Chapter Twenty-Six

Riston

Terra-Sol date unknown

Riston blinked, zir head spinning, and nausea fought to turn zir empty stomach inside out. The acrid smoke burning zir nose didn’t help; it had zem coughing as soon as ze took a breath.

Pain spiked through zir chest, the force of it like an explosion. Only the tight grip of the harness kept zem from collapsing. Too tight. Whatever had happened after the countdown hit one, zir chest now felt like a mess of deep bruises and shifting bones. Lifting zir arms sent agony through zir ribs and down zir back, but the pressure of the straps was making it difficult to breathe. Clumsily, ze swiped at the release button until ze finally depressed it and unlocked the mechanisms trapping zem to the padded backing. Ze regretted the decision immediately. Without the straps, Riston nearly fell. Each step was heavy and sent jarring, horrible vibrations up through zir bones. The pain grew exponentially worse as ze staggered toward the closest console.

Alarms were still blaring throughout engineering, and under it were the pained grunts and cries of the others as they struggled back to consciousness. Ze barely registered it over the sawing wheeze of zir own harsh breathing. When ze finally forced zirself upright, colors danced and sparked before zir eyes. No. Wrong. The colors weren’t inside zir head, they were real.

Sparks streamed out of one wall where a chair had slammed into a display. The lights overhead flickered between the full-spectrum UV and the unsettling blue of emergency power. Every working console and display flashed warnings and alerts from every deck and department with terrifying frequency. The burst of fear gave Riston the push ze needed to move closer. Even getting to the console was almost too much for zir battered body, but ze made it and leaned heavily against the solid surface.

Ze stared at the display, trying to sort what ze saw into a status report that made sense.

Fire on deck four.

Drive power critical.

Life-support systems critically low: decks one, two, seven, nine, and ten.

Twenty-nine personal distress signals activated.

Primary teams not responding to medical emergencies. Additional personnel necessary.

All ze could do was wearily watch reports scroll in from all over the ship. No section of Novis had been left untouched, but nothing was beyond repair. The hull hadn’t been breached, and so long as that remained true, everything else could be handled. Eventually. Once the crew could take more than a couple of steps without wanting to die.

And then what will they do with me? They’d jumped, probably somewhere far from anywhere humanity had jurisdiction, but just because they couldn’t throw zem in prison on Paxis didn’t mean Riston and the kids were safe yet.

“Cira! Stop moving and let me look at it!” Meida’s frustrated words made Riston glance back. Or try to. The sharp pain twisting brought on stopped zem short with a sharp hiss.

“It’s not like I’m bleeding out,” Cira shot back as she appeared next to Riston, already wrapping her left forearm in nano bandages. “It’ll hold until we figure out exactly how much trouble we’re in.”

“Sometimes, you are far too much like your mother,” Meida muttered as she shuffled into place on Riston’s other side.

“Thank you.” There was a system-worth of false cheer in Cira’s response, but it worked. Riston wheezed through half a laugh, and Meida’s expression softened a little. For a second.

“Communications are down again. Or…unreliable.” Meida cocked her head when a new message flashed in a corner, one that cut off midsentence. “Okay. Cira, I need you to download a full sys-check from engineering and take it to the bridge. If Erryla can’t see this, she needs to.”

“Yes, sir.” Cira’s right hand twitched. Something in her cybernetic elbow sparked, and a shudder ran through her body as lines of pain creased her face. Riston was there in a second, ignoring zir own aches to steady her. Cira widened her stance and swallowed with enough force that Riston could hear it. Meida hadn’t noticed, all her attention focused on the various displays. Ze wanted to make a noise and make her see that Cira was in worse shape than she wanted to admit, but who was ze kidding? All of them were in the same shape, and rest wasn’t an option.

Quicker than ze expected, she was steady again. Then, smiling weakly, she patted zir hand in silent thanks before reaching with her left hand to open a storage compartment. Inside was a stack of hand terminals, all of them smaller and simpler in design than she usually used. It was enough to get the necessary information to the bridge, though.

“I’ll send up another runner in ten minutes,” Meida said when Cira tapped the terminal to the console to begin the data transfer. “Unless we get comms back up. I need as many people as can work right now, so tell Erryla to fix the damn comms.”

“Yes, sir,” Cira said again, the words both threadier and far more sarcastic this time.

“And take Riston with you,” Meida said once the upload was complete. “I still don’t want anyone traveling alone until we’re sure Lasalia was the only one on board.”

“Okay.” Cira glanced at Riston, a faint curve to her lips. “If you insist.”

Meida snorted and picked up the tablet, tapping it gently against Cira’s shoulder. “I’m sure it’s such a hardship. Now get going.”

With a sharp nod, Cira turned to leave, her immobile right arm only making her wobble a little as she tried to re-center her balance. Riston was grateful she didn’t seem to be feeling the same pain ze did every time ze so much as twitched. Just as ze braced zirself to push through zir own misery and follow her out, movement caught zir attention. Mika was approaching, clearly ready to take zir place beside Meida once ze left.

Riston had never known it was possible to feel so much relief and guilt simultaneously. Mika only seemed to have minor injuries, and Greenie and Treble looked to be in the same condition. They were easy to spot once ze looked. But ze hadn’t been looking, and that ate at zem. Checking on the kids should’ve been zir first task—just like it had been for cycles—and yet ze’d practically forgotten they were in engineering.

Clearing zir throat, ze asked, “Are you guys gonna be okay?”

Treble rolled her eyes as she approached with the faintest of limps, and Greenie blinked at zem, seeming a little more shaken by it all. Despite the shock widening his blue eyes, he still managed a smile when he said, “Of course. How much worse can our day get, really?”

