Neptune pulled the massive door shut behind him. He opened a flat, black computer and plugged a few attachments into the ports.
“Shouldn’t you use that giant computer on the other side of the door?”
“Can’t. This door blocks all signals. The only way for me to maintain a connection to the ship is through a radio signal.”
“How exactly did you expect to do this by yourself?”
He looked at me for a moment, and then back at the screen. Apparently, I wouldn’t be getting an answer.
“We’re approaching a suspected wormhole. Normally we’d blast through it, but if the ship is damaged, the hull will deteriorate when we go into hyperdrive.”
“Can’t we wait until we reach Ganymede and inspect it there?”
“Depending on the damage, that might be too late.”
“What are the risks of passing a wormhole at our current speed?”
“We could pick up an unwanted passenger. Or a contaminant. Or come to the attention of space pirates. The risks are numerous and unpredictable. The only thing we do know is that we need to maintain our current speed to examine the fracture in the ship and seal it. Once we’re done, we have to resume our speed or risk attack. Are you clear on your assignment?”
I nodded. “How long do we have before we arrive at the coordinates?”
He looked at his watch. “Seventeen minutes.”
“How much time will I have before we come out of that pocket of space?”
“Five minutes.”
What neither of us said: in twenty-two minutes, we’d know if I was successful or if I—and subsequently the ship—were on our way to becoming space dust.
I secured my helmet onto the thick white uniform and then pulled on my gloves. Neptune buckled each of them. He removed two oxygen canisters from a black bag by his feet. One can lasted twelve hours. Two cans were more than enough. He pulled the pin in both and took a deep inhale from each of them. He was testing to make sure they hadn’t been tampered with like the ones used to poison the engineering crew.
He nodded at me. I turned around and he secured each to the chambers that were molded into the uniform for that very purpose. He fed the hose into the opening in my helmet and tapped me on the shoulder. I took a deep breath of pure, cold oxygen. It reminded me of Plunia.
Tears formed in my eyes and I blinked several times to make them go away.
“You’re coming back,” Neptune said. No promises to rescue me if something went wrong. No proclamations of feelings left unsaid. Just three words: you’re coming back. Said with such conviction that I believed him.
“Keep an eye on Vaan,” I said. My voice was muffled by the helmet, but I could tell by Neptune’s expression that he’d heard me clearly.
“He’s Federation Council.”
“He was on the ship before any of us. He’s the youngest member of Federation Council and his loyalties could have been compromised.”
Neptune’s expression changed. “Who else do you suspect?”
“Yeoman D’Nar. Earlier today when I was pressing the uniforms, I found one with a melted pearly blue blob on it. I think it was one of her fingernails from the first day.”
Talking about something other than my possibly impending death helped with my nerves.
“Doc Edison knows everything we know. He knew about my physical being faked and he looked the other way. That’s a direct violation of the code of senior officers of a spaceship. He knew how the carbon monoxide would affect the crew, and he’d know how to tamper with one of my canisters. He was quick to get the second navigation officer out of my ward the day I found the body and he instructed me to report to him for a physical after my shift. If it hadn’t been for my uniform infraction, he would have had a chance to poison me as well. Nobody would have questioned him if his report linked my death to the officer in the uniform ward.”
“Who else?”
“Pika.”
“What about Pika?”
“She’s a Gremlon. They’re notorious pranksters. I don’t think she’s capable of murder and sabotage, but she was in the uniform ward, and she told me she’s a stowaway.”
“It’s not Pika.”
“How do you know?”
“Pika is my—it’s not Pika. You said five. Who else?”
“Well, if you’re sure it’s not Pika, then there’s you.”
“Me?” He seemed genuinely surprised, but not mad.
“When I look past your overwhelming charm,” I paused to make my point, “I’m left with the fact that you showed up in the uniform ward even though my Code Blue hadn’t been acknowledged. You had access to every part of the ship because of your security clearance. It would have been within your job description to take the second nav officer out if you thought he was a threat to Moon Unit 5.”
“Not bad. Anything else?”
“You weren’t in uniform, so you might have been trying to go unnoticed. And,” I paused. “you don’t have the proper credentials to hold the position you have on this ship.”
“When you put it like that, I do sound guilty.”
Lights on the computer panel activated. A timer was displayed. It was set for three hundred seconds.
“I better get into position,” I said.
I climbed the rungs on the side of the repair chamber. A long, thick cord hung on the wall by the pressure-sealed escape hatch. I grabbed the end and hooked it onto the loop on the back of my uniform. It was small consolation to know that if something went wrong while I was outside the ship, my body could (possibly) be retrieved.
Nothing prepares you for the moment when you look out the window of a spaceship at the vastness of the universe and realize how inconsequential you are. As I waited for signs that the ship was slowing down, looking for the never-ending blackness to become recognizable as the nebulas, carbon particles, and shimmery space dust that I had previously only seen from the telescope at the space academy, I knew something was wrong.
We weren’t slowing down. There would be no pocket of time and/or space for me to identify the problem with the hull and repair it—no five minutes. Not even five seconds. This whole mission was a trap.
