“No. Everyone stays here. No more exploring. No more sleeping away from each other,” Yan said and ran a hand through his hair. Five pairs of eyes followed the blood, caked underneath his nails, smeared across his palm.
“What—” Jesi started out, but Yan shook his head, and she fell silent.
“We’re down to one security guard,” Yan simply said. His voice was eerily calm, but his left hand, resting on his knee was trembling. “Ordan is dead.”
Ordan. That was his name.
Too little, too late,VIFAI noted. Iris bitterly agreed. But this wasn’t the time for self-flagellation.
No one said anything. Tev took half a step to shield Jesi; a useless but admirable gesture, Iris admitted. To this day, there were only two people Iris hadn’t liked, and one of them was beginning to move into the “potentially tolerable” category. The other was Bacai, who had successfully cemented her position as immature, stubborn, irritating, and completely incapable of change.
With all eyes still on him, Yan gripped his kneecap hard, until his fingers were bleached of all colour. “The Vessel and I found Ordan not a half hour ago. Whatever killed him is gone, but it did some serious damage. I can’t find the weapon, no matter where I look, so as of right now, we don’t know who killed him or with what.” Yan paused. He looked to the right-hand-side entrance to the communal room from where the second station security guard had just entered.
“I told Ordan to keep to the parts we already knew,” the guard said, and Iris heard a brief hitch in his voice, like he was about to cry, then fight its way back down to the diaphragm. It was highly unlikely a killer would mourn their kill, but Iris had seen better manipulation firsthand. He tried his utmost to see people as good, first and foremost, but he had been proven wrong before.
“He did,” Yan said. “As far as I can figure it out, Ordan went back to the airlock Vessel and Ishtan checked out when our first one got jammed. He must have circled around this area first and then headed off in the other direction. I found his radio when I rolled him over.” Yan paused, took a long breath, and tightened his grip on his knee. “He somehow got through and made a call to Station forty-five minutes ago. They spoke for three minutes, after which the call was disconnected on his end. Whoever attacked him kept him there by giving him radio access. That’s when they got him. I think.”
“Attacked?” Ishtan asked. “Are you implying it was deliberate?”
A flash of poorly contained anger contorted Yan’s features. “I’m not sure how Ordan would have gotten a fist-sized hole in his chestby accident, Dr. Ora.”
Ishtan raised his hands apologetically. Beside him, Riyu broke out in a visible shudder. “Someone is out to kill us, then?Is that what you’re saying, Yan?” She wrapped her arms around herself tightly, her fingernails digging deep into the soft shell of her jacket.
Yan nodded.
“Who would be trying to kill us?” Tev asked. “An institute wouldn’t send a hitman out for us. Neither would a station. Pirates then? Scavengers?”
The first part of the question was a good one: Who would, indeed, try to murder academics and engineers and security guards? For pirates, academics were more of a liability than an asset, according to what Iris had learned from all the books and media he’d consumed. Sychi Institute would also refrain from paying any ransom if they were taken captive, that much was well recorded. But pirates hadn’t been spotted in over a hundred years, and even then, they had gone mostly after transport ships, ships that hadgoods. A generation ship, while a tantalising relic, would be impossible to re-sell outside proper channels. Scavengers were still fairly common, but they kept to the edges of the galaxy, rarely coming close enough to heavily trafficked areas like Doshua Station. If someone was after them, they knew the workings of the ship well enough to dome off communication and were familiar with the layout to appear and disappear swiftly. A competitor, then, sent to lay claim to the ship before anyone else?
“A competitor, perhaps,” Jesi said softly. “But when we first got here, the airlock system was asleep. If anyone had gone in before us, I would have noticed it.”
“What if they used a different airlock?” Tev asked.
“Unlikely. This one is the closest to the station.”
“There are ways to send the airlock system to sleep. We never checked the logs, never bothered to,” Yan said and winced, bracing before saying the next thing. “Another fun development.They’re trying to piggyback onto the Vessel’s AI. Any scanner would pick up on it; it uses enough energy. They might be under the impression that it can still talk to Station, or worse yet, they’re trying to fry Vessel’s brain.”
Jesi spun around and glared at Iris. “You have anAI?” she spat out.
“Pilots and monks, Jesi, pilots andmonks.” Tev placed his hand around her bicep, but she yanked it away.
“I know. It’s still gross.”
Iris had witnessed the exchange without saying a word, without so much as thinking of responding. At Jesi’s words, he bowed a little and diverted his eyes to the floor. “I’m sorry.” When he looked back up, Yan’s face was stern and immobile; Riyu and Ishtan were trying their best to contain their mutual disgust. Only the second security guard, whose name Iris also didn’t know, didn’t seem to hold any strong opinions about the presence of an AI construct or how it was embedded into Iris’s brain.
No pro-Vessel sentiment here,VIFAI said with bitter humour.Not anymore.
Under the weight of everyone’s gazes, Iris straightened his back and folded his hands together in front of him. Self-pity wasn’t helping. Self-pity was for when they left this place alive. It was to be done in private. “I would like to perform rites for Ordan,” Iris said when no one else had spoken for nearly a minute. “I am useless to the engineers”—he said this meeting Yan’s eyes—“and I would be of little service to anyone else. I can only help Ordan be returned to the Light with dignity.”
“Ordan wasn’t Starlit,” the guard said.
Iris bowed to him. “Then I can simply prepare the body as neutrally as I can. So that when we leave, we may pass it over to his family. Would that be something he would have wanted?”
The security guard folded his arms across his chest, in a terrible tension of respectfully mourning someone he didn’t know well enough togrieve, but still well enough to miss. Or perhaps with the look of someone who never wished to see Ordan’s body again, a reminder of something regrettable. But Iris doubted that line of thinking. People weren’t inherently murderers. They were ignorant at best, and when they did kill, it was most likely by accident—and Ordan’s death did not look accidental. Iris weighed both ideas and decided to continue without accusing anyone of murder just yet.
“His mother would like that,” the guard finally said, face turned towards the floor.
“Thank you. I will start right away.”
