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Neptune walked to the locked cabinet mounted on the wall. He entered a ten-character code into the keypad and the cabinet opened. Inside were uniforms unlike any I’d seen on the ship. Thick, flame-retardant fabric with accordion-like pleats at the shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees. Orange reflectors were evenly spaced at ten-centimeter intervals. It was big enough to accommodate a separate uniform underneath.
Neptune pulled one from the top of the pile and handed it to me. “Put this on. It’s insulated against temperature and pressure changes. I’ll supply you with fresh oxygen canisters after you’re suited up.”
“Okay.” I took the uniform from him and undid the zip closure. I put one foot into it. Neptune tapped my shoulder. When I turned around, he was holding the black security staff uniform I’d planned to retrieve. “Wear this underneath.”
“Why?”
“I’ll be able to hear you through the transmitter.” He handed me the uniform. “I’ll wait out front.”
“Neptune.” He stopped just before reaching the door. “No matter what happens tonight, you’ll still have a problem. Someone wants to destroy Moon Unit 5, and they’ve already killed once to protect their identity. Focus on the murder and you’ll catch them.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It was the secondary crime. It was sloppy. I’ve been thinking about what I saw when I found the body, and I’ve come up with a list of suspects.”
“We’ll talk about this later.”
“There might not be a later.”
“You’re coming back, Stryker.” He raised his hand and the doors opened.
I needed to make him listen to me. I knew more than he did: about D’Nar’s nail polish and Pika hiding in the uniform room and Vaan and my history. I knew Doc Edison had tanks of gas in Medi-Bay and could easily have smuggled carbon monoxide onto the ship. I knew Purser Frank lied about nitrous oxide at Happy Hour, Uma Tolst had access to the reserve of gas tanks as well, and Martians had baited me before I attacked them.
Neptune had to listen to me. I had to make him. I said the one thing I’d been holding back. “I know you were stripped of your title.”
He froze. He turned his head slightly to the side. “Get into uniform. We’ll finish this conversation in the repair chamber. I’ll wait outside.” He turned away from me and left.
I changed from my temperature-adjusting jumpsuit into my security uniform and pulled on the white space suit over it. The sleeves, hem, and neck of the suit had metal grooves that would lock onto my boots, gloves and bubble helmet. I secured my boots to the hems of the suit, picked up my bubble helmet and my gloves, and left the safety of the uniform ward behind me.
We walked in silence. It wasn’t unlike the other times I’d walked with Neptune through the ship, except this time I wouldn’t have minded some innocuous chatter. We took the elevator down to the security level where I’d spent time in the holding cell before proving myself a hero. I guess there were some things I was doomed to repeat.
The pressurized entrance to the repair chamber was on the wall behind the desk where Neptune had sat. He activated a number of buttons on the control panel and then flipped a large red switch on the wall. The dial behind him spun slowly. He grabbed one of the spokes, leveraged his body weight against the concrete wall with one of his boots, and pulled. For all the times I’d seen him flex his sizeable biceps, this time he did it out of necessity and not intimidation. He opened the round door and tipped his head.
“Get inside. We’ll talk once we’re secure.”
I stepped into the chamber. Unlike the dinginess of the rest of the security level, the repair chamber was bright white, shiny, and pristine. A channel of air jetted past me into a vacuum, designed to keep anything from settling inside.
Neptune pulled the massive door shut behind him. He opened a flat, black computer and plugged a few attachments into the ports.
“Shouldn’t you use that giant computer on the other side of the door?”
“Can’t. This door blocks all signals. The only way for me to maintain a connection to the ship is through a radio signal.”
“How exactly did you expect to do this by yourself?”
He looked at me for a moment, and then back at the screen. Apparently, I wouldn’t be getting an answer.
“We’re approaching a suspected wormhole. Normally we’d blast through it, but if the ship is damaged, the hull will deteriorate when we go into hyperdrive.”
“Can’t we wait until we reach Ganymede and inspect it there?”
“Depending on the damage, that might be too late.”
“What are the risks of passing a wormhole at our current speed?”
“We could pick up an unwanted passenger. Or a contaminant. Or come to the attention of space pirates. The risks are numerous and unpredictable. The only thing we do know is that we need to maintain our current speed to examine the fracture in the ship and seal it. Once we’re done, we have to resume our speed or risk attack. Are you clear on your assignment?”
