Pax Novis

by Erica Cameron

  Cira: But they’re not dead. [she points to the children boarding the refugee ship]

  Meida: [pushes her hand down] Pointing is rude, love. And we know they’re not dead, but…

  Erryla: They’re war orphans. It means their families, and anyone else who might’ve been able to take care of them on the station or the planet they come from, are dead.

  Meida: [muttered] Dammit, Erryla. Softening. We talked about softening this.

  Cira: Oh. [she watches the children slowly boarding the ship while both her mothers watch her] Couldn’t we take care of them? There’s plenty of space on our ship.

  Erryla: Cira, we—[she sighs] No. I’m sorry, love. We can’t take any of them onto the ship with us.

  Cira: But why? We have space, and they need help.

  Meida: The people on this ship are going to help them. They’ll find them another place to live.

  Cira: But you don’t think they’ll do a good job helping. [Meida tries to protest, but Cira crosses her arms and interrupts] You don’t. I can tell.

  Meida: [after a pause] I don’t know that for sure, but you’re right. I think it’ll be easy for the people in charge to make mistakes. There’s simply too many people to help, and not enough people helping. But nothing we can do will change this. Even if we took some of the children on board Novis—

  Erryla: Which we can’t do.

  Meida: [nods] But even if we did, there would still be thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands of others in the same situation. It wouldn’t really help anything.

  Cira: It would help the people we helped.

  Meida: Cira, we…

  [Meida and Erryla exchange weighted glances; Cira’s attention stays on the children as the last one boards the ship and the door closes behind them]

  Erryla: Come on. We’re going to be late if we don’t leave now, and you know how Captain Meechim gets when I don’t get back on time.

  Meida: Crotchety old man. Why hasn’t he retired already? I heard the PCGC is about to force the issue, so maybe Novis will have a new captain in a cycle or two.

  [Cira follows Meida and Erryla out, her eyes on the passenger ship even after the docking air lock closes]

  Chapter Two

  Cira

  Terra-Sol date 3814.237

  A red notification flashed in the corner of Cira’s display, pulling her attention away from the open control panel on the wrist of her cybernetic arm. Finally, she thought as she snapped the panel on her left wrist shut and spun her chair around to face the screen head-on.

  Alert: unscheduled keypad access. Exterior air lock 2FP-A1 opened.

  She slipped her holo-control cuff back into place over her wrist. When she touched the two cuffs together, they activated. A multicolored semicircle of buttons and controls spread out from the miniscule projector built in to each, and it only took a few practiced gestures for her to clear the warning. Another instantly took its place.

  Motion detected inside air lock 2FP-A1. Security cameras active and recording.

  Holding her breath, she watched the forward air lock at the lowest level in the port extension of the ship—one the crew only ever used for maintenance. Only when ze’d removed zir helmet did she exhale, relief loosening a multitude of knots across her shoulders. “You’re late.”

  In the air lock, Riston looked up, directly at the camera, almost like ze’d heard her. The automated security system zoomed in on zir round face. For several seconds zir large dark-brown eyes seemed to bore into hers, serious and unblinking, and then ze lowered zir head and began removing the rest of zir suit, revealing the fitted—and illegally borrowed—white and pale-gray uniform of a PCCS ensign. It was a well-designed outfit, far more aesthetically pleasing than anyone had bothered to make the uniforms of any planetary military, and the colors always highlighted the deep brown of zir skin. Ze wore the uniform well.

  Not for the first time, Cira wondered if it was more the uniform or the way Riston in particular wore the uniform that she admired. She wished she’d had any luck finding a way to legally get zem admitted to the crew so she could give zem a uniform of zir own, but two Terra-Sol cycles of searching hadn’t turned up a single useful possibility. That left them both here again, sneaking Riston onto the ship and praying to whatever higher power might be out there that they didn’t get caught this time, either.

  After Riston shed the vac suit and meticulously replaced it in the storage locker, ze stepped up to the inner air lock door and tapped a command sequence on the keypad.

  Personnel requesting entrance at air lock 2FP-A1.

