by Kelly Jensen
Even as a holographic representation, Elias’s expression was easy to read. The lines of his face hardened and a scowl overtook his mouth. “Ness is with me. I’ll call Qek now. Check back in as soon as you have more news.”
The connection closed and Felix pulled up another display when it became clear Zed’s code and the captain’s key had failed to open the main hatch. Power throughout the ship continued to fluctuate, lights flickering and door panels flashing. Air circulation coughed and wheezed. Frustration snapped through Felix’s veins with a near audible crackle. “Can you...?” Felix gestured toward the blank expanse of plasmix.
“What? See through walls?”
“No, try your cuff. You’ve unlocked doors with it before, haven’t you?”
Zed ran a finger along the Guardian cuff circling his right wrist. Outwardly, it was the only symbol of his connection with the peacekeepers of the galaxy. Most people mistook it for a comm bracelet or jewelry. Brow furrowing, Zed concentrated on the door for a second or two, then shook his head. “Can’t do it with the power fluctuating like this.”
“Double shit.” Felix slapped his palm against the blinking panel. Then he glanced at Zed, another idea taking shape. “Could you phase-shift through it?” Through half a meter of interleaved alloys, cabling, insulation and ceramix. The door was nearly as thick as the outer hull.
Zed eyed it uncertainly. “Ah, I can try.”
Zed had been part of an experimental project with the AEF. He could move very fast and shift out of phase. Felix had seen him pass through people as though they weren’t there. But never a wall or door. Nothing not made of flesh. He shimmered for a fraction of a second, then disappeared. A fleeting shadow, something like an afterimage, ghosted toward the sealed hatch. One blink and it was gone. Felix’s bracelet chimed.
Another holo unfolded, showing Zed with that damned crease between his brows. “Made it.” Wincing, Zed rubbed at his temple. The holo skewed, making it look as if he’d swayed to the side.
“Are you okay?”
“Just a bit out of it. I’ll be fine. Where’s the external port?”
“Past the aux hatch. Duck under the portside exhaust housing. You’ll see the indented square of the panel cover.”
The holo shifted and bobbed, showing Zed’s progress along the side of the ship. A moment later, Zed huffed over the connection. “No one here, but our perp left in a hurry. There’s some doodad hanging from the inside. And a bunch of wires.”
Felix shunted aside thoughts of his ship being disemboweled through an external access port. Wasn’t possible. But someone with the right tools could do a lot of damage—after fucking up the internal systems. As proven. That someone would have had to hack the port open first. Getting into the ship’s systems after that would have been the easy part.
“Going to case the docks,” Zed reported.
“I’m going to try and open the fucking door.” After he stabilized the power systems.
“I’ll leave this channel open.”
The holo shut off, but the sound of Zed running and the background noise of the docks echoed quietly in the empty cargo bay. Felix called up another display and searched back through the diagnostic results looking for the blinking smiley face that had mocked him in Cargo Two. Fucker. He dove beneath the idiotic readings, seeking out actual diagnostic data. Sifting through status reports left his mind free to wander along different paths, such as what other ship’s systems had been accessed and compromised, and what Elias had meant by saying yes. Yes to what?
Focus on the Chaos.
Before they left port, he and Qek would have to crawl through every inch of programming. Finding a course-correcting bug after they’d flown into a star would suck. Especially now, after he and Zed had finally had a chance to settle in together. Get cozy. Stop feeling as if the future might be limited by the next call, or the next war.
He found the connection between the dummy report and the genuine readings and snipped it. The lights blinked once more and stabilized, the air vents stopped stuttering and a quiet and contented hum slid through the skin of the ship. The false readings had been layered with instructions. Clever. Or not. Okay, it was fucking brilliant and he’d have to try it out sometime—when he wasn’t so pissed off, and on a ship other than his own.
