Chapter Twenty-One

Riston

Terra-Sol date 3814.257

It had been an hour and Riston’s pulse still hadn’t calmed down to normal levels. Ze could still hear the soft, insistent beeping and see Cira with her arm stuck behind the device planted by someone who clearly meant them harm. For the space of a breath, ze’d been so sure ze was about to watch Cira die. Ze’d probably have died zirself a split second later, but that hadn’t been the thought blasting through zir head like a claxon. The only thing ze’d been mentally screaming was Please, no. Not her.

The fear of that moment still buzzed through zir blood, and ze hadn’t been able to handle her leaving zir sight for long since then. Part of zir brain was still convinced she’d vanish in a burst of sparks and smoke.

Like now. Ze sat alone watching teams of people work on very important tasks requiring very specific expertise—none of which ze had. Ze’d never regretted pouring zir time into astronavigation and piloting until today. What ze knew about pulsar triangulation and pinpointing ship locations inside a spinning, expanding universe wouldn’t help anyone here.

At least zir friends could help. Greenie’s work on the hydroponics deck had given him a deep understanding of the life-support systems, and he was currently working with several engineers on backups in case of catastrophic power failure. It had taken a while for Treble to admit how much time she’d spent sifting through the ship’s communications logs and pulling gossip from them to share with Shadow, but soon she was given an open channel to the team working to figure out how to wrest back control of the comm system.

The sight Riston had the hardest time turning away from, though, was Tinker working side by side with Lieutenant Commander Meida Dalil-Antares, Chief of Engineering herself.

As soon as they’d established a link to Ghost’s device, Meida had sent her engineers back to other tasks. They were still there. If anything, they seemed to be growing closer. It almost gave Riston hope. Maybe if ze threw zirself onto the sword of the court as the ringleader they’d find a way to forgive the younger ones.

Riston jumped when a hand landed on zir shoulder. Zir body curled in even as ze twisted to see who was there. Cira stood there frowning, shadows under her eyes and her silver hair beginning to fall out of its restraining clips. Ze braced for a question ze couldn’t answer or a new crisis ze wasn’t sure ze had the energy to deal with.

“You okay?” Cira’s voice was soft, and instead of pulling away after zir startled twitch, she added pressure, almost like she was trying to hold Riston together.

“Sorry, yes. Fine. I just…” Clearing zir throat helped cut zir babbling off. Once ze felt more in control of zir tongue, Riston opened zir mouth and tried again. “What happened?”

“Nothing bad.” Cira sat down, her hand trailing from zir shoulder to the crook of zir elbow. The imagined line of heat the trail left behind was searing. Thankfully, Cira didn’t seem to notice zir faint shiver. “New orders are going out, and a subfrequency has been found. Engineering thinks Ghost’s devices are using it. When they’re not hijacking our systems, of course. Getting anything useful from it is a long shot since we’ll only be able to pick up the signal when it’s in use, but we’re still sending people out with sensors designed to detect that frequency. They’re crawling through every maintenance shaft and passage on the ship looking for additional components of this installation.”

“How are the orders spreading?” Ze leaned into Cira, relishing the reassurance that she was here.

Cira smiled. “Word of mouth.”

“Ah, low-tech,” ze tried to joke. As if any of this was funny.

“No-tech, really, or as close as we can get.” Cira glanced over her shoulder, and then she shook her head. “No one trusts the systems, and sending anything through communications, security, or engineering is currently at the top of everyone’s avoid-at-all-costs list.”

Riston closed zir eyes. “I can’t blame them.”

It wasn’t zir fault or zir doing, and yet guilt tugged at zem like a gravity well.

“Ris.” Cira’s left hand tightened on zir arm. “Are you sure you’re—”

“What? No.” Meida’s words from Adrienn’s office cut Cira off. “That can’t be right.”

Riston shoved zirself up and hurried into the office, a fresh rush of adrenaline sharpening zir fading focus. Cira was only a step behind, and Adrienn trailing closely. When they burst in, Meida’s fingers and gestures flew through the holo-controls spread out before her and across the touch commands on the desk. Tinker was standing nearby with a wide smile. The jagged edge to Tink’s expression made Riston’s anxiety ramped up more.

“So, this is a good news/bad news deal,” Tink said with false cheer. “The good news is our link into Ghost’s nodes is teaching us a lot more about what the system changes are intended to do, and we’re almost definitely not going to blow up!”

“That’s…good. So, what’s the bad news?” Cira asked.

“Our new theory about what happened to the other ships and what’s about to happen to us,” Meida admitted without any of Tink’s forced excitement or looking up from her work. “If we’re right, we may wish we’d blown up instead.”

Cira stared at her mother, but it was Tink who said, “It looks like someone finally developed a transdimensional drive.”

