Arkady was looking at Pendt, and Pendt felt seen for the first time in years.
“You could tell immediately?” she asked.
“Yes, sir,” Pendt said.
Arkady asked no more questions, and Pendt did not volunteer any additional information. Tanith dressed quickly, and Morunt updated her calorie allotment.
“You’ve done well, Tanith,” Arkady said. There was no warmth in the captain’s tone. It was a performance review and nothing more. “I am pleased.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said quietly. She looked like she wanted to vomit. “I’m glad I can serve the Harland.”
“Teach Jerrus how to run the engine room,” Arkady said. “You will be off for at least a week when the child is born, and someone will have to fill in for you.”
With that, the captain left the medical bay. Tanith waited a few moments, and then went back to work too. She looked a little unsteady, but there was nothing wrong with her. Pendt waited until it was just her and Dr. Morunt.
“Did you know when I did?” she asked.
“No,” said Morunt. “I didn’t know until you gasped, and then I knew where to look. I always thought that you were stronger than I am, and now we know you are. I can only find things when I know where to look, and a lot of medical ‘things’ are very, very small.”
“Can you fix them when you find them?” Pendt asked. She could clearly see the shifts in the pattern she’d have to make to change the baby to a star-mage. The scope of it frightened her too much to mention it, though.
“Not the way you can,” Morunt said. “Or, at least, the way I think you can. I couldn’t change my eye colour with all the food on this ship in my stomach. You’re going to be able to do a lot of things I can’t, but I wouldn’t be in a hurry to tell anyone about that. I said you’re stronger at detection, and you are, but you’re stronger in other ways too. And you’ll be better off if no one knows that, either.”
Pendt was already keeping secrets, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to add this one to the collection. She’d seen her cousin exposed and pliant; she was in no hurry to let anyone do the same thing to her.
6.
THE HARLAND’S BRIG WAS cool and dry and close enough to the engine room that the cyclers provided a constant, soothing hum. There was nothing to do there, which was part of what incarceration meant, but there was also nothing to do, which meant while you were in it, your time was your own.
Pendt’s semi-regular confinement to the brig was not a new development. Before the fingernail incident, she had been considered her mother’s to discipline. Now, if she was very lucky, she was locked in her room. It was barely big enough for her narrow cot and the cabinet that held her change of clothes and toiletries, but it was hers, and she could lock the door from the inside too.
The downside was that the air circulation was so poor, Pendt often woke gasping in the middle of the night, desperate for more oxygen. Her rank on the Harland didn’t entitle her to any repair allotments, so she just had to bear it.
“A rat hole for the galley cat,” said Kaeven. Lodia made him check the environmentals after the fourth time Pendt was found passed out in the hallway that led to the toilets, but he did a cursory job at best. “It’s no better than you deserve.”
Her brothers all lived in a bunkroom across the hallway from her closet. Lodia had a small room, though hers was much nicer than Pendt’s, and then there was the toilet facility. There was no common area. If they wished to socialize, they did it in the mess or the crèche-turned-gym. Pendt rarely wished to socialize.
The lights in the galley were dim, only lighting the workspaces the minimal amount to assist with food preparation. Pendt had been released from confinement a few minutes before the pre-dinner shift began and told to report for duty. There was no doubt that this was still part of her punishment, though. At lunch, she had mistakenly licked her fingers after getting vege-matter on them instead of putting her hands in the calo-recycler. The cook had reported her, of course, and Lodia-the-Officer had ordered Pendt to the brig. Her presence now was at the behest of her aunt, who never missed the chance to remind Pendt what she was worth to the Harland.
Pendt’s brothers sat on one side of the long Family table. Lodia sat at the foot and Pendt’s cousins sat with their backs to the galley. The elder generation of cousins, who had no offspring, were at the other table. Pendt looked out at the sea of light brown to white-blond hair she could see through the galley cutaway, and then turned her attention back to the task. Her aunt meant for her to hear whatever was about to happen, but not see it. Her stomach rumbled very softly.
“Talbor,” said Arkady.
Pendt’s younger brother stood and saluted: “Yes, sir?”
“Today you are eight, and ready to learn your place on the Harland,” Arkady said. “You will have to work extra hard to make up for your family’s lack, but I know you will do better than your best.”
Pendt didn’t need to see the room to know how everyone would react. Lodia would stare straight ahead, unflinching. Her brothers would look at their plates, and then up at their aunt like hopeful children. Her cousins would smirk. Everyone else would pretend not to know what was going on. Pendt tallied rations, counting calories into allotments to be given out at the next meal.
“I will, Captain,” Talbor said.
And now Talbor, born of a trade with a mining colony that had resulted in a single fertilized egg for each party at the table, officially outranked her. It was difficult to keep track of time on the Harland, but if Talbor was eight, then that meant Pendt herself was almost eighteen, and they must be getting close to Brannick Station. Pendt’s hands shook, and she steadied them before the cook could notice. The last thing she needed was more trouble, even if the brig was basically a vacation from the torture of working around so many calories all the time, knowing what she could do with them, and not being permitted to eat them.
Pendt lifted up several trays and headed out to distribute them, starting with the captain and working her way down the ranks. As she made her runs past the table, Talbor used his Spark deck to shoot little flecks of electricity at her arms. She’d rolled up the sleeves of her jumpsuit while she worked—he wouldn’t have dared damage that—and each contact burned her skin with little marks she’d never be allowed to heal. She did not give her brother the satisfaction of responding. She was used to discomfort.
“Stupid cat,” Talbor said. “Can’t even feel a Spark when you hand it to her on a platter.”
The twins snickered quietly and Karderee smirked, but no one else at the table even acknowledged her existence. Arkady was almost done eating.
A larger spark hit the back of Pendt’s hand, right in the webbing between her two smallest fingers, and she hissed, dropping the cutlery she was trying to pass out.