Who out there will save me?”
From the unabridged diaries of Vessel Iris, Volume Seventeen
Ordan’s body was laid to rest in an empty room along the corridor, wrapped in the Sychi blanket, flowers tucked inside. It was a poor substitute for a proper burial, especially for a man who had died protecting them. If they were lucky, Iris would be tasked with explaining the circumstances of his death to Ordan’s mother. If she ever gained the opportunity to see her son again. Now, alone, he sunk to the floor in prayer before the wrapped body. Prayer never came.
Several fruitless minutes later, he sat back on his heels and turned his attention to the bloodied hem of his robes. From his ankles and up towards his shins, red leeched upwards, claiming a new white thread with each passing moment. Already, the edges were curdling and turning an ugly, permanent brown. Soonthe stain would engulf his robes entirely. Soon there would be no white left at all.
Reel it back. VIFAI’s electronic voice came from the recesses of his mind.
“It’s all quite hopeless, isn’t it?” Iris asked out loud.
It’s all right to be frightened.
And yet. Iris extended his arm, palm facing down. His hand hovered above the floor, level, steady. Despite the dried blood under his fingernails and caked across his knuckles, fear wasn’t the prevailing emotion. It wasn’t the first time he had found his hands in this state. Five years earlier, he had been called to an oddly pristine shuttle, orbiting just outside Kaneno Station. As far as Iris had been able to see, there was no structural damage, nothing at all that was wrong with the ship itself. The brief had been left deliberately vague. Inside, he found seven passed. Six from chest wounds and a seventh from a self-inflicted head wound. Two families, traveling across the galaxy. For what purpose, he would never learn.
Sometime before Iris arrived, the shuttle had lost gravity and without it, blood was floating freely in little crimson bubbles. It had settled on Iris’s robes, his face, little droplets of red like freckles on his cheeks. He had wiped it from his face as he worked, mixing their blood with his sweat. He tended to them all, the adults, the children, and laid them to rest in the airlock where their extended families would have collected them. He didn’t wait for the families to arrive. He wouldn’t accept another assignment for months afterwards.
“I wish you good rest,” Iris finally said to Ordan. “I will not disturb you further.” He placed his hands on his knees, right above the bloodied handprints, and got to his feet.Do you think whoever it was that killed Ordan is able to control the electronicsin the ship? Like the airlock?Iris asked, walking slowly down the corridor, his mala passing between his fingers. The faint smell of sandalwood rose higher and higher the more he worked the beads, settling him.
If it’s tracking little bursts of energy, as your engineer has said, then yes, they would probably have the capacity to activate and deactivate the airlock at will.
“He’s not my engineer,” Iris said and wrapped the mala back around his wrist. If someone was tracking them, they would be most effective if they had a bird’s-eye view of the ship. They would need to be somewhere it was possible to simultaneously track everyone aboard the ship and then act upon the ship in response. Maybe Yan was right. Maybe someone was so set on securing theNicaeafor themselves that they were willing to kill for it. This side of greed was largely unknown to Iris, and he chose to defer to the engineer’s opinion. Then again, it could have been a simple, plausible disagreement between the guards that had ended poorly. It wouldn’t be the first fatal quarrel Iris had witnessed.
The dark, weaving corridors presented countless possibilities and countless opportunities to end each and every one of them. The entire ship could be turned into one monstrous killing field if someone was only vicious enough, driven enough. Iris summoned a memory of the mural he and Ishtan had viewed, the awe with which the archaeologist had admired its brutality. There had been a clear divide between the passengers of the ship. There had been conflict. There had been violence. But all of this Iris already knew to be painfully human. Then there was the red, ever-watching eye, whose tracking gaze Iris couldn’t shake even in his recollections.
When he reached the communal space, no one looked up to greet him. In one corner, Riyu and Ishtan were slumped againstone another, their faces drained of all emotion and energy. Riyu had been crying again, her eyes angry and red. By the kettle, the young engineers and Yan were whispering among themselves, sipping something steaming from their mugs. Iris couldn’t find the second security guard. As subtly as he could, he snuck close to the kettle and gave Yan a little bow.
“He’s all taken care of?” Yan asked.
Iris sniffed the air.Coffee.“I’ve done the best I could with what I had. But we need a long-term solution for storing Ordan. The ship is quite warm and humid.”
Without a word, Jesi turned around and walked away. Tev followed her with a hushedsorry.
“It would befantasticif you didn’t bring up humidity and dead bodies around them,” Yan said, voice low. “They’re just kids. They’re not ready for this.” The faint tremble of his voice was enough to convey Yan wasn’t ready for it either.
“I couldn’t help but remember that you mentioned Ordan had just made a call to Station before his untimely passing. I’ve consulted my construct, and it’s certain that—”
“That whoever is watching us is also able to manipulate the airlocks from a distance,” Yan finished for him. “I know. I figured. We’re not only trapped here, but also might get severed in half by some closing doors at any given minute.”
Iris nodded. He had anticipated a rising bubbling of panic, a chill to seize his body, but there was nothing left in him but pleasant numbness. He instead turned his faculties to Yan, to the efforts the engineer was putting towards appearing calm and in control.It’s all right to be frightened.No, out of all of them, Yan didn’t have the luxury. He had others looking to him for both comfort and for solutions, an impossible balance.
“I was also thinking that if someone is watching us, if they have the capacity to manipulate the ship, they would have to bewell placed. Perhaps they are in one of the ship’s brains, as you described them,” Iris said.
Yan raised an eyebrow. Iris wasn’t sure if the engineer was surprised he remembered that ships this size had multiple brains or that he had concluded they would be a good vantage point.
“Have some coffee,” Yan said and nodded to the kettle. “It’s weak, but it’s better than nothing.”
Iris thanked him with a deep bow and hurried to pour himself a mug.
Looking into the middle ground, Yan continued speaking in a low voice. “If they’re using one of the brains, we will be able to locate which one based on my little setup upstairs. Signals are a two-way street, and if they’re tracking the spots where we are interacting with the ship, I will be able to track them right back to whichever brain they’ve picked to watch us from. But I don’t have a good enough map. I suspect your AI does.”
Iris nodded affirmatively and took a gulp of his coffee. Itwasweak, but it would be enough to silence the grumbling of his empty stomach.
“In theory, we should be able to reach any of the brains without forcing any doors open,” Yan continued. “There are enough variations. The only problem is time. Water won’t be much of an issue since we can just squeeze it from the moss, but we don’t have much food, and I’m especially worried about morale.”
“I could lead a prayer,” Iris blurted out and immediately felt like an idiot.
“It’s like you’re not even trying, Vessel.”
