Page 61 of Pets in Space 10

Amalena held her breath, her back pressed against the cold metal wall of the darkened lab.

The only light came from the thin crack under the door, a line of gray that did little to pierce the gloom.

A few feet away, she could just make out Gaerynx’s silhouette, crouched low, one hand resting on Pavrel’s back to keep him still and quiet.

The quiet drumbeat of her heart seemed loud in her ears.

Merix shifted in the carrier at her feet, a silent protest against the confinement.

They’d frozen the moment they heard the soft tread of shoes, a sound that had grown louder and then, mercifully, faded away down the corridor.

Pivada, based on the flash of blond hair Amalena had seen.

They were so tantalizingly close. The door to the disused stairway was less than ten meters from their hiding spot.

But in the quiet and the ship’s artificial light, ten meters felt like a kilometer.

It had taken them thirty painstaking minutes of skulking through the ship’s corridors to get this far, and all they needed was thirty seconds to get through that door.

Yesterday, after their hurried meeting in the cargo hold, she’d napped, read, and, at Gaerynx’s odd request, dutifully recorded Merix meowing on her wristcomp and personal datapad. He’d been much more enterprising. Somehow, he’d collected an amazing assortment of items from all over the ship.

Their slow, silent slither from Deck Five had been an adventure in misdirection.

On Deck Four, they’d left her wristcomp tucked behind a ridiculously fake seaweed-encrusted column near the north lifts.

The sporadic meowing it played was just loud enough to be picked up by the gray audio dome near the lift doors, but faint enough to suggest the source was farther down the hall.

In that deck’s gym, Gaerynx had programmed the climbing wall for an ultra-slow ascent with long, silent pauses, leaving a towel and an open water pouch on a nearby bench as if its user planned to return.

On impulse, they’d palmed every stateroom door they passed, leaving a trail of glowing orange panels.

She hoped the security team would assume it was another ship system’s glitch, and if they were lucky, the team would have to check each room in case someone got stuck.

Gaerynx had nearly been caught leaving his company tablet playing soft music on a dining room chair.

A sleepy-looking Pivada had emerged from a lift, but she’d turned the other direction and only had eyes for the brewer, and its noisy gurgling had covered the sound of his retreat.

His bike-riding athleticism served him well as he silently ran back to the stairway where she’d been waiting for him.

The mix of terror and exhilaration she felt reminded her of pranks from her university days, but the consequences were exponentially higher. Back then, the worst-case scenario was a fine and a stern note to parents. Getting caught now could cost them their jobs or even their careers.

Considering that she’d barely known the man a week ago, she and Gaerynx had fallen into a surprisingly easy rhythm.

They amused each other. They synced without needing long conversations.

In her last relationship, she’d believed the disconnect had been her failing.

Now, as she was admiring Gaerynx’s cleverness and daring, she was beginning to realize the flaw had been in her choice of partner, not in her ability to connect.

By the time they reached the stairs to Deck Three, the security team was stirring and had noticed the passengers were missing again. Near the passenger airlock, a sliver of open space in a storage closet had given them a hasty hideout when Rishi’s sharp voice had cut through the quiet.

“…sent Pivada down to check Deck One again. We can’t keep running all over the ship looking in every room.” Her voice was laced with frustration. “And Dhalshun’s been up all night because that farking game console in the Deck Five media room kept turning itself on.”

She turned out to be complaining to Toldt and Sypher, who joined her as she passed by the storage closet to stand in front of the lift doors.

“This monitoring assignment has turned into a clusterfuck. We were geared up for keeping a low-profile watch on a couple of corporate scientists, not surveilling persons of interest in a building sabotage investigation. We need access to the ship’s vids. ”

“Not a chance,” said Sypher. “The crew won’t even talk to us right now. I don’t know why the targets keep moving around, unless they somehow figured out we’ve got ears on them.”

“I’m tired of guessing where to move the audio units to listen for them,” grumbled Toldt.

“Hell, I’m tired of following them everywhere. But unless we catch them doing something to the ship,” Sypher said, “we have no cause to detain them.”

