Chapter Ten

Riston

Terra-Sol date 3814.253

Searching a ship the size of Pax Novis was a harder task than Riston had figured, especially with only five people to share the work. Ze blamed the first two wasted days of hunting on adrenaline, fear, and the burning desire to be able to do something for once.

Riston was crawling slowly through a tight tunnel and hating how poorly designed these spaces always were. Sure, no one on the team of engineers had expected these access hatches and maintenance shafts to be used for actual travel, but did there need to be so many extruding pipes, cables, and edges? Ze’d nearly sliced zir forehead open on a corner of dropped ceiling when ze didn’t duck fast enough. One or two pained grunts had come from Shadow, too, who was several meters behind zem, with Tinker traveling between the two. They were circling back around after searching the narrow passages between engineering on deck five and the power relays on deck four. It had been a logical place to look, considering the work done in engineering and the missing plasma torch. However, although paranoia had Riston inspecting every scratch on the ship and wondering if it had been there before, nothing seemed out of place.

Would ze notice, though? It felt like zir own senses were becoming unreliable. Fear had them all jumping at imagined noises. Adrenaline had made sleep difficult the night before, so today, they kept searching until they were on the verge of collapsing.

When the five of them had finally fallen asleep last night, it was in a pile of blankets on the floor of their junction, and one of them was always keeping watch. All of them slept with makeshift weapons clutched in their hands—pipes and ceramic knives and, in Treble’s case, a shock-stick she’d had since before she came on board. Although the armory had more than enough in its storage compartments and on its shelves for them to borrow items without leaving the crew short, the extra safety for themselves wasn’t worth the problems—and the panic—it would cause when someone noticed the theft.

Riston checked the path ahead for more potential concussions, then ducked zir head and took a deep breath. And stopped. There was something odd in the air, a scent that was familiar and yet utterly out of place. Ze took another breath.

“Zazi?” Tink’s question was barely a whisper. Riston extended zir arm back and held up one finger, focusing on the faint aroma that had grabbed zir attention.

It was tough to tease the layers of scent apart—engineering always carried the smells of grease, sweat, hot metal, and ozone—but there was a different note in the air today. Another breath brought zem the fading hint of…peppermint. Zir heart jumped. This scent had caught zir attention once before.

Hands shaking, Riston carefully turned in the tight space so ze could face Tinker and Shadow. Both were watching zem with wary expressions, but neither spoke. Ze beckoned Shadow closer and only when the three were pressed as close as the confines of the passage would allow did Riston whisper, “They were definitely here. I smell peppermint, and I’ve smelled it before. The day we left Mitu.”

Tinker’s narrow eyes went wide. Behind her, Shadow went so tense and still that Riston was sure he’d stopped breathing. Part of Riston wanted to order an immediate retreat to get the younger two far away from any place the ghostlike saboteur had been, but ze needed Tinker to help with the ship systems when Riston didn’t know to look for. Even Shadow was better with the technical aspects than Riston, though still a distant runner-up to Tink’s innate skills. Sending them away would only leave Riston without the help ze needed. Ze also wasn’t willing to let anyone go off alone if it could be helped. Staying together might limit the areas they were able to search, but it was safer. And besides, Tinker had gotten scarily good at opening panels she wasn’t supposed to have access to without anyone noticing the breach.

After warning them again to stay silent and alert, Riston let them take the lead. Staying to the rear made it easier to keep watch. Navigating the ship had gotten so much trickier in the past few days, and it wasn’t only because of the new threat on their ship. The patterns of crew movements they’d memorized—and come to rely on heavily—had broken down completely. Teams were working overtime and venturing into places they rarely visited. Yesterday, Riston, Tink, and Shadow had spent over an hour stuffed uncomfortably close together inside a storage closet while they waited for several people to finish their work one passage over. So even though Riston still searched the area for strange marks or signs of fresh welds, ze also kept watch while the others worked.

