Sea's Dance. SeaScape, #1

In the far distant future humanity has joined a civilization that spans the stars, corporations rule through the commerce of technology and knowledge. Hired by one of those powerful corporations Professor Valeria Pelayrm, xeno-archaeologist, is on a mission tracking the origin of the Scribes, creators of artifacts found amid treasures of alien tech. Val has managed to decipher clues to the ID route the Scribes might have used.
Commissioned with the promise of a substantial payday, Val is more interested in the goal than the treasure. Aboard the star-cruiser 'The Weightless Sword', Valeria is surrounded by a squad of the corporation's Elite guards. The ship is manned by a minimal crew, formed by the corporation to minimize the risk of a security leak. Secrecy is no protection. The clues they've followed have been around for hundreds of years.
The mission was planned through corporate channels. Betrayal is closer than they ever suspected. Sea, the only female of the squad, is assigned to bodyguard the professor. It is Val's pet, Azkor, an alien mammal of unknown origin itself, that has plans not even Val suspected. Sea finds that Val is not the one in charge of the pet/master relationship. All too soon Sea finds that she is trapped. A spaceship in the middle of nowhere is hardly the place to carry on a firefight with a monster.
The weapons Azkor uses are able to slip through any defense, rendering her entire squad impotent... Sea finds that Val isn't as lost as she'd first thought. They can only hope to survive on the ship long enough to complete half of their mission. Only then does Sea expect to find a way to escape the control the creature has claimed. She'd once sworn never again to be enslaved in this manner. Her only chance of escape might be to trust Valeria...
even though the professor betrayed her. The two women have been forced together... a mental link connects them... allowing Azkor to nurture a plan they can barely comprehend. Not until they learn something of Azkor's depths do they begin to understand the truth of the mission they are on.