Felix contemplated the panel next to the main cargo door. It was still locked. Briefly, he entertained the idea of taking a fire ax to it—and only resisted because there was no way he could chop through the same wall Zed had effortlessly bypassed without making enough mess to strand them on Chloris for days.
Time to start hacking with code instead of sharp tools.
He tried pinging Marnie and Ryan, but they didn’t answer. Putting out their own fires, no doubt. Time stuttered and blurred as he attacked the door panel with different programs. Distantly, he tracked Zed’s progress through the docks. He ignored a call from the Chaos’s chief—and only—medical officer, Nessa, forwarding it to Zed’s wallet instead. He accepted a call from their ashushk pilot, Qekelough.
“Elias and Zander are tracking a suspect toward the market from opposite directions,” Qek reported. “Nessa is on her way back to the Chaos.”
“I can’t crack the code the fucker used to lock the ship.”
“Did you try the Alerion sequence Mrs. Scott forwarded last week?” Qek meant Marnie. Ashushk tended to start with the most formal form of address and work their way down to nicknames over a period of time only they could measure. Zed had graduated from Mr. Anatolius to Zander in a matter of weeks. Dying on Qek’s home planet might have had something to do with that.
“Where did you store it? I’m afraid to even access the ship’s systems. Bastard cooked up a dummy diagnostic report that was actually feeding instructions to the lights and air circulation systems.”
“I would be most interested in studying the code for such a hack.”
“After we make sure the ship is ours we’ll check it out. For now, I just need to get the doors open.”
“I have a local copy on my wallet. I will send it to you now.”
“Thanks, Qek.” Felix’s bracelet chimed with an incoming data packet. “Where are you, anyway?”
“I am still at Belan Laboratories. Zander gave me the Anatolius access codes.” Being related to the station’s owner had distinct advantages. “I used them to access the security footage from the docks. That is how I tracked the suspect to the market. I am having difficulty maintaining visual contact in the crowd, however.”
“Triple fucking shit,” Felix muttered. He needed to be out there, helping track down the asswipe who’d hacked his ship. Not trapped inside the cargo hold trying every hack known to man and ashushk.
The fingertips of his crystalline hand tingled and he spared a glance in their direction. With little more than a thought, he could shape his fingers into various tools, just as the resonance could, making his arm a gift beyond measure. He’d imagined digging them into the guts of the access panel—right before mentally bashing the door down with an ax. Extending one finger, he poked the outside of the panel and thought at it. Could he exploit the weird biotech further by thinking his way into a ship’s system?
Judging by the cool spot at the tip of his finger and the absolute lack of anything traveling down his arm, the answer was no.
Qek’s new routine unpacked and Felix immediately put it to work scanning the lock. Hope flared when the program leaped off in a new direction, his fingers following along on the holographic interface. A map of circuits appeared in the air, a glowing path weaving up and down and through the middle. Several intersections flared brightly, indicating broken connections. Breathlessly, Felix watched the Alerion sequence unlock the panel, one digit of the access code at a time. Then the panel hummed and clicked, and the hatch began the journey upward.
Felix didn’t wait for the do
or to fully open or the ramp to extend. Crouching, he jumped from the ship and ran through the docks, using his bracelet to key the hatch closed behind him.
If someone managed to jump inside before the hatch resealed—good luck to them. They could go ahead and try to steal his ship. More likely, they’d stumble across the same fucking roadblocks he had just trying to get out. Or, they’d discover that little course-correction routine just before they jumped through a black hole.
Chapter Two
Zed caught a glimpse of someone matching Qek’s description of the hacker—a flash of red hair on a shorter-than-average figure wearing a green backpack—and that was it. Man, woman, he didn’t know. At this point, he couldn’t even say it wasn’t an ashushk wearing a wig. Tracking the hacker through the crowd on the concourse outside the docks was achieved by following his or her wake. Zoning to access the greater speed of his experimental training wouldn’t help in these crowds, and phase-shifting to pass through people was out. Transitioning through the Chaos’s thick cargo door had left him feeling more unsettled than he’d like. A familiar ache had settled in between his temples, his eyes didn’t really want to focus and his muscles felt a bit rubbery—good signs that he’d pushed himself too hard to phase-shift through that door.
