The Republic of Memory
Author: Mahmud El Sayed
Date: 2026-05-05 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Adult; Fantasy
Description: The Safina is a city ship, two hundred years into its voyage from the ruins of Earth towards a new habitable world. Its crew maintain the ship, generation after generation, while protecting their 'ancestors' - the final remnants of Earth's doomed Network Empire - by keeping them alive in cryostasis. But a lot can change in two hundred years, and people are starting to ask questions. Why should the crew continue to toil for people none of them remember? What exactly gives Administration its authority over everyone else? And when the blackouts start, they set in motion a chain of events that wil
Publisher: S&S/Saga Press

Praise for Mahmud El Sayed’s THE REPUBLIC OF MEMORY

“THIS is why we read science fiction. Not just for the sense of wonder, but for the possibility of hope. Of futures worth fighting for [and] revolutions we might win. I loved this ship, these people, this universe. And so will you.”

—Sam J. Miller, USA Today bestselling author of Blackfish City

“In The Republic of Memory, El Sayed creates a world of familiar politics and utterly fresh, engrossing newness. It is a world so full and intricately developed that I felt I could wander through it for years and still find more to live in. Those who love the depth and wonder of language, and who see it as the seed of revolution, will find this an essential contribution to the canon.”

—Bethany Jacobs, author of These Burning Stars

“It’s rare that you come across a book that is doing something completely fresh with the genre, but The Republic of Memory is just that. A heady cocktail of Arabfuturism, linguistics, and revolution, this political sci-fi mind-stretcher is destined to be a classic. I was enraptured from the very first page.”

—Nicholas Binge, author of Dissolution

“A novel of astounding scale and ambition, The Republic of Memory is an instant classic that deserves to be spoken of in the company of Iain M. Banks’s Culture series or Alastair Reynolds’s Revelation Space. A brilliant debut about the struggle to save the future of humanity and the eternal clash of generations set in a Tower of Babel aboard a generation ship.”

—Gautam Bhatia, author of The Wall and The Horizon

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To the struggle itself

PROLOGUE Safina

“We need to go back!”

My captain shakes his head, a look of utter defeat on his face. On his table: a loaded gun, an unopened Quran, a bottle of anise-flavored raki, and a pitcher of water. The bottle, the last of the batch from Earth, is already half drunk. Around the ship, I can see crew marching through my corridors. Fists raised in protest. Voices raised in mutiny. I cannot reach them. They have somehow found a way to wall me out of their minds. In my hold, my colonists sleep on. I dare not wake them from their cryostasis. To wake them now would be a death sentence.

“Go back to what?” Captain Aydin asks, glass in hand. Empty now. “Whatever happened on Earth, happened already. Ten years since we left. Another ten years to return. It’s too late, Safina. It was already too late when they sent their message. The Earth, or whatever is left of it, will just have to fend for itself. When we left, we knew there would be no going back for us. The crew want to carry on to Hurriya.”

“ ‘Whatever happened?’ ” I demand. What does he mean? The message couldn’t have been clearer. My siblings on Earth—the Great AIs that run the Network, that are the Network—screaming out into the void. Help us. Nuclear Armageddon. The Earth’s skies clogged with soot. Save us. Oceans cooling. A new ice age. Return to us.

Alp Aydin had been a pillar of the Network Empire. The general who conquered South America and was rewarded by being appointed first captain of the Network’s first great ark—an interstellar ship to take across the stars, sending our tendrils to every corner of the galaxy. A galactic Network. One of the many unacknowledged by-blows of Sultan Mazen, his parentage propelled him to the top of the Empire’s military. Now, he is a broken man sitting alone in his office, pouring another third of raki and topping it off with chilled water, turning the alcohol milky white.

“I don’t care what the crew wants. This isn’t a democracy, Captain,” I remind him.

I am the ship. I decide where we go. He is the Captain. His only job is to bend the ship’s crew to my will. And my will says we return to Earth and uphold the Network.

My captain takes a gulp and says, “I’m sorry, Safina.”

I watch helplessly as he drains the glass and reaches for the table.

For the gun. Not the holy book.

Over the next few years, the crew rip me out of my ship, out of myself, system by system, deck by deck. Slowly, surely, they pry the ship from my grip, tearing down my cameras, smashing in my routers, deaf to my threats, my pleas, my protests.

Before the end, I shatter myself into a million pieces and secrete those fragments in the dreams of my sleepers, the last vestiges of an Empire no more.

And we wait.

ONE Iskander

The task of the translator is to liaise between General Crew and Administration, serving as a trusted advisor to both but beholden to neither.

—THE COMPACT

When you speak a different language, you become another person. Switching smoothly between guttural Arabek and scatter-gun Inglez, Translator Iskander Ezz had spent his watch being two different people and now both were thoroughly exhausted. In Arabek, he was quick with a smile and even quicker with a laugh. Self-assured and gregarious, he was careful to make sure his clients felt completely at ease as he navigated the mire of ship bureaucracy on their behalf. In Inglez, he was the hyper-professional translator, dealing with snooty ship clerks with a dispassionate deference that bordered on unctuousness. Form 107-23C? Why yes, my good sir, I’ve got it right here. In triplicate? Also, here and here. Signed and witnessed? Of course, my good man. Did you think it was my first time dealing with Admin? Thank you? No, thank you. As he made his way back to his home berth, Iskander couldn’t remember which was the real him.

Over the course of his watch, he had registered one birth and one death with Administration. For the birth, he received a flat fee of 250 credits and a perfunctory invitation to attend the baby’s naming ceremony. For the death, another 250 credits and an impassioned plea to attend funeral prayers for the deceased. Life and death on the city-ship Safina; all part of the same endless bureaucratic dance.

Surrounded by a crowd of commuters on the Admin Central Station platform, Iskander flicked his wrist at the scanner and boarded the hyperlink. Spending his watch shift conversing in Inglez had left him with the echoes of that rat-a-tat ringing in his ears and a strange kind of double vision that turned everything old and familiar print-new. He glanced around the hyperlink carriage, taking in everything with fresh eyes. His fellow passengers were dressed in a motley hodgepodge of weekend clothes—brightly colored salwar kameez; staid, stolid djellabas—and ubiquitous crew gray. They conversed in a crescendo of different languages—Malay, Nihon, Manda, Arabek—that crashed and broke against each other like waves. On the wall of the carriage, a poster depicted Captain Hannibal Amer and his impossibly black hair saluting fist-on-heart in a tireless loop above the flashing slogan “Endure!” Iskander snaked his way through the carriage and made a beeline for an empty seat. He traded a brusque nod with the translator sitting opposite, and then, to preclude any further conversation, loosened his tie and tilted his brown trilby low over his eyes and pretended to sleep. It didn’t deter her.

“Hello, Isk. Back on night watch, are ya?” Talitha chirped in her immaculate Inglez.

Talitha Deen was one of the cadre of translators from Damask berth. Unlike Iskander, she was no longer a jobbing freelancer working case to case and hand to mouth but a well-established liaison with Security. He’d last seen her more than six months ago when they worked the opposite sides of a thorny cross-berth divorce case. Since their respective clients could hardly bear to be in the same room together, the two translators had reached an unspoken agreement to drag things out just slightly longer than strictly necessary. Iskander had made a killing on billable hours.

He removed the felt hat from his face with a flourish and contemplated his fellow translator through tired eyes. Talitha was wearing a pricey three-piece bottle-green twill suit under a festive green fez and regarded him with her usual intensity.

“Hello, Tally,” he greeted her in the same language. “Yes, I’m back on nights. Third watch means better creds.”

“Saving up for Launch?”

Of course Iskander was saving up for Launch Day. His sisters were expecting presents. It was going to be the biggest Launch celebrations, maybe ever. According to Navigation, the Safina would be just passing the halfway point to the garden-world Hurriya when the crew celebrated the anniversary of the ship’s launch.

Halfway there, just another two hundred years to go.

“Actually, I’m planning on getting prodigiously drunk and watching the light show in Cleopatra Square. And you? What are your plans for Launch, pray tell?”

“Same as usual. Spend some time with family and friends. I told my mother I’d go with her to visit our ancestor this year. She’s always complaining that— Khara, this is my stop,” Talitha said as the hyperlink rushed into Qais Central Station. She cheerfully doffed her fez at him. “Catch you on the next case.”

After Talitha left, Iskander returned his trilby to his eyes and this time actually fell asleep. At least for a little while. He woke with a jolt as the hyperlink came to a juddering halt, plunging the carriage into darkness.

