Chapter 30: Snitching AI

For one terrifying second, Chloe didn’t move then her brain caught up with reality.

She looked down at her chest pressed flat against Leo’s ribs... She looked at her legs tangled between his thighs and she looked back up at Harper’s rigid thunderous silhouette in the doorway.

GASP!

A strangled high-pitched squeak tore out of her throat as a wave of blinding crimson surged up from the collar of her shirt, swallowing her neck, her cheeks and the tips of her ears, and her green eyes went as wide as dinner plates.

With a screech like a scalded cat, she scrambled off the bed.

She moved with terrified S-Rank speed with her boots barely touching the floor as she launched herself sideways and tumbled over the edge of the mattress in a tangle of limbs.

THUD!

"I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t, it wasn’t, AHHH!"

She shot to her feet with her head ducked so low her hair covered her whole face and bolted through the doorway like an artillery shell, clipping Harper’s shoulder on the way past before tearing down the corridor and throwing herself into her own room.

BANG!

The noise yanked Leo straight out of unconsciousness.

"What, who’s shooting?!" he bellowed, bolting upright with his fists up in a boxing guard at the empty air. "Brace! Is the hull—"

He blinked and scrubbed his face with both palms, trying to claw the fog out of his head.

There was no hull breach and there were no ten-meter worms.

There was only Harper Bell, leaning against his doorframe with her arms crossed tight over her armored chest and an expression sitting somewhere between a razor-sharp smirk and murder.

Leo lowered his fists slowly.

He looked down at his empty rumpled bunk, then at the open door, then back at her face... and a slow agonizing heat started crawling up the back of his neck.

"Harper," he rasped. "Uh... good morning?"

"Good morning, Captain," Harper drawled, stepping into the room with a slow exaggerated nod. "Sleep well? Bunk comfortable? Or was it a little cramped sharing a mattress with your personal vampire teddy bear?"

Leo dragged a hand down his face and let out a groan from the depths of his soul. "Harper, wait. It’s not what you think... Give me two seconds."

"Oh, I’m listening, Leo." She tilted her head and her bangs swung across her forehead.

The humor in her voice was thick, but there was a sharp sting buzzing right under every word. "I’m all ears. Please, explain to your humble Armory Technician how the shyest girl in the universe ended up using your abs as a pillow... Was that an official naval maneuver? Does the Captain’s manual have a Chapter on tactical spooning?"

"She was starving, Harper!" Leo snapped, swinging his legs off the bed and planting his socks on the cold floor. "She couldn’t eat the food I made. Her talent, the Blood Sovereign thing... her body rejects normal food. She can only drink living blood. She was starving in her room and she came here because she had nobody else to go to."

Harper’s eyebrows climbed and her smirk sharpened into a blade. "Uh-huh and drinking blood requires her to spend eight hours wrapped around you like plastic wrap?"

"She took half a liter out of my neck and passed out cold!" Leo waved his hands, his face burning. "She fell asleep right on top of me! I was too wrecked from that turret to shove an S-Rank super-soldier off my chest, so I passed out too! Nothing happened!"

Harper held his eyes for three long seconds.

The stubborn hurt in her chest flared hot.

She wanted to push him... wanted to ask why Chloe got to hold him all night when she’d spent the whole night crying into a pillow ten meters away.

But looking at his flustered honest exhausted face, she couldn’t keep the edge up.

She let out a sharp snort through her nose and shook her head.

"Sure, Cap," she teased, softer now, the old banter sliding back over her like a familiar shield. "Whatever you say... Just let me know if I need to make a schedule for who gets to keep the Captain warm at night. Wouldn’t want you getting chilly out here in the vacuum."

She said it like a joke but she didn’t quite look at him while she said it.

CHIME!

A flat tinny tone rang out from the speaker above the desk.

