I watch in silence as my twin sister creeps up to the large alien spaceship. She’s almost touching the side before the door opens slightly, revealing one of the men I encountered earlier. She stares at him for a moment before saying quietly in unaccented Zarinnian, “My sister would say hello, if she desired, but probably no more than that. She’s not particularly fond of talking.”
The man startles. “And where is your sister? She said she would bring you in the future, not send you alone.”
My twin sighs. “Change of plans. There’s been a problem. The Admiral is beginning to resent our presence on this station and we suspect he’ll attempt to have us assassinated soon. We need a way out, without starting an interstellar war. Our employers won’t let us leave legally - of this we’re well aware - because they’re scared of what we could do without supervision. My twin asks (with as much respect as she’s ever given anyone, which isn’t saying much) that you allow us to slip away on your vessel. We’ll disembark as soon as you need us to, but we have to get out of here.” My sister holds her breath, waiting.
The Zarinnian turns and calls to someone further into the ship before saying, “And where is she?”
My sister smirks. “Making plans and preparations. If all goes well, they’ll never suspect you at all.”
The Zarinnian leader comes to the edge. “I’m sure we can accomodate you, but you’ll have to contribute to supplies somehow. We need to return to Zarinnia as soon as possible, and we don’t have much extra supplies,” he says, as if that’s supposed to dissuade us.
My sister only nods before glancing around and swearing under her breath in several languages, startling the men. “Sorry, I have to go. Either my sister or I will return when we know the plan. Here -- my excuse for visiting was to bring tools, quickly take it. If I dawdle any longer someone will get suspicious.” She hands them the tools and runs off.
I grin from my hiding place. The plans are in place; a collapse in a non-structural and mostly unimportant tunnel at just the right moment will be the perfect cover. If they think we’re dead, it’ll be awhile before they discover that our bodies aren’t there and come after us.
“Akiralara!” I don’t even flinch at the sound of the Admiral barking my name. I heard his footsteps as he searched for me. “Maintenance is asking for you and won’t tell me why. Are you planning something without consulting me?”
I watch his face silently, wondering what makes him believe that I am any less dangerous without my sister. Is it my lack of a desire to speak? He starts to get upset with my quiet and yells, “I asked you a question!”
Finally I stand. I move so that I’m only a couple inches away from him and say softly, “And I chose not to answer. We both know my sister and I can never escape, don’t we, Admiral?”
He flinches at the use of his title and starts backing away. “Of course, of course. How silly of me to believe you might be trying to leave. After all, you can’t.” He almost runs in his attempt to flee. I smirk after him, wondering why it’s so darn easy to manipulate these guys.
If we were anyone else, threatening them like this would immediately send up red flags in the system, but we do this about once every three or four years. Base Command has gotten used to it and likely won’t even bat an eyelid. They’ll just tell him to get over it.
I remember what he started by saying, that Maintenance wants me and won’t tell him why, and starts heading down. The Maintenance Department is on the ground floor so mechanics can easily carry tools out to the spacecraft, and as a result, they have lots of little tunnels that run deeper into the rock. Most of the station is underground, a fact frequently overlooked by the commanding officers. Kazaya and I explored them all as soon as we arrived, and one of them opens up directly under the Zarinnian ship. I shake my head at the irony.
Stepping into Maintenance, the first thing I notice is the distinct lack of workers. The department head comes up to me. “Mornin’ Zorana, gud t’ see ya agin.” His voice lowers. “All o’ my workers got drafted fo’ that special program the Admiral’s buildin’ next door. I dunno what it is or what it’s for, but one o’ my men says it’s gonna take months.” His voice returns to normal volume. “I got a part that needs fixin’ an’ all my men done gone missin’! Mind helpin’ me out a little? I got summa those rations I know ya luv so much! Got a good place to eat ‘em, too, if I do say so myself. Bit of a climb gettin’ down there though, and dangerous. Never know when those tunnels might collapse on ya.”
My brain whirls as it processes what he’s really saying. I nod and set to work on various projects around the department as he regales me with stories of how easily those tunnels collapse and rumors and gossip from around the station. I know what he’s doing; by emphasizing the instability of the tunnels, no one will think it’s strange if one collapses on us, and he’s using the rumors to feed me bits of information I might not have known otherwise.
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Finally I murmur, “My sister…” and he winks at me. Sure enough, my sister put him up to this. I know why she chose him, though. He’s well-liked and trusted as a cheerful, helpful person - no one would ever even suspect him of breaking a rule, much less treason - and he’s been kind to us since the beginning, helping us get away with a lot more than the Admiral or Base Command will ever know. He always seems to be drunk, but he’s the best mechanic on board (a title he claims I’m going to steal from him if he doesn’t start working harder).
