In Nadir's Shadow

by E. J. Heijnis

  "You're talking about mutiny," Yegor said, his tone sly. "My, oh my."

  "It's not mutiny," Oksana said at once. "They're not thinking straight. We can't just let them keep going when we know they're not in their right minds. Anybody would see it that way."

  Osip said, "We need Gervasi in charge. If she was running the ship, she'd turn it around in a heartbeat."

  The sound of boots on the deck. "You're fucking crazy," Gugal said. "I'm done with this, and you better be, too. If I hear another word about this shit, I'm reporting it." He walked away.

  "You keep your mouth shut, Gugal," Osip called after him. "You don't want to be on the wrong side of this."

  Gugal halted. "Oh no, buddy. You don't want to be on the wrong side of me." A scuff on the deck. "Forget about all this shit. You hear me?" He walked away, but the door opened before he got there. "Chief," Gugal said, and left as another set of footsteps entered the room.

  Those footsteps slowed, then stopped. Fleet guard Chief Zakhar's iron voice said, "There's a strange smell in here. A stink, even."

  Osip cleared his throat," I, uh, don't smell anything, sir."

  "Hm." Zakhar sniffed the air. "No, it's definitely there. It smells like rot." His tone sharpened with contempt. "Is there anything rotten in here, Talent?"

  Seconds of silence. Part of Miron wished he could see the scene, but another cursed the chief for interrupting. Finally, Osip said, "No, sir."

  "Good. The smell's still here, though. You'll have to clear out for now, so I can look around. If I can find the source, I'll eliminate it."

  The three talents got up without a word and left the mess hall. Zakhar's footsteps approached, and the chief appeared from behind the food dispenser. "Commander, do you want me to pursue this?"

  Miron sighed. "I doubt there'll be a need now. I was hoping to hear more names. Still, I appreciate your intervention."

  Zakhar hesitated. "Are you all right, sir?"

  "I'm fine, Chief. Back ache, is all."

  The guard chief nodded and pointed at a corner of the compartment. "Chief Ludmila sent me to do some diagnostics in here. I'll be working over there."

  Miron nodded. "Pretend I'm not here."

  Zakhar got to work and Miron returned to his food, too tired to feel irritation at the comfort he derived from the other man's presence.

  After finishing his food, Miron headed for his quarters. He kept his gaze on the deck, barely paying attention to the route. The conspirators had mentioned Gervasi, but they'd failed to specify whether she was aware of their plans. It would be immensely satisfying to present Borya with the truth of her betrayal, but he had to be sure first. He doubted he'd get another opportunity to eavesdrop, and he couldn't think of another way to get the information he needed.

  He looked up to see a fleet hand sitting in the corridor, facing a pressure door in the opposite bulkhead. Fatigue blurred his vision, and he rubbed his face to clear it. Once he got closer, he recognized Ilari. "Talent? Are you on duty?"

  She turned her head as if dazed, and stared at him with calm, exhausted eyes. "No, sir. I'm on red shift. I got off an hour ago."

  The aches in his body tugged at his will, but something felt off. "Are you all right? What are you doing out here?"

  "Just... resting. I think I know, I finally know, how to deal with it." She offered a dreamy smile. "It's a trick, you know. It's all a trick. Once you get it, it's obvious, but you still can't explain it. But I get it now."

  He nodded. "That's right. It's not real. Once you understand that, it can't get to you anymore."

  Ilari's smile broadened and a tear slipped down her cheek. "That's it! Exactly."

  His conscience satisfied, Miron gave her a nod. "I'll see you in Control." He left her on the floor and resumed his course. A few more steps, then a left―

  He walked into the bulkhead, bouncing his forehead off the metal and bruising his knee. His mind roiled in confusion as he staggered back, trying to reconcile where he'd thought he was with what he saw before him.

  He'd taken a wrong turn. This was a different corridor. He forced his sluggish thoughts to retrace his steps from the mess hall.

  As soon as he realized where he was, the other pieces snapped into place all at once. He stumbled back the way he'd come. "Ilari!"

