by Kate Blair
“We need to work out what the agricologists are up to. You dated Sabik, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I ended it.” I showed him the vents, too. Could he have planted the bomb?
“Sabik’s still hung up on you,” Jovan says, cutting through my thoughts.
My cheeks get warm. I didn’t know Jovan paid any attention to my love life.
“Does he trust you? Do you think you could get him to tell us about Yuri?”
I shake my head. “He’s been lying to me. I think he was hiding a path in the woods.”
“A path? What do you mean?”
“On the way back from fixing a landclearer. There was a path further into the forest, but he tried to distract me as we walked past it.”
“Where is it?” Jovan grabs my display screen from a shelf. “We have to find out what they’re trying to hide. We could get Astra to send a protector.” He taps on the screen a few times, then passes it to me.
I take it from him and peer at the image. It’s a map of Beta: the view from the shuttle simplified, turned into a harmless diagram. There’s the shuttle camp, the village in the forest, the path between them, the graveyard, and the surrounding fields and woods.
I scan the picture, trying to make it match up with what I know of the surface. It’s difficult. The map is too clean, nothing like the mess of a planet. And we never needed maps on the ship. I try to think of it like a schematic, but then I realize the path to the landclearer won’t be on the map anyway, because it’s not a real road.
“Sorry.” I wave a hand over a large mass of woodland. “I know it’s this side of the village, but that’s all.”
Jovan exhales. “I guess even if we knew where it was, we don’t know if we can trust any of the protectors on the surface.”
“I might be able to work out where it is if I were on Beta.” I feel sick saying it.
“You’re not going down to Beta. Things are too tense. You might get hurt. Yuri would definitely be suspicious.”
“But we have to find out what they’re hiding.”
“Astra and your mother would never let you. Not now. And what excuse could you give for going there?”
“This is impossible. If we tell Astra, she might tell Mom. Even if she doesn’t, and she sends a protector, we don’t know if we can trust them, and I won’t be able to explain where to look. How are we going to find out anything?”
Jovan pauses. Stares ahead for a moment. “Perhaps you could smuggle me down in something big, like an empty landclearer shell. I’d hide until night so they won’t see me searching.”
“You won’t find the path if you don’t know what you’re looking for. And what about the creature?”
“Cassius, Orion, and the bird were all near the shuttle camp. I think it’s safe on the other side of the village. And I’ll take images,” Jovan says. “Send them to you. You can tell me where to go.”
“The trees all look the same to me. I’d need to be there.”
Jovan shakes his head. He takes my hand. It makes my heart jump. The warmth of his skin. “I have to do this, Ursa,” he says. “If they’re planting bombs, they mean to start a war.”
I think of the Venture 2. The bodies of her crew must still be floating through space somewhere, horror in their frozen eyes.
I breathe in, pull my hand away, and sit upright. “I’m not going to sit up here and wait for someone to blow up the Venture, and I’m the only one who can find the path. I’m going down there.”
“Fine. I’ll go with you. Protect you.”
My stomach is warm. I wish we could do that.
“We’d be more likely to be caught if there’s two of us. And even if that landclearer plan of yours would work, there’d only be room for one inside.”
“You’d be in danger.”
I clutch my hands together, think for a moment. “I know where Astra keeps her pulse gun. And you were right about the creature being on the other side of the settlement.”
“But —”
“I’ll ping my location if I get in trouble. I’ll upload any evidence as soon as I find it.”
Jovan shakes his head. “Send you down with a weapon? What if you get caught? That’ll give Yuri too much ammunition for his conspiracy nonsense.”
He’s right. It’s one thing to be caught investigating in the forest, another to be caught with a stolen weapon. But a pulse gun is a small neon green cylinder. There has to be a way to hide it.
“My blowtorch,” I say, finally.
“What?”
