Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book 1)

by Meg Pechenick

  No communications network, I thought. No incoming transmission from Earth, then. Or from Vardesh Prime. The timing was unfortunate—but was that all it was? Was it merely a coincidence that the system had gone offline just before Saresh and I were due to receive replies to our messages? I knew Saresh was on my side, but that didn’t preclude the possibility that someone else on the ship was working against both of us.

  When no one else spoke, I said, “This sounds like a big problem, but I don’t know what it has to do with me. Is there something I can do to help?”

  “I’d say you’ve done enough,” Vekesh said.

  The chill in his tone was unmistakable. I replayed his words until I was certain I’d interpreted them correctly. Then I said, “I don’t understand.”

  Saresh said, “I’ll try to put this in terms you can relate to. We seem to be dealing with a hardware problem, not a software problem. Communications equipment all over the ship has been damaged, apparently by a high-intensity signal designed to exceed the capacity of our systems. The best analogy might be an electromagnetic pulse. Some of the equipment may be salvageable, but most of it is worthless. It will have to be replaced.”

  “You said ‘designed,’” I said slowly. “Does that mean you think the damage was intentional?”

  “That appears to be the case.”

  I looked at Vekesh. “I’m still not sure why I’m here.”

  Hathan said, “Rhevi Sohra has been running diagnostics on the other systems, looking for anomalies. Just before the network went down, the engineering computer flagged an unauthorized device drawing power from the ship’s engines. The amount of energy consumed was minimal, just enough to charge a single-use signal disruptor like the one Saresh described. Under ordinary circumstances we might not even have noticed the loss of power.” He paused, looked down at his flexscreen, and selected a different pane of the display before concluding, “The source of the unauthorized power drain was in helix four. The residential corridor.”

  “So you’re searching everyone’s quarters for this . . . signal disruptor?”

  “No,” Vekesh said.

  Finally I understood. “But you want to search mine.”

  “We intend to search yours. We don’t need your consent, but Hadazi Takheri insisted you be informed. You should thank him, by the way, for continuing to serve as your advocate. Not everyone would be so impartial, especially when his own equipment has just been targeted for destruction.”

  “You think I did this? You think I tried to damage the ship?” I wasn’t sure who I was asking—all of them equally, perhaps.

  “It’s a possibility that has to be explored,” Saresh said quietly.

  I was looking at Hathan. He was still studying the display on his flexscreen. His gaze, when it snapped upward to meet mine, was icy. “The evidence is difficult to ignore.”

  “What evidence?”

  “I think that’s been summarized quite effectively,” said Vekesh.

  I shook my head, incredulous. “I can’t believe this. Is this really what you think of me? After three months of watching me try to learn your language, understand your culture, adapt to your life . . . I wanted to be here so badly—” I had to stop. The tightness in my throat made it difficult to speak. When I recovered, I said, “I wanted this more than you could possibly understand. I love the Pinion. I would never do anything to damage it.”

  By way of a response, Hathan turned his flexscreen around so that I could see it. At once I recognized the image he had been studying. It was a diagram of the Pinion’s living quarters. The rooms were outlined in white on a dark background. A blinking orange symbol, presumably marking the location of the unauthorized power drain, drew my eye. There was no mistaking its location: the smallest room on the right-hand side. My quarters.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “I don’t know the first thing about how your technology works. Earth is still using electronics, remember? Even if I had any reason to sabotage the ship—which I don’t!—I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to do it.”

  “The device wouldn't be difficult to operate,” Hathan said. “It might even have been remotely activated. Or timed. All you would have had to do was position it.”

  “How would I have even gotten it on the ship? My bags were scanned and searched the day I came aboard. For exactly this reason. You didn’t find anything. There was nothing to find!”

  “Then perhaps we missed something. Or you may have had a collaborator who placed the device on board.”

  “Everything you just said could be equally applied to anyone else. And of everyone on the Pinion, I’m the least likely suspect. I have no motive and practically no means. Any other crew member has had a hundred opportunities to sneak something onto the ship. How many starhavens did you stop at between Vardesh Prime and Earth? Has someone been scanning every single object you guys have brought on board?”