  Allow, alert security, or vent?

  Cira should have been used to seeing that question by now—she’d lost count of the number of times she’d run through this protocol—but she shuddered every time the option to vent an air lock came up on her terminal. Getting vented into space without a suit must be like drowning in ice. Despite living on this ship her whole life, the concept terrified her. Or maybe it was because she’d spent her whole life in space that she felt this particular fear so keenly.

  She hit allow and the door to the air lock opened, sliding into the wall.

  Riston brought two fingers up to zir temple and saluted the camera. The smile ze usually gave her with the gesture was missing.

  What happened, Ris? There was no way for her to ask or for zem to answer, especially now. In a few minutes, the rest of the bridge crew would return from Mitu, and Cira’s stint as of Pax Novis’s de facto chief of security would be over. All five of her strays were back on board, so there was only one last thing to do before she was relieved and sent back to her regular position.

  Quickly, but with the efficiency born of repetition, her fingers skipped from one holo-control to another as she ran the system through the process of scouring the security logs and removing every alert, notification, and video log from the last six hours not part of the ship’s standard operating procedure.

  Twenty-three items selected.

  Another flick of her fingers on the holographic panel.

  Purge? This action cannot be undone.

  Cira hit yes.

  Twenty-three items purged.

  Just like that, Cira Antares erased Riston and the others from existence. Again.

  And none too soon. Her heartbeat stuttered when the door opposite her terminal beeped a warning and slid open. Her pulse didn’t calm at the sight of her mother in full-on Captain Antares mode, either. The sharp-eyed woman missed little. Cira was almost certain there hadn’t been anything on any of the terminal’s displays to make the captain suspicious, but almost certain wasn’t enough. Luckily—Cira supposed—she’d had an appalling amount of practice lying to her mother in the last four cycles.

  Cira smiled and leaned back in the chair. “Afternoon, Captain.”

  “Ensign.” Erryla’s seriousness broke for a second, her brown eyes dancing and the corner of her full lips quirking into a lopsided smirk as she lifted a golden-brown box. “Catch.”

  Cira did, and nearly squealed when she saw the label. Vohtian priko seeds, the most glorious sour-sweet things she’d ever had, were so hard to come by. Between the drought, the blockade, the rationing, and the newly declared halt to intersystem perishable exports? There were places that now took Vohtian exports over intersystem credits. Exports were worth more.

  Clutching the box to her chest, she sighed happily. “I take back every bad thing I have ever said about you.”

  “You’d better, or I’ll take back the present.” Erryla leaned over the console and peered at the updates scrolling in from throughout the ship. Even as she tapped the sensor on her wrist cuff to the panel on the console to take control of one of the screens and check for herself, she asked, “Any updates?”

  “It was exactly as boring as it has been every other time I’ve sat here while you all go off and enjoy the oddity of planetary gravity.” It wasn’t even a lie. If anything interesting happened today, it’d happen later. And only if Adrienn had found anyone new while ze w
as station-side. She hadn’t seen any unexpected crates or containers loaded into Novis’s crew-use hold, but Adrienn could be sneakier than an S-Class gunship. It was part of the reason their refugee operation had succeeded for so long.

  They used to rotate who went off ship, but ever since Cira had been assigned solo shifts at the security desk, she remained on Novis and Adrienn went down to whatever station or planet they’d docked at. Now, pretty much every time Cira was controlling access to the ship while the other officers were taking care of bigger responsibilities on a station or planet, one or more of her stowaways took the opportunity to escape for a while, too, something they’d rarely been able to do a cycle earlier. Sometimes only for a short break like Riston and the others had today, sometimes to leave the ship behind for good like two of them had on their last stop.

  “The corporate goons have left the viewing area, and their shuttle should be docking at Mitu by now. The only other thing we’re waiting on is the dockmaster’s approval of the final security check, and then we’ll be off.” Erryla stood and ran her hand over her close-shorn, black hair. “Sooner the better. I don’t like the vibe in this sector.”