I pull it out of my gear bag, hold it up. It’s a dark metal tube, just bigger than a pulse gun. “I can adjust this, take out the energy cylinder. Slide the gun into the body of the blowtorch. If I get searched, all they’ll find is an innocent-looking tool.”
Jovan’s Adam’s apple bobs. “There has to be another way. I don’t want you to go, Ursa.”
“You said it yourself, we have no evidence and no way of knowing what Yuri is going to do next. We can’t just wait for him to destroy the Venture.”
Jovan meets my gaze. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“No. Because this is my decision. The landclearer thing is a good idea. There’s one due to go down in a couple of days. But I can work on it tomorrow, get it finished ahead of schedule, so it’s ready for the next shuttle down.”
Jovan puts his hand on my shoulder. Our eyes lock.
Deep breath. “Let’s do it,” I say.
I make a new remote as quickly as I can and spend the rest of the morning checking the vents and the engine room. They’re all clear, which is good. I guess Yuri hasn’t gotten around to planting another bomb. Or maybe he didn’t think of planting two. He’s an agricologist, after all. They’re pretty dumb when it comes to the basics of engineering. He probably knows nothing about the principle of redundancy.
Then I try to do normal things. Lunch. My afternoon shift, then an extra evening shift, working on the landclearer. I’m exhausted by the time I pad back along the narrow corridors to my habitation carriage and down the steps to my cabin, avoiding the gaze of the people I pass.
I heave open our cabin door and squeeze through. Mom’s in there, just sitting on my bunk. She smiles and stands when I come in, but I slink over to my bed and sit down, slouching forward so I don’t hit my head on the bunk above. Mom leans against the bathroom unit, and I stare down at our feet.
“How are you?” she asks.
The air in the room is so still with no breeze to move it. Everything is limp and dead around us, the air filling with our bodily odors. I try to block it all out. Concentrate on what I have to say.
“I’m going to be working some double shifts over the next couple of days,” I say, feeling guilty. “Including an overnight. There’s a lot to do, since people have gone down to the planet. I won’t be in the cabin much.”
It’s the excuse Jovan and I came up with.
Mom frowns. “I was hoping we could spend some time together. I don’t want you to think that because I’m captain now, I don’t have time for you.”
“It’s fine, Mom. Working is the best thing for me. Can you tell Astra that I’m going to be busy?” I don’t want to tell her myself. She can always tell when I’m lying.
She sighs. “Okay.”
“How’s the investigation going?”
Mom shrugs. “I don’t know. Antares had the engineering equipment checked. There’s nothing missing from the hut.”
“So, Yuri was making it up? What are you going to do?”
Mom shakes her head. “I can’t do anything without evidence. I just have to keep digging.”
At least I can help with that.
Mom sighs. “I wanted to see you. I’ve missed you. But I should probably get back to work. See if there’s a new angle on this I can come up with.”
“Oka
y.” I start changing into my sleepsuit. I can’t meet her eyes.
“Well, good night then.” She sounds sad. She pushes the door open and is gone.
Once I’m ready, I lie on my thin mattress, breathing in the air of the ship. Listening to her creaks and clunks. The hum of the air circulation system. The murmur of the boosters correcting our position and spin. My home. My cramped and crowded oasis in the heavens. Tomorrow I will be flung down to Beta. And who knows what will happen there.
I squeeze my eyes tight shut and try not to think about it.
I don’t want to go down to the planet. But I don’t want us to go to war, either. What’s happened to us? To this crew? I used to know them all so well. But they’re becoming strangers, nursing secrets and suspicion. It feels as if the ground is fracturing beneath my feet, like Maia on the ice.
I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but it sticks there. When I start crying, it’s like it’s going to choke me or make me sick. I sob into the bedclothes. It’s not pretty, and I’m glad no one is here to see.
the next day speeds by. I work around the ship, mostly tinker-ing. Patching up insulation, checking on the magnetic shield, and fixing the leak in habitation carriage 2. I soak up the drops on the floor after I’ve tightened the gasket, and then I transfer the water to a vial to put back into the system. It’s only when I’m finished that I remember I don’t need to do that anymore.
