Page 37 of Tattle Tail
“That is considerate.” She didn’t know why the gesture touched her. Joseph had spent the last two days pouring soup down her throat and…
That was unfair. He had been a thoughtful and patient caretaker, even when she resisted his ministrations. He had proven himself to be a considerate male time and again. She trusted him. She would not have arrived at his ship while ill and slept in his bed for days if she did not.
“Well, I like my nephew and I’m not going to be the one to poison him,” Joseph said.
“But not his father?”
“Winter is on his own,” he said in a tone so dry that it made her chuckle. Then cough, the force of which made her chest ache. “Drink. It helps,” he said.
She took a cautious sip, aware that he watched, waiting for her verdict.
“I cannot taste much, but I like the scent,” she said.
“Good. Ginger is pretty pungent, so it should cut through all the—” he waved a hand at his face “—stuff you got going on in your sinuses.”
“Yes, it is considerable.” And completely unglamorous. She wasn’t the most skilled person at seduction, but even she understood that sneezing and covering a person in snot killed any hope of attraction.
Still, his gaze skimmed over her legs with something like appreciation. Her tail thumped in response and realized that her shirt was exposing more than she wanted.
Blushing, Peaceable tugged down the shirt.
He cleared his throat. “Peaceable, I—”
The lights flickered, plunging them into darkness.
Chapter 10
Joseph
Red illuminated the common room.
“What’s happening?” No sooner had the words left Peaceable’s mouth than an alarm sounded.
“Potentially many things.” Some alarming, some routine. “The last time an alarm went off, the cargo shifted, and the weight distribution needed to be balanced. Massive pain in the ass.”
He slung himself into the pilot’s chair at the helm. Warnings flashed on the screens and control panels. Entering a code silenced the alarm, allowing him space to think. He scrolled through the warnings.
Peaceable sat in the navigator’s chair, peering over his shoulder. “Is it typical to have so many error codes?”
“No.”
Cascade failure was a term that made his blood run cold. Pilots whispered about it like a mythical beast, a monster stalking them in the darkness of space. Maintaining a ship was the ritual to keep the monsters away. Modern systems were compartmentalized. Failure in one did not mean a collapse in other systems.
And yet…
Joseph scrolled through the list, no longer counting but prioritizing. Some of them might be generated automatically and would disappear when the primary error code was resolved. Start with the basic systems.
“Okay, looks like the first warning is about our breathable atmosphere. CO2levels are too high,” he said.
She frowned. “That should not be.”
If only the universe were as orderly and tidy as Peaceable demanded.
“Lucky me, I have a brilliant engineer to help me figure it out,” he said. Her ears went back, as if trying to find a hidden insult. “We can access the atmosphere filtration system from the cargo hold.”
“What happens if it cannot be repaired?” Worry filled her voice.
“Ships have backups and redundancies.” Joseph kept his tone light, to counteract her worry. “I might not know the ins and outs of every spacefaring vessel, but any pilot worth their salt knows enough to keep a ship together. Emergency repairs and maintenance issues happen all the time. The first year after I got my pilot’s license, I scrubbed so many filters. I think I spent more time on my back trying to fit hoses and gaskets in place than I did at the helm.”
