Quite Possibly Alien (Freeman Universe)

One human. Six legs. All hero.
When merchant apprentice Ciarán mac Diarmuid intervenes and rescues a fellow spacer from foreign assassins he breaks the Freeman Federation’s unwritten law – mind your own business. And when the mysterious damsel in distress demands to know his name he breaks unwritten law again – keep your mouth shut.
Now a single decision will determine Ciarán’s future. He can surrender his lifelong dream of winning an interstellar merchant’s license and escaping his dreary farm-boy destiny. Or he can apprentice himself to the black sheep of the powerful nic Cartaí clan, a young woman who is almost certainly a pirate, aboard a sentient starship that is almost certainly insane, on a mission that will almost certainly get both him and his cat killed.
Ciarán mac Diarmuid has no idea he is part of something greater than himself. That he has been chosen. Any competent human may win a merchant’s license. And any interstellar vessel will do. But it will take more than two legs and a pair of opposable thumbs to defeat the enemy and see justice done. It will take the heart of a tiger. And of the hero who walks beside her.