Pax Novis

by Erica Cameron

  “What’s happening?” Fear rang in Tink’s voice.

  “Nothing good.” Dread built in Riston’s gut, a depthless cold ze could barely breathe around. “I’m going to find Shadow. You all better damn well stay hidden until I come get you.”

  “Riston!” Treble hissed, her demands for an explanation implicit.

  Ze ignored her, not even looking back until ze was sitting on the ledge of the shaft. Three fearful faces looked up from below. “Shadow’s in trouble. I don’t know how bad it is or what I’ll have to do to get him out of it, so prepare for the worst. All I need you to do is keep yourselves safe until either I get back or you get off this ship.”

  Then, without waiting for a reply, Riston left. Ze hoped it wasn’t for the last time, but that hope was microscopically small. The apology Shadow had sent sounded too much like a goodbye.

  Riston felt as loud and heedless as a wrench clattering down a shaft, but ze couldn’t help it. Fear pushed zem faster even as caution slowed zem down. Still, Shadow was in trouble, and he’d only suffer more if Riston got caught before ze reached him. That was a mistake Riston would never forgive zirself for.

  5IR-M3, Shadow had sent. Deck five, inboard, rear, maintenance shaft three. It was a full five decks below where they’d been sleeping tonight, and Riston was suddenly furious with zirself. Why had they hidden so far from everything? Picking the tunnels between decks ten and eleven in the middle of the port side extension was great for hiding—one of the least accessible sections of the ship—but getting anywhere else from there was tortuous. Even taking every shortcut ze could think of that kept to the ship’s hidden veins, Riston’s anxiety had reached an almost unbearable pitch by the time ze reached the central section of passages above deck five.

  Riston repeated the directions in zir head continuously. Deck five, inboard, rear, maintenance shaft three. The directions were as specific as could be within the ship’s hidden labyrinth, but shaft three was empty. So was every offshoot Riston checked. No sign of life, no sign of confrontation, and no hints where anyone might’ve gone.

  Pax Novis was massive. Thirteen levels and endless kilometers of passageways both on and between decks. Cargo holds, living quarters, storage closets, and several halls of offices all added extra hidey-holes for determined stowaways. Riston didn’t have time to search a tenth of the possible spots Shadow could’ve tucked himself away, so ze made zirself stop and think. He said shaft three. Shadow wouldn’t have gone far from shaft three if that’s what he sent.

  Taking a deep breath, Riston turned around and went back. This time, ze crawled with deliberate care, placing each hand only after examining the floor beneath it. Between each half-pace forward, ze stopped and inspected the dull gray walls, the indentations surrounding each panel and piece of embedded electronics. Ze looked up, scrutinizing each centimeter of piping and paneling above. It took full minutes to traverse each meter this way, and the waste burned in zir lungs like acid. Only the need to find Shadow kept zem to it.

  And then Riston saw it—a smudge barely visible in the tunnel’s dim light. It was nearly hidden in the ridged brace dividing shaft three from the opening of the offshoot running starboard. To Riston’s untrained eye, the mark almost looked like a fingerprint. In blood.

  No. No, no, no, no.

  Riston dove into the offshoot and crawled faster, zir eyes scanning for any more signs. Now that ze knew what to look for, they were easier to find. A dark droplet splashed between plates on the floor. A tiny smear between panels on one wall. There were more and more signs as ze moved farther starboard, and then they abruptly stopped. Ze moved another ten meters without seeing a single smudge, smear, or splatter, so ze backtracked to the last and stared at the double drop of blood at the point where floor met wall. He must’ve stopped here, but why? And where had he vanished to? There was nothing here.

  “Shadow?” Although Riston wanted to yell, ze kept zir voice only just above a whisper. Ze knocked on several panels, desperately hoping for the echoey thud of a storage compartment. “I can’t help you if I can’t find you, kid, come on. Let me know where you are.”

  The thud was so weak Riston would’ve dismissed it if ze hadn’t been listening for exactly that kind of noise. A meter away, what had looked like solid wall shuddered and began to open, and the faint light from the passage filled the black space.

