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Then a child rushed over to them. A child! I haven’t seen one in years, because my latest master didn’t trade children. It was pretty much the only good thing about him, though he claimed it was because child slaves were too high maintenance and impossible to train properly.
The girl was half Syndoran and half probably human, definitely not the hybrid’s progeny. Yet, he picked her up into his arms, whispering something that made her giggle. The human female smacked both their heads playfully and then they all left together as one big happy family.
I haven’t seen any violence or mistreatment, let alone torture. All I’ve witnessed was friendship and love.
Determined to be brave and finally emerge from the maintenance walkways, I collect my meager belongings, along with the empty water bottles and food wrappers. I wouldn’t want to be accused of littering.
As I head back to Nikolai’s storage room, I hear a distant skittering. The insects are back.
They are standing in front of a control panel, chirping at each other, their voices growing louder as if they’re having a heated argument. A smaller insect reaches for the panel, but a larger one stops him. Their chirps turn into hisses.
The larger one seems to be in charge and they chase the others away from the control panel. They scatter, grumbling to themselves in their insect language. The leader looks in my direction, nods as if saying “how do you do”, then disappears after their friends. I hear them claw on a pipe somewhere down the corridor.
It’s only when the lights flicker that I realize the obvious. Of course, I’m such an idiot! It’s the insects causing the system malfunctions. I mean, they’re literally tearing the ship apart from inside. Of course that would cause trouble. The crew must not know about them, otherwise they would have stopped them already. I need to tell them.
I make my way back to the storage room, a little disappointed to find it empty. But I understand. Nikolai has other duties than just sitting around in the dark storage area all day and waiting for his messed up acquaintance to show up.
I make myself comfortable in a corner of the room, determined to wait for him. I need to tell someone about the insects but that doesn’t mean I’m about to race through the corridors and hope I run into a random crew member who won’t attack me on sight. Talking to anyone but Nikolai still scares the hell out of me.
Chapter 13
Nikolai
I’m so happy itfeels 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’teven 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 exactlyisgoing 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.”