Treble smacked his shoulder, but she shrugged, not disagreeing.

“Go, Zazi.” Mika waved zem away with flicks of her fingers. “We’ll be here when you get back.”

“Promise,” Greenie added. “I don’t think I could go far even if I tried.”

After extracting a promise that they’d all get themselves checked by medical soon, Riston finally followed Cira toward the elevator. They rode up to deck six in silence.

The short walk from the elevator to the bridge was eerily normal. It didn’t seem like anything loose had been left in the corridors to rattle around and cause damage. Only the damn emergency lights and the complete lack of people proved something was wrong. Hearing voices in the distance, likely coming through the open door to medical, should be a relief, and it would be if Riston could pretend ze didn’t hear distress in every utterance. Ze failed. Badly. The instant the security office’s soundproofed door slid closed behind them, it released the knot of tension that’d been building in the pit of zir stomach. Ze could barely handle zir own pain right then; seeing someone else’s would crush zem.

When Cira scanned her ID at the door to the bridge, it didn’t open. She frowned and repeated the gesture. Six seconds passed before the door finally pinged approval and opened. The reason behind the delay was obvious as soon as they stepped into the flickeringly lit room.

Two positions sat empty and dark. Control of those stations seemed to have been rerouted to the other consoles where the least injured of the bridge crew were working. Had someone died or had they simply been injured badly? Not knowing made Riston’s chest ache, but the sight seemed to strengthen something in Cira. She straightened, holding her right arm tighter against her side, and strode quickly toward an empty position. Riston started to follow until Cira caught zir gaze and shook her head, nodding toward the second empty position instead.

She…she couldn’t be serious. Cira could not legitimately be suggesting ze sit down at an official bridge station as though ze were crew. The astronavigation station, of all places. That’d be the very definition of too good to be true.

“Riston.” Erryla couldn’t be ignored, but Riston still turned to face her with extreme hesitance. She held up what looked like two control cuffs, and then she tossed one in zir direction. It fell to the floor at zir feet because ze was too shocked to react. Ze barely caught the second one she gently lobbed zir way. “You’ll need those if you plan on being of any use.”

“Are…are you sure, sir?” ze asked.

“According to the details saved in that folder you gave us access to, you passed every piloting and astronavigation training course the computer offers, correct?”

“Yes, sir, but why would you—”

Erryla’s raised eyebrows cut zem off. “Are you questioning your superior officer?”

“N-no, sir. Of course not.” Superior officer? For Erryla Antares to be zir superior, that would have to mean Riston was part of her crew. Heart pounding, ze bent to pick up the second cuff and snapped them around zir wrists. Was this an official invitation, or was this an emergency measure just until the injured crewmembers were back? Riston desperately wanted to know, but making zirself ask would take more courage than ze had left, so ze simply said, “Thank you, Captain,” and walked to the last empty station as if ze truly believed ze belonged there. It was a laughable lie. Ze couldn’t even keep zir hands from shaking when ze approached the chair. Its mechanisms activated as soon as it detected the pressure of zir touch, and the chair spun outward to give zem space to settle in.

It was hard to believe this wasn’t a fever dream or a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation. How was it possible to go from illegal stowaway to member of the crew? Even a temporary promotion was so statistically unlikely it was virtually inconceivable, and yet… I’m touching a Pax Novis bridge seat, and they actually want me to sit here.

Taking a deep breath, Riston slid into the cushioned, contoured chair and tapped the wrist cuffs to the sensor on the edge of the console. The display lit up, astronav charts and sensor data streaming in as the cuffs’ holo-controls emerged. Suddenly, it was all real—ze was now in charge of figuring out where in the galaxy or the universe they’d ended up. Or at least coming up with a decently educated guess.

Not long after Treble had found her way to Novis, she and Riston spent hours talking about their lives and the various ways luck and human nature had failed them. Near the end of the conversation, when their eyes were getting heavy and their normal emotional defenses were unusually low, Treble had told a story about a nurse she’d met one of the last times her father had put her in the clinic.

“He told me, ‘You have the right to exist, to take up space, to demand to be seen. You have the right and, maybe more importantly, you have the responsibility to make sure you’re seen. Most people aren’t horrible, but in this quadrant, in this time, there are very few people who’ll take a stand for you.’” She’d shrugged and smiled almost fondly at the memory. “He was right, but I think it’ll be a long time yet until I figure out how to believe he was right about me.”

Riston had been battling the same doubts most of zir life. Ever since Ladadhi, ze’d been shuffled around and forgotten as soon as it was convenient. Experience had taught zem to hide in plain sight, to take only what was necessary for the barest sort of survival, and to avoid wanting anything beyond the minimum. Want was the fastest path to disappointment.

That hadn’t stopped zem from wanting this, a place among the crew. The acknowledged right to exist, to take up space, and to be seen. Against all odds, ze had it.

All it had taken was a disaster and a crew on the brink of collapse to make it happen.

Most of the Pax Novis crew had only experienced personal loss, not the catastrophic loss of everything. Everyone and everything Riston cared about, though, was here. This meant that, for once, ze was in position to help someone else. If ze fought to keep the small bit of space ze’d been granted and showed them exactly why they should let zem stay, ze could help them all see what ze already knew. Riston had already lived through the obliteration of his universe once, after all, and ze didn’t think the crew had remembered yet that no matter where in the quadrant they were, they were alive, they still had the ship, and they had one another.

I can do this. I can be seen.

Riston had found zir place and zir people, and this time ze wasn’t going to lose them.