I glanced down at the bottom of the chamber for Neptune. The heavy metal door was open and Neptune was gone.
29: Suicide Mission
I was alone in the repair chamber. Neptune was missing and his computer was unattended. The red indicator light on the side of the computer blinked at twice the pace that it had when he’d first activated it. The timer display continued to count down the seconds until the hatch opened. When it did, I’d be sucked out of the ship by the force of the atmospheric pressure. I didn’t know how much time I had, but I knew I didn’t have much.
I jumped off the rungs and free-fell to the base of the chamber. The cord attached to my containment suit jerked me short of crashing into Neptune’s computer. I flailed my arms around behind me to unhook the cord. Seconds after the metal disconnected and swung into the side of the chamber, the red blinking light turned bright blue.
Crap!
I grabbed the computer and jumped out of the repair chamber, slamming the heavy round door shut with the force of my weight against it. The mechanism locked into place. I didn’t know what would happen on the other side of the door and I wasn’t going to stick around to find out.
I tucked the computer under my arm and ran as fast as I could down the hallway toward the cell. After everything I’d learned about Neptune, after him arresting me and jailing me and freeing me and pretend-chipping me, I couldn’t believe he’d betrayed me. He was a master at manipulation. I wondered if I would have seen his betrayal coming if he hadn’t been banned from teaching and I’d been able to take his course.
Wait a minute. How did Neptune know we had five minutes in which to check the stability of the ship? How did he know about the problem with the ship in the first place? Engineering had been compromised. So where had he gotten the schematics, the timetables, and the intel reports
? And how could he possibly have known I’d show up in the uniform ward after Pika told me how he’d disobeyed orders to keep the doc from chipping me in Council Chambers?
He couldn’t. He’d shown up prepared to unlock a suit for himself. I hadn’t even known what was in that cabinet, and that was my responsibility. Neptune had taken the information he’d been given and planned to conduct the repair mission himself.
And if Neptune had been inside the repair chamber when he entered the code to release the pressurized door, the atmospheric pull would have sucked him out into zero space right after me. We would have died within minutes of each other.
So, where had he gone? He’d left his computer. He’d left the indicator on. I’d trained for years for an emergency just like this one. It was do-or-die time. Time to prove if I were the person I’d always wanted to be.
When Neptune had me in lockup, I’d watched him work. His computer wasn’t all that different from the training computer in my Level 3 courses. I dropped into his chair and ran my hands over the colorful knobs and switches and buttons. I pulled off my gloves and ran my fingers under the bottom of the desk. There was a small button on the right. Yes. That was what I’d been hoping to find.
Hostility among the ranks of ship personnel was rare but not unheard of. Those of us who made it through our classes on tactical advantages had the option of studying either computers or drone technology. I’d opted for computers. My partner, Zeke Champion, told me his dad was in charge of computer repairs on space fleet vessels.
One day, when Vaan stayed late to meet with political leaders, Zeke told me to crawl under the desk and look for a button. Surprised that he was right, I bribed him with Plunian potato chips until he told me what the button did. It blacked out the computer from the ship’s operating system, forcing it to function without a connection to the network. It was called going dark. I’d asked him why anybody would want to do such a thing.
The answer was deceptively simple. When you didn’t know who was tampering with your information, you went dark so nobody knew what you knew. It was the difference between RSVP’ing to a party and showing up on someone’s doorstep unexpected. The hazards of such an action so far outweighed the benefits that I felt like I’d wasted a perfectly good batch of homemade Plunian potato chips as a bribe.
If I got out of this alive, I was going to find Zeke and cook him a five-course meal.
I pressed the button and the computer system went dark. A moment later, a flash of neon green burst through the middle of the screen. Small pixels of color broke away, leaving a small, spinning insignia.
Counter security network. Enter code word.
Ten white squares blinked on the screen. Ten letters. Neptune’s code. I didn’t know Neptune’s code. I didn’t know anything about Neptune. How was I supposed to figure this out?
I clawed at the thick white containment suit until it was in a pile on the floor. I bent my head down toward the transmitter. “Neptune, it’s Stryker. I’m at your computer. I’m trying to access the counter security network and I need your code. Does this thing work two ways?” I slapped at the transmitter. “Neptune! Where are you!”
“Stryker,” he said. “I’m in here.”
His voice came not from the transmitter, but from the holding cell where I’d spent my first night. I approached the area when I saw him. He was on the ground. There was a large gash in his shirt and blood covered the fabric by his shoulder.
“Don’t.” He held up his hand. “Beams.”
I stopped short right before the high-intensity light beams appeared. The floor to ceiling barrier caused sweat to run down the side of my head into the collar of my uniform. I slapped my palm against the button on the wall. The beams didn’t retract.
“Why won’t they turn off?”
“You need a top-level security card to deactivate them.”
“You need Doc,” I said. “I’ll get him.”
“Not Doc. Save the ship.”
“I need your code.”
He closed his eyes. His chest rose and fell with labored breathing. His lips parted and a word came out, faint and barely decipherable. “No.”
