“It does matter!” Riston tried to remember that none of them had studied the war like ze had. They didn’t pay attention to the dangerously unstable quagmire their current intragalactic political arena had become. None of them had the same motivations, though. Riston had learned enough about their pasts to know ze was the only one in the group who had literally watched their home, their city, and their entire family destroyed before their eyes in the middle of the so-called stalemate. “If one planet falls, it endangers the whole system. And the impact won’t stop there. Every occupied planet in the quadrant will feel the repercussions. And guess what happens to the trade ships if there’s no one to trade with? Or if the flight paths through the systems aren’t treaty protected anymore?”
“We’ll either get blown up or starve to death when the ship’s systems begin to fail, and the hydroponics bays stop producing food.” Treble’s morbidly practical words almost sounded optimistic in her light, melodic voice. She swept her long blonde hair over her shoulder and began to separate it into sections to braid. “Either way, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
So we shouldn’t worry about it at all, was the unspoken addition. Riston didn’t agree, but ze didn’t argue, either. It was a point they’d debated already, and ze knew by now ze couldn’t change their minds on this.
Trying to think of something else to say, ze picked at a loose thread on zir fingerless gloves. They’d once been white before frequent wear and infrequent access to the laundry turned them dingy gray; they were still stark against zir dark skin. It was cold in this section of the ship—since it was rarely used, the engineers didn’t waste energy warming it—so the Novis stowaways were always bundled in layers. Underneath the extra clothing, they wore standard duty uniforms of Novis crew. In uniform, it was easier for them to hide in plain sight when they absolutely had to access the main portions of the ship. Unfortunately, that thin cloth only did so much against the lingering chill in these sections of the ship. Riston ducked zir chin closer to zir chest, burrowing into zir own clothing, zir mind still annoyingly blank.
Except…why did it smell like peppermint in here? Ze’d smelled it when ze first arrived, and the scent hadn’t dissipated yet.
“Well, for now Nea-gi is still there, and their trade posts are still full, so happy birthday, Zazi Novis.” Greenie held out a white box, his thin lips curled into a shy smile.
“What?” Riston stared, zir gaze jumping between Greenie’s blue eyes and the box. A gift. Which made no sense. “I haven’t ever told you when my birthday is.”
Even if zir birthday was today, ze wouldn’t deserve a present. All the times ze’d lectured the others on caution and constant awareness of their surroundings had clearly been wasted when ze was the one who’d run straight into the only person on the station—possibly the only person living in that whole system—who could identify zem on sight. It was doubtful that anything Minya might have told security would do much more than create a security report on Mitu with zir real name on it. Still, carelessness caused trouble, and trouble cost lives. Ze should tell them what happened and use the mistake as a lesson.
“Which means today could be it,” Tinker countered from her seat on the floor, never looking up from the pile of spare gears and scrap metal in her lap. Her chin-length black hair had swung forward, hiding her face, but Riston was sure ze could hear her smile. “You always tell us it’s somewhere between rude and ridiculous to turn away help, so take the present, Zazi.”
Riston rolled zir lips between zir teeth and studied the others. Even Shadow grunted from the access tunnel above their heads, dropping a tiny piece of the protein bar he was eating on Riston’s shoulder. Considering how rarely Shadow participated in these conversations—even as much as rolling his eyes or flicking small pieces of food at people to agree or protest—Riston swallowed the arguments ze wanted to make. And the story ze had been on the verge of telling. They’d put this together for zem; ze wouldn’t ruin the moment for them.
“How did you even get the credits to buy anything on Nea-gi?” Riston asked, running zir fingertips over the box. Whatever it was, there was no way ze could accept this if they’d fallen back on old survival habits and stolen it.
“I didn’t.” Greenie’s smile turned smug, his blue eyes strikingly bright even against his pale, freckled skin. “I traded the stall owner for advice about her garden.”
It was a smart trade. Greenie was only thirteen, but he spent most of his time on Pax Novis researching, and experimenting with, growing things. His advice was probably worth more than whatever the woman had given him in return. Riston opened the top and found…a piece of paper?
