Admittedly, I’d tuned out at the five-minute mark. Jean-Claude was now up to about minute eight. I couldn’t get the taste of Camille out of my mind. The sensation of her soft skin under my fingertips. The sounds she’d made. The way my body had flared to life. As if prior to kissing Camille Rey it had been dormant. Waiting for something to kick it back into existence again.

I smiled to myself, wondering if she’d spend the evening in my bed. If she’d be a screamer or a throaty moaner. I wanted desperately to know what she looked like when she came. My fingers flexed. My cock twitched. So much for losing the erection while I hid behind my desk.

“Are you even listening to me, Noah?” the mayor demanded.

“Hmmm?” I inquired.

Jean-Claude looked to Camille at my side. “Is there a reason why the captain is not taking this seriously, Commander?”

“I’m sure the captain has reasons for everything he does, your Worship,” Camille offered, solicitously.

Jean-Claude looked at me again and then leaned over the desk. He hadn’t sat down yet. He’d been looming. Pacing. Hands waving and mouth spewing. For a normally serene person, he’d been exceptionally riled.

And I’d ignored practically everything he’d had to say.

I cringed internally and forcefully pushed the delicious, visceral memories of kissing Camille away. I knew the chief. If she thought for a moment that I couldn’t do my job because I was distracted by her body, she’d deny me her body. And wouldn’t that be a shame?

“My apologies, Jean-Claude,” I said, sitting forward and meeting his accusatory glare head on. “It’s been an unusual morning, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“Of course I’m aware!” he exclaimed. “I’ve had three hundred messages from concerned passengers over the past four hours. Not to mention, my gel wall has been reconfigured to show a picture of the Rhine Falls.”

I arched my brow at the man.

“Really? That is concerning. The Rhine Falls and not the Trümmelbach?”

Jean-Claude threw his hands up in the air and started pacing again. While his back was turned to me, Camille swatted me on the arm and offered her own glare for good measure.

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair and then leaned back in my chair and said, “Vela, identify yourself to the mayor, please.”

The walls pulsed an ice blue, rather like the blue of the Trümmelbach glacial Falls in Switzerland. It was seriously creepy how the AI did that.

“Mayor Lambert,” Vela said through the invisible speakers in the gel ceiling. “There is no need for concern. Everything is in order.”

“What…” Jean-Claude said, turning around and piercing me with a narrow-eyed look, “was that?”

“I am Vela,” Vela said. “The artificial intelligence now residing inside the Chariot’s computer systems.”

The mayor reached out to the chair opposite my desk and fell into it; almost missing the damn thing. He looked ghostly white and about as bad as to be expected.

“It’s true then,” he whispered. “I’d heard, but…You don’t ever think…How did this happen?”

“The solar flare that took out the vessel Vela forced the AI Vela to find an alternate place to call home,” I said.

Jean-Claude stared at me for a long time and then said, “Do you have any Williamine?”

I nodded and reached into the bottom drawer of my desk, pulling out the last unfinished bottle Jean-Claude had brought with him. I pulled out three shot glasses and filled them to the rim, and then handed them out.

Camille held hers and stared straight ahead as if she had no desire to consume it. Jean-Claude stared into his as if it held the answers to the universe. I downed mine.

This had been one hell of a day.

“So, now we have an artificial intelligence inside the Chariot’s computer systems, keeping us all in line,” I announced.

Maybe that hadn’t been the correct thing to say because Jean-Claude downed his drink, reached over and grabbed the bottle of Williamine and then topped it up for round two.

He drank that also and then said, “So, are we an Anderson Universal vessel now?”

The liqueur suddenly felt like it might come back up my gullet. Sweat beaded my brow. My hands trembled until I got myself under control by force of will alone.

“Jesus,” I muttered, wiping a palm down my face as if I could wipe the realisation away that easily. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Did the presence of an Anderson Universal AI override the ESA’s ownership of the vessel?

“Well, I suggest you do,” Jean-Claude offered. “Anderson Universal always had a high opinion of itself. You can’t expect their AIs to be any different. Has it demanded anything yet?”

This just got better and better.

“I am not demanding anything, Mayor Lambert,” Vela said. “Save humanity’s survival.”

“‘Humanity’s survival,’” Jean-Claude repeated. He leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk and whispered, “Can it be trusted?”

I closed my eyes.

“It can hear,” I offered instead of answering that loaded question.

Jean-Claude looked suitably chagrined when I opened my eyes again. He sat back in his seat and said, “I have to advise the leaseholder.”

I knew he did, but I really wanted this handled in a controlled manner. I had no control over the leaseholder. So, I either had to make a ship-wide announcement soon or put a muzzle on the mayor. I looked across my desk at Jean-Claude. He had better colour in his cheeks now and a determined set to his jaw.

I sighed.

“Can you delay it for an hour?” I asked.

“Noah,” he said. “I am subject to the lease agreement, too. If I fail to advise him on this…”

He’d lose his pension.

“Half an hour,” I pressed. “That’s not long. It could take you half an hour to walk back to your office.”

“Down the hall,” he offered pointedly.

“Jean-Claude,” I said. “Even my crew are not aware, and I need them aware before the public is.”

He let out a frustrated breath and nodded his head. Either the notion that I hadn’t told anyone else before him calmed him. Or the fact that I was right. If the civilian passengers - and that included the leaseholder - spat their collective dummies over this, we all needed my crew, especially security, to be ready.

“Twenty minutes,” he said.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered. “And here I thought you were neutral territory.”

He spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders.

“Switzerland might have been neutral, Noah, but we were never unprepared.”

I held his gaze and nodded my head. Twenty minutes. It would be tight. But we could do it.

I looked up at Camille. She met my gaze with an unwavering one of her own.

Twenty minutes to circle the wagons. We could do it. Possibly. Probably.

I grimaced. And offered the mayor a glare.