Trina thought Nishan would go help the doctor, but instead the political officer came to sit on the padded bench.
“Tell me everything you know about this virus.” Her breath clouded the faceplate with each word, then cleared almost instantly. “The smallest detail could prove critical. We’re scanning the logs, but there’s too many for us to find the culprits in time.”
The protest that she knew nothing died as Trina remembered how her grandfather had gotten her to agree. “I don’t know who sent it, but my mother had something similar from the polit testing.” In short sentences, Trina told Nishan everything she could remember.
“And there was no cure?”
Trina touched the pocket where she’d held the vial. “None that we knew about. Nor had the apothecary who was helping us heard of one.”
“Nishan.”
The way the doctor’s voice lowered an octave made Trina tense, knowing whatever the woman had found in her research could only be bad news.
The political officer rose. “She doesn’t know much of use.”
Before Nishan could move, Lenat strode over to join them, a sealed container holding the vial between her gloved hands. What Trina could see of the doctor’s face looked pinched.
“She knows more than she’s telling you.” Lenat waved the now empty vial. “This isn’t some attempt at a cure. It’s the virus. Alive and unchanged. She was the delivery system.”
Both crewmembers turned to stare at Trina who shrank back. “It’s the cure. I swear. That’s what Grandfather said.”
Nishan clamped a hand down hard on Trina’s arm. “Records say you have no parents besides your missing sister. Falsifying those records is a crime, but nothing in comparison to what your grandfather has done. Tell us everything you know.”
Though fear kept her body as frozen as Paul, Trina’s mind spun with this new information. Grandfather had planned this all along. Why else put his only son with the laborers if he hadn’t needed to keep one of the polit leaders safe? Katie had been right. Nothing changed.
“Tell us,” Nishan demanded, giving Trina a shake. “Tell us everything you know about your grandfather and who he might be working for.”
They thought her grandfather another shafter snuck aboard as she had been. Nishan thought she wouldn’t know who gave the orders, and had Trina been a true shafter, that assumption would have been right. But her sister was the only other shafter on the ship.
“Where’s Katie?”
Nishan pressed her helmet against the one shielding Trina. “You don’t think to bargain, do you? Your sister’s life is in your hands.”
A commotion at the door distracted the political officer, but Trina sat still. Grandfather may have planned this, but she had delivered the virus then passed it to the crewwoman, and possibly Katie.
A familiar face, the security officer she’d first met on the platform when they entered the ship and since at gatherings, came over as two others carried someone to a different padded table.
More victims.
“We found your sister,” Patty said. “In the cargo bay as you thought. She’s very sick though.”
Nishan’s shoulders relaxed for a moment at hearing the quarantine was complete, but when she turned to stare at Trina, the tension returned. “Don’t coddle her. She delivered the vial.”
“Her? She’s so young. “
The political officer gave a sour laugh. “How young was I when they picked me for the Guild? Besides, she’s older than she looks. The life is hard, and it stunts growth. The polits on Ceric called them shafters if I remember correctly.”
Trina looked at Nishan in surprise.
“Crew doesn’t care what you were, only what you choose to be.” Something in the words made the woman pause. “You may have delivered it, but you really thought it was the cure, didn’t you?”
Trina could only nod.
“Death would be personal for shafters, like it was with my people. I should have realized.”
Patty’s gaze narrowed. “Then you can tell us where it came from.”
Nishan frowned. “Her grandfather, a family not listed in our databanks.”
“Another shafter then? But why would she be listed and him not?”
They seemed to have forgotten Trina, but their comments failed to distract her from the knowledge that her grandfather had used her to infect people just like polits had infected her mother. He couldn’t have known she would fight it off either. She wanted no part of his family. He didn’t understand what the word meant. Trina slid off the table. “I can bring you to him.”
“You can tell me where he is,” Patty countered. “You’ll be staying right here. Be happy Nishan understands, or you’d be carted off to the brig along with him and everyone else involved.”
Trina straightened to her full height, the suit bulky around her. “There is no one else.”
Nishan laughed. “No shafter, no matter how clever, could have done this.”
“Who said he was a shafter?”
The two of them tangled stares, and Trina slipped into full shafter pose without thinking. Her hands flexed to release knives she no longer carried. The political officer matched her down to the twitch in her fingers.
“What else could he be? No laborer or polit would raise his granddaughter in the shafts.”
“My father was a polit, my mother a shafter. He had no choice. We had no choice until Grandfather offered this.”
Nishan’s position shifted so slightly that the others might not have noticed, but Trina backed down as well. “And with this offer you would do anything for him.”
“I did do anything. I even carried his poisons.”
The political officer put one hand on Trina’s shoulder, ignoring her flinch. “Unknowing.”
Trina’s lips twisted into a grimace. “The way of family outside of the shafts. A sacrifice in the name of owning the first settlement.”
