“And I think that will end our simulation,” Weber said dryly. She entered a few commands at the captain’s station and the lights returned to normal. “And I have to say, eighty percent casualties is a new record for that particular mission.”
Lucas fumed. There shouldn’t have been any casualties. All they’d needed to do was vector around a stupid dust cloud. He could have done it in his sleep.
The bell chimed to end the class period. “I think that’s enough for today,” Weber said.
Rahul looked at Lucas with a furious expression and then headed out into the hallway. Elena unbuckled herself from the pilot’s station and stretched her arms.
“Well, that was a disaster,” she said, sighing.
“I can’t believe we messed that up,” Lucas said, heading out after Rahul. “All we had to do—”
“All we had to do was not have you commanding!” Rahul snapped. “Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone?”
“My orders weren’t the problem,” Lucas shot back.
“You’re right—it was your stupid cocky attitude!” Rahul said, shoving Lucas hard in the chest. “I’d never even been on a bridge before today. So while I’m trying to learn, you’re acting like I ought to know everything already.”
“We should have just let Weber keep teaching us,” Elena said crossly.
“There’s practically nothing to teach!” Lucas shouted. Why were they acting like he was the one who had made the mistakes? “If you’d just listened to me—”
Lucas was interrupted by Captain Sanchez’s voice over the intercom. “Attention. All cadets are restricted to their bunkrooms until further notice. Afternoon classes and training sessions are canceled. All off-duty officers report to the wardroom.”
“Seriously?” Rahul groaned. “Now we’re going to be locked in our bunkroom for the rest of the day?”
Weber pushed past them and headed down the ladderway toward the rear of the ship. “You heard the captain,” she said. “Get to your cabin.”
The climb up to the alpha-section deck was much more difficult than heading down, Lucas discovered. By the time they got to their bunkroom, his arms were starting to feel rubbery. He sat down in his sleep sack and massaged his shoulders. The sudden flurry of activity that had followed the captain’s announcement soon faded into silence. After a little while, Tali opened the door to their cabin.
“We’re in lockdown,” she said curtly. “Don’t leave this room.”
“What about food?” Rahul asked. “We’re not going to miss dinner, are we?”
Tali looked at him for a moment with a disbelieving expression and turned to go. Lucas jumped up and started to follow her out onto the deck, but she stopped suddenly. “What part of ‘Don’t leave this room’ don’t you understand, cadet?”
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Is there something—”
“There’s a shipwide search,” she said, heading into her own cabin. “That’s all I know. Now get back to your room.”
Lucas’s anxiety, which had been mounting ever since the first announcement, suddenly went into overdrive. A lockdown might mean anything, from a mechanical problem to an imminent attack. But there was only one explanation for a shipwide search—someone had found out about the device Tali had planted. And now they were trying to find out who had done it.
As soon as Lucas came inside and closed their door, Rahul sat up in his sleep sack. “Do you think this has anything to do with last night? It couldn’t, right?”
“I don’t know,” Elena said, folding her arms. “But just so we’re clear, if anyone asks me about it—”
“I know, I know,” Rahul said. “You’re not going to lie. I guess this is what I get for dragging you along.”
“And this is what I get for agreeing to such a stupid idea,” Elena said angrily. “Wasn’t it enough we failed our first simulator run? If we get kicked out of this school—”
“We’re not going to get kicked out,” Rahul said. “We don’t even know what they’re searching for. Maybe it has nothing to do with us.”
Lucas, lost in his own thoughts, barely heard them. Did Tali suspect that they were searching for the device he had found? Probably, he guessed. But he still didn’t know what it was or why she had put it there.
“Acceleration ending in thirty seconds,” Palmer said over the intercom.
“I was just getting used to gravity,” Rahul mourned. “But maybe this means—”
“All cadets should remain in their cabins until explicitly instructed to leave.”
Rahul sighed. “Or maybe not.”