He grins. “I think summa those tunnels are already on the verge! Truth be told, lassy, I wouldn’t head down there if I were you. More likely t’ git yerself killed than anything else! Though there’s rumors of a secret food stash that might interest you.” He then launched into a long and no doubt spontaneously fabricated tale about the legend of the stored food. I continue nodding noncommittally at all the right places in the story as I fix two more engines. Finally I wash the grease off my hands and wave to get his attention.
Tapping my CSD, I touch my lips before folding my hands together. He bobs around. “Already that time, is it? Well then, lassy, I’ll git those rations into one o’ dem tunnels for ya, just be careful. Wouldn’t wanna git crushed, now, wouldya?” He laughs merrily. “Go git yerself some food now, and some rest. I’ll need ya here agin tomorrow, you hear me?” I nod, suppressing my amusement.
Slipping off to the dining area, I feel like even more whispers than usual are trailing me. As soon as I finish I slip out, heading to my room. My sister and I have rituals we do on nights that we run off into the tunnels, and we make sure to follow every single one of them tonight as if it’s the same as our normal escapes.
Slipping through Maintenance, I see that he’s still here, waving to us as we creep on by. That’s normal, too. I just hope the cameras didn’t catch the thumbnail-sized detonator hidden in the curve of his hand. We wave back and vanish into the manmade underground tunnel system, walking the route to the hidden exit by memory. I open the hole in the ceiling and knock lightly on the loading hole in the bottom of the Zarrinian spacecraft.
The hole opens to reveal the Zarrinian leader staring down at us, surprised. “How did you know this was here?”
My sister points at me so I state calmly, “All your ships have one. Yours is in the right spot.”
He blinks, slightly confused as his mind processes all of the missing words in my statements. He shakes his head and says, “Is this how you plan to load the rations?”
I drop back through the hole, leaving my twin to explain it to him herself, and start gathering food to hand up. “The rations, and ourselves,” I hear her say. “The plan is to make it look like we were just wandering in the tunnels as usual tonight when the one we were in just happened to collapse. We’ve done all of the setup for it already. All that’s left is loading the food, and ourselves, onto your ship.” She pauses. “When the tunnel collapses, don’t take off. Make it look like you have no idea what’s happening and no connection to it. If you immediately fly away, it will make you appear guilty. We’re leaving our comms here so they don’t track us.”
I look up to see him nodding. I tug on my sister’s foot and start handing up the rations. I can hear one of his subordinates exclaiming in the background that these are fairly high-quality rations and I smirk. I guess sometimes it does pay to make connections with others, who knew. Then I answer my own question, Well, my sister knew, I guess.
Once all of the rations have been loaded, my sister drops down and we both remove our CSDs, taking them to the tunnel Kazaya rigged earlier. To allay any suspicion, we take our time getting there and leave them close together so that it looks like we’re just sitting and talking. Then we run, counting down as we return to the hole. I boost Kazaya up so that the leader catches her and pulls her safely into their ship. He leans down to help me up, but I shake my head and wave him back from the edge. He frowns but moves anyway, probably due to my sister’s grip on the shoulder of his shirt.
I crouch, putting most of my strength into my lower legs, and spring into the air, up through both the hole in the tunnel and the loading port in the bottom of his ship and almost to his ceiling. As I start to come back down, I twist in midair and land on my feet, though I immediately lean back down through the port to move the tunnel cover back into position. I turn and nod to my sister. We both count down in silence. Five, four, three, two, one… BOOM!
We can both hear and feel the collapse as the ship starts tilting. I shoot my twin a startled glance and she shakes her head. I wait, and the ship starts tilting back up the way it’s supposed to be. The Zarrinian leader sighs in both relief and exasperation. “You couldn’t have warned me your plan could potentially destroy my ship?”
“Would you still have gone through with it? Besides, we calculated exactly which tunnel to destroy. It wasn’t structurally important and it was right underneath the Admiral’s illicit smuggling business on the other side of the rock. There was no way your ship would be destroyed.” I have to admit that my sister has a silver tongue when she needs to. Sighing, I wonder how long it’ll take them to realize that our bodies aren’t in that pile of destruction.
I turn to their leader, who is introducing himself to Kazaya as Marion. “Marion,” I say. He turns in surprise. “Zarrinian comms?”
“Oh, right,” he says, gesturing at his vice commander. “Here.” He hesitates briefly. “Can you guide me through what to say? I’m worried I might let something slip.” Kazaya immediately nods and I follow suit, clasping their comms around our wrists.