At lunchtime, when I know the cabin and corridors will be mostly empty, I creep in to take Astra’s pulse gun. I’m not supposed to be able to get into the crew’s personal safes, but I learned how to hack the emergency opening mechanism years ago. And there, in Astra’s small safe, is the neon green of her pulse gun. It’s slim and cold in my fingers. I change the setting on the gun from green to red. Lethal. If I’m going up against the creature, I doubt the stun option will be enough.
Astra won’t check the safe while I’m away. She never uses her gun. She’s more of an investigator and interviewer these days. I slip it into my gear bag and head back to the main engineering workshop. The energy cylinder is jammed in the blowtorch. I hit it with my wrench, and the strike rebounds on the pulse gun sitting next to it on the workbench, chipping a corner off the pulse gun casing.
But it does the trick. The energy cylinder slides out of the blowtorch, and the pulse gun slides in perfectly. I only hope I haven’t broken it. Lunch is almost over, and I can’t risk testing it in the engineering lab when anyone can walk in.
Once that’s done, I double-check what Mom told me last night, scanning through the engineering supply lists, the manifests of what went down to the planet, and the checklists of what’s still in the engineering supply hut. My head spins when I try to focus. But Antares is right: no engineering equipment is missing. Yuri did make that up.
Jovan pings me to let me know he’s switched his shift. Now he’s scheduled to pick up the animal transport pod when it comes back up on the shuttle tomorrow. The chickens are going down in it today, but it’ll be empty coming back. That’s my ride back sorted. If all goes well, I’ll spend one night on the planet, hide in the animal transport pod, and be back on the ship before my disappearance is noticed.
I don’t want to think about what will happen if all doesn’t go well.
after my shift, i pack my landsuit into a small bag and leave the cabin. Jovan meets me at the cargo loading bay. We wait until the corridor clears around us before opening the doors.
“Ready?” he says. I nod, and he hits the button.
The doors swish open. There are heaps of equipment in the cargo bay, ready to go down to the planet. Right in the middle stands the empty casing of the landclearer I fixed yesterday. Jovan heads straight for it and swings open the side hatch. I join him and we peer into the dark.
“It’s cramped, but you’ll fit okay. It’s good that you’re petite. Probably best to brace yourself against the sides as much as you can. It’ll be a bumpy ride.”
I switch from my gray ship’s overalls to my warm landsuit while Jovan keeps watch, back turned out of respect. Then I climb into the landclearer. It is tight in here. Metal corners stick into my back as I try to find a comfortable way to sit.
Jovan is framed by the hatch. “Stay safe. See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow?” It comes out like a question when I say it.
Jovan looks like he’s about to say something else, but there’s the buzz the cargo bay doors make when they’re about to open. Jovan closes the hatch quickly, shutting me in the body of the landclearer.
There’s a voice. Aldrin. “What are you doing here?”
“Just checking on the chickens,” Jovan says. “They’re ready to go.”
“They’d better be.” Aldrin sounds tired. “Because I have to load them.”
Jovan’s footsteps fade, replaced by the sound of Aldrin clumping around, readying the loading cart. The hydraulics buzz, lifting me into the cargo hold of the shuttle and bumping me against the inside of the landclearer. Once I’m in place I can see out of the crack around the edge of the hatch, if I put my eye right against the cold metal. I see the animal transport pod and a few other boxes loaded into the hold, then the shuttle cargo doors close and it’s pitch black.
It’s not long before the shuttle leaves. It’s hard to brace myself as gravity lifts, then returns. My eyes strain at the blackness, desperate for something to focus on.
I’m not the only live passenger in the cargo hold. The dark around me is filled with the alien sounds of clucking and squawking. I know chickens are harmless, but it’s hard to remember that when their screeches and bawks echo through the black. Soon the stuffy space fills with a stink worse than the washrooms. The smell of panicked poultry, I guess.
