Chapter Twenty-Four

Riston

Terra-Sol date 3814.258

Resignation and regret slumped Riston’s shoulders, but Cira lurched forward with a wordless cry, hands outstretched as though she could reach through the door and…what? Push the gushing blood back into Lasalia’s body? It wouldn’t help. The woman had already dropped in an awkward, horrible slump. A split second later, Riston slid between Cira and the window, but it was too late to keep her from seeing the destruction. In the blue light of emergency power, the growing pool of blood surrounding Lasalia looked black. Ze flinched at the sight, wrapped zir arms around Cira’s waist, and eased her away from the air lock.

“She—why would she—oh my…” Cira shuddered and swallowed convulsively. When Riston tightened zir hold, she burrowed deeper and clutched fistfuls of zir shirt. She hunched so low that, for the first time, Cira was shorter.

“I know.” Heart aching, Riston brushed the barest of kisses against the top of her head. “It’s okay. You’re okay. There wasn’t anything more you could’ve done.”

“But why?”

Despite the war, Riston thought this might be the first time Cira had ever seen death. Not bodies—no one could grow up in war and avoid corpses—but the actual process of death. Zir first impulse was to lie to her, but ze forced the truth out instead. “Because if we’d captured her, there are ways to get the information we need, no matter how badly she wanted to hide it.”

It took a few minutes for Cira’s breathing to level out and half a minute more for her to loosen her trembling grip on zem and step back. When Riston had nightmares about zir own past, the meat shells left behind weren’t what woke zem in a panic. Watching the vibrancy of a life fade, though… Riston never forgot those moments. Cira wouldn’t ever forget today, either, no matter how badly Riston wished ze could carry the memory for her.

“Sorry.” She bit her lip, maybe in embarrassment and maybe to keep herself silent.

“There’s nothing to apologize for. But if…” Riston shook zir head. The pressure of impending doom hadn’t lessened with spilled blood. Something dangerous and potentially deadly was still lurking in the veins of the ship, and the only person who could’ve told them how to stop it was dead. “If you can, we should start figuring out how to get out of here.”

The look she gave the air lock was haunted, like the memory had already begun to turn into a nightmare, but it also seemed to shake her loose from some of the shock. Slowly, she pulled the posture and mien of a Pax officer around her like a coat, and Riston nearly smiled to see it. In these moments, the potential leader in Cira was so clear. It was also when she most powerfully resembled Captain Erryla Antares.

“Okay.” Cira took a long breath and exhaled. “I guess we’d better get back to work.”

It took two hours for Cira, the officers on the bridge, and a team working one level below them to figure out how to unseal deck twelve. It had been a strange process, with each new piece of information Cira needed blaring into the room through the emergency alert system and accompanied by claxoning alarms. Riston spent every second twitching with barely controlled anxiety, and it wasn’t solely because of the sound. Although she worked at the console farthest from the air lock, giving Riston all the reason ze needed to remain at that end of the section, too, they were still too close to death for zir comfort. Ze wanted more distance. Distance made it easier to think. And to forget.

When the locks on deck twelve finally released, Commander Liddens was the first one through the door. Cira’s eyes brightened as soon as she saw him, and that look held Riston back when impatience was pushing zem to rush through the open hatch and head back to zir friends. Then ze got a good look at Halver’s face and stayed for a whole different reason.

“Halver,” Cira breathed, relief in her voice. The instinctual reaction shifted abruptly into caution. The second-in-command’s beige skin was pale, his eyes sunken, and his black hair shiny with several days’ buildup of natural oils. None of the officers following him in were in better condition, and Riston wondered if there was a single person on Novis who wasn’t on the brink of collapsing from exhaustion. Cira must have noticed the same details. Riston could practically see the memory of everything that had happened since her confession—and her crew’s reaction—rise in her mind. She took a step back.

But Halver rushed forward and dragged Cira into a tight hug. “Your mother has been furiously worried for hours.”

“Furiously, huh?” Cira laughed weakly against his shoulder. “Which one?”

“Both.” He pushed her back to hold her at arm’s length. Worry and pride somehow both danced in his eyes. “Erryla wanted to come for you herself, but I talked her out of it.”

