And we have our favorite dance partners waiting for us down there.”

Loree brought up the schematic that showed the cluster of hot red dots.

“I’ll search for more weapons,” Lorcan volunteered, and Quinn nodded.

“Balance that with getting rest. There’s a whole series of compartments that I haven’t been able to get into before, and we’re going in blind. Regroup in six hours.”