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Before I could say anything to the grinning alien girl in front of me, I heard the ward doors slide open. When I spun around, I was facing my boss.
Yeoman D’Nar was a tall, thin woman with golden blond hair, glowing skin, and legs that made her uniform barely the acceptable length without requiring alterations. She was only about five years older than I was, which meant she graduated from the space academy before I’d entered, but her legend was still fresh in the halls. She’d accomplished a lot in a short amount of time, and while it would have been easy to attribute her success to her looks, that very thought went against everything I wanted to believe regarding equal opportunity. I’d told myself she was the closest thing I’d have to a role model on the ship, but now that we were face to face, I could tell both her glacial attitude and penchant for pearly blue nail polish would be problematic when it came to finding commonalities between us.
“Lt. Stryker, you are in violation of the uniform code. I can’t believe you would commit an infraction this soon in the moon trek. Do you know what would happen if one of our passengers saw you like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like that, all purple arms and perky breasts. The Moon Unit is a family ship. It’s a good thing the doctor reported you to me. If you went out of this ward like that, Captain Swift would have to be notified.”
We must have passed the breakaway point. The temperature in the uniform ward had dropped, and so had my body heat. I glanced around the room, looking for Pika. Surely the presence of a stowaway on board would be a bigger issue than my wardrobe infraction?
“Yeoman, did you see someone when you came in? Someone pink?”
“Don’t try to distract me. You were hired aboard this ship to perform a simple task. Manage the uniforms for the crew. I’m both insulted and disappointed that on our first day of travel you would make a mockery of your department.”
“I’m not making a mockery of anything.”
“And the condition of this ward is appalling.” She pointed at the piles of uniforms, her pointy blue fingernail jabbing at the air. “Get these uniforms off the floor and back into that closet. I’m going to have to declare this ward off limits until you are back to ship standard. And if anybody—anybody!—finds out about this, you are going to be held personally accountable. I know the space academy trained you better than this.”
I tried to remember what information I’d put on the application that I’d uploaded into the ship’s database when I first learned the original uniform lieutenant had broken her leg and wouldn’t be able to make the moon trek, but I couldn’t. Everything about me being on this ship was the culmination of a carefully thought out plan. The events of the day were far too random to fit neatly into my expected organization.
The press surrounding Moon Unit 5 had stressed how the ship would run like clockwork. That the crew had been trained to make the trip to Ganymede, the largest of the moons that orbited Jupiter, and back in seven days. Ganymede had once been covered in ice, but a team of renegade meteorologists determined to regulate the weather had found a way to harness the sun’s heat and not only melt the ice, but establish a protective gaseous layer of oxygen around the moon, making it one of the galaxy’s most desirable destinations.
The ship’s publicity department had gone out of their way to overcome the criticism that had lingered after the trouble with the first four Moon Units. The corporation had been out of service for the past ten years, and nobody had expected them to start running again. And here we were less than twenty-four hours into our journey and I’d found a body, been charged with a wardrobe infraction, and discovered a stowaway.
It was a darn good thing I’d memorized the Book of Protocols.
“The BOP makes allowances for uniform modification based on extreme changes in temperature and emergency situations. I admit that I did not seek out approval first, but while assisting both ship security and the medical staff with the discovery and movement of a dead body here in my ward, my uniform tore. I modified the garment before it became more damaged and plan to repair it when my shift ends. I take full responsibility for my decision.”
Yeoman D’Nar’s eyes flashed. She seemed angrier about my very plausible (and true!) explanation than she’d been over the discovery of the infraction in the first place.
“Where are your sleeves?”
I pointed to the floor under the bench.
She crossed the room and picked up the fabric, studied the seams where I’d torn them from the body of my garment, and then crumbled them into a wad and set the ball of fabric on top of my cabinet. “I expect that uniform to be in pristine condition when you report for duty tomorrow. You are to go directly from your shift to your quarters and not leave for the rest of the night. That is non-negotiable. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Yeoman. I understand completely.” I understood that she had just given me an acceptable reason not to go to the medical ward when my shift was over. Inside I smiled. To her, I forced my face into a serious expression to match her reprimand.
“Good. Now get this ward back up to standard and notify me when you’re done.” She spun on the heel of her gravity boots and left.
As soon as the doors swooshed shut behind her, I closed the closet door and faced Pika. She was still grinning. “You’re not supposed to be on the ship. You’re going to get in trouble. We’re going to have fun!”
“Who are you?”
“I told you. I’m Pika!”
“What are you?”
“I’m a Gremlon. I hitchhiked from Colony 7 to the space station and snuck on board. Where did you come from?”
There was something joyful and likable about Pika, but as soon as she said she was a Gremlon, I knew I had to be careful.
Gremlons were an alien race that mostly lived on Colony 7, not because space travel was all that hard to come by these days, but because their overwhelming sense of trickery was more important to them than loyalties. The Gremlon usually found employment in the entertainment industries. They were colorful and wild and exuberant. They were tons of fun to be around, and the more successful of them had found ways to parlay their wild side into performances that people paid to see. But because they had no sense of how far was too far, they often ended up in trouble. More than half of the prisoners in the Plunian jail system were Gremlons. Colony 7 was the one place where their trickery was the norm.
“I don’t know what you think you heard, but you probably misunderstood me. It’s been a stressful morning.”
“Yes! Because you found a dead guy in your closet and then the giant made you hot and then the doc said he wants to probe you. Space probe! Watch out! And then the mean lady with the crabby face made fun of your outfit.” Pika acted out everything she said, shifting from limp arms hanging by her sides to illustrate the dead officer to raising her arms above her head to represent Neptune, the giant. She scrunched up her face to imitate Yeoman D’Nar’s angry expression. It was like watching a one-woman show. I didn’t want to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself. In thirty seconds, she’d captured the highlights (and lowlights) of my morning.
