ABANDONED. Sci-Fi/Space Navy - Space Destroyer captain rescues ice priestess from lifepod, romances her while exploring and fighting AI bots. Spoilers ahead.

[JC]

I read this a few years ago; I believe the copyright was between 2012-2018. I'm pretty sure it was a stand-alone book, not part of a series, and it featured the captain of a space navy destroyer/battleship on an exploration mission.

During the course of the mission (first 100 or so pages), they picked up a distress call from a lifeboat. The lifeboat had a member of neutral-relations alien species on board, an ice priestess. The species was nominally humanoid, but had a body temperature substantially below that of humans, to the point where a special crew quarter had to be modified to provide a cold enough environment for her to be comfortable.

The captain and the priestess begin developing a relationship, and after some ado about a few forms of meditation and a couple experimental medical treatments, the priestess begins raising her body temp to the range of "it won't freeze off on insertion." The crew in general is bemused and supportive of the developing relationship.

Aside from the budding romance, the ship is on a general exploration cruise, and begins to find signs of planets attacked by some force. The priestess is able to provide some details about the enemy force; they're a race of AI drones that her species has been fighting for some time. Over the course of the book, it is gradually revealed that her people actually created the bots as a defensive measure not long after first encountering humans, but they bots went self-aware and turned on them.

Toward the end of the book, one of the revelations is that the priestess is actually something of a revolutionary among her people, and set herself up to be recovered by the ship so that she could reveal the secret - though she didn't intend to do so openly, just prodding the crew along until they discovered the truth for themselves.

Things happen, the captain, priestess, and crew are victorious, the bots are brought back under control/destroyed, and the priestess finishes warming up to the captain... so to speak. The alien government is not particularly happy with her having told the humans the truth. She more or less tells them where to stick it; the story closes on the captain and the priestess heading off to consummate the relationship.

I can't for the life of me remember the name of the book, or the author, and the copy I had seems to have disappeared in a house move. Any ideas, folks?

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

[JC]

Just giving this a gentle bump after 30 days. >_>

[JC]

Bump?

[Kat]

This sounds delightful and I hope you find it, following.

[Kris]

No response, moving to Abandoned folder.

JC (OP) last posted in the group in October 2020.