Chapter Twenty

Cira

Terra-Sol date 3814.257

Cira doubted Adrienn’s office had ever had eight people in it at once. It should’ve made the small space feel cramped and uncomfortably close, but Cira couldn’t get over the surreal version of reality she’d fallen into.

Despite being the one who brought these children on board, she hadn’t ever spent time with them like this. Cira and Riston sat at the desk, every screen active and data flowing almost faster than they could read. Tinker, Treble, and Greenie were sitting in the corner with a collection of handheld screens. Even though she knew a lot about what their lives before Novis had been like and could guess how many times they’d had to push aside pain, grief, or fear to focus on the next task, it still impressed her to see the truth of it in action. It had hurt her to lose Shadow, too, but not like it had gutted Riston and the others, and yet here they were, diligently working on the tasks Erryla and Meida had assigned. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to pull together the same kind of focus in their positions.

Cira also couldn’t believe how much they’d changed in the last cycle. The periodic updates from Riston had barely been enough to keep her connected to their lives. Now, they were finally together for the first—and maybe last—time. Momentary impressions through security camera lenses weren’t the same as seeing them in person. It didn’t give her the same jolt as seeing Tinker and realizing the girl had grown several inches in the past cycle or noticing the healthy curves under Treble’s layers that hadn’t been there before.

They were different people now, and she needed to get to know them all over again.

Eventually. Maybe. If the ship didn’t blow up before she got the chance.

The situation on board was precarious. Even now, three security personnel were in the room with them, and three more waited just outside the door because, despite the help they were providing, the kids were stowaways. Criminals. Cira supposed she was one now, too, if she was being honest.

Riston touched her right hand so gently she didn’t think she would’ve noticed if it hadn’t been for the sensors in her prosthesis. They were far more delicate than human nerves. She turned toward zem, ashamed for letting her attention wander, and gave zem her undivided focus. Even if ze couldn’t hold her gaze for more than a few seconds at a time.

Motions small and words quiet, ze pointed out several subtle errors ze’d noticed in the backup logs. Riston had changed since she first met zem, too. With regular meals, something close to proper medical care, and the exercise of scrambling all over the ship, Riston had expanded to fill in zir broad shoulders and solid frame. Zir dark brown eyes sparkled with intelligence, and working with zem on this project had shown her a level of concentration she was nearly envious of. They had been working together for cycles, coordinating supply drops and how to introduce new stowaways to the ship, but working with Riston like this, close enough to touch zir hand and hear zir breath was different. Thrilling. Zir lips looked soft, and even as ze described the errors and what the rewritten code might be covering up, she couldn’t help wondering what it’d be like to kiss zem again. Or really kiss zem for the first time.

And that thought was more surprising than anything else. The peck to Riston’s cheek was the closest she’d ever gotten to a kiss and far closer than she’d ever had the desire to get before. Wanting to do it again—wanting to do it better—was a strange desire, one she couldn’t fit into what she’d believed was true about herself. And now of all times? Her world was falling apart, and the physical desire she’d previously believed nonexistent chose now to wake up and fixate on Riston, however faintly?

She sighed as she flagged everything Riston found and sent the files on for further analysis. As she did, she tried—and mostly succeeded—to shove her minor sexuality crisis out of her mind. If they couldn’t fix the damage done to the ship, they were all probably going to die. If they beat the odds and won, nothing she figured out about herself would matter—she and Riston were probably going to spend a long time locked in separate cells of a Paxis prison.

They were both traitors, after all.

“Ensign?”

Cira’s head snapped up, her hands bracing against the desk and her heart already speeding up in anticipation of another problem. No panic widened the security officer’s eyes, though, and no new tension infused their stance. They’d called because her mothers were standing just outside the office, Meida looking weary and anxious while Erryla was somehow still crisp and collected. Although Cira wasn’t sure if she was ready to face both her mothers at once, especially not with her stowaways watching, she forced herself to walk out the door.

“Yes, sirs?” she asked, her eyes fixed between her parents instead of on them.

“Cira.” The word cracked in Meida’s mouth. An instant later, she grabbed Cira around the shoulders and hauled her into a crushing hug. The air burst from Cira’s lungs, and tears welled in her eyes. A hug didn’t fix anything or absolve her of the crimes she’d have to answer for. That didn’t stop her from clinging to her Mama.