“Thanks, but, umm…” Riston picked it up. Paper was rare—as in it was rarely seen or used—but that was because it was essentially useless. Hoping ze was wrong and the item was more than a kitchy antique, ze asked, “What is this?”
“Not what you’re thinking it is.” Tinker finally looked up, her dark brown eyes lit with excitement. “It’s something for you to give to Cira next time you report in.”
Attention sharpening, Riston asked again, “What is it?”
“Art.” Obviously, the undertone in Treble’s voice added.
“Are you sure?” Riston held up the thin white material. It was more resilient than ze’d expected, but it didn’t seem a worthy gift for Cira Antares. She’d saved all of them more than once, and she was risking everything she cared about every day they stayed on her ship. She deserved everything, and all ze had to give her was this. “It’s awfully white.”
“No, it’s awfully new. A company came up with a brilliant microthin screen and an even smaller processor.” Grinning, Tinker jumped up and took the device from Riston. She pressed the corner between her index finger and thumb, and a simple menu appeared in the center. “This is absolutely stellar. It’s a single-purpose unit loaded with a huge catalog of art—ancient pre-colonization Earth stuff and some things from before the war.”
As she spoke, her fingers moved across the screen, searching through the database for “flowers.” Dozens of thumbnail images appeared on the screen.
“It only contains art that’ll fit the proportions, so display shouldn’t be a problem,” Greenie said, as Tinker handed it back with a flourish. “It’s really hard to scratch or break because it was designed for soldiers who are constantly restationed. They can load it with vids and stills from home. Or they can load art.”
“Wow. That’s…” It was the best gift Riston had received in ages. “Thank you.”
“Hold on.” Tinker skipped back to where she’d been working and scooped up her project. In a few steps, she was back in front of Riston, presenting her work to zem on flattened palms. “Give her this, too.”
It was a frame. Although it was made of gears, wires, and scrap metal, the design was delicate, and the open space in the center was the perfect size to fit the thin screen. It even left one corner exposed to allow access to the menu sensor.
“This may be your anniversary, but you’re the one who proved staying long-term was possible, so that’s why she was willing to let us stay, too,” Treble said. “You’re not the only one who wanted to say thank you somehow.”
“I wouldn’t be here without you both.” Tinker nodded, her round face innocently earnest. “You don’t accept thanks, and I can’t just go up to Cira and offer her a hug, so helping you say thanks is the best we can do.”
“Just try not to sound like the lovesick fool you are when you give this to her,” Treble said. Greenie laughed, Tinker grinned, and above them Shadow audibly huffed. Thankfully, Riston had stopped being embarrassed that the others knew about zir hopeless crush on Cira.
Accepting anything from the others was never easy. Riston was too used to being on the other end of the exchange, passing out supplies or medicine or whatever else was needed. Receiving felt wrong, but they were right; she would love something like this.
It’s not for you, ze reminded zirself again. It’s for Cira.
The distinction was enough to erase zir hesitation. It was illegal under the PSSC charter and license for any Pax vessel to carry passengers who weren’t secured in cryopods. The only exceptions involved catastrophe and emergency rescue operations; it didn’t cover transporting orphans. Captain’s daughter or not, Cira could be imprisoned, banished from the PCCS and imprisoned, or even executed for helping Riston and the others.
To keep everyone safe, Cira especially, she couldn’t spend much time with her stowaways, a fact Riston tried not to regret. It left zem putting far too much importance on arbitrary anniversaries and their brief weekly meetings. It was probably a good thing their time together was so sparse—it kept Cira from noticing zir feelings for her. It was hard to fit anything but necessities into those stolen moments. They had to use the time to prevent potential problems, consider new passengers, and hand off supplies. She’d risked everything she loved, and continued to risk it, for people who had been barely more than strangers. Even three cycles later, Riston couldn’t delude zirself into thinking they had progressed much beyond that point, yet when ze’d asked to stay, she had said okay. There wasn’t ever going to be a way to repay her, but gifts like this might be a start.
So Riston said thank you and accepted their offerings on Cira’s behalf.
The group parted ways a few minutes later, each heading back to their own hidey-hole.
