The Vela: The Complete Season 1. Yoon Ha Lee
threw up their hands. “Nobody even knows we’re out here, and they don’t know what to look for, so even if somebody were scanning this exact spot in space at this exact time, they wouldn’t know who we were or where we were going. It was fine.”
“It was a breach of the security protocol I laid out before setting foot on this ship,” Cynwrig said. “I’ve discharged soldiers far more competent than you for much less than that.”
“Yeah, I bet you have,” Niko said.
“Enough,” Asala said. “Niko. Her files?”
“I didn’t.” Niko sighed. “I wrote a—”
“I got a hacking alert,” Cynwrig said, shaking her handheld in Asala’s direction. “Local origin point.”
“Can I finish? I wrote a program that would seek out the specific problem areas on the ship. Things where devices or concurrently running programs weren’t playing nicely with each other. It must’ve tried to assess your handheld. Yours, too, probably,” they said to Asala.
Asala hadn’t gotten a hacking alert, but then, she doubted her handheld’s security programs were as robust as Cynwrig’s. She was quiet a moment. “They’re your ally’s family,” Asala said lightly.
“That doesn’t excuse them,” Cynwrig said. She had less of a purchase on the situation now, and it looked to only be making her angrier.
“I’m not saying it does. I’m saying this is a kid on their first field trip”—she saw Niko bristle at that—“and from the level of ass-kissing I’ve experienced, they’re just trying to do a good job. If the Khayyami government wanted your files, they would’ve got them on Khayyam. They wouldn’t have waited for you to be on a sealed ship with a grand total of two possible culprits. Especially since you’d be likely to space one of them, and that means a fifty percent chance of spacing the president’s kid. Ekrem is a lot of things, but he’s not an idiot.” She stuck her thumbs in her pockets. “Niko, please apologize to the High General of Gan-De for breaking her security protocols.”
Niko looked betrayed. “I—”
“I know I said please, but it’s not a request.”
Niko sighed. “General, I was just trying to help. I’m sorry. I should have checked with you—”
“And me.”
“—and Agent Asala first.” Their mouth twitched. “I didn’t mean to cause you any offense or distress. I’m sorry.”
The fire was dying in the general’s eyes, but the embers still glowed. She huffed and left the room.
Asala waited until she heard the thunk of Cynwrig’s door. “I think that means we’re not going to war, at least.”
Niko sat down on the edge of their bed, their limbs hanging limp. They looked exhausted. Had they been sleeping? The glitches in the ship were a pain, yes, but hardly worth Niko wrecking themself over. Was this all in an effort to impress?
Asala leaned against the wall. “What were you really trying to do?” she asked. “And don’t bullshit me.”
Niko exhaled. “The scramblers honestly are the problem.” They ran their hand through their floppy hair. “But . . . I did hack her handheld.”
“Why the fuck—” Asala caught herself launching into a shout of her own, and put on the brakes. “Why the fuck would you do that?” she hissed.
“Because she”—Niko pointed hard at the door—“has been on my ass about what we’re actually doing out here, and I don’t know if she’s just being paranoid or if she knows something. If she knows why we’re really here, then she knows about the Vela falling off the map. And she is not the person who should have that particular chip in her pocket.”
Asala said nothing for a few moments. “And?”
“And what?”
“Did you find anything?”
“Are you . . . are you not mad about this?”
“Of course I’m fucking mad about this. But you did it, so . . . ?”
“No,” Niko said sourly. “Her stuff is so encrypted I couldn’t untangle it.” They gestured at their gear. “Not with this. I could’ve done it back home.”
Asala drummed her fingers on her arm and considered. The kid was nervous, and annoying, and was assuredly going to make a roaring mess of something at some point during this job. But hacking the general’s files—even a failed hack—took guts, and their reasoning showed political savvy, if not the wisdom to wield it. “That was both pretty smart and very stupid,” she finally said.
“Those can’t be true at the same time,” Niko said.
“In this line of work, there’s a lot of crossover.” Asala let out a mighty sigh. “We have two more days until we drop her off. Do you think you can avoid causing a diplomatic crisis between now and then? Just read a book, or something? Like a normal person?”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” Asala started toward the door, then looked back at Niko, their eyes bloodshot from staring at screens, browbeaten and yelled at and wanting so badly to save the world. She closed her eyes and chose her words carefully. “I care, Niko.”
Niko looked up. “What?”
“I care. Of course I care. About—” She gestured vaguely toward the window, toward everything unfolding on worlds beyond. “You don’t know what it’s like. You think this is all some big heroic quest. Some moral-of-the-story. You need to get over that shit right now. It’s different when you know their faces. When it’s not just people who are dying, it’s your mom and your dad and your friends, it’s everybody on your street, it’s your language teacher who stayed after school to help you pass your quizzes, it’s the lady who used to sell you fireworks whose name you never bothered to learn. It’s everyone you ever met, and there is no hope for any of them. That’s what we’re going up against here. That’s what you are going to find on Hypatia. They’re not looking for a savior. They don’t want a savior, and they don’t want a new home. What they want is the life they had before everything went to hell. They want the people they lost. And they can’t have that, so they deal however best they can.” She met Niko’s gaze. Theirs was wide; hers was steady. “Do you get that?”
Niko nodded. “I think so,” they said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. I don’t need pity.”
“No, I meant sorry for saying that you don’t care. That was . . . that wasn’t okay.”
“It wasn’t.”
“That was an asshole thing to say.”
Asala accepted with a nod. She waved her hand over the computer stuff on the floor. “Clean this shit up. Read a book. Don’t hack any more government officials.”
• • •
Can you tell me what this line is for?
There’s a doctor who’s set up shop in one of the supply closets.
And how long have you been in line?
What time is it?
A little after ten.
Three hours, then. And here I thought if I got here early . . .