  “There have been regular security checks,” Saresh said, but I thought the words lacked conviction.

  “I take it you don’t consent to the search, then?” Vekesh looked faintly pleased, as if my protests were precisely what he had expected.

  “Of course I consent,” I said wearily. “Go ahead. Search my quarters. You’re not going to find anything.”

  I followed the three of them to my quarters. Vekesh and Hathan went in first. I stood in the doorway to watch. Saresh stood in the corridor behind me. I wondered if he had been ordered to collar me if I tried to run. I could have told him there was no need; flight was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to see exactly what was going to happen. I didn’t trust Vekesh any farther than I could throw him, and I had a sinking feeling that I’d just been skillfully played. Again.

  After a final glance at his flexscreen, Hathan went to the wall opposite the door, the one that housed the tiny hexagonal viewport. The viewport had a screen that could be pulled up to reveal the starscape beyond or snapped down to hide it. He raised the screen, lowered it, frowned, and then pulled the screen out from its housing to look at the underside. He went still for a moment. Then he detached something from the fabric of the screen. Wordlessly he held it out to Vekesh. It was a small metallic object about the size of my thumbnail. I had never seen it before in my life.

  Vekesh took it distastefully. “Check the room again,” he instructed Hathan. “There may be more than one device.”

  There was. It took Hathan a little longer to find the second one. It was tucked into the back pocket of my favorite pair of jeans, which were neatly folded at the back of my off-duty drawer. Which was odd, considering that the last time I’d seen them, they’d been rolled and at the front of the drawer.

  At the sight of the first device I went cold all over, but it was the second one—and the accompanying thought of hostile fingers picking so cavalierly through my personal belongings—that made me angry. This was my private space, my sanctuary, and someone had intruded on it. Worse, they had done so in order to pin suspicion for what was effectively a terrorist act squarely on me. The Pinion was a symbol of human-Vardeshi cooperation. An attack on the ship was an affront to the alliance. Whoever had disabled the ship’s communications network was attempting to sow the seeds of division between our peoples, and they were using me to do it.

  “Someone’s been in my quarters,” I said.

  Vekesh gave me a look so absolutely cold it trapped the words in my throat for a moment. I tried to push forward through the fear. “No, listen to me. Those pants were folded. I don’t fold my clothes. I roll them. Look at the rest of the drawer. Someone came in here and put those . . . things . . . in with my stuff, but they didn’t do it right. If you check the—I don’t know, the door access logs—you’re going to see that someone else entered my quarters while I was out.”

  Ignoring me, Vekesh turned to Hathan. “Are there any more?”

  “No other signals were detected.”

  He nodded. “Check the room for weapons and contraband tech. I’ll assemble the
tribunal.”

  “Tribunal?” I said.

  Vekesh turned to me. “You’re confined to your quarters until further notice.” He left without waiting for a response.

  Left alone in my room with Hathan, I squared my shoulders and looked at him directly, challenging him to look back. At length he did. I was reminded abruptly that he wasn’t human—that none of them were. At such close quarters, the otherness was almost palpable. His face was impassive; his eyes were disconcerting, the irises pale within their startlingly dark rings. He didn’t like me. I hadn’t been able to make him like me. Why hadn’t I understood before how important that was? At this precise moment, he saw me as an enemy and a threat. I knew before I spoke that I wouldn’t be able to change his mind. All the same, I had to try. “Suvi—” I said.

  “I have to search your room.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He did so in a coldly methodical fashion, moving from the drawers to the shelf beside the bed and the storage spaces beneath it. I sat down on the bed, folded my arms across my chest, and watched. He pulled out my duffel bag and looked through the pockets. He stepped through into the sanitation room to rifle through my cosmetics. When he emerged, I tried again to make myself heard. “Look. This is completely insane. I’ve never seen those things before, and I have no idea who put them here, but they were planted by someone to frame me. I—”

  He held up a restraining hand. “You’ll have an opportunity to speak for yourself at the tribunal.”

