by AJ Super
“Why don’t you tell me about her? Really tell me who she was? I just want to know who my family is.”
“Your family is the Medusa.” Xaoc’s voice wavered. “Your family is me. You don’t need anything else. The strongest rise. You will eventually prove you are the strongest. I know you will.”
Nyx glowered at the back of the leather chair. “I’m not playing your silly pirate games. You know I never will. The strongest aren’t necessarily the smartest. Have you met Malcam? It’s no wonder you’ve been stuck in the secondary shipping lanes with secondary cargos and secondary bounties.”
“I know the man very well. He’s a brute, but generous to a fault. And smart. You just won’t see it. You’re too blinded by whatever prejudices you’ve grown up with. Too blinded by Kai.” Xaoc gripped the armrests on his chair. She watched his shoulders tense.
She knew that reaction. It was pure Elysion viper. It hissed: “If you push me, I’ll put you out in the black.”
Her face turned stony. “You need people who can strategize and think running your ship. Isn’t that why Kai is ExO and not Malcam? By letting Malcam run the last op, now you have to spend good money to do a memory strip, which may or may not work, to get the location of the Star.”
Captain Xaoc was silent.
“What if the mind-stripping doesn’t work? You’ll be out good coin that would have otherwise fed the crew and kept the ship in the sky. Papa, it’s a gamble, at best. And you’ll be killing a defenseless, sick man.” She squeezed her nails into the palm of her hand, knowing her father didn’t really care.
He spun back to face her, eyes wide with anger. “Precisely. He’s a madman. A drain on our resources. It’s better that I gamble than let him die with what our crew needs to survive. Or would you rather they see a Queen’s Navy firing squad?” He leaned forward, face hard. “I can make this your choice if you would like.”
Nyx tensed. If he was determined to be on this path, to continue to pursue the Star, she couldn’t stop him. But she could try to find it herself. She would be on the Thanatos for a week after all. She could make use of that time. She had hoped Matthews would give up some useful information, even if he could barely remember. But maybe something or someone else on the ship would know.
I have a secret. You’re standing on it.
She had to know what the captain had meant by that. She bit her tongue, debating whether to tell her father.
Xaoc leaned back and flicked his hand. “You’re dismissed.”
Nyx crossed her arms. “Is Malcam up to something?”
“The ambition of youth. It won’t amount to anything in the end.”
Her lips tightened. “I think you ought to be a lot more careful than that, papa. He has a lot of support, and you…”
The captain slammed his fists on the desk, rattling an empty glass and shaking the datapad settled next to his elbow.
Nyx stepped back.
“They are my crew. They follow my orders. You only need to worry about the orders I give you. And your orders are to clean up and go to your post on the Thanatos, forthwith.”
Nyx snapped a salute. “Yes, sir.”
He smiled weakly as he brought his handkerchief to his mouth to stifle a cough. “Let’s have dinner when you get back. We haven’t had dinner, the two of us, in a long time.”
She lowered her hand, shoulders dropping. “Are you okay, Papa?”
He nodded, hand at his mouth. “You’re dismissed. Mon petit papillon. That’s what she called you, right?”
Nyx beamed. He remembered. It was a small thing, but he remembered. “Yes,” she said softly. She turned and slapped the pad next to the door. It whispered open.
“Que Les Étoiles soient avec toi.” Her father tapped his heart with two fingers in the traditional religious salute to the stars.
She looked over her shoulder. “Stars be with you too, Papa.” Then she scurried through, leaving her father, whose vein popped on his forehead as he began to cough violently into his handkerchief again.
She leaned against the closed heavy metal door. Going to the Thanatos would be a good opportunity. Though Matthews knew something about the Star and something about her maman, she didn’t know if she could believe him. But she didn’t understand how he could know her maman. He looked the same age as Nyx: mid- to late-twenties. Nyx was a child when her maman died, as was he, so how would he know about her? Somehow, Nue was entangled with Matthews, and he had expressed sympathy about destroying the Star to Nue. So, did Nue have something to do with the Star of Erebus too? Now Nyx had a week to figure it out.