A sound caught Riston’s attention, the quiet click-shoosh of a hatch opening in a tunnel nearby. Shifting closer, ze put one hand on each of the others’ shoulders. They halted immediately, tilting their heads to listen just as the faint murmur of conversation floated down the corridor. They didn’t want to be seen, but they also weren’t willing to relive their time getting to know a closet the day before. Finally, there was no choice but to leave. Riston hated that they had nothing to show for their efforts, but it was worse knowing the only prove ze had that their ghost had been there at all was a fading smell. Ze half expected skepticism and doubt when ze had to explain it all.

“We need to move our meeting place somewhere else, and we need a better hunting plan,” Riston finally admitted once Greenie and Treble had rejoined them and ze had filled them in on what they’d found—which hadn’t been much of use. Peppermint might tell them when the ghost had been haunting a particular corridor, but it didn’t make eradicating the specter any easier.

“Considering how well we’ve kept ourselves hidden from a crew of over two hundred,” Greenie said, his tone bleeding frustration as he repacked his bag, “we shouldn’t be shocked one person who was smart enough to sneak onto the ship in the first place without help from Cira and Adrienn and fix the power glitch would also be able to hide from us.”

“If it’s only one person,” Treble corrected absently, most of her attention on the ship blueprints and the options they had for a new place to hide. “Don’t assume.”

Greenie sighed, his whole body sagging. He looked the way Riston felt. It had only been a couple of days and they were all fighting off fatigue.

“Which is why we need to get smarter,” Riston had said. “We know the ship better than some of the engineers do. There must be some way we can use that. Or sensors that will give us a better overview of people’s movements. Something to help us finish this.”

Tinker jumped onto the ladder and grabbed the bag she’d left in one of the higher tunnels. It was the one she always carried with her, but when she dropped it in the middle of the group, it rattled impressively. Just from the bag’s collapsing shape, it was clear her toolbox wasn’t inside.

“I have ideas.” Tinker opened the bag, her expression giddy. With quick movements and a tumble of words, she laid out various devices—motion sensors, minuscule cameras, heat triggers, and more. She’d even come up with a way to piggyback her own network on Novis’s to give them a way to monitor their web without anyone on the crew monitoring them. It’d also be a way for them to communicate with one another, thanks to the handheld terminals she’d collected over the cycles, fixed, and repurposed. Riston’s head was spinning by the time she finally paused long enough for anyone else to get more than a word or two in.

“Wow.” Riston looked at the array of wires and devices with all the awe they deserved. “There’s no way you came up with this in two days. How long…”

Tink flushed, her eyes on her hands and her devices. “Some of this I’ve been developing since before Cira found me, because my family…” She frowned and shook her head. “I learned a lot from them and never had a good reason to use it until Novis. Most of this I’ve been building since I decided to stay. I wanted us to be able to talk to one another whenever we wanted and to keep us safe and give us more warning when one of the crew was nearby. I started building a lot more when my toolbox went missing, though.”

A chill ran through Riston. “What do you mean?”

She looked directly at zem, somehow seeming both determined and deeply anxious. “I only left it behind for a moment, Zazi, and I was down on deck four when I did. Someone had taken it by the time I went back.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Until yesterday, I thought someone on the crew must have taken it and thought it was someone’s personal set,” she said. “I thought…maybe if I’d known someone was nearby, I never would’ve walked away from the toolbox, and then no one would’ve found it, and everything would be okay.”

Ze’d scolded her for being careless, and yet she was the one who had not only been extraordinarily cautious for someone so young, she’d been thinking the whole time of ways to be more careful. She hadn’t been responsible for anything ze’d accused her of, and yet ze’d come down on her with the mercilessness of a collapsing building just because…

Oh. Because, at least for the meddling in engineering, Cira had said Tinker was to blame.

“Don’t feel too bad, Zazi,” Treble said with sarcastic levity, and Riston grimaced at how much of zir thoughts must’ve been projected on zir face. “Greenie and I were totally guilty of everything you accused us of that day.”