The distant roar of the engines died away, and weightlessness returned. Even to Lucas, who had gone through this hundreds of times, the transition always felt disturbingly like falling into a hole with no bottom. He floated in his sleep sack for a few minutes, then pulled out his screen and opened up the chapter Hofstra had assigned in his last class. But his mind wouldn’t focus, and after a little while he stuffed the screen back into its cubby and closed his eyes. Sleep was probably even less likely than studying, but maybe he could relax a little.
He’d finally managed to get his thoughts into a slightly less agitated state when he was distracted by an odd thumping sound. He opened his eyes again and saw Elena punching and kicking an overstuffed laundry bag.
“Really, Elena?” Rahul asked wearily.
Elena answered by unleashing a flurry of punches that made her drift back against her bunk. She reset herself and started practicing a lunging side kick.
“Have you ever done zero-gee combat before?” Lucas said.
“No. But I did karate back on Earth. And tae kwon do. And jujitsu.” She punctuated each word with a jab.
“You might want to try—”
“Oh, are you some kind of expert at this too?” Elena said, grabbing the bag to keep it from floating away.
“No,” Lucas admitted. “But I’ve seen some fights.”
“Well then, Mr. I’ve Seen Some Fights, maybe we should spar.” She used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe sweat from her forehead.
“Elena, stop,” Rahul said.
“It’s not really my thing,” Lucas said, shrugging.
“Wow—I thought everything about space was ‘your thing,’” Elena said. “I mean, really, why are you even here?”
Lucas sat up and glared at her. “What’s your problem? I’m here so I can learn, same as you.”
“You want to learn? Then maybe I can teach you something. Show me how you punch.”
“I know how to punch.” Of course he’d never actually punched anyone, but everyone knew how, didn’t they?
“Show me, then. One punch.”
Lucas floated out of his bunk and grabbed the punching bag, but Elena shook her head. “No, I mean punch me.”
“You want me to hit you?”
“I want you to try to hit me.”
“This is not a good idea,” Rahul warned.
Lucas glared at her. He couldn’t get in trouble for punching her, right? After all, she was asking him to do it. And right now it would feel wonderful to wipe that smug expression off her face. . . .
He drew his arm back and swung at her. He thought he’d moved quickly enough to catch her off guard, but she was much faster than he expected. She slid to the side and swung her right arm upward. The back of her wrist caught his forearm with a loud crack.
“That’s about what I thought,” she said.
Lucas grabbed his arm and grimaced in pain. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. His forearm was fractured in at least one place, maybe two.
“What’s the matter?” Elena asked. “That couldn’t have really hurt.”
“You broke my arm,” he said through gritted teeth.
“What are you talking about? All I did was a simple outside block.” She was still glaring at him belligerently, but a note of uncertainty had crept into her voice.
“Yeah, well, this didn’t just happen on its own.” He held out his a
rm as straight as he could, trying not to wince.
“Oh my god,” Elena said, staring at the jagged-Z shape of his forearm. “Oh god.”
Rahul’s eyes went wide and he swung himself out of his bunk. “We need to get you down to medbay.”
“We’re in lockdown,” Lucas protested weakly. The pain in his arm was making him a little dizzy.
“They’ll make an exception,” Rahul said, opening the door. He helped Lucas float out into the hallway.
“I can take him,” Elena said, following after them.
“Seriously?” Rahul asked. “You don’t think you’ve done enough for one day?”
She looked at Lucas with a pleading, distraught expression. “Please.”
He could tell her not to come, but why? Just to make her feel more guilty? “Fine,” he gasped. “Whatever.”
Rahul sighed and helped him put his good arm around her shoulder. Lucas and Elena slid over to the ladderway and made their way toward the back of the ship, moving in awkward, jerky motions. When they reached the medical bay they found Dr. Voorhaus, a thin, bald man with round glasses, floating cross-legged in front of a large wall screen that appeared to be showing a three-dimensional model of a blood vessel. In an adjacent supply room, a red-haired woman in her twenties was inspecting the contents of a large cabinet.