“Is the situation that bad?” Cira glanced at Riston, the same apprehension on her face that ze was trying—and probably failing—to keep off zir own.

“Not at the moment, but…” A faint flush bloomed along Halver’s cheeks. He cast a quick, self-conscious glance toward the other officers, but he didn’t hold back. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. You’re ours, always have been and always will be. I shouldn’t have forgotten that.”

Cira didn’t respond immediately, but the tears Riston could see gathering in her eyes said a lot. Halver smiled, cupping her face and planting a smacking kiss on her forehead.

Then, rather abruptly, Halver switched back to professionalism. “Chief Antares is still coordinating efforts to locate and disengage the TD drive and regain control of the systems.”

Cira immediately offered to help, but the very idea made Riston’s fists clench with a rush of impatience. There were so many other places ze needed to be. It’d been too long since ze’d heard anything from zir friends.

Thankfully, Halver nudged them toward the exit. “Neither of you have had any real rest in days, so you need to find a place to lie down. I can make it an order if I need to.”

He did just that when Cira protested, ordering them back to the main section of the ship. They’d have to travel a circuitous route, at least for the first part of the trip, but at least they’d have a chance to sleep soon. Hopefully. As exhausted as ze was, it wasn’t likely sleep would come easily. Ghost may be gone, but they weren’t safe. Still, the very idea of sleep had become a guide star it was hard to turn away from.

“Thank you, sir,” Riston murmured as ze passed the commander.

Something ze almost wanted to call respect gleamed in Halver’s exhausted eyes when he nodded in response before he signaled one of the junior officers who stepped toward the one open hatch. Riston had barely glanced at them initially, and even now it wasn’t until Riston saw the last name Simone printed over their yeocin insignia that ze recognized Iyana. This was the girl Treble had developed such a crush on. Her large eyes, amber skin, and aubergine corkscrew curls were striking, yet Riston thought it was probably the calm competence she exuded that’d so firmly captured Treble’s attention. Riston wanted to ask the yeocin if she’d met Treble yet, but ze held back. Asking would be too much like hoping something would come of the encounter other than heartbreak and disappointment.

Riston was already doomed in that respect. The others didn’t have to be.

Iyana led Cira and Riston back through the tunnels until they were able to exit onto deck eleven. Then, she gestured toward the elevator. Although Cira and Riston gave each other an uncertain look, they followed the silent instructions. To their surprise, the elevator came when called for. A portion of the lockdown must have been lifted. Riston’s heart leapt. Not only would they be able to get back to medical faster, clearly progress had been made. What else had the crew regained control of? Ze and Cira had been all but cut off from everything for the last few hours, trapped alone with a room slowly filling with blood.

When they stepped onto deck six, Riston expected to head left toward medical. Iyana turned right. Toward the bridge. Questions crowded Riston’s mind and piled up on zir tongue, but ze couldn’t be the first to break the lengthy silence. But the bridge? Ze’d never thought seeing it would be possible. Regulations said noncitizens were never to be allowed into the command center of the ship, yet Iyana led zem and Cira straight into the security office connected to the bridge.

Gesturing toward the bridge door, she finally said, “The captain wants to see you.”

Cira audibly swallowed before nodding and taking three stiff steps toward the door. There was a panel to the side, and she swiped her wrist past the embedded sensors. A second later, the door slid open. Beyond was the bridge, three-tiered, full of flickering colors and bright screens, and absolutely packed.

Riston’s pulse rose until zir blood felt like a tide was rising under zir skin. Clearly the space was designed to comfortably fit a nine-person team, but at least twice that many bodies filled it now. Captain Erryla Antares sat at the center of the highest tier, three holo-displays active around her. Teams of two or three worked at all eight of the stations on the lower two levels. Every screen was active. Every conversation was heated. Noise and warmth struck Riston like a wall, and ze had to force zirself to follow Cira into the room.

It got worse when people began to realize exactly who had arrived. Silence spread outward in a wave. Attention fixated on Cira and zem. The only reason Riston didn’t turn around and run was because the door automatically closed behind them. The pressure of so many gazes on zem at once was too much to bear, which was why it took zem a few seconds too long to notice ze was wrong. Some people were watching Riston, but most were only looking toward zem. It was Cira and the captain at the center of their focus, and the crew looked between the two women with obvious hesitance, like they were waiting for one or the other to explode.