“Just because they aren’t answering their doors,” said Toldt, “doesn’t mean they aren’t still in their rooms. Maybe we can use safety as an excuse to lock them in.”

“For how long?” Rishi had shot back. “And then what? Get sued for coerced confinement? I don’t care what the new orders said.

We don’t have a reason to hold them, and without external comms, we can’t ask.

” She made a frustrated noise. “Toldt, sit on the crew until you get them to unlock the Deck Four staterooms. Sypher, silence that Deck Five game console, even if you have to shoot it. I’ll have Pivada patrol Deck Three while I finish the goddamn report and stay on comms monitoring until Dhalshun wakes up.

If you find one or both of our targets, don’t let them out of your sight and call for backup. ”

After the team left the area and she and Gaerynx were slipping into the lab closest to the unused stairway, Amalena had felt a grim satisfaction knowing the security team was just as hamstrung by the lack of external comms as she and Gaerynx were.

A soft sound from Gaerynx brought her back to the present. He’d placed a repositionable first-aid bandage over the movement sensor to keep the light from coming on, but the room’s wallcomp still cast a twilight glow on him and Pavrel.

He was easing the lab door open a few centimeters more, but he wasn’t looking out. Instead, he watched Pavrel. The kulak’s tufted ears, faintly outlined by the light from the hall, were swiveling independently, one aimed left, the other right. After a moment, both ears swiveled forward and relaxed.

Gaerynx met her eyes and gave a single, sharp nod.

He moved first, a fluid shadow slipping out of the lab, Pavrel trotting silently at his heels on the leash. Amalena adjusted Merix’s carrier on her shoulder and followed, her soft-soled shoes making no sound on the textured floor. The air in the corridor felt colder.

When Pavrel reached the unmarked service door, it slid open and lights flickered on. Both kulak and man glided in quickly. Amalena followed though the opening as fast and quietly as she could.

Gaerynx palmed an access panel she hadn’t noticed, and the door slid closed with a barely audible sigh. She strained to hear anything beyond her own heartbeat. Long moments of silence suggested they’d successfully evaded the security team.

He glanced at her, a wordless question asking if she was okay.

She took a slow, deep breath, then another, encouraging the air to soothe her anxiety. After a moment, she managed a small, tight smile and nodded, appreciating his concern.

He gave her one last look, then turned and started cautiously down the stairs.

On Deck Two, Amalena stayed in the stairwell while Gaerynx and Pavrel crept toward the Computer Nexus door. The utilitarian corridor to the south, where the ship operations areas certainly were and the crew’s quarters might be, was eerily quiet, an observation confirmed by Pavrel’s relaxed ears.

Unfortunately, the door didn’t open automatically as the one on the stairs had, nor did it react when Gaerynx palmed the access panel.

It had been too much to hope for. She moved silently to the edge of the doorway to speak lowly and quietly to Gaerynx.

“I think the manual crank is in the baseboard to your right.” Her contribution to their plan had been to read the ship’s safety manual from front to back, carefully watching the accompanying vids for details that might prove useful.

He nodded and looked down. He had to keep Pavrel close as his cover story for being on the forbidden deck, but luckily, the kulak seemed to think grooming was temporarily more important than assisting.

Gaerynx pried off the cover with his fingertips and pumped the handle.

The door obligingly, and with a faint groan, crept open.

As soon as the gap was wide enough, Gaerynx replaced the cover and slipped through with Pavrel.

A moment later, he beckoned to her. She streaked in, bumping Merix’s carrier against the frame in her haste.

When Gaerynx palmed the interior access panel, lights flickered on and the door slid most of the way shut, leaving a one-centimeter gap.

There was nothing they could do about it.

Maybe it wouldn’t be noticeable from a distance.

She could only hope the open door wasn’t sounding an alarm on some ship control console, or they’d have company in a hurry.

The room was grimy and unexpectedly crowded and cluttered. The air, thick with the smell of dust and old machinery, made her sneeze. “I see the janitor is taking the year off.”

Gaerynx’s quiet chuckle was a warm sound in the cold room. “Makes me appreciate how clean the passenger areas are.”