Chapter 4 Domestic Pressure
Domestic Pressure
Dove
The smell of real coffee wakes me.
Not the recycled, twice-filtered ship coffee that tastes like despair and bad decisions—this is the kind that makes you believe the universe might not hate you after all. For three seconds, I forget where I am.
Then yesterday crashes back: the storm, the gorgeous alien scientist, his adorable daughter, the debt collectors tracking me. The week I thought I had shrinking to three days.
My stomach growls loud enough to echo off the walls.
“Captain, your glucose levels are suboptimal,” Pickles announces through my comm unit. “I calculate you require nutritional intake within the next seventeen minutes to maintain peak cognitive function.”
“You’re monitoring my blood sugar now?”
“I monitor all relevant biological systems. It is my function.”
Yesterday’s clothes wait for me, cleaned and folded on the chair. Apparently this station runs on terrifying levels of domestic efficiency. So much for formulating an escape plan before facing the day.
The door slides open to reveal Tavia sitting cross-legged right outside, data pad in her lap, yellow eyes bright with anticipation.
Plan status: failed before it started.
“Good morning!” She bounces to her feet, markings pulsing with delight. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up! Pickles said your circadian rhythm suggested you’d emerge within the next fourteen minutes, and he was right! He’s really smart, isn’t he?”
“He’s something.”
“I heard that, Captain,” Pickles says through the corridor speakers. “I am currently integrated with station communications systems. I must note, the small person has asked seventy-three questions about you since awakening. I have answered forty-two of them.”
“Pickles!”
“What? You said I could ask him things!” Tavia looks between me and the speaker. “He told me about how you saved him from the derelict ship, and how you spent three weeks putting him back together, and how you named him—”
“That’s enough biographical data for this morning.”
“I found the narrative endearing,” Pickles offers. “The small person demonstrates exceptional emotional intelligence for her developmental stage. I am… fond of her.”
Tavia’s markings blaze bright enough to light the corridor. “He’s fond of me! Papa, did you hear? Pickles is fond of me!”
Cetus emerges from the kitchen.
I’m immediately, painfully aware that I look like I slept in my clothes—because I did—while he’s unfairly put together in clean work coveralls that somehow make his shoulders look even broader.
His yellow eyes find mine. His markings brighten, patterns chasing across his shoulders like bioluminescent circuitry coming online.
“Good morning.” His voice drops into those low harmonic registers that do illegal things to my nerve endings. “I prepared coffee according to your stated preferences. Two sugars, minimal milk, temperature maintained at sixty-eight degrees Celsius.”
He remembered. Every detail.
“You… remembered all that?”
“I remember relevant details.” The patterns along his neck pulse warmer. “Your comfort is relevant.”
Tavia’s watching us with barely contained glee, her markings doing rapid little pulses like a strobe light of smug satisfaction.
“Thank you.” I accept the cup he offers. Our fingers brush—his skin radiating heat that sinks straight through to my bones. The contact lasts half a second too long to be accidental. “That’s very… efficient.”
“Efficient,” he repeats, and something in his tone suggests he knows that’s not what I meant.
I take a sip to avoid responding. Perfect. Exactly how I like it.
Dangerous.
“So!” Tavia bounces on her toes. “Papa said we’re doing atmospheric checks this morning, and I asked if you could come help because you spotted that pressure differential yesterday and that was really smart, and he said yes, and Pickles said he wants to observe station operations, and—”
“Tavia,” Cetus says gently. “Breathe.”
She takes an exaggerated breath. “Can you please come help with atmospheric checks? Please?”
I should say no. Should claim I need to work on my ship, file reports, anything that doesn’t involve spending more time with them.
“Captain, I recommend accepting,” Pickles says. “The small person has been very excited about your participation. Also, I am interested in observing the station’s monitoring systems. For purely academic reasons.”
“You’re an AI. Everything you do is academic.”
“I neither confirm nor deny experiencing what might be termed ‘curiosity’ about the Terraforming Specialist’s operations. However, I note that refusing would disappoint the small person, and I have calculated that disappointing small persons is suboptimal for general morale.”
Tavia’s looking at me with those huge yellow eyes, markings bright with hope.
“Sure. I can help with atmospheric checks.”
Her smile makes something twist in my chest.
The monitoring station is impressive—banks of displays showing atmospheric composition, pressure differentials, electromagnetic activity, and about forty other metrics I’d need an advanced degree to fully understand.
Cetus moves through the space with practiced efficiency, pulling up data streams and correlating readings with the kind of systematic precision that shouldn’t be attractive but absolutely is.
I’m in trouble.
“The primary concern is maintaining atmospheric stability during storm activity,” he explains. I’m definitely not staring at his hands as they move across the controls. “Electromagnetic pulses can disrupt monitoring equipment, creating false readings that—”
An alarm shrieks.
Tavia jumps. Cetus’s markings flare bright as he pulls up the relevant display.
“Sensor array seven is offline.” His voice stays calm, but I can see tension in his shoulders. “That’s the tertiary backup. If we lose the secondary array, we’ll be flying blind through the worst of the storm.”