Riston stopped breathing as ze felt the precariousness of the moment. There was no way the captain didn’t sense it, yet she calmly closed what she’d been reading, shut down the displays around her chair, and rose to her feet. The few people standing between her and the door stepped aside, clearing a wide path that led straight to Cira.

Chest aching, Riston watched Erryla’s steady approach. It took zem a second to realize ze hadn’t been breathing since they stepped onto the bridge. When ze finally exhaled, it felt like zir lungs rattled against zir ribs, but ze kept still as Captain Antares stopped less than a meter away.

“Ensign, that was good work.” Erryla spoke clearly and with enough volume to be heard by the rest of the bridge. Cira began to tremble. “And Riston, I’ve been told it’s only because of how well you know the ship that Cira was able to reach deck twelve in time. Thank you.”

“Oh, umm…” Riston’s breath caught. At this rate ze might pass out from lack of oxygen if ze didn’t calm down. How could ze, though? Everyone was watching. Only Meida, standing nearby and grinning with pride, gave zem anything good to focus on. Taking strength from her, Riston squared zir shoulders and nodded once. “Absolutely, sir. Anything I can do.”

“Hmm.” Erryla’s dark brown eyes scanned Riston from the toes of zir beat-up boots to the ends of zir wiry hair. “You know, I almost believe that.”

Sound rippled through the room. It was neither a laugh nor a sigh of relief, but it signaled a release and the crew began to go back to their tasks. Within seconds, the buzz of overlapping conversations took over the room and attention shifted away from Riston. It should’ve made it easier to settle down, but now ze was essentially alone with Cira and the most powerful woman on the ship—the woman who currently controlled the course of Riston’s life.

“Ridiculous voyeurs,” Erryla muttered, a flicker of fond exasperation appearing on her face. It grew into something stronger when Cira laughed softly at the joke, and she drew her daughter into a hug, murmuring something into Cira’s ear before stepping back. Cira followed. With only one glance at Riston and a small but genuine smile, Erryla returned to being The Captain, her daughter and heir apparent trailing behind.

Cira looked back once, and her smile was probably supposed to be encouraging, but all Riston saw was Cira leaving. Alone, Riston barely kept zirself from pressing into the solidity of the wall. Zir hands shook and anxiety settled in zir stomach. Should ze leave? Thankfully, Meida approached before Riston felt too adrift.

“Breathe, Riston. It won’t look good for our hero of the moment to pass out,” Meida said under her breath, a sympathetic smile on her weary face. Her long dark hair was piled in a messy knot on top of her head, her uniform was stained in spots and hopelessly wrinkled, and the shadows under her eyes were bruise-dark, yet she still smiled at Riston while they both stood on the bridge—the actual bridge—of Pax Novis. “And before you protest, you’re the reason Cira had the chance to keep that woman from escaping. Therefore, hero.”

“If you say so, sir.” Riston did breathe easier, though, and Meida’s obvious approval made zem stand tall. Ze still wanted to change the subject. Just about anything else would do. “It seems like we missed a lot while we were gone.”

“Some,” Meida acknowledged. “My engineers are still scouring the hardware and software to find every node of the drive installation so we can do a clean purge. Other progress is minimal. Elevators are back online and life support is reengaged on decks one and two, but those have been our biggest wins so far. We almost have access to sensors, and we’re close to being able to bring the regular lights back up—we think. That alone will be good for morale.” She sighed and glared up at the ceiling. “I’m beginning to hate the color blue.”

Riston tried to smile. “I don’t blame you. Blue hasn’t been my favorite for a long time.”

“Ah, yes.” Meida glanced at Riston with a crooked, apologetic tilt to her mouth. “I’m sure you’ve been doused in emergency lights more than once.”

“And once was enough, yet somehow…” Ze waved zir hand in a vague gesture that encompassed the entire situation and translated to here I am again.

Expression settling into somber regret, Meida placed a hand on Riston’s shoulder and gently squeezed, but she said nothing. What was there to say? No, really. What could Riston say? There had to be something, because the expanding silence would consume zem if it got too big. There was only one question that ze could think of, though.