She’d start with Sia. Everyone else on the Thanatos with security clearance was dead. If she could revive Sia, she could access the systems without anyone knowing, and she could get into the logs and maybe figure out what Matthews knew.
It was a long shot, but it was still a plan. She only needed to get to Sia without anyone noticing.
Nyx turned to go to her quarters. A muffled thump against the conduit-lined corridor made her spin in surprise. She back-tracked past her father’s ready-room door following a low rumble of voices. Kai and Malcam.
“She doesn’t need to know, Malcam. Keep your mouth shut.”
“But wouldn’t it be interesting, Your Highness, if she knew what was going on? From the very beginning? From when you…”
“Tais-toi. She doesn’t need to know. Captain’s orders.”
“Just like the next thing is captain’s orders,” Malcam whispered so low that Nyx could barely hear.
Nyx rounded the corner and put her hands on her hips. “What doesn’t she need to know? What’s the next thing? What orders?”
Kai had the beastly Malcam pressed against the metal wall of the Medusa, the collar of his well-fit black tee gathered in his hands. Malcam raised his hands in supplication.
Nyx narrowed her eyes. “Why are the two of you fighting this time?”
Kai slowly let Malcam free, and the two men stood straight. Malcam pulled his shirt down, glaring at Kai.
“We’re just having a conversation.” Kai fidgeted with the pulse pistol at his waist. “Nothing important.”
Nyx sighed. If they were ordered not to tell her something, they would likely go to the grave with it. She started to pivot to go, but something was bothering her. She paused half-way in her turn, head down, and bit her lip. “What’s wrong with my father?”
Kai and Malcam glanced at each other. Kai shook his head imperceptibly to Malcam, eyes tight. Malcam pushed at his lip with his tongue, nose-piercings flaring. Kai stepped forward. “What makes you think there’s something wrong?”
Nyx squared her shoulders. “He looks off lately. He hasn’t been visiting with the crew as much. He leaves big duties to you deux cons. The coughing.”
Malcam walked up behind her and patted her on the back as he passed. “It’s nothing to worry about. He just caught a cold. He’ll be fine.” He glanced at Kai, then walked around the corner and out of sight.
“You expect me to believe…?” Nyx thinned her lips as he disappeared, then turned to Kai. “You expect me to believe that’s all this was? Your little fight?”
Kai shrugged. “We fight about everything. Believe what you want. I have to go pack for the Thanatos now. You should, too.” He paused as he walked by her, his smile soft and playful. “Maybe we can have a roll on our own ship when things settle?”
She rolled her eyes, “Is that all you ever think about?”
He leaned over and kissed her forehead. Her stomach heated. “No. But right now, it sounds like a wonderful idea. Our own ship. And being settled.”
“Mmmm.” She nodded as he glided away. It did sound nice. But what sounded better was her ship. Her as captain. She wanted that from her father, and the only way to get that was to find the damned Star of Erebus before anyone else. She was just going to have to get to Thanatos’ Sia before anyone decided to slag her. It was her only chance. A shower would have to wait.
4
Though the
swabbies and Engineering had been hard at work on the Thanatos, Nyx’s new quarters still smelled of burnt electrical conduit from the damage to the ship earlier in the week. Eventually, the air scrubbers would clear the smell, but someone would probably need to change the filters, and it was a scramble to get everything done to make the ship remotely habitable for the short flight to the Xianlong V junking station.
Being acting ExO, she could have taken a larger room, but she wanted something away from the bulk of the crew and away from prying eyes and sneaking ears. Her tinkering and fiddling wasn’t welcomed or encouraged on the Medusa. Everyone would have questioned her fixing Sia, because everyone on the Medusa had a motive for their actions—a reason and a scheme. She couldn’t just enjoy fixing something, and Malcam had people lurking around looking for the Star. She also couldn’t risk someone finding out that she was still looking, too.