  She wasn't in the corridor anymore. He heard the sound of a pressure door sliding shut, followed by a buzz and the unmistakable hiss of the pressurization mechanism activating.

  He reached the door, peered inside. Ilari stood with her back to him, facing the porthole in the second pressure door. It showed only the infinite black of space.

  He slammed a fist against the door. "Ilari! Get in here, right now!" She didn't respond. He fumbled with the controls. The depressurization cycle wouldn't reverse without an emergency override―he couldn't recall his. The air drained out of the airlock. Once drained, the outer door would open and she would be gone.

  His finger twitched, activating his implant to contact Control. "This is Commander Miron. Emergency command. Repressurize airlock 5-C. Confirm at once."

  Borya spoke deep inside his ear: "Done. What happened?"

  With another finger movement, he limited his communication to Borya's receiver only. "Ilari's in the airlock. She was depressurizing it."

  "I'll send you a few hands."

  The mechanism changed pitch as air poured back into the pressure chamber. Ilari looked around, then turned, and the despair on her face made him doubt if he'd done the right thing. She lunged at the porthole. "Let me out!" she shrieked, hammering the door with her fists. "Let me go! Don't do this to me! Please!"

  Miron had nothing to say. He glanced at the display next to the door. Seconds left to go until pressure equalized.

  Ilari fell silent, her eyes suddenly wide, no longer seeing him. Her lip quivered as she slowly turned around.

  Something else was in the pressure chamber.

  She staggered back. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed.

  Miron didn't know what she'd seen. To him, it was Ilya that faced him from inside the airlock. Her ravaged features indicted him, an accusation more eloquent than words. Panic gripped his chest. He breathed faster. "You don't understand," he said. Sweat leaked into his eyes. "I did the best I could! I didn't know!"

  The controls chimed and the door slid open. He forced himself to enter, keeping his back to the apparition. His body protested as he lifted Ilari off the floor and carried her out. Staggering through the corridors, his strength draining away, he tried to ignore the memories, the cruel voices in his mind that seized on his weakness.

  Fleet hands found him, spoke to him―he couldn't understand a word. A whirlwind raged in his skull and no matter how fast he breathed, no air made it into his lungs. His last conscious sensation was of hands catching him as his legs gave way.

  Chapter Six

  Miron awoke on a bed in the infirmary. Another man lay next to him, muttering and twitching in his sleep. He raised himself up on his elbows and saw Rurik and a female orderly on the far side of the room, leaning over another patient. Miron managed to work himself into a sitting position before the doctor heard him move and came over. Stubble lined the doctor's gaunt cheeks. "Slow down, Commander. There are some drugs in your system that will take a little time to wear off. How do you feel?"

  "What drugs?"

  "Sedatives. You've been sleeping for the past fourteen hours."

  "Fourteen hours?" He grabbed the doctor's coat and pulled him closer. Though his vision narrowed and the world spun, he forced himself to speak: "Don't ever give me sedatives again. Those are for the crew. Do you understand?"

  A calm nod. Miron released the man's coat and almost fell back. Rurik waved off the orderly, who turned away after an acerbic stare at Miron.

  "I'll respect your wishes, Commander, but if you intend to remain effective, you're going to have to give yourself some consideration," Rurik said. "I'd heard you were helping out the engineers, but no one told me yo
u were working double shifts there in addition to your Control time, and regular visits to all ship's departments. If they had, I'd have found you and told you to slow down."

  "Everybody's working hard."

  "Not this hard," Rurik replied, his tone decisive. "You need more sleep, or you will break down. If you have trouble managing that, then it's time to reconsider your stance on medications."

  Miron looked away. "How is Ilari?"

  Rurik answered him in an even tone: "She's over there."

  "She's comatose," the orderly said with an edge.

  Miron ignored the woman. "What's wrong with her?"

  The doctor hesitated. "Commander, have you read her file?"

  "Not entirely."

  A brief look of grief and regret passed over the doctor's face. "I suppose it wouldn't have made much difference. This isn't the first time Ilari's experienced an incorporeal attack. When they salvaged the Relentless, she was the only survivor. They found her in an equipment locker. She'd locked herself in and broken the handle, but she must have changed her mind, because she'd torn her nails off trying to get out again." He shook his head. "They should never have sent her back out here. She even requested a transfer out of shipboard service, but they rejected it."