“Can you reroute?” I lean over his shoulder to see the display, very aware of his heat radiating through the small space between us.
“Standard protocols suggest—” He pauses, studying the data. “No. Standard protocols require physical repair, which is impossible during active storm conditions.”
“What about non-standard protocols?”
His eyes meet mine. Electric. “I’m listening.”
I pull up my own scanner, running diagnostics on the failed array. “Okay, so the sensor isn’t dead—it’s being overwhelmed by electromagnetic interference, right? It’s screaming so loud it can’t hear anything else.”
“An imprecise but essentially accurate analogy.”
“So what if we don’t fix the sensor? What if we teach it to listen differently?
” I’m already pulling up the station’s communication arrays.
“You’ve got redundant comm systems—long-range, short-range, emergency broadcast. What if we repurpose one of the short-range receivers to act as a secondary ear?
Feed that data through a filtering algorithm to strip out the electromagnetic noise, cross-reference with the functional sensors… ”
“That violates six standard safety protocols.” But he’s already pulling up the systems I’m describing, his movements quick and precise. “The signal degradation alone would—”
“Would be less than total sensor failure. And you can compensate for degradation if you know its parameters. Build a correction algorithm based on the differential between the filtered signal and the clean sensors.”
“You want to create a makeshift sensor array using equipment designed for completely different purposes.”
“I want to solve the problem in front of me with the tools I have available. Isn’t that terraforming in a nutshell?”
His markings blaze so bright they cast shadows across his workstation. When he looks at me, there’s something fierce and approving in his gaze that makes my pulse spike.
“Captain, his cardiovascular rhythm increased by thirty-two percent,” Pickles announces helpfully. “This is statistically significant. Fascinating.”
“PICKLES.”
“I am merely documenting observable phenomena. The small person is also observing with great interest. She appears pleased.”
I glance at Tavia, who’s trying and failing to suppress a massive grin.
“Your solution is brilliant,” Cetus says, and the way he says brilliant sounds like he’s tasting the word. Testing it. Finding it insufficient. “Unorthodox, technically questionable, and absolutely brilliant.”
“So we’re doing it?”
“We’re doing it.” He’s already pulling up access codes. “But we’ll need to work quickly. The secondary array is showing stress markers—we have perhaps forty minutes before it fails.”
“Then let’s move.”
Working with Cetus is like dancing with a partner who anticipates your every step.
I call out the communication array I need accessed, and his hands are already pulling up the protocols.
He identifies a potential signal conflict, and I’m already routing around it before he finishes the sentence.
The workspace is small enough that we keep brushing against each other—his arm against mine, his heat seeping through our clothes, the careful way he moves to avoid his claws touching me accidentally.
“Reroute the gamma frequency through the tertiary buffer,” I say, focused on the signal patterns.
“Done. Signal clarity improving to seventy-three percent.”
“Not good enough. We need at least eighty-five for reliable readings.” I lean closer to his display, pressed against his side now. He smells like something clean and metallic and warm, and it’s extremely distracting. “What if we—”
My comm unit crackles with an incoming transmission.
Not station communications. My personal frequency.
Ice floods my veins.
“Dove Foxton.” The voice is smooth, professional, absolutely terrifying. “Collection Agent Niz’kor, Blackstar Collective Asset Recovery Division. We note your delivery schedule has been… disrupted.”
The pause before disrupted carries threat.
I step away from Cetus. Nearly trip. My hands reach for the comm.
“This is a recorded message,” the voice continues. “Please be aware that your current location has been flagged for tracking purposes. We expect contact within the next seventy-two hours to discuss your account status. Failure to comply will result in asset seizure protocols.”
The connection cuts.
Silence.
“Captain, incoming transmission has terminated,” Pickles says quietly. “However, I have detected embedded location tracking protocols in the signal. They now have precise coordinates for this station.”
The monitoring station feels too small. Need to move, need to think, need to—
“Dove.” Cetus’s voice is careful, controlled. “Who was that?”
“Nobody. Delivery company check-in.” The lie tastes bitter. “I should go check on my ship. Make sure the storm hasn’t damaged anything.”
“The storm is intensifying. Exposure to exterior docking areas would be extremely dangerous.”
“I’m a courier. Danger is part of the job description.”
“Dove—”
“I’m fine!” Too sharp. I hear it the moment the words leave my mouth.
Tavia flinches.
“Sorry. I need some air.”
I’m moving toward the door before anyone can stop me.
“Captain,” Pickles says softly. “Your respiratory rate suggests acute stress response.”
I pause at the doorway, forcing myself to breathe. Tavia’s watching me with those big yellow eyes, her markings dim with worry. Cetus has that controlled stillness that suggests he’s fighting every instinct to follow me.
“I’m okay. I need a minute. Keep working on the sensor array—you’re almost there. I’ll be back.”
It’s probably a lie.
But they let me go.
I make it to the observation deck before my hands start shaking.
The storm is magnificent from inside the station’s shielding—great arcs of lightning that turn the atmosphere purple and gold, wind that rattles the reinforced windows, electromagnetic pulses that make my hair stand on end through the protective systems.
Beautiful. Deadly. And the Blackstar Collective knows exactly where I am.