Cira started going backward through Amitis’s logs, letting the information sink into her mind without lingering on any particular point. Then she reached their last port of call. Datax, the same as Novis’s next port of call.
The planets and stations she’d picked up her stowaways from were always going to be memorable, but Datax especially would forever be linked to Riston. The reminder now jarred her out of the flow she’d established.
Regret and guilt and compassion and anxiety all swirled up at once. She wished she could find a clear explanation for what was happening to the Pax ships. She wished she could bring Riston here and actually talk to zem. To apologize. Despite how little time they’d spent face to face, ze was still one of the people she trusted most. It was hard not to. Ze radiated comfort and empathy, and zir actions followed through on those initial silent promises. At the core, ze was emotionally honest, and Cira met enough people to know how rare that was.
What would it be like to work with zem on a problem like this? She already knew ze and Adrienn got along, so how would it be for the three of them to crash in her quarters and slog through data in concert. It was an impossible, naively optimistic dream, and she tried to push it out of her head. She failed.
This wasn’t a problem she struggled with in the beginning. Helping her stowaways had been enough. She didn’t dream about what might happen if only they could stay. Life, she knew, would be far better for them in a place they could legally exist. Pax Novis would never be that place. Riston had been the first one to disagree. When ze’d been on Novis for weeks and still hadn’t chosen a destination from their upcoming ports, she’d gently reminded zem that ze’d never have a life in the belly of a ship.
“Maybe not,” ze’d agreed after a long, uncertain silence. Zir brown eyes had held hers, and she’d felt like there were entire conversations in the look ze gave her; she just didn’t know how to translate the language. “This place has still felt more like home than anything since Ladadhi. I’d like to stay if I can.”
“You’ll be alone almost constantly,” she’d warned.
Ze had simply shrugged. “It’s peaceful.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to figure out how to give you access to the computer, even for something as simple as the library.”
“I’ll find another way to keep myself entertained.” Then, before she had been able to come up with another argument, ze’d smiled. “Besides, wouldn’t it be easier if you had someone besides Adrienn to help you with the newcomers? I can do that. I’ll make sure they stay safe.”
Doubts had lingered in Cira’s mind, but Riston had seemed so sure. She’d given in, laid down a few new ground rules, and let it go. Then Dyaus Acharya—the boy the others called Shadow—had asked to stay, too. More had joined until suddenly they’d been an adoptive family created by circumstance and bound by secrecy, with Cira as their link to the rest of the system.
Was that when the shift in how she thought about Riston had happened? Ze was her point of contact with the others, and she trusted zir opinion. The sense of humor ze wielded could shock her into gales of laughter, but ze was thoughtful, too; the present after Mitu was proof enough of that, but there had been other moments over the cycles. The more she remembered those stolen meetings and scattered conversations, the heavier her remorse became for judging zem and dropping a ruling on zir head without taking the time to look at more than one piece of evidence. She wouldn’t do that again, not if she could help it.
As she delved deeper into the data she’d gathered, she admitted one more truth to herself—she had to go into this research accepting that she knew nothing. Maybe she’d discover Riston or the other stowaways really were responsible. Maybe proof would point to a crew member who’d cracked under the pressure and started stealing. Maybe Cira and Adrienn’s worst fears were right and someone else—a true outsider—had infiltrated their home and was working to cut them off from the fleet. The truth lived somewhere on that spectrum.
Now Cira had to find enough evidence to prove it.
Intersystem News Feed
Excerpt from article by Jonis Ridge
Terra-Sol date 3814.250
Officials have tried to keep this secret, but sometimes the hardest thing to hide is something that isn’t there.
As of the time of initial publication, three Pax ships have either missed docking times or rescheduled them. For an organization famous quadrant-wide for being on time, transparent, and communicative, the changes in delivery schedule would be unsettling enough. Even before the first missed port of call, however, the PSSC had begun to close ranks. PSSC Control delayed decisions and confirmations that had taken only minutes the week before. Now, most communications to ships go unanswered and requests sent to officials on Paxis Station don’t fare much better. There have been no new debris fields or attacks reported by either Pax officials or any other system, so Pax’s missed stopovers can only mean orders from Control have changed. Are the ships being pulled back to Paxis Station or simply diverted to a new course? If threats have been leveled against the fleet, no one has bothered to report them and no system or fringe group has claimed credit for the disruption.
This leaves the quadrant watching the movements of all Pax ships with growing trepidation. Feris, which hasn’t answered a single communication since Terra-Sol 3814.233, had been carrying two modular cargo pods of medical supplies desperately needed in the Alula system, where a vicious plague has been sweeping through Syèlifi. Amitis, only radio-silent since 3814.242, has on board a supply of industrial atmospheric water generators that are even more necessary to the drought-stricken planet Vohtu in the Draconis System. Given the immense carrying capacity of Pax ships, these items are just the first in a long list of valuable goods, all of which would fetch an incredible number of credits on the black market.
More than one planet in more than one system is asking itself a very important question: What will happen to us if Pax neutrality has been compromised?
