We split up, assessing the nearby passages and walls. I felt anxious and out of place. I wasn’t familiar with all the controls on my comm and I wasn’t used to working with this team – or even these species. I stuck close to Kade, hoping that my master didn’t interpret my hesitation as unwillingness to help. “This door’s open, but…” Kade checked his map. “No. It leads into the rear of the ship. Not the way we want to go.” I nodded, but then I noticed a stray drop of liquid flowing down the wall. I followed the trail down and saw there was a puddle gathering around the base of the door.
“Kade? There’s liquid here.” I couldn’t smell anything in particular, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was only water. Kade bent down, letting his comm take a sample of the liquid…
“Sir! Ethanol leak over here,” he called to our master. “We should be careful with flammables.”
“Fuck,” my master muttered. “Put a marker on it. We don’t need someone else accidentally setting themselves on fire.”
Kade pressed a button on the side of his comm and a thin pen-like object sprang out from somewhere in the depths of the device. He drew a symbol on the wall next to the door. Despite the wide variety of cultural differences and political conflicts across the galaxy, at some point in the last hundred years or so, the vast majority of species had agreed upon a universal system of symbols to designate common or important meanings. Among the two dozen or so standardised symbols, there was one for medical aid, another for radioactive hazards, and another for fire hazards. The symbol Kade drew was the one for fire hazards, then he slipped the pen back into its case.
“That’s awfully handy,” I said, checking my own comm to locate the appropriate button.
Kade smiled. “When we have time, I’ll show you the rest of the functions. It’s a lot more complicated than anything you would have used during training.”
I nodded, and I privately hoped that perhaps I hadn’t screwed up my relationship with Kade too badly, after all. Even if we couldn’t be long-term friends, it would make my time here more pleasant if we didn’t spend the whole time snapping at each other.
I sighed. Having a long-term friend would actually be really nice, and for a moment I was torn between the longing for it to happen and the anger that came from knowing it never would. But I only had a moment to wallow in my own emotions.
“How about going up?” my master called to the group. “If we can get to the next floor, we might be able to go into the lab through the ceiling.”
“This door won’t open,” one of the Denzogals reported, a man named Chorokan. He’d discovered an access hatch to the right of the bulkhead that was blocked by something on the far side. He could get it open only an inch or two before it ran into something large, and even his superior strength wasn’t enough to shift it.“Is anyone inside here?” he yelled loudly, and we all paused to let him listen for a reply. “Hello? Anyone there?” He shook his head, turning back to us. “Nothing, sir.”
“If we could get that door off, though, there’s another access point here,” a Solof woman named Ronta said, pointing to the next hallway over on her map.
My master looked largely unimpressed. “Possibly. But we can’t cut it with anything that would create sparks. Too much risk of flammable gasses. We’d have to use the laser cutters and take it slow, to make sure we don’t generate too much heat.”
“Stairs over this way,” our Derelian member called, from a narrow hallway to the left. I surreptitiously checked the mission instructions again, noting that his name was Zip-Zip. Alliance names were quite different from Eumadian names, so I was having trouble remembering them all. “But they’re blocked. Looks like a couple of crates got dislodged. Hey, is anyone up there?” he yelled. He waited a moment… and then a loud thump sounded from the space above us.
“Help! We’re up here!” a muffled voice drifted down to us.
“Can you move the crates so we can come up?” Zip-Zip called, his tail waving back and forth in agitation.
“No, I’m stuck. And Timsan broke his leg. Please, help us!”
“Ah, fuck. Let me get a look at that,” my master said, and he ducked into the passageway. I followed him, wondering if I might be able to help, and I noticed Kade was on my heels.
We all craned our necks upwards, and sure enough, there were two large crates blocking the narrow staircase. One had slipped nearly halfway down the stairs, but the other was lodged right in the doorway at the top. There was a sliver of space over the top of it where someone might be able to squeeze through, but getting up there was going to be a challenge.
“I think I’d be able to climb up past it, sir,” I volunteered, after taking a good look at it. There was a railing up the side ofthe staircase that I could use for leverage, and at the top, if I was lucky, I might be able to just push the crate backwards and out of the way. Or if not, I should be able to climb over it and slide myself through the gap. It wouldn’t be easy, but it should be possible.
“No way,” my master said, to my surprise. “You’re not disappearing into some inaccessible death trap by yourself. If anything happened, we wouldn’t be able to get you out again.”
I blinked at him. I honestly didn’t know what to say to that. This type of situation was exactly what I’d been trained for – accessing dangerous and inhospitable spaces, with only myself to depend on to get me out again. So why was he refusing to let me go?
But before I could think of anything to say, Kade spoke up. “I could go with him, sir,” he said. “It might even be easier to climb if we can steady each other. And then we’ve got a better chance of moving the crates with the two of us.”
“What if they’re unstable?” my master asked. “Those crates are big. If one of them falls, it could do either of you some serious damage.”
“And there are at least two injured crew members up there needing our help,” Kade replied. “I’m not in favour of taking unnecessary risks. But sometimes there are necessary ones.”
My master frowned as he considered the options, and I took the time to notice that he’d given me a flat no, but for Kade, he’d merely pointed out the dangers of the venture. Was that because he didn’t trust me, or simply because we hadn’t been working together for long enough for him to get a feel for my abilities yet?
He glanced back out into the hallway where we’d started, and where we were currently making little to no progress, and that seemed to make up his mind. He sighed and nodded. “All right. Chorokan, get the laser cutter and start working on that door,” he said to the Denzogal. “Ronta and Zip-Zip, go and get somemedical kits and ropes. Ropes in particular might help us move the crates. Kade and Jai, if you think you’ve got a reasonable chance of making it, then you can have a go at climbing up there, but if the crates are too unstable, then come back down.”
I noticed the way he’d phrased it. It was not an order. Rather, his instructions were phrased as a conditional option –ifwe thought we had areasonablechance. This was a far cry from the reckless disregard for my safety that I’d been expecting from my new master. His actions over the past day and a half had been inconsistent at best, but I was rapidly coming to dislike the niggling feeling that I was being unjustly judgemental about Commander Aiden Hill.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JAI