  Shadow was there, a bruise spreading across the side of his long face. The color was only now beginning to shift from red to purple, and blood dripped from the broad base of his nose. Worse, a blood-dark stain spreading across his stomach and down the left leg of his pants. Riston stared, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, sickened and terrified, and somehow only capable of thinking, How did he get himself in there without leaving more blood all over the corridor?

  Even that stunned thought careened out of Riston’s head when Shadow tried to unfold from the cramped storage compartment and collapsed. Riston surged forward, barely getting there in time to keep Shadow from smashing his busted nose against the floor. Fear and deep, pain-tinged regret surged through Riston’s chest when the normally distant and forcefully independent boy wrapped his arms around Riston’s shoulders and clung.

  “I’m s-sorry,” he murmured against Riston’s shoulder. “I caught a glimpse of G-ghost and I thought I could do it by myself. I th-thought I could. I’m sorry. I didn’t…” He looked down at his chest and laughed weakly. A spray of blood landed on his lips and chin, spots of deep red on his brown skin. “You t-told me to be careful. Should’ve listened. You’re always right, Zazi.”

  “No. No. Don’t you dare start saying goodbye.” Riston gripped Shadow tighter, barely keeping zirself from shaking him.

  “Everyone leaves s-sometime, and there’s no help for us here.” His hand clumsily landed on Riston’s shoulder. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay. You can still save Cira and Pax Novis.”

  Maybe. But Riston would be damned if ze didn’t save Shadow first.

  Ze hoisted Shadow over zir shoulder, wincing at the cry of pain zir friend couldn’t stifle. The others were well hidden, and ze’d known the risks when ze came up here after Shadow. At least they were only one deck down from Adrienn and the med bay.

  After all, what was freedom when measured against a friend’s life?

  Tau Ceti News Feed

  Article by Kina Howard

  Terra-Sol date 3813.015

  In a shocking display of departmental cooperation and efficiency, teams from local constabularies, interstate investigation squads, and various station security teams coordinated multiple raids on estates owned by the infamous Kidokonoe family. Over forty-seven members of the family have been arrested and charged with crimes ranging from conspiracy to commit tax fraud to multiple counts of premeditated murder.

  What has baffled many who weren’t directly involved in recent events is how, exactly, so much evidence has suddenly appeared when the family has been all but untouchable for generations. Evidence has been filed, though, and it’s both concrete and plentiful. Bank records, video footage, and enough recorded ID swipes from various events to disprove—or at least call into question—fifteen different alibis. It’s a windfall. Not even the best investigation teams have been able to gather even a tenth of this detail, and this has led many to believe that the evidence to allow for this rush of arrests could only have come from inside the family itself.

  Their daughter, nine-cycle-old Mika Kidokonoe, sometimes called Tinker, is considered by many to be a prodigy in the field and one who had been expected to one day take over the family’s empire, but she has been missing since Terra-Sol date 3812.318. More than a few have speculated—and hoped—that her disappearance is somehow related to the swift takedown of the syndicate as only five weeks separated the events. Child genius turned whistle-blower? It’s one hypothesis that has been floating through the feeds since news of the arrests broke a few weeks ago, and it’s the one people have been clinging to the hardest despite the lack of evidence. Few of the other options e
nd well for a little girl born into a syndicate as notoriously infamous as the Kidokonoes’.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Cira

  Terra-Sol date 3814.256

  Cira pushed rice around her plate before spearing a piece of the vegetable-based protein ships’ kitchens usually substituted for meat. It barely tasted like anything tonight even though she knew it had been marinated in spices. Numb-tongue, she’d called it before, but those times she’d been sick and could blame the symptom on congestion. The only thing she was sick with now was exhaustion and anxiety. Those feelings weren’t soothed by Erryla’s absence from dinner. They were in one of the small private rooms off the dining hall, and it felt empty without the third member of their family.