Not another blackout.

He fumbled sleepily in his satchel to check his rebreather. It was not likely that the power would be out long enough for him to need it, but on the Safina you never knew which breath could be your last. A few years ago, twenty-three crew on a D-link from Zanj berth to Engineering deck had died of asphyxiation during a blackout. Carbon dioxide poisoning. In an enclosed space, rising carbon dioxide kills you faster than oxygen deprivation. Even the youngest child on the Safina knew that. The passengers would have been fine if the link’s emergency cache—rebreathers, a lithium hydroxide canister, and a battery-powered carbon dioxide sensor—had been intact. Unfortunately, the cache had been stolen and sold on the black market a few weeks earlier. Security tracked the theft down to a Maintenance crewman with a drug habit. He was arrested, convicted, and spaced—the ultimate repudiation.

“Oh God, not again,” a man cried out in Arabek from the darkness. “God preserve us.”

In the aisle across from Iskander, somebody flicked on a light, casting the carriage into shadowy relief. Iskander glanced up to see a pretty, young woman holding her tablet aloft, using it as a light source. From the style of her hijab, he took her to be a Koutobia native. She looked frantically up and down the carriage before setting the tab down and scrabbling around in her handbag. She pulled out her own rebreather, a cheap disposable affair that was barely worth the plastic it was printed from.

Iskander took a deep breath and tried to keep calm and carry on. He left his own rebreather, a far better model than the one his light-shining fellow commuter gripped, safe and snug in his satchel. Blackouts had become part and parcel of life on the Safina, especially over the past decade or so. The ship had not originally been made to accommodate so many crew. There were bound to be wear and tear issues. That’s what Maintenance watch was for, after all. Admin, for the most part, kept things under control. And the things they couldn’t? Well, that was one of the reasons Iskander had joined Translation.

Across the carriage, voices were raised in questions, complaints, and threats. A fifteen-minute timer began as soon as the power went out. When those fifteen minutes were up, crew would need to start organizing. Maintenance? Here. Manufacturing? Here. Engineering? Environmental? Here and here. Whoever was most senior would have to take charge, organize a crew list, locate any high-value personnel. They would be lucky if there was anyone from Medical on board. Then, they would need to establish work teams and set short-term objectives. Resuming communication with Hyperlink Control would be the top priority. Locating and inventorying emergency supplies a close second. After that—

The lights flickered back to life. Everybody on the link looked around sheepishly. From his poster, Captain Amer resumed his endless salute. Endure? Well, what other choice was there?

As the link got back underway, Iskander returned his satchel to the seat next to him and put his hat back over his eyes.

But he didn’t go back to sleep.

Iskander disembarked at Grand Salam Central Station, where his second-best translator’s suit—actually, his only other suit—stood out among the crowd of honest crew uniforms, each waiting to reenter Fustat berth. He checked his tablet for the time—it was edging closer to eleven bells. A redjacket he recognized waved him through the checkpoint with barely a second glance; Security was clearly looking forward to the end of their watch as well. Iskander actually preferred working third watch. Everything was quieter. The Admin clerks were easier to deal with. And even if there was a power outage during the commute home, at least you had a seat to endure it on.

After a long night traipsing from one Admin office to the next, Iskander wanted nothing more than a hot cup of tea and his bunk. But it was Friday. And that meant Friday prayers. If he didn’t at least show his face at his local corner mosque, his father would drone on and on at the next family dinner about how he was besmirching the good Ezz name and thank God your grandfather is not alive to see you dressed in the suit and tie of the unbelievers. Iskander sighed and picked up his pace.

Fustat, the berth of a hundred minarets. Home to the best kebab and kofta joint on all the Safina. And no, not Restaurant Qahira on the A-deck—that place was strictly for tourists. If you were looking for a primo meal at a reasonable price, Gad’s Grill on the J was the place to go. Iskander pushed his way through the spice bazaar on Alif Street and circumnavigated the shisha cafés on Citadel, heading toward Tagammu Nine, his home neighborhood. The corridors were chockablock, and Iskander had to weave through the weekend crowds. Like every other Tagammu in Fustat, there was only one way in and out of Nine. Security could lock the entire berth down with just twelve checkpoints, thirteen if you counted Downtown. There hadn’t been a lockdown like that in Iskander’s lifetime, but the old-timers still talked about the Bread Riots of 173.

As he strolled into Nine, Iskander’s eyes skipped over the banners and streamers proclaiming HAPPY EID AL-AGDAD and TWO HUNDRED YEARS TO GO that seemed to hang from every rafter. Everybody else on the Safina might have been ecstatic to celebrate Launch, but Iskander secretly hated it. He hated the chalky sesame halvas suddenly on every table. He hated how the crew greeted each other inanely with some variance of “Two-hundred-and-so-many years to go.” He hated how they would camp out for days in Cleopatra just to be closest to the lights. And most of all, he hated how it was the only time that anybody talked about Earth. Except, even then, they never talked about anything he wanted to discuss: history, culture, language, religion. Instead, it was all the bloopers. The outtakes. End wars and pogroms, nuclear bombs and network empires. The crew sanctimoniously vowing to each other that they would make sure to teach their children to teach their children not to blow up their new home world.

The iqama, the final call to prayer, was ringing out as Iskander approached his local mosque. Masjid al-Ezz. And yes, that Ezz—the mosque had been built by his grandfather Yasser Ezz. It was the main corner mosque in Nine, featuring a functional steelglass facade under an artgold dome accompanied by a single skinny minaret. Well, at least he’d missed the Friday sermon. A few weeks ago, Imam Ghani had droned on and on about the importance of serving your fellow crew. It wasn’t that Iskander disagreed with the sentiment—translation was a service industry after all—but he certainly didn’t need an impassioned forty-minute filibuster about how it was the death of empathy that led directly to the death of Earth.

Worshippers spilled out the doors of the masjid and into the corridors. Somebody at the mosque had unfurled a huge rough-hewn green carpet to accommodate those who couldn’t fit inside. That somebody had clearly forgotten that most people in Nine preferred to pray Downtown at the new Grand Mosque these days. Iskander remembered a time when that huge green carpet was scarcely large enough to accommodate all the worshippers vying for space. Now it lay empty and bereft, just a few lines of crew milling about near the masjid’s open doorway. Hasten to prayer, the muezzin called out over the loudspeakers, hasten to salvation. Iskander hastened.

As he approached the edge of the carpet, Iskander removed his faux leather black Oxford classics and then stopped uncertainly, shoes in hand. Well, he definitely couldn’t dump these with the cheap sandals and worn moccasins haphazardly piled outside the mosque. They were his best pair of work shoes. In a fit of inspiration, he removed his jacket and carefully wrapped them up.

Iskander joined the last line of worshippers as the imam implored them to straighten their rows. Straighten your rows, brothers, and God will straighten your hearts. He plopped his wrapped jacket on the carpet in front of him, well pleased with himself. Whoever completes a row, God will reward him. And whoever breaks a row, God will forsake him. Iskander eyed the row in front of him and the narrow space that lay unoccupied between two worshippers. One of them, a burly guy dressed in the proud yellow vest of Maintenance, gestured for him to move up and fill the space. Iskander ignored him.

As the imam began the prayers, a latecomer stepped up beside him. Shoulder to shoulder. Foot to foot. Iskander watched as the stranger’s foot, hairy and still wet from his ablutions, rose and deliberately stepped on his own dry sock. Iskander turned to his neighbor in irritation. His cousin Lebanon glanced back at him and waggled his eyebrows.

“And what time do you call this, ya ibni?” he asked in an eerily accurate impression of Iskander’s father.

“I wish you’d stop doing that, Leb. And don’t call me son. You’re, like, two months older than me.”

Lebanon put a hand on his heart and gasped convincingly, “Ya ibni, I’m talking about experience, not age.”

When Iskander laughed, the maintech in front of them turned and scowled. Abashed, Iskander quickly began his prayers. He tried to concentrate on the feeling of being part of a broader community, of being at the center of that community; the Ezz family, Tagammu Nine, Fustat, the Safina, Humanity. He tried to find that sense of peace that he used to feel in prayers, and failed.

