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.
Logic dictated that.
· · · · ·
Logic dictates that it cannot be much longer, but still, I feel a sense of relief at the twelve-minute mark, when one of the Syldrathi smothers a yawn. I make a mental note to research what variables might have caused the gas to impact him before the others. Carbon monoxide is lighter than air. Perhaps he is taller?
I inspect the other four technicians from my vantage point. One is visibly flagging, but three still appear well. I hope the Syldrathi constitution is not, in their cases, hardier than I anticipated.
· · · · ·
It was harder than I had anticipated to keep my father safe, but I succeeded for a while. It was a small ship, but I was small too, and I had a lot of experience playing hide-and-seek. This time, though, there were no muffled giggles as I slipped away from my hunters. No secret smiles as they walked right by me.
I shoved my feelings down very hard as I climbed from the vents and into my mother’s office. I imagined myself putting them in a box and closing the lid so they couldn’t distract me.
I crawled in under her desk to where her comms equipment was plugged in, and yanked the cables free. The rig was set to auto-transmit a status update every three hours. If it didn’t, someone would come looking for answers. They might wait until we missed two check-ins, but if a corp craft was in the area, we could get lucky.
Two hours later, the equipment failed to transmit. After four hours, the raiders started bickering. Their drugs were wearing off, and their raid had not concluded as easily as they had expected. One of the men argued they should cut their losses.
The leader pointed out that (a) my demonstrated ability to calculate odds would still be lucrative for their employers, and (b) I had seen their faces and could testify against them.
But after three more hours of searching, they lost patience. They shot Miriam, despite her begging and her tears. And then they held the gun to my father’s head.
“Come out, Zila,” called the man. “I don’t want to shoot your daddy too. Just come out and he’ll be safe, Lucky Charm.”
I considered my position. If I emerged, I was confident they would