“How long will the refit take?” Stacia rubbed the back of her neck. Even the weight of her hair strained her. A bone-deep weariness settled in her, as if she could crawl into her bed and sleep for a week.

“Little over a day.”

“Another delay.” Stacia tugged at the long sleeves of her white kanzu.

Paki met her eyes as if noting her for the first time. He angled his head to the side. Something akin to concern filled his voice. “Captain?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Let me be the judge of that.” Paki gestured for a seat, his funkentelechy causing the wall nearest him to protrude. Nanobots shed from it in an inky wave as they fashioned themselves into a chair.

“Maya, retrieve operations status reports from the last week. Panoramic display.”

The images popped up all about them. Paki clasped his hands behind him as he perused the information. He always enjoyed the opportunity to control the stage and remind his audience how important his insight was.

“There appears to be a great deal of … inefficiency in your command.” His finger passed through the light constructs as he ran it along a series of projections.

“An … inefficiency.” Stacia rubbed the bridge of her nose, not quite bored, not quite pained, altogether not quite ready to deal with his brand of bullshit. “If I were paranoid, I’d say there was a deliberate attempt to undermine my command.”

“Hmm.” Paki studied a particular display of the ship’s energy consumption. With a turn of his wrist, he rotated the image along its central axis and widened his fingers to zoom in. “I’d say you might have a reason to be paranoid but prematurely arrived at the wrong conclusion.”

Stacia refused to rise to the bait of his tone. Xola used to play those kinds of games. See if she’d get distracted by allowing him to annoy her. “What do you mean? What do you see?”

“Nothing I can quite put my finger on. Almost more of a feeling. But it’s almost as if there is an intelligence at work. Something deliberate. Even the sublight times between Saturn and the Orun Gate … the way the activity is so scattered…” His voice trailing off, he held his hands together, a photographer framing a shot. Paki came at the data from different angles. His mind made intuitive connections, often detecting patterns others missed. Seeing was his gift. “But if you combine the incidents, they all contribute to the same goal: a work slowdown.”

“What are you thinking?” Stacia’s thoughts gravitated to worst-case scenarios. She had that in common with Xola. Infiltration. Sabotage. Espionage. Getting to Titan or the Cypher to gain access to the Orun Gate for their own ends. But she couldn’t make that leap in front of Paki. She wanted to see if he’d get there on his own.