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I finished my shift and headed to my quarters. It was easy enough to keep my head down and avoid talking to the other crew members. Between the assault in the hallway and any rumors that may have sprung up about me after the session in Council Chambers, I wasn’t the most popular person on the ship. There’d been a time when I’d hoped to make friends on Moon Unit 5. Those days were over.
When I reached my quarters, I slipped out of D’Nar’s uniform and into a robe. The only regulation uniform I had left was the one I’d torn the sleeves from on day one, and until I could retrieve a fresh uniform from the ward, I was going to have to repair this one or risk another infraction. I didn’t know yet if Yeoman D’Nar had bigger reasons for riding my case since I arrived on the ship than just being mean, but until I knew if she was the murderer, I wasn’t going to give her an excuse to come after me. And if I did find out she was responsible for the death of Lt. Dakkar, my lack of regulation uniforms would be the least of my problems.
I got my sewing kit out of the bottom of my closet and sat at the table to work on the repairs. It would have been both faster and easier to do in the ship’s workroom, but that would require me to leave my quarters, and I wasn’t intent on making any public appearances.
As I lined up the edges of the fabric and started to sew, I thought over Vaan’s words. If he’d been thinking clearly, he never would have admitted to having been on this ship before we departed. That meant someone expected trouble and applied for a representative early. Had Vaan volunteered for the assignment because of me? Hardly likely. Nobody on this ship knew I’d be here. So was it a coincidence? As a woman of science and reason, I hated coincidence. I liked when things fit into a pattern and made sense.
If Vaan wasn’t here because of me, and his presence wasn’t a coincidence, then I could see only two other options. Number one: someone had banished him to the ship in the hopes of getting rid of him. Number two: Vaan had arranged to be on the ship to commit murder.
Which meant I now had two solid suspects.
As my fingers nimbly handled the repairs to my uniform, it occurred to me that there would be a value to solving the murder on my own. In a conclusion that possibly only I would reach, it seemed that removing Moon Unit 5 from danger and saving a ship filled with vacationers who might tell their friends and even return for second and third trips would be worth, say, the price of my freedom. I had never heard of anyone successfully removing the chip from their spinal cords once implanted, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be done. And if I was enough of a hero to save the luxury moon cruiser from bad press, then maybe I could even convince the owners to keep me on board.
Who was I kidding? There was no future for me with the Moon Unit corporation.
I finished repairing the second sleeve and stood up to change. I untied my robe and let it fall to the floor and then stepped into my uniform and bent down to lift it up. The doors opened.
“I hate those doors!” I said. I whirled around and found Neptune and Pika in the hallway. “A minute, please?”
Neptune grabbed Pika’s skinny arm and pulled her a step backward. The doors shut.
After today, I was never going to take my uniform off again! I finished dressing and opened the doors. Neptune and Pika still stood there. “My old uniform is in the uniform ward. You can get it there.”
“That’s not why we’re here.”
“Then what do you want?”
His eyes hovered some distance above my head. “Show her,” he said.
Pika raised her eyes up to meet mine. She moved her hands from behind her and held out Cat.
I turned around and scanned my room. Because Cat’s motion detectors were triggered by light, he occasionally walked around and fell off things. Sometimes I’d leave him on the bed and find him on the floor across the room. It added to the feeling that he was a live pet. But today, I’d been so distracted by Vaan and D’Nar that I hadn’t looked for him when I got back after my shift.
“Where did you find him?” I asked. I reached out to take him and Pika pulled him away.
“Tell her,” Neptune said.
Pika looked embarrassed. “I took him.”
“Tell her everything.”
“I took him, and I broke him.” The pale pink alien girl held Cat toward me butt-first. The power panel above his right hind leg was open, and two wires jutted out. “I’m sorry.”
I raised both eyebrows. Gremlons weren’t known for their ability to feel sorrow or remorse. Pika’s apology had been coerced and, judging from the way she quivered while she stood next to Neptune, I had a pretty good idea of who had been the coercer.
“It’s okay. I built him, so I can fix him. Come on in and sit down.” I looked up at Neptune’s face. “I’ll take care of her from here, thanks.”
“We need to talk.”
“Fine. Talk.”
Neptune put his hand on my forearm and pulled me into the hallway. I looked up and down the hall to see if anyone had seen him manhandle me, but no luck.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I said, but no sound came out of my mouth. “Great. This again. Where can I get one of those sound-cancelling thingies? You know, so I can sneak up on you and catch you naked.”
Neptune glared at me like he’d heard what I’d said. He pointed to me, and then to him, and then at a door across the hall. I rolled my eyes but followed him inside. As soon as the doors swished shut behind us, he spoke.
“I need a favor.”
“You have a lot of nerve. You think I’m going to do a favor for you?”
“I’m going on a mission. Solo. I need you to keep an eye on Pika.”
“Why? Why are you so protective of her? She could be behind everything. She’s a stowaway.”
“She’s not a threat.”
“How do you know that?”
“Can I count on you to look out for her?”