Chapter Ten
Riston
Terra-Sol date 3814.253
Searching a ship the size of Pax Novis was a harder task than Riston had figured, especially with only five people to share the work. Ze blamed the first two wasted days of hunting on adrenaline, fear, and the burning desire to be able to do something for once.
Riston was crawling slowly through a tight tunnel and hating how poorly designed these spaces always were. Sure, no one on the team of engineers had expected these access hatches and maintenance shafts to be used for actual travel, but did there need to be so many extruding pipes, cables, and edges? Ze’d nearly sliced zir forehead open on a corner of dropped ceiling when ze didn’t duck fast enough. One or two pained grunts had come from Shadow, too, who was several meters behind zem, with Tinker traveling between the two. They were circling back around after searching the narrow passages between engineering on deck five and the power relays on deck four. It had been a logical place to look, considering the work done in engineering and the missing plasma torch. However, although paranoia had Riston inspecting every scratch on the ship and wondering if it had been there before, nothing seemed out of place.
Would ze notice, though? It felt like zir own senses were becoming unreliable. Fear had them all jumping at imagined noises. Adrenaline had made sleep difficult the night before, so today, they kept searching until they were on the verge of collapsing.
When the five of them had finally fallen asleep last night, it was in a pile of blankets on the floor of their junction, and one of them was always keeping watch. All of them slept with makeshift weapons clutched in their hands—pipes and ceramic knives and, in Treble’s case, a shock-stick she’d had since before she came on board. Although the armory had more than enough in its storage compartments and on its shelves for them to borrow items without leaving the crew short, the extra safety for themselves wasn’t worth the problems—and the panic—it would cause when someone noticed the theft.
Riston checked the path ahe
ad for more potential concussions, then ducked zir head and took a deep breath. And stopped. There was something odd in the air, a scent that was familiar and yet utterly out of place. Ze took another breath.
“Zazi?” Tink’s question was barely a whisper. Riston extended zir arm back and held up one finger, focusing on the faint aroma that had grabbed zir attention.
It was tough to tease the layers of scent apart—engineering always carried the smells of grease, sweat, hot metal, and ozone—but there was a different note in the air today. Another breath brought zem the fading hint of…peppermint. Zir heart jumped. This scent had caught zir attention once before.
Hands shaking, Riston carefully turned in the tight space so ze could face Tinker and Shadow. Both were watching zem with wary expressions, but neither spoke. Ze beckoned Shadow closer and only when the three were pressed as close as the confines of the passage would allow did Riston whisper, “They were definitely here. I smell peppermint, and I’ve smelled it before. The day we left Mitu.”
Tinker’s narrow eyes went wide. Behind her, Shadow went so tense and still that Riston was sure he’d stopped breathing. Part of Riston wanted to order an immediate retreat to get the younger two far away from any place the ghostlike saboteur had been, but ze needed Tinker to help with the ship systems when Riston didn’t know to look for. Even Shadow was better with the technical aspects than Riston, though still a distant runner-up to Tink’s innate skills. Sending them away would only leave Riston without the help ze needed. Ze also wasn’t willing to let anyone go off alone if it could be helped. Staying together might limit the areas they were able to search, but it was safer. And besides, Tinker had gotten scarily good at opening panels she wasn’t supposed to have access to without anyone noticing the breach.
After warning them again to stay silent and alert, Riston let them take the lead. Staying to the rear made it easier to keep watch. Navigating the ship had gotten so much trickier in the past few days, and it wasn’t only because of the new threat on their ship. The patterns of crew movements they’d memorized—and come to rely on heavily—had broken down completely. Teams were working overtime and venturing into places they rarely visited. Yesterday, Riston, Tink, and Shadow had spent over an hour stuffed uncomfortably close together inside a storage closet while they waited for several people to finish their work one passage over. So even though Riston still searched the area for strange marks or signs of fresh welds, ze also kept watch while the others worked.
A sound caught Riston’s attention, the quiet click-shoosh of a hatch opening in a tunnel nearby. Shifting closer, ze put one hand on each of the others’ shoulders. They halted immediately, tilting their heads to listen just as the faint murmur of conversation floated down the corridor. They didn’t want to be seen, but they also weren’t willing to relive their time getting to know a closet the day before. Finally, there was no choice but to leave. Riston hated that they had nothing to show for their efforts, but it was worse knowing the only prove ze had that their ghost had been there at all was a fading smell. Ze half expected skepticism and doubt when ze had to explain it all.
“We need to move our meeting place somewhere else, and we need a better hunting plan,” Riston finally admitted once Greenie and Treble had rejoined them and ze had filled them in on what they’d found—which hadn’t been much of use. Peppermint might tell them when the ghost had been haunting a particular corridor, but it didn’t make eradicating the specter any easier.
“Considering how well we’ve kept ourselves hidden from a crew of over two hundred,” Greenie said, his tone bleeding frustration as he repacked his bag, “we shouldn’t be shocked one person who was smart enough to sneak onto the ship in the first place without help from Cira and Adrienn and fix the power glitch would also be able to hide from us.”
“If it’s only one person,” Treble corrected absently, most of her attention on the ship blueprints and the options they had for a new place to hide. “Don’t assume.”
