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was out within two minutes and draping her insane, fucking sexy body along the wall. I wanted to wave her back in there so badly, but I braved it out.”
    “I told you not to eat those Toquarian meat pies,” another man muttered. “Smelled off.”
    “I wished I’d listened. My stomach was puttin’ up such a fuss, felt like it was trying to kick its way out of my body. And I’ve never smelled anything so foul in my life. Poor woman leaned against the wall, showing off the most amazing set of—”
    “We get it. She had a good body. What happened?”
    “The smell hit her and she made this strangled noise, gasped. I mean, my eyes were watering it was so bad. And I’d just lifted the covers and waved the air her way.”
    “What’d she do?”
    “She left. She fucking left. Grabbed her stuff out of the bathroom and walked out naked. I hated to see her go for about ten minutes. Then I was glad she did. Our one layover on a place I can get laid and I’m strapped to a waste receptacle like I’m about to land it in Sector Two. Damned meat pies.”
    The laughter then seemed to last forever. Sounded like three different voices and none were the familiar tones of the captain or Anders.
    My dry throat forced me to take the last few steps. The men stopped talking when I walked into the galley. Three of them sat in one of the booths and two stared at me. Juniper glanced up, blushed and looked back down. I didn’t think he was the one who’d been telling the story. That had probably been the tall, skinny man with a shock of orange hair in a stripe over the middle of his scalp. The rest had been shaved off. He faced another man who was shockingly gorgeous with dark brown skin, full lips, long ropy black hair and strange opaque eyes.
    I’d seen one of his kind before. He was a Replicant.
    My owner had found one for the ship, but she hadn’t stayed long. Nobody could figure out how she got away—there was nothing on the cameras. But as I understood it, they could take anyone’s DNA and shift into someone else. They were hard to catch and hard to keep.
    “You must be our new passenger,” the skinny redhead said with a friendly smile as he stood and came toward me. “I’m Speero.”
    He came too close. I stepped back, my spine hitting the door jamb.
    He frowned but stopped moving toward me.
    The Replicant sitting across from Juniper chuckled. “Speero, the woman just heard you tell a story about blowing out your own ass. Think she wants you close?”
    Red blotched his milky-white cheeks. “Yeah, um, sorry about that story. Ever had Toquarian meat pies?”
    I shook my head.
    “The general ‘meat’ description is bad enough, but it’s best to stay away from the ones pedaled on hover vehicles,” he advised. He held out his hand, frowned again when I only stared at it.
    “What’s the proper Gwinarian greeting?” Speero asked the question with a glance over his shoulder.
    The Replicant frowned at him. “How the hell would we know?”
    “Juniper goes with the captain on all planetary excursions.”
    “It doesn’t matter anyway,” Juniper finally spoke. “She won’t want you touching her. Was Lashin’s.”
    Real regret flooded Speero’s bright green eyes. He dropped his hand. “I’m sorry.”
    I opened my mouth to tell him it was okay, that he hadn’t known, but I couldn’t get words to actually form. Humiliation became this hot flush rushing throughout my body until every part of me burned. I stepped back out of the galley.
    “Did you need something from the simulator?” he asked, following me.
    I shook my head, turned and scurried back into my bunkroom. After the door shut behind me, I stood there, quivering and burning up with embarrassment. I’d been fine with Clay and Anders, had shot out lights, glared into my owner’s cameras. But I couldn’t even open my mouth to answer a simple question with others.
    A ringing sound filled the room and I turned toward the door.
    “Siri?”
    The relief I felt