Cira wished she could change the way this disaster had unfolded even if she couldn’t wish the stowaways out of her life, even now. Maybe things would’ve been different if she’d been brave enough to come clean before everything was on the verge of exploding. She’d never know, and the damage was already done. As wonderful and reassuring as Meida’s embrace was, another set of arms was conspicuously absent. Even after Meida finally released her, Erryla didn’t move any closer. She simply nodded at Cira, the distant acknowledgement of a superior officer to a subordinate. Meida’s quiet protesting noise didn’t even cause a flicker in Erryla’s expression.

“Anything new?” the captain asked.

It was easier for Cira to think of her as Captain instead of Ma when the ground between them was so cracked and broken. Slowly rebuilding the armor of rank and duty around herself, Cira delivered a report. The device Tinker found had given them a path to follow, but the saboteur was an expert, and their work was brilliantly subtle, specifically designed to escape notice. Slowly picking apart the logs and discovering all the places their ship had been tampered with had led progress, but not enough. “I don’t know if we can catch up with whoever’s doing this unless something changes drastically.”

“Ghost,” Riston offered quietly behind her. “We’ve been calling them Ghost.”

“Hmm.” The captain’s noncommittal response neither invited further opinions nor told Cira to stop talking, but Cira couldn’t think of anything else to say. She kept her mouth shut and watched the captain. It was safe because the captain hadn’t really looked at Cira once. She’d been staring fixedly into Adrienn’s office.

“We figured out how Ghost got on the ship,” the captain announced. Cira stopped breathing. The faint rustle of movement inside the office halted, too, and she knew everyone—security and stowaways—was waiting for more.

“A cargo module we loaded at Mitu Station included cryopods, and one had a double chamber. It was programmed to wake the hidden occupant once we were well away from the station. That was the power glitch Adrienn noticed before we left the station,” Erryla explained. “At this point, we have to assume they circumvented our security measures and used maintenance hatches to get out of the cargo section. They’re so well prepared it’s unlikely they’re working alone, even if there’s only one person on our ship.”

“Is there?” Cira asked. The captain finally looked at her, but only out of the corner of her eye. Cira swallowed and forced herself to clarify. “Are we sure there’s only one?”

“As sure as we can be. Teams have been through every cargo module that might grant access to the ship, and only the one modified cryopod has been discovered.” The captain looked slowly across the gathered group, meeting everyone’s eyes including, unexpectedly, Cira’s. The look sent a ripple of shock down Cira’s spine that locked her in place even after her mother had moved on. “Just because they’re alone doesn’t make them any less dangerous. In fact, it worries me more. If each vanished ship really was the work of an individual, it means these people are extremely intelligent, well prepared, well funded, and utterly determined. It also makes them harder to find. Clearly.”

The frustration and fury she must’ve been feeling leaked into her words and the captain abruptly paused. Only after she’d taken a deep breath and cleared her throat did she keep speaking. “Nevertheless, every officer in the crew who isn’t involved with the search for additional sabotage is currently searching for the saboteur themselves. As for our…guests…” Another pause. Another breath. “Anything you can add to help us figure out where this insect may have burrowed into the ship to hide would be welcome.”

There was a beat of breathless waiting, and then Riston, voice hoarser than usual, spoke for all of them. “Of course, Captain. We’ll let you know as soon as we think of anything.”

With a vague gesture that seemed to mean “Carry on,” the captain walked away. Cira blinked at the abrupt departure. She was about to go back into the office, but Meida nudged Cira to follow the captain. By the time they caught up, Captain Antares was waiting at parade rest, feet shoulder width apart and hands behind her back. Cira stopped an arm’s length away, but Meida took another step, awkwardly shifting into the gap between them. Uncertain and trying not to let that turn into fear-fueled nausea, Cira waited for someone else to speak. It took several seconds—and a dark look from Meida—before the captain opened her mouth.

“I can’t forgive you yet—I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to—but I’m beginning to understand, Cira.” The sound of her name, spoken for the first time since the confession, made Cira’s breath catch. “The children are talented, and more diligent than I’d expect at their age.”

Even with the stress of everything, the thrill of being right flashed through her veins like an electric current. She’d hoped—been sure­—the crew would see how amazing her stowaways were if they ever had the chance to meet them. Seeing that actually happen wasn’t a gift she ever thought she’d receive. It was the height of irony to have it happen like this.

“They had reasons to grow up fast.” Cira swallowed and tried to mirror the captain’s posture. “And I dug into their backgrounds before I approached them. Nothing in their histories would make them a danger to us.”

Us, she said, though she wasn’t entirely sure they still counted her as part of their group.