“What are you going to do? What are you going to do? What are you going to do?” She slapped the tips of her fingers against my forearm in a blur, not hurting me but causing a slight stinging sensation.
I stepped backward and held my hands up. “I’m here as the uniform lieutenant. I’m going to do my job.”
“But you’re not you’re not you’re not,” she said.
“Why do you say everything three times?”
“Because it’s funny!” She jumped out from behind the closet door and bounced back and forth from one foot to the other, making goofy gestures with her hands.
“It won’t be funny if you make so much noise that they come in here and catch you.”
“Us.”
“You.”
“Us.”
“You. I have a cover story.”
Her face fell and the small pointy ears atop her head wilted slightly. Don’t be a fool, Sylvia, I told myself. It’s an act. But the longer she stayed sad, the more I needed to cheer her up again. “Fine. Help me get these uniforms folded and back into the closet. And here,” I said, holding out an extra small gray general crew member uniform, “put this on so you don’t stand out so much.”
Her ears perked up, and she grinned again. I had a feeling Pika’s “help” was going to be minimal.
I looked around the rest of the uniform ward. Now that the body was gone, the ward looked like I’d expected. Utilitarian-beige walls. Orange carpet. Locked emergency cabinet on the back wall next to a ten-key pad to gain access. Every ward on the Moon Unit held emergency equipment. Only first officers had the passcodes.
Pika pulled on the uniform and skipped in circles around the ward while I folded the inventory. Every once in a while, she stopped and put her hands on her hips.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Plunia.”
Plunia had been “discovered” about three hundred years ago even though we’d been in existence far longer than that. Massive overpopulation of Earth, the third planet from the sun, had led to space exploration in the solar system. Soon enough, those explorers discovered that the planets that revolved around the sun were only a fraction of what existed in the universe.
When those explorers reported back that the Plunian atmosphere was similar to theirs, earthlings started moving in. No one had anticipated the newcomers, and there’d been a war. But the realities of how vast the universe really was, and how little everyone knew about it, forced odd partnerships. Earth was still out there, somewhere closer to the sun than was comfortable to me, but entire pockets of their scientific community had established labs on other planets. Medical breakthroughs came from collaborations between Uranians and Saturnians, and everyday checkups were conducted by a full body scan created by a former airline security agent who found work on a dwarf planet.
Pika considered my response. and then resumed skipping. A few minutes later, she stopped. “What are your parents?”
“Plunian and earthling.”
She thought about that for a moment and skipped some more. Her questions were direct and seemed to come from a place of pure curiosity, and I found it easier to drop my guard and answer truthfully than try to come up with lies. I’d been so worried about accidentally letting someone learn I didn’t belong that it felt good just to be honest.
“What’s your mom do?” she asked, this time not bothering to stop skipping. I’d gotten most of the uniforms off the floor, and Pika’s path was less obstructed.
“She’s a dry ice miner.” Ever since the advent of commercial space travel, scientists had been looking for ways to make the Kuiper belt livable. Ice mines on Plunia, Pluto, Mars, and Neptune helped solve the problem because they produced oxygen. Mills that purified the ozone made formerly uninhabitable planets habitable.
“What about your dad?”
“He’s in jail.”
“On Plunia?”
“No, on Colony 13.”
Pika stopped skipping. Her eyes widened, and she looked scared. “What did he do? Uh-oh!” Before I could answer or react to her sudden change, she sprung across the room and wedged herself behind the closet door where she’d been when I first discovered her.
The doors swooshed open and Neptune entered. “Stryker,” he said.
I whipped my head back around from where Pika was hiding to face the giant security guard. “Neptune. I mean Mr. Neptune. I mean, do you have a title?”
“It’s just Neptune.
“Why isn’t it Mr. or Commander or Sargent or Admiral? Detective? The doc called you Neptune. Why?”
“Never mind the doc. He doesn’t like me.” Well, that wasn’t passive aggressive at all. “I need to ask you some follow-up questions about this morning.”
“Okay,” I said. I remained on the opposite side of my counter, with the structure acting as a protective barrier between us. Depending on the nature of Neptune’s questions, I was toast. “Fire away.”
He crossed his arms. I suspected he did that when he wanted to look more intimidating. It worked. The fabric of his shirt stretched across his massive chest. He was like a wall. Who was I kidding? If he wanted to get me from the other side of the cabinet, he probably could have reached over it and lifted me by the front of my magenta uniform. He was probably thinking that very thing, considering how his eyes were affixed on my uniform instead of my face.
Oh, crap.
I’d forgotten about my wardrobe infraction. I should have changed into a new uniform after Yeoman D’Nar left, but Pika had appeared out of nowhere and distracted me, and now I was half naked in front of the head of ship security. Perky, too.
Double crap!
“My sleeves got caught on the cabinet,” I said. “I thought it was more important to stay here with Lt. Dakkar’s body—”
“Don’t use his name.”
I hated the detached feeling of calling the deceased officer by his position, but Neptune outranked me and he’d given me a direct order.
“I thought it was more important to stay here with the body of the second nav officer than to go to my quarters to change.”
“This is the uniform ward,” he said. “You could have changed here.”
A whole lot of people were content to point out the obvious. “It’s a good thing I didn’t. You would have walked in on me naked.” Neptune’s eyes went back to my chest. “I’ll change when my shift is over.”
“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible. You need to come with me.”
“I can’t. I’m on duty. And when I’m done I have to go straight to my quarters per Yeoman D’Nar.” Neptune’s forehead scrunched in confusion. I pointed to my arms. “To repair my uniform,” I added.
“What you wear is no longer a problem. Sylvia Stryker, you’re under arrest for impersonating a crew member of Moon Unit 5.”