“Well,” Voorhaus said, eyeing Lucas’s arm. “I see that you’re back. Lieutenant Travis, if you please?”
The woman took Lucas’s good hand and gently helped him over to an examination area. “How did this happen?”
Elena started to answer, but Lucas cut her off. “It was my fault. She was teaching me some martial arts moves, and I took a bad swing.”
“Mmm,” Voorhaus said. He ran a scanner over Lucas’s arm. “Your bone density barely registers. You’ve broken it before, I see.”
Lucas nodded. Voorhaus put away the scanner and put his hands gently on Lucas’s shoulder. “This is going to hurt, I’m afraid. Though I suppose you already know that.”
With a quick motion he slid the broken pieces into proper alignment. Lucas bit his tongue to keep from crying out. When his arm was straight, Voorhaus injected it with a hypospray and wrapped it in a thin plastic cast.
“Come back in three days and I’ll remove this cast. In the meantime, no more martial arts or strenuous activity.”
Lucas nodded. Elena helped him out of the chair and into the hallway. From the anxious and miserable expression on her face, anyone passing by would have guessed that she was the one who’d gotten injured.
“You didn’t have to lie to him,” she said. “Not for me, anyway.”
“Well, it’s none of his business.”
“Mmm,” she said, leading him to the ladderway. “Just like it’s not my business why you needed to go out onto the hull last night?”
He paused. “What do you mean?” he asked carefully.
“Well, it’s pretty obvious that we didn’t go outside last night just to cure your insomnia. And the fact that the captain is searching the entire ship isn’t just a coincidence, is it?”
Lucas sighed. He should have known that he wasn’t going to be able to fool her. “You’re right. It’s not a coincidence.”
“You know, for some reason I thought you were going to be the one person around here who would always tell me the truth,” she said, jabbing her finger at him. “I thought maybe you would know what it was like to feel different. Guess I was just being stupid.”
Her words were like a knife in his chest. She was right. Not only had he deceived his friends, he’d almost gotten them killed. But Tali was his sister, and he had to find some way to protect her. What was he supposed to do?
“This is exactly why my parents told me not to come here,” Elena said. “Maybe I should have listened.”
Lucas tried to imagine what it would feel like to spend your entire life with people who always tell the truth and then come to a place where your own sectionmate lied. Ever since he’d arrived here, he’d been keenly aware of how different he was. He hadn’t even thought about how Elena might feel just as much like an outsider, even though she came from Earth.
“I’m sorry for lying to you.”
“Well, I’m sorry for breaking your arm,” she said. “Though somehow it doesn’t feel like that makes us quite even.”
Lucas wanted to ask whether she meant that breaking an arm was worse than a lie, or whether it was the other way around. But right now probably wasn’t the time.
“So what did you do when we were out there?” Elena asked. “Did you sabotage the ship or something?”
“No!” he said quickly. “I swear. I was looking for something. The same thing the captain is searching for, I think. But I can’t tell you any more than that. I promised . . .”
“You promised someone else,” she finished for him. “You’re protecting them.”
He nodded.
“At least you’re being honest with me,” she said. “That’s a start. But you’re asking me to trust you, even though you don’t trust me enough to tell me what’s actually going on.”
Lucas was silent. What could he say in response? Everything she was saying was true.
Elena turned and stared out a nearby window. “I just can’t get used to it. Everyone lies, here. All the time, about everything. It’s insane.”
“We don’t lie all the time.”
She snorted and nodded at his cast. “Does your arm hurt?”
“No.” Lucas flexed his arm gingerly. “Well, yeah, a little.”
“See what I mean?”
“Okay, but that doesn’t count,” he protested. “I was just trying to not make you feel bad for snapping my arm in half.”
“Once you start telling little lies, you start telling big ones too,” Elena said, as if she were quoting from something.