  Miron felt a sensation like ice water washing over his skin. He looked at Rurik. "One of them was in the airlock with her."

  Sorrow crumpled Rurik's face. He looked for somewhere to look. "Yeah."

  "Help me up."

  Every limb felt drained and weak, but once he was off the table, he was able to walk slowly without assistance. They came to Ilari's bed. Deep circles underlined her eyes, and broken blood vessels discolored the pallid skin of her sunken cheeks.

  "Can you do anything for her?"

  Rurik gave him a searching look. At Miron's raised eyebrows, he turned to the orderly. "Esfir, Alyona's sedatives should be wearing off. Go check on her, please. She's in her bunk."

  Esfir demurred, looking back and forth between Miron and the doctor. Lacking an argument to refuse, she said, "Yes, sir," and marched out.

  Miron nodded after her. "What's her problem?"

  "She thinks she should have gotten my posting. She also thinks you had something to do with her not getting it." Rurik turned back to him. "To answer your question officially: no, I can't."

  "What does that mean?"

  The doctor looked down at the fleet hand. "I've seen this before. She looks asleep like this, but her mind isn't. It's broken, stuck on repeat. Whatever she saw in that airlock, she's still seeing it. Except now, she can't even move."

  "And you can't do anything?"

  Rurik hesitated. "I didn't say that."

  "Get to the point," Miron demanded.

  "Fine." Rurik faced him. "We could end her life."

  He stared, fear stirring in his gut. The suggestion was unthinkable, but the doctor's expression left no doubt he was serious. "What's wrong with you?"

  "I'm not joking. Her mind is gone, Commander. It will never work again. All she can do now is..." He shrugged. "Suffer. They can keep her on heavy meds when she wakes up, maybe get her stable enough for simple labor." The doctor's voice turned bitter. "She won't be alive. But at least she'll be productive."

  Miron looked back at the motionless fleet hand. "Are you sure?"

  Rurik lifted his eyebrows and walked away. He picked up a tablet and fiddled with it. "Not the first time I've patched somebody up I shouldn't have. The Commonwealth needs its citizens." He shook his head, eyes on the tablet.

  Miron swallowed, looked around the room. "Okay."

  The doctor didn't look up. "Okay, what?"

  "I said okay. Put her to rest. Just make sure it's painless."

  Slowly, Rurik put the tablet down. "Are you sure?" he said, suspicion in his eyes.

  Miron glared at him. "Don't be dense."

  Rurik straightened with a deep breath and nodded. "Thank you―"

  "Don't." Before the doctor could speak again, he escaped as fast as his battered body permitted.

  *****

  Shura paced across the room while Kirill sat at the table, still playing quietly. The auditor's words kept repeating in her head, threatening to drown her in panic each time. No matter how much she thought about it, she could think of no way to escape being caught. Ermolei would give her up; it would be forced out of him. Once they knew, one simple test would confirm that Kirill wasn't supposed to have lived. Then they would take him away. She would be interrogated, then sent off to die fighting the floaters.

  They had to get away.

  A distant memory sprouted in her mind. She'd heard a story once, of people who had fled the auditors by running away to the northern forests, far from the inhabited Districts. She didn't know if those people still existed, or if they ever had. She embraced the thought regardless, her mind desperate for any choice besides surrender.

  She stopped pacing and took a deep breath to try to stop her body from trembling. They were coming. She couldn't do anything about that. But maybe she could avoid them, at least for a while. Why not try?

  Other than hiding Kirill, she'd never broken the law. After he'd been born, she'd taken extreme care to avoid drawing attention, and the thought of defying the auditors drew a fresh spike of terror. It would be easier to submit. But she'd made her choice years ago, when she'd committed a crime to save her son.

  Now she'd commit more.

  Finally armed with a purpose, the nervous energy she'd built up materialized into specific actions. She took a bag and stuffed it with anything she might need on the run: snack packs, blankets, all their clothes, clean or not, a tablet with internal memory capacity that she used whenever she had to work outside network coverage. She only had two bottles to fill with water and nothing but snacks for food, but she had a plan for that.

