“We’ve got people down there, Chief. What’s going on?”

Camille crossed to my ready room’s desk and brought up the viewscreen, then mirrored it with her terminal out on the bridge.

The most bizarre conversation lit up the screen before me. I took my time reading it, getting more and more alarmed. Turning, I leaned my hip against the desk and looked at Camille. She was fuming. Her fists bunched, her eyes narrowed, her cheeks flushed pink with adrenaline.

Quite a sight, but I couldn’t enjoy it.

“It’s blackmailing us,” I said.

“Yes.”

I arched my brow. “And it seems to think you’re the one that will help it achieve its goals.”

“I had noticed.”

“Take a breath, Camille,” I instructed. I hadn’t seen her this riled for quite some time. She was in danger of passing out from lack of air.

Camille sucked in a deep breath and then let her shoulders relax.

“Damn it, sir,” she muttered. “Is it not bad enough that I let it out of the library?”

I huffed out an unamused breath.

“Steady on, Chief,” I said. “You’ve not got the monopoly on fuck-ups.”

“That does not help.” She glared at me, arms crossed over her chest.

“Relax,” I said. “We’re in this together. Now, how do we get ourselves out?”

Camille shook her head, her smile chagrined. “That’s what I admire about you, Captain. Your sense of noblesse oblige.”

“Anything else you admire?” I asked, waggling my eyebrows.

She arched hers at me.

“Maybe my commanding presence, for instance?” I tried.

She rolled her eyes.

“No, well, we can work on that,” I offered. I leaned back on the desk and looked directly at her. “The containment field. Can you break it?”

“Possibly. But I have my doubts.”

“I don’t particularly like the idea of giving in to terrorist demands.”

“Vela didn’t place the explosives. That was the saboteur.”

“A human being,” I agreed. “Ironic, isn’t it? Here we are discussing whether we should trust a machine and it’s a human who’s trying to kill us.”

“I’m not sure I’d call it irony.”

“Oh, what would you call it?”

“A disaster.”

“It is that, Chief. So, the containment field?”

“The containment field,” she agreed, cracking her knuckles and staring at my terminal.

“Have at it,” I offered with a wave of my hand. “Don’t mind me.”

“I never do, sir.”

“Oh, don’t I know it. Not even impressed with my commanding physique.”

“Physique, sir? I thought we were talking about presence.”

“That too. I’m a two for one kinda guy. Interested yet?”

“Enthralled,” she said, ignoring me completely.

I watched as her fingers flew over the keyboard and lines of computer code appeared on the screen. One line after the other in such quick succession, I couldn’t keep up with it. Camille thought her code was not as beautiful as Vela’s had been. I begged to differ. Everything Camille Rey did was spectacular.

I shifted my attention away from the screen and started watching my chief. Her eyes flashed with determination. Her hands moved in a blur in the air before her. Her skin glistened with a fine sheen of perspiration. It was almost too much to bear.

Without thinking, I reached out and touched a tendril of her hair that had come loose from her tie. I twisted it about my index finger and then reluctantly tucked it behind her ear. I realised, suddenly, that she’d stopped typing and was looking up at me; a question in her eyes.

“It fell out,” I said, idiotically.

“Thank you,” she offered and then slowly returned her attention to the screen.

I glanced at it and saw Vela had been trying to talk to her. She’d ignored three of the AI’s communication attempts, but the last line was a doozy.

you work well with your captain

you would work well with me

“Huh,” I said. “Is it coming on to you?”

“I’d rather not say,” Camille offered.

“And it’s watching us,” I observed. “That’s not creepy at all.”

“The gel walls,” Camille offered. “They were designed by the four Anderson Universal AIs.”

“They were?” I hadn’t known that fact. “How did you know that?”

“I was headhunted by them a few years back,” Camille casually remarked. “I turned them down.”

“You turned Anderson Universal Incorporated down? The grandfather of interstellar space flight. Were you drunk?”

Camille rolled her eyes. “No, I was not drunk. I just didn’t like their aggressive recruitment style.”

“Get away!” I said, unconvinced. “The Anderson Universal? I’m not buying it. Just thinking of all that tech would have gotten you excited.”

“Really?” she said, unimpressed.

“That’s what gets you excited, isn’t it, Chief? Super sexy tech?”

“Among other things,” she muttered.

I leaned down, resting my elbow on the desk beside her and my chin in my hand, staring up at her face with feigned rapture.

“Do tell,” I said, grinning. “What other things? Commanding things, perhaps?”

She scowled at me. “You’re like a child.” My grin broadened. “Or a horny teenager, I can’t decide which.”

I barked out a laugh.

“Yes, well,” I murmured, standing upright again. “Must be all the tech.”

“Ha ha.”

“But seriously,” I said. “You turned them down. Why? And don’t give me the PC line. Tell me the truth. Why?”

She looked up at me, a disgruntled expression on her face. As if admitting the truth was the last thing she wished to do right then.

“Go on,” I whispered. “I won’t tell anyone. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Family,” she snapped. “We’re a family. And you don’t shit on family.”

“Some people do.” The saboteur for one. Wasn’t the last of humanity a type of family? We were sure as hell in this bid for survival together.

“Well, I don’t,” Camille said. “The ESA has been good to me. The Chariot my home.”

I stared down at her and thought I’d never met a more extraordinary person. So clever. So capable. So full of passion. With such a big heart.

“You surprise me, Chief,” I said. “Time and again. Maybe it is me who should be impressed with your commanding presence?”

“Not my commanding physique?” she asked, smirking.

“Oh, trust me,” I muttered under my breath. “That impresses me no end.”

Her hands stilled. Fuck, I’d said that aloud.

Then the gel walls pulsed a strange red. One might even call it pink. A romantic pink?

And a voice said, “Humans are very strange, but I believe they are worth saving.”

Camille pushed back from the desk and stood up. I reached out automatically and gripped her elbow, fearing she’d topple over in her hurry to distance herself from the terminal.

“Chief?” I said carefully. Was that Vela?

“It’s cracked the communications system,” she whispered, perhaps thinking the AI might not be able to hear her.

“That can’t be good,” I offered, weakly.

“Not if it keeps badgering me,” Camille snapped.