“She’ll be out of rotation for at least a week. But who knows? Reconfig goes fast sometimes.” Walters ambled over to her and swiped a potato chip out of her lunch. She grunted. Reconfig. That didn’t sound so bad. Rosalyn could think of a few things she’d like to reconfigure in her head. “Happens to the best of us.”

“We’re scheduled to launch with her today,” Rosalyn said, glaring. “The Brigantine salvage, they went blue two months ago. Who’s replacing her?”

“Going blue” meant all souls aboard were deceased. The ship would beam red for a crisis, an SOS message, but blue if there was no hope of recovering living crew members. It was a little cold and tragic, she thought, but it allowed for proper allocation of resources. Triage. Living crew in danger had to take precedence.

Walters hovered. She groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please don’t tell me . . .”

“Yup.” So smug.

“That you’re my pilot . . .”

“Mm-hmm.” Even smugger.

“On the Brigantine job, and we’re not getting a replacement for Alexia. Of course.”

“You betcha,” he smirked, and swiped another potato chip, munching with obvious relish. Not a second later, a message arrived on her VIT monitor catching her up on the new crew assignments. “You’re in good hands, Devar, I can fly circles around Courtney. She’s decent but she’s got no style. And anyway, this sounds like a breeze. The two of us can handle it.”

Rosalyn snatched up the remainder of her lunch before he could pilfer more of it. Then she pushed past her coworker, flinching away from actually shoulder-checking him out of the way. “I don’t need you to have style, I just need you to do your job.”

“Oh, I will,” he assured her with a cocky chuckle. Dick. He breezed past her, as if ending the conversation was entirely his idea. Rosalyn froze and watched him swagger out of the garden and into the flow of salvagers leaving the cantina. “I’ll do my job,” he said over his shoulder. “With style. Four hours, Devar, don’t be late! Hey, you should jazz up your AR profile, you know? An inspirational quote or something. Keeping it blank makes you look like a psycho.”

Don’t throw your bread crust at him. Only a child would do that.