  “Where’s Ma?” Cira finally asked.

  “What, I’m not enough mom for you now?” Meida smiled at her own joke and laughed when Cira rolled her eyes, but the smile never touched Meida’s eyes. The moment of forced humor didn’t last. Sighing, she gestured in the general direction of the bridge. “No such things as shifts right now for Erryla or Halver. She called some sort of war council with the senior staff.”

  “Technically you’re part of the senior staff.”

  “And I’m already in charge of figuring out how to wring more out of the engines.” She stabbed a slice of tomato with unnecessary viciousness and frowned at her plate. “Hypothesizing about who’s got it out for us and how they’re getting through our defenses isn’t a conversation I need to be part of.”

  Cira nodded, though she wasn’t sure she agreed. Instead of pushing what was obviously a sore subject, she asked, “Can you really get much more from the engines?”

  I see what you’re doing, Meida’s gaze said, but she followed the shift regardless. “No, the engines are what they are, but the solution to the power glitch gave me an idea. You see, no matter how much power we pull in from cosmic radiation, we lose most in the conversion process and even more during transferral.”

  Some of the tension in Meida’s shoulders seemed to ease away as she spoke, her eyes lighting up and her gesturing getting broader. For several minutes, Cira watched her mom expound on one of her favorite subjects, adding questions and comments as needed to keep the monologue going. The topic didn’t just relax Meida, it took her mother’s focus away from Cira. The last thing she wanted was for Meida to notice how deep Cira’s stress and fear ran and to start digging for reasons why.

  “What I’m really hoping, though,” Meida said, “is that when we—”

  She stopped midsentence, lips pursed and a furrow appearing between her eyebrows. Putting her fork down, Meida tapped her wrists, quickly entered a command, and spoke. A communication must be coming through, Cira realized. Before worry had too much time to build, Meida’s posture relaxed and her lips curved.

  “Hello, starshine.” The endearment wasn’t used often between her mothers, but it always made Cira smile when she heard it. “Are you coming to join us after all?”

  Then the furrow between Meida’s brows returned. She sat up straighter. “Yes. Hold on.”

  Meida activated the camera and display inset in the wall, and Erryla’s face filled the screen. She was in her office, the remains of a half-eaten meal sitting on the desk and the usual star map filling the wall behind her.

  “What happened?” Meida asked. “It doesn’t seem like good news.”

  “It’s not, but I wanted you both to hear it from me.” Erryla cleared her throat and her eyes shifted away from the lens. The obvious nerves made Cira’s throat close, and she tried to brace for whatever was about to drop. More ships going quiet? One of her stowaways captured?

  “Pax Amitis missed the last passive sensor.” Erryla’s gaze swung back to the camera and stuck. “According to long-range scans, it’s gone.”

  “How is this happening?” Although the question held a hint of a plea, Meida seemed numb. It was like the news about Tanshu’s ship had dropped her onto her emotional floor and only the kind of cataclysm that reshaped planets or stars or minds would be capable of forcing her lower. At least, that was how Cira felt. This news was like a twinge of phantom limb pain compared to the initial shock of loss. But that didn’t make it easy to bear.

  Cira released a shuddering breath and closed her eyes. For a second, her body felt too heavy. She propped her elbows on the table, her hands clasped, and rested her forehead on the flat plane of her fists. Her mothers’ conversation was barely a murmur over the sound of her own blood rushing through her ears.

  Captain John wasn’t family by blood or marriage, but he was one of her mothers’ best friends. He sent jokes and gifts unexpectedly, always remembered important anniversaries, and was one of the best mediators in the fleet. Everyone expected Captain John Litico to one day run Paxis Station. He couldn’t simply be gone. There shouldn’t be a force powerful enough to wipe away a presence like his.

  A claxon rang through Erryla’s office, blaring through the dining room’s speakers, too. Cira’s head jerked up.

  “What now?” Meida demanded, already on her feet. The same question reverberated through Cira’s head.