“Maybe they aren’t. We’ve lasted longer than the other ships—in each case, less than two weeks elapsed between their last port and their disappearance. We, however, left Mitu over four weeks ago.” The captain spoke slowly, considering each word. Then, she cast a glance toward the office. “I can’t help believing something about their presence caused the delay.”

“Obviously,” Meida added. “None of the other ghosts had to deal with watchful kids.”

Cira loved her more than ever for making that sound like a good thing, as though she didn’t understand why every ship wouldn’t want watchful kids hidden on board. Erryla didn’t respond, though, she just cast her wife a complicated glance and walked toward the head of the security team monitoring Cira and her stowaways.

“Give her time.” Meida touched Cira’s shoulder and gazed at her with sad eyes. “I’ll throw myself in the cell with you if she doesn’t stand before the court and plead for clemency. She loves you no matter what, it’s just… There’s a lot right now, love. Too much at once.”

And being captain meant being responsible for more than one family. Erryla’s decisions would save or imperil over two hundred people. Cira tried to remember that, but it was hard sometimes. She understood that Meida was trying to bolster some of the cracks in the ground between her wife and daughter, so Cira forced a smile and simply said, “I know, Mama.”

However Meida would’ve responded was lost to the blare of alarms.

“What is wrong now?” Erryla slammed her wrist cuffs together, and as soon as she had control, her fingers were flying through menus, authorizations, and alerts on the nearby display. Cira raced closer, her eyes jumping from one notification to the next, her pulse picking up and her breathing going shallow. She was only vaguely aware of Riston crowding in to see, too.

Error: Lock latch malfunction to panel 12, deck 2, section C.

Attention: Maintenance schedule for power coupling updated.

Security Alert: Crewmember heard noise coming from maintenance tunnels between decks four and five. No crew was scheduled for work in that section at the time, according to available data, and no one was seen when the sounds were investigated. A panel was found to have been broken, the lock and latch cut off with a plasma torch.

A plasma torch. The one that had gone missing. Cira turned to the smaller screens inset in a nearby console and brought up Tinker’s maps. There was one red dot on deck four.

“We’re forcing them to move faster.” Cira watched as her mother activated every security team on deck four. “They’re making mistakes.”

Riston shook zir head. “That only matters if we catch them.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the optimistic one?” Cira asked.

“No,” ze said on a sharp laugh. “That’d be you. You’re the one who thought you could change the quadrant. I’ve only ever tried to survive in it.”

She didn’t know how to argue that. Besides, they had more important issues right now. Cira spun on her heel toward the captain. “Permission to go check this out, sir?”

Erryla was watching Cira and Riston, her expression full of something Cira couldn’t put a name to. Doubt maybe. Or pain? It shoved Cira’s new reality into her face with the impact of an asteroid crashing into a planet. Cira wasn’t an honored officer anymore, the young one with incredible potential. She didn’t get to request assignments. She also couldn’t take the question back. Odds were long, bordering on impossible, that she’d get approval, but hopefully the captain wouldn’t let anger blur her common sense.

Cira counted to six before Erryla said, “Fine. You, Riston, and two of the security team. Keep a channel open the whole time.”

“Yes.” It didn’t matter that she was five last time she’d been under this much supervision; relief and excitement bubbled up so strong she had to fight against a smile. “Of course, Captain.”

It only took a minute to gather the tools they might need, and then they were walking out of medical and heading for the elevator. The threat of imminent danger pushed her to move faster, of course, but Cira also wanted to be well away before Erryla could change her mind.

“I cannot believe your mothers let us go,” Riston murmured as they walked with one security officer ahead of them and one behind. “Even with the minders.”

“Well, you’re still wearing the restraint, and we can’t really go anywhere. Even if we stole a shuttle or an escape pod, we’re in range of exactly nowhere. It wouldn’t end well.” Cira tried to project a serenity she didn’t feel. Her mothers had taught her that if a leader was calm under pressure, everyone else would be, too. Riston didn’t need her anxieties seeping into zem. “Besides, there’s a lot of ship, a lot of jobs, and only so many crewmembers. Plus, not everyone would have a clue of what to look for or what they were looking at.”

“I’m not sure I will, either,” ze admitted as the elevator doors opened. “I’m here to be a set of eyes for Tinker and Meida. And because Captain Antares told me to.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “She has that effect on everyone.”

