Chapter One
SADIE
The overtime lights flickered in the access tunnel and I thought, not for the first time, that station maintenance had a strictly “eh, let’s see how long she lasts” take on life support.
It was my own fault for mouthing off to the foreman, Chad.
I used to have my pick of shifts—then I made it clear I wasn’t interested in Chad or his buzz cut. Plus, his name was Chad. Pass.
I had to get out of maintenance. I was taking classes to transfer to the med bay. The hours were just as bad, but the work wasn’t as demanding on my body, and I thought it would feel a bit more rewarding to be helping people—and aliens—directly.
I pressed my dataglove to the panel, coaxed the circuitry into full brightness, and immediately regretted it; the glare ricocheted off the composite wall, straight into my retinas.
I blinked away stars. I had two meters to go, a junction that’d been patched by six generations of engineers with six incompatible toolkits.
Last week, it buzzed like a nest of amphetamined hornets.
This week, the leak was heat. My job, as ever, was to bandage it enough to get us through.
My dataglove chirped. I braced for a nagging systems alert—standard in my line—but it wasn’t from Station Ops.
It was from Etta, which coming this late meant incoming travelers, and I had to be there to help open the bay.
I palmed the wrench back into my satchel and craned my head around the bend just as the stainless utility door shuddered open.
A Bozad carrier landed with a thunk in the hangar, and I could immediately tell why they were there.
One wing was scorched and covered in blaster marks.
I was surprised it was still able to stay in the air.
I skittered up the ladder rung, half-dragging my overalls, hoping the angle might make me seem taller.
They noticed me, of course. I was hard to miss, short and human—and female. A human working on the station was rare. A human woman? Unheard of. That, and I was the only one in the station willing to stare back when a Bozad gave you the eye.
The smallest of the group—by which I mean only slightly less likely to collapse the deck plating—leaned over the ladder well and regarded me with a glower somewhere between mild offense and earnest curiosity.
His skin was that perfect interference-blue, the kind you see on engine coolant pooling under the right light.
His hair was black and wild, more coarse than hair I had seen on most humans.
His jumpsuit was regulation, but tailored close enough to show what I can only describe as extrastellar commitment to personal fitness.
I took an extra beat to admire the fit, then decided to double the odds he’d either report me to his superior or try to out-stare me.
He stared.
I smiled, which tended to throw them. Most Bozad expect humans to flinch or defer, maybe offer a bow or four, but I took great pride in letting my curiosity get me into trouble. “This is the maintenance bay. You here for that wing?”
He answered, but not with the expected request for parts or patchwork. “We require immediate medical attention. Our flight engineer has sustained serious injury.” The rest of his crew clustered behind him, faces glinting under the harsh lighting, each carrying a different flavor of distrust.
“Med is two decks up,” I said, but he crowded closer on the ladder, blocking the climb with his mass and his certainty.
“I am aware. But the human medtech is… insufficient,” he said, and I realized he meant Mara. Her bedside manner was artillery-grade even on the best days.
I weighed my options. This was not my job, not my deck, and I had rigid plans to finish the shift and hit the sleep pod with minimal drama. But Bozad don’t ask for help. If they do, they mean it.
“Fine,” I said, and made the climb.
When I stepped out onto the deck at the top of the ladder, the air was wet with the sharp, chemical tang of alien blood.
The engineer was splayed out on the hull, breathing shallow, a latticework of blood stripes in slow rivulets.
His suit had sealed around the wound, but not before the pressure spike turned what looked like a superficial gash into a deep and ragged wound.
His fingers twitched in the Bozad sign for pain, and I wasn’t sure if he’d do anything more before passing out.
“Hold him,” I said, snapping on my gloves.
The blue one barked a word I didn’t know, and three sets of hands hoisted the engineer upright.
His breathing jerked faster. I tore a patch of sealant spray from my kit and wedged myself under his arm, close enough to smell boiled copper and the sharp pine of Bozad skin.
The wound was messy but clean—no shrapnel, no burn, just torn muscle under the glossy blue sheath.