Neptune’s pain was evident. He was on the floor, his back up against the cot that I’d rested on four days ago when he’d treated me like a criminal. He kept his left hand on his shirt, pressing the fabric against the open wound. His eyes were half open. He was fading.
“Neptune!” I shouted. He opened his eyes. “Man up. What’s your code?”
“Daila Teron.”
30: Falling to Pieces
I stood, frozen on the ground outside of the cell. Had I heard Neptune correctly? Had he just said his code—the code to the dark security network—was Daila Teron? As in, the original uniform lieutenant who I’d hacked my information on top of to take her place on the very ship I was trying to save?
“Stryker.”
The sound of my name snapped me out of it. I ran to the computer. The ten rectangles blinked at me. I activated the keyboard and pecked the letters out one by one. D-A-I-L-A-T-E-R-O-N.
Access granted.
I didn’t have time to stop to think about the why of it all.
The first thing I did was run diagnostics on the ship. If there were truly a problem that required Neptune—or me, in my save-the-day gesture—to leave the safety of Moon Unit 5, armed only with two canisters of oxygen and an untested tether to a ship that was still moving through the galaxy so fast we’d disintegrate before blacking out, then I needed to know what it was.
The ship’s systems were listed as Code Green. Totally normal. I set the timer to backtrack and show me the diagnostic logs for the past twenty-four hours.
All clear.
There was no threat. There had never been a threat. The emergency mission was a ruse to get us out of the way.
I closed the dark network and returned the computer to its normal state. Someone else had been down here long enough to attack Neptune. I didn’t know when or how or why. I didn’t know if they’d seen him on the computer in the repair chamber or me climbing the rungs to the hatch. I didn’t have the time to stop and worry about it.
I stuffed the containment uniform underneath Neptune’s computer and crept toward the cell.
“Stryker,” Neptune said. His voice sounded weak. The hot beams of light cast a bluish glow over him, and the blood on his shirt looked purple, not red. He pulled his hand away from his chest and slid his space gun across the floor. It glided between the beams and hit my boot. “Save yourself.”
I picked up the gun and felt the heft of it in my hand. “Don’t die on me, Neptune.” He held my stare for a long, tense moment. There wasn’t time for anything more.
I ran to the elevator. The doors swished open and I jumped in, sidestepping something blue on the floor. It was a uniform—a medical uniform. One band on the sleeve. Medical ward, first officer.
Doc.
My heart raced as the elevator sped to the floor with the uniform ward. The doors opened and I scanned the hallway. At the far end, Beryn and his green Martian cronies stood in a group. I raced toward them. When they spotted me, the group collectively backed away.
Beryn took the position in front of the rest of them with his arms held up. “Get away from us. We pose no threat to you.” His eyes moved between my face and the space gun, and then back to my face.
I dropped the gun to my side. “Neptune is in the holding cell in security. He’s injured. Get help.”
“You’re a uniform lieutenant. You don’t give us orders.”
Captain Swift joined us from the other side of the hallway. “But I do,” he said. He pulled his radio from his side and spoke into it. “Emergency in the sub-basement. Officer down.” He looked at me. “Is it bad?”
“Yes.”
Captain Swift turned to Beryn and the others. “Disperse throughout the ship. Be on alert for intruders, stowaways, and anyone acting suspiciously. Code Red.” He turned toward me. “Do you know who’s responsib
le?”
I thought I did, but so much depended on me being right and I didn’t want to screw this up. “No,” I said tentatively.
“Captain,” Beryn interjected, “the passengers. How will we know who’s supposed to be here and who isn’t?”
“Call Purser Frank,” I said. “He’ll know.”
Captain Swift nodded once. The little green men scattered into the hallways. I went the opposite direction toward the uniform ward. It was the closest place I could think of where I could activate the emergency alarm to warn everyone on the ship.
In the uniform ward, I ran straight for the console and the button to communicate with the bridge. The cover was stuck. I set down Neptune’s gun and clawed at the plastic bubble. The gun fell off the console. The bubble didn’t budge.
I turned around, looking for something to use to smash it. My eyes rested on the iron I’d used to press the closet of uniforms earlier that day. It was too far away. I grabbed the makeshift BOP that I’d hidden in the center console, whirled around, face to face with the captain.
“Lt. Stryker,” he said. “We have to get you to safety.”
“I have to notify the bridge.”
“I already did. You’re in danger. Come with me,” he commanded. He was calm. Stoic. In control, like a captain should be. He moved toward me and I willed myself to stand still. “Neptune will be fine. Doc Edison will see to that. Neptune went on a risky mission, and something must have gone wrong.”
“Not Doc,” I said. “He’s—” I stopped. Something wasn’t right. For the first time since being on the ship, Captain Swift was disheveled. His uniform jacket was wrinkled and the bottom closures weren’t closed properly.
No. Not Captain Swift. Please, no.
I clung to the BOP with both hands, wishing there was a way to trade it for Neptune’s gun. Gone was the rational side of me that defaulted to the knowledge I’d learned at the space academy. I was panicking. Nothing felt right.
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