She shoveled another mouthful in as the others filled their plates and looked at him. “You have a pet?”
“Once. Back when I was a kid,” he grinned as he smothered his pancake in chocolate sauce. He flicked a look at Seren. “Do I want to know what’s in this?”
“Bugs,” the warrior replied, his expression innocent.
“Yeah, thought so.”
He smiled and dug into his breakfast. It was a little lighter than a regular pancake, with less substance. That wasn’t surprising with alien ingredients. They weren’t likely to be the same as they had been at home but even so, for a moment, he was transported to being five again, sitting in the kitchen with the housekeeper eating pancakes while his parents were away. They were always away. He’d been at military school before he’d realized other families spent Christmas together.
“These are good, Gracie,” Indra said, sectioning her pancake into small bites before spearing a square covered in chocolate. “I didn’t know you could cook.”
The brunette smiled as she took her seat and reached for the last couple of pancakes. “Yeah, well… I didn’t want to deprive you all of Jay’s bug pasta.”
He flicked her the bird, and the humans at the table all chuckled and then lapsed into companionable silence as they ate. Jay watched Keris make inroads into the mountain of pancakes on her plate. She had a good appetite, that was for sure. The warmth of approval spread through him. She was new to this real body thing, and she needed a lot of energy.
Miisan sparked into existence by the tablet, but rather than the enigmatic smile she usually wore, her face was set into grim lines.
“I hate to interrupt your meal, but we have a problem. My long-range sensors just picked up a ship inbound. It’s B’Kaar.”
Before any of them could ask anything else, the AI winked out, leaving a space where she’d been. Keris stared at it, a strange sensation rolling through her. Locked in place, her heart began to pound, and suddenly she struggled to pull air into her lungs.
That alone was enough to cause panic. It should have had her scuttling back off to the medical bay, worried about cellular degeneration and a whole host of other things that could go wrong with a biological body.
But it didn’t.
Instead, she was locked into place, her sole focus rotating around one word—a name that AIs like her feared above all else.
B’Kaar.
“B’Kaar? Who is that?” Jay demanded to empty air, trying to get Miisan’s attention.
His face had tightened into what she’d named his “professional” expression—when he dropped the laughing and joking and the warrior beneath came out. Seren wore an almost identical one and not for the first time did she wonder just how much Latharian DNA still existed in the human genome.
“And how far away are we talking? Miisan? Who the hell are these B’Kaar?”
The advanced AI didn’t respond, the air so quiet and dull it was like she’d never been active.
“They specialize in cyberwarfare,” Seren supplied, his expression filled with surprise. “But this is a remote system. Not anywhere near their normal haunts. What are they doing out here away from civilization?”
“Cyberwarfare?” Jay asked, his voice sharp. “You mean they’re hackers? Oh, come on, we can easily beat that! Hell, you guys are practically full battalions by yourself,” he said, indicating the two Lathar. “Either that or we’ll just sic Indra on them.”
The human female paused in the middle of cutting her pancake up. The scarred symbol on her face, a sign that she came from one of the more dangerous elements of human society, seemed to catch the light. She smiled, the expression somewhat ominous.
“Absolutely not,” Nyek snapped, glaring at Jay. “My female will not put herself in harm’s way.”
“Your wife is right here,” Indra replied smartly, arching an eyebrow at her mate before smiling at Jay. “And she will do what’s needed.”
“Hell yeah!” Jay leaned over to high-five the human woman. “We can take care of a bunch of gamer nerds, no problem!”
Nyek’s eyebrow winged up. “Gamer nerds? Humans are a lot tougher than we expected if you talk about taking on the B’Kaar so lightly.”
“Frontier marine, baby. Best of the best.” Jay grinned, half turning to catch her eye. As soon as he saw her face, he froze, his expression sobering.
“Hey, sweetheart, you doin’ okay there?”
She managed to shake her head and in the next moment she was in his arms, burrowing against his broad chest.
“Hey, hey, I got you. What’s wrong?” he murmured, the deep voice rumbling through his chest and against her ear. She closed her eyes. Whenever she was near him, she felt safe, and she’d never needed that more than she did now.
“The B’Kaar…” she whispered, her hand curled around his heavily muscled upper arm. Sitting in his lap, he dwarfed her, something she was still getting used to after so many weeks in a metal body. “If they find out what I am… They’ll—”
Her throat closed over, trapping the words inside, and she shook her head.
“They’ll what, sweetheart?” he asked, his big hand stroking over her back soothingly.
“She’s an AI in a biological body.” Nyek’s answer was blunt. “Best guess is that they’ll want to dissect her to see how she works.”
“Nyek!” Indra’s gasp echoed that from Gracie as Jay stiffened.
“What? I’m right.”
“Yeah, but you can’t say things like that! Not in front of Keris!”
“No,” she murmured. “He’s right. The B’Kaar hate AIs anyway. If they find out who… what I am, then—”
She couldn’t say it, a tremble she couldn’t shut down running through her weak and fragile form. Why had she uploaded to this body? It was defenseless and unarmored. At least in her metal form she would have had a chance at fighting them, or she could have uploaded herself to the base mainframe and hidden somewhere. Some secondary relay or datastore maybe… something she could pack and compress her base code into and look like a maintenance subroutine or something else benign.
But now… like this? She didn’t stand a chance. She didn’t even know how to fight.
“It’s okay, love,” Jay murmured, holding her close. “They won’t hurt you. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
He dropped a kiss on top of her head and then looked up. “Miisan, how long do we have until the B’ket or whatever they are arrive?”
Silence stretched out in the room. Jay growled in irritation.
“Miisan, dammit, you fucking answer me or I’ll find your control box and rip it out of the fucking wall!”
“She doesn’t have one,” Keris replied automatically. “Once she unpacked, she would have integrated herself into the base systems. It’s a failsafe. It means there’s no central location to damage and take the system offline.”
Jay looked at her. “So you mean we’d have to blow this whole damn place up to kill her?”
She nodded. “And since we need it to survive…”