Pax Novis

by Erica Cameron

  Investigations are ongoing, but leaked video feeds from security stations and planetary defense networks have confirmed the truth. In apparent violation of the terms of warfare established in the peace summit of 3785, Pavonis S-class warships have destroyed most of the capital city on Oweba, the fourth planet in the Arae System. Hundreds died in the initial attack, and thousands have died since as medical personnel are limited and most of their supplies have been destroyed. From the timing of this attack, it can be hypothesized that the Pavonis Coalition ordered this as retaliation for the destruction of their research facility on Surka, a moon on the outer edges of their home system.

  Names of those confirmed deceased have been listed below.

  It sounds like Ladadhi. She shouldn’t have looked up those vids after meeting Riston three cycles ago, but curiosity had eaten at her. There had only been around six weeks between learning about Riston’s home city and Cira looking it up. Once she started digging for details, she hadn’t stopped. She hated to think of herself as an expert on the incident, but she practically was. So much about the description of what happened on Oweba sounded like the reports immediately following the attack on Ladadhi, the attack that had left Riston an orphan. Now, another attack, too much the same, had killed Jaelena.

  When Adrienn spoke again, zir voice was rough and thick. “She wouldn’t have been on Oweba if we hadn’t left her there. Now, she’s dead. What good are we doing exactly?”

  “You keep track of where we leave them.” Cira said it slowly, eyes still on the scrolling list of confirmed dead. “Do you watch where they came from, too?”

  “What? I— No. Not in detail.” Adrienn tapped out a rhythm on the desk. “What’d I miss?”

  Cira tapped her wrist to the panel on the desk, claiming control of the wall screen. The holo-controls expanded from her cuffs, and she quickly accessed her personal files to bring up a report she’d flagged and saved a cycle ago. She’d set up alerts in the system for a few dozen names and places, watching for moments exactly like this one.

  “Jaelena’s father was arrested and executed for murder. He remarried, but he never stopped drinking. One night, he came home after too many drinks and a bad night at the gologao tables, and he killed his wife and her sister who’d been staying with them. The wife was pregnant at the time.”

  Adrienn sat as still as a defendant waiting for a verdict. Ze barely breathed.

  “If Jaelena had been there, she would’ve died. And it would’ve happened a cycle ago in a place she hated, where she was doing work she loathed, while her father stole all her credits and drank them.” Cira tapped her wrist to the desk again. Relinquishing control of the screen automatically closed her files and deactivated her holo-controls. “So, do I wonder if it’s worth the risk? Sometimes, sure. Mostly on the rare days we almost get caught. What I never question is if we’re doing the kids we help any good. That is not a fact I have ever doubted.”

  “All right. Fair. You’ve made your point.” Adrienn exhaled heavily and rubbed zir hand over the shaved side of zir head. “Then I guess I should ask if all’s well with our ducklings.”

  “They’re all safely tucked away, but Riston…” Cira shook her head. “There was a look on zir face I didn’t like when ze came back on board. And ze was a lot later than the others—almost too late. I was starting to worry that either something had happened or that ze’d decided not to come back. I won’t get to talk to zem in person until tomorrow, though. At the earliest.”

  “Station days,” ze said. Like it was an answer in and of itself.

  Which it was. “Station days. I’m off bridge duty, but I have training soon, reports to catch up on, and a shift in the kitchen during third watch.”

  “And who knows how the next few days will go.”

  “With how nervous Cap was about the state of Nea-gi?” She absently rubbed at her right shoulder, just above the connection point between flesh and machine. “I’m trying real hard not to expect the worst. Right now, though, it seems more prudent than paranoid to keep the sensors fine-tuned and the security team on alert.”

  “Great.” Then ze lifted zir chin toward her arm. “Problems?”

