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Moon Unit 5 arrived at Ganymede after all.
No damage had been sustained to the ship under the Captain’s crooked direction, but the same couldn’t be said for the crew. Dakkar Teron, the second navigation officer and brother of the original uniform lieutenant, had been murdered. Two members of the engineering crew had been poisoned with noxious gas. And Neptune was still recovering from the stab wound the captain inflicted when Neptune left the repair chamber to investigate a hunch that something wasn’t right. Doc said Neptune would recover in time. Despite the way he grumbled about it, I knew he’d been just as thankful as the rest of us for the role Neptune played in protecting the ship and its passengers.
That included me. Sure, I’d figured out something wasn’t right when I looked out the porthole of the repair chamber and saw the speed at which we were moving. But Neptune had figured it out before then. He’d placed the outer seal of the repair chamber on lockdown, protected by his private log-in credentials. Even if I’d tried to open the chamber myself when I saw he was gone, I wouldn’t have been able to. He’d made sure I wouldn’t die before he went after the person who’d stabbed him and left him in the cell to die.
It was hard to be mad at him after that, but I managed. Mostly because I’d figured something else out too.
I stood by the ship’s exit, saying goodbye to passengers heading out for a day of sightseeing. Since Plunia was now gone, Moon Unit Corporation had arranged for a space taxi to transport me, and all other crew members who had lost their homes thanks to the space pirates, from Ganymede to temporary housing on Federation Council property.
I was surprised by the number of people on the ship who said goodbye to me by name. Even Yeoman D’Nar had a few kind words, despite my accusations of murder based on the fake fingernail fragment I’d found in the uniform closet. It turned out D’Nar and Dakkar Teron, the second navigational officer, had tussled in the uniform ward before the ship departed, just not the sort of tussling I’d assumed. Her attitude problem was simply a defense mechanism to hide the fact that her lover had been found dead. When she realized she’d lost a fingernail, she feared incrimination.
I waited at the exit for Neptune. We hadn’t spoken since the night he’d killed the captain. I didn’t know if he thought I was a hero or a hindrance. I didn’t know if he would have shot the captain if not for me.
He was among the last crew members to exit the ship. “Stryker,” he said.
“Neptune.”
He stood next to me with a black duffel bag over his non-injured shoulder. He hooked his thumb under the strap and hitched the bag up. “Take care.”
“That’s it? ‘take care?’ We never talked about what happened.”
“Security crew doesn’t talk about missions.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll never get a chance to work another cruise ship like this one. On paper, the only thing I’m qualified to do is farm ice, and now that Plunia is gone, the only ice farms are on Mars. I don’t want to live on Mars.”
“You got a place to stay?”
“That’s not the point.”
“I know.” He looked off in the distance, past a row of space taxis. “Do you know why I took this job?”
“The chance to show off your sparkling personality?”
He smiled. “I made a mistake. Back when I had an opportunity to teach at the space academy. I made a mistake and it cost me my credentials, my title, and my reputation. I cut myself off from everybody I knew. A friend I’d lost touch with contacted me about this job. We were at the academy together. It wasn’t what I would have chosen if I’d had a choice. I was a soldier. Moon Unit Cruise Ship Security?” He shook his head to show how he felt about the choice. “Gotta set aside a lot of ego to go from protecting federation ships to babysitting a vacation vessel.”
“You wanted a paycheck.”
“I wanted to feel important again.” Neptune looked away from the crowds and directly at me. “Thaddeus Swift was that friend.”
There was no quick retort for that. I’d been so busy thinking about the losses I’d experienced while on Moon Unit 5 that I hadn’t considered how Neptune’s actions affected himself. He’d shot and killed the man who had pulled him out of his self-imposed exile. We had both made sacrifices. We would forever be changed by what happened. I’d dealt with loss when my dad had been arrested. I suspected this wasn’t a first for Neptune either.
“Stryker, take it from me. It’s not easy to lose the life you know. It’s tempting to self-destruct. Some people withdraw. Others seek familiarity.” Neptune’s honesty was both surprising and welcome, but he wasn’t getting off that easily.
“There never was a problem with the ship’s hull, was there?”
“Captain Swift told me Engineering reported a crack in the exterior to him prior to departure. I ran a pre-flight inspection and didn’t see any signs of maintenance or repair. Raised a red flag. I told him the problem was fixed, but I was on alert.”
“You used me,” I said. He raised one eyebrow into a sharp peak. “You suspected something was wrong as far back as the day you arrested me for being on the ship. You suspected Captain Swift and you used me as bait to get your proof.”
“It’s security’s job to take risks to protect everybody else. You should know that. You attended the space academy.”
“My dad got arrested and I had to drop out to help my mom on the ice farm. I thought you knew all that.”
“My tenure at the academy ended before your dad was arrested. I assumed you graduated like your CV said.”
I’d said a lot of stuff to Neptune since boarding the ship. I’d lobbied accusations at him. Insults. Sarcasm. Lies. And after all that, after having lived through what I had, knowing how unclear my future was, I felt I had little to lose from plain old candor.
