My father shoved me—the first time I remember him ever being rough, outside a game of saigo in the exercise rig—sending me stumbling toward Max and Hòa’s lab.
“Hide,” he whispered when I looked back, bewildered.
I didn’t understand, but I was an obedient child, so I ran through the doorway, picking a spot among the sample crates we would deliver on our next trip to Marney Station. I could observe what was happening through the door.
My mother strode forward to confront the new arrivals. There were three of them, clad in bodysuits as battered as their ship. I recognized them instantly—I had met them a week before, when I had visited Marney with my father.
I can recall the sight of my mother in that moment. She wore a blue jumpsuit, and her hair was out, tight black curls like my own flowing around her shoulders.
I cannot remember her face anymore.
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.