by CJ Birch
“We hacked her passcode,” he says.
Chapter Seventeen
I enter the bridge, overwhelmed as if it’s the first time. The view from the panoramic windows is breathtaking. It’s almost like there are more stars than space. They pepper the expanse like a jeweler’s cloth sprinkled with diamonds. I imagine each of them as a sun, each with the possibility of planets and life. The idea is intoxicating.
I make a quick scan and confirm the captain isn’t here before taking a seat at one of the stations. Dr. Prashad said she wanted me to check in before duty, which can’t be a good thing. I have a bad feeling the next words out of her mouth are going to include the phrase “relieved of duty,” and I have far too much to do to let that happen.
Before coming to the bridge, I stopped by my cabin. The vial the Burrs placed in my duffel bag back on Europa station is no longer there—only a rip—which means there’s a good possibility I’ve already used it. I need to check the video footage of when I attacked Hartley. I know there wasn’t any from the actual assault, but Hartley said I wasn’t captured until I got to the airlock. That’s a lot of space to cover, and there’s sure to be footage between the attack and the airlock.
I spend the next hour sorting through that day’s security camera recordings until finally, I catch the images. It’s quick, and I have to replay it a few times before I can understand what I’m seeing. I pause it mid-action and see myself tossing a syringe behind a stand of canisters next to the airlock.
“Lieutenant Ash.”
I jump and scramble to shut off my screen, then turn to see Jordan standing at the entrance to the bridge.
“Can I speak with you in private?”
Shit. I stand to follow her off the bridge. She looks pissed.
Before I get to the door, Vasa calls out to her that there’s something she should see.
“I’ll only be a minute, you can tell me when I’m back,” she answers.
He swivels back to check his monitor, undecided if he should push further, but whatever is on his screen makes him brave. “Okay. It’s just, is this the anomaly you wanted me to watch out for? There’s a trace of it behind us.”
She steps around me toward Vasa. I think she’s forgotten that I’m there until she calls out for me to wait in her cabin. But as soon as the doors shut and I’m free from sight, I sprint along the corridor to the first deck chute. I scramble down so fast I miss the third rung and almost slip off. I hold tight, regain my footing, and continue in a much more controlled descent.
The airlock is deserted when I arrive. I crouch behind the crate of air canisters on hands and knees in search of the syringe that I now know, due to the footage, I chucked after attacking Hartley. I sweep my hand under the canisters back and forth, each wide arc moving deeper until my shoulder stops me from going farther, and my fingers catch the tip of something hard. I wrap my hand around it and pull it out. It looks like every other syringe I’ve seen. The vial, however, is blank on its label, with only a hint of liquid slipping down the insides as I turn it about.
As I watch, mesmerized by the sway of the pale blue froth, it hits me, what happened, what I did to Hartley the day I attacked him in the corridor. I need to know what’s in this vial.
I rush back to the med center, aware that I’m trackable, aware, too, that whoever they send for me will be less understanding now that I’ve disobeyed a direct order. Around each turn, each bend, I expect to meet Vasa lined by two security guards and the barrel of their guns pointed at me. But I don’t; my route is deserted.
When I arrive, the doctor is seated by a monitor scrolling through data. If I’m not mistaken, it’s my own readings from my first dose. I recognize the mountain peak next to the hills. The doctor is comparing these to new peaks and valleys, and I assume it’s my latest trip under that he’s collating.
“Dr. Prashad.” I’m out of breath and I don’t know why. It must be the adrenaline, the thrill of getting caught that makes my heart beat and my palms sweat. “I need you to analyze the contents of this,” I say, placing the vial on the table in front of him.
He takes it, turning it in the light, curious now. “Where did you find it?”
“It came on board with me.”
The doctor sets it on the table and opens a drawer, rummaging through its contents until he pulls out an instrument to open the top of the vial. “And you don’t know what’s in it? Even though you brought it with you?”