  “No more than usual.” The latest technology may have given her better-than-human motor control in her hand and several useful but unnecessary hidden features, but nothing had yet been able to fix the fact that metal and muscle simply weren’t designed to work together like this. Some of the smaller organizations for prostheses users were beginning to push for more radical integration of machinery to solve this problem, but despite how comfortable she was with her enhanced arm, Cira had no desire to have a collarbone, shoulder blade, and rib cage made of the same metal composite as the bones in her cybernetic limb.

  Unlike most of those who used cybernetics, Cira hadn’t been damaged by an explosion or accident; she’d been born with extreme damage to the limb. Erryla had gotten sick while carrying Cira, and they simply hadn’t caught the infection in time. Her arm had taken all the damage, and Cira had been in prostheses of varying sizes and qualities since she was old enough to walk. At this point, especially with how well it responded to her neural commands, it was as much a part of her as her flesh arm. She barely thought about it at all until her shoulder started aching or some of the inner workings needed maintenance.

  She looked down at her arm now, though, considering Adrienn’s question for a moment before finally shaking her head. “I probably need to adjust what I’m doing in the gym is all.”

  “Maybe.” Zir eyes were all doctor, carefully scanning her posture and the way her cybernetic fingers twitched against her thigh. “Let me know if it becomes constant.”

  “Promise, Doc.”

  “Good. Now go away. I’ve got a Chief Engineer to track down, an entire supply run to inventory, and a patient schedule to fix.”

  Cira said goodbye and left, waving to the nurses as she headed for the elevator.

  Although Cira had lived in main-deck quarters attached to the captain’s as a child, she’d voluntarily given up the prime spot when she’d passed the PCCS officers’ exam. Halver now had the room directly across from medical that had once been Cira’s, and she had a single suite in the starboard saucer section six decks above. It was still a better situation than most ensigns could claim, because when she’d tried to insist she was fine with a bunk-share like the other unmarried junior officers, the crew had refused to listen. She was the daughter of Captain Erryla Antares and Lieutenant Commander Meida Dalil-Antares, Chief Engineer. She was also both a child most of the crew had helped raise and the second-youngest ensign in PSSC history. According to the Novis crew, Cira had both earned and deserved the gift of privacy. They’d basically told her to shut up and say thank you.

  She’d been guilt-ridden then. Now, the guilt she felt as she tapped her ID chip to the sensor by her door was less about taking up space that could’ve gone to a senior officer and more about what she was using that space for—her room had become the command post and storage center for her and Adrienn’s refugee operation. Hoarded rations, extra clothes, and fixable but worn-out tech all eventually made it into Cira’s hands, and through her, to Riston and the other stowaways.

  Today, safely hidden in her room, she sat at her desk and tapped her cuffs together, bringing up their holo-controls and automatically activating the screen in the wall. With a few swipes of her fingers through the air, she had several news feeds up on the wall, priority given to the official PCGC feed and the most reliable local one from Nea-gi. More details from Oweba arrived every minute. Each update only made the situation bleaker. And bloodier. The cities on Oweba had once been a beacon of the Arae System, and Pavonis ships had utterly leveled several. Residents barely had two hours of warning. Evacuations had begun—every available ship had been commandeered and filled beyond capacity—but only one-third of the 6.5 million inhabitants seemed to have escaped alive. According to some sources, even that survival statistic might be an overestimation.

 
What worried her more was the tone of the reports. The PCGC feeds tended to be bare-bones, as stripped of bias as it was possible for something composed by a human being to be. Everything coming off Nea-gi, though, was laced with either panic or vitriol. Gory visuals of corpses half burned to ash vied with heartbreaking holo-captures of children crying for their parents. Descriptions of the attack were florid and vicious, filled with claims it had been both unprovoked and unprecedented. Neither was true. A space battle between Arae and Casseta warships had ended up destroying a Pavonis research station recently, and nearly every military leader Cira had ever heard speak would agree that was a crime deserving of punishment. As for precedent, well…all anyone had to do was search for pictures of Ladadhi, a crime that could be laid at Arae’s feet.

