“Ship’s passengers may request basic information.”
I blew out a sigh of relief. Maybe I could figure out something to work with here. “Dax said you were programmed to take orders only from him. Is that correct?” I kept my voice low, hoping that whatever intruders might be boarding the ship wouldn’t hear me and come looking for me.
Fat chance of that since I was apparently in the control room.
“Correct,” the computer replied. “I am programmed to respond only to orders from Commander Lutro Dax and his clowder.”
Clowder? What the hell did that mean? “Computer, can you define clowder?”
“A clowder is a Drovekzian family unit.”
My mind raced. “Would a clowder include Commander Dax’s mate, by any chance?”
“Yes. Clowders include all mates and kits.”
Kits? Like kittens? Eeeuuww. We won’t call them that.
Wait. What the hell was I thinking? I was never going to have any kind of infants with that…that alien man.
I shook off my response and plowed forward, even though I was pretty sure what I was about to do was really bad idea.
“Computer, did you hear Commander Dax referred to me as his mate?”
“Affirmative.”
“Yes!” I pumped my fists just once as I considered all the possibilities that could open up. Maybe there was something I would be able to do, after all.
Not that I wanted to be his mate.
No, you just want to rip his clothes off, the annoying voice in my head piped up.
“Computer,” I said, ignoring my internal psychopath, who was clearly wrong. I just thought Dax was… pretty. Nice to look at. Otherwise, he was a pompous, self-righteous ass. “Please verify that I am Nora Marlin, mate of Commander Lutro Dax.”
“Confirmed.”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
“What next, what next,” I murmured to myself, tapping my fingertips together. Another thump from outside shook the ship.
“Report,” the computer said. “The ship has been boarded by a platoon of Karlaxon soldiers.”
“Computer, are all the invaders on board yet?”
“Negative.”
“Do everything you can to seal off the ship from any more Karlaxons boarding.”
A loud bang came from somewhere in the ship, and the sound of some kind of weapons fire, I presumed, given the pinging sounds followed by tiny exploding noises.
“All outer doors closed and sealed,” the computer announced.
“No other Karlaxons can board?”
“Confirmed. The outer airlock has been sealed.”
Why the hell hadn’t Dax done that himself?
God, I hope I didn’t just screw up his plan.
“Computer, can you show me the interior of the ship on the screen?”
“Confirmed.”
Nothing happened.
I sighed at how damn literal the machine was. “Computer, please show me the areas of the ship where there are currently Karlaxon soldiers.”
The screen in front of me shifted to a schematic of the ship, the first time I’d really gotten a sense of its dimensions.
A series of red dots stretched out along a line, presumably indicating the Karlaxons’ path through the ship.
“Computer, show me where the Karlaxon soldiers are headed.”
The schematic turned until it was a 3-D rendering with a dotted line. “The Karlaxon warriors are headed to the cargo hold on the lower deck,” the computer said.
“Why would they be headed there?” I wondered aloud.
The computer answered as if I had been speaking to it. “Commander Dax requested all other routes be closed off.”
Oh, hell. I had probably had just trashed his plan. “Why the cargo hold?”
“He intends to evacuate the case soldiers into open space. The cargo hold is the best location for such a plan.”
I rubbed my eyes, wondering if I should try to communicate with Dax. My stomach sank at the prospect.
“Computer, where is Commander Dax now?”
“Unable to reply.”
“What? Why?”
“Commander Dax has locked down all further computer communication with anyone but him.”
“But you can tell me that?” That didn’t seem right. If Dax had shut down all communication, the computer shouldn’t have been able to respond to me at all, right?
What the fuck is going on here?
Without any prompting, the computer changed the image on the screen to what looked like a real-time image of a group of aliens moving through one of the bright orange ship’s corridors.
They were hideous, giant and lumpy and gray—more alien-looking than Dax. And much scarier.
As one of them barreled past whatever camera was tracking them, it flipped up the faceplate on its helmet to reveal a perfectly monstrous face—something like a cross between a rhinoceros and a human, with tiny eyes that glowed a malevolent red.
Suddenly, I was thankful that Dax had been the one who had abducted me. If I had to be kidnapped by an alien, at least I’d been taken by the tiger-alien and not the rhinoceros-alien.
A scraping sound above me startled me out of my reverie, and I froze for a second in my seat before jumping up and racing toward the weapons cabinet, hoping I could figure out how to use one of the guns inside in time to protect myself.
Before I could get the door open, though, Dax dropped down through an opening in the ceiling that he had just created.
“What in all the garlockian underworlds do you think you are doing?” he spat out. “You unbelievably reckless… who-man … female!”
Chapter Ten
Dax
“Human,” Nora corrected my pronunciation. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know what I’m talking about? Of course you do. You have no business trying to use my computer. This technology,” I made a gesture encompassing the whole ship, “is so far beyond your primitive world’s understanding it’s a wonder you didn’t blow us up.”
“So far beyond my understanding? It’s a talking computer. Some kind of AI with the voice interface. You say ‘computer’ and it answers. Any half-brained idiot could do that part.”
“So you admit it was an idiotic move?”
“That’s not what I said.” She took three steps toward me, standing up on her tiptoes to get in my face—or tried to, anyway. Nora was so short that the top of her head barely brushed the midpoint on my
