13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Nikolai

I’m so happy it feels like I’m floating. The short time I spent locked up with Z’Ree counts as one of the best moments of my life. I’m almost happy enough to forget why we were locked in there in the first place.

Something bad is happening to the ship. Even someone as clueless about alien technology as I am can take a hint. The lights that flicker occasionally, the almost non-existent water pressure, and, of course, the latest mega hint—the loss of pressure.

We’re in trouble. And we’re in space. We can’t exactly exit the vehicle and wait on the side of the road for a tow truck. We can’t even call Houston and tell them that we have a problem. Not that Houston was able to do much for Tom Hanks when he was stuck in space.

There’s no point in being a prophet of doom, though. The crew spends most of their life in space. They’re used to being on spaceships, even on malfunctioning ones. They’ll be able to fix whatever is wrong.

The message summoning everyone to the bridge for an emergency meeting makes a dent in my “all will be good” conviction. Perhaps things are more serious than I thought. D’Aakh has been talking about systems going haywire for several days now. And Z’Ree is hiding down in the engineering section. Damn, she could be in danger.

With my thoughts wildly bouncing between blissful optimism and the prospect of all of us dying terrible deaths in the cold vastness of space, I make my way to the bridge. Almost everyone is already there, except for Zarkan who’s probably still on his way and Nala, who’s probably keeping Ellen occupied. Whatever trouble we’re in, Ellen doesn’t need to hear about it.

“You got some soap here,” I tell Astra, pointing to the back of her neck.

“Yeah, that’s what happens when you can’t finish your shower,” she grumbles, scratching at the spot.

D’Aakh shoots us a deathly glare. “Oh, you didn’t get to finish washing yourself. How fucking tragic. It’s not like the entire fucking water reclamation system is in shambles and we might find ourselves without water in a matter of days. And there’s no telling which systems will follow.” Without letting the disconcerting words sink in, he points a finger at me. “And it’s all your fault.”

I reel back from the ridiculous accusation. “My fault?! How is this my fault? I don’t know anything about these systems!”

My heart picks up pace, slamming wildly against my sternum as if trying to escape my rib cage. Did I do something wrong? Accidentally damaged something? Did I touch something I shouldn’t have?

No matter how hard I strain my brain, I can’t come up with anything and yet, D’Aakh is glaring at me, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his posture conveying “you did it” better than any words ever could.

The others exchange surprised looks, then focus their eyes on me. Are they looking at me just with confusion? Or do I see suspicion in some of their eyes, too?

I wipe my sweaty palms on my pants, clenching them to hide how hard they are trembling. “I…I didn’t do anything.” My words sound pathetic even to me and I just know that this is when they get rid of me. The oddball that never belonged here in the first place.

“That’s enough!” Zarkan arrives, his voice booming through the room. He’s angry. Really angry, which is something so out of character for him that we all gawk, speechless. “Whatever is going on,” he says, “and we still don’t know what exactly is going on, none of it is Nikolai’s fault, so stop throwing stupid accusations around, D’Aakh.”

D’Aakh lowers his head like a scolded child, but doesn’t relent. “Not directly, but if he’d told us about the saboteur earlier—”

“About what?” I interrupt, staring at him in disbelief. “What saboteur?”

“The one that you’ve been hiding! The one that keeps crippling our ship, bit by bit, causing our systems to malfunction and fail.”

My eyes widen at the realization that he’s talking about Z’Ree. “Are you out of your mind?! She wouldn’t do that! Not to mention, why would she? She’s on this ship as well. If the systems fail, her life will be in danger too!”

“Well, perhaps she doesn’t care about her life anymore. I don’t know how crazy people think,” D’Aakh smirks.

I’m standing in front of him before I even realize I’ve moved. Fist in his shirt, I’m practically snarling into his face. “What did you just say about her?!”

In a motion too fast for me to comprehend, D’Aakh slips out of my grip, slams me against the wall, and twists my arm up behind my back, proving he’s not just a brilliant technician, but also an elite soldier. I struggle momentarily against his grip, then push myself off the wall and throw the back of my head at his face. The bastard dodges and twists my arm up further. Then there’s yelling and people pulling us apart.

“What the fuck is going on?!” Zarkan hollers, easily pinning me to the wall with just one arm.

“He put us all in danger!” D’Aakh protests, held back by both Tareq and Lyriana.

I bare my teeth at him. “Don’t call Z’Ree crazy again. She’s a better person than any of us here and she’d never do anything to endanger someone else.”

