I slept for all of four hours before the com's chiming raised me from the dead. I rolled over, aiming a fist at the crudmucking readout. Tech should be efficient, fast, and completely silent. Whoever invented the beeper deserved to be voided.

  The soft lights in my cabin bored into my consciousness, forcing my eyelids up. Not that there was much to see. Unpainted steel walls, fifty square meters of cold steel floor, like a miniature loading bay full of nothing. A work desk, a chair, a white curtain divider with a print of pale, flowery vines, a bunk, a storage chest. The Kylians had built the cabin in my absence, and they'd been very generous with space. Apparently, a bachelor on Santa Kylie was expected to host dinner parties.

  All I hosted was the hatchling. He lay in a dog basket in the corner behind the curtain, a big, scaly lump, snoring wetly. I crawled out of bed, gave the com a perfunctory slap and ambled over, the decking cold against my naked feet.

  The hatchling was warm, his matte scales glittering softly, reflecting a light that wasn't there. Today, he smelled faintly of lilacs and pine, as if he'd rolled around in a forest meadow instead of sleeping on a freezing floor. Maybe he had. Void wyrms were mostly magic, and obeyed the rules of physics only as much as they wanted to. That was my theory.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Considering that I was the only human in the known galaxy with a void wyrm hatchling as a charge, I'd say my theory beat most experts. The hatchling huffed in his sleep, as if he'd heard my thoughts. Which wasn't impossible. I sat down and leaned against his flank, luxuriating in the warmth.

  The banging on my door woke me, a sharp sound of metal on metal. My com was blaring too, buzzing like a broken electric engine.

  Someone really wanted me awake.

  But my migraine was gone. Resting with the hatchling often did that. For some reason, he liked to help me.

  "I'm coming," I muttered, preventing my sky-blue polymer-velvet pajama pants from slipping down too low with one hand, the flooring cold against my feet, the entire ship feeling wrong somehow. With a final glance backward, to make sure the hatchling was safely hidden behind his curtain, I keyed the door open.

  "Captain, sir," a Kylian in the deep blue of Riina's security forces said. "It's the transmission tower."

  "What's wrong with it this time?" I sighed.

  "It's talking."