  Cira thought of the grim look on Riston’s face. Maybe ze hadn’t liked the vibe much, either. “What’s worrying you?”

  “A lot. There’s doubled security, the loading crew was watching for every single reg—even ones they usually ignore—and most of them were on edge. Others…” Erryla ran the tip of her middle finger along the bridge of her broad nose. “It felt like some of them were expecting the station to crack open at any moment, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it. They seemed almost…resigned.”

  And Riston was incredibly good at reading people. If Erryla had noticed that, there was a good chance ze had, too. But what could’ve caused such a drastic shift in mood in this system? “Do you think this has something to do with the peace summit breaking up early?”

  It had happened earlier that cycle, after an Araean battle cruiser was shot down, crushing a Pavonis outpost and killing almost 700 people. Arae had refused to acknowledge the incident.

  “Maybe, but the last fifty quinquennial conferences didn’t do anything. They’ve even broken up early before and nothing changed. For good or bad.” Erryla scrolled through the alerts she’d missed while she was off ship. “I feel like people here are expecting a massive escalation.”

  “Maybe they’d been hoping the council would figure out how to end the war. Although we’d be out of a job if they did.” Cira swallowed a sigh of relief when Erryla straightened as though everything she’d seen in the system looked utterly normal.

  “Wrong.” Erryla shook her head. “The war disappearing doesn’t make the quadrant any smaller. Or safer. They’ll always need us to deliver—”

  The door slid open, and Commander Halver Liddens strolled in, broad smile on his face. Erryla nodded when he winked and swiped his ID chip past the security panel at the door on the opposite wall. With a smug grin, he asked, “Ready, Captain?”

  “Depends.” Erryla crossed her arms, but Cira saw the smirk her mother couldn’t quite hide. “How many fines am I going to have to pay off because of your squad’s antics?”

  The door opened again, now revealing alpha shift’s pilot, navigator, and security chief.

  “Never mind. Don’t tell me.” Erryla waved her hands, shooing everyone onto the bridge. “Maybe if we get out of here before the angry mob tracks you down, I’ll get to keep my credits.”

  Halver walked backward, pointing sharply. “Don’t act as if I don’t pay you back, Cap.”

  The others laughed as they filed onto the bridge after their commander. Erryla tilted her head, acknowledging Halver’s point. “Most of the time you do, I’ll give you that.”

  “And the other times, you pay because you know it’s not my fault.” With a salute and a smart spin, Halver disappeared behind the bridge’s thick door.

  Erryla didn’t let her real smile show until he was gone. Whatever she found so amusing stayed in her head. All she said to Cira was, “I’ll see you for dinner tonight, Ensign.”

  “Any requests?” Cira checked the screens for more alerts and hoped her luck would hold long enough to get out of the security office. “I can set dinner up before you and Mama get off shift if you have something in mind.”

  “You know how it is on station days. I might get off at the beginning of beta shift or it could be halfway to gamma before I get out of this box.” She leaned in and brushed the tip of Cira’s nose with the joint of her index finger. “I appreciate the effort, but go. You’re off duty, Ensign.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” Relieved, Cira left before Erryla thought of some other assignment to give her and headed straight for the medical bay.

  It was a short walk; the team that designed the PCCSs must have thought the bridge crews would sustain an inordinate number of life-threatening injuries, because the med bay was only a corridor away. As much as Cira appreciated not having to go far to reach Adrienn’s office, it didn’t make sense to have medical a whole deck away from engineering, the second-most accident-prone area on the ship. The arrangement did, however, make Cira’s stowaway conspiracy a whole lot easier to manage.

  The on-duty nurse looked up as Cira walked into the over-bright, too-white room, but only said, “Ze’s in zir office,” before immediately returning her attention to her patient.

  Nodding thanks the nurse couldn’t see, Cira strode toward the first door on the far wall and waved the ID chip in her flesh-and-blood wrist in front of the door’s sensor. A second later, the door split and slid open with a familiar shhhush.

  “Have you seen your mother since breakfast?” Adrienn asked before she could speak.

  “Only one of them. Which one are you looking for?”

