Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(51)

But I remember they shot her in it without a word.

· · · · ·

Without a sound, I reach the vent junction and the maintenance control hatch mounted on the wall. It takes me longer than anticipated to disable the security system with my uniglass. I am not the expert in computer espionage that Finian is.

The lock on the control box is a more mundane matter, and I use my all-purpose knife to pry off the lid, which slices through my index finger as it comes free. The pain is a sharp line of fire, and I close my eyes tightly, screwing up my face involuntarily with the effort to stay quiet.

My heart is only too willing to accept an excuse to kick up its rate once more, and I try another round of breathing exercises as I extract a set of quik-stitches from my jumpsuit and apply them. I glance up at the Unbroken techs, but they remain engrossed in their wrestling match with the uniglass security measures.

I return to my work, studying the maintenance panel until I am confident I understand it. I can read the Syldrathi glyfs with my uniglass, and there are only so many ways for oxygen-based life-support systems to operate. But I check, and check again, fully aware of the consequences of failure. Then I set to work on the filtration system, diverting the extractors, and settle down to wait.

I estimate that the results I am expecting will take approximately fifteen and a half minutes to achieve. Give or take three or four seconds.

· · · · ·

Three or four seconds was all it took for everything to unravel. For my mother’s body to fold to the ground, for the next round of disruptor shots to scorch the air.

In the action vids I’d seen—my parents didn’t condone them, but Miriam let me watch when they weren’t paying attention—people who got shot always flew backward. Newton’s third law of motion prohibits this, of course—a bullet lacks the force to reverse a body’s momentum. But I still remember feeling surprised as Max stumbled forward after the shots hit him, before he crumpled to the deck.

The remaining three adults, including my father, raised their hands in surrender. I watched over the crates, holding my scream inside. I remember my heart rate was elevated, my respiration bordering on distressed, my mouth dry.

I remember I did not like feeling that way.

“Where’s the child?” the lead raider snapped. It was a man’s voice, accented, perhaps from Tempera.

“What child?” my father asked before either Hòa or Miriam could reply.

“Your child,” the man said, his voice dropping in register. There was a shake to it, and he paused to brace his hand against the edge of the hole they’d blasted in our ship. I concluded he was drug affected.

He had been inhaling an illegal substance when I’d met him a week before. Marney Station was not reputable, but it was possible to access many black-market goods there, and my father was a practical man. After we had filed our latest samples, we’d taken the grav-lift down to the lower levels so he could purchase ingredients for a special meal to celebrate Hòa’s birthday.

“Don’t move out of my sight,” he told me.

I followed his directive, but was drawn to a group of gamblers participating in a game of tintera. I loved games, and I stood on my toes to watch the cards dealt—each round the players would decide whether to accept a new card from the dealer. The goal was to hold cards that, added together, totaled twenty-four.

It was simple to note which cards had already been dealt, calculate the probability of a favorable deal from the remaining cards, and decide accordingly.

The first time I advised the man on his choice, he laughed.

The second time, he listened.

The third time, he gave me fifty credits and invited me to play.

“Come be my lucky charm,” he said.

Everyone laughed, and I grinned. It was exciting to have new playmates. Life on the Janeway was so predictable.

When my father retrieved me fifteen minutes later, I was up one thousand nine hundred and fifty credits. He made me leave them at the table and escorted me away with a haste I did not understand.

Now the man stood here on our ship, asking to see me.

“There’s no child here,” my father said.

And so the man shot Hòa. He didn’t make a sound as he died.

Miriam was the one who broke. “Don’t shoot—she’s here! I’ll help you find her.” She turned to look for me, her voice trembling. “Zila? Zila, come out!”

I did not like the feelings I felt then, either. Anger, that my friend who watched vids with me would betray me. Contempt, that she thought I was stupid enough to obey. Fear, that now they knew I was here.

“She’s not here,” my father said, quiet and calm. “We sent her to school.”

They were going to search soon, I realized. And they would find my things. My father’s voice faded to a soft, familiar hum as I clambered up into the air vents and crawled down the ship to our living quarters.

When I dropped into our room, I could smell my mother. The warm, spicy scent of her perfume, an outrageous luxury on a posting like ours.

I had only a few possessions. I stuffed my clothes into the laundry hamper, then stripped my bed and dumped the sheets on top to hide them. I crushed the model mining equipment I had been making with my father and fed it into the recyc.

Keeping to the vents, I dodged the men as they searched the ship for me. They had already shot three people. They wanted me. They would shoot my father and leave once they had me. So it was up to me to keep him safe.