“Pika got onto this ship without anybody knowing and she’s kept herself out of trouble better than I have. I’m pretty sure she can take care of herself until you get back.”
Neptune’s dark eyes bored into me. I stared back. Twenty-four hours ago, I might have told him what I’d figured out about Vaan and Yeoman D’Nar and everybody else, but not now. Too much had changed since them and Neptune was partly to blame.
I crossed my arms. “Pika knows where to find me if she needs anything.”
“Good.” He glanced down at my chest again.
“Is there a problem with my uniform?” I asked.
“No.”
“Okay then. If you want to keep talking, look at my face.”
“We’re done.”
“You can say that again.”
I turned around and held my hand up. The doors didn’t open. I waved my hand back and forth over the flat red sensor mounted to the wall, but nothing happened. Neptune raised his open palm and the doors parted.
“Showoff,” I said. I stormed across the hall. He didn’t follow.
When I reentered my quarters, I found Cat sitting on the table. Pika was asleep in my bed. I changed into a silver jumpsuit made for lounging in the off hours. Like my blankets, the fabric adjusted to temperature but was also shot through with color-morphing threads. I set the dial to a soothing shade of amber and pulled my tools out of the closet.
My motivation for repairing Cat wasn’t entirely because I wanted a distraction. When I’d built him, I’d inserted a small recording device. It only retained twenty-four hours of content because I hadn’t seen a need for more, but now that I knew Cat had been with Pika, and for a portion of that time, Pika had been with Neptune, I wanted to know what they’d said.
Working with tools on a problem such as this had become second nature before I’d turned ten. My dad had been the first to notice how I’d take things apart and rebuild them. At first, it was a game to see if I could. Once I mastered the reassembly portion, I’d learned how to make things better. Soon the other kids on Plunia showed up with their broken toys and gadgets, and after that, it was their parents. I quickly learned my skills weren’t common, and the families who treated my parents poorly quickly learned my repair work came with a price. I’d hidden the money from my parents because I didn’t think they’d let me keep it. The longer I went without spending it, the more I knew once I did, it would be for something important.
I’d spent it all on a doctor willing to fake the results of my physical so I could work on Moon Unit 5. Look where that had gotten me.
I pulled on my magnification goggles and peered into the exposed power panel on Cat’s tush. The problem was easily identifiable. The exposed wires needed to be looped around the recording circuits and then reconnected to the grounding screw. Piece of cake. I picked up the smallest of my tools and set to work. A few minutes later, Cat was back up on all fours. I closed the power panel on his rump and pressed the playback button on his recorder.
“There’s a problem with the hull.”
“Engineering fixed that on day one. I conducted an inspection myself.” I would have recognized the voices even if I hadn’t already overheard the beginning of the conversation. Neptune and Captain Swift. This was the conversation they’d started before leaving me alone in the uniform ward. Pika must have been there the whole time.
“I didn’t do it!” Pika said, sitting up in my bed. She looked around the room like she expected to get into trouble.
“It’s fine, Pika. Neptune isn’t here.”
“But I heard him!” She pulled the covers up to her chin.
“You heard Cat.” I pointed to the robot animal on the table. “Were you in the uniform ward today? Somewhere near Neptune and Captain Swift?”
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t answer.
“I already know you were. Cat recorded their conversation. You must have been close to them if Cat picked up their conversation.”
“I lost him,” she said. “We were playing in a room with screens and then the giant and the captain came in. I got scared and hid under the table, and when they weren’t looking, I left.”
“You didn’t hear what they said?”
“No. Some. Yes.”
I set Cat on the table and moved to the foot of the bed. “Pika, why are you so scared of Neptune? Did he hurt you?”
“No! But he told me if I talked about him, he’d drop me off at the nearest space station.”
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one on the ship that Neptune tried to control with his threats. Except now, I was pretty sure I had dirt that I could leverage against him.
“Listen to me,” I said. I reached up and ran my fingertips over the base of my skull. “I’ll take care of Neptune. He won’t do to you what he did to me.”
“He saved your life,” she said.
“Is that what he told you? He didn’t save my life, he marked me for life. He inserted a microchip into me. Now anywhere I go, I’ll be identified as an intergalactic law-breaker. I can’t hide. Whenever I pass a security checkpoint, the chip will trigger an alarm. Nobody will listen to anything I say. You don’t get chipped by accident.”
She moved her head from side to side, her eyes never leaving my face. “The giant shot you with an ice pellet. I saw him take the chips out of Doc Edison’s gun and replace them with dry ice. He knew there was a chance somebody in that room would demand you got chipped but he didn’t know who it would be. When Doc resisted, the ice pellet started to melt. If anybody had seen water drip from the muzzle of the chip gun, they would have known what the giant did. And if anybody else acted when Doc hesitated, you would have been chipped.”
“Neptune didn’t chip me?”
“No.”
I touched the back of my neck again and felt the wound. “I don’t get it. Neptune is security. He should be the one to follow orders. Why would he go against them?”
“He was trying to protect you.”
“Why?”
“Because he likes you.”