Tony pressed a finger to his lips and ducked past her to scrape off his tray into the garbage chute. After he’d deposited his dishes, he took her by the arm and began dragging her toward the exit.
The guard standing there stopped them with an upraised hand. “Where do you two think you’re going?”
It was the same bored-looking lieutenant who had gleefully informed them they were assigned to dish duty a few days ago. Thick black caterpillar eyebrows framed his round baby face. Giant hands and a barrel chest juxtaposed his face.
“We’re done eating,” Tony explained.
“So? Go sit down. You have work to do.”
Tony shook his head. “Val isn’t feeling well. I’m taking her to med bay to see what’s wrong. I think it could be food poisoning.”
The lieutenant assessed her with one eyebrow raised, his other eye narrowing to a beady brown slit. “I guess she does look a bit green around the gills. All right, but make sure at least one of you is here before lunch is over. Those dishes don’t clean themselves.”
Tony nodded quickly and dragged her out the door with him.
“What are you doing?” Val whispered as soon as they were out of earshot of the guard.
“Playing hooky,” he replied.
Val’s spirits immediately lifted, and her churning gut settled. A smile touched her lips. “Tony Dean Nelson, you are now officially my favorite person on this ship.”
He beamed at her and waggled his eyebrows. “Ahead of your dad?”
She made a sweeping gesture. “Way ahead! He’s huffing and puffing to catch up.”
Tony laughed at that. “Cool.”
They hurried through the corridor together, heading for the elevators. Val began to notice something as they wound through the ship. One out of every four doors was guarded by men and women who seemed twice as scary as the baby-faced lieutenant they normally dealt with in the mess hall.
“Why do you think they have so many guards on this ship?” Val whispered to Tony.
He shrugged. “Lots of sensitive equipment, I guess.”
“Yeah, or lots of secrets.”
Tony stared at her. “Now you’re starting to sound like your dad. What would they have to hide?”
Val just shook her head. They came to the elevators: four sets of doors to either side of the corridor. A pair of blue suits with sidearms were standing around, guarding one elevator. Val angled for the ones on the other side to hit the call button, but one of the two guards intercepted her before she could. “What are you doing out here?” he asked. “It’s lunch time.”
“She’s not feeling well,” Tony explained. “I’m taking her to med bay.”
“Well, you’ll have to go around. The elevators are busy.”
“With what?”
“None of your business. Take the stairs.” The guard nodded around the corner up ahead.
“She’s not feeling well,” Tony repeated.
“Then I guess you shouldn’t waste time arguing with me.”
Tony scowled and led the way to the stairwell. As they turned the corner, Val heard one of the elevators ding open, and she pasted herself to the wall to peek around the corner and see who it was.
“What are you doing?” Tony hissed.
“Shhh.” She saw Carrie and Lewis Hound emerge from one of the elevators.
Hound was saying, “I let you take them on a tour of the cryo decks. That should be enough to settle their suspicions.”
Carrie stopped and planted hands on her hips. “A woman is missing, Lewis, and Andrew Miller might have been the last person to see her. Where is she?”
Hound rounded on Carrie. “Are you accusing me of something?”
“I’m just asking if you know anything,” Carrie replied. “If someone finds a body...”
“A body?” Hound echoed, sounding incredulous. “We put her to bed early, that’s all.”
Val’s heart pounded as she waited to hear more, but Hound turned and stalked off, muttering something she couldn’t hear. Carrie hurried to catch up with him, her voice equally indistinct.
Val stared after them in shock, trying to put the pieces together. Were they talking about that woman her dad claimed to have seen in the middle of the night? Almost equally shocking was the fact that neither of the guards watching the elevators had reacted to Carrie and Hound’s conversation. Maybe they were in on it.
One of them turned and looked her way. Val ducked back out of sight, cursing silently to herself. Tony pulled her into the stairwell, and they went flying down the stairs together. After passing a few landings, they stopped to catch their breath.