I nodded. “How long do we have before we arrive at the coordinates?”
He looked at his watch. “Seventeen minutes.”
“How much time will I have before we come out of that pocket of space?”
“Five minutes.”
What neither of us said: in twenty-two minutes, we’d know if I was successful or if I—and subsequently the ship—were on our way to becoming space dust.
I secured my helmet onto the thick white uniform and then pulled on my gloves. Neptune buckled each of them. He removed two oxygen canisters from a black bag by his feet. One can lasted twelve hours. Two cans were more than enough. He pulled the pin in both and took a deep inhale from each of them. He was testing to make sure they hadn’t been tampered with like the ones used to poison the engineering crew.
He nodded at me. I turned around and he secured each to the chambers that were molded into the uniform for that very purpose. He fed the hose into the opening in my helmet and tapped me on the shoulder. I took a deep breath of pure, cold oxygen. It reminded me of Plunia.
Tears formed in my eyes and I blinked several times to make them go away.
“You’re coming back,” Neptune said. No promises to rescue me if something went wrong. No proclamations of feelings left unsaid. Just three words: you’re coming back. Said with such conviction that I believed him.
“Keep an eye on Vaan,” I said. My voice was muffled by the helmet, but I could tell by Neptune’s expression that he’d heard me clearly.
“He’s Federation Council.”
“He was on the ship before any of us. He’s the youngest member of Federation Council and his loyalties could have been compromised.”
Neptune’s expression changed. “Who else do you suspect?”
“Yeoman D’Nar. Earlier today when I was pressing the uniforms, I found one with a melted pearly blue blob on it. I think it was one of her fingernails from the first day.”
Talking about something other than my possibly impending death helped with my nerves.
“Doc Edison knows everything we know. He knew about my physical being faked and he looked the other way. That’s a direct violation of the code of senior officers of a spaceship. He knew how the carbon monoxide would affect the crew, and he’d know how to tamper with one of my canisters. He was quick to get the second navigation officer out of my ward the day I found the body and he instructed me to report to him for a physical after my shift. If it hadn’t been for my uniform infraction, he would have had a chance to poison me as well. Nobody would have questioned him if his report linked my death to the officer in the uniform ward.”
“Who else?”
“Pika.”
“What about Pika?”
“She’s a Gremlon. They’re notorious pranksters. I don’t think she’s capable of murder and sabotage, but she was in the uniform ward, and she told me she’s a stowaway.”
“It’s not Pika.”
“How do you know?”
“Pika is my—it’s not Pika. You said five. Who else?”
“Well, if you’re sure it’s not Pika, then there’s you.”
“Me?” He seemed genuinely surprised, but not mad.
“When I look past your overwhelming charm,” I paused to make my point, “I’m left with the fact that you showed up in the uniform ward even though my Code Blue hadn’t been acknowledged. You had access to every part of the ship because of your security clearance. It would have been within your job description to take the second nav officer out if you thought he was a threat to Moon Unit 5.”
“Not bad. Anything else?”
“You weren’t in uniform, so you might have been trying to go unnoticed. And,” I paused. “you don’t have the proper credentials to hold the position you have on this ship.”
“When you put it like that, I do sound guilty.”
Lights on the computer panel activated. A timer was displayed. It was set for three hundred seconds.
“I better get into position,” I said.
I climbed the rungs on the side of the repair chamber. A long, thick cord hung on the wall by the pressure-sealed escape hatch. I grabbed the end and hooked it onto the loop on the back of my uniform. It was small consolation to know that if something went wrong while I was outside the ship, my body could (possibly) be retrieved.
Nothing prepares you for the moment when you look out the window of a spaceship at the vastness of the universe and realize how inconsequential you are. As I waited for signs that the ship was slowing down, looking for the never-ending blackness to become recognizable as the nebulas, carbon particles, and shimmery space dust that I had previously only seen from the telescope at the space academy, I knew something was wrong.
We weren’t slowing down. There would be no pocket of time and/or space for me to identify the problem with the hull and repair it—no five minutes. Not even five seconds. This whole mission was a trap.
I glanced down at the bottom of the chamber for Neptune. The heavy metal door was open and Neptune was gone.