Page 14 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

Pell waits until she leaves before speaking. “That message piggybacked through a maintenance repeater. I can try to trace it, but if they knew enough to scrub the access logs, they probably bounced the origin through six dead relays and a coffee warmer.”

“A coffee warmer?”

“I once watched Brakk route a pressure door through a coffee warmer.”

I consider that. “Find Brakk.”

Pell’s mouth twists. “Do you want him questioned or recruited?”

“Both.”

We find Brakk near the equipment cage, arguing with two League inventory clerks over missing scan nodes. His fur is greased flat in several places, and he has a tool clenched between his teeth while using all four fingers of one hand to make a gesture that does not require translation.

“You can tell your requisition protocol to crawl up a vent and die,” Brakk says around the tool. “I logged twelve gravimetric nodes, twelve thermal snakes, and six resonance pucks. I now possess nine gravimetric nodes, eleven thermal snakes, five resonance pucks, and a migraine named Merrow.”

One clerk lifts his tablet defensively. “The manifest shows no discrepancy.”

“The manifest is lying to preserve its self-esteem.”

I stop beside them. Both clerks straighten. Brakk removes the tool from his mouth and squints up at me.

“Oh, good. The mountain is here.”

“Your equipment is missing.”

“No shit.”

“What else?”

His ears twitch. “Depends who’s asking.”

“I am.”

“That answer is too big and red to ignore, I suppose.” Brakk waves the clerks away. They go with visible relief. “Three compact signal taps, two portable battery bricks, a coil spanner that better have been taken by someone planning to return it before I commit a felony, and one narrow-band transmitter rated for subspace burps.”

Pell makes a choking noise. “A transmitter?”

Brakk glares. “I said that with my words.”

“Why was it not reported to security?” I ask.

“I reported it to procurement.”

“Procurement is not security.”

“Procurement has the forms. Security has shoulders.”

Pell rubs his forehead. “Brakk, a narrow-band transmitter could send data off-world in compressed bursts even through Nareth-Kul’s interference.”

Brakk’s expression loses some of its profanity and gains calculation. “Yeah. That occurred to me after I stopped being angry about the coil spanner.”

“Who had access?” I ask.

“Half the site, if they knew how to bypass my cage lock.”

“Who knew?”

Brakk bares small teeth. “Me.”