The elevator closed in time for Cira to watch in the reflection as Riston looked toward Cira. So much shone in zir expression, including questions Cira would probably have to answer before too long, but she wasn’t ready to face any of it yet. She wasn’t ready to face Riston.

So she didn’t. Not then. Not here. Not yet.

Cira had been right and wrong. The saboteur was rushing, not bothering to hide their work or their presence anymore, but they weren’t making mistakes. Another device had been installed between decks four and five, behind panel twelve this time, but nothing found nearby gave them any way to track Ghost, and none of the data they sent Tinker and Meida helped them figure out what was being built or broken inside the systems.

They’d been working at panel twelve for over an hour, scanning the system and trying to match every single component to the original blueprint of this section of the ship, when Cira finally asked something that’d been bothering her. “Why is so much happening between those two levels? Does it have to be here?”

“If I wanted to shut down a ship, power, shields, and engines would be my first targets,” Riston said, but ze sounded unsure.

Because that wasn’t right. “They’re not trying to shut us down, though. We’d have found another ship if the ghosts were just turning the engines off or blowing the ships up.”

“What other option is there?” one of the security officers asked as they handed Cira a molecular scanner.

“That’s what we need to figure out.” Cira did a quick sweep with the device, but her gaze drifted. It was hard not to look at the damage done to the panel by a plasma torch or at the device hastily installed by someone whose ultimate plan was nothing but question marks and empty space.

“Ghost isn’t usually this obvious, though,” Riston cautioned. “If it were my plan, I’d be obvious somewhere unimportant to draw attention away from what I needed to hide.”

Cira closed her eyes. That’s probably what she’d do, too. It made more sense than someone who’d been so sneaky, subtle, and cautious suddenly making egregious mistakes. Ghost seemed to have plans, backup plans, fallback plans, emergency plans, and worst-case scenario plans. The possibility of someone discovering their presence too early would’ve occurred to Ghost already, and diversions probably would’ve been prepared.

Then an alert appeared in the corner of the panel’s display and a soft chime rang through Cira’s inner-aural comm, the sound of an incoming call. From medical, according to the alert. As soon as Cira put aside her tools and accepted the connection, she heard the murmur of multiple conversations. Tinker’s face filled the screen.

“Good. There you are.” Tink looked and sounded far too serious for someone so young. “I need you to go back to the place I found before.”

“What?” A quick flick of Cira’s fingers switched the audio to broadcast so everyone could hear. “Tink, that’s on the other side of the deck, and I doubt Riston and I will notice anything the engineers didn’t.”

“That’s not why I need you to do this, so go anyway.” When they didn’t acquiesce immediately, Tink insisted. “Now.”

“But the captain—”

“Says it’s fine.” Erryla leaned into view of the camera, her words sharp and lines appearing around her eyes. “Go, Cira. You’re closer than anyone else.”

The urgency in her mother’s voice was contagious, and Cira found herself rushing to pack up, castigating the others when they didn’t move fast enough. Moving at a normal pace, it would’ve taken half an hour to get where Tink wanted them to go. Today it only took seventeen minutes. When they got there, though, everything looked the same. The panel remained undamaged, and so did the device behind it as far as Cira could tell, so she adjusted her hold on the hand terminal and let Tinker see it for herself.

“There should be a small display panel on the right side of the node they installed,” Meida said, appearing next to Tink. When Tink leaned closer to the screen as though to get a better look, Meida smiled and typed something into the panel, a command to enlarge the images Cira was sending if she had to guess. “Look at that and tell me what it says.”

Cira handed the terminal to the closer officer and slumped sideways, twisting until her head was as close to the side of the panel as she could get. The space was so narrow she could barely see the light coming off the far side of the device let alone read anything written there. Her head was too big to fit. Growling with frustration, she grabbed the terminal and stuck it into the space. Tink issued orders—up four centimeters, right one—and then Cira held still so Tink could read the tiny display with the long combination of numbers and letters. Hopefully, the code made more sense to Tinker than it did to Cira. It seemed so. Tinker and Meida murmured to each other, rereading the code several times, checking information from other systems, and then coming back to the code again. It took several minutes before they came to a conclusion.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Meida said on a tired sigh. “This thing is designed like the plants back on Vohtu. What you can see above ground is small, but they’re incredibly hard to kill once they sprout because their root system can spread for dozens of meters in every direction. The devices may only be attached to certain conduits, but the codes on those readouts link to a lot of other systems.”

“Why’s there even a display on this?” Riston asked. “Can we trust anything it says? It seems too easy.”

