Chapter Twenty-Five
HANA
Why? Who would kill my mother?
It couldn’t have been Cyclo. It’s just not possible. If she was hungry, she could have killed anyone else on the ship. It wouldn’t make sense to go after her. Mother and Cyclo worked together to nurture every newborn on the ship. Once they were out of their gestational chambers, they went into Cyclo—the first real sleep, first embrace, first feeding. No one loved Cyclo more than my mother, and Cyclo knew this. I’m sure she did.
Could Cyclo have been angry at her? But it took extremes of stress to her physical self before she hurt Gammand and Miki after they spoke to me, and even Fenn, in a way that wasn’t…nice.
“It must have been a person who hurt Mother. Some member of the crew,” I say finally, my voice already scratchy from aching.
“Or an accident,” Portia offers. “An explosion, perhaps?”
“No,” Fenn says quietly. “Not an accident. This was deliberate. This was the taking of a life—violently. Look at the amount of blood that was lost. The pattern of where it was when they dragged her into this room to escape. Cyclo doesn’t have access to this room, does she?”
I shake my head. “No. The walls are thick plastrix. Some of the auto functions work with Cyclo’s matrix, but not many. This is where patients came when Cyclo’s matrix wasn’t helping—it was all direct human intervention.”
“They must have brought her here to save her. To keep her away from Cyclo,” Fenn says.
“No. I don’t believe Cyclo would have killed Mother. Who’s to say they didn’t try to save her here—it’s the medical ward. And they just ran out of time,” I say. The normal lights are back on, but I can almost sense the ghost of Mother’s presence. The blood, refusing to completely disappear, begging me to tell the story. To unearth the secrets and tell the truth.
“Anyway, look at how Gammand died. No one could have escaped an attack like that. How could they have saved her from that? It must have been a crew member.”
“Maybe,” Fenn says, “but Cyclo learns, doesn’t she? Perhaps she is getting better at killing. Her first time was sloppy. Your mother called for help. Got help, but too late. Cyclo has been a lot neater since then. Look at Miki.” Fenn pauses, and his face contracts with pain. “We still never recovered any trace of Miki.”
Portia puts a hand to Fenn’s back and frowns with him. “Our poor Miki. But, the question we need to consider is why. It might be just from lack of energy, but the killing of a single person doesn’t quite make sense. Not then, not three weeks ago, when they fled. We’ve watched her energy stores drastically decrease since then, as Cyclo’s functions have deteriorated. Cyclo wasn’t nearly as hungry three weeks ago. With Miki and Gammand, she was.”
“Stop talking like Cyclo killed my mother,” I yell. “I’m telling you, it’s not her. She didn’t do it.”
“But you don’t know that!” Fenn says.
“And you don’t know that she did! Cyclo cared for her. She cares for me!”
I’m so ready to flee this room, to get away from the words they keep flinging at me relentlessly. I don’t believe it. I can’t.
“But Hana,” Portia says gently. “What happened to Gammand—you can’t explain that away.”
My shoulders drop, and my eyes fill until the world is a blurry, watery mess. She’s right, and I hate to admit it, to see the truth.
“Look,” Portia says. “We know your mother died on that day. And the evacuation happened at the same time. We need to know why your mother was killed. Maybe she did something that angered Cyclo, or someone.”
“Or rather, maybe she was about to do something,” Fenn adds.
Suddenly, Portia’s and Fenn’s holofeeds turn on automatically. It’s Doran.
“Where are you?” he asks, frantic. “Are you all right? Where’s Hana?”
“She’s with us,” Fenn says. “Did you see what happened? Gammand’s dead.”
“I saw the whole thing on your live feeds, but I couldn’t get through, and then I lost contact for almost an hour. I’ve been talking to the heads at ReCOR. Portia, Fenn—they swear that they didn’t know this was a possible outcome. They say they had no idea that the Calathus crew believed that something bad happened to Dr. Um. None of this was revealed to me.”
“How could they not know?” Portia nearly snarls. “How? We found out ourselves that Dr. Um was violently attacked. They must have told ReCOR. You must have known, Doran. We came here to die, but not like this. Not like this!”
Doran is silent for a long time. Fenn’s veins are sticking out of his neck, and he’s livid with anger. We all wait for Doran to speak again.
“I didn’t know. I swear on my children, I did not know. But that doesn’t help. You didn’t do this mission to be murdered, but to sacrifice your lives. There’s a difference. But ReCOR will not send a ship out there to rescue you. They say that this is still all in keeping with your contracts, even if the Calathus actively harms you.”
“And our death benefits will still be enacted?”
“Only if your work gets done.”
“Not if we’re murdered early!”
“They can’t possibly finish under these conditions! They’re doomed to fail. So we’re just going to let Portia and Fenn die here?” I ask, shoving my face close to Portia’s so that Doran can see me. “You can’t. It’s not their fault. It’s murder. And it’s now in the records.”
