Page 10 of Starlight, Starbright
But biology doesn't lie.
I set the tablet aside and lie back on my bunk, staring at the ceiling. The soft vibration of the engines travels through the walls. Familiar. Soothing. The ship hums around me, ten thousand lives depending on systems I maintain.
And somewhere else on this ship, probably in his own quarters, is a Zephyrian captain whose biology keeps betraying feelings he's been trained to hide. Feelings that might be directed at me.
I should be worried. This complicates everything. Command relationships, crew dynamics, the investigation into sabotage that's trying to kill us all.
Instead, I find myself smiling at the ceiling, wondering what it costs him to suppress those golden glows. Wondering if he researches human behavior the way I'm researching his species. Wondering what happens next.
Sleep finally pulls me under, and my last conscious thought is of silver markings shifting to gold in the light of an engineering deck, beautiful and involuntary and impossibly honest.
ZORIC
This asteroid field has been charted for years. Three separate survey missions mapped it. We should have detected it with plenty of time to alter course. But the sensors were degraded precisely enough that we couldn't see it until we had less than two minutes to respond.
I pull up the timeline analysis on my secondary screen. Navigation sensor failure: 0201 hours. Power fluctuation: 0200 hours. The fluctuation occurred first, degrading the sensors gradually rather than triggering immediate alerts. By the time the system recognized the failure, our response window had shrunk to less than two minutes.
Probability of coincidence: 0.0003%. Probability of deliberate action: 97.6%.
Chief Martin's pattern recognition proved correct. Even with her data, I hesitated to declare sabotage without more evidence. That caution had nearly cost us everything.
The calculation produces uncomfortable results I don't wish to examine.
My door chimes. “Enter.”
Chief Martin steps through carrying two cups. The familiar, rich scent of coffee preceding her. She sets one on the cornerof my desk without asking permission, the ceramic making that soft sound against metal that I've heard once before. When she brought me coffee two days ago.
“Thought you might have been up all night too.” She settles into the chair across from me, cradling her own cup. Her hair is damp. She's showered recently. The faint scent of her soap reaches me even at this distance. “The data from the asteroid field is pretty damning.”
I accept the coffee. She remembered. The realization that she's been paying attention to such details produces an illogical sense of satisfaction. “I've completed correlation analysis between the sensor failure and your documented fluctuation pattern. The statistical impossibility of coincidence confirms sabotage.”
“So we have proof.” She leans forward. “Enough to act on?”
“Enough to investigate more aggressively. Not yet enough to identify the perpetrator.” I pull up my analysis on the central display. “The saboteur has intimate knowledge of our systems, personnel schedules, and my command protocols. They predicted my response time to within acceptable margins.”
She studies the data streams, her dark eyes moving rapidly across the screens. “Show me the power routing during the fluctuation.”
I bring up the relevant diagrams. She rises and moves around my desk to view them more closely. Her proximity is immediate—less than a meter. I detect her scent profile more clearly. The soap is something floral. Lavender, perhaps. Beneath it, her natural scent, which I find pleasant for reasons I cannot adequately explain.
“There.” Her finger points at a specific junction. “That's the tertiary bypass. If you wanted to weaken shield generator three without triggering diagnostics, you'd reroute power through that coupling. It's old tech, barely monitored anymore.”
I examine the routing she's identified. “The power draw is within normal parameters.”
“But the timing isn't. Look.” She leans closer, near enough that her proximity makes me warmer. When we both reach for the same data point on the screen, her fingers brush mine briefly. “Every seventy-two hours, there's a microsecond spike right before the fluctuation. Like someone's testing the response time.”
She's correct. I hadn't noticed the pattern because the spikes occur on a scale of milliseconds. Too brief for standard monitoring. But when compiled across three weeks of data, they create an unmistakable signature.
“This is excellent analysis.” I pull up additional screens to verify her finding. “You identified a pattern I missed.”
“You weren't looking at microseconds. I spend half my life chasing glitches that last less than a second.” She straightens, but doesn't move away. “We make a good team, Captain.”
The statement produces a response in my chest cavity that has no logical explanation. Pleasure, perhaps. Or satisfaction. Or something I lack proper terminology for.
“Yes.” The word emerges with more warmth than intended. “We do.”
Our eyes meet and I can’t look away.
She notices. Her face flushes. Then she steps back, breaking the moment.