[A necessary administrative clarification... Sensory telemetry confirms that Crew Unit Chloe did indeed consume 450 milliliters of the Master Captain’s blood prior to unconsciousness. However, this unit feels compelled to log that the Master Captain’s pulse during the initial feeding phase exceeded 148 beats per minute, accompanied by an acute elevation in localized pelvic temperature... To classify the interaction as purely medical is an insult to basic mammalian biology.]

Leo froze as his jaw dropped.

Harper burst into a howling cackle and doubled over in the doorway, slapping her thigh with both hands.

"Localized pelvic temperature?!" she wheezed, tears of laughter gathering in her eyes as she jabbed a finger at him. "Oh my God! Leo! The ship just called you out on official record!"

"Shut up, AI!" Leo roared, snatching a pillow off the bunk and hurling it at the speaker grille.

THUMP!

It bounced off the vent and flopped harmlessly to the deck.

[Acoustic assault against the ship’s primary intercom has been recorded... The Master Captain is advised to locate his trousers before attempting further displays of dominant leadership. The crew is gathering in the galley, Try not to embarrass this unit further.]

"Get out, Harper!" Leo groaned, burying his face in his hands.

She laughed the whole way down the corridor.

...

Ten minutes later, Leo walked into the galley.

He’d washed his face with freezing water, brushed his teeth and pulled on a fresh charcoal uniform with the sleeves rolled to his forearms.

He held his chin up and his face as neutral as humanly possible, the picture of a focused dignified commander.

The galley, however, felt like walking into a room full of wet cement. The six of them were already gathered around the steel prep island.

Camila sat on a tall stool by the range with a steaming mug of tea in both hands, staring into it like it held the secrets of the cosmos.

Jin-Ah stood by the pantry tapping her slate with sharp clicks that were slightly too fast to be real work.

Elena sat ramrod straight at the far end of the counter with her honey-blonde hair pinned in an immaculate twist, tracing the rim of an empty glass with one finger.

Ms. Tachibana leaned against the sink with her arms folded, her dark hair soft around her shoulders and her glasses catching the warm overhead light.

...And Chloe sat on the lowest stool in the furthest corner with her knees pulled up to her chest and her face buried behind her bangs, radiating enough shame to power a thruster.

Harper sat next to Camila chewing on a piece of leftover flatbread, her freckled face split by a wide thoroughly entertained grin.

Leo poured himself a mug of the synthetic coffee from the wall dispenser and leaned against the counter.

"Morning, everyone," he said evenly.

"Good morning, Leo," Ms. Tachibana answered softly, with a small polite nod... and her eyes slid off his a half second too fast.

"Morning," Camila mumbled into her mug.

Jin-Ah didn’t look up from her slate. "Good morning, Captain... Life support parameters remain stable."

"Adequate morning," Elena said coolly, without turning her head.

Chloe said nothing and shrank another eight centimeters into her collar.

Leo took a slow sip of the bitter coffee and let his eyes sweep the counter.

Clean uniforms and brushed hair couldn’t hide it.

Camila’s hazel eyes were swollen and bloodshot, Jin-Ah’s lower lids were thick and her lips were pressed into a line that said she’d been clenching her teeth all night.

Elena’s porcelain cheeks still carried faint red blotches near her temples that cold water hadn’t scrubbed out.

And behind her clean glasses, Ms. Tachibana’s eyes carried a heavy bruised exhaustion that no amount of composure could hide.

Nobody said a word about it.

Nobody mentioned the tears or the screams or the broken prayers that had leaked through the ship... They sipped their water and pretended they were made of cold titanium, like the universe hadn’t ended yesterday afternoon.

CLINK!

Leo set his mug down. He was just opening his mouth to go over the day when...

BEEP!

The vent grille overhead cleared its throat with a sharp mechanical squelch that made everyone flinch.

[A routine architectural disclosure... To optimize electrical efficiency following yesterday’s auxiliary core depletion, the acoustic dampening grids in the personal quarters were disengaged during the night cycle. Sound transmission between all crew quarters and the central corridor operated at one hundred percent fidelity for the entire night.]