Surviving on a ship as big as Pax Novis was as easy as it wasn’t. It took three things: knowing the crew’s routines, knowing the signs of those routines changing, and knowing how to use both of those to stay hidden. Greenie had predictably found a space on the hydroponics deck, Tinker had found a rarely used crawl space on the engineering deck, and Treble mainly stayed on the same deck as the family suites. No one knew where Shadow spent his time, but Riston guessed he slept in a different service tunnel every night.
For Riston, home aboard Pax Novis was a junction near a bay of escape pods on the crew’s cargo deck. Ze’d chosen carefully, and ze took time every day to make sure ze left it looking utterly uninhabited. There were storage compartments in this junction intended to be a place for the engineers and maintenance crews to stow supplies and extra tools, but Novis’s crew didn’t use them. That allowed Riston a small space to store zir few possessions.
And few they were. Everything ze owned fit in a single compartment less than a meter wide, and the only security against discovery was a hidden catch that had been installed by a previous stowaway. The top silently slid open, and Riston shifted aside the small stack of clothes, the blanket and pillow, the stash of food, and the various trinkets to reach zir tablet.
It was an older model, without the extendable screens that had become common, but it was the most important thing ze owned. After Cira created a dummy test account for zem, it had given zem access to the ship’s library. Riston had had the same privileges as the crew’s children for the last year and a half. Despite the restrictions, it was far from useless. It gave Riston a portal to millennia of books, vids, and music. Ze could see all ship-wide broadcasts, play games, pull up star charts, and catch up on the education ze’d missed trying to survive on Datax.
Most importantly, ze could message Cira.
All communications were recorded, logged, and filed in the system, so ze and Cira spoke rarely and always in a simple code they’d come up with along the way. After every station day, there was always a chance she’d bring back a new passenger. It didn’t happen often, but there was always a chance.
Need any help tomorrow? ze sent. If someone new was on board, she’d turn down zir offer of help. They’d meet either way—they always did the morning after leaving port—but this code gave zem time to prepare for bringing a new stowaway into the fold.
Yes. The answer came back instantly. I thought I’d have others, but they couldn’t make it.
No newcomers. Good. As much as Riston wanted to help the kids as lost as ze’d once been, each new stowaway meant someone else in the galaxy who knew what Cira was doing and who could, if they let information slip, ruin everything.
0630? Cira asked.
I’ll be there, ze typed and sent. I’ll help with anything, ze almost added. Any time. But saying that wasn’t a risk ze was ready to take. Not now, and probably not ever. Admiration from afar was one thing, but believing ze could be worthy of anything more from Cira crossed over into dangerously delusional territory. The most ze allowed zirself were gifts and gratitude.
Carefully, ze placed the framed screen in zir storage compartment, removed the blanket and pillow, and then sealed it up for the night. Leaning against the wall of the junction with the pillow behind zir back and the thick blanket spread over zir knees, Riston brought up the next lesson in the astronavigation class. As much as ze wanted to stay on Pax Novis for the rest of zir life, no one could hide forever. The only way ze wouldn’t get sucked into the worst of the war as soon as ze left this ship was if ze had some expertise to offer other than meat filler for a military uniform. Ze spent the next hour learning about astronavigation and trying to quash the naively persistent hope that ze’d one day use this information as an officer of the Novis crew.
Despite zir best efforts, ze spent the entire night dreaming about being exactly that.
…
Sleep never came easy when Riston was only hours away from seeing Cira. The importance of the next day and the gift waiting to be given made sleep even harder to hold on to that night. Ze spent most of the night watching various scenarios play out inside zir head. The imaginary moments with Cira were like training simulations—three-dimensional, eerily real, and doomed to failure every time.
At 0500, zir tablet chimed, the sound not coming through the small speakers embedded in the device but straight through the inner-aural comm everyone had implanted when they were children. It was the signal ze’d been waiting for.
