Chapter Sixteen

Riston

Terra-Sol date 3814.256

Despite the anxiety buzzing through zir body like an electric current, Riston didn’t let zirself pace the long, narrow room. Instead, ze traced every corner, edge, and curve with zir eyes.

The room was designed as a quarantine bay, but Riston wasn’t sure if it had ever been used for its intended purpose. Or at all. A wide archway divided the bay from the rest of medical, and at first glance, there was nothing to keep Riston from running away. That, however, was only because force shields couldn’t be seen by human eyes until the privacy filter had been turned opaque. Ze almost smiled at the thought. Privacy, or even the illusion of it, was probably the last thing they wanted to give Riston.

Four beds were spaced evenly along the rear wall. That wall was almost entirely display capable, ready and waiting to glow with pulse rates and diagnostic charts and whatever else the medical team demanded, but now the screens were a blank, shiny white. A decontamination chamber was tucked into one corner, and supply cabinets were secreted everywhere else, each of them clearly labeled. Seemingly, they contained everything crew trapped in quarantine might need, including clothes. Clean, bloodless clothes.

Riston stared at the clothes cabinet for a long time before finally looking down at zir own body. Drying blood—Shadow’s blood—caked zir hands, and zir shirt was stuck to zir stomach. Ze was a literal stain on the clean room, and ze wanted nothing in that moment more than to strip, scrub raw, and enshroud zirself in fresh cloth because the control ze had cloaked zirself in was cracking and shattering to pieces around zem.

Breath hitching, ze gripped the front of zir tainted shirt and tore it off, ignoring the tears filling zir eyes. Whatever happened from here, whatever punishment they delivered, it wouldn’t be worse because ze stole more clothes. No one would care about that, not now.

Guilt still ate at zem as ze let the decontamination shower’s sonic rinse scrub blood, sweat, and tears off zir skin. Ze found ration bars in the same compartment as the clothes, but ze didn’t touch those. Instead, as soon as ze was dressed, ze stood against the wall and waited. Ze waited, and remembered, and hoped, and feared, and fought back tears still burning at the corners of zir eyes, and then kept on waiting.

An hour passed, maybe more, and monotony began to smother the sharpest edges of zir anxiety. The sound of voices after seemingly interminable stillness grabbed Riston’s attention. Ze couldn’t make out words, but the tones were clear, rough orders from one interspersed with quiet responses from several others. Something was happening beyond the wall dividing medical in two. The operating room was over there. And Shadow. Riston pressed so close to the force shield the hairs on zir arms and neck stood up from the vibrations in the air. It didn’t help zem hear anything better, but was it zir imagination, or were the voices getting closer?

Even with that slight warning, ze nearly stumbled straight into the shield when two nurses appeared at the other end of the room. Ze quickly stepped backward as they drew closer, guiding something behind them. Their bodies blocked his view. Questions pulsed inside zir head; ze asked none. The nurses approaching said nothing. Silence created an almost physical barrier between them, pushing Riston back as they closed in. Ze watched, though, cataloging every twitch of their faces and aborted motion of their hands until they suddenly stopped a meter or so from the shield. The closer nurse took a gun out of the holster on their belt.

Riston stopped breathing. Death by nurse was not how ze’d expected this to end.

Zir eyes flickered between the foreboding expression on the nurse’s face and the small handgun. It took zem a second to recognize the compact black design. Ze wasn’t staring at death; this fired nonlethal projectiles which delivered an agonizingly painful shock to whoever or whatever they hit. Having survived the experience once already, Riston wasn’t eager to repeat it. With hands held up, palms out, ze pressed flat against the rear wall, bowing zir head as much as ze could without losing sight of the people beyond the barrier.

At a nod from the gun wielder, the second nurse moved to a control panel to the right of the archway. Seconds later, the computer pinged, and the shield dropped, but Riston barely noticed. Ze could see what was between them now. It was a hovercart about two meters long, bearing a white fiber-reinforced polymer bag. Like the gun, this was something ze recognized. Riston had seen these before, and ze’d hoped to go cycles longer before seeing it again.

That was a cold-storage bag. For bodies. For the dead. For Shadow.

“No!” The denial escaped Riston on a thin wisp of air, but it didn’t change anything.

Ze had risked everything, and it hadn’t worked. It was like watching an explosion and knowing there was nowhere safe to run. All ze could do now was brace and pray no one else got caught in the destruction ze had helped cause.

Riston slid down the wall, knees pulled tight to zir chest to curl zirself into a tight ball that hid the tears streaming down zir face. Tremors tightened zir muscles and snapped zir jaw shut until ze felt like ze might shake apart entirely. The nurse guiding the cart moved into the room. Riston heard their passage, but ze didn’t look up. Couldn’t. If ze opened zir eyes, all ze would see was the cold-storage bag, and all ze’d be able to think about was the friend whose body was now coated with frost, drained of life, and waiting to be jettisoned into the black.