I’m certain of it. Z’Ree wouldn’t hurt anyone even if her life depended on it. Up until recently, I considered myself the same, but clearly, my instincts have finally gotten the better of me. I’m acting like a damned caveman. “Sorry,” I mutter in D’Aakh’s direction, sucking in a deep breath to calm down.

Zarkan gives me a wary look before releasing me, then turns to D’Aakh. “I don’t want to hear any more accusations. We’re here to determine what’s going on and we will do so together, without arguing or fighting.”

“Fine,” he pushes through his gritted teeth. “I’m just trying to save everyone’s lives, and I can’t really do that when you keep hiding things from me.”

“It was my decision not to tell anyone about the stowaway,” Zarkan says. “At the time, her presence appeared insignificant. What makes you believe she’s behind these incidents?”

My mouth opens to protest but Zarkan holds his hand up, silencing me. D’Aakh brings up the ship’s schematic, with several areas colored bright orange. All of them lining the maintenance walkways Z’Ree currently uses as her hiding spot.

“These are the places where important conduits have been damaged. Plumbing, wires, whatever you can think of, it’s all been shredded. The automated systems keep cutting off the damaged areas to contain the issue and since we only use a small portion of the ship, we haven’t really noticed it, not until the problems became too great.”

“And you’re sure someone deliberately damaged those conduits?” Zarkan asks, frowning at the schematic. “Couldn’t it be accidental? You said it yourself. This ship wasn’t in the greatest shape when we took it from those Genixarian slavers. Could it be the wear and tear catching up with us?”

D’Aakh shakes his head, his head antennae swaying from side to side. “I only checked one of the locations since I’ve been too busy keeping the ship together, but there were cables and pipes missing. Literally. It looked like someone had torn them off the walls and dragged them somewhere else.”

“That’s…disturbing,” Astra says, shuddering. “Do we have a creepy monster on board?”

“No, but we do have a stowaway,” D’Aakh jeers, shooting me a glare.

I can’t help but laugh. “This is ridiculous. Z’Ree is five feet nothing and skinny as a twig. Are you really suggesting she’s roaming the damned ship, tearing things off walls? Perhaps you’re the crazy one here,” I jab.

“Well, someone is doing it!”

“What are the odds that we have two stowaways?” Astra asks.

Zarkan shakes his head. “None. At least not someone we picked up on the Arcade. Cai, play the footage.”

A security footage from the airlock plays on the screen, showing me walking away from the entrance. The moment the airlock is unguarded, a familiar figure dressed in oversized coveralls tiptoes toward the ship's entrance. Z’Ree looks around for a moment before making her decision and darting through the airlock.

Another camera shows her inside the ship, heading for the nearest maintenance walkways hatch. She struggles to open it before slipping through and disappearing from the screen. Shortly after that, the crew arrives back at the airlock.

“No one else entered the ship while we were docked with the Arcade,” Cai announces.

“I thought you were keeping watch,” Astra says. “How did you not notice someone sneaking on board?”

Cai sounds aggrieved as she explains, “At the time, I was deeply focused on keeping the Arcade’s AI from rebooting emergency protocols, which would reactivate the slave collars. That was the order given to me by the captain. I apologize for missing the unknown person boarding the ship, but my computational capacity is limited.”

“There’s no need to apologize, Cai,” Zarkan interjects. “We’re not here to assign blame. Nikolai, it sounds like you’ve spoken to the stowaway? What did she say?”

I shift uncomfortably, not wanting to share anything about Z’Ree with others. Something inside me keeps chanting “mine”, making me more than a little possessive but everyone is looking at me and I know I have to give them something.

“She doesn’t really speak. I think she has been punished for speaking so many times she now has a mental block that prevents her from speaking altogether.”

Astra sighs. “Poor girl. How long has she been a slave?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t really talked about her past much, since most mentions of it send her into a panic attack. She’s heavily traumatized and certainly not in a condition to gallivant around the ship and tear up pipes!”

“You wanna fuck her, we get it,” Lyriana snorts. “But let’s face it. There are plenty of species who look dainty and innocent, yet they’re capable of wreaking havoc with their special abilities. What is she, exactly?”

I scowl at her. Astra jokes that Lyriana is bitchy because she’s constantly on her period. Whilst I know that the Zyderi reproductive cycle doesn’t work that way, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. Lyriana is never in a good mood.

“I don’t know what she is,” I reply. “I don’t care, either. She’s not behind this.”

Zarkan steps in to quell the argument before it gets heated. “Even if she isn’t behind this, we need to know more about her, Nikolai. You said it yourself. She’s on this ship with us, which means she’s in danger too.”