Before Nishan could respond, Lenat appeared and came between them. “Yes, he used you terribly, but in doing so, he might have saved everyone. Trina, you are the only one to recover.”
Trina stared at the doctor as she struggled to find the words. “How many have died?” Her throat tightened around the last, knowing their blood coated her hands.
“Only two colonists so far. Heather and the others are still holding on, including your sister. I don’t know how long they’ll be able to hold out, and you are the key. I need a sample of your blood. I need to figure out what makes you unique.”
Trina glanced at Nishan though she didn’t quite understand why until the political officer solemnly nodded. As one shafter to another, though she’d gone by a different name, Nishan was confirming the truth in Lenat’s intentions.
“How?” Trina didn’t bother with an assent. This was no trick, and if it would help the others, she would do whatever she had to.
“I’ll study why your body fights it off, and hope to build a cure from that.”
“Give us your grandfather’s name first. We’ll get him,” Patty said.
“I want to go. I deserve to confront him with what he’s done. Katie’s sick and I was too. He meant for me to die.”
Patty reached toward her, but Nishan caught his arm. “Remember what I said. For shafters, death is personal, isn’t it?”
Trina lowered her head in agreement, too frustrated to speak.
“I understand. You need to be there, only his death is not yours to take.” She waited until she could see the acceptance in Trina’s eyes before glancing at the doctor. “Lenat, hurry. For her to have that tool, there are more involved than just this grandfather. Whatever you might think, Trina, he could not have acted alone, nor could he without help from the crew.”
Lenat raised a device to Trina’s suit, and it formed a seal before jabbing into Trina’s arm. “Sorry,” the doctor said as the vial in her hand filled up with red fluid.
“Tell us.” Patty confronted her as soon as Lenat withdrew.
This time Trina didn’t hesitate, not after Nishan understood her needs.
“My grandfather is Samuel. The grand polit of the Menthak family. Though he has many contacts, he has the power to work alone. Who else would have agreed, knowing what he risked? He’s determined to win for Menthak, even if it means killing all of us. That has to be the true reason he froze his son.”
Both Patty and Nishan looked stunned at the news, and why shouldn’t they be. No polit should have a shafter child based on Nishan’s understanding, and Patty lacked a shafter’s knowledge of how far the wealthy would go to keep that wealth.
Nishan recovered first. “Even I wouldn’t have guessed this came from so high, but it makes sense. No other section froze a polit. The difference was enough to flag when you were loaded, but we couldn’t see why.”
“Now you know. Now we all know.”
They exchanged a look full of shafter wisdom while Patty glanced from one to the other, clearly sensing a subtext he could not understand. “Why would a leader do this? There’s a whole planet waiting for them and not enough people to work even a fraction of it.”
“That’s exactly what this is about,” Nishan said, her voice sinking lower. “You can’t just scatter people across a planet and expect them to survive. It’ll take a lot of slow, hard work to make it happen. I’ve been in most of their meetings and it’s all about control. Whoever controls the workers and the colonization plan controls who gets the best land and when. They’re not going to start with six separate settlements. They’ll start with one and only spread out once they have the first city established.”
“So, this is all about being the owner of that first city?” Patty sounded shocked.
“Probably. It’s the most important issue for all of them.” Nishan waved toward the colony sections. “Remember the names on Ceric. I’ve travelled there enough to learn that First City knows the other settlements only by number. I can tell you, though, that Sixth City doesn’t go by that name within its own limits. Only those who controlled the start of the colony want to remember the order.”
“Important enough for this? If it isn’t contained, the virus could spread through all the colony sections, especially with this girl and the other loose. How could that solve anything? If they all die, no one’s going to win.”
Trina could be silent no longer. “If we all die, Menthak wins because of Paul. There are enough laborers frozen to give a start, and they’ll have no one to look to except Menthak.”
Patty’s hands curled into fists, but though he scowled, Trina could tell he didn’t understand.
Nishan put a hand on his arm to catch his attention. “Consider how you felt waiting for your first ship placement. That moment when you’d do anything to clear the decks before you just to get the chance. Only Menthak acted on that feeling.”
“Not Menthak. One man only.”
Nishan glanced at Trina, her gaze filled with an apology, but Patty’s features hardened as if he finally understood.
Then his eyes unfocused for a moment and he put a hand to his ear. “We need to get going. The team is assembling at the Level 5B main entrance,” he said in response to a message only he’d received. “Meeting crew is easy for those on the top. Who knows how many helped him in this, knowingly or not? We can only hope the quarantine kept your grandfather from learning what we’ve discovered.”
Patty stomped to the door, his thoughts clearly on traitors in the crew, while Nishan followed him.
Trina took the chance to snatch up her panel tool before scrambling after them. She needed the reassurance of its weight in her pocket.