Riston started counting as a distraction, counting breaths and heartbeats and quickly losing track of both. Reality interrupted constantly. Shadow falling out of the storage closet, bloody and gasping. The elevator doors opening to reveal an entire security team with weapons pointed at zir head. The hovercart approaching with its horrifying cargo and the sickening realization that Riston had been too late. Adrienn hadn’t been able to save Shadow, and Riston had given up zir own freedom and risked the others for nothing.

Shadow was dead. Riston truly had failed.

More orders came from the main bay. Captain Antares’s sharp words pushed everyone out of the room and locked it down. Riston didn’t move. Hours passed. Zir ass was numb, zir tears had run out, zir back ached, and zir stomach gurgled with constant cries for food. Ze only distantly noticed. The pain of yet another loss was too raw, another gaping wound that would take cycles to heal. It wasn’t the first. Ze was practically riddled with holes and scars—zir family on Ladadhi, so many friends on various stations, Shadow. It was honestly a wonder ze could breathe around all those fissures; zir lungs were more scar than tissue.

And then the voices rose again.

Riston hadn’t heard anything except the nurse’s quiet footsteps since Captain Antares cleared the bay. If there were voices now, someone was probably coming to see zem. Ze tried to take a breath and prepare as best ze could, but zir chest felt too tight to draw in air. The last time people approached, they’d brought death with them.

“Computer, allow passage into quarantine for one person,” Captain Antares’s crisp voice ordered. The ship’s soft, genderless voice asked for an authorization code. There was no verbal response, but then the computer pinged confirmation.

Riston shifted zir head to peek out just as the force shield dropped and Erryla strode into the room. I’ve become so dangerous she doesn’t even want me to hear her codes, ze realized. The Captain was getting paranoid. Unfortunately, her paranoia was pointed in the wrong direction.

The high collar of Erryla’s uniform accented the length of her neck, its white panels stark and sharp against her umber skin, and her sharp features were made harsher by the too-bright lights of medical. She looked down at zem like a piece of trash she was figuring out how to scrape off her ship. Captain Erryla Antares was an imposing woman at the best times and in the best moods. Today, the glower on her face would’ve shaken stone; it made Riston want to throw zirself at her feet and beg forgiveness. If it was only zir own life at stake, ze probably would’ve done exactly that.

“Your identification scans as Risor Nillian, but I doubt that’s right. We’re searching for your real ID. We’ll find it, but this will be easier if you tell me now.” Erryla stopped a meter away, her hands clasped behind her back and her feet shoulder-width apart. “Who are you?”

Ze considered silence, lies, and the truth. Ze’d been caught. Ze wasn’t getting out. Neither silence nor lies would earn even the smallest measure of mercy. The truth might.

Just as her lips parted to speak again, Riston answered.

“Riston Okafor, ze. I’m originally from the Tau Ceti system—Planet Shadhima and city of Ladadhi.” Ze hoped zir expression was a tenth as blank as hers. “My family died in 3808, and then I got shunted from station to station with the rest of the orphans.”

“And which station did we pick you up on?”

“Datax.”

“When?”

“A while ago.”

Captain Antares’s lips thinned. “Would you care to be more specific?”

“I can’t. It’s been hard to keep track of time.” This ze’d lie about; ze didn’t want to give away anything that’d link back to Cira or Adrienn. “More than a cycle, though. I know that.”

“What about them?” She tilted her head toward the medbed on the far side of the room, her eyes never leaving his face. “Did they come on with you or board separately?”

Riston flinched. The reminder of how ze failed Shadow burned like acid at the edges of the newest hole in zir chest, but ze pushed it aside. Ze had to think clearly to survive this conversation and, more importantly, to make sure the others could survive it, too.

“We don’t have anything to do with what’s happening to the fleet, Captain,” ze finally said. “This is the only place I’ve felt safe since Ladadhi exploded around me. I’d never do anything to endanger this ship. None of us would.”

“You endangered this ship as soon as you stepped on board,” Erryla said, a low growl coming into her voice. “And how do you know anything about what’s happening to my fleet?”

“Gossip travels. The crew hasn’t been talking about much else.” Ze met her eyes for a millisecond before dropping zir gaze. “For the rest, there’s public terminals in rarely used corners of the ship and public news feeds.”

That was how ze’d gathered information before Cira gave zem a handheld terminal. In-person meetings hadn’t happened with any regularity back then, and ze’d been forced to rely on overheard conversations and stolen time scanning news feeds.

A muscle in the captain’s jaw ticked. “Do you know the punishment for trespassing on a Pax ship?”