When the corridor from the docks dumped traffic into the market, Zed faltered. People flowed everywhere—a glut of humanity, with a few friendly ashushk thrown in for variety. No matter where Zed looked, he couldn’t pick up a disruption in the eddies of the crowd’s current. No clue as to where the hacker went.
His wallet pinged. He pulled it out, his tone short as he answered. “Yeah?”
“Have you reached the market, Zander?”
Qek’s precise, even tones mollified his temper somewhat. He’d checked in with her earlier to relay his intended destination, so it was natural for her to follow up. “I’m here. I think I lost them, though.”
“Elias is approaching from the opposite direction.”
And it would be just their luck if the hacker ducked sideways without them seeing—wait. Fuck, yes. Zed jolted forward. “Got him! He’s heading toward the promenade.” The main one that had vegetation hanging everywhere—it was a pretty iconic destination on Chloris, a unique characteristic that separated it from all the other stations belonging to Anatolius Industries. “Hasn’t seen me.”
“I will inform Elias and Anatolius Security. Good luck.”
Tucking his wallet away, Zed focused on shortening the distance between himself and the hacker. The crowd inhibited pursuit again—but luckily this time, it did the same for the hacker. By the time the guy reached a side corridor, Zed was only a few meters behind. The service alley wasn’t as wide as the main concourse and didn’t have nearly as much vegetation dangling overhead. It also wasn’t as crowded. Zed tried to keep a few people between him and the hacker as he debated his course of action. Charge ahead again and risk the hacker bolting? His slighter frame was a definite advantage over Zed’s bulk. Or hold back and work at getting closer, all subtle-like?
Movement close to his side distracted him for a second, but it was just Elias, jogging up and breathing heavily. “We got him?”
Zed smiled. Well, the odds had just increased in their favor. He nodded to one side of the corridor. “Work your way over on that side. I’ll stick over here.”
“Pincer?”
“Pincer.”
They wove through the diminished crowd, getting into position. Zed was about to signal Elias to close in when the hacker looked over his shoulder. His eyes widened and he darted sideways.
Zed didn’t waste any time on swearing—he just leaped into pursuit. The hacker had found a narrow access tunnel intended for maintenance bots and technicians. Slipping into the Zone despite the headache that warned him it was a bad idea, Zed found an additional burst of speed. He reached out, his fingers millimeters from the hacker’s pack—
And grabbed nothing. Only an afterimage existed—an afterimage that tossed a smile over his shoulder and melted away from his grasp.
Zed skidded to a stop, his brain refusing to acknowledge what he’d just seen and felt.
Elias caught up to him. “What the hell happened?”
“He shifted...” Zed waved a hand at the empty corridor.
“He what?”
Zed shook his head, fighting the words. They couldn’t be true. There was just no way...
Elias looked at Zed, then at the dark hall—then back to Zed, the realization dawning on his face. “Are you telling me he phase-shifted?”
Impossible. But...”I don’t know.”
“Zed—”
“I don’t know!” His fingers carded through his hair, yanking at the roots, a bad habit he’d picked up from Flick. He squinted as the shout made the pain in his head spike.
“Was he one of your teammates?”
“No.”
“Did you recognize—”
“No!”
Elias raised his hands. “Man, I’m just trying to get a handle on this. We’ve been operating on the belief that you were it. The last of your kind.”
Ire fading as quickly as his temper had flared, Zed’s shoulders sagged. “Maybe he was a holo.” But the suggestion sounded weak, even to his ears. He’d felt the rough material of his pack.
Zed closed his eyes. Fuck. “He phase-shifted.”
“Yeah. Looks like.” Elias rested his hand on Zed’s shoulder, a rare comradely touch.
