Pax Novis

Chapter Three

Riston

Terra-Sol date 3814.237

It had been hard for Riston to let zirself think of the other stowaways as zir friends. They weren't friends, at least, not in the way people normally defined friendship. They didn't even know one another's names. Their real names, the ones logged upon their birth by the citizen registries of their home planets, were gone. So was "home" in whatever form it had previously existed. Pax Novis had been a better home than the warring families and planets they'd come from. So, they weren't friends, but the five Novis stowaways—Tinker, Treble, Shadow, Greenie, and Zazi Novis—had become allies first and something far more important soon after.

In the beginning, they'd served as sources of information and conversation for one another, but the bond had deepened quickly once each declared their intention to stay. Somehow, they became family, and Riston was more grateful for their companionship and trust than ze knew how to explain.

The first cycle on board Pax Novis had been peaceful and had gone a long way toward giving zem the silence and security ze needed to sort through the chaos of zir own mind. Eventually, however, the silence and isolation had become oppressive, a weight to be borne as payment for the sense of safety being on board Novis brought. Ze may have been the first to stay, but the others had joined in quick succession, and they'd created a community. To Riston, it was still a luxury to be able to bounce ideas off someone other than the voice in zir head, and it was a luxury ze was taking full advantage of today. The theories running through zir mind were as serious as a ship flying through an EMP minefield.

"I'm telling you, it looks pretty and well-run on the surface, but Nea-gi is on the verge of something big." Riston and the others were sitting on the floor of a mid-deck junction, all of them buzzing with the adrenaline of a planetside visit. Where their rush came from excitement, though, zirs had the sharp bite of worry. "If Nea-gi's government breaks down, the whole system will follow, and Primis will be overrun in less than a month, probably by more than one army. The mines on the surface will either be destroyed to avoid one side gaining control, or they'll be shut down until that system stabilizes."

"Always worried, always thinking." Treble's tone was more singsong than usual, and the smile on her sharp-featured face broader. The sound echoed softly off the metal walls, but this spot was so far forward it was almost never accessed by the crew. Being overheard wasn't as much of a concern here, which is why they tended to use this space as one of their primary meeting points. "Zazi Novis always looks out for zir little Novites."

Smiling despite zirself, Riston rolled zir eyes and dropped zir head back against the junction's wall. None of the stowaways were more than a few cycles younger than zem, but they'd still somehow come to feel like zir kids. Or exasperating younger siblings. It depended on the day.

"Even if the planet does collapse, it doesn't matter. PSSC Control will give Novis a new port to visit from that light-year long waiting list of theirs, and everything will be basically the same for us." Greenie shook his head, his shaggy brown hair flopping into his blue eyes. "Besides, this war has been a stalemate for centuries. If someone doesn't start losing soon, it'll go on for the next few hundred cycles, too."

"It does matter!" Riston tried to remember that none of them had studied the war like ze had. They didn't pay attention to the dangerously unstable quagmire their current intragalactic political arena had become. None of them had the same motivations, though. Riston had learned enough about their pasts to know ze was the only one in the group who had literally watched their home, their city, and their entire family destroyed before their eyes in the middle of the so-called stalemate. "If one planet falls, it endangers the whole system. And the impact won't stop there. Every occupied planet in the quadrant will feel the repercussions. And guess what happens to the trade ships if there's no one to trade with? Or if the flight paths through the systems aren't treaty protected anymore?"