“I do.” In fact, ze was surprised ze hadn’t already been shoved into a cryopod or out an air lock. Ze had a feeling only the threat to the fleet had stayed the captain’s hand, but she didn’t understand and she needed to. Riston forced zirself to meet her gaze again and hold it. “Do you know the average lifespan of a war orphan? I turned seventeen recently. Even getting this close to twenty is beating the odds.”

This time, the captain blinked first. For a fraction of a second, she looked down and a frown pulled the corners of her lips down, then all trace of emotion vanished. Her focus snapped up to fix on Riston once again. “Are you the one who stabbed them and left internal injuries that ruptured their spleen so badly even my chief medical officer couldn’t save them?”

“Is that…” Riston’s stomach rolled. Ze swallowed hard to shove the rising nausea down. Tears ze thought ze’d run out of burned in zir eyes. “That’s how he died?”

Her gaze sharpened. She stilled. “Yes.”

Oh, Shadow. I’m so sorry. Tears flowed faster, and ze suddenly couldn’t bear the weight of zir own body. Ze curled over zir knees, eyes closed tight. If ze went back to yesterday, could ze find a way to keep Shadow alive? Should ze have known what Shadow had been planning?

“If it helps, he was unconscious when you brought him in.” Erryla’s voice barely carried over the sound of zir own harsh breaths, yet ze still heard the edge of reluctance under her words, like she was saying this against her own better judgment. “He didn’t suffer much.”

That wasn’t true. Maybe Shadow hadn’t suffered in medical, but he’d been alone in the storage compartment for a long time. Half an hour or more, maybe. He’d started suffering as soon as the saboteur slid a blade into his abdomen, and he’d been suffering in one way or another for cycles before that. Most of his life had been suffering. All Riston could hope was that, whether afterlife or oblivion came next, the misery Shadow had lived was finally over.

“Where are the others?”

“W-what?” Riston’s heart stuttered, and zir head snapped up so fast a muscle in zir neck twinged. Erryla hadn’t been hinting there might be more people on her ship; she’d spoken like she knew they were there. How? Ze’d been so careful…hadn’t ze?

“‘None of us would.’ That’s what you said when you insisted you weren’t a danger to my family. If it were just the two of you,” she said, gesturing sharply between Riston and the body that had once been Shadow, “you would’ve said ‘Neither of us would.’ And if you didn’t cause his injuries, someone else did. Someone who isn’t a member of my crew.”

Riston tried to keep the rising panic off zir face. It was hopeless. Breaths hitched in zir chest, blocked by the lump in zir throat, and ze felt zir eyes widen. Ze didn’t have training in keeping zir thoughts hidden behind an emotionless mask. What ze knew had been learned from cycles as a station rat and all the times zir life had depended on how well ze told a lie. From the faint narrowing of the captain’s eyes, Riston was sure zir face had given everything away. Even if ze said nothing else, confirmed nothing else, she knew there were others on her ship.

“I’ll give you five minutes. While I’m gone, Riston”—she put emphasis on zir name as though she doubted it was real—“consider this. What little patience and mercy I have is running out, but I’ll make you one offer. Tell me how to find the others, and I’ll make sure you live to stand trial. There won’t be any guarantees if I have to hunt them down.”

Then Erryla turned sharply on her heel, ordered the computer to let her pass, and strode through the split-second hold in the force shield. Riston followed her path with zir eyes, until zir gaze landed on the four people standing at the other end of the room—Lieutenant Commander Meida Dalil-Antares, Commander Halver Liddens, Lieutenant Farran Badri, and Lieutenant Adrienn Naess. It made Riston’s head spin to see them all in person—and to see them seeing zem. Meeting her wife halfway, Meida gripped Erryla’s elbow and whispered something; her gaze flicked back and forth between Erryla and the quarantine bay. Beyond them, Halver leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his broad chest and eyes trained on Riston, and Farran had her gazed fixed in the same direction as she shifted impatiently. The only one who paid Riston no attention at all was Adrienn, and Adrienn was the only one ze actually wanted to look zir way.

Riston needed a chance to apologize for putting Adrienn in this position before the captain killed Riston or made zem disappear, and ze had to make sure Adrienn and Cira both knew this was not their fault. Neither needed to carry guilt for zir decision. It was doubtful ze’d ever get that chance, though. Riston would be shocked if ze ever saw Cira again. Erryla seemed intent on keeping everyone except the highest ranking personnel out of medical, and Cira may have been the captain’s daughter, but she was only an ensign. Her mothers wouldn’t let her anywhere near someone they considered as dangerous as they believed Riston was.

If only they knew. She’s the last person in the quadrant I’d hurt. Ze glanced at the officers, at their tense expressions and fear-filled eyes, and the knot in zir chest snarled further. Ze wouldn’t purposely hurt Cira, but intent wouldn’t matter once she found out what had happened today.