Doran pauses and covers his face with his hand.
“Doran,” I say. “Please. Where’s the closest space station?”
“It’s in Sector Four, on the other side of Maia.”
“Wait,” Fenn says. “You’re that close?”
“Yes. It’s the center of four different missions I’m managing right now,” Doran says. “But I’m resigning my position. I’m going to get hell for this, and lose my job, and probably be indicted for theft given that I’m removing you from a sanctioned, legal mission that you’ve already signed a contract for, but I don’t care.” Doran’s face shifts farther away from the screen. “I’m coming to get you. It’ll take me at least five or six days, traveling in the fastest craft I can get. You have to figure out a way to survive until then.”
“How will we communicate with you?” Portia asks.
“You can’t. Once I’m off my ReCOR communication access, they won’t let anyone talk to you. You’ll be out of communication with everyone.” He looks behind his shoulder. “And if I’m not careful, they’ll find a clever way to detain me. But I didn’t do this job to kill people, dammit. Nine months I spent training you all, and it wasn’t for this.”
There is a long silence, then Doran finally says, “I’ve got to get out of here before they find out what’s going on. Portia, Fenn…and Hana.”
“Godspeed, Doran,” Fenn says. I raise my hand, but Doran’s image disappears before my last goodbye leaves my lips.
…
I can’t believe it. Doran is really going to save us. But six days is a long time, on a ship that’s dying rapidly day by day, and becoming more murderous as the hours go by.
We are still in the same room, reeling from Gammand’s death and reveling in the possibility that Doran might save us. If he does, then we don’t die. But Fenn and Portia won’t get their death benefits.
“Doran said he might be detained by ReCOR,” I say.
“Which means that we may have to prepare for the worst now,” Fenn says. “And that means fulfilling our contracts so we aren’t murdered for nothing.”
“You do realize we’ve been set up to fail,” Portia says. “If we can’t make our objectives, I don’t want to die for nothing. We could try to find other ways to survive if Doran can’t get to us in time.”
“At least you were able to release the nutrient mixtures, off the record. That might buy us some time,” Fenn says.
My stomach drops, and nausea overtakes me. Something in the chain of events of Mother’s death bothers me. Something that’s missing. That’s when I remember. Mother’s diary. I haven’t read it all—just a page or two here and there. There must be more there that I missed, including the answers I’m looking for.
“I need to see something. I need to get my things,” I say.
“What? From your room? That’s impossible. Cyclo is active in that quadrant,” Fenn says, almost yelling.
Portia nods her head. “He’s right. You can’t go there.”
“My mother’s things are there. I need them. I’ll get my answers there. I have to know.”
“They aren’t worth it.” Fenn grabs my hands. “Please. Hana, that stuff isn’t important. It isn’t worth risking your life.”
“Then I’ll risk it for something else,” I say, turning to Portia. “The cell culture. The one with the photosynthetic cells. I can transplant them into Cyclo and see if they work. But it will only be useful if I can talk her through it, so she doesn’t ruin the process. I’m the only one who she’ll listen to. And it makes sense to do it in the north quadrant, where my room is. It’s the side of Cyclo that receives the most light from Maia.”
Portia opens her mouth, then closes it without arguing. “You know, Hana is right. If we have any chance of doing this, it has to be her.”
It has to be me.
And only me.
…
It takes a while to prepare. Fenn wants to put me in full body armor, a set that was originally for Miki, but it’s far too large. I’m drowning in the suit.
“I don’t like it, Fenn,” I tell him, trying to take off the hard-shelled leg armor and peeling off the gloves. “I need my bare hands. This is how I talk to her sometimes. And it doesn’t even fit anyway.”
“You realize that touching Cyclo puts you at risk,” says Portia. She’s braiding my hair—a very maternal action, and one I’m not used to anyone but Mother doing. Her long, spider fingers section my hair into a tight, twisting braid that leaves no tail swinging with a chance it’ll get caught.
“I know. But I have to try. If she knows I’m afraid of her, everything will change between us.”
Which is a lie. Everything already has changed. It changed the day I woke up alone. It probably changed the day Mother died, and I was asleep and didn’t even know my world was collapsing.
Portia finishes braiding my hair, and her hand lingers for a second on my shoulder, fingers against my neck. Her red eyes glisten for a second, and a horizontal membrane blinks across her red pupils. I forget that Prinniads have double eyelids. I think it means she’s upset, blinking away her own ruby-red tears.
Fenn walks in, holding several large cylinders, a foot long each. There’s a window on each one that shows they’re all filled with lavender-colored liquid.
“I’ve got good news and bad news.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“The good news is, I’ve got all the cells we’ve grown so far for photosynthetic purposes. It’s enough that if they take, then Cyclo will be able to make two percent of the usual energy she makes. And two percent is enough for her to maintain her safety systems.”
“And the bad news?” I ask.
