Page 47 of Swept By The Alien Pirate Prince

“Have at it.” I gestured to her to metaphorically take the stage.

Silver beamed and walked over to one of the vertical storage containers. Normally, they were locked tight, but Silver had been reprogrammed with all the access codes, so she was able to punch in the correct keys. The doors yielded, clicked, and opened.

I watched the A.I. as she scoured through the unlocked shelves, her face buried behind the doorframe so I couldn’t see exactly what she was doing.

“What are you looking for, might I ask?” I craned my neck in her direction.

“I’m looking for certain documents. Amada wasn’t the only one who attempted similar projects. The Empire has been testing those waters for years.”

I approached Silver from behind and peeked over her shoulder. “Oh yeah?”

“There might be something useful in here,” Silver mentioned.

“Fingers crossed.”

Silver poked her head out from behind the door. “My fingers are not crossed.”

“Right. No — I mean — it’s an expression.” I offered her a sheepish smile and shrug as if to say, ‘you don’t get it, but that’s okay.’

“An expression.” Silver’s face went into concentration mode.

“You know, one of those things you do when you are just exaggerating or describing something, but it’s not necessarily true?”

“I am learning,” Silver said, almost apologetically. “Please be patient with the process.”

A humored grin spread across my lips. “You certainly are learning. And doing a fantastic job of it, I might say.”

“Here we go.” Silver pulled out a huge three ring binder. The thing was brimming with papers that had been stuffed in it to maximum capacity.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing to it.

“Something that might just make all your headaches go away,” Silver advised.

“Let’s hope so,” I said.

“Fingers crossed?” Silver concentrated on me, her voice ringing with hope.

“You got it in the right context.” I chuckled with approval. “Nice.”

Silver’s lips curled at the edges and her smile was adorably proud. “Thank you very much.”

I yawned and stretched. “To be honest, I would love anything that would help me get a better night’s sleep, or something that would help me not to have to work all these grueling, late nights. I’m tired.” My shoulders slumped but I managed a meager laugh to keep the situation lighthearted and friendly.

“I aim to find these solutions for you,” Silver said in her robotic voice, not using emotion.

“Good.” I picked up my water and drained the remainder of it and polished off the cluster of fruit and nut granola I’d been snacking on for the past few hours.

Silver and I continued pouring over all the research in the binder, which turned out to be surprisingly helpful.

We got into a few arguments, but nothing we couldn’t tame quickly, and at the end of the day, I was excited to present Cyburn with a working stealth unit.

“It’s fully operational,” I declared with pride as he stood before me. “All the functions have been immaculately restored.”

“How did you do it?” Cyburn’s almond eyes were wide and gleaming with surprise.

“A lot of hard work and effort,” I said. Silver stood in the background. I gestured to her. “I couldn’t have completed the task without Silver’s cooperation and assistance.”

Silver cast us a slight bow as Cyburn clapped his mammoth hands together with approval.

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