I hop on one of the beds to watch him work, keeping an eye on the doors the whole time. Maybe if they track me now, they’ll think I got sick and came here. Maybe I won’t get Vasa’s armed guards. “It was hidden in my duffel lining,” I say. “I think I stabbed Hartley to cover the injection site, just like the Burrs used my wound to hide the mind knot entry point.”
Dr. Prashad swabs the inside of the glass and slips it into a long black cylinder. “So whatever’s in here could be in Hartley right now?”
I shrug, because based on what I overheard none of this makes sense. They said if I was close enough I would detonate it. Where’s the bomb I’m meant to detonate? Is it on board the Posterus already? Are they going to take me over as soon as we get there? And if I did inject Hartley with whatever’s in this syringe, how is that supposed to help? The screen on the cylinder in his hand lights up, green against black, with a medley of numbers and letters, running through the molecules hidden in the soft folds of the swab.
“I examined Hartley after the attack, I didn’t see anything unusual—aside from the stab wound in his lower back, of course.”
I cringe and look down at my fingers. I have to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t me who did that. “Was he in a lot of pain?”
“Yes,” Dr. Prashad says. But as soon as he sees the horror on my face, he softens. “It was only momentary. The cut was so superficial it’s almost like it never happened.”
But it did, and I was the one to do it.
As soon as the cylinder cycles through its task, the doctor taps it against the monitor, transferring the information to the screen. A new display comes up, most of which I can’t understand. He’s busy for a second, scrolling through, hands flying, muttering to himself. I leave him to it, wishing that he’d hurry. He pulls up a new file and swipes through several screens of this with a few more grunts and a couple of reallys and imagines. I can’t take any more suspense, I slide off the bed.
“What is it?” I ask.
“It looks like…” He shakes his head like he must be wrong, and flips through a few more screens before stopping at a list of chemicals, some of which I do recognize. At the top of that list, and the most disconcerting, is nitrosamine.
“What is that a list of?”
“It’s what was in the vial, but it’s also,” and he pulls up another screen, “now laced throughout Hartley’s body. This here,” he points to a word I don’t recognize, “is a synthetic binder. It’s binding the nitrosamine to Hartley’s tendons and bones as if the substance has fused with his system.”
“Wouldn’t you have recognized a carcinogen in his system when you examined him the first time?”
“Not in such trace amounts. You’d be surprised at the things your body collects without you knowing it. But the problem here is that it’s spreading through him like a virus. I think the vial contained some sort of nanotechnology to replicate this stuff and infuse his body.”
And just like that, I know what I’m meant to detonate. My stomach muscles clench as my mind flies in a million directions, grabbing hold of elusive what-ifs.
I’m meant to detonate Hartley.
“And more worrying still is what I found laced through your system.”
“What?”
He shakes his head as if he’s not sure, or more likely doesn’t want to be. “We all create a small amount of electricity in our bodies. Not enough, mind you, to be of much use, but what I’m seeing in yours is that you’ve got an abnormal build-up of protons—positively charged particles. That’s abnormal in
itself because usually your body…”
He’s searching for a way to describe this so I’m not completely lost. But it’s too late for that.
“Just tell me what you think it means.”
“It means that if this keeps up, and you happen to touch Hartley, your body combined with his will act as an explosive.”
Chapter Eighteen
My fingers tremble as I punch in my activation code for the escape pod. An inappropriately perky chime fills the cramped space as the welcome screen fades.
I’m the other half of a bomb.
I have to get away from Hartley before we blow up the ship. The thought rolls around my head like a billiard ball off the break, knocking and bumping until my mind is a racket of clicking and clangs. How did this all go so wrong? When I stepped aboard the Persephone, I would never have imagined that I would be sitting here, only a few weeks later, in an escape pod, about to commit suicide. I take a deep, shaky breath at that thought.