“I know!” I snap, immediately regretting it. “I’m sorry,” I continue in a much calmer tone. “I know she’s in danger and I’m worried about her. She… I don’t know what she is. She seems hellbent on hiding it from everyone. I have some hints, but I haven’t run them through the database yet.”

“Well, spill it, lover boy,” Lyriana says.

I grip the side of the table to stop myself from lunging at her. She’d take me down just as easily as D’Aakh did.

I focus on Zarkan, pretending the bitch isn’t in the room. “She has large purple eyes with no whites. Her skin is…” I swallow the “soft and kissable” and finish with, “iridescent. She keeps herself covered in some black sludge, but I cleaned some minor injuries for her and her skin looked like it was covered in miniature diamonds. The strands of her hair are thicker than mine and strangely…crystalline? Oh, and her tears were also made of crystals. Solid crystals that evaporated instead of melting.”

It’s the first time I see Zarkan truly surprised. He exchanges glances with D’Aakh, who’s equally taken aback. “Could it be…?”

“Silithrae,” Zarkan agrees.

“No fucking way,” Lyriana says. “Aren’t they extinct?”

Zarkan sighs. “After their planet was taken, the few remaining families were kept safe in UGC safe houses, but… The slavers were relentless. One by one, the families were hunted down. Most Silithrae died fighting, but the rest were enslaved. They make extremely valuable slaves.”

“Correct,” D’Aakh confirms. “A healthy female Silithrae would be worth billions of units on the slave market. Enough to buy a small planet.”

I’m not the only one who glares at him after that statement.

“Sorry,” he says, bristling. “I was just pointing out a fact, not suggesting we sell her or anything. It makes sense she’s trying to hide her identity. Even good people would be tempted when such a fortune is at hand. And, while the Silithrae do have some very interesting abilities, extreme strength is not among them.”

“Which means she likely didn’t damage the ship,” Zarkan concludes.

I’m tempted to yell “I told you so” at all of them, but that would be a little childish. Still, I shoot a victorious smirk in D’Aakh’s direction. He grimaces at me in return.

“Who did, then?” Astra asks the question we should all be focusing on instead of dissecting Z’Ree’s origin.

Silence ensues and in a way, it’s much scarier than our previous arguing. Something is tearing our ship apart right from under our feet, and we have no idea what it is.

“Perhaps we should search the ship?” Tareq suggests. “Go through every corridor and every maintenance walkway. We’ll find the saboteur and deal with them.”

“I have a better idea,” D’Aakh says. “We could get our stowaway up here with us and then seal off the entire area and vent the atmosphere. That should take care of whoever is damaging the ship.”

“Unless they have space suits,” Lyriana points out.

Zarkan frowns at them. “No. We’re not killing anyone. Even if this person damaged our ship, it could have been an accident, or they didn’t realize what they were doing. We’re not cutting off their oxygen if there’s a chance they’re good people. Maybe they’re just frightened and confused. Seal the hatches to contain them in the maintenance walkways, but there will be no venting of the atmosphere. Understood?”

“Fine,” D’Aakh spits out. “At least I’ll get to say I told you so when we’re all floating dead in space.”

“Stop being so dramatic, D’Aakh,” Faelin says, patting D’Aakh’s shoulder. “I’m sure you can fix the ship in no time.”

D’Aakh shakes Faelin’s hand off. “You’re all crazy,” he mutters before storming out of the bridge.

Lyriana sighs. “I’ll go help him. Omni,” she calls and snaps her fingers, “heel. You’re coming with me.”

The tall Quintran rattles his wings, then gives her the finger. His little finger, because that’s what goes for “fuck you” in his part of the galaxy. “Fuck off, bitch,” he grumbles, but follows her anyway.

“It’s so nice to see my crew getting along with each other,” Zarkan snickers, before switching back to a more serious tone. “Nikolai, go and get Z’Ree out of that section of the ship. There are plenty of empty rooms around if she wants to keep her distance, but she can’t be in the maintenance walkways anymore. Faelin, you make sure Ellen doesn’t wander off anywhere dangerous. I know she likes to explore, but it’s not safe now.”

“Don’t worry. Once Nala finds out there’s something chewing on the wires, she won’t let Ellen out of her sight.”

Zarkan nods. “Good. You two,” he turns to Tareq and Astra, “try to help D’Aakh if you can. And no more fighting.” That last statement was definitely aimed at me. I lower my head under the weight of his scowl. “We’re all in this together. Dismissed.”