“Where are my friends? Are they—”

“Captain!” The call came from the center of the middle tier—the long-range sensor station. All other conversation cut off as the officer reported. “We have three incoming vessels. Two are pinging with transponders from Pavonis and one from Orionis.”

“Are they broadcasting?” Erryla asked.

“Probably, but if they are, we can’t see it,” the officer on comms responded.

The captain nodded. “Cira, go to comms and walk them through how you used the emergency systems as a workaround. See if you can do the same to get us talking to those ships.”

“Oh, damn,” Meida muttered. “Erryla’s danger senses are pinging.”

“Is she usually right?” Riston asked.

Through clenched teeth, Meida said, “Yes.”

“They wouldn’t attack, not a Pax ship.” Pax ships were off-limits. That was a fact, like gravity and orbital rotation.

“After what we’ve been through, I can’t take anything as a surety anymore.” Then an officer called Meida’s name, and she hurried across the room.

No one glanced at Riston after that. The incoming ships had consumed everyone’s attention, and the organized chaos of the bridge drew Riston inexorably in. It was hard to see detail on the displays, but ze could listen. Relay sensors. Paxis protocols. Comm blocks. The conversations overlapped in strange ways, leaving Riston struggling to pull data out of the flood.

“What did you do?” The sharp tone snapped Riston’s focus to a station on the third tier.

“I…I didn’t do that.”

A look passed between the two, both faces gleaming ghostly in the blue light, and then they simultaneously shouted, “Captain!”

“Shields and deflectors have just gone up, and every weapons system on Novis is active and locked on the incoming vessels.” The first officer turned, and Riston finally recognized Farran Badri, the chief of security. “None of the ships are in range yet, but this isn’t good. Nothing I’ve done has shut it down.”

Eerie silence settled as everyone waited for orders. Riston eased down a few steps, trying to see around Farran’s shoulders to the screen. The bright warnings were hard to miss. They should have been red, but the blue emergency lights mutated them into a strange shade of purple.

“A manual workaround may be the only solution. Can we post a team at every gun?” Erryla asked Farran.

“At this point?” She shook her head. “I think we’d have to pull from Meida’s teams working on the seek-and-destroy hunt through the tunnels and systems.”

“I can go.” The words burst out in the breath of quiet that followed Farran’s pronouncement. Riston almost flinched when every head snapped toward zem, but Erryla’s curious expression encouraged zem to continue. “If you need people, I…I can go.”

“I’ve filled the comms team in on everything, so I can go, too,” Cira offered. “It’d be one less team you have to pull from somewhere they’re needed more.”

To Riston’s amazement, Erryla only hesitated a moment. “Fine. Go to the forward portside gun control. We’ll send crew to the other five.”

“Yes, Captain.” Cira ran for the door, dodging the other officers.

Riston was there, but the door was still closed. It needed an ID swipe to get out. Cira’s practiced motion activated the door, and a few running strides brought her across the security office where she repeated the gesture at the exterior door. Riston followed her out and down the hall to the port elevator. They slipped inside as soon as the door began to open.

“Lasalia said they didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Riston said once the elevator was in motion. “Do you think they’d actually fire on those ships?”

Cira looked over, her eyes narrowed. “Do you think anything she told us was true?”

The door opened and Cira sprinted out. Riston followed, but zir mind was spinning. Strangely, yes. Ze hadn’t believed every word Lasalia had said, but there’d been something true in that statement. Maybe it had been in her face when she’d said it. Riston had believed and ze’d probably been wrong.

No one intending to keep people safe aimed guns at them.

Four sharp turns ended in an ID coded door. Cira slowed just enough to wave her arm at the sensor in the wall to open the door. It brought them into the straight stretch of the forward port extension, and they ran headlong down the corridor. The recesses of the ship might be Riston’s home, but the corridors were Cira’s. She moved with an absolute confidence here that Riston could only wish for, not even slowing when the bulkhead door sectioning off the forward compartment loomed ahead. Midstride, she swiped her ID past the reader next to the door. It had barely begun to open when Cira turned sideways—still moving fast—and slipped through. Riston tried to copy her movements and nearly scraped the skin off zir ear. Inside, ze had to swerve fast to avoid slamming into the bank of vac suit storage lockers. Ze was still trying to regain zir balance when ze rounded the last corner and finally faced the door to 5FP-W1—deck five’s forward, port weapons control center.