That is what I’m going to do. I’ve decided to launch a pod that will hurtle through space with no propulsion, no sensors, no navigation. And no way to detect space debris, let alone avoid it, which probably is the whole point. The surprise of death is better than knowing when and how you’ll die. There is food enough for two weeks, but only air enough for seventy-two hours. Whoever designed these escape pods clearly had a sense of humor. I will die of oxygen deprivation long before I die of starvation—if I don’t explode from a collision first. These pods were meant to be lifebuoys. They have one function, and that is to keep you alive until a rescue ship arrives. But there is no rescue ship coming for me.
After several warning screens, the countdown flashes green, waiting for me to hit the go button. Once it’s pressed, I’ll have three minutes before the door closes and the pod unlatches from the ship. I hesitate over the panel. Is this reckless? Am I being too rash to think that there won’t be a better solution?
I can’t think of any other way to save the ship. Prashad said there was no way to unbind the nitrosamine from Hartley’s system or stop the micro-parasites slinking through my system and persuading my subatomic particles to create a potential motherlode of electric shocks. There is only one way. Only one way I can stop the Burrs—stop Sarka from using me to destroy the ship we have worked so hard to protect the past two decades.
I press the panel and start the sequence.
I strap myself into the control chair—which is laughable—there’s nothing to control once this thing gets going. The buckles close with a final-sounding click. The metal is cold against my shaking hands, and I breathe to push the dread, clogged in my throat, back down.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I turn to see Jordan standing in the door, with panic in her eyes. They’re wide, the pupils tiny pinpricks lost in an expanse of blue. Her chest is heaving. She’s out of breath from running and her raven black hair now looks like a dark nebula, an interstellar cloud of dust—it has no clear boundaries and reaches in all directions.
I try to concentrate. Escape pods are most definitely off-limits. She must have rushed from the bridge. I wonder if Vasa is close behind.
I reach down feeling for the mass in my cargo pocket. When my fingers wrap around the cool cylinder, a calm descends. “Have you spoken with Dr. Prashad?”
“He messaged me on the bridge.” She pivots the control chair so we’re face-to-face, and that’s when she notices the countdown on the screen behind me. Her mouth drops open, dumbfounded. She looks to me as if she can’t believe I’d do something so brainless. She catches a glimpse of the restraints anchoring me to the pod. “Are you insane?” Her voice is a low hiss. There’s a pause where we stare, inches apart, and then a flurry of action as she unfastens the harness and yanks me from the chair. I’m so stunned that it takes me a moment before I resist her touch.
“This is the only way,” I say, jerking my arm free from her grasp. I hold the back of the chair, just in case she tries to pull me out of the pod.
“I doubt that. There’s nothing that would convince me to help you…”
Kill yourself. She can’t say it, but I know that’s what she means. I am shaking with fear but determination, too. I have to save the ship. But part of me—a large part—wishes I could take her in the pod with me, that we could be safe together. Somewhere. “Only this way I can at least save the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands of people.”
She shakes her head, confused, the idea that my death could save thousands unfathomable. I wish I had more time. I need her to understand that this is for the best, but I’m not a saint, every second I delay the easier it is for her to talk me out of it. Just her presence has me second-guessing myself.
“There’s no way I’m leaving this pod, not alive anyway,” I say.
She steps back as if I’ve punched her, and there’s more than fear and panic in her eyes now. I’ve seen that look directed at me enough times to know she’s furious.
“We’ll keep you apart. We’ll make sure you and Hartley are never in the same room. I promise you I will make sure of this.”
I shake my head. I’ve thought of all this. “And what if my mind knot takes over and I don’t have a choice? We can’t take that risk. Or are you planning on locking me up in the brig for the rest of my life?”
“Once we’re out of range of the communication buoys we’ll…” And then her mind catches on to what I’ve already discovered: The Posterus will be dropping communication buoys along our flight path in an attempt to remain in contact with the Union fleet.
It’s such an unsettling contrast to see her spirited presence—with the ebony hair and shining blue uniform—against a backdrop of sterile walls and panels. And all the while, her mind must be charging as quickly as a bursting gamma ray.