“What the hell was that?” Val asked.
“Maybe it was nothing,” Tony suggested, but his expression said that not even he believed that.
“They were talking about that woman who came to see my dad. Carrie was asking Hound if they killed her!”
“You don’t know that,” Tony replied.
“Who else could they have been talking about?” Val replied, throwing up her hands. “My dad was right. We need to find him. And Kendra.”
“We’ll have to walk past those guards again to get to the mess hall.”
“Shit,” Val said, heaving a deep breath. “There has to be another way. Maybe we can wait until my dad leaves for work. We could go to med bay first, like we said, to kill time.”
“Yeah,” Tony nodded. “Good idea. Let’s go.”
* * *
After a brief visit to the ship’s doctor, in which Val had been given a bottle of pills for her nausea, they headed down to the engineering decks, searching for her dad.
They eventually found him by the sound of his cursing echoing out of one of the machine rooms on deck eight. Strangely enough, there weren’t any guards present. Val found that particularly odd, since the engineering decks probably had the most sensitive equipment of all.
An elderly man looked up with a smile as they approached. “Are you two lost?” he asked. That had to be Harold, the guy her dad was apprenticing under.
Her dad was lying on his back, his head under a group of cylindrical metal tanks that were held above the floor by metal frames.
“We’re just here to talk to my dad about something,” Val explained.
“Ah, of course,” Harold replied, nodding.
Andrew’s head thunked into something with a ringing report, and he cursed viciously. Dragging himself out from under the tanks, he glared up at Val with a grease-smeared face. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. His gaze flicked to Tony, and swiftly narrowed. “I thought you were getting an early start on the dishes.”
“I took her to med bay. She wasn’t feeling well,” Tony explained for the umpteenth time.
Val rattled her pill bottle.
Her dad’s annoyance faded to concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’m feeling a little nauseated.”
Andrew sat up. Harold offered a hand, and he took it after a brief hesitation. He stood up and wiped his greasy hands on a rag that Harold passed to him.
“Maybe you should go rest. I’m sure Tony can handle the dishes on his own. Right, Tony?” Andrew grabbed his shoulder, and Val saw him wince as her dad squeezed. He ducked out of her father’s grip and went to stand behind Val, using her like a shield.
Real heroic of you, Tony, Val thought wryly. She pocketed the pill bottle and shook her head. “I’m okay. The meds are already helping. We’re actually here to talk to you about something.” Her eyes flicked to Harold, and his grizzled eyebrows drifted up. “In private,” she added, her gaze snapping over to her dad.
“Can it wait?” He turned and nodded to the tanks he’d been working on. “The water recyclers are leaking, and as you can probably guess, we can’t afford to waste a single drop.”
Val hesitated. As if to punctuate what her father had just said, something gave way with a metallic ping, and a hissing stream of water sprayed out underneath the tanks.
“Damn it!” her dad roared. He dropped
to the deck and scuttled under the tanks once more, vanishing before Val could explain that what she had to tell him was urgent, too.
Harold smiled tightly at them. “You’ll have a chance to talk to him at dinner.”
“Harry, I could use an extra set of hands here!”
“Go on, you two, scat!” Harry said before dropping to his knees to see what her dad needed help with. They began arguing immediately about what kind of tools would be best for the job.
“Just shut it down and flush the tanks!” her father said. “We don’t have time to argue about how to fix the damn thing.”
Tony began pulling her away. “Come on,” he whispered. “We’ll talk to him at dinner.”
If we get a chance, Val thought, but she let Tony pull her away and lead the way back up to the mess hall. The conversation they’d overheard was too sensitive to discuss in a public area.
* * *
When they finally finished with all the dishes, they had just five minutes before dinner. Val hurried out and lined up for a tray of food. But after smelling the disgusting combination of dish soap and Sebastian’s paella stewing in giant pans, Val wasn’t the least bit hungry. Still, she knew if she didn’t eat now, she’d be starving later, and it would be too late to do anything about it.