I thumbed the pressure patch open and cupped it to the gash.
The engineer hissed. I kept eye contact.
“You’re not going to lose the arm,” I said, which was the truth and also maybe what he needed to hear.
The patch hissed, set, and fused to his skin with a perfect blue-white seam, almost invisible.
I watched the blood lattice slow. The blue one looked at me in surprise, then, after a pause long enough for a poker tell, nodded acknowledgement.
“Will he survive?” the blue one asked. He spoke more softly than before. I took stock of the engineer’s color—a duller blue now, but no longer that sickly gray—and nodded.
“You’ll need to keep it clean,” I told him, not sure if Bozad even had words for post-op care. “Bring him to med if he crashes again.” I caught the engineer’s gaze—alert, lucid, not quite grateful, but better than dead.
The blue one extended his hand, palm up. For a second, I thought maybe I was about to get pulled into a ceremonial death struggle or receive a challenge coin, or hell, a tip. Instead, he just… waited, letting the moment hover as if unsure whether humans even shook hands.
I took it. His skin was cool, almost slick, and there was a strength to the grip designed for more than breaking things.
“Izu Karel,” he said. “You saved my crew. If you require assistance, call for me by name.” The rest of the Bozad, observing this, gave stoic nods—approval, or at least respect in their culture. I tried not to let the flush of adrenaline and pride show on my face.
“Sadie Mercer,” I replied, trying to keep my voice as even as possible.
The rest of my shift was a blur. I finished the repair and ran diagnostics, all with the alien’s name on a loop in my head. Izu Karel. If you require assistance.
I didn’t tell anyone, not even Mara, but a week later, there was a message in my station inbox—Bozad contact protocol, practically a coded distress beacon. The blue bastard must have tracked the terminal I usually used in the rec lounge.
When I showed up, Izu Karel was waiting, next to the holofoam sculpture they installed to impersonate Earth flora. It looked nothing like a tree.
He didn’t look any less intimidating in civilian wear. More, if possible—the outfit had more seams than a pressure suit and hugged every inch of him with bespoke menace.
I’d expected a thank you, maybe some formal request for a maintenance favor. Instead, he said, “I would like to take you out,” in that rumbling accent, as if he’d just stated the time of day.
For a second, my brain bluescreened. The Bozad weren’t exactly famous for their subtlety, but this was…
direct, even for them. My only previous experience being asked out was Mara’s third cousin on Ganymede, who’d wordlessly tapped three hearts on my public feed and then spammed me a protein bar meme.
Izu Karel’s voice had none of that mealy shakiness, and he was very clearly not asking about shifts or borrowing my tools.
He stood there, chin tilted. His hands remained visible, nails neatly groomed, resting on the table between us with the casual certainty of a gambler already holding four aces. Space station etiquette did not prepare me for this.
It took effort not to laugh. Not at him, but at myself for instantly assuming I’d misheard.
“Take me out,” I repeated, because my mouth was on autopilot and apparently needed to stall for time.
“Yes,” he confirmed, unblinking. “On Bozad, custom dictates reciprocation of significant favor. You have provided one. We will eat and drink. You may select the venue.”
It was, if I was parsing this right, both a debt discharge and a date. I had zero data on the correct response for interspecies courtship, so I did what every respectable human does when faced with the unexpected—reverted to type and suggested the bar.
“Um, The Hangar is still open?” I said, maybe a little lamely. The Hangar was the closest thing we had to a nice restaurant on the space station. It was more bar, but the food was also excellent. “The drink selection’s decent, and it is a little classier than Plasma Pub.”
“Within acceptable parameters. Do you possess appropriate attire?” He said it with the deadpan gravity of evacuation protocols. I had to cover my smile and duck my face down, pretending to swipe at phantom lint on my sleeve.
I could never tell if the Bozad grasped nuance, or if they just didn’t see the point in it.
I wanted to say, “Does this look like a wardrobe that owns a second outfit?” Instead, I looked down at my jumpsuit (spotless, for once) and said, “You want me to show up in a dress code I don’t have?
” There was a challenge in it, but also an involuntary eagerness.