“The last gestational chamber with the backup embryonic stem cells leaked. One of those acid blemishes somehow splashed the chamber. All the cells dumped out.”
Oh no.
All those stem cells, spilled onto the floor and lost. Another chance to fortify Cyclo. Another chance to save her, and ourselves, lost.
Portia puts her hand on her head. “Then this is all we’ve got. Even if we had time, we won’t be able to make more cells. We’ve got one shot.”
I sigh. I can’t handle much more bad news. “So, what do I do?”
Fenn shows me the two capsules. “These can be injected or poured onto her surface. There’s a gel capsule of growth medium around each clump of cells. So once Cyclo can bring them near her outer surface, they’ll be able to survive on their own for a while. Hopefully long enough to mature and start harvesting light energy.”
“How long will it take for them to establish?” I ask.
Portia removes her hand from my shoulder. “Twenty-four hours. At least. And that would be fast, but we need fast.”
“The growth capsule should accelerate the process,” I tell them. I sound more confident than I am.
“Remember to get the cells injected first. Get your mother’s diary later. It’s less important.”
I nod, but I can’t bear to look Portia in the face. She sees my reluctance to agree.
“Hana. You have to do what’s safe first. We can’t take the risk that Cyclo will hurt you. Use all your good standing with her and inject the cells first.”
“Cyclo won’t hurt me,” I say stubbornly.
Portia starts to talk, but I turn away from her. She doesn’t understand. Fenn ignores her and helps me put on a backpack with all the cell cartridges on it, and it must weigh thirty pounds. But I’m surprised to find I can bear the weight.
“Funny,” he says, to no one in particular. “I don’t think you could have carried this when we first found you.”
“I know,” I say. “I’ve gotten stronger. All the walking and running, I guess.”
“Or something else.” He lifts the handheld data device that Gammand used to wield. “Your biometrics have been great in the last few days. Far better than when we first found you. Your anemia is still there, but it’s better. And your electrolytes are fine.” He snaps it shut and puts it into a sleeve of the backpack to monitor my biometrics on the short trip. “You can’t fix all that with just a little exercise.”
“That’s odd. The only thing’s that’s changed is…is…”
I can’t say the rest because the rest is the last thing I want to hear. The last thing I want to admit.
“You haven’t slept inside Cyclo since the day after I was wounded,” Fenn says. He’s quiet, and his words are spoken so gently, as if he knows there’s a barb about to stab me in the heart. Prepping me for the worst. “Ever since you got real food, you’ve been stronger. Cyclo might be the reason you were so weak when we found you.”
“No. No, Fenn, it can’t be.”
“I think she was purposely keeping you malnourished, Hana. To keep you dependent on her. It’s the only answer.”
“But Mother was in charge of telling Cyclo how to handle my hibernations.”
“Are you so sure?” Portia asks. Her red eyes look slightly dull. She’s worried for me.
“Cyclo’s been sick,” I say. “She’s been lacking nutrients herself. It’s not her fault. She wasn’t doing it on purpose,” I say, but I’m not ready to admit that the weakness I had when the Selkirk landed is the same weakness I’ve felt my whole life. Could Cyclo have been trying to keep me powerless since I was born? It just can’t be. Fenn fiddles with the strap on my shoulder, and I pull away from him. I head to the door and face them. “She wouldn’t hurt me. Not on purpose.”
Portia instructs me about the best way to introduce the new cells, reminding me about not touching Cyclo, spending the minimum of time in the northeast quadrant. I don’t want to listen to anything she has to say, but I must.
Finally, I’m ready. Before I head out the door into the dark, navy-blue hallways, Fenn touches my hand.
“Hana. Please be careful. Please remember what I said. Cyclo may not be on your side. Even with those nutrients we just gave her, she’s still unsafe.”
I shake my head. I can’t. I can’t. Cyclo isn’t like that. Instead of speaking again, because he’s realizing that I won’t listen to him, he pulls my shoulder close.
“Just…try to be safe. Trust your instincts.”
I don’t even know what my instinct are, or if I’ve ever listened to them before—a language I may have to learn fast, I suppose. Fenn kisses me tenderly on the forehead, and I close my eyes, inhaling his warm scent.
His fingers tap a message on the side of my shoulder.
.. .-.. --- ...- . -.-- --- ..- .... .- -. .- ..- -- .-.-.- -... . -.-. .- .-. . ..-. ..- .-.. .-.-.-
I love you, Hana Um. Be careful.
My eyes widen, and my mouth drops open.
So.
That’s what it feels like.
My heart thrums quickly, a happy tap-tap-tap against my rib cage as I smile.
“I love you, too,” I whisper. Reluctantly, I head out the door. I turn around, adjusting the pack on my back, and smile.
“I’ll be fine. Cyclo won’t hurt me.”
Despite my words, Portia and Fenn are looking at me with stricken expressions.
As if I’m alre ady a ghost.