“Worse, they seem to have figured out how to use a ship’s existing power supply and systems to make it work.” Meida sighed and leaned back in her chair to look at her audience. “From what I just uncovered, there are only a few more steps between Pax Novis and a trip so far away from occupied space, we’d never see a city again. Not in our lifetimes.”

“Oh.” Cira swayed, looking lost and like she was no longer standing on solid ground.

Riston understood how it might feel as though the ship had suddenly destabilized. Trying to absorb the information was already spinning zem through the implications. A transdimensional drive explained how the ships had seemed to vanish. Riston couldn’t see the why of it, but so much else just fit. “I…wish that didn’t make so much sense.”

Meida glanced at Riston, her gaze measuring and weighted, but she simply nodded.

Gathering courage from the small gesture, Riston took the idea forming in zir mind and let it spin itself out in words instead of thought. “Earlier, Cira was telling me about the sensor sweep the crew is doing with modified devices, the ones that have been frequency tuned? She said they’re using them to look for more interference left behind, but…”

Ze paused and glanced around the room, but no one was glaring at zem. Everyone seemed to be waiting for more, and when ze continued, the words spilled faster with each rushed syllable. “Well, scanners might be able to find the actual person, too. Ghost must be talking to someone somewhere, right? This isn’t just an attack on Novis, it’s an organized invasion of the entire fleet, right? And Novis has taken longer to drop out of communication than any others, so things have gone wrong—clearly—but that means updated plans and multiple notifications. How, though? If there’s a subfrequency, seems like it’d be easier for the ghosts to put everything on the same frequency rather than trying to create two or three. The more there are, the more likely they’ll be discovered too soon.”

“But then discovery would expose everything at once.” Meida’s tone wasn’t harsh or dismissive. To Riston, it sounded like she was considering all the angles.

“They could easily plan for that,” Cira countered. “Encryptions and whatever other security Ghost’s team might’ve come up with.”

“Uhh, yes. Exactly.” Ze barely reined in the urge to hug Cira breathless for standing up for zir ideas. “They’ve had one for everything else, so it’s not a stretch. If we home in on the signals and track the placement, level of activity, and bandwidth, I’m betting we won’t just have Ghost’s work, we’ll have Ghost.”

I think. I hope. Stars, what am I going to do if this doesn’t work?

For a moment, no one moved. They stared at Meida, waiting for a decision, everyone except Cira. She and Meida were watching Riston, and Cira had something that almost, almost looked like pride in her eyes.

“I’ll get you the hardware you need, and I think I can spare Tinker—”

“Mika.” The correction came so quietly that Riston almost didn’t hear. It was Tink’s blush, a deep crimson spreading across her cheeks, that gave it away. She looked down and shyly said, “I’d like it if you called me Mika.”

Meida glanced at her young partner and smiled. “Mika, then. Mika can coordinate that part of the search while I keep digging into the code we decrypted.”

“What about the captain?” Cira asked.

“I’ll deal with your mother.” Meida stepped closer and cupped the back of her daughter’s head, tilting her stance to look directly into Cira’s eyes. “And no matter what’s happened before now or what might happen next, she’s still your mother. Still Ma. Nothing will change that, or how much that stubborn woman loves you, so whatever you’re thinking, stop. She’s not going to throw you in a cargo hold or deny this plan just because your zefriend came up with it.”

“Mama!” Cira’s exclamation would’ve sounded like a scold if she’d been able to keep the embarrassment off her face or stop her eyes from flickering toward Riston. In a rush, Riston remembered the brush of warm lips on zir cheek and the split second of impossible hope that had risen after one moment of pure joy. That same hope rose again before ze could squash it.

Meida smiled, pressed a kiss to her daughter’s forehead, and stepped away. “Go get what you need for this venture of yours to work. Riston, since it was your idea, you can coordinate with Mika and the other teams to make sure the groups are tracked and moving efficiently.”

“Me?” Riston squeaked.

“Your idea, your responsibility,” she said sternly. “Don’t let me down.”

“No. Of course not, sir.” But even as the words left zir mouth, Riston began to tremble.

The ship was just under one thousand meters long. There were thirteen decks and literally dozens of kilometers of shafts and passages and crawl spaces between the levels. It wasn’t just luck that made it possible for Ghost to hide successfully despite lockdowns and search parties—Riston had been exploiting the sheer size of the ship for cycles before anyone but Cira and Adrienn knew. Despite zir idea about signal hunting, failing to find the culprit wasn’t just a possibility, it was nearly a certainty. Yet Riston had promised success.

All I’ve got to do now is find a way to deliver.

Then the lights in medical sputtered for several torturous seconds and abruptly died.