Greenie sighed, his whole body sagging. He looked the way Riston felt. It had only been a couple of days and they were all fighting off fatigue.
“Which is why we need to get smarter,” Riston had said. “We know the ship better than some of the engineers do. There must be some way we can use that. Or sensors that will give us a better overview of people’s movements. Something to help us finish this.”
Tinker jumped onto the ladder and grabbed the bag she’d left in one of the higher tunnels. It was the one she always carried with her, but when she dropped it in the middle of the group, it rattled impressively. Just from the bag’s collapsing shape, it was clear her toolbox wasn’t inside.
“I have ideas.” Tinker opened the bag, her expression giddy. With quick movements and a tumble of words, she laid out various devices—motion sensors, minuscule cameras, heat triggers, and more. She’d even come up with a way to piggyback her own network on Novis’s to give them a way to monitor their web without anyone on the crew monitoring them. It’d also be a way for them to communicate with one another, thanks to the handheld terminals she’d collected over the cycles, fixed, and repurposed. Riston’s head was spinning by the time she finally paused long enough for anyone else to get more than a word or two in.
“Wow.” Riston looked at the array of wires and devices with all the awe they deserved. “There’s no way you came up with this in two days. How long…”
Tink flushed, her eyes on her hands and her devices. “Some of this I’ve been developing since before Cira found me, because my family…” She frowned and shook her head. “I learned a lot from them and never had a good reason to use it until Novis. Most of this I’ve been building since I decided to stay. I wanted us to be able to talk to one another whenever we wanted and to keep us safe and give us more warning when one of the crew was nearby. I started building a lot more when my toolbox went missing, though.”
A chill ran through Riston. “What do you mean?”
She looked directly at zem, somehow seeming both determined and deeply anxious. “I only left it behind for a moment, Zazi, and I was down on deck four when I did. Someone had taken it by the time I went back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Until yesterday, I thought someone on the crew must have taken it and thought it was someone’s personal set,” she said. “I thought…maybe if I’d known someone was nearby, I never would’ve walked away from the toolbox, and then no one would’ve found it, and everything would be okay.”
Ze’d scolded her for being careless, and yet she was the one who had not only been extraordinarily cautious for someone so young, she’d been thinking the whole time of ways to be more careful. She hadn’t been responsible for anything ze’d accused her of, and yet ze’d come down on her with the mercilessness of a collapsing building just because…
Oh. Because, at least for the meddling in engineering, Cira had said Tinker was to blame.
“Don’t feel too bad, Zazi,” Treble said with sarcastic levity, and Riston grimaced at how much of zir thoughts must’ve been projected on zir face. “Greenie and I were totally guilty of everything you accused us of that day.”
Greenie cast a quick glare at Treble, who raised an eyebrow in challenge. It only took a second for Greenie to wince and shrug, accepting his own guilt. “I’ve been good since then, though. Spied from a great distance only.”
“It’s not…” Ze let the words fade, because how could ze explain the twist in zir gut and the swirling uncertainty in zir mind. Cira had always been close to infallible to zem, and so when her judgment had come down, ze’d carried out the sentence without question. Ze’d already thought Tinker had been careless with her tools, but without Cira’s ire about engineering, that conversation would’ve played out so differently. Maybe ze would’ve stopped ranting long enough to listen when Tinker explained what had truly happened. Maybe they would’ve had a clue something was very wrong almost a week earlier.
But ze’d listened to Cira, and this time, Cir
a had been wrong. The realization left zem a little off-balance and confused. It took several seconds too long for zem to remember the others were waiting for some kind of response.
“It would’ve been better if you’d stayed away from the level entirely.” Riston finished instead. Ze supposed it didn’t matter much now. Even if, by some miracle, they weren’t discovered, they’d be leaving Pax Novis behind soon. Too soon.
You won’t even be able to talk to Cira after you leave.
The thought hit out of nowhere, like the sudden collapse of a star, and nearly sent zem physically reeling. Ze hadn’t even realized ze’d still held on to the hope of keeping up correspondence with Cira, trading messages back and forth and at least staying friends. How naive. The impossibility of it was even written into the Pax charter. In order to maintain their neutrality, Pax citizens remained insulated and weren’t allowed any unnecessary contact with the rest of the quadrant. If ze tried to send Cira a message from Datax or wherever else ze ended up, it’d bounce back unread with an official notice attached—a copy of the relevant sections of the Pax Charter and a warning that further communications would be reported to the local authorities. Ze knew because ze’d seen it for zirself when ze was doing some, admittedly illegal, poking around. It wasn’t even a monitored program. No alert would ping anywhere on board the ship when one of those notices went out. Cira would never even know ze’d tried to reach across the galaxy to say hello.
Ze almost laughed aloud at zirself. Moving on really was the best choice. Clearly, being here this long was making zem delusional. Ze wasn’t losing anything except a safe place to live. Ze’d never had anything else to lose, not here.
Well, ze corrected with a glance at the other four, that isn’t entirely true. There were things to lose here; ze was simply planning on taking most of them with zem.
Pax Novis Page 15