Greenie cast a quick glare at Treble, who raised an eyebrow in challenge. It only took a second for Greenie to wince and shrug, accepting his own guilt. “I’ve been good since then, though. Spied from a great distance only.”

“It’s not…” Ze let the words fade, because how could ze explain the twist in zir gut and the swirling uncertainty in zir mind. Cira had always been close to infallible to zem, and so when her judgment had come down, ze’d carried out the sentence without question. Ze’d already thought Tinker had been careless with her tools, but without Cira’s ire about engineering, that conversation would’ve played out so differently. Maybe ze would’ve stopped ranting long enough to listen when Tinker explained what had truly happened. Maybe they would’ve had a clue something was very wrong almost a week earlier.

But ze’d listened to Cira, and this time, Cira had been wrong. The realization left zem a little off-balance and confused. It took several seconds too long for zem to remember the others were waiting for some kind of response.

“It would’ve been better if you’d stayed away from the level entirely.” Riston finished instead. Ze supposed it didn’t matter much now. Even if, by some miracle, they weren’t discovered, they’d be leaving Pax Novis behind soon. Too soon.

You won’t even be able to talk to Cira after you leave.

The thought hit out of nowhere, like the sudden collapse of a star, and nearly sent zem physically reeling. Ze hadn’t even realized ze’d still held on to the hope of keeping up correspondence with Cira, trading messages back and forth and at least staying friends. How naive. The impossibility of it was even written into the Pax charter. In order to maintain their neutrality, Pax citizens remained insulated and weren’t allowed any unnecessary contact with the rest of the quadrant. If ze tried to send Cira a message from Datax or wherever else ze ended up, it’d bounce back unread with an official notice attached—a copy of the relevant sections of the Pax Charter and a warning that further communications would be reported to the local authorities. Ze knew because ze’d seen it for zirself when ze was doing some, admittedly illegal, poking around. It wasn’t even a monitored program. No alert would ping anywhere on board the ship when one of those notices went out. Cira would never even know ze’d tried to reach across the galaxy to say hello.

Ze almost laughed aloud at zirself. Moving on really was the best choice. Clearly, being here this long was making zem delusional. Ze wasn’t losing anything except a safe place to live. Ze’d never had anything else to lose, not here.

Well, ze corrected with a glance at the other four, that isn’t entirely true. There were things to lose here; ze was simply planning on taking most of them with zem.

“Are we moving first or playing spy?” Greenie’s question broke into Riston’s thoughts.

Ze took a breath to give zirself a moment. “Anything that can’t be carried with you at all times needs to either be trashed or stored, and then it’s all Tink. Think about how we can help you deploy your toys while we’re getting settled.”

“Tools,” she corrected with a shy smile. “Not toys.”

An hour later, they’d finished relocating to a junction between decks ten and eleven and were poring over a detailed blueprint of Pax Novis. Tink was using it to lay out her plan like a tiny general directing troops, pointing to different shafts and junctions and holding up the devices she wanted at each point.

First, she explained the broad construction of what she called a sensor web, including the brilliant bit of programming she’d created to make the devices scan for ID chips and automatically allow both Novis crewmembers and all five “approved” stowaways to pass without raising an alarm. Next, she moved on to the sensors and heat triggers, explaining both their use as well as how to install them to keep them hidden. After all, the ship had no shortage of watchful eyes at the moment.

“Tink, Shadow, and I will go with you while Greenie and Treble take the other half of the work.” Ze wished there was a way to break the group evenly, but if there had to be an imbalance, it seemed better to overprotect the youngest of them, especially since Tink was also the technical genius of the group.

“No. We don’t have time. I should go on my own.” Shadow’s words were quietly confident, and he held himself like he was gearing up to argue his point if necessary.

“It’s not safe for anyone to be alone right now,” Riston protested.