Riston placed the gift and zir tablet in a small pack and then, cautiously and quietly, ze climbed up into the familiar maintenance crawl space between the decks and traveled toward the port side of the ship. 0500 was the middle of alpha shift, and most people were usually either asleep or firmly ensconced in their work. Ze still moved as silently as possible. It should’ve been an easy trip straight across a single deck, but only the ship’s main corridors ran in straight lines. The access tunnels and maintenance shafts Riston and the stowaways lived in were labyrinthine; ze’d gotten lost more than a few times when ze’d first come aboard. After three cycles, ze could travel these hidden passageways with zir eyes closed. In fact, ze sometimes did exactly that. There were many places that weren’t usually lit because they were rarely used. Riston only knew them by the feel of the composite under zir hands, the pattern of ridges and indentations on the walls, and the way the air smelled.
Practice and patience guided zem onto the recreation deck and into the locker room without being seen, and ze quickly ducked into a stall. Stripping quickly, ze tapped a control to activate the shower. A mist of warm, soap-infused water gathered on zir skin for several seconds before sonic waves efficiently cleansed zem of dirt, sweat, soap, and water. Clean and dry, ze shoved zir uniform—the same black, white, and red outfit that yeocin on the ship were issued—into a chute in the wall. A menu appeared on the display above, offering zem an array of sizes to replace the clothes. Selections made, the clean, folded, and pressed garments dropped into a central slot.
Although Riston avoided looking in the mirrored surface behind the door of the stall, ze did glance down as ze smoothed the borrowed uniform. Borrowed, ze reminded zirself. Not stolen, but also not yours.
But in a way, even though ze would give it back the next time ze risked coming down here to shower, it was stolen. It was as stolen as zir place on this ship and the very air ze breathed. Wearing the PCCS uniform reminded zem of that truth with painful clarity, especially today, with yesterday’s shuttle conversation lurking in the back of zir mind, but ze didn’t have a choice. It really was the only way to pass through the occupied p
arts of the ship unnoticed.
Riston checked to make sure ze had everything, then ze slipped out of the room. Head down, ze aimed for the paths hidden behind the ship’s walls and between its decks. The trip would’ve been simple in the main corridors; ze could’ve headed for an elevator in the starboard foreleg and gone up two decks. It was a ten-minute trip at most for the crew. Through Novis’s crawl spaces and maintenance tunnels, the trip took nearly forty-five minutes. The route was excessively convoluted to avoid any areas where teams might be working, and ze had to go away from zir intended destination more than once in order to reach specific ladders. Thankfully, ze knew how to plan for that kind of travel and still arrived at the meeting point early.
When ze approached the maintenance hatch, ze ran the pads of zir fingers over the plate marking the location. 12FS-M1: deck twelve, forward, starboard, maintenance hatch one. Cira had chosen this spot as their meeting place two Terra-Sol cycles ago because no one else ever came up here. There wasn’t a reason to apart from scheduled maintenance or when securing particularly tricky cargo. Despite how cramped the space was, how it smelled of metal and stale, recycled air, and how cold ze always got sitting on the metal floor to wait, ze had a strange fondness for this place. Almost all zir in-person interactions with Cira had happened here.
Ze took zir pack off and slid to the floor with zir back against the only smooth wall. For the next twenty minutes, ze ran astronavigation simulations until the soft chime of an incoming message made zir hand jerk across the screen, inputting the wrong data. Alarms lit up the simulated control panel, and the virtual Novis crashed into a rogue comet. Ze cringed at the message that popped up on the display:
Mission failed. Ship destroyed, and all lives lost.
Do you want to try again?
That message was galling most of the time, but today it didn’t bite quite so deeply. The message that interrupted zem had been from Cira. She’d arrived, and she was waiting on the other side of the hatch. Ze sent a reply, and seconds later the door opened, letting zem out into the brightly lit, utilitarian space. It was a single room with white walls broken up by three air-lock doors that had a discordant slash of bright red running through their centers like a warning. Or a wound. Dark gray grated flooring kept the space from being too glaringly bright. The otherwise open space was only broken up by an elevator, a small bathroom, and racks of storage for numerous vac suits. That elevator and the maintenance shafts were the only connections to the rest of the ship. No hallways connected this forward section of deck twelve to the saucer-shaped living quarters at the rear of the ship. Ze still scanned the area with a wary eye as ze stepped through the door.
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