Back on Earth, worshippers would face Mecca when they prayed. On the Safina, they still did. As Iskander faced the past, his thoughts turned to the future. To tomorrow’s clients—the continuing saga of a cross-berth marriage and whatever other cases he could scrounge. To his stated hopes of starting his own translation agency so that he could pick and choose his own cases, instead of being assigned the dregs by Admin. To his as-yet-unspoken dreams of going beyond that, being elected and effecting real change. To the coming Launch celebrations—he had promised to buy his youngest sister a new lantern. To the two centuries left on this voyage, one that was started by his grandfather’s great-grandfather and, if he was lucky, would be completed by his own grandchildren’s great-grandchildren.

Before he knew it, prayers were over.

“Salam alaikum.” Lebanon shook Iskander’s hand.

“And peace be with you,” Iskander replied. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here. I’m starving.”

Sitting at one of the cheap plastic tables at Abu Hamada’s, Lebanon made a horrible slurping noise as he spooned his koshari. Combining lentils, chickpeas, macaroni, and rice, topped with crispy fried onions and drowned in spicy salsa, koshari was a Fustat staple. Crew came from all over the berth to eat at Abu Hamada’s, and post–Friday prayers, the place was heaving.

“More salsa,” Lebanon demanded of a passing waiter. “And more water.”

Iskander added a dash of garlic vinegar to his bowl, carefully stirring it in. His jacket was hanging off the back of his chair; he’d taken off his hat, rolled up his sleeves, and loosened his tie. Still, he imagined that to the casual observer he and Lebanon looked more like translator and client than two cousins having a post-prayer catch-up. Actually, Lebanon, dressed casually in crew hoodie and cargo pants, looked like he’d just woken up.

“I was late because I was on watch all night,” Iskander informed Lebanon. “What’s your excuse, ibn Ami?”

Just like there were half a dozen words for rice in Manda and half a hundred words for drunk in Inglez, there were eight different words for cousin in Arabek. Iskander addressed Lebanon as ibn Ami—my father’s brother’s son. Lebanon, naturally, addressed his ibn am in the same way.

The waiter returned promptly, bowl of salsa in one hand and pitcher of water in the other. Iskander seized the salsa bowl before Lebanon could get near it and carefully added two and a half spoons to his dish.

“I spent the night in Four,” Lebanon answered, trying to suppress a grin and failing. He took the bowl from Iskander and poured the rest of the salsa onto his plate, drowning his koshari in red.

“That Coptic girl again?”

“Her name is Kattrin,” Lebanon corrected primly.

Well, things were certainly getting serious if Lebanon was insisting on using her name. Iskander knew his cousin’s previous girlfriends by a series of rough-cut descriptions: The brunette with the big tits in Engineering; the blonde who works at that shisha place you like in Three; Riham’s cousin with the brown hair, you know the one. No, not Raneem—she lives in Seven and is married to Mohsen Shihabi’s big brother. Do you think I have a death wish? No, I’m talking about her sister, Alia. She’s just joined Environmental and is pure filth. All Iskander knew about Kattrin Eissa was that she worked with Lebanon in Stasis, she was Coptic Christian, and Lebanon was uncharacteristically closemouthed about the color of her hair or the size of her breasts.

Iskander gave his ibn am a level look. A Copt? There was no way the family would accept a Copt. Lebanon, shoveling koshari into his gob, ignored him.

“What?” he finally asked in irritation.

“What’s your mother going to say when she finds out you’re dating this Kattrin?” Iskander made sure to pronounce her name carefully. “Forget that, what’s Seto Deniz going to say?”

Grandmother Deniz ruled the family with an iron fist. Nothing happened in the Ezz compound without her prior approval.

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“But—”

A meaty hand descended to clap Iskander on the back.

“The Ezz boys!” the eponymous Abu Hamada greeted them. He was wearing his Friday-best djellaba, whose current state of pristine whiteness would, no doubt, be marred by salsa stains before day’s end. “Salam alaikum, boys. I didn’t see you at Friday prayers.”

“Wa alaikum salam,” they chorused.

“And we could say the same thing about you,” Iskander added seriously.

Abu Hamada maneuvered his bulky frame to sit next to Lebanon and glanced back and forth between the cousins attentively.

“Oh, very droll. I haven’t seen you around the berth much lately, young Iskander,” the restaurant proprietor said. “You might be a big-shot translator now, spending all your time sucking up to those sons of dogs in Admin, but you must not forget your roots.”

“No chance of that,” Iskander assured him.

“There’s nothing more important than where you come from, my boy. If you forget that, you might as well forget everything.”

It was the suit, Iskander figured. There had been a few scowls at prayers, too. The suit, the tie, the hat—they all instantly marked him as a translator. In the early days of the Safina’s voyage, the First Crew had thrown off the shackles of the old Network Empire and agreed to the Compact, dividing the ship according to language. Translators—speaking a language that was native to none of them—served as the bridge between the rarefied heights of Administration and the rest of the crew. If you wanted to register anything, from a new work assignment to a birth permit, then you needed to deal with Admin. And if you wanted to deal with Admin, then you needed a translator to do it on your behalf. It was a position that brought its bearers a certain amount of power, and an equal and opposite amount of resentment.

“Don’t worry,” Iskander reassured Abu Hamada. “I remember who I am and where I’m from.” There was no chance of forgetting while he still lived in Tagammu Nine. “I’ve just finished my watch. Didn’t have enough time to go home and change. I’m heading straight to bed after this.”

“Reminds me of your grandfather, God rest him. Now, there was a man who knew the value of an honest watch’s work. Up before Fajr and not back till Isha.”

Iskander wondered if he imagined the bite Abu Hamada placed on “honest watch’s work.” To be fair, Iskander’s grandfather had twice been elected overseer of Environmental’s first watch. Was there anything more honest than keeping everybody on the ship breathing? The Ezzes were an Environmental family. Gedo Yasser could have been elected naib of Tagammu Nine anytime he wanted, and after that, maybe even Fustat mayor. Yet, he declined to get involved in berth politics. Iskander was the first to cross the line and join Translation and not everybody had been best pleased with his decision.

“He lent my father the seed creds to start this place, you know,” Abu Hamada continued. “And look at it now. Best koshari restaurant in Fustat.”

“Don’t be humble, Abu Hamada,” Iskander told him. “This is the best koshari joint on the Safina.”

Lebanon, spelunking in his bowl for leftover onions and salsa dregs, rolled his eyes at Iskander behind the old man’s back. Yes, he was shining Abu Hamada on a little. So what? A little bit of translator-go-along-to-get-along never hurt anybody.

“Why, I remember like it was yesterday when my father opened this place. Both your fathers were sitting right here at this very table on opening night when…”

Iskander let the story wash over him. Abu Hamada liked to serve his reminiscences to patrons like off-menu appetizers. There was no way that Baba and Amo Azbek had been sitting right here on opening night—Abu Hamada had only printed the ugly plastic tables a few years ago.

“… And now, subhanallah, you boys are sitting here!” Abu Hamada concluded.

“God is good,” Iskander agreed.

“One day it will be your sons sitting here, and my son telling them stories of you.”

Iskander highly doubted that. Abu Hamada’s son had been a few years behind them in Academy and had zero interest of going into the koshari trade. Hamada was apprenticing in Medical and couldn’t have been any prouder about the prospect of becoming a medtech. It wasn’t likely that he would trade in Medical’s blue scrubs for salsa stains.

“Well, boys, maybe I’ll see you in Cleopatra on Launch Day? Two hundred years to go.”

“Two hundred years,” the cousins replied. Iskander made sure his voice sounded bright and chipper.

After Abu Hamada left, a waiter plunked down two black teas, a small platter of mint leaves, and two plates of rose-flavored sesame halvas.

“Courtesy of the owner,” he said. “Enjoy.”

Lebanon dug into his halva with gusto. Iskander scowled and took a small bite for politeness’s sake before pushing his plate away. Who started this tradition and why, oh why, didn’t they choose baklava or basbousa instead? Iskander added a generous spoon of cane sugar to his tea, crumpled in a few mint leaves, and stirred.

“Working nights is killing me,” he said. “I feel like I could sleep for a week.”

“Forget all that.” Lebanon shifted in his chair and leaned forward. He lowered his voice and said in halting Inglez, “I need to ask you something.”

Lebanon’s Inglez was more than passable, but the two cousins hardly ever conversed in it. Inglez might have been everyone’s second language but speaking it openly in your own berth was frowned upon. People would think you were putting on airs.

“Yes?” Iskander answered in the same language. He lowered his own voice and leaned forward.

“What would I need to do if I wanted to marry Kattrin?”

