Pax Novis

Chapter Two

Cira

Terra-Sol date 3814.237

A red notification flashed in the corner of Cira's display, pulling her attention away from the open control panel on the wrist of her cybernetic arm. Finally, she thought as she snapped the panel on her left wrist shut and spun her chair around to face the screen head-on.

Alert: unscheduled keypad access. Exterior air lock 2FP-A1 opened.

She slipped her holo-control cuff back into place over her wrist. When she touched the two cuffs together, they activated. A multicolored semicircle of buttons and controls spread out from the miniscule projector built in to each, and it only took a few practiced gestures for her to clear the warning. Another instantly took its place.

Motion detected inside air lock 2FP-A1. Security cameras active and recording.

Holding her breath, she watched the forward air lock at the lowest level in the port extension of the ship—one the crew only ever used for maintenance. Only when ze'd removed zir helmet did she exhale, relief loosening a multitude of knots across her shoulders. "You're late."

In the air lock, Riston looked up, directly at the camera, almost like ze'd heard her. The automated security system zoomed in on zir round face. For several seconds zir large dark-brown eyes seemed to bore into hers, serious and unblinking, and then ze lowered zir head and began removing the rest of zir suit, revealing the fitted—and illegally borrowed—white and pale-gray uniform of a PCCS ensign. It was a well-designed outfit, far more aesthetically pleasing than anyone had bothered to make the uniforms of any planetary military, and the colors always highlighted the deep brown of zir skin. Ze wore the uniform well.

Not for the first time, Cira wondered if it was more the uniform or the way Riston in particular wore the uniform that she admired. She wished she'd had any luck finding a way to legally get zem admitted to the crew so she could give zem a uniform of zir own, but two Terra-Sol cycles of searching hadn't turned up a single useful possibility. That left them both here again, sneaking Riston onto the ship and praying to whatever higher power might be out there that they didn't get caught this time, either.

After Riston shed the vac suit and meticulously replaced it in the storage locker, ze stepped up to the inner air lock door and tapped a command sequence on the keypad.

Personnel requesting entrance at air lock 2FP-A1.

Allow, alert security, or vent?

Cira should have been used to seeing that question by now—she'd lost count of the number of times she'd run through this protocol—but she shuddered every time the option to vent an air lock came up on her terminal. Getting vented into space without a suit must be like drowning in ice. Despite living on this ship her whole life, the concept terrified her. Or maybe it was because she'd spent her whole life in space that she felt this particular fear so keenly.

She hit allow and the door to the air lock opened, sliding into the wall.

Riston brought two fingers up to zir temple and saluted the camera. The smile ze usually gave her with the gesture was missing.

What happened, Ris? There was no way for her to ask or for zem to answer, especially now. In a few minutes, the rest of the bridge crew would return from Mitu, and Cira's stint as of Pax Novis's de facto chief of security would be over. All five of her strays were back on board, so there was only one last thing to do before she was relieved and sent back to her regular position.

Quickly, but with the efficiency born of repetition, her fingers skipped from one holo-control to another as she ran the system through the process of scouring the security logs and removing every alert, notification, and video log from the last six hours not part of the ship's standard operating procedure.