She and Tony ran to their usual table, the first ones to sit down, and Val passed the time waiting for her dad to arrive by bouncing her knees impatiently and periodically glancing at the door. Everyone else arrived before he did.
Tony kept his gaze low, looking nervous as Carrie came to sit at their table. Roland was eating fast, as if eager to leave—or maybe he was just that hungry.
Carrie nodded to Val. “Is everything okay?”
Val froze, her knees no longer bouncing. “Why would anything be wrong?”
Carrie pointed to Val’s tray with her knife. “You haven’t touched your food.”
Relief coursed through her; Val slumped and smiled tightly as she stared at the yellow rice mixed with seafood on her tray. “After smelling it cooking for the last three hours, I feel like paella is coming out of my ears.”
Carrie smiled back. “I guess you’ll keep your skinny waist like that. I’m almost jealous. You reach my age, and even looking at food packs on the pounds.”
Kendra agreed with a snort. Val nodded absently and turned to scan for her dad again. She couldn’t see him, but she did notice Diane sitting at a kids’ table nearby. Beyond that, Reverend Morris stood holding hands, her head bowed as she said grace with her growing group of followers. Val began to look away—and that was when she spotted her dad darting out of the serving line, probably trying to escape from Harold, who was leaving the line right behind him.
Her dad sat down a moment later, guzzled his juice, and then looked to Val. She noticed that he still had a hint of grease on his face, but it was smeared around, making him a few shades darker than usual.
“So? What were you in such a hurry to talk to me about earlier?”
Val almost swallowed her tongue. Her knees started bouncing again.
Tony covered for her. “We figured it out on our own.”
“Yeah?” Andrew’s eyes pinched skeptically, but he shrugged it off and dug into his food.
Val let out a slow breath and began picking through hers as well, taking tentative bites. The paella was actually pretty good. Before long she was eating with more enthusiasm, listening absently to the ebb and flow of meaningless small talk passing between the people at her table and the tables around her. It took a while for her heart to stop pounding, but eventually it did, and she managed to suck in a breath that didn’t feel forced. She noticed that Carrie was gone, and Kendra was rising to leave.
“Wait,” Val said quietly.
Kendra regarded her with eyebrows raised.
“We need to speak to you,” Val explained.
Kendra returned to her seat and nodded for Val to go on. Her dad set his fork down and fixed her with a worried expression. “So you did have something to talk to me about.”
“We couldn’t say anything in front of Carrie,” Tony whispered.
“Well, she’s gone now, so spill it,” Andrew said.
Val explained what they’d overheard Hound and Carrie talking about by the elevators.
Andrew scowled. “I knew I wasn’t imagining things!”
Kendra seemed particularly unsettled by the news.
“You think they did something to her?” Tony asked, flicking long hair out of his eyes. He looked paler than usual.
Roland’s eyes were wide and unblinking as they skipped around the table. “This isn’t good,” he said.
Andrew spoke next: “Hound said they put her to bed early—those were his exact words?”
Val nodded.
Andrew jerked his chin to Kendra. “I guess you were right not to trust your sister.”
Kendra winced and glanced around the mess hall, under the guise of stretching. She leaned across the table and whispered to him, “We need to sneak into the cryo room.”
Andrew shook his head. “Why?”
“To see if that woman is alive or dead.”
Val felt a cold weight settle in her gut. She shook her head. “What difference will that make?”
Kendra’s gaze skipped to her. “It’ll tell us what we’re dealing with. If Hound is willing to kill his own people to keep them quiet, what do you think he’ll do to us?”
Val’s dad pushed up from the table with a growl. “I’m gonna get some coffee. I’m half asleep, and something tells me this is gonna be a long night.”
All eyes turned to him as he left.
“A long night?” Roland asked.