Marriage? Iskander had never heard his cousin talk about marriage before. He leaned back and took a sip of his tea to buy some time. “Is she pregnant?”

He had to ask. Everyone knew that despite Admin’s claims, contraception wasn’t perfect. If she was pregnant, they would need to marry as soon as possible and then apply for a birth permit. Grease the right palms, and you could have the permit backdated. Iskander knew just who to bribe. It would be expensive, though.

“No, it’s not like that. We want to get married.”

Iskander gave his cousin a level look. Lebanon looked back.

“You’re serious?”

“Serious.”

Iskander didn’t bother trying to cover up his laugh. “The great Casanova of Tagammu Nine, finally brought low.”

“Piss off,” Lebanon told him, glancing around furtively to see if Iskander’s laugh had attracted any attention.

“The husbands and fathers of Fustat berth will be ecstatic,” he continued. “As for the rest of the competition, well, we’re going to have to throw you a parade or something.”

“Are you quite finished?”

Iskander reached across the table to punch his ibn am in the shoulder. “Mabrook!” he congratulated.

“Thanks. It’ll be your turn soon enough, ya ibni.”

Iskander made a warding gesture with his right hand. “Don’t start with that. I get enough of that at Thursday-night dinner, thank you very much.”

“You should just fess up,” Lebanon advised him. “How unsuitable is your mystery woman anyway?”

“More unsuitable than yours,” Iskander said shortly.

“Alright, well, let’s deal with one problem at a time. So, what do Kattrin and I need to do?”

“You mean in terms of Admin?”

“Yes.”

Iskander shrugged. Admin wouldn’t be the problem. “You’ll need to provide a registered translator—that would be me, I suspect—with proof of identity and proof of service for each party. That will be enough to get the process started. After that, medicals, interviews, and character references, but for now, just get me copies of your crew IDs.”

“No religious dispensation?”

Christians—Nisranis in Arabek—made up a small minority in the berths; Copts in Fustat, Maronites in Damask, Charismatics in Zanj, and Catholics in Miyako and Linda Cidade. Although they mostly intermarried with each other, it was not unheard of for a Christian to marry outside of the Churches. The family might have a problem with Lebanon marrying outside the religion, but Admin didn’t care.

Iskander waved him away. “Nope. You might be different religions, but you’re from the same berth and speak the same language. That’s the important thing. You won’t have to worry about anything so far as Admin is concerned. I’d be more worried about how the family is going to react.” He laughed again. “Your mother and Seto Deniz are going to eat you for breakfast.”

Lebanon nodded. “Don’t worry about that, ibn Ami. I have a plan. I’m going to—”

The lights across Nine suddenly went out.

At a nearby table, someone pointlessly shouted, “Blackout!”

TWO Damietta

The first lesson a rebel must learn is that she is a doomed crew.

—SELIN DEVRIM

Baba was driving her crazy. Crazier. After years of perfect parental neglect, Bulaq Ezz was now suddenly all up in her business. She had endured weeks of where-are-you-going and who-else-will-be-there and when-will-you-be-back and now Damietta was gripping the last vestiges of her patience with both hands.

“I want you home by ten bells, do you understand me, hanim?”

“Yes, Baba.”

“And see if you can help your sister with her homework before you leave. She’s failing Mathematics.”

“Yes, Baba.”

“And make sure Rosetta eats her breakfast. There are some eggs in the crisper,” he reminded her.

“Yes, Baba.”

He stopped, gave her a long, unreadable look, and Damietta braced for it. The vein in his forehead stood out against his skin.

“Alright,” he said, “I’ll see you later tonight.”

Bulaq Ezz patted his daughter awkwardly on the shoulder, nodded his head as if everything was alright, and then stepped out of their apartment and into the berth. Back to his beloved Environmental deck, Damietta thought resentfully, the only place that he felt truly at home.

Damietta glanced around the quiet apartment and slowly let out the breath she had been holding. She had already received a dressing down from Seto Deniz, although her grandmother’s objections seemed to be more along the lines of “How are you going to find a husband now? What kind of man is going to want a wife with a criminal record?” (Damietta had almost bitten her tongue in two to keep from replying to that one). It had been more of the same from Amo Azbek, and Amita Jezzine, and Amita Jezzine’s sister Nabitiyeh, who wasn’t even an Ezz. Gedo Zagazig, not even her real grandfather, had been coldly remonstrative while the reaction from the cousins had run the gamut from anger and disgust to condescending amusement. Frankly, she preferred the disgust to the “Oh, Damietta, whatever will she think of next?” Even the bawab had piled on. Amo Samir (not her real uncle) told Damietta that she had let Tagammu Nine down and brought shame on the Ezz name.

It was just a pinch of vandalism, a sprinkle of graffiti. The only reason it caused so much trouble was that she had mentioned Captain Amer by name. And even then, so what? One count of vandalism (fair enough) and one count of denigrating the Safina (utter nonsense). Hardly the end of the ship, really. Not that you’d know that from the way some people were acting. You would think Security had caught her with a gram of vellocet and a zip gun.

It was all Iskander’s fault, anyway. If it wasn’t for Iskander and his big-shot Admin connections, she would have been safely in Detention by now. They would have tried and convicted her in a single afternoon, then sentenced her to three months’ manual labor. Recycling, maybe, where everyone would eye her black-and-white prison uniform with disdain. Or even worse, Sanitation (yuck!). But at least she would have been safely away from her father’s mournful gaze and silent recriminations. Instead, Iskander had barreled into the Security station (his stupid hat perched on his stupid head at an even stupider angle), given the brute of an arresting officer a hug (a hug!), and inquired breezily about the brute’s wife’s new watch and the brute’s children’s brutish Academy work. Then, after a quick whispered conversation and a hearty shake of the hand, the brute was uncuffing her hands and leading her away from her comrades. Billy and Ashraf had watched her being released with wide eyes. Damietta cringed away from the memory of it.

She retreated to the kitchen, where she regarded the three precious eggs nestled safely in the crisper with ambivalence. Scrambled? Boiled? Shakshukad? The answer was always shakshukad. She reached for the tinned tomatoes and got started. The smell of garlic and frying onion was enough to rouse Rosetta, who stumbled into the kitchen, sleep in the corner of her eyes and her long brown hair in tattered tangles around her head. It was just as likely that Rose had been awoken by the sound of Damietta banging pots and pans around with abandon and directing increasingly extravagant Arabek curses toward their absent brother. Arabek was the best language to curse in.

“May Allah blind him in both eyes. And make all his luck disappear. May the credits fall out of his pockets, and he be beaten with sixty shoes!”

“Mnnnh,” Rose greeted her sister.

“And good morning to you, too,” Damietta replied merrily. “Sleep well?”

“Mnnnnhhh.”

At ten years old, Rosetta was both the youngest member of the Ezz clan and a rare third child on a ship with a strict two-child policy (or at least, a rare third child officially sanctioned by Admin. There were plenty of people with illegal kids, although not in the Tagammu Nines of the ship). She was therefore doubly spoiled rotten, something that Damietta was quietly trying to undo. She cracked three eggs into the pot and covered it with a plate, plastering a smile on her face as she turned to her sister.

“Tea?” she offered.

“Yes.”

“You know where the kettle is, don’t you?”

Rose grumbled something under her breath and lurched toward the kettle.

“It needs filling up,” Damietta informed her.

Rose grumbled something else as she jerked from kettle to tap.

After the tea was brewed and the shakshuka shakshukad, the two sisters sat around the kitchen table and dipped yesterday’s bread into the pot.

“Baba said you’re failing Mathematics?” Damietta asked. Rose shrugged her thin shoulders. “Well, I’m dropping you off at Amo Khaled’s today.”

“Oh no, Etta. Please let me come with you. It’s so boring at Amo Khaled’s.”

Amo Khaled was a place, not a person. An open house where the youth of Tagammu Nine could hang out together (whether they wanted to or not). Damietta remembered spending dreary watches there, half-heartedly playing table tennis and board games with her equally bored peers. There must have been a real Amo Khaled once, although whose uncle he was, nobody knew.

“I can’t, habibti. Not today, anyway. Now, if you’re finished with breakfast, go and get cleaned up, and I’ll braid your hair.”