  "Aman," Kirill said.

  "Yes, cub," she said, out of breath. She stuffed a tube of stimulant tablets into her pocket. She never took them, even on whole-day shifts, but she'd never run from law enforcement before.

  "Smiley says we're leaving home."

  She stopped working and came over. "How does he know that?" she said, failing to keep the tension from her voice. "What did he say?"

  Now his fear had nothing to do with the auditors. He shrank back. "That's what he said, that we're leaving."

  Her frustration fled, and for a moment she felt only a bone-deep fatigue, so intense each breath demanded an effort. "Well, he's right. We have to go. That man will come back to take us away. To hurt us."

  "Why?"

  In a weary reflex, she kneeled and hugged him. "That's hard to explain, cub," she whispered. "One day I will. But today, I need you to make sure that you do everything I tell you, whenever I tell you. Just do it. Okay? You promise?"

  He nodded. As she returned to packing, she realized her plans had a flaw. She had to get to work to engineer her escape, but she couldn't bring Kirill on the commute. Where could she leave him? The daycare in the complex knew she got called in sometimes, so they would take him unscheduled, but what if the auditor found him there? What if they took him straight to the doctor and tested him before she got back?

  She'd have to leave him with someone. Arina was her neighbor, and although they weren't friends by any means, they'd helped each other out in the past. "Kiri, take your clay. You're going to stay with my friend for a while. You know, the one with the long hair? You remember playing with that little girl, Saila?"

  "Where are you going?" he asked in a small voice.

  She came to him. "I have to do some things so we can get away. I'd take you with me if I could. I'll come get you as soon as I can. Before the evening. Then we'll leave, you and me. Okay?" He gave a timid nod, but she saw the doubt in his eyes. "Be brave, Kiri. For me. You just promised me you'd do whatever I told you, right? "

  "Yes, but..."

  "I know, it's hard. But it's going to be okay. Now, when you get there, I want you to play quietly. Don't tell Arina or Saila about what's g
oing on, okay? That's very important. You can't tell them anything, because they won't understand and you'll frighten them." She took his hand to lead him outside, leaving her bag by the door on the way out.

  Arina lived a few doors down. She answered the door on the first buzz. Shura had summoned her best apologetic smile, but the look on Arina's face when she opened the door erased all trace of the charade. "What's wrong?" she asked.

  The other woman's bloodshot eyes flicked back and forth between her and Kirill. "Nothing," she said, and hugged herself. "Nothing. What do you want?"

  "I got called in to work, and I was wondering if you could watch Kirill for me. I―"

  "I can't," she cut in. "Just take him to daycare."

  "They won't take him," Shura said before Arina could close the door. "They don't have a work schedule for me today, the office didn't bother sending one. I just need to have him somewhere safe for a few hours."

  Arina gave a nervous laugh, tainted with hysteria. "Then you don't want him here!" She caught herself and looked away, blinking rapidly. As Shura tried to think of what to say, Arina's breath hitched. She turned back to them. "Did you have a visitor today?"

  "A visitor? No, I―" An memory flashed in her mind. Arina, at the infirmary, coming out of the examination room with Ermolei. Smiling. Quiet words exchanged. The vicious look at Shura.

  She smiled through the realization. "We don't get a lot of visitors. Listen, I don't want to give you any trouble. I'm going to try the daycare again. They're just going to have to take him." She looked down at Kirill. "Say bye."

  "Bye."

  She walked away, not looking back, her heartbeat thundering in her ears. She wasn't sure how, but she knew with icy conviction that Arina had been visited by the auditors. She clenched the fist that wasn't holding Kirill's hand. Who else? It couldn't be anyone who had Ermolei as their doctor. All of his patients would have been questioned, and she didn't dare trust them.

  She stopped in the middle of the hallway, afraid to pursue her next thought. She had no friends, but someone did owe her a favor. It had been a long time, and what she would ask for was out of proportion. She wouldn't normally dream of asking this of her. She most likely wouldn't even be home.