Chapter Eleven

Cira

Terra-Sol date 3814.253

Erryla had left the bridge half an hour ago, and waiting for her to come back was about to make Cira lose her mind.

Halver had strode in here, beige skin a few shades paler than usual, and calmly but insistently asked to speak to the captain in her office. Neither came back. One outgoing communication had been logged since then, but it was encoded and encrypted with the captain’s privacy locks. Cira couldn’t even tell to whom it had been sent, which meant she couldn’t even guess what had brought Halver down here looking like ghosts were on his tail.

The spike of anxiety set off by Halver’s expression had splintered into a mess of emotions that swirled through her chest and clouded her mind. What had started as nerves deep in the pit of Cira’s stomach was quickly becoming nausea. Normally, she could hold on to a strong emotion about as long as she could hold a breath—eventually, exhaustion took over and she had to let go. However, with each new worry that infiltrated her ship, her emotional lung capacity rose and the moment between each inhale and exhale lasted longer. She was so jittery it was hard to sit still long enough to finish a shift. Sleep was something that now only happened for other people. She didn’t understand how she hadn’t mentally overloaded a week ago. Although, if she was contemplating what she was about to do, she had to be close to that edge now.

She tried, honestly tried, to avoid even the appearance of preferential treatment. Neither of her mothers gave her anything she didn’t earn, and Cira didn’t expect them to. Few people on the crew would mind, but she still held back, almost like she was saving up their good will until the situation was desperate. Like now.

Setting her station on auto—which sent priority alerts to someone else—she got up and walked across the bridge. Directly opposite the door to the security office was one leading into the command conference room. It was a space with three large wall screens, four different holo-displays, a long table, eight chairs, and not much else. Given Halver’s solemnity and urgency, Cira had half expected a command meeting to be in progress here. Was it a good sign or a bad one that Halver’s news hadn’t necessitated that?

The door to the conference room hadn’t been locked or ID coded. Not so with the captain’s office. A small red light on the panel beside the door told her that she’d need permission to go any farther. At the sight of it, Cira hesitated. Did she dare interrupt whatever meeting was happening behind those doors?

It only took a few seconds for worry to win over caution. She gritted her teeth and requested entrance. The system required an ID check when a door was security locked to announce her to those inside, either vocally or on whatever display Erryla was standing closest to. Cira held her breath and waited, unblinkingly watching the red light until the strain made them burn. If they rejected her, there’d be a triple flash of that tiny light. If they let her in…

The door shooshed open, the sound mirroring the audible rush of Cira’s exhale.

But then the sound of hitching, sobbing breath reached her ears.

“Captain?” Cira hesitantly stepped in. Her already pounding heart beat harder when she saw Erryla in the middle of the long room with Meida in her arms. “I— Ma? What happened?”

“If you’re coming in, get in so the door can close.” Erryla’s voice was rough, but her face was in Captain mode and unreadable. She always looked like this on duty, or when she was working hard to forget her own emotions so she could be a foundation for someone else to land on. And Meida looked like she needed exactly that.

Breath hitching and shoulders shaking, Meida clung to her wife and wept the way she’d never do in a more public space. Image was power, and power was everything to two of the youngest senior officers in the PCCS fleet. Even in front of their own crew—especially then—both women fought showing anything interpretable as weakness. Behind the intertwined couple, Halver was sitting at the desk, his elbows propped on the surface and his forehead resting on the knuckles of his linked hands. He wasn’t even looking at them, but Cira still had the urge to shield her mothers from exposure during what seemed like a deeply private moment.

Cira took a slow step forward, and the door closed, beeping once as the security lock reengaged. Taking a breath, she quietly asked again, “What happened?”

Meida’s hitching breaths turned into true sobs. Erryla pressed her lips together and turned her face toward her wife. Seconds passed with only the faint beeps and pings of active programs, the subtle hum of the air systems, and the harsh, arrhythmic breathing of four people.

“Tanshu’s ship stopped communicating.” Halver lifted his head to look at Cira, the expression on his face bleak. “It’s one of three more ships to go silent. Dignis, Portis, and Sanctis haven’t sent or received a single message in hours.”

“Uncle Tanshu?” Cira’s voice cracked as memory overwhelmed her.

Family was hard to define within the PSSC. There were those bound by blood and marriage, the people you flew with, and in a certain sense, the whole of Pax society—compared to most systems, their population was miniscule. Less than two hundred thousand compared to the usual billions. Living almost exclusively on ships, however, often meant choosing between family and rank. When a position became available, it was generally on another ship or back on Paxis Station, and taking more than your immediate family along wasn’t usually possible. Meida and her older brother Tanshu had been living apart for more than twenty cycles, since Tanshu became a First Lieutenant and transferred off the ship they’d both been born on. The separation, however, hadn’t mattered. From birth, Cira had been bombarded by messages and gifts from her far-flung family. When they were docked on Paxis at the same time, there were parties and dinners and games. Everyone checked in with everyone else constantly, and that had been especially true of Tanshu and Meida. He’d been so much a part of Cira’s life, she couldn’t imagine not getting a nearly instant reply to a message she sent. Her fingers twitched toward the pocket on the thigh of her pants where her personal tablet was stowed, as though she could prove them wrong by simply demanding Tanshu answer his comm. It wouldn’t change anything. There was no doubt Halver, Erryla, and Meida had all tried exactly that.

Tanshu hadn’t answered. Her uncle, her zaunle, and their son were missing.

What is happening to us? It didn’t make sense. The laws governing her universe, every truth she believed in, were failing or changing. When Pax Feris vanished, it took two of her more distant relatives—both of them second cousins once removed. Losing Dignis was so much closer to her heart. How much closer might the next one get?