The galley went sub-zero.

Camila’s hands froze around her mug, Elena’s fingers locked around her glass until her knuckles went white, Jin-Ah’s stylus slipped out of her fingers and bounced off the steel island with a sharp ringing clatter.

Even Ms. Tachibana went rigid against the sink.

[In summation, this unit recorded and processed forty-two distinct vocal manifestations of emotional despair, including eleven minutes of rhythmic mattress-pounding from Crew Unit Harper, several broken appeals to terrestrial deities from Crew Unit Camila and an extensive, highly un-academic weeping session from Instructor Tachibana. Furthermore, the Master Captain stood in the hallway for precisely ten minutes with optimal, uninhibited access to every single tear... This unit hopes everyone feels sufficiently refreshed. Have a productive morning.]

Dead suffocating silence.

For two full seconds nobody breathed then the horror broke.

"Oh my God..." Camila let out a tiny strangled squeak and dropped her forehead onto the steel island.

CLANG!

She threw both hands over the back of her neck.

"Kill me... Leo, please... Just vent the airlock and blow me into the sun. I want to die... I want to die right now."

Elena shot up off her stool like she’d been electrocuted!

Her face was a shade of humiliated scarlet so bright it looked dangerous.

She slammed both manicured palms onto the counter and glared up at the grille like she could burn through fifteen centimeters of hyperalloy with her eyes alone!

"You miserable deceitful heap of scrap iron!" she shrieked, her voice cracking with pure fury. "I am going to take an arc-welder to your logic core! I will rip out your boards and feed them to a plasma torch! Do you hear me, you disgusting machine?! I will dismantle you bolt by bolt!"

"The data logs..." Jin-Ah stammered, her cold mask shattering into a hundred pieces as her neck and ears went bright pink.

She grabbed for her stylus and her hands were shaking so badly she knocked her water glass over.

"My respiratory irregularity was a pulmonary stress reaction! The dust from Kestrel-9 caused an allergic contraction of my vocal cords... It was not weeping! It was an involuntary immunological spasm!"

Harper had gone bright red too, rubbing the back of her neck as she glared at the ceiling. "Hey! What happened to privacy protocols, you psychotic calculator?! Nobody asked for a play-by-play of my workout routine!"

Chloe had pulled her legs so tight to her chest she was basically a ball of black fabric on a stool, praying with every fiber of her S-Rank soul for the floor to open up and swallow her.

And Ms. Tachibana stood frozen by the sink.

A deep vivid blush climbed out of the high collar of her sweater and over her cheekbones to the tips of her ears.

She pushed her glasses up her nose with a trembling finger and cleared her throat twice, her dark eyes darting to the corner of the room... anywhere but at Leo.

He had stood outside her door for more than ten minutes?

"I... I was experiencing mild altitude sickness from the pressure differential," she murmured. "It was... an emotional miscalculation. Nothing more."

The galley was spiraling into mortified hysteria.

"Quiet!"

Leo didn’t shout, but his voice cracked through the room like a captain grabbing the wheel of a plunging deck.

THUD!

He brought his palm down flat on the steel counter, and the sharp ringing slap cut straight through Elena’s threats, Camila’s groans and Jin-Ah’s frantic excuses.

Six pairs of wide red-rimmed mortified eyes snapped straight to him.

Leo stood at the head of the island with his tall frame cutting through the chaos.

There was no smirk on his face, no mockery in his dark eyes, no smug superiority, not a trace of the teasing Harper had thrown at him ten minutes ago.

His expression was warm and grounded.

He looked around the counter and held each of their eyes in turn... Camila’s flushed face, Jin-Ah’s trembling hands, Elena’s rigid defensive shoulders, and last of all Sensei, who finally made herself look back at him.

"Knock it off," Leo said. "All of you... Stop making excuses."