Tamed By the Alien Pirate by Celia Kyle Page 0,1

melodious—he fancies himself a singer—but it might as well be sandpaper rubbing across my cerebral cortex because of the stupidity of its message.

“Normal efficiency parameters?” I reach up and clutch at my horns for fear my head will explode. “Normal is not good enough. Not if you’re working under me.”

His fellow, a somewhat slovenly man of immense build and strength but sadly not the brain to match, snickers.

“What do you find so amusing, Kelk?” I turn my ire on him, freezing his mirth cold. “Your mistake is his mistake is my mistake. Just like a plasma conduit, all the pieces must be working in concert or…”

I arch an eyebrow, prompting him to finish.

“Or it doesn’t work?”

“Or it fails.” I slam my fist into the casing once again, knocking tools onto the deck plating with a great clatter. “And failure is never an option when your job is overseeing devices, which, when improperly tuned, could mean the painful deaths of every Kilgari and human on this ship.”

“But—but the diagnostic machine says it’s within normal parameters.” Vahn holds the boxlike scanner in front of him like a shield. I snatch it away and send it hurtling across the access room to smash into pieces against the bulkhead.

“I don’t give a damn what the diagnostic machine says. You will get this up to my specifications, which do not allow for this grotesque deviation.”

“Grotesque Deviation?” Vahn and Kelk exchange glances.

“Yes, you have adjusted the influx control valve to .000012 microns, when it’s supposed to be .00001 microns.”

“But…” Kelk swallows hard. “But that’s barely a significant difference at all.”

“Yeah, and it’s well within normal…” Vahn closes his mouth after I narrow my gaze in his direction. He clears his throat and tries another tact. “What I mean to say is, it won’t make any difference when we’re firing.”

“And how do you know that it’s off without even looking at a diagnostic box?” Kelk crosses his arms over his chest, and a moment later Vahn does the same.

“Yeah, how do you know?”

I start chuckling, though I am aware my eyes glitter like black diamonds. The two blanch and take a reflexive step back.

“First of all, I don’t need a diagnostic box to tell you’ve done a piss poor job on your calibration. All I have to do is look at the plasma coil itself. If you had tuned it to my precise specifications, there would be only .00035 seconds between flashes. There are .00037.”

“But—”

“Silence!” I slam my fist against the casing again, knocking the rest of their tools down. “You were about to say ‘but what difference does that make?’ Am I right?”

Vahn nods, and a moment later Kelk does as well.

“Well, let me tell you what kind of difference that makes. During a firefight, if the enemy has their shields tuned to within a matrix threshold of one hundred to one hundred twenty-one quarks per second, there’s a .000002 percent chance that the whole thing will overload and cause a catastrophic cascade reaction, blowing out the entire starboard side gamma emitter array. Is that what you want? To cripple the Ancestral Queen and leave us vulnerable to enemy attack? Well?”

My comm makes a chime, reminding me I have a meeting scheduled on the bridge with the rest of the senior staff. Good. We should be getting close to M’Kal, which means we’re that much closer to finding Lokyer.

Lokyer was a good kid, a little bit of a smart mouth on him but a good kid. When we thought he was dead, I took it like a blow to the gut. Finding out he was alive created hope that was tempered by the fact he’s likely being tortured even as we speak. So finding him is of the utmost priority.

“I’ve a meeting to attend. You two will remain here until this plasma coil is tuned precisely to my specifications. Is that clear?”

“But, without the diagnostic box it could take all day.”

“So go requisition another one from Montier. Or better yet, learn to do without one.”

“Easy for you to say. We’re not all Mr. Millimeter.”

I scowl at him until he has the good sense to look at his feet. True, I often dicker about adjustments most see as minor, but they simply haven’t thought things through to sufficient levels.

A great Terran philosopher known as Murphy said anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and at the most inopportune time. Well, the best way to avoid that is to make sure nothing can go wrong in the

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