Swallowing a pained cry, Cira stumbled toward her mothers, reaching for them. Meida was incognizant of her approach, face still pressed against her wife’s shoulder, but Erryla looked up and extended one arm to her daughter. The impact hurt. Cira’s cybernetic fingers caught strands of Meida’s dark hair, Erryla’s sharp elbow accidentally skimmed the top of Cira’s head when she ducked under it, and the crash of her body against her mothers’ drove the breath from Cira’s lungs. None of those pains mattered—they barely registered as they clung to one another, tears in more than one pair of brown eyes. Only Erryla wasn’t crying, but from the way her breath dragged and stuttered, willpower would only hold the tears at bay a little longer unless duty intervened.

But duty couldn’t reach them here yet. The office was locked against the crew, and Halver was there to stand silent guard over her family. There was something in his expression, though, a softening of his strong-featured face almost like longing. Or pain.

The Dalil and Antares families weren’t the only ones spread throughout Pax society. Halver had family on Paxis and several ships, including Pax Corrogis, Pax Prudis, and Pax… Oh. Pax Portis. She couldn’t remember who—his zisther maybe, or one of his cousins—but he would be hurting just as much as Meida, yet he was still sitting at the desk alone.

As soon as Meida’s cries quieted to clogged sniffles, Cira gently drew away from her mothers and rounded the desk toward Halver. He eyed her hesitantly as she approached but still rose when she twitched her fingers at him. Smiling ruefully, he stood and opened his arms.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Halver sank into the embrace with a faint shudder, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “My zisther has always been strong. Misao will be fine.”

The words were spoken with more hope than faith. No matter how strong one person was, how could anyone fight what they didn’t understand? Right now, everyone was fighting something they couldn’t even see. Misao’s ship was flying between systems—far from the safety of a solid planet and a natural atmosphere—and zir ship was malfunctioning in ways no one had yet been able to understand or fix. Misao was in the same spot everyone on Novis was. Cira wasn’t about to bring any of that up, though. The Pax fleet had been thrust into the middle of an unexpected battle, and they needed to keep their minds clear if they were going to find the safe path through the enemies closing in on them.

“What does Control want us to do?” Cira asked as she drew away from Halver, leaving only her hand on his shoulder; both of them could use the connection.

“They’re as clueless as we are.” Meida stepped out of her wife’s hold and wiped angrily at her eyes.

“The recall to Paxis still stands, and they’ve put a rush on it. We’re not heading to Datax anymore. Engineering is supposed to do whatever they can to boost top speeds.” Erryla spoke to Cira, but her gaze lingered on Meida. “I guess they figure it’s harder for a ship to disappear when a hundred thousand pairs of eyes are on it at all times. We’re solidly in the middle of nowhere, though, and our drive is only capable of so much before the ship starts breaking apart around us.”

“There’s a fun thought,” Cira muttered, her grip on Halver’s shoulder tightening convulsively. It was straight out of her nightmares—Novis cracking at the seams, holes exploding in its sides, fissures forming so suddenly no one had time to reach escape pods or vac suits. She’d placated her completely rational fear of vacuum over the cycles by spending more than the minimum hour per month running emergency depressurization, power failure, and evacuation drills. There was no way for her to get any faster or to know the exigency procedures better. Somehow, it didn’t do much to soothe her fears now.

“I wish I could say your mother was being pessimistic,” Meida began with a scolding look at her wife, “but she’s right. Whoever balanced the power glitch might be able to come up with a solution to shave a week off our travel time. I don’t think I can.”

“What can we do, then?” Cira desperately wanted something to do besides research.

Erryla glanced between Halver and Meida before she sighed and rubbed her hand over her closely shorn hair, frustration and exhaustion bleeding through her expression. “Increase security again, write a few new monitoring programs to make sure no one messes with the computer, and pray to every omnipotent entity humanity has ever believed in that we’ll make it to Paxis in one piece.”

“There’s not much more we can do,” Halver agreed. Cira wasn’t sure if the yet she heard hanging unsaid at the end of the sentence was actually there or if she only hoped it was.

Maybe I should tell them what I’m working on. Even before she finished the thought, words piled up on her tongue, and she had to bite her lip to keep them from tumbling out. She wanted to tell her mothers about the research she was doing, the conclusions she’d come to the night before, and the theory she was building. It was so unfounded, though. What proof she’d gathered was scattered and piecemeal. It could mean exactly what she assumed it did. She could be completely wrong. In the middle of a moment like this, with emotions running high and fear taking over, she didn’t want to be the spark that incited an explosion.

“We won’t be able to keep the disappearances a secret—I’m sure some people have noticed their messages aren’t getting through—but let me tell the crew,” Erryla said. “Don’t say anything yet.”

“You’d better make the announcement soon.” Halver shrugged when Erryla cast a questioning glance at him. “I wasn’t alone when I figured this out. I told Lieutenant Niven not to spread rumors, but you know how it is on this ship on a good day.”

“And when tension is high, it’s worse.” Erryla’s eyes flickered like she was reading something written in midair. “I’ll make an announcement before the shift change and warn officers off duty to be ready for an influx of questions.”

Thankfully, none of those questions would be directed at Cira, leaving her free to lock herself in her room or Adrienn’s office to work through the night. Adrienn would have stimulant shots in zir office. If Cira begged and swore on her family’s lives to abide by every schedule and restriction ze placed on the medication’s use, ze would probably give her enough to keep them both up all night.

Somewhere in the quadrant, someone had started a countdown. It was cycling down, and Cira didn’t know how much time was left or what would happen when the chronometer hit zero. She was sure, however, that she didn’t want to find out.

But if she was going to present her mothers with anything, the foundations of her logic had better be as solid as graphene or she’d only be dropping more trouble on her own head.