  All of it taken together proved Erryla was right. Tensions were high on Nea-gi and probably throughout the Primis system, and this latest loss in Arae—which was currently a Primis ally—would only inflame passions further. A month ago, the voices in Primis calling for peace had been almost loud enough to drown out the warmongers. That likely wouldn’t be the case anymore.

  She was about to switch to a new feed when a white box rose from the bottom of the screen—a fleet-wide message. It was flagged as a priority, but not an emergency. Intrigued, Cira brought up the notice.

  Pax Feris has missed her latest check-in with the Pax Class Governing Council. If any PCCS has had recent communication with Captain Adriano or any officer on board Pax Feris, report it to Control immediately.

  Cira shook her head, torn between amusement and disgust. Had her mothers seen this yet? Regulations said alerts like this would only go out three days after the missed check. No computer was perfect, after all, and comm systems could fail, but there were other ways to get a message out if the circumstances called for it. Clearly, Captain Botran Adriano hadn’t used any of those methods. After another six days, he, along with every senior officer on his ship, would be held in dereliction of duty, not a lightly held crime in this fleet.

  No one would tell her what happened to spark the intense dislike Erryla and Meida had for Botran, but the enmity had lasted more than a decade. News that Feris’s captain had apparently failed at check-ins, the most basic task the job required of him, would only validate everything they’d been telling Cira for cycles. Her favorite was a story about when Botran had gotten to the final interview stage of recruiting an agricultural expert before realizing someone planetside had, as a joke, filled out an application for a cow. Smirking, and wanting to see what new tales the bulletin would bring to light, Cira sent the news to her mothers with the subject line, I guess you were right all along.

  They were good judges of character, her mothers, something Cira liked to believe she’d inherited from them.

  Reminder: Junior officer combat training begins in five minutes.

  Cira blinked and glanced at the chronometer in the bottom corner of her display. Somehow, she’d eaten up almost an hour scanning the news feeds for details on Oweba. Not even the first thrums of the thrusters easing the bulk of the ship away from the limited gravity of the station had pulled her attention away from the constantly refreshing information on her screen, but she felt the motion now. She always did. Some people claimed they never noticed the faint vibrations once they’d been on board more than a few days, but Cira always knew, and she’d been born on this ship.

  Now, she wished she’d kept that sensitivity today. If she had, she wouldn’t be tripping over her own feet as she stripped out of her duty uniform and changed into the less restrictive training clothes. Today was a sparring day, of course, not a weapons day. She’d be drenched in sweat and trying to duck under the instructor’s perfectly aimed blows within the next hour. Weapons training, when she’d spend most of the assigned shift sitting at a control panel and running through dozens of battle simulations, wasn’t scheduled for another two days. With the rising tensions in the quadrant, though, Cira wouldn’t be surprised if the captain ordered extra training sessions for everyone.

  As she raced toward the elevator that would take her down to level ten, she hoped they wouldn’t need to use any of the skills the combat instructors drilled into them. She hoped, but given the look Erryla had come back wearing, doubt had begun to seep in.

  PSSC Internal Alert

  Terra-Sol date 3814.130

  Officials from the Arae, Draconis, Casseta, and Tau Ceti systems have officially withdrawn from the intersystem peace summit more than two weeks early. Although no official statements have been released by either the military or government leaders of these systems, it

  is widely believed the destruction of a civilian

  deep-space research station on the moon Surka

  is behind their abrupt departure.

  The last time any group abandoned the peace summit early resulted in an escalation of hostilities that resulted in the overthrow of the original government of the Alula system. PCGC officials have upgraded the watch alert for all stations, outposts, and vessels to a level one even

  though there is no word yet as to how this may impact security surrounding the deep-space stations or which shipping routes may become inadvisably dangerous. Reports will be sent on priority channels as soon as additional details become available.