“After I returned to Plunia, I hacked into the academy computer and downloaded the curriculum. I bought class lessons and used materials and taught myself as best as I could. If you checked up on me, you would have known my CV was bogus.”
“Your credentials were bogus, but your knowledge was real. Nobody would deny that.” We both turned to watch the crew of Martians deboard the ship. “Not even them.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
Neptune raised his eyebrow again.
“What happened at the academy to make you leave?”
“I got involved with a student.” He was silent for a beat. “Her name was Daila Teron.”
Oh.
“You saw her name on the crew manifest. You expected her to be on the ship instead of me. Is that why you came to the uniform ward before my Code Blue was acknowledged?”
He nodded. “I wanted to establish some guidelines so there wouldn’t be any conflicts of interest on the moon trek.”
Neither one of us mentioned how poorly that had turned out for him.
I looked down at my magenta uniform. It was the same one I’d worn when I’d arrived. Over the past six days, it had been torn apart and put back together. It was the uniform equivalent to my life. And the longer Neptune let my statement go unanswered, the more I got the picture. “You knew from the first day you saw me on the ship that I didn’t belong.”
“Your presence on the ship raised some questions, yes.”
I smiled to myself. “Is she coming to pick you up?”
“No. Daila and I were short-lived.”
“But your password—”
“The last time I got involved with a subordinate, it cost me my job and my reputation. Using her name as a password was a reminder not to let that happen again.”
“Is that a habit of yours? Getting involved with subordinates?”
“No.”
The word hung in the air. With it came questions, answers, and unexpected emotions. Whatever I wanted to say was silenced by the sight of Vaan waving at me from the end of the docking station.
While Vaan and Neptune had maintained cordiality for the duration of the moon trek, there’d been no love lost between them. Vaan had initiated proceedings to strip Neptune of his rank and title. Nobody had told Vaan that Neptune had lost his credentials long before the moon trek had started. Including me. When the council came back with the ruling that no action would be taken against Neptune, Vaan’s reputation took a hit. Put simply: the two men would never be buddies.
Pika skipped out from the ship. She held a large purple oxygen pop in one hand, and traces of the violet hue had smeared around the outside of her mouth in a ring. She skidded to a halt when she saw me talking to Neptune and tried to hide the oxygen pop behind her back. “Am I in trouble?” she asked Neptune.
“No. Just”—Neptune looked slightly embarrassed—“wait for me over there.”
“Okay,” She looked guilty for a moment, and then gave me one of her fifty-tooth smiles. “I’m glad you didn’t die!” She hugged me, and then, in a flash, was at the end of the platform with the other departing passengers.
“What’s going to happen to Pika?” I asked.
“She’ll be fine.”
“But she was a stowaway. I think the ship was her home.”
“She lives with me.”
“You—and Pika?” The thought surprised me. Pika had shown an odd loyalty to Neptune even though she was afraid of him.
“She left Colony 7 and bummed around the galaxy. I found her living on my property a couple of months ago. Didn’t see the point in scaring her away.”
“You let her on the ship.”
“She followed me to the space station and snuck on board. That made her my responsibility.”
“Security protocol demands that Federation Council be notified of stowaways aboard a passenger-bearing vessel. Based on Dakkar Teron’s death, they would have instructed you to make a stop at the nearest space station and turn her over to their custody.”
“Pika wasn’t a threat.”
“You wanted to take care of her.”
“I didn’t want to leave her to fend for herself.”
“You’re not so tough after all.” I grinned at him.
Neptune’s face softened. He looked out at the sky. It was lavender, a shade not too far from my part Plunian flesh. The sun, in contrast, was a small yellow circle over five hundred million miles away. As I absorbed the beauty of the galaxy, I had a hard time believing in the threat of space pirates and fighting amongst planets, of dry ice shortages and intergalactic wars.
“What’s next for you?” Neptune asked.
“I’m going to live at the space academy and get my degree.”
“There’s a position for you here if you want it.”
I turned to him, surprised. “Where? The moon trek is over.”
“There will be more moon treks.”
“You know the only way I got onto this ship was because I lied about my credentials.”
“You’re more qualified than any candidates I ever met. The corporation is launching Moon Unit 6 soon. Bigger ship, longer trek, more demanding passengers.”
Before I had a chance to answer, he continued. “Think about it before you turn it down,” Neptune said. He didn’t look at me. “We make a good team, Stryker. Moon Unit Corporation would be lucky to have you.”
I studied Neptune’s profile: his intimidating stance, his arched eyebrows, his inherent toughness. And then I turned and looked the other direction at Vaan. Member of Federation Council. Part of the law and order of the galaxy. Plunian, like me. The men represented two different avenues: one to my future and one to my past. The decision was easier than expected.
“What’s the range on that micro-transmitter in my security uniform?”
Neptune looked from the sky to me. “Why do you ask?”
“You’ll need a way to reach me when Moon Unit 6 is ready to go.”
He grinned. “See you soon, Stryker.”