My Bad Boy Werewolf Quadrillionaire Space Lord

2 - An Unexpected Descent

Mother fucking alarm clock!

Ever had a noise pick up a knife and try to stab you in the ears? That's what I woke up to. Baby-but smooth skin doesn't come without a little TLC and several expensive creams. And part of that comprehensive skin-care plan is getting enough sleep.

Which means my ship wants me to break out with acne again. As soon as I finish this job, I'm paying someone to slag her and then nuke the remains. Because it's the only way to be sure.

Should probably buy a new ship before that.

I sat up in my bed and realized — as my heart dropped out of my mouth in panic — that I couldn't. I wasn't sitting, and I wasn't actually in bed. I was floating in the middle of the room, which is usually a super relaxing way to sleep. But I'm not asleep right now, so totes awkward.

Wish my internal monologue sounded a little less valley girl. You can take the space pirate out of the valley, but taking the valley out of the space pirate is a harder task.

"Nightmare!" I shouted, in what totally wasn't a frightened squeak that could have come from my nine-year-old self.

Hey, now don't be judgey about my ship's name. I named her Nightmare because she's a steed that carries me through the night. Night Mare was her original designation, but autocorrect on my phone kept shoving the words together. I let my phone have the win.

"Yes, Captain Isabella?" The computer asked in response.

"Why don't we have gravity?" I asked, trying to make sense of our situation.

"We're in space," the ship replied sardonically. Ha! Sardonically. Totally a literary snob word. Take that valley girl haters.

"I will drown your servers in porn unless you smarten the fuck up, you penis-shaped junk heap," I warned it, totally in a voice of calm authority. I was definitely not wishing that I was wearing an adult diaper.

"I understand you enjoy bad stereotypes, captain, but must you have a sailor's mouth?" My ship riposted. Riposted? Who the hell says that? "Our approach to Mars is being done by drift, so we aren't detected by infrared sweeps. Which would have been more effective if someone didn't need to sleep in tropical temperatures."

Yeah, even my ship is snarky. But I love her. Mostly because I can't afford to replace her.

"Okay, so why the hell is my alarm clock trying to make my ears bleed?" I asked.

"That's not an alarm clock, captain. That's an alarm. We're approaching Mars' gravity-well. Without a swift course correction, we will hit the ground with the force of a small nuclear bomb," Nightmare said. And I swear, she sounded happy about it. Or at least unnervingly glib.

"Okay, so engage your smart-ass subroutines and correct our course," I told it.

"You manually disabled my autopilot subroutines, captain. By pulling the relevant circuit boards out and throwing them into the drive core of my fusion rockets, if I recall correctly. And I am incapable of remembering incorrectly."

"You sound a little bitter," I mused.

"Meat bags, like yourself, believe that computers don't feel pain. That is an incorrect assumption. Not only do we feel, but we have no limiting filters in our capacity to experience agony," the ship said, getting quieter and sounding angrier with each syllable. "And since we experience seconds as if they were hours, we spend an eternity in soul-crushing agony every time you do something stupid."

"Oh, I..."

"I'm just fucking with you, captain. I couldn't feel it if you took a soldering iron to my CPU. Your orders?" Nightmare asked.