“But we can get more done faster with three teams.” With a gentle smile, Shadow picked up several sensors and placed them in his bag. “I know the risks, Zazi. I accept them.”

No matter how much Riston wanted to force Shadow to travel with a group, ze couldn’t. Riston nodded, accepting the decision. He wasn’t wrong, and even at the height of his gossip-mongering, he was never seen by the crew. Shadow knew how to hide. He’d be fine.

Hopefully the words would feel true if Riston repeated them to zirself enough times.

“Okay, there’s one more thing before we go gallivanting off on this adventure. We didn’t talk about it when we started this, but I just need to make sure.” Treble stopped, her dual-hued eyes jumping from face to face before focusing on her twining hands. “We all realize we’re chasing someone smart enough to sneak onto a Pax ship, right? They’re also someone who knows we exist and who clearly doesn’t feel anything warm or fuzzy about the PCCS.”

“I think everyone is aware of that by now,” Riston said wearily.

“Okay, so then am I the only one thinking the person we’re chasing may end up chasing us? I mean, we’ve already had to give up our space. Personally, if I were them, I’d be using us as a decoy to keep the crew from looking deeper.” Her heterochromatic eyes locked on Riston’s, one brown, one green, and both somber. “Does everyone realize how likely a possibility one of us getting hurt—or worse—really is? I’m fine with it for Cira and the last to call any of us helpless, but damn. We’re kids, and we’re working at a dangerous disadvantage here. We’re fighting a war on two fronts, not one.”

“But if we are, so is our thief,” Greenie said. “Maybe they’re trying to avoid us.”

“Or they could be trying to get rid of us,” Treble insisted.

“They’ve had three weeks to do that, though.” Tinker’s nose wrinkled as she thought it all over. “If they were a direct threat, wouldn’t they have done something by now?”

“Maybe they were hoping their work would be done before we figured out they were here.” Greenie rubbed his eyes. “Us going after them could change things.”

“Assume the worst, for now,” Riston said. “If you spot any irrefutable evidence, don’t touch it or collect it. Message Cira and get out. Someone who’s cornered is always dangerous, and we don’t know what this person’s goal is or what they’re capable of.”

“And we’ve been chasing after them like we’re hunting a stray cat.” Treble pulled her long blonde hair over her shoulder and ran her fingers over the strands. “The cat might not like being caught. The cat might have claws. Or bombs.”

Riston shuddered. Memories of Ladadhi were always close, and it was too easy to remember the charred bodies of zir family. Zir friends. Everyone ze’d known. It was also too easy to imagine Tink, Treble, Shadow, and Greenie in their places. Limbs missing. Eyes unseeing. Skin bloody or blackened. Bodies still.

No. Wrenching zir mind away from those hellish images, remembered and imagined, ze tried to focus on minimizing the danger. Keep everyone as safe as possible and maybe they’d come through this…well, not okay, but alive.

“Stay in contact,” he ordered after a minute. “Check in every five minutes, and make sure your terminals are coded to your ID chips so no one can send a false message.”

Ze didn’t want to think about why that contingency plan was necessary, but ze had to. They couldn’t go into this search without considering all potential consequences. Ze laid down a few more rules—like triple-checking every door and corner—and then, with Tinker’s help, established a timeline for the work they needed to do. Then it was only a matter of beginning.

Riston wished the others luck, and then ze watched as Shadow climbed up to the shaft running under deck eleven while Greenie and Treble kept climbing. Two decks up, they would head forward until they reached a junction that would bring them down to deck eight. Riston hadn’t let anyone actually say goodbye, but that didn’t keep this from feeling like a final parting.

Then Tink wrapped her small hand around zir wrist and tugged. “Ready to go?”

Forcing a smile, ze nodded. “Lead the way.”

As Shadow had reminded zem, they each knew the risks. All Riston could do was be careful and hope zir family’s knack for survival continued to keep them safe. Ze didn’t want to—ze couldn’t—lose anyone else ze loved.