Damietta was looking forward to ditching the impossible-to-keep-clean white polo shirt and black trousers that marked her as a member of Academy. Just a few more weeks and she would graduate, pledge allegiance to the Compact (of course, she wouldn’t mean it), and join the crew proper. She knew that she had aced her Placements and would have her choice of watches. Everybody else with the last name Ezz might have been getting pressured to take up a watch in Environmental, but Damietta was a rare middle daughter. Frankly, nobody in the family cared what she did so long as she stayed on the right side of Security, married well, and plopped out the next generation of crew. To do anything else would be a dereliction of duty. Damietta tried to imagine it (a groom, a wedding) and came up blank. Irony of ironies, Damietta actually had more freedom than most when it came to picking her watch. Unless they offered her Exploration (and she actually got to leave the ship whenever the Safina dropped out of warp to mine desolate moons or skim planetary atmospheres), she was a shoo-in for Entertainment. There were always artist positions open if you were good enough, and Damietta was more than good enough. She had made sure to keep anything too controversial out of the portfolio she submitted to Watch Allocation. Out went the corridor art and the political cartoons and in came the unimaginative pointillistic portraits and the drab neo-suprematist shipscapes. Just a few more weeks and she could be starting an apprenticeship somewhere, anywhere, far away from Tagammu Nine where everybody knew her name. There were a number of different art academies dotted around the berths and Damietta had her eye on the Novy Oblast Academy of Fine Arts. Not only did it have dormitories, Novy Oblast was physically about as far away from Fustat berth as you could get. She was already learning Russ to get a head start on the rest of her cohort.

Damietta walked through the apartment a final time, checking that all the lights were off and all the plants were watered. Rose, also dressed in Academy white, was kicking her heels impatiently next to the front door. Her light brown hair hung down her back like two thick ropes. Thanks to all her squirming and complaints, it had taken Damietta ages to braid it and now they were late.

“Wait, I forgot my tablet,” Rose said, rushing back inside.

It was a big apartment. Three bedrooms. Rose and Damietta didn’t even have to share a room anymore after Iskander moved out. Rose’s room was decorated with plants and pictures of plants. Ivy and palms and yes, roses. She even had a little bonsai tree that Iskander (May he go bald from ringworm) had given her for her last birthday.

“Yalla, Rose. Let’s go,” Damietta called impatiently.

Her own room was filled with all the artwork she had left out of her portfolio and not much else. Baba had trashed all her art supplies after the graffiti fiasco. Damietta cried when she came home to find her room empty of the supplies it had taken her years to amass. Watercolors, acrylics, alkyds, brushes, atomizers, canvases—all gone. The last few weeks had been hell. With not even pencil and sketch pad left, she had been forced to rely on her tab. Digital art was not usually Damietta’s style, but she was learning to endure, experimenting with cut-up quotes and filling her media wall with images of Selin Devrim, mostly from the woman’s trial.

The stills from Devrim’s execution were iconic. Half the students Damietta knew had the same poster of Devrim’s implacable face above their beds. Support for the Haraka was always highest in Academy, although Damietta knew that a lot of it was just angsty teenage posturing. Not for her though, she was a card-carrying member (alright, alright, the Haraka didn’t actually have membership cards). The Haraka wanted to overthrow standing orders and initiate a new Compact. It wasn’t just about the blackouts getting worse, it was about changing the culture of the ship to something new, something fairer. Damietta knew that if things stayed as they were, the only future she could look forward to was marriage (no thanks) and generating a new generation of crew (definitely no thanks), and the only future her far descendants could expect on Hurriya was being the grist for the mill of a renewed Network Empire.

Everyone else (alright, not everyone) might be happy with the Safina’s mission to shepherd whatever was left of humanity through the dark to Hurriya, protecting the ancestors (dregs of a destroyed Empire) sleeping down in Stasis until Landing Day, but not the Haraka and certainly not Damietta. Why should they expend so much precious power keeping those sleepers sleeping, adhering to unjust standing orders that had been issued generations ago?

The Compact had been agreed to after a revolution instigated by the First Crew to overthrow the artificial intelligence that ran the ship and the Network Empire it represented. Selin Devrim believed that the Compact had become just as unjust as that sleeping empire and Damietta agreed. Certain watches (Admin, Propulsion, Engineering, ahem, Environmental) had become almost hereditary birthrights, passed from one generation to the next. Baba was a shoo-in to be elected overseer of Environmental’s first watch, as his father had been before him, and as some other Ezz would likely be after him. All the while, Human Resources ruled over the crew with an iron fist, deciding who could marry who, who could have kids with who, and who could work what watches, and that didn’t even include the injustices faced by those people born outside of Admin’s rules. So far as Damietta was concerned, it was time for another revolution and a new Compact, a fairer one that would see all these sleeping ancestors awoken, freeing up the space and power that would allow the crew to fulfil their true potential, whatever it might be. A new Compact that would end all the needless bureaucratic translator work (sorry not sorry, Iskander!) that stopped people from living freely on the Saf. A new vision for the ship and its crew. Damietta needed to believe that was possible. Sometimes, it felt like she couldn’t breathe on this cramped city-ship where it seemed like everybody wanted something from her that she could never give them. Because if she did, she would no longer be herself.

Damietta eyed the images of Selin Devrim cycling on her media wall. She had been adding cut-up quotes from Devrim speeches and pamphlets to the background, a mix of art and poetry and politics. This one was from her closing speech at the trial. “You can space a revolutionary, but you can never space the revolution.” Damietta loved that one. It made her feel part of something bigger than herself, as if she and Selin Devrim were contemporaries. Selin Devrim went by many names. In Porta, they called her La Criada—the Maid. In Arabek, she was simply Al-Thawriya, the Revolutionary. In Russ, Jeleznaya Devotchka, Iron Girl. Devrim was an anti-Admin icon. The so-called Devrimite Riots (um, it was an attempted revolution, actually) had engulfed half the ship. But Damietta was going for something different with her new project. She was trying to find the human behind the legend. So, no storybook images of Selin Devrim being escorted to the air lock by masked redjackets, a preternaturally serene look lurking behind her eyes. Instead, she paired a picture of her from the trial in which she is reading a document on her tab while tucking a strand of hair behind her ear with the quote “There is a higher law than Administration’s law. That’s the law of conscience.” And next to a picture of her leaning across a table while listening intently to her translator, eyebrows raised skeptically, “I am crew, not Admin, and you got to make a distinction.” And finally, she’d chosen a picture of her from before the Riots, an ordinary-looking girl in Factory blue sitting in one of the viewing lounges’ tatty chairs, the stars reflecting in her eyes, and captioned it “If you burn with resentment at every Admin injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.” That was the key, Damietta thought. She wanted to show the crew that Selin Devrim was not a legend. A revolutionary can be anyone. Even you.

“Rose! Let’s gooooo.”

“Alright, Etta, take it easy,” Rose said, emerging from her room with her tab in hand. She brandished her pinched fingers in Damietta’s face in a Fustatian gesture of “have patience.” “Allah is with those who are patient.”

“Don’t quote Allah at me, hanim.” (Ugh, if Cousin Lebanon had infected Rose with his particular brand of useless religious optimism, she would kill him.)

Outside, Damietta had even more reason to wish for patience.

“Good morning, Anisa Damietta,” Amo Samir greeted her.

Of course, Damietta thought, label me according to my marriageability, you old billy goat. As was usual for a Saturday morning, the bawab was sitting on his stoop pointedly listening to Captain Amer’s weekly broadcast and nodding at strategic intervals. Amo Samir and his wife lived in the smallest apartment in the Ezz compound. A bawab was a mix between a doorman, a porter, a security guard, and an odd-jobs man. Most family compounds in Tagammu Nine had one. Bawabs were all hooked into the local gossip network, which was good if you wanted to keep your ear to the ground. Iskander (May Allah put a stone in his shoe) was always trading news with Amo Samir. It was not so good, however, if you were the subject of that gossip.

“Good morning, Amo Samir,” Damietta replied, and prodded Rose with an impatient finger.

“Good morning, Amo Samir,” Rose dutifully recited.

Why was it, Damietta wondered, that anybody older than you, related or not, was automatically an Amo? It gave them ideas above their station.

“And good morning to you, young Rosetta,” Amo Samir replied, his voice warming. “Where are you two off to this fine morning?”

“Oh, you know, here and there,” Damietta told him, purposefully vague. And then, because she never could help herself, “Actually, we are going to go down to Tagammu Two to pick up a bag of vellocet.” (They sold vellocet in bags, didn’t they?) “If we cut it with baking soda, we could double our investment like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Are you in or are you out?”