The shuttle is a smooth ride if you’re in one of the bucket seats, but by the time we land, I’m bruised and battered, muscles aching from the strain of pressing against the casing, trying to steady myself. Skin hot from where I hit the sides too many times. I’m glad of the extra padding of my landsuit, but sweaty because of it.
A little while after we land there’s a whirr. A gray line appears in the darkness, the outline of the landclearer’s hatch. The air is suddenly fresher; the shuttle cargo hold doors must be open, releasing the chicken-stink into the outside world. There’s the hum of the hydraulics, more bumping as the landclearer shell is unloaded, then proper light through the crack. I exhale and breathe the cool air in deeply.
There’s the rhythmic patter of rain on the landclearer casing. Some lurches and bumps, then acceleration. I must be on the trailer of a landbike. I tense against the metal as we jolt along the forest path.
It’s not long before we halt, and there’s tipping and tilting, then the tapping of the rain stops. A painful thump bangs my head hard against a metal corner, and I’m still. I bite my tongue to stop myself screaming and count to ten silently as the pain in my skull crests then subsides. I rub my bruised head, put an eye to the crack around the edge of the hatch, and see the hulking shadows of equipment around me.
I’ve made it to the equipment hut.
I wait, listening. No voices. No chickens; they’ll have gone to their new homes. No sound but the thrum of rain on the roof high above me. I need to stretch my cramping legs. I ease open the hatch and peer out. My landclearer has been set down next to some digger parts, so I’m hidden even if someone enters the hut. I climb out, grateful to ease the pressure in my legs and body.
I stretch, rubbing my aching limbs and bruises and waiting until the pins and needles have gone, then creep across the hut. The packed, dry dirt of the ground and the rain on the roof muffle my steps, but I kick up dust. Some gets up my nose, and I pinch it until the urge to sneeze fades.
Nearer the door, the dirt darkens into mud, and there are voices from outside. I tiptoe over to peek through the crack. Agricologists and builders huddle there, using the overhang of the hut as shelter fr
om the downpour: Sabik, Almach, Phoebe, and Cassiopeia.
My nose itches again. A sneeze forces its way out as I’m still raising my hand, but I manage to muffle it with my palm. Only a quiet “chuff” sneaks out. I check outside. None of them have turned around. There’s not even a break in the conversation. The sound was probably drowned out by the drumming rain on the roof above.
The sun is setting, and there are gaps in the clouds. The tapping on the roof grows sporadic, then stops altogether. The crew members wrap up their conversation and go their separate ways. Three of them head toward the habitation huts. Sabik heads the other way, behind the equipment hut and out of sight.
My plan is to head out when it’s dark, so I sit down on the dusty ground and wait, peering out the crack in the door. Slowly, the weather clears. There are still clouds, smeared over the darkening blue. The setting sun colors them shades of pink and purple before sliding below the horizon, soaking the forest camp in the mauve-gray of twilight.
I guess this planet would be kind of pretty if it weren’t for all the danger.
I scratch my arms. This weather is drying it out my skin, making it flake like rust. My lips are dry too, and I bite at them as I wait, peeling the upper layer off like old glue.
People should be back at their huts now, settling in for the night, lifting their feet into bed and silencing the creak of their floorboards. My limbs ache with exhaustion. I wish I could slink to a hut and rest. But instead I wait until the last of the light drains from the sky.
I creak the door open. Pull up the hood on my landsuit. There’s a chill to the air, and it’s still damp after the rain. I head for the habitation huts nearest the fields, moving carefully from the shadow of one hut to the next, keeping my face turned away from the village as much as I can. There are cracks of light visible at some of the windows. I try not to creep. I don’t want to draw attention to myself. I’m just a shadow in the dark. A late worker returning home.