  “What tribunal? Who’s putting me on trial? No one here is exactly impartial. Vekesh has clearly already made up his mind. And whoever put the signal disruptor in my quarters has everything to gain by making me look as guilty as possible. If there is a trial, it’s going to be a sham.”

  Hathan sent an eloquent look at the uniform hanging from its hook beside the door. “You signed your contract voluntarily. You’re subject to the same regulations as the rest of us.”

  “I didn’t sign on for this,” I said.

  As he moved to the door, I called after him, “Do I even get to shower before this tribunal?”

  “I’ll talk to Ziral,” he said, and left.

  Ziral arrived a few minutes later and escorted me down the corridor to the showers. She didn’t speak except to say curtly, “Your uniform,” when I asked her what I was supposed to wear. I put my uniform on and paced restlessly around my quarters until Ziral opened the door again to walk me to the axis chamber.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  There was a trial, or the façade of one. It was brief, perfunctory, and one-sided. Vekesh presided, with Saresh, Hathan, and Ziral serving as de facto jury. The other crew members assembled to bear mute witness to my humiliation. I was permitted to speak briefly in my own defense. My words were halting and inadequate. They dropped one by one like stones into a silence as deep and cold as a crevasse in a glacier. I felt as if just such a crack had opened in my own life, and I had fallen unwittingly into it. The alliance, the mission, and the chain of decisions that had led me here were suddenly revealed to be riddled with errors. Why had I willingly placed myself so far beyond the reach of help? I was months away from my home, unable to communicate with my own kind, completely in the power of people about whom I knew far less than I had imagined, and I was utterly alone.

  By the time the trial concluded, I was no longer Novi Alkhat. That identity had been stripped away, along with my door access codes, my computer privileges, and my dignity. Until the communications network was restored, I would be a virtual prisoner on the Pinion, confined to my quarters save for designated intervals in the mess hall, the fitness center, the laundry room, and the showers. I would be escorted to and from all of those locations by a crewman, and I knew without having to ask that Vekesh would select my chaperones from among those who were least inclined to sympathy. No one was to speak to me unless given explicit permission by a senior officer. I was to eat my meals alone at the previously unoccupied third table in the mess hall. Less than a passenger, I was now essentially an item of cargo, to be delivered in more or less functional condition to the security officers at Arkhati Starhaven. I had no idea what would happen at that point. Given the current state of Earth-Vardeshi legal policy, I would probably spend several years sitting in an aesthetically appealing cell while our two planets negotiated an extradition treaty. I didn’t care. None of it seemed real. I saw now that none of it had been. I should have known from my first glimpse of the Pinion, from the first laugh I shared with Zey, from my very first Vardeshi sentence, that it was simply too good to be true. You do me too much honor. I was horribly, horribly tempted to laugh.

  After the trial, Saresh was assigned to walk me back to my quarters and lock me in. I drifted along at his side in a fog of bewilderment and self-recrimination until we reached my door. To my surprise, after keying in the new entry code, he followed me inside and closed the door. “Avery, listen to me,” he said urgently. “I can’t stay long, but you should know that there is another possibility. Another way to prove your innocence.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I may be able to clear your name. If you’re willing to give me a chance.”

  “How—”

  He didn’t say anything, but he raised his right hand and brushed two fingers against his temple.

  I stared at him. “Are you serious? You want to try to read my mind?”

  “I can’t promise that it would work.”

  “Can you promise that it wouldn’t kill me? Or incapacitate me?”

  “I can’t promise anything.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t believe you would even suggest this. What about the Vox code of ethics? Zey told me about that. He told me about what it was like before. About the people whose minds just . . . cracked.” I couldn’t suppress a shiver.