She had a point, he decided. He thought for a moment and then stuck out his hand. “Let’s start over. My name is Lucas Adebayo. I’m a new cadet here.”
She raised her eyebrows and shook his hand. “Elena Pruitt. Nice to meet you.”
“You look like you need a friend you can trust,” he said. “So I hereby promise not to ever lie to you about anything, ever. Big or small.”
The corners of her mouth twitched into a smile. “Thank you, Lucas Adebayo,” she said. “Maybe nobody here would understand, but—it means a lot.”
“So, Elena Pruitt . . . does this mean we’re going to be friends?”
“Of course,” she said, taking him by his good arm and helping him to the ladderway. “And just wait till you meet Rahul. He’s a little odd, but I think the two of you will hit it off beautifully.”
10
THE NEXT MORNING, Captain Sanchez announced over the intercom that all cadets were free to leave their cabins and classes would proceed as normal. When she finished, a faint combination of cheers and groans could be heard from the other bunkrooms.
“That’s it?” Rahul asked. “Just, ‘Hey, we searched the ship for something, but now we’re all good’?”
“Well, what do you expect her to say?” Elena said, floating out of her sleep sack. “‘We suspect sabotage, and here’s what we found’?”
“We don’t know it was sabotage,” Lucas pointed out. “Maybe it was nothing.”
Of course, if he hadn’t been so stupid as to lose the device he’d removed, he would know the answer to that. Though on the other hand, he wasn’t completely sure whether he wanted to know.
His tablet flashed another schedule change notification. He sighed and scrolled down to read the full text. “Hey, I just got a message that I’m supposed to go to the officers’ wardroom instead of to my morning classes. Did any of you get that?”
Rahul, who was in the middle of brushing his teeth, grabbed his own screen and peered at it. He spit the tooth gel out into a paper towel and shook his head. “Not me.”
“Me neither,” Elena said. “There’s no explanation? Just go to the wardroom?”
“It says th
e change was requested by the captain herself.”
“Ooh, that sounds fun,” Rahul said. “I didn’t think we were even allowed in there. Maybe the captain is rewarding you. Though on the other hand, she might be punishing you. Hard to tell.”
Elena looked over Lucas’s shoulder at his screen. “I guess you’ll just have to go and find out. You’ll need to hurry, though—it says you’re supposed to be there five minutes from now.”
With his arm in a cast, Lucas ended up using most of that time just getting his uniform on. He took a quick detour through the rec room and grabbed a bulb of breakfast protein before heading down to the wardroom. Why couldn’t they have warned him earlier so he’d at least have a chance to eat properly? Though, he decided, maybe it was for the best, since if he’d known, he might have spent a sleepless night trying to figure out what this was all about. Surely it couldn’t be related to their trip outside the ship two nights ago, could it? If Sanchez knew about that, she’d probably send armed guards, not a schedule change.
The officers’ wardroom was on deck eleven, just behind the rec room. It was a large, curving room with an outer wall made entirely of transplastic, making for a beautiful view of the Milky Way. The only furniture was a long table with comfortable-looking chairs. Lucas’s nervousness tripled when he saw that the only two people in the room were Sanchez and his sister, Tali.
He cleared his throat. “Cadet Adebayo reporting, ma’am.”
“Come in, Cadet,” Sanchez said. “Have a seat, if you’d like.”
Lucas glanced at Tali, trying to figure out if this situation was as bad as it seemed, but her expression was unreadable.
“You know Cadet Chen, of course?”
Lucas nodded, feeling slightly relieved to discover that Sanchez hadn’t found out that Tali was his stepsister.
“She tells me that you were the one behind the strategy that won alpha and beta sections’ capture-the-flag game. That was very well done.”
“Uh—thank you, ma’am.”
“According to Ensign Weber, yesterday’s bridge training was slightly less well done.” She glanced down at a report on her screen. “I’m interested, however, in hearing your take.”
The Orpheus Plot Page 11