Especially since Xaoc didn’t think Sia could be fixed and had ordered her left as scrap for the yard. Spare parts, he said. Nyx took the opportunity. With Sia, she could access the Thanatos’ systems remotely, without anyone knowing. If she fixed Sia, she might find the truth.
She wasn’t sure if Matthews’ secret was real or if she had imagined his words. His whispers were like a dream now. Between her maman’s name and the suggestion of a secret aboard the Thanatos, she felt like she was the one with time dilation sickness, floating in a nightmare where time had stopped, while everyone else passed her at break-neck speeds, oblivious that she wasn’t moving.
She was frozen in her own, private, one-second moment. Time no longer held sway, and she could only differentiate it by her time on the command deck as acting ExO, and her time in her quarters repairing Sia. She had to prove to her father that the Star was on this boat, and the secret Matthews held was that it wasn’t destroyed like he had claimed.
Nyx’s fingers flew through the wires in the temporal lobe of the Ship Interface Android.
She didn’t have much time left, only a couple days. She had successfully stayed out of Malcam’s way by sticking to her duties on the Thanatos. Kai had reported that everything was quiet, and no one would pay much attention to her as long as she kept a low profile.
Nyx connected the logic processor to the hard drive of Sia. She cradled the android’s heavy, bald, brown head in her lap. Other parts were strewn across her bed. Sia’s wiring, twisted in reds, yellows, whites, blues, greens, was laid bare across the temporal and parietal lobes of what would be a brain. The synthetic flesh was singed away.
A week had passed quickly, and they were set to dock on Xianlong V, a junkyard, in less than two days. She needed to complete the repairs to the android today so she could get answers, but it had been slow going.
She should be doing the repairs in the Engineering bay. There was a table set for laying the android to ship interface out, but she didn’t want the other crew to know she was still looking for the Star of Erebus. Captain Matthews’ secret could potentially come tumbling out of Sia’s mouth once she got the android up and running.
Nyx connected the blue visual processor wire to the hard drive and the red vocal modulator to the drive as well. The yellow wire for the power would be the final step. She avoided powering the unit until the last of the singed wires were replaced and attached. The hard drive would blow with only the bare essentials connected. They all had to shunt a faulty load if she did something wrong. If only half of the wiring was attached, the whole thing would burn up.
Nyx bit her cheek. It was a safety precaution that she never understood. If she wanted to strip the memory of the android, she only needed the memory core and vocal processors working, not the whole system. But the way Sia worked, she had to have the android fully functional to do any kind of diagnostic, and she had to run a full diagnostic on the ship without Kai or any of the other personnel noticing.
Sia might know if the Star was really on the ship, if Matthews made up an elusive secret, if he was deluded and mentally ill, or even if Nyx was deluded for believing him. She needed to know what exactly was hidden on the ship. She had to have something to give to her father, to save the Thanatos somehow.
Nyx’s heart beat faster. Her fingers moved quickly.
That was the heart of the matter. She wanted the Thanatos. She was a good ship. Reliable, though some of the consoles could use a little rigging to be more responsive. She was fast. Good in a fight and even better running away. And Nyx wanted to be ExO permanently. She wanted to be Captain, wanted her own crew. Her own family.
Nyx moved the singed synthetic flesh aside further and popped open the sensory strip of the android’s brain. She suspected a small power coupling was fried and eased out a small cylinder nestled next to the sensory data chips. The carbon residue from the burned-out coupling had blackened two of the chips, but they looked none the worse for wear. She pulled them and wiped the carbon off, carefully set them back in their soon-to-be-lit-up orange settings, and then replaced the power coupling with a fresh, shining metal cylinder.
She ran the power line to the hard drive and plugged it in. A small blue spark arced and bit her fingers. She yanked her hand back, swearing under her breath in Queen’s Speech, “Fils de pute.”
The android powered up. Her eyes opened, unseeing.
“Self-diagnostic,” Nyx whispered, hoping she hadn’t fried the android’s brain. She ticked off the seconds on her fingers.