Even with an incoming threat—or maybe especially then—access to gunnery stations wasn’t as simple as swiping an ID. Riston caught zirself on the opposite wall and watched as Cira scanned her ID, entered an access code into the panel next to the door, and waited for bridge approval. It didn’t take long.

Forward weapons control was a small room, no more than two meters by three. One whole wall was display capable and a chair sat in the center of the space. A smaller backup control panel extended from the far wall. Cira dove into the main chair and tapped her wrist to the arm to claim control of the system. Riston bypassed it all and slid to the floor under the backup console where several access hatches were hidden. The mechanics of the weapons were behind this wall in the space between the room’s wall and the outer hull of the ship. Getting into the space wasn’t easy and moving once there was harder. The passage was exceedingly narrow, but ze could stand and look around. The blue emergency lighting extended here. That combined with the glow from some of the other control nodes allowed zem to make some sense of the space. There was a lot, and ze was only making sense of a small portion of it. So far.

“What’s the comm status?” Riston shouted into the main room.

“Text updates only,” Cira called back. “Visual and audio haven’t come back yet.”

“How much time until the ships are in range?” Ze crouched next to a panel and exposed the inner workings of the turret’s rotational controls. The hull bulged outward at this point to contain the gyroscopic controls allowing gunners to adjust azimuth and elevation. This was where moving parts would be easiest to reach and therefore sabotage. Possibly.

A frustrated curse echoed in from the main room. “Estimates are less than ten minutes.”

Ze wished they’d stopped to get tools before they rushed down here. Levers, slides, gears, control nodes, it was all laid out in front of zem, and all ze had to work with were two flesh-and-blood hands. From Cira’s ever more frequent curses, she wasn’t having luck, either.

“Cira, switch!” Riston shouted as ze scrambled back to the main chamber.

“Why?” she demanded.

“Because you have a hand that isn’t made of bone and is less likely to be pulverized,” ze snapped as ze came back into the room. “And I don’t have anything else to work with.”

“Oh.” Cira looked down at her hands as though she had forgotten one was different from the other. “Right. Computer, grant full access to all systems to all personnel in the control room.”

“Access granted,” the computer’s neutral tone confirmed, and the words were like a spring that popped Cira out of her chair. She slid toward the low crawl space as she was clear, but she turned toward Riston before she disappeared under the console.

“Communications are almost up, and instructions are coming in on the display to the right.” Cira looked at the chair, the screen, the open hatch, and finally back at Riston, fear in the lines around her eyes. Then she unlatched her wrist cuffs, the ones with the embedded holo-controls and the official Pax interface chip, and tossed them to zem. “Good luck.”

“You, too,” ze said. There were only four minutes and six seconds left before the ships would be in weapons’ range, and it was getting less likely by the second that they’d shut the guns down in time, but Riston would stop trying when ze died. Not a moment before.

It was easy to snap her cuffs around zir wrists, but the control chair suddenly seemed monstrously tall. Ze felt five cycles old again, shorter than the other children and struggling to keep up. When ze finally moved, each step felt weighted until the moment ze stepped onto the footrest and settled into the sloped, cushioned seat. This wasn’t just being tolerated; ze was being given actual power on the ship ze’d grown to love so desperately.

Ze placed shaking hands on the control panel and touched the sensors to reactivate the cuffs. The wall of screens contained a multilayered, multicolored barrage of information, but even though Riston had been focusing primarily on astronavigation, ze’d also worked through the basic training for every other position on the ship, including gunnery sergeant. It only took a few seconds for zem to acclimate and remember.

On one section of the screen was a three-dimensional grid, and Pax Novis was a white, seemingly stable block in the middle of it. Three smaller shapes approached, two from directly ahead and one from astern to port. All the vessels should’ve been outlined in green for peaceful ships since none had activated their weapons, but they were all marked out in red. Nothing ze tried disengaged Novis’s weapons lock or refocused it. When ze tried to fix the targeting lasers on a small asteroid, all ze did was bring the turret system one step closer to firing.

