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Vaan walked past Neptune and left. I put my hands on my hips. “What do you want?”
“I want a debriefing.”
“Not now. I want to get to that tour of the bridge that Captain Swift offered.”
“You’re not going to the bridge. Debriefing. Now.”
“I thought you could hear everything I said.”
“I can.” He didn’t look particularly thrilled.
“Then why do you need a debriefing?”
“Follow me.” He turned around and left.
I looked at my surroundings. This ward was where I was supposed to be. In a small corner of the ship, away from the passengers and the security team. In charge of folding uniforms and storing them neatly between requisitions. I’d taken a big risk to get on board Moon Unit 5 in the first place, but that was because I knew I was qualified to do the job vacated by the original accident-prone uniform lieutenant as soon as I saw it listed on the ship manifest. It was a low-ranking position. It was perfect for me because I could fly under the radar.
Nobody should have had reason to question if I was qualified or how I’d passed the physical exam. Every single person on this ship had been given two uniforms before departure. The only time I’d be called on was in case of uniform infraction or promotion. The crimes on the ship had made my position far more visible than I liked.
Neptune came back in. “Stryker. Now.”
I may have cursed at him under my breath.
I had to jog since his legs were so much longer than mine, but there was no way I was going to tell him I couldn’t keep up. We went into the elevator. He swiped his card and the elevator started its descent.
“You’re not putting me back in the holding cell, are you?” I asked.
“We’re going to engineering.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know what you know about what happened in there.”
“You do know. You just heard me dictate it to Vaan.”
“Commander Marshall’s line of questioning was intended to elicit answers to a different set of questions than the ones I’m asking. And while you’re working for me, you will address him—and every other ranking officer on board this ship—with the proper title.”
“I can’t start calling Vaan ‘Commander Marshall.’”
“Unless you have evidence to strip him of his rank, then you’ll show him the appropriate respect.”
I almost wished I did, but I didn’t. Vaan had achieved his position the hard way: through high grades and networking. Unlike the other twenty-three members of Federation Council, Vaan hadn’t been born into a legacy position. A Federation Council member had died, and there had been no family line to take over. It was the kind of thing that happened only in the rarest of situations, and Vaan had been the right candidate at the right time. He was the most honest person I’d ever met. I’d tried really, really hard to hate him after he took the position, but I couldn’t. That made it ten times harder to get over him. Eventually, I did.
But that didn’t make us friends.
Neptune didn’t ask any more questions. I sulked on my side of the elevator for the duration of our trip to engineering. Neptune acted like he always did: eyes staring forward, arms crossed, biceps flexed, mouth turned down. His lack of personality was taking all the fun out of finally having achieved a position on a security staff. I widened my own stance so my gravity boots were shoulder-width apart and crossed my arms over my chest.
“What are you doing?”
“Practicing. Isn’t this the official security team pose?”
Neptune was not amused. I dropped my arms to my waist and stood in a more ladylike position. When the elevator stopped on the engineering floor, I walked out and headed toward the computer room where the gas leak had taken place. I reached the entrance and turned around. Neptune was still by the elevator.
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
“No.”
“Then what exactly do you want me to do?”
“Take your time. Walk around. There is no threat. I want you to absorb the scene and tell me if anything strikes you as off.”
“The whole thing is off. There isn’t any crew at the computer. Shouldn’t somebody be making sure the ship is running in ship-shape shape?”
“I’ll wait here.”
I turned my back on Neptune and entered the room. As soon as I stepped onto the industrial carpeting, a chill ran over me from the inside out.
Members of the crew on the ground.
Lights flashing overhead.
Alarms sounding.
Gas leaking into the room right before I saw the hose.
I wondered, briefly, if anybody else would have felt the difference in the air quality? Or if I would have noticed it as quickly as I had if I’d been wearing my helmet?
Unless...was it possible that my helmet wasn’t cracked? And that the gas leak from engineering had seeped up into the uniform ward? Where I’d found a body?
I closed my eyes and pictured the ship’s schematics. The orientation packet had included a 3D rendering of Moon Unit 5, a diagram that illustrated the magnitude of the ship. The bells and whistles available to the paying passengers on their big adventure to the moons of Jupiter were on the main level, along with the bridge, Medi-bay, The Space Bar, and Ion 54, the after-hours dance club. There were other passenger-targeted entertainment options, but I wasn’t concerned with them at the moment. Because when I pictured the ship, I pictured the only portion where it came together in three layers: The Space Bar, the uniform ward, and engineering. Stacked on top of each other like a sandwich.
I approached the wall where I’d found the carbon monoxide leak. It wasn’t hard to remember where I’d been when I inhaled the toxic gas. I knelt on the carpet and ran my fingers along the wall, feeling for an opening. I found it between two acoustic panels. I fed my fingers into the seam and wriggled them around. The tips of my fingers connected with the end of the tube, now recessed into the wall. I couldn’t get hold of it, but I could confirm one thing. The hose was pointed down.
It had been fed into engineering from one of the floors above us. Anybody on the crew would have known where engineering was. The leak wasn’t random. It had been a deliberate act to incapacitate the crew that kept the ship safely running.
I stood up and glanced around the room for anything else before leaving to give Neptune my theory. I felt a sense of unease like I was still missing something but couldn’t place what. The seizure-inducing red light had been reset, and the room looked normal. Colorful buttons and switches flickered on the control panel, and the orange carpet appeared to have recently been vacuumed.
The orange carpet. No, that’s not right. When did the carpet down here become orange? It was gray. I remember it being gray. The carpet was gray, and the engineering officers who had been passed out on it were in white shirts.
White. Not red.
Engineering officers wore red shirts. Just like the navigation officer. Their assigned positions could be discerned from details like the trim on their sleeves and the color of their collar. Engineering uniforms were bare bones. All about utility. The engineering officers had to be prepared for more physical tasks than other officers on the ship. It was one of the reasons their quarters were on this sublevel and not with the rest of the crew. I’d heard a rumor that Purser Frank had expressed concerns to the captain that passengers might be troubled by the appearance of men dressed in such non-glamorous garb and Captain Swift agreed. It had cost Moon Unit 5 an extra two weeks in design revisions, but the work had been done.
So why had I seen men in white uniforms on the ground?
I looked up at the ceiling. The red lights had bathed the whole room in a surreal glow. Red shirts, viewed under red light, would appear white or close to it. The orange carpet was close enough to red that the men would have all but blended in with it. Which meant I didn’t know what color the men were wearing: red like engineering, or gray like flex crew.
Or both. Which meant one of the victims I’d saved might have been faking.