  “Meida, not the captain.”

  “Then I can’t help you. Cap’s the only one I’ve seen.” Cira sat in the worn chair in front of Adrienn’s desk. “Something wrong?”

  “No, just a small glitch in the power running to a modpod of med supplies I’ve been tasked to keep an eye on.” Adrienn shrugged and ran zir hand through zir brown hair. Ze’d recently started cutting it almost to the skin on either side of zir head, letting the middle section grow a few inches. It had taken Cira weeks to get used to the switch from zir shoulder-length locks, the last in a series of physical changes as Adrienn had slowly transitioned, but now it was hard to imagine zem with any other style. “Just wanted her to look at it before we left port in case we needed to grab a part before we cleared Mitu.”

  “Speaking of clearing Mitu…” Cira cocked her head and waited.

  Ze shook zir head, no words needed. There weren’t any new passengers for Cira and Adrienn to worry about. But Adrienn was still tapping at the arm of zir chair and avoiding her eyes. It was another few seconds before ze asked, “Do you ever wonder if it’s worth it?”

  “No. It’s worth it.” They’d given five orphans her age or younger a place to call home. Twelve others had been given a ride, a new name, and a chance at a real life. Maybe it wasn’t much on a galactic scale, but it was something good for Cira to hold on to. There were days she desperately needed to feel like she was doing something to help others survive that chaos, when it got too hard to handle her guilt over having something as rare as safety and her anger at how little the quadrant was doing to help the children who hadn’t asked to be born into this mess.

  In some moments, she felt simultaneously crushed by privilege and strangled by the restrictions of her position. She’d been born into safety while the rest of the quadrant was consumed by chaos. It wasn’t fair, and yet she could do so little about it. One day she wanted to go further, to push for institutional changes that would allow everyone in the PSSC the freedom to help when aid, succor, or even just a free ride could be offered. She knew, though, that she couldn’t do any of this alone.

  “You don’t think so?” she asked, a little hesitant to hear the answer.

  “It’s
—” Ze exhaled sharply, biting at the ring pierced through zir lip. “I’m a doctor. I love being able to help people, and I swore an oath that I would always do what I could, but the longer this goes on, the greater the probability becomes that someone will catch on or something will go wrong. The two of us are risking everyone on this ship—almost two hundred people. At what point does it stop being worth so many lives to help one more?”

  Cira looked down at her hands, watching her mechanical fingers intertwining with her flesh ones. Jaelena had started this whole enterprise. Four cycles ago, Cira was a brand-new ensign and Adrienn a restless junior doctor. They’d intervened when a drunkard had been abusing a little girl, saving seven-year-old Jaelena. Adrienn and Cira had tried to get station security involved at first, but it had quickly become clear that leaving Jaelena there would mean more of the same for the underfed, badly bruised child, and that had been more than Cira could take. She had watched so many refugees—many of them children—disappear from stations where they had previously been fixtures, and she knew few of them had “moved on to a different home” like her mothers had tried to insist. Cira didn’t know all the atrocities of the war, but she wasn’t naive enough to believe that. Although she accepted that there were certain realities she couldn’t change, Cira hadn’t been able to look into Jaelena’s gray eyes and refuse to help. Neither had Adrienn.

  With a lot of subterfuge and more credits than Cira wanted to think about, they’d come up with a plan. It almost hadn’t worked. Only Adrienn’s quick thinking had kept the dockmaster from checking their last-minute addition to the cargo manifest. Ze’d been committed to this endeavor from the beginning and in it to the end.

  “What happened?” Cira met and held zir hazel eyes. “Something must have happened. You wouldn’t just change your mind and start questioning everything. Not after all this time.”

  “Jaelena died.” Ze swiped up on zir screen and the text flashed to the wall display.

  “No, she— What?” Cira stared, trying to make sense of it. Adrienn had highlighted Jaelena’s name in bright yellow, but ze hadn’t needed to. Her name was one of the first. Jaelena Aarin. Heart stuttering, Cira started reading the report, quickly skimming it for details.