“Whoever he was, a hell of a lot of planning went into this.” And the fact that they’d carried it out on a station the Chaos hadn’t even been scheduled to visit until the day before—that meant they’d been shadowed, their communications monitored.
Fuck, that was almost as scary as the fact that the hacker had phase-shifted.
* * *
Felix met Nessa exiting a lift tube from the maintenance level.
“Where are Elias and Zed?” he asked.
A scowl pulled at the delicate lines of her face. “On their way back from the main market.”
“They lost him?” Qek had relayed a short holo capture from one of the security cameras. Maybe when Marnie and Ryan were back online, they could clean it up and pin an identity to their hacker.
“Apparently he shifted.”
“He what?”
“Phase-shifted. Zed had a hold of his pack and he dematerialized right the fuck out of there.” Ness rarely swore.
Goose bumps prickled the back of Felix’s neck and shoulders. “Qek wasn’t able to follow on from...” From where he’d disappeared?
“He slipped into a camera dead zone behind the promenade. From there, he could have gone anywhere.”
His bracelet chimed once. Felix thumbed open the channel. “Yeah?”
Zed’s voice crackled through. “We lost our perp in the market—”
“Because he phase-shifted?” Felix exchanged a look with Nessa. Surely she’d meant something else?
Zed was the last living member of Project Dreamweaver. He should be the only human being in the galaxy who could mimic the stin ability to shift out of phase. The stin poison running through his veins had killed the rest of his team. Zed had only survived through the intervention of the Guardians.
“Can we talk about it when we get back to the ship?”
“Sure. Sooner I get back and start purging systems, the better.”
Felix closed the connection and ran his fingers down the smooth skin of his crystalline wrist and over the back of his perfectly formed hand. It freaked him out to have Zed in his thoughts, to be in Zed’s. But in only four months, he’d come to rely on it. Nothing soothed his anxious ripples as well as Zed’s deep pool of love and commitment. Not for the first time, he wished their connection extended beyond touch.
Nessa touched his wr
ist. “I’m sorry Zed’s whole scene got interrupted.”
Felix shrugged. “It’s not as if he needs to buy me strawberries to get me into bed. I’m a sure thing.” A creepy creep at the back of his skull suggested Zed had been trying to do more than simply seduce him.
Nessa opened her mouth.
“You know what this means, right?” Felix said. “Someone other than Zed phase-shifting?”
Closing her mouth, Nessa nodded. “Let’s get back to the ship.”
* * *
The crew of the Chaos normally gathered in the mess for team meetings. Felix didn’t want to be parted from the main computer, however, so they were all squashed into the corvette’s small bridge. Qek sat in the pilot’s seat, Felix in the copilot’s. Nessa and Elias took the jump seats set just behind and Zed crowded the doorway. The air cycler struggled to keep up with five rounds of agitated breath.
Qek’s blue fingers skipped across three different holos. Felix had another three open. The main console display shimmered beneath, and Nessa, Elias and Zed all had their wallets out and activated.
“Navigational system cleared.” Qek didn’t look up from her displays. Instead, she closed two and opened another.
“Great chunks of data were copied from medical,” Nessa said.
Elias looked up from his wallet. “Logs are secure, as far as I can tell, and all our financials are held off-ship.”
“They weren’t after credits,” Zed said.
Felix finished recompiling the program responsible for basic ship functions. “Life support and the gravity generators are secure.” He glanced over at Zed. “What do you think they were after?” He hadn’t assumed it would be credits either. There were much easier ways to steal currency than hacking a third-class corvette.
Zed gripped the back of his neck. A crease teased the middle of his brows. Felix had an uneasy relationship with that little wrinkle. In the past, it indicated headaches—symptoms of Zed’s rapid decline. Now, the crease signaled stress, which didn’t make Felix any happier.
“Obviously they wanted access to Morrison. Hacking through our communications protocols would have had to have been a priority.”