“While we can’t be sure the readout isn’t masked or scrambled, the device itself wasn’t built for subterfuge.” Quinley Quinley leaned into the camera’s view then, zir gaze sharp and intent. “And given that what happened to the other ships is still a mystery, I’m inclined to believe we’re right and this program has infiltrated the whole ship. If I’m wrong, all we lose is some time being cautious.”

“But we’re not wrong. We don’t think.” Tink bit her lip, her gaze between Quinley and Meida before she sat straighter and put on the voice she used when pretending to be older. “More data is required to make a more definitive statement, however.”

Quinley looked down at Tink, zir lips quirking into a smile that looked fond, and hope rose in Cira’s chest. If the children continued to help, there really was a chance the crew would see what Cira saw in them, and maybe, maybe, she could convince them to let her friends go instead of shoving them into a windowless cell for the next few decades. The messages about Riston, Tinker, Greenie, Treble, and Shadow hadn’t reached Paxis yet after all. No one outside of Novis’s crew and their resident Ghost knew the kids had ever been here.

She nearly laughed. Riston was right—she was the optimistic one. This time, though, her optimism had something stronger than wishful thinking as its foundation. She could see the shift in how the crew was treating the kids. Hopefully, it would be enough.

After a consultation, Tinker and Quinley issued a set of detailed instructions for Cira and Riston to follow. They didn’t trust the data coming from the sensors, terminals, and computers in this area, so they walked Cira through each delicate step.

“You have to dent the back wall of the hatch without touching anything else inside,” Tinker explained. “Once you have a little more space to work with, we need you to slide your right hand up behind the casing of the device.”

Cira handed the tablet to Riston and adjusted the clips holding her hair back. This was going to be hard enough without strands of silver randomly streaking across her vision. Before she reached for the panel, though, she had to ask… “What exactly is the danger here?”

“We’re assuming something in the design will prevent tampering because it wouldn’t make sense otherwise, but I don’t know what form it will take except something not good,” Quinley admitted. “I wouldn’t even have you attempt this if both of your hands were flesh. For all we know, making the wrong move by even a millimeter could be enough to trigger the security protecting this thing.”

“So glad I can be useful,” Cira muttered as she laid down on the cold floor and twisted her cybernetic hand into a position that would’ve sent agony through its opposite.

“So glad you can be careful,” Meida corrected.

“Don’t worry. I have zero desire to die in a fire.” She slowly straightened her middle finger, stretching it to its limit to reach a tiny, almost imperceptible button on the back of the casing—exactly where her guides said it would be.

Riston moved so close Cira could feel zir body heat. “Are we sure about this?”

“No,” Cira said. And then she pressed the button.

The device began beeping.

“No, no, no! Do I let go or hold?” Beep. No answer. Beep. Cira screamed. “Let go or hold?”

“Let go!” Riston demanded.

“Hold!” her guides shouted. She listened to the engineers.

“Stars, you’d better be right about this.” Cira held her breath and counted the beeps.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

With a faint snick, a previously hidden panel in the casing slid open to reveal a data port. Nothing exploded. No alarms sounded. Six shaky sighs of relief echoed through the tunnel.

“Okay,” Tinker said. “This next part is going to be tricky.”

Laughter burst out of Cira, the sound high-pitched and frenzied. Now it was going to get tricky? Smothering the anxiety masquerading as mirth took precious seconds, but no one scolded her. Quinley waited until Cira fell silent to give her instructions.

It became instantly clear that the “trick” wasn’t in the complexity of the task but the extreme precision it required. Only once Cira was sure she had herself under control—she couldn’t risk a tremor shifting her arm at the worst second—did she take the data cord the security officer held out to her. Then, with Riston holding the tablet to give their guides the best view, she slid back to the floor and slowly reached her hand back into the incredibly narrow space. The pressure she’d exerted on the rear wall of the compartment had created a few millimeters of space, and now she used every iota of it to grip the end of the cord and manipulate it into the tiny port without brushing against anything else.

Cira was in position, but she hesitated before making the connection. “Even if I do this without killing us all, what are the chances Ghost doesn’t know we’re here?”

“Low,” Riston said.

“Here’s hoping they can’t set this off remotely,” Cira muttered, shifting her cybernetic fingers until the cord clicked into place.

There were no rumbling booms of incoming destruction, and no screams filtered through the open channel, but there was a beep. Riston shifted the tablet, positioning it to get a better view of the device’s small display and then projecting two deceptively simple words.

Message sent.