Kendra added, “He’s right. We need to access the cryo rooms tonight. And we’re going to need your help to do it.”
“What about me?” Val asked, suddenly wondering if she were invisible.
Kendra just shook her head as she pushed out from the table and started after Andrew.
Val frowned after Kendra. A hand slid into hers and squeezed. “Let them handle it,” Tony whispered.
NINE
Kendra
Kendra found Andrew near the coffee maker, and his hands trembled as they cradled a ceramic mug. He glanced up at her while sipping from the half-empty cup. She saw the uncertainty in his eyes, a familiar stare in her line of business. Those in law enforcement often filled their grief and trauma with booze, and Andrew’s face held the haunted gaze of a man wanting to drown his sorrows.
“Is there any more of that left?” She indicated the coffee carafe, and he nodded.
“Sure. I usually don’t like to have caffeine so late, but… you only live once, right?” He smiled, his entire face softening with the simple movement.
Kendra had the urge to touch his cheek, to tell him everything would work out. She wondered if they could assist each other in some way, to stop the dread and all their stresses from overwhelming them. Maybe a couple of hours isolated from the others would distract them enough to reclaim their sanity. She kept this to herself too as she poured the cup, adding a touch of milk to coat her upset stomach.
“About that… I’m going to check out the cryo space tonight,” she told him before blowing on her steaming coffee.
He set down his cup, stepping closer to her. His arms crossed at his chest, as if he was trying to intimidate her. She didn’t flinch.
“What? You think you’re better suited for the task?” she asked.
“Yes.” One word. No explanation. He was just like every man.
“Why? Because you were a Marine, or because I’m a woman?” she asked through her teeth.
“Yes.” Andrew grinned, and Kendra could tell he was enjoying her reaction.
“Seriously.”
He relented, lowering his arms to his sides. “Seriously, I do think I’m better suited for recon.”
“Andrew, if you go in there guns blazing, the only thing that’s going to happen is you ending up in one of those tubes and never coming ou
t again. Think about Valeria, would you? You’ve admitted you haven’t spent enough time with her over the years, but she’s here now. It’s the two of you. Be there for her,” Kendra said, and judging by the expression on his face, she’d gone too far. “Andrew…”
“No. I understand. I’ve been a shitty father, like I was a shitty husband.” He leaned against the café countertop and made fists with his hands. “I want to be better, Kendra. I do. All of this stuff has me so riled up I’m not sure what to do with myself.”
“We could ignore the message from the woman. Maybe Valeria heard Hound wrong, and they weren’t really talking about the visitor you had in your room. Hell, even you thought it might have been a dream for a while,” she told him.
“What does it matter if we do or don’t? We’re not in control here, Kendra,” he said. “They are… your sister is.” He said sister like it was a curse word.
“I’m going. We need to understand what we’re dealing with here. I can’t go to this colony without more information,” Kendra said, and he closed his lips tightly.
“Fine. But be careful,” Andrew said. “We need you.”
“You do?” She peered into his eyes, checking for a deeper meaning, but he didn’t offer one.
“We do. Val loves you already, and Diane… and Tony. Hell, even Roland thinks you’re a superhero,” Andrew told her, and her breath caught in her throat. It was overwhelming hearing such praise, especially from this hard-shelled man.
“And you?”
“I do too. We’re in this together. A team, right?” Andrew asked, his words quiet.
“Right.” She placed her cup on the counter, recognizing that it was almost time. Roland was waiting for her, as per their earlier instructions, and she didn’t want to be late.
“You be safe. I’ll see you in the morning.” Andrew appeared ready to step in for a hug, or some type of intimate gesture, but instead he turned away, stalking through the hall.
“See you in the morning,” she whispered, and made for her room. Curfew was soon, and things would become more difficult afterwards. Kendra wasn’t sure how she was going to remain undetected, but she was working through an internal excuse list in case she was caught.
Final Days: Colony Page 7