Every place in this room held memories of Samuel, and every memory now twisted in her heart. He had never been her family. She’d been a tool for his ambition and nothing else.
A flicker from the bottom of the room console caught Trina’s attention. Three lights held steady, their significance escaping her for a moment until she remembered watching her grandfather test the listening devices.
One flickered and went dark.
The murmured discussion between Nishan and Patty barely broke her concentration as Trina recalled that they’d turned off the robots when security swept the ducts for Katie. They were unlikely to have restored normal functions with all focus on containing and curing the virus.
Two lights remained, but for how long. Nothing was there to hinder the betraying crew in the effort to cover their tracks. By the time she explained the lights and Patty got security mobilized, the devices would be gone, along with all trace of who had given them to her grandfather.
Her hand crept to the pocket where she’d stowed the panel tool. The officers were distracted, and the remaining lights had been the very first to turn on, the first she’d placed. If she hurried, Trina could get to them before the crewmembers did. She had to make sure Patty had what he needed to stop this from ever happening again.
Trina slipped out of the room without either crewmember noticing, or maybe Nishan gave her this chance to rejoin her section as though she’d never been gone. Neither could suspect her true actions. If they had, they’d have tried to stop her, and those who helped her grandfather—helped her—would remain undetected. Who knew what they’d help with next?
No guards remained to block her path as she moved not toward the entrance but into Grandfather’s bedroom. The panel tool came out, and before she could change her mind, Trina slipped into the darkness of the ducts.
This time she didn’t question her comfort, didn’t deny how it felt more like home to her than anywhere else on the ship except maybe the cargo bays. The ship didn’t need her to pretend to be a colonist. She had to be a shafter if she wanted to slip in quick and get those devices. If there wasn’t some way to track these back to the crewmembers who had worked with Grandfather, they wouldn’t be trying to clear the devices away.
Within seconds, she’d oriented herself on the nearest of the two devices. Like the crewmembers, she had nothing to fear in the tunnels, no cleaning robots to sweep her out into space.
She planted her feet and pushed off into a quick sprint, the thud of her footsteps the only sound in the silence.
Innate caution, or a flash of light she hadn’t consciously seen, slowed her pace before Trina reached the last turn. Without that, she would have barreled head first into the huddle of crew that stood a short distance down the last section of duct.
Trina crouched to the floor, the last sounds of her passage faded unnoticed as the three people in the same bulky suits she wore argued and waved scanners along the walls. The suits showed how they knew they’d been discovered, but the scanners proved how foolish Trina had been. Only chance kept her secret so long. The crew could have discovered her work easily if they’d only thought to look.
Her mind fixated on the number of them. She was so small in comparison. The bulky suit hampered her movements, but more, she didn’t have a single knife to protect herself. Some shafter she’d turned out to be. So willing to give it all up that, when she needed those skills, she had nothing to offer.
But her thoughts kept turning back to the three crewmembers until Trina stopped castigating herself long enough to listen.
Grandfather couldn’t have traded with so many of the crew that the ducts were now full of them. If they were still searching for the other device, they would have split up. For three to be in one space meant they must have collected the other already. If she didn’t get this device before them, they’d go free, eager to sell out the ship again for a few rarities.
The realization narrowed her paths to one. The device or nothing.
Trina rocked back on her heels as she struggled for an answer. Any second now, their scanners would pick up the device and everything would end with her having escaped into the ducts at the first opportunity, where she had no business being.
If only they hadn’t shut down the ducts. At least then these crewmembers would have moved slower, slow enough for Patty to gather his forces against them.
Instinct made her glance behind into the darkness, though she would have heard something if the robots had been restored to their tasks. Maybe she’d made the situation worse.
When Nishan and Patty realized where she’d gone, they would keep the system down. They knew, no matter how skilled she might be, the cleaning robots posed a danger to anyone in the ducts, even crew.
The knowledge settled into her bones and with it came not more condemnation, but an idea. She’d been so good at mimicking voices to entertain her sister, and Mother before the fevers grew too strong. Could she sound enough like a robot to make a difference?
For the second time in less than an hour, Trina reached for the clasps holding her helmet secure. The only other people in the ducts wore suits like hers, so here she did not risk infecting anyone. The risk lay in whether they’d stayed in contact with the rest of the crew enough to know the robots were still turned off.
Trina had to take the chance.
Her first free breath in longer than she cared to consider offered a hiss too quiet to stretch along the empty space between them, or so she thought until the nearest crewmember froze.
“Did you hear that?”
The others stood up from their crouch and took a step towards her.
If they came toward her, she’d just have to run and hope all three would follow long enough for her to circle back. Hands shaking, Trina sucked in more air through her teeth, the hiss a little louder.
That time the reaction was more marked.
The nearest crewmember jerked and thrust his arm out to block the others. “I heard it that time. Are you sure the ducts are shut down?”
Trina leaned out a little to see the three, but they were focused on each other, not on a darker shadow in a shadowed corner.
“How can I be? If we turn the comms on, we’ll show up exactly where we have no business being. Just give me a sec and I’ll find the sensor. It’s right around here.”
Fear leant strength to her hiss that time. If they found the device, she’d have no proof of anything.
The first grabbed the one still on the floor and jerked him up. “There’s no time. It’s not worth dying over. They don’t know about these yet or they wouldn’t have turned the ducts back on. We’ll come later when we can pick up the aversion signaler. Come on.”
Trina clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she remembered the sound when the robot had caught her.
The result was dramatic.
All resistance left the crouching crewmember as he leapt to his feet and tugged at the others to get them into a run.