A sharp tone drew Riston’s attention to a new window. At first it was just a black box, but then colors flickered and an image appeared—Mika sitting at Adrienn’s desk. Shadows moved on the blue-lit wall behind her like dark ghosts. It proved she wasn’t alone, but her small, tired face was the only one that appeared on the display.

“Riston, this is our fault. We’ve been trying to fix the system, but we’ve been doing it in pieces.” Mika’s voice shook, and she spoke so quickly Riston had a hard time following at first. Riston’s own hands were trembling as ze switched from single channel audio to a wider band—ze needed Cira to hear this. “Regaining control of some systems changed the programming in others. I found the original code for the weapons system, and it was meant to fire warning shots first—just to get people out of range again—but I don’t think that’s what it’ll do anymore.”

“What will it do?” Riston’s throat tightened around a fresh wave of fear.

Mika ducked her head. “The guns are aiming for the engine cores. These aren’t military ships, Zazi. One’s civilian cargo, one’s a passenger transport, and one’s search and rescue. Their defenses can’t protect them from Novis’s arsenal. Even an indirect hit may cause a reaction and blow the whole ship.”

Then Meida swung into view of the camera, her dark eyes focused and intense. “Emergency system tricks won’t work this time. Tell Cira she’s got to shove it into maintenance mode or physically break something to keep it from firing.”

“Something?” Cira practically growled, and metal clanked from inside the wall where she was working. “That’s so helpful. Thank you.”

But it was. Maintenance mode. Ze’d been trying to turn it off or switch targets, but both actions were probably barred explicitly by Ghost’s code. Maintenance, though. There was a chance—though a small one given how deviously intelligent all the other sabotages had been—that whoever programmed this virus didn’t think about maintenance as a workaround. Riston closed half the menus and notifications on the screen to clear away distractions and focused on a specific set of submenus. Beginning with control menus and status options, ze searched for a workaround that’d do what Meida suggested and knock the system into maintenance mode, cutting off its ability to fire.

Maintenance mode unavailable.

Error reporting. Scheduled repairs. Ze moved steadily through to be sure ze didn’t miss anything. It was unacceptable. Missing something meant ships blown into dust and lives lost. Too many lives lost.

Maintenance mode unavailable.

The message flashed again and again, all but mocking zem. Something clanged from inside the wall where Cira was working. Nothing on the display shifted. Whatever she’d done wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough. Ghost’s programmers hadn’t missed a trick. Shifting the guns into maintenance was just as impossible as switching targets or shutting down, and the countdown was now measured in seconds, not minutes.

“Cira,” Riston warned, “we’re almost out of time. Tell me you have another brilliant fix.”

She screamed, a furious howl that sounded torn from her throat. There was another clang and a screech like bending metal that had Riston leaping out of the seat.

“Cira? Cira!” Ze slid across the room and dove for the hatch. “Are you okay?”

In the cramped space between walls, Cira was braced between one surface and the other with her cybernetic hand thrust into the turret’s gyroscopic controls. Her silver hair seemed to glow in the blue light, and the gleaming strands quivered as she panted for breath. Every line of her body seemed taut with strain. Sweat beaded on her skin. Before Riston could say anything else, she shifted her weight and pulled, straining with desperate effort against something inside the weapon’s mount. Another throaty scream overlapped a vicious groan. It ended in a sharp, echoing clang as Cira slammed back against the wall with a piece of broken, twisted metal clutched in her cybernetic hand.

An alarm blared from the main console and Riston scrambled backward, slamming the back of zir head on the console as ze shoved zirself to zir feet to look at the display. Ze blinked at the warning slashing a solid line straight across the middle of every display in the room.

Critical malfunction. System entering emergency shutdown.

Cira had done it with only five seconds left until the ships were within range of Novis’s weapons, but it didn’t matter. It was too late. Cira had had to use every bit of her cybernetically enhanced strength to pull that piece free of the turret, and none of the other teams had the same advantage. Riston shouted descriptions and told anyone who was listening exactly what to do, but there wasn’t enough time.

Five functional rail guns fired.

Three hits landed.

Two ships exploded.