  --------

  Exactly one Terra-Sol cycle after the verdict and sentence was handed down, The Stowaways were executed on Paxis Station under the sentence of both illegal passage and acts of sabotage.

  On Terra-Sol date 3812.318, three Pavonis citizens were caught illegally stowing away on board Pax Portis. In the months between their capture and the trial on 3813.130, investigators were able to determine the means by which The Stowaways snuck on board the ship. For security reasons, that information was never revealed. The reasons for their subterfuge, however, was.

  A smuggling ring that stretched between four systems

  had been attempting to gain a foothold on a Pax vessel, and the three had been put in place in order to install a security loophole in the ship’s computers that could be exploited at each port. During the trial, all three confessed to the plot and also led PCGC investigators to several additional branches of the syndicate. Despite the defendants’ cooperation and the interventions of the Intersystem Legal Council and Refuge Center (ILCRC), a guilty verdict and a death sentence was handed down for each.

  The youngest of the three, whose name was never released or listed in any publicly accessible court documents, was seventeen at the time of their initial capture.

  Chapter Three

  Riston

  Terra-Sol date 3814.237

  It had been hard for Riston to let zirself think of the other stowaways as zir friends. They weren’t friends, at least, not in the way people normally defined friendship. They didn’t even know one another’s names. Their real names, the ones logged upon their birth by the citizen registries of their home planets, were gone. So was “home” in whatever form it had previously existed. Pax Novis had been a better home than the warring families and planets they’d come from. So, they weren’t friends, but the five Novis stowaways—Tinker, Treble, Shadow, Greenie, and Zazi Novis—had become allies first and something far more important soon after.

  In the beginning, they’d served as sources of information and conversation for one another, but the bond had deepened quickly once each declared their intention to stay. Somehow, they became family, and Riston was more grateful for their companionship and trust than ze knew how to explain.

  The first cycle on board Pax Novis had been peaceful and had gone a long way toward giving zem the silence and security ze needed to sort through the chaos of zir own mind. Eventually, however, the silence and isolation had become oppressive, a weight to be borne as payment for the sense of safety being on board Novis brought. Ze may have been the first to stay, but the others had joined in quick succession, and they’d created a community. To Riston, it was still a luxury to be able to bounce ideas off someone other than the voice in zir
head, and it was a luxury ze was taking full advantage of today. The theories running through zir mind were as serious as a ship flying through an EMP minefield.

  “I’m telling you, it looks pretty and well-run on the surface, but Nea-gi is on the verge of something big.” Riston and the others were sitting on the floor of a mid-deck junction, all of them buzzing with the adrenaline of a planetside visit. Where their rush came from excitement, though, zirs had the sharp bite of worry. “If Nea-gi’s government breaks down, the whole system will follow, and Primis will be overrun in less than a month, probably by more than one army. The mines on the surface will either be destroyed to avoid one side gaining control, or they’ll be shut down until that system stabilizes.”

  “Always worried, always thinking.” Treble’s tone was more singsong than usual, and the smile on her sharp-featured face broader. The sound echoed softly off the metal walls, but this spot was so far forward it was almost never accessed by the crew. Being overheard wasn’t as much of a concern here, which is why they tended to use this space as one of their primary meeting points. “Zazi Novis always looks out for zir little Novites.”

  Smiling despite zirself, Riston rolled zir eyes and dropped zir head back against the junction’s wall. None of the stowaways were more than a few cycles younger than zem, but they’d still somehow come to feel like zir kids. Or exasperating younger siblings. It depended on the day.

  “Even if the planet does collapse, it doesn’t matter. PSSC Control will give Novis a new port to visit from that light-year long waiting list of theirs, and everything will be basically the same for us.” Greenie shook his head, his shaggy brown hair flopping into his blue eyes. “Besides, this war has been a stalemate for centuries. If someone doesn’t start losing soon, it’ll go on for the next few hundred cycles, too.”