“Oxygen levels holding at six percent, pronounced dangerous for humans.”

She clucked her tongue softly, disappointed. No miracles here; it was just a glitch. Nobody would survive in oxygen levels like that, not for long, anyway. “Seal and secure your current location, Servitor. I’m coming aboard.”

It was the pilot’s turn to lash out and grab her by the forearm. Rosalyn shook herself free at once, glaring.

“Are you fucking crazy? You can’t go in there, Devar, we don’t know where the crew is! They could be alive.”

She closed the communication link to the Brigantine and waited, leaning against the air lock portal while the AI followed her commands. She heard the whir and clank of the opposite air lock engaging, the doors aligning and then unlocking. As always, the sound made her adrenaline spike—it was time to do her job.

“Relax, salvagers run into stuff like this all the time.”

“I don’t.”

“I’m serious, Walters, you need to calm down. That AI should have powered off ages ago; it’s probably just low on cells. My guess? It doesn’t have enough juice to sync all the new mission information and it’s repeating back old data. I’ll check the onboard databases when I get inside. Once we get that Servitor fully charged, it’ll cycle in the new logs from the ship and match up with our dossier.” She leaned against the exit briefly before glancing over the items in her case. The doors finished aligning and she punched the release lever next to theirs.

“Good to see you’re so confident, but it sounds to me like you’re writing fiction,” Walters muttered, shaking his head. He was sweating, too. “Me? I’m staying put. You let me know if I need to rescue your ass. Or don’t, you know, because I warned you, all right? You can’t say I didn’t warn you. Christ, we could be going to a cushy refuel job and probably, like, winning a medal of service or something, but instead you want to get messed up in this shit.”

“Good to know where your priorities are at.” Rosalyn shot him one last glance and then nodded toward the circular door as it gave, opening onto the tunnel passage like an aperture. “There are dead bodies on that ship, right? Our colleagues. One stupid glitch isn’t going to keep me from getting them home.”

He stared at her, unblinking, then rolled his eyes and took a step back, putting up his hands as he retreated to the cockpit. “You’re sure this is all routine? I can get mission control on the horn again.”