  “Emergency access codes. Elevator four.” Erryla’s hands were dancing through the holo-controls, and her eyes were locked on a display Cira couldn’t see. “At least two passengers. No ID on either one. They’re headed for six.”

  Deck six, where the bridge, the communications center, the security office, the armory, the senior command crew quarters, and the med bay were all housed. That was why it was secured. Three-fourths of the crew didn’t have access to deck five unless they punched in emergency access codes. If two people without ID used those codes, either a horrible accident had left both of them amputees…or neither belonged on this ship.

  Cira had given Riston the emergency codes a year ago. There’d been a scare when a fever hit Greenie alarmingly hard and wouldn’t break, and Cira knew she had to do it. Letting one of her stowaways die of a curable illness was unconscionable, so she’d given Riston the codes along with two strict instructions:

  This is a last resort.

  Whoever needs medical attention must come alone if they’re capable of doing so.

  Now, there were two people in the elevator. Either the ship’s specters were about to become real, or two of her stowaways were in serious trouble.

  When Meida bolted from the dining room, Cira followed, though she’d zoned out on the conversation, missed words and details and possibly orders. Even now, all she heard was footsteps, harsh breathing, and the startled exclamations of the crewmembers they blasted past. The elevator’s door was just beginning to open when they rounded the corner.

  “Move aside!” Meida barked.

  The three crew who’d been about to board jumped aside, all of them staring wide-eyed as their Chief Engineer leapt into the empty elevator with Cira practically stepping on her heels. Cira met their eyes just before the door closed, and she tried to smile, but the expression didn’t feel convincing. The short sprint had her heart pounding, and her hands shook. Meida looked like her bones had been replaced by an immobile graphene skeleton. The gossip would be telling terrifying stories about them within the next hour. Cira was sure of that if nothing else.

  “Deck six,” Meida demanded as the doors sealed. She followed it with her executive override, locking down the elevator and preventing it from stopping at any other deck.

  Cira bit her lip and kept still. Her mother hadn’t glanced at her since they’d left the dining hall. Did she know Cira was still here? The elevator was nearing six, and Cira stopped breathing, half expecting Meida to order her to stay behind or go back to her room like she was five again.

  “Go to security. Send whoever’s there to medical and take over the station,” Meida ordered as the elevator door slid open. Then she looked at Cira. Her dark brown eyes were intent and full of something that made Cira want to hug her mother achingly tight. “Once you get there, seal the bridge and keep it sealed until the captain orders otherwise. Are we cle
ar, Ensign?”

  Swallowing against the lump in her throat, Cira nodded. “Yes, Chief.”

  She stepped out of the elevator, but then stopped, watching Meida jog the short distance to the port door of medical. One of the senior security officers was already posted there, expression grim and hand resting on zir gun. Ze glanced at Cira after Meida entered medical, but she turned toward the bridge before the security officer could do more than nod.

  Deck six was never bustling—it was at its most packed during shift change, and even then, there weren’t more than thirty people in this section at once. On the short walk from the elevator to the main door of the bridge, though, she passed four security officers on patrol. All were openly armed. They’d never been armed on board before. Weapons were kept in secure lockers and only removed when a team needed to accompany the captain onto a station or when guarding the passenger entrance while docked. Even in training sims and on the practice range, only dummy weapons were used. Seeing live weapons on their hips made Cira feel nearly certain someone was about to die. Depending on how the next few hours unfolded, it might be her. If it wasn’t, Riston could just as easily be the one who ended up in their sights.

  Her pace picked up and so did her pulse, each beat pushing through her veins so hard she could feel its throbbing rhythm in her left wrist and at the base of her throat. The tremor in her hand that’d started in the dining hall got worse. Secondary security protocols, which required an extra level of identity verification, had been initiated. It took two tries for her to correctly input her passcode after swiping her ID. Somehow, she passed Meida’s orders to the lieutenant behind the desk without stuttering, and she even got through her initial check-in with Halver on the bridge. Commander Liddens just nodded when she told him a full lockdown had been ordered.