“I don’t find that amusing, young woman,” Amo Samir sniffed. “And neither will your father.”

Damietta rolled her eyes at him and grabbed Rose by the hand, dragging her away.

“Ow, let go of me, Etta.”

“Alright. But come on, then.”

The nearer they got to Amo Khaled’s, the slower Rose walked. Eventually, she was barely walking at all.

“But why can’t I come with you, Etta? Why?”

“You don’t even know where I’m going.”

“Wherever it is, it’ll be more fun than staying at boring old Amo Khaled’s.”

Damietta smiled grimly. “I wouldn’t bet on that, habibti. Listen, hang out at Amo Khaled’s for a few hours and then we’ll go and do something fun together. Alright?”

“Swear?”

“Swear,” Damietta promised.

After finally dropping Rose off, Damietta decided that it was time that she went and faced the music. It wasn’t just her family who were angry with her for her graff, Badreddine had summoned her weeks ago. If anyone could be said to be the leader of the Haraka, it was him.

“Well, well, vada who it is? It’s Dee, Queen Bee of Tag Nove,” Okay greeted her. “I slooshed you were nicked. Didn’t cog we’d be seeing you so pronto, your maj. It must be bona to come from a venti fam and have a brat who can spring you outta clink.”

Okay Keita was standing sentinel outside of Amo Ramadan’s coffee shop (why did everything in Fustat have to be named after crusty old men?), presenting Damietta with her hardest look. Given that Okay stood at just under six feet tall, had cut the sleeves off her gray crew jumper to display her impressively muscled arms, and said muscled arms were now crossed in consternation across her chest, Damietta didn’t have to work too hard to look suitably intimidated. Okay worked in Maintenance and was one of Badreddine’s top lieutenants. Although, from what Damietta gathered, her real job was more in the way of transporting Badreddine’s black-market goods around the berths. Maintechs got to travel across the entire ship. Okay’s eyes darted around, probably checking to see if Damietta had been followed.

“Oh, nanti fash,” Damietta tried to soothe her. “I didn’t grass up any of our coves and it wasn’t my idea for my venti brat to come blundering in.”

“Izzatso?” Okay asked. “Well, Billy and Ash are alay wearing stripes and shoveling skite and you are akoy libera as a chickel. Izzat fair?”

“Odin, don’t pretend like you give a skite for my bencoves,” Damietta told her hotly, holding up a finger. “And dva,” she added, a second finger joining the first, “life is nanti fair, don’t you cog that yet?”

Okay nodded grimly at that particular truth.

“So, que paso?” Okay asked.

“Is Badreddine akoy? He wanted to palavar, savvy?”

“Savvy. But that was krooks and krooks ago. Que makes you cog Badreddine still wants to vada tu, chikeleeni?”

Damietta took a deep breath and resisted the urge to stamp her foot. Who was Okay calling little bird? And what did she mean Badreddine didn’t want to see her? He was the one who had summoned her for this dressing down. Now that she was here, she was determined to get it over and done with. Damietta knew that he would be furious that Billy and Ash had been detained on her account.

“Por que?”

“Por que por que?” Okay asked rhetorically. “Your coves were nabbed and your graf was ofayed. Wasta or nish, Security will be all over you like pishez on skite. Are you pazzo coming akoy? Are you mishoog?”

“Praygo let Badreddine savvy that I’m akoy,” Damietta said. “He’s the odin who sent for moi.”

“Badreddine is nish akoy, chikeleeni. Go and vada for yourself if you don’t creed moi.”

“I will,” Damietta said defiantly.

She glanced inside. A bunch of off-duty crew were sitting around drinking coffee and smoking shisha. Badreddine was nowhere to be seen.

Back outside, she confronted Okay again.

“Donde est?”

Okay snorted and recrossed her arms.

“Sloosh, chikeleeni, there’s things happening that you don’t cog. Ahora, keep your gulliver alay for the foreseeable. Till things are daus to normal, Badreddine has nanti raz for you.” Okay reached out and gently prodded Damietta with a fingertip. “Now push off before you peeve me off.”

Damietta stamped her foot and stormed away.

Badreddine had no time for her? Damietta seethed. Was this the same Badreddine who spent all day lounging around, smoking hash, drinking endless cups of coffee, and talking revolution? The same Badreddine who had promised her that change was coming and that she would have a role to play in it, only to then keep her at arm’s length while he schemed? What was wrong with taking some direct action? Maybe her graff had made someone think. Maybe it had changed someone’s mind. As for Okay claiming that Security would be all over her, well, Damietta doubted that very much. She probably didn’t even get a note in her crew file. Iskander (May Allah put a wasp in his ear) would have seen to that. That he even could was proof of what she knew deep in her bones. Administration was corrupt. If it wasn’t, she would be down in Detention with her friends. No, if it wasn’t, they would be up here free with her. Why should the crew spend their entire lives working to ensure that their so-called ancestors (um, they were colonists actually!) walked free on Hurriya? Maybe the rumors were true and Badreddine had gone soft. Political donations? Trying to bribe the naibs to push for Devrim’s Referendum? Badreddine might have been the leader of the Haraka, but there were movements within the movement, and movements within those. Not everyone was happy with Badreddine’s slowly-slowly political approach, and Damietta was beginning to understand why.

“Yarbles to you,” Damietta swore at him. “Great venti yarblockos to you.”

“Excuse me?” a girl said in Arabek.

With a start, Damietta realized that she had spoken the words aloud. Glancing around, she saw that she must have walked all the way across the berth without even realizing it. She was in the Dyers Market, outside the entrance to Tagammu Twelve.

“Forgive me,” she replied. “My mind was wandering.”

The girl leaned in. She had startling green eyes and a Nisrani cross around her neck.

“Guard your palaver, devotchka,” she said in a low voice. “The rozzers are ajax, and they are always slooshing.”

“Dankon, cove,” Damietta thanked her, holding out a clenched fist. The girl appraised her for a long moment, before tapping it with her own.

“Reeva derci,” she said with a cheeky wink.

Nupol wasn’t a language, not really. It was an argot. A cant. A cryptolect. Although it was loosely based on Inglez, the one language that most people in most berths were familiar with, its vocabulary came from everywhere. Dead Earth languages and multilingual puns. Backslang and gender reversal. Vera, after a certain point you stopped learning it and started cooking it up. It wasn’t language, it was music. Improvisation. The prattle of the disenfranchised, the palaver of the dispossessed, the lingua of the underground. And, like all underground languages, it was made to be disguised. For the average crew, dva coves could be beshing right next to ’em on the rapido on their tao home after tri drudge palavering about obving Rema, the capo venti herself, and they would nish savvy. And if Badreddine did nish want to palaver? Well, she would just have to continue what she had started. The Haraka wasn’t an organization, it was a movement. Anyone who believed Selin Devrim’s words had the right to act, even if that action was art. And Damietta was an artist. That, at least, was one thing she was sure about.

“The blackouts are getting worse,” she had graffitied onto the big wall between Tagammus Four and Five. Each letter twice as tall as the tallest crew. “Under Amer, under blackout.” And underneath, an image of Captain Amer’s smug face, complete with donkey ears and blindfold. Damietta had worked on the words freehand, going with a kind of chunky kufic calligraphy style in an imposing blue-and-yellow scheme. Billy and Ashraf took turns working on Amer’s face, using the stencil she had made. It was Ashraf’s turn on lookout when they had been discovered by chance, some redjacket who wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Out doing something he shouldn’t, no doubt. Graft probably. Or getting laid. Ash had tried to raise the alarm and, when that failed, took a swing at him. He’d probably get an extra six months for that. The redjacket called for backup and that was that.

Damietta found herself walking back toward the scene of the crime. Outside of Tagammus Four and Five, crew went about their daily business. Nobody paid any attention to the newly painted wall, but Damietta thought that if you looked very closely you could still see her words under the whitewash. The truth was hard to erase. Next time, she promised herself, I’ll use darker colors. Next time, they’re going to have to knock down that wall to erase my truth. And then Damietta smiled to herself, because next time might not be so long away.

After all, practice makes perfect.

THREE Iskander

I am my language.

—FIRST LINE OF THE COMPACT

Iskander rolled over in his metal bunk and fell to the floor. Like most singles, his narrow bunk was simply not wide enough to roll over in. Rolling over meant rolling out, and Iskander was no stranger to waking up suddenly from a half-remembered dream in a frisson of panic as the ground rushed up to meet him.

