Chapter 10 Organized Chaos
Organized Chaos
Dove
Thirty hours.
“Captain,” Pickles says through my comm unit, volume dialed low for night cycle, “your heart rate has been elevated for approximately forty-seven minutes. I calculate a ninety-one percent probability you are not sleeping and a seventy-eight percent probability the cause is romantic in nature rather than threat-related.”
“Can’t it be both?”
“An excellent point. I shall log this as ‘compound anxiety with romantic complications.’”
I throw off the covers and sit up. The borrowed shirt—Cetus’s shirt—rides up my thighs, and the fabric carries his scent.
Clean and metallic and warm, like ozone after a storm.
I’ve been sleeping in it for three nights now, and every evening he hands me a freshly laundered one without comment, and I press my face into it the moment my door closes.
“Captain, I detect you are engaging in olfactory stimulation via the Terraforming Specialist’s garment. Again.”
“I’m stretching. The shirt shifted.”
“I have thermal imaging capabilities. You are holding the collar against your nose.”
I drop it like it burned me. “We’re not pair-bonding. We’re preparing for a government inspection.”
“Shall I compile the station compliance checklist, or would you prefer another four minutes of definitely-not-smelling his shirt?”
I’m already pulling on work clothes. “Checklist. Now. Full diagnostic on every system the PDC will want to see.”
“Compiling. I should note that the station’s documentation is approximately forty-seven percent below PDC minimum standards.
The atmospheric processor maintenance logs haven’t been updated in eleven months.
The safety signage in Corridor B is in Lividian only.
And the emergency supply inventory was last audited when the small person was six. ”
“So two years ago.”
“I calculate we need approximately thirty-two hours of continuous work to achieve minimum compliance. You have thirty-four hours. The margin is tight.”
“Story of my life.”
It’s bad.
Cetus Storm is a brilliant terraforming scientist who considers paperwork a personal affront. Safety incidents are all filed under “atmospheric anomalies” regardless of whether the incident involved weather, equipment, or Tavia venting coolant into Corridor C.
“He categorized a kitchen fire as ‘localized exothermic atmospheric event,’” I mutter, scrolling.
“I find it endearing,” Pickles offers. “In a deeply inefficient way.”
My fingers fly across the console—reclassifying, building templates, creating a paper trail that makes this station look like a model of regulatory adherence. Every courier learns to speak fluent paperwork. Customs officials don’t care about your charm. They care about Form 27-B in triplicate.
I’m deep in atmospheric processor certifications when his voice hits me from the doorway.
“Good morning, Dove.”
Low. Rough with sleep. Layered with those harmonic undertones that make my vertebrae dissolve one at a time.
I don’t turn around. If I turn around, I’ll see him in whatever he sleeps in, with his markings dim and warm from bed, and I’ll lose approximately three hours of productive work time to staring.
“Morning. Coffee’s in the thermal unit—I made a pot an hour ago.”
“You’ve been working since 0400?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” I keep typing. “Your documentation is a disaster, by the way. Did you know you filed Tavia’s school records under ‘Biological Sample Development Tracking’?”
“She is a biological sample in active development.”
“She’s your daughter.”
“The categories aren’t mutually exclusive.”
A soft sound—bare feet on metal flooring—and then he’s beside me. Close enough that his body heat radiates against my arm. I make the mistake of glancing sideways.
He’s in sleep clothes. Low-slung pants and nothing else.
Teal skin stretched over broad shoulders, the yellow markings along his neck and chest glowing soft amber in the dim light.
His hair is sleep-mussed, which shouldn’t be attractive on a six-foot-eight alien scientist but absolutely, devastatingly is.
The markings pulse brighter when he catches me looking.
I snap my eyes back to the screen. “Your atmospheric processor maintenance logs need complete reformatting. I’ve built templates. And your safety signage needs to be bilingual—I’ll handle the Standard translations if you verify the Lividian.”
“You’re organizing my station.”
“I’m saving your station. There’s a difference.” I pull up the next file. “When was the last time you ran emergency evacuation drills?”
“I conduct regular—”
“With documentation? Signed forms? Timed results logged in the PDC-approved format?”
Silence.
“That’s what I thought.” I finally turn to face him fully, which is a mistake because he’s closer than I expected, leaning over my shoulder to read the screen, and his face is right there. “We need to run a full drill today. With Tavia. Timed. Documented. Filmed if possible.”