“You can’t do this.” She’s desperate to find a solution that doesn’t involve me shooting into the unknown in a glorified casket.
My mouth dries. “It’s done.” I must save the ship. It’s the only way to plug the gaping hole, the aching hole that’s torn me up since I found out what happened to me on Sarka’s ship. And then I remember once more the reason I won’t fight anymore. I am no longer whole.
I remind myself: I am the other half of a bomb.
This fact has ripped me up, and no matter what, I will never be able to become whole again.
Jordan’s head falls to her chest. She’s beautiful in this moment, and I take it as a last gift. One last time to be near her. The pale high cheekbones, colored by emotion, the long dark lashes stark against her skin.
“We just need more time,” she says.
I look back at the countdown again, only a minute left. “This is all we have.”
“You horrify me, Ash. The things you’re willing to do to yourself.”
I try to protest, but she raises her hand for me to stop.
“From the first time I met you. You always push yourself to extremes!” She doesn’t move toward me, just hugs her arms tight against her chest. “Well, I don’t accept this. There’s a solution that doesn’t require you to die.”
“You don’t have a choice!”
“I’m ordering you to get off this pod and to report to the doctor. Right now!” She grabs my wrist. “You’re relieved of duty.”
I watch her rush through emotions as if she’s shuffling a deck of cards, and a strange numbness settles over me. I am an empty container; nothing left to fill me except the void of space. I almost laugh.
“Or what?” I ask. “What are you going to do? Court-martial me?”
I check the countdown, only forty-five seconds left. “Leave, Jordan.”
Jordan somehow manages to reach past me and enter her command code on the computer. She’s the only person on this ship who can stop the countdown of an escape pod. Too late, I push her away. But it’s done. The count stops at thirty-three seconds.
“Why did you do that?” I yell. “If that engine blows up, this mission will be set back years, maybe forever. The mis
sion is worth my sacrifice.”
“But why does it have to be you? Why are you always so quick to sacrifice yourself?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know, okay?” I sink down into the pilot’s seat. All the exhaustion and stress from the last couple of weeks deflates. “I was raised that way, I guess. In my family, if there’s something that needs to be done, we do it, because we can.”
“That’s a harsh way to live, Ash.”
I close my eyes. I can’t look at her. “Every single person in my family has served, going back as far as we can remember. Me in the fleet, my father in the Commons, my grandfather led the first wave of immigrants to the Belt back in the early twenties. I joined the fleet because I knew it was what was required of me.”
“Is that why you’re doing this? For approval?” She’s incredulous; she doesn’t understand.
Is that why I’m doing this? For some deep-seated need to prove that I’m worthy to my family? No, it’s more than that.
“Because if it is, I can tell you right now, it’s not worth it,” Jordan says. “The price is too high.”
I open my eyes. “It sounds like a price you’ve had to pay.”
She leans against the console, folding her arms. “I’ve never understood the need to seek approval from one’s family.” She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, contemplating. “Then again, my father was never worthy of it.”
“Why not? What did he do?” This feels absurd. Only a moment ago I was ready to sacrifice my life, and yet here I am with someone…someone I’m falling in love with. I want to know her. I want to be close to her before I die. I want this. And I will convince her I must go.
Her face drains of color as she looks out the porthole. “It’s more like, what didn’t he do?” She runs her hands along the console as if she’s looking for dust to wipe clean. “I was ten when I first noticed something was wrong. My dad had these charts of the solar system, made of real paper. And he was always poring over them, which naturally made me fascinated by them as well. One day I was looking at them when no one was around. They didn’t make any sense to me, but they were beautiful. Whoever created them had used a different color to map out different phenomenon, where radiation was the worst, where a planet’s gravity well started. Reaching out to grab another one, I accidentally spilled my juice over them. I tried to wipe it up, but that only made it worse.