Sia blinked slowly, a halo of gold glowing in the ether of her fawn-brown eyes.
“Android, respond.”
“Vo-oo-ca-aa-l processors rebooting. System rebooting,” the android echoed.
Nyx held the android’s head. This had to work. “Self-diagnostic.”
“All systems nominal. External damage detected.”
Now she was getting somewhere. “How did you get the external damage?”
The android twitched. “An external source code was detected. Unable to control this unit. Time dilation detected. This unit, shot.”
One of the bridge crew had shot Sia to stop her link-up to the ship, presumably to stop the android from driving the Thanatos deeper into the singularity. The android’s memory seemed to be intact. This was good. She was going to get some answers. Nyx smiled. “Self-diagnostic, motility.”
Sia fluttered her eyes and sat up, lifting her head out of Nyx’s lap and scattering bits of wire and burned up detritus. She twitched her arms and legs as if she were being electrocuted. “Motility confirmed.”
“Okay. Hold still.” Nyx knelt beside the android on the bed and grabbed the skull piece to cap the exposed wires. She snagged the small screws and electronic screwdriver. In seconds, the replacement for the damaged silvery skull was back in place, and the burned synth-skin was cut away and patched up with a strip that only slightly mismatched the skin of the android. Eventually, the smart synth-skin would bio-morph to match the melanin content of the original skin.
The one thing it would never do? Grow hair. As a result, androids were bald, as were burn victims and others who needed synth-skin treatments.
Nyx stood. Sia’s fawn eyes bored through her, every part of her manufactured to look like she was from the South Asian Republic’s Martian Colony, or at least one of their ore haulers where the Thanatos had likely stolen her from.
Nyx tipped her head. This was her chance to find the secret. This was her chance to find out what was on the ship. “Can you do a diagnostic on the ship? Are you connected?”
The android nodded. “Affirmative.”
“Run ship-wide diagnostic.” Nyx nibbled her cheek.
“Life-support, nominal. Communications, sub-nominal. Engineering, nominal. Jump space drive, sub-nominal. Defenses, nominal. Weapons, off-line.”
“Why are communications sub-nominal?”
“The long-range communications’ array damaged.” The android twitched.
“Of course, it is.” Nyx sighed. “There’s nothing out of place otherwise, though?”
“Sensors detect nothing out of the ordinary,
if that is what you are asking.”
Nyx’s mouth pulled into a thin line. There was a question she wasn’t asking, something she wasn’t saying right. She plopped down next to the android on the bed and patted her black-slacked leg. Sia still wore the uniform of the Thanatos. That could be a problem, rile up some of the Medusa crew if they ever got it into their thoughts that Sia was sentient, which happened time and again with this superstitious crew.
She sighed. “If only you could tell me where the Star of Erebus is, then this would all be better.”
The android was silent.
“Twenty questions time, then?” She’d get the information that Matthews was hiding if it took all night. “Something general. Something easy. Is the Star of Erebus on the Thanatos?”
The android swiveled her head to Nyx and was silent.
Nyx pushed her cheek with her tongue. “Are you being quiet because you were programmed not to answer questions that lead directly to the Star?”
The android was silent.
“Where is it?”
The android was silent.
“Okay. You won’t tell me where. I have to guess.” She pursed her lips. “It would make a difference if it was just hidden or if it was installed. Is it hidden?”
“No data.”
“Interesting. Is it installed?”
The android was silent.
“So, it must be installed. But where? Where would Matthews have installed a… Weapon?” Nyx’s heart dropped. Her eyes widened as she remembered the ship’s schematics. “Is the Star on the hull?”
Silence.
“Aft dorsal sector?”
Silence.
“Is it installed with the manual override for the weapons’ system?”
Silence.
Nyx’s hands trembled with excitement. “Is it operational?”
“No data.”
She squeezed the android’s leg. “You can’t tell if it’s operational?”
“I do not have access to those functions.”