“The venue should reflect the favor,” he said, “and your standing. Choose something you consider… elevated.” Subtle emphasis on the last word, though his poker face didn’t move at all.
He could have been a statue or a murder-bot, but I’d seen enough life in the flick of his eyes last week to know he was baiting me, if only barely.
“I’ll think of something,” I said, standing. “Tonight?”
“I will be present at The Hangar at 20:00 shift. You may arrive at your discretion.” He performed a little bow, not quite mocking but one degree off sincere.
I’d never in my life put so much thought into an outfit. Mara caught me, of course, standing half-naked in the drypod.
“Do you even own a dress?” she asked, as I debated between my least-stained jumpsuit and the actual dress my mother shipped me when I first left Earth, with a note about “first impressions” on “suitable partners.”
“I don’t know if I’d call this a date,” I said, wriggling into the dress. It was ancient—synthetic silk, black, and too tight in the shoulders, because apparently I was bench-pressing my trauma in my sleep.
It looked way better than I remembered. The fabric shimmered if you caught it just so.
The dress hugged where it needed to and slouched casually at the hips, and my legs looked longer in it.
I watched Mara’s eyebrows do a delighted little jump, which I tried and failed not to preen over.
I did a half-turn in the pod’s mirror wall and pretended to adjust the strap, just to see if it moved with me.
It did. I had no illusions about my body—compact, function over form.
But in this ancient relic from the Mercer matriarchy, I looked like trouble worth chasing.
If I’d been a betting woman, I’d have put money on the odds that Izu Karel wasn’t ready for this.
Mara, doing her best to wrap a respectable friend’s concern in sarcasm, said, “Are you planning to seduce the entire bar or just your blue friend?”
“It’s a work function,” I said, but my ears burned. “It’s not like a real date. It’s a… diplomatic obligation.”
She cackled. “You’re wearing heels. Diplomatic, my ass.”
I ignored her and took another critical look at myself in the mirror before heading out to The Hangar.
People were already crowding the entry when I got there.
Most of the station worked on staggered day-night shifts, so The Hangar was never empty, but the way they’d set the lights tonight made it almost cozy.
I shouldered my way past some dock-jockeys in dirty mechsuits, feeling a weird flutter at the thought of being early.
Etta caught my eye from behind the bar and immediately did a double take like she’d just seen a cat riding a jetbike. She gave me a two-finger salute and started pouring something neon and hazardous into a glass.
I spotted Izu even though he was hunched respectfully in a booth sized for humans.
There was no way to miss him—the iridescent skin popped against the matte gray of the table, and his hair messy as it had been the first time I met him, which told me he styled it that way.
He wore civilian clothes, tight at the chest and arms and strange in color, kind of a deep violet that must’ve meant something in Bozad culture.
His posture made him smaller, but I could tell he was still scanning the bar like a predator learning to smile.
He looked incredible. I mean, if I’d had to sketch out a fantasy of alien prince, undercover, it would have been maybe thirty percent of what I saw in that booth.
The blue shifted, micro-patterning with the station’s weird bar lights so it looked like his veins glowed and faded in secret messages up his neck.
Beneath the thin civilian shirt, you could make out cable-thick muscle.
I hadn’t noticed before, but his irises matched the outfit almost exactly, a violet so deep it nearly went black when he focused on something.
Me, in this case.
He must have caught me staring, because he stood the second he saw me, and for a split second, stumbled over the protocol of a human greeting—was it a bow?
A handshake? Instead, he just hovered by the table like gravity was optional, expression unreadable but gaze molten and unblinking.
If he’d been trying to look nonchalant, he’d failed spectacularly.
“You… adapted.” He pointedly did not look down at my dress, but it was obvious that’s where his attention was glued.
I grinned, unable to help myself
“You said elevated attire,” I said, “so I did. Are we going to stand here while you take inventory of my fashion sense, or are you going to sit and eat with me?” The words came out more brazen than I intended, but I was wired on nerves.
Izu processed for a second, then slid back into the booth, making a show of how little effort it cost him.