“Look into initiating the Drop Protocol,” Erryla said to her command crew. “One of them has died from what seems like infighting, and you heard what the other said. There are more.”

“And your solution is to gas the ship?” Adrienn asked. Riston stopped breathing and hid his face to hide the fear he was sure showed there.

Erryla nodded. “The option must be kept ready and in reserve if it becomes necessary.”

“The logistics will be complicated.” Meida sounded as drained, wired, and bone-deep exhausted as Riston felt. “We can’t make an announcement about it to prepare the crew, not even on the priority channel—there’s too big a risk the targets would overhear and find a way to avoid the sedative.”

“So we call a conference of all senior officers and pass the warning by word of mouth,” Erryla said sharply. The following pause was laden with crackling tension before she took a breath and began again. “There’s still a risk of being overheard, but it’s unavoidable. Besides, we won’t have many options left if we don’t get zem to talk.”

Riston rubbed a hand over zir mouth to stifle a sharp laugh. Even if ze talked, would they believe zem? Ze shouldn’t be on the ship. Anything ze said came from the mouth of a sneak, a thief, and, as far as they were concerned, a saboteur.

“Do you really think the injuries were down to infighting?” Adrienn asked uncertainly.

“Infighting.” Farran scoffed. “How many people do we think there are? Do we believe three or five or ten stowaways could live here without triggering alarms or getting spotted?”

“That’s just it, the odds of anyone sneaking on without detection are absurdly low.” Halver had barely moved. He was still leaning against the wall, arms crossed and body tense. “Which is why I want to know how long they’ve been here and who helped them sneak in.”

“Who helped? You’ve got to be kidding.” Meida looked at Halver like she expected him to take the words back.

Erryla rounded on her wife. “Don’t act like we haven’t already thought the same thing. How else did this happen? We have a rat infestation, Meida, and there’s only one explanation.”

“No. None of this makes sense,” Adrienn argued. Riston’s heart ached as one of the two people who knew the truth about zem argued to save zir life. “Even if you’re right and there’s…someone on board who helped them, are children the ones sabotaging the fleet? Is there someone willing to sneak strangers on board working on the crew of every affected ship? I mean, you want to talk about absurdly low odds, there’s a set for you. I dare you to do the math on those statistics. The chances are even lower that a group of orphaned, abandoned kids somehow have the skills to infiltrate our ships, hack our systems, break our communications, and make ships the size of small towns vanish into stardust.”

“I don’t know about the other ships, but it’s the only answer on this one.” Erryla’s hand flung out, her finger pointed accusingly at Riston. Ze flinched, even though ze couldn’t get any farther away. “Ze knew the emergency codes to access this deck. Either someone told zem, or zir group is deeply embedded in our systems. I don’t like either option. Do you?”

“I…” Adrienn swallowed, glancing toward Riston and then quickly away. “No.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t see any other choices.” Erryla spoke so quietly Riston had to hold zir breath to hear. “So we have to find a way to make zem tell us the truth. If I can’t convince zem to do it, Adrienn, I need you to find a way to make zem.”

Riston released zir breath in a sharp gust. Zir hands would’ve been shaking if they hadn’t been clenched around zir legs so tightly zir knuckles ached. Make zem. Ze knew what that meant—drugs or brain scans or worse. Over the cycles, ze’d stayed out of the law’s reach, but some of zir friends hadn’t. When they walked out of those truth-seeking sessions—if they’d been allowed to walk out—they’d been shaky, wide-eyed, nervous, dazed, or all four. None had been able to resist. Every person cracked under the weight of the strongest truth-seeking measures. They revealed everything and betrayed trusts they’d sworn never to break.

Ze would do the same in the end, too. Watching Captain Antares stride closer, her arms clasped behind her back, her steps measured, and her eyes cold, Riston knew ze had to think quickly if ze was going to keep any of zir secrets to zirself.

The force shield dropped, the captain stepped through the wide doorway, and Riston was once again facing the most powerful force on this ship.

“Your time is up, Riston.” She stopped only a meter away, far closer than she’d dared to get the first time. Ze watched her closely but didn’t move as ze waited for more. “I’m going to ask you several questions, and you’re going to answer them in specific, verifiable detail. If you don’t, there are ways I can make you, just like there are ways I can make sure your friends, wherever they are, know every detail of your fate.” The captain smiled, but the expression was grim and dangerous, a slash of sharp white against her dark skin. “If you won’t lead us to them, I will find a way to use you as bait and make them come to us.”

“And then what?” ze asked, zir voice rough and hoarse. “Kill everyone?”

“I haven’t decided,” she said with disarming—and terrifying—honesty. “But know this: my only priority is the safety of this ship. If I think it’ll be safer for us all to get you off Novis immediately, I will, no matter what that means.”

And Riston absolutely believed her.