  “I can’t make any promises,” Saresh said again, “but I believe I could make the attempt without injuring you. Zey was essentially right, but his understanding is limited, for obvious reasons. And he was talking about wartime interrogations. This would be different. It wouldn't be forced. Of course there’s an inherent risk, but I think the very worst that’s likely to happen is that it doesn’t work. Our minds may not be compatible. If that’s the case, you’ll be no worse off than when we started. And if it does work, I’ll see your innocence in your memories, and I’ll be able to advocate for you. A Vox is a powerful defender. I could exonerate you instantly.”

  “By reading my mind,” I said. “By looking at my memories.”

  “It is intrusive,” he acknowledged, reading my tone with his usual precision. “There’s no denying that. But wouldn’t it be worth the loss of privacy to show that you’re innocent? Now, immediately, not after months or years of legal wrangling. If the alliance even survives that long.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just—can’t.”

  The door hissed open. “Saresh,” said Khiva from the hallway. “The khavi wants everyone back in the axis chamber. Unscheduled briefing.”

  Saresh nodded, fixed me with a last compelling look, and said, “Think about it.” Then he followed Khiva out into the hallway and closed the door. My imprisonment had begun.

  Left alone in my quarters, I stripped off the uniform and replaced it on its hook. I put on jeans, a striped shirt, and a cardigan. I might not be entitled to wear my uniform any more, but I’d be damned if I’d shuffle around the ship in my pajamas. At five o’clock Ahnir came to collect me for dinner. I’d known the meal would be agonizing. My imagination hadn’t prepared me for the reality. The silence as I walked through the mess hall toward the galley was frigid. Ahnir watched intently while I prepared my meal, as if he expected me to lay siege to the room with a three-inch folding knife or eight ounces of boiling water. I cooked slowly and methodically, hoping the mess hall would empty out in the interval. My hopes were disappointed. No one had left, and in fact a few people had arrived while I was cooking. The murmur of conversation was pitched below my hearing, but
I had no doubt that I constituted the principal subject of discussion at both the higher- and lower-ranking tables. I knew I was expected to sit alone at the empty third table, and I’d given a little thought to which seat I would choose. I didn’t want to sit facing the wall like a punished child. More than that, I didn’t want to turn my back on ten people who had collectively designated me as their enemy. I sat down on a stool that squarely faced the rest of the mess hall, swept the room with one defiant look, picked up my fork, and took a bite of rehydrated rice and vegetables that tasted like dust. I had never felt so exposed.

  I had always been excruciatingly sensitive to others’ opinions of me. When Rajani had called me a gentle soul during training, she had really meant I was painfully eager to please. Dr. Okoye, too, had pinpointed it instantly.

  “To be frank, I wouldn’t authorize sending someone with your personality profile on a sensitive mission on Earth,” she had said. “But the fact remains that the Vardeshi did like you, and I can’t rule out that that element of your psyche may have contributed to your being selected. It may continue to work in your favor, as long as you can keep it in perspective. If the Vardeshi change their minds about you, a week or a month from now, you’re going to have to find a way to live with that. Your job isn’t to be liked. It’s to observe and record, but more than that, it’s to survive.”

  Well, I thought, they had changed their minds, abruptly and collectively. The fact that they were wrong was completely beside the point. I still longed for their approbation. Now I was going to have unearth from somewhere the strength of will to sit in the same room with them and eat one bite after another of tasteless food, knowing how thoroughly they despised me, knowing that the best I could hope for was to endure their disdain without completely breaking down.

  The days that followed were the loneliest of my life. If I had thought the Vardeshi were reserved before, I knew my error now. Any semblance of warmth they had ever shown me had been utterly obliterated. I had been right to expect that Vekesh would select my jailers carefully. I was never permitted a moment alone with Zey, Sohra, or Daskar. Vethna, Khiva, and Ziral were my most frequent attendants. Saresh served as my escort a handful of times. So did Hathan. I dreaded seeing him outside my door. He radiated a palpable coldness. When circumstances forced him to speak to me, he did so in flat, uninflected English. It was the worst insult he could have offered. There was no trace of contempt in his voice, but it was there, implicit, in his choice of language. I had suspected before that he disliked me. Now I knew he hated me.