His yellow eyes study me with an intensity that has nothing to do with emergency protocols. “You’re extraordinary.”
“I’m a courier. Paperwork is half the job.”
“You’re reorganizing my entire operational structure at four in the morning because you want to protect us.” His voice drops into those deeper harmonics. The claiming ones. “That’s not paperwork. That’s—”
“Survival strategy.” I stand, putting the chair between us, because proximity to a shirtless Cetus at dawn is a threat level I’m not equipped to handle.
“I need access to the maintenance crawlspaces. Several of your environmental sensors are showing calibration drift on Pickles’s diagnostic, and the PDC will check those first.”
“The maintenance crawlspaces are narrow.”
“I know. I’ve been in them before.” The memory of being pressed against his chest in a space designed for one person hits me with the subtlety of a cargo bay door. His warmth through both our clothes. The way his claws extended when I shifted against him.
From the slight brightening of his markings, he’s remembering too.
“I’ll need your help,” I say, keeping my voice professional through sheer force of will. “The sensor housings require two-person access.”
“Of course.”
“After you put on a shirt.”
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. “Is my current state of dress... distracting?”
“Your current state of dress is a workplace safety violation. I’m adding it to the compliance checklist.”
He does smile then. Full and real and devastating, his markings flaring warm gold. “I’ll return in five minutes. Appropriately attired.”
He leaves, and I exhale like I’ve been holding my breath since last night.
“Captain,” Pickles says, “your core temperature elevated by 1.3 degrees during that interaction. For reference, that exceeds your thermal response to the actual electromagnetic storm.”
“Not a word, Pickles.”
“I have already said several words. But I shall refrain from additional commentary. For now.”
Cetus returns wearing a work shirt that he’s buttoned wrong.
I’m not going to tell him. The gap between the third and fourth buttons exposes a strip of teal skin where yellow markings trace down his sternum, and if the PDC wants to dock points for improper attire, that’s between them and their own self-control.
“The primary environmental sensors are in three locations,” he says, pulling up a station schematic.
Professional. Focused. Apparently he’s decided to match my energy, which is both helpful and slightly annoying, because part of me—the stupid, reckless part that got me into debt in the first place—wanted him to keep looking at me like I was extraordinary.
“Atmospheric processing array, water recycling hub, and the bio-dome junction. The crawlspace access for the first two requires passing through a shared ventilation shaft.”
“How tight?”
“The shaft dimensions are ninety centimeters by seventy centimeters.”
I stare at him. His shoulders alone are wider than seventy centimeters.
“I’ll go first,” he says, reading my expression. “The wider section is near the sensor housing. The initial passage is... more constrained.”
Constrained. Right.
We gather tools—plasma torches, calibration units, Pickles downloaded onto a portable diagnostic pad—and head for the access panel in Corridor B. Cetus removes the panel cover, revealing the dark shaft beyond. Warm air flows out, carrying the hum of processing systems.
“Papa! Dove! Wait for me!”
Tavia rounds the corner at full sprint, her markings bright with morning energy, her hair a teal-streaked disaster. She’s wearing what appears to be a hand-drawn “INSPECTION CREW” badge pinned to her shirt.
“Small person,” Pickles says through the corridor speakers, “it is 0530 hours. Why are you awake?”
“Because something exciting is happening and I have a badge!” She points to it proudly. “I made it. I’m the Official Inspection Preparation Assistant.”
“Tavia, the crawlspaces aren’t safe for—” Cetus begins.
“I’m not going in the crawlspaces. I’m going to do quality control from out here.” She produces a data pad from behind her back. “Pickles helped me make a checklist. I’m going to inspect the inspectors.”
“That’s... not how inspections work,” I say.
“It is now. I have a badge.”
Cetus looks at me. I look at Cetus. His markings pulse with that helpless warmth he gets whenever Tavia is being impossibly herself.
“Fine,” he says. “You can monitor from the corridor. But stay within Pickles’s sensor range and don’t touch any access panels.”
“Obviously. I’m a professional.” She sits cross-legged against the corridor wall, data pad ready. “Proceed with your crawlspace activities. I’ll be scoring your teamwork.”
“Scoring our—”
“On a scale of one to ten. Pickles says your collaborative efficiency has increased by forty-three percent since Dove arrived. I want to see if confined spaces improve or decrease that metric.”
I close my eyes. “Let’s just get in the shaft.”
“That’s what she said,” Tavia whispers to her data pad.
“TAVIA.”