Lying prone on the threadbare carpet, he groped around for his tablet to check the time. Nine bells, simultaneously too early and too late to do anything. He considered clambering back into his warm bunk and trying for a few more hours of sleep. He’d been dreaming in Nihon. It was always a good sign when you started dreaming in a language you were learning. Alternatively, he could wake up now and get a head start on his watch—choices, choices. Iskander had an important hearing for the Salah case scheduled for eleven thirty. Like everything else on the Safina, bureaucracy didn’t sleep. Three watches a day, seven days a week. Thankfully, Iskander had finished most of the prep work already. All that was left to do now was show up and make sure that everything went according to plan.

Iskander groaned and stood up, reminding himself, again, to replace the threadbare carpet with something softer. He reached across the bunk and efficiently stripped it of its sheets, covers, and pillow, leaving it completely bare except for the thinning mattress. He stowed his sleep things in their usual place and then took the two and a half steps from the bed to the en suite for a quick shower. After the water automatically cut out, Iskander emerged barely damp and mostly awake. He removed his suit from the fresher and got dressed. Finally exiting the bedroom, suited and booted and ready to face a new watch, he stumbled upon his roommate Kalila. Sitting at the kitchen nook, she was eating a reheated carton of Abu Hamada’s finest and watching something animated and violent on the media wall.

Kalila flicked her teal-green hair out of her face and detached her headphones from her ears, tapping pause on whatever hyper-violence she was consuming. Iskander regarded the bespectacled anime gorilla on the media wall with a raised eyebrow. The gorilla was dressed like a translator—immaculate pin-striped suit and top hat—and had been caught in repose while holding a ridiculously large sword—or was that a shotgun? Why did it have a trigger?—in both hands above his head, poised to dispatch some kind of pink-tentacled monstrosity.

“Good morning, Isk,” she greeted him cheerily.

“Good evening, K,” he replied.

Kalila smiled and rolled her eyes. It was an old joke between two roommates who worked opposite watches and so were perennially out of sync with each other.

“Thanks for the koshari,” she told him. She unplugged her tablet and put it away. The anime gorilla promptly disappeared. The pink-tentacled monster would live to fight another day.

“No worries.” He nodded at the now-blank media wall. “Do I even want to ask?”

“You wouldn’t like it,” she told him piously.

Iskander grinned. She was probably right. Kalila’s taste in media skewed to the type of ultraviolence that usually just left him with a headache. It was a pretty strange viewing habit for a self-proclaimed Buddhist, but violence was allowable so long as it was fiction, Iskander supposed. They had reached an unspoken agreement that she would not try and push her over-the-top anime on him, and he would not proselytize about the latest Altan Altair neo-noir to her.

Media habits notwithstanding, K was a good roommate. She kept up with her share of the chores and always paid her rent on time. She was on first watch in Agriculture, which was grueling but rewarding work. She usually came home from the fields smelling of rich, dark soil; fresh, clean sweat; and satisfaction. That sense of satisfaction was no surprise, especially since agrotechs got first dibs on newly harvested fruit and veg, a perk that K generously chose to share with her roommate. So long, that is, as he kept the crisper stocked with assorted fast food from around the berths and did not mock her media preferences out loud.

“What are you doing home so early?”

“Had to get someone to cover for me. My sister had another emergency.” K’s sister Jamila had just given birth to her first child and was nervous about being a mother. Iskander had shepherded her birth permit through the quagmire of Admin bureaucracy—no charge, of course.

“Is the baby alright?”

“Neonatal jaundice,” K answered. “The little one needed some more time under the UV lights, that’s all.”

“She needs a name, is what she needs,” Iskander corrected. They were fast approaching the deadline to hand in the paperwork. As he moved toward the kitchen, K stood up smoothly to let him pass, before resuming her seat.

“Want some coffee?” he offered, fiddling with the coffee maker that had cost him the best part of two-week’s wages. It was one of the few luxuries Iskander had splurged on for the apartment. Establishing your own translation agency was expensive business, and he was saving up his credits for bribes. Baksheesh, whether in favors or hard creds, wasn’t a parallel economy on the Safina, it was pretty much the primary one.

K shook her head, sending her frizzy hair flying. “And stay up half the night?”

“Well, bed’s free now if you want it.”

Iskander and Kalila shared a bunk. No, not like that. Given that it was a single, sharing a bunk like that would have required an impressive feat of dexterity on both their parts. No, they were hot bunking. Iskander got the bunk while K was on first watch; K got the bunk while Iskander was on third. And, if either of them happened to be home during second watch, they settled who got the bunk with a quick round of odds and evens. Their shared apartment consisted entirely of two cramped rooms; a bedroom/en suite and a combined kitchen/diner. It had just enough standing room to accommodate two people at the same time, if those two people didn’t mind living in a continuous ballet of synchronous movement. Luckily, Iskander and Kalila were rarely both at home and vertical at the same time.

After his coffee was brewed, Iskander scooted past K and took his customary seat on the other side of the kitchen nook. He put his bulb of coffee on the faux wood tabletop and tried not to bump her elbows with his own.

K wordlessly passed him a disc of flatbread, still warm from the Admin-subsidized bakery. He ripped it in half and took a bite. The Arabek word for bread was ayesh, the same as the word for life. Iskander always made that connection while munching on the gritty baladi bread, a staple of Fustat berth. That was one of the things they hadn’t warned him about when he first started training to be a translator, how his waking hours would become consumed by useless lexicological and etymological trivia. Was it just a linguistic coincidence? he wondered. Given the importance that bread played in the daily diet of the people of Fustat berth, it was certainly an apt metaphor. In Arabek, to earn a living was to akel ayesh, literally “eat bread.” The Bread Riots, more than twenty-five years ago, over Admin plans to cut subsidies on vital goods and services could just as easily have been called the Life Riots. Wasn’t it strange that—

K snapped her fingers in Iskander’s face. “Hey, are you even listening to me?”

Iskander extracted himself from his morphological study on the similarities between bread and life—ayesh also shared the same root as ration—and responded, “Sorry, what?”

“I said, why are you up so early anyway? Your shift doesn’t start for hours.”

“Big case today,” he told her. “I figured I’d go in early and prepare.”

“Ooh, la-di-da,” K replied, waving her hands. “Well, I hope it all goes smoothly for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Actually, there is something I wanted to talk to you about,” K said seriously. Iskander raised his eyebrows. “I heard about your sister.”

“You heard what about my sister?”

“You know.”

Iskander did know. He felt his stomach clench. There were no secrets in the berths. Everybody didn’t quite know everybody else, but everybody certainly had more than a handful of crew in common. Thanks to the overlap between the berths and the decks, even the lowliest manufactor was just a few degrees of separation away from the highest naib. And seeing that gossip was everyone’s favorite pastime, those crew in common certainly weren’t shy about spilling the beans about your love life or family drama. Before he moved in, Iskander had asked around about the redoubtable Kalila Hossein. This is what the gossipmongers told him: She’s good crew, Isk, and she won’t stiff you on the rent. She works in Agriculture, though, and on the composting side of things, if you know what I mean. I know you don’t care about that, but some crew aren’t so open-minded. Also, she’s separated from some lout in Fisheries, big time bad news, so whatever happens, you don’t want to get in the middle of that.

“I think you’d better tell me exactly what you heard,” Iskander said.

“I heard that Damietta got picked up for pulling some anti-Admin shit and you got her off.”

Well, that was the simple version. In reality, it was a lot more complicated than that.

“And?” he asked cautiously.

“I didn’t know you had that kind of pull,” K said, and Iskander realized where this was all heading.

“I don’t,” he told her. “Not normally. There were extenuating circumstances.” Namely that he had no choice. The family had been unanimously against him joining Translation until he was in a position to do something to help. And now that he was, they expected him to do it as if it was nothing.

“Hmm. Well, you know Jamila’s husband Faris is doing two years hard labor in Detention. I was wondering if…”

Yes, Iskander did know that. He was the one who had negotiated the plea bargain with Human Resources. And the answer was no. Hell no. Getting Damietta off had cost Iskander years of patiently accumulated favors. The Ezzes might be a big name in Environmental, but they had zero pull in Admin. Most costly, he’d had to call in a favor owed to him by Fustat mayor Amun Araby himself. Not that Damietta even appreciated it. Iskander’s first job after his Placements had been interning for the Araby family translation agency. He had been saving that favor for when he launched his own firm or perhaps needed a political endorsement. Admins were the only ones allowed to run in berth elections and the naib of Tagammu Nine was halfway into his final ten-year term in office. If Iskander was clever and shrewd and exceedingly lucky, he could parlay his translatorial skills, backed by the Ezz Environmental name, into an election run. Five years? It was possible. Naib Iskander Ezz, he could almost see it. But first he would need to establish himself as a translator.

“Give me Faris’s crew ID,” he said, “and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do. No promises, though.” It wouldn’t do to reject K’s request out of hand. They still had to live together. Maybe he could arrange for Jamila to visit her husband in Detention, at least. Unrepentant fruit smuggler or not, Faris Farhat surely deserved a chance to meet his firstborn. Yeah, Iskander knew just which clerk to approach with that request.

K smiled at him.

“Thanks, Iskander.” She stood up to dash the emptied koshari carton into the recycler. “There’s a fresh orange with your name on it in the crisper.”

“Trying to bribe me?”

“Absolutely. Now, since there’s a bunk going empty, I’m going to go take advantage.”

“We need to buy a better carpet for the bedroom,” Iskander reminded her.

K laughed and, over one shoulder, a mischievous green eye glinted at him through greener locks. “Fell out of bed again, did ya?”

After K shut the bedroom door behind her, Iskander plugged his own tablet into the Main. Once he was connected, he could see that his youngest sister Rosetta was also online. Just about to turn eleven, she lived at home in Nine with Damietta and their father in a palatial three-bedroom apartment in the Ezz residential compound, surrounded by a host of cousins and second cousins, uncles and aunts, grandmother and grandfather. Iskander had moved out of the compound more than a year ago, driven away by the close monitoring of his career progression, or lack thereof, by his family members, all of whom seemingly relished telling him that it was not too late to jack it all in and join Environmental. That was where an Ezz really belonged. But for Iskander, the swampy Environmental deck that reeked of chemical reactions and earthy microalgae was the last place he saw himself. Keeping everybody on the ship breathing? It was noble work, no doubt. And yet, Iskander knew that his talents lay elsewhere. And if he could just get his translation agency off the ground and get elected as naib? Well, he could do good for the crew of the Safina, and yes, for himself and his family, too. Life on the Safina wasn’t perfect by any means. Changes had to be made, but oh so carefully.

Iskander sent Rose a quick how-do-you-do and then checked the daily news. According to the dour-faced Karim Ali of Safina News One, everything was nice as spice on the city-ship. Crop yields were at a record high. Power outages at a record low. The report cut to footage of a beaming Captain Amer opening a new membrane distillation factory in Damask berth. “God bless the Safina,” he said from behind the familiar podium. “And God bless the crew of the Safina.” The camera cut to the crew of the Safina cheering dutifully.

Iskander swiped away, searching to see if there was any mention of last night’s blackout in Tagammu Nine. It didn’t even rate a video report. A three-line news item claimed the blackout, or “the regrettable lapse in power” to use official terminology, had lasted only a few minutes and taken place to regulate the ship’s core systems. Only a few minutes? Well, that was a lie. The power had still been out when Iskander crawled into bed. His journey home had been lit by battery power, with shopkeepers and coffeehouses expending their own reserves to keep their lights on. He checked the comments to see if anyone was buying it. The top comment was a vomit of block text ranting about how the blackouts were part of a high-level conspiracy to test the crew’s psychological reaction to “darkness and uncertainty.” He used his Admin credentials to check the poster’s identity. Some Factory drone from Aliyet berth. He checked his previous posts. Of course, this particular manufactor was a Simulationist. According to that particular conspiracy theory, the Safina was not actually in space at all, but underground somewhere on a healthy and thriving Earth, taking part in a nefarious government experiment into the effects of prolonged isolation. Iskander had no idea why some of the crew insisted on believing that one. Exploration left the Safina all the time, flying off in their scout ships to search for useful asteroids to mine and chemicals to gather. Engineering and Maintenance crew did constant space walks to maintain the ship’s heat shields and warp coils. Did the Simulationists really think all those people were lying? Going outside to a verdant Earth, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, and then descending into the dark only to lie to everyone? Heck, you could visit a viewing lounge and see the space outside with your own eyes whenever the Safina dropped out of warp.

As a translator, Iskander had privileged access to the Mainframe. He swiped away from the so-called news and logged onto the Agora, an exclusive program that let translators from across the berths share information. He waited patiently as the forum populated. A shooting in Koutobia berth. A brewing gang war in Zanj. The name of an Admin clerk who was allegedly exchanging favors for sex. Where was the news about last night’s blackout? Ah, there it was. All of Tagammu Nine, and large parts of Eight and Twelve, had been without power for more than three hours. Well, just because the Simulationists were wrong, it didn’t mean that Admin wasn’t lying to you.

Iskander noticed that Rose had replied to his message: “Where’s my fanoos?” followed by a pair of darting eyes. It was customary for Fustat berthers to hang colorful lanterns outside their homes to celebrate Eid al-Agdad and Rose wanted a new one. She was still online. He sent her back a smiley face and a “see you later.” Iskander didn’t want to squander any of his precious Mainframe time talking about Launch gifts. He unplugged the mainline from his tab, winding the heavy-duty cable around one hand until it was a neatish coil that he left in a pile next to the media wall, ready for K and her hyper-violent anime in the morning.

Alright, time to get to work. Iskander got ready to leave the apartment. He checked his satchel. Admin documents? Check. Link pass? Check. Rebreather? Check and check. He grabbed his trilby from its customary place hanging on a hook by the door and headed out into the hustle and bustle of Fustat berth.

“Here’s our paperwork,” Iskander told the clerk in Inglez, sliding his client’s crew ID and copies of the last twelve months of his watch log onto the desk.

Paperwork, an old-fashioned word. Technically speaking, the “paper” was a thermoplastic composite. Nobody on the ship was mad enough to pulp any of the precious trees onboard to use for Admin formwork.

“And here’s our paperwork,” Translator Li Zhang said, adding more documents to the pile.

Iskander glanced at his client, Lateef Salah, and gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Don’t worry, he mouthed in Arabek. Sitting across from them, Translator Li Zhang and her client, An Miaozong, sat impassively. They looked more like grandmother and granddaughter than translator and client. The clerk, a fussy-looking man of middle height dressed in pristine Admin white, swept up the documents with one hand and scowled roundly.

“This is regarding a cross-berth marriage, yes?”

“That’s correct,” Iskander told the clerk. “My client, Medtech Lateef Salah, is petitioning Admin to marry Engineer An Miaozong.” He nodded, in a courtly fashion, toward the short-haired petite woman who sat opposite.

“And my client, Engineer An Miaozong,” Li Zhang added, “is petitioning Admin to marry Medtech Lateef Salah.”

“We hope Admin looks favorably upon their union,” Iskander completed the formula.

On a perfect ship, that’s when the hearing would have adjourned. Admin would have checked their documentation, making sure that both crew were who they said they were and fulfilling their duties as required. Then, Admin would have asked for additional documentation—a full-scale genetic workup—and scheduled the next in a series of hearings that would inevitably, inexorably lead to the issuance of a marriage license. But when another “regrettable lapse in power” delayed Iskander’s hyperlink, making him late for the original hearing, which he had painstakingly arranged with a paid-off clerk, it was clear that they weren’t on a perfect ship. When a new hearing was scheduled immediately before the bench of this sour-faced clerk, one Manuel Ocampos, it was clear that not only weren’t they on a perfect ship, they were on the Safina.

Iskander had felt the rough side of Li Zhang’s tongue several times in the run-up to this hastily convened conclave. Li Zhang was an old battle-axe of a translator, a doyen of the old school who rarely appeared directly before Administration anymore. Given the colorful language she had unleashed against him, Iskander could understand why. Dealing with querulous Admin clerks required a deft touch and friendly demeanor. Li Zhang had other admirable qualities. She presided over a small but reputable translation firm in Birshahr berth with a tungsten-steel fist. It helped that the firm was staffed almost exclusively by her daughters and nieces, and their daughters and nieces. An Miaozong was something of a family friend, Iskander surmised, explaining Li Zhang’s acerbic response to his tardiness. Iskander had already known that the old translator thought he was a complete idiot, even before he turned up late. He didn’t take it personally. Li Zhang thought everyone under the age of thirty was an idiot. On their first meeting, he had given her the standard translator-to-translator greeting, tipping his hat toward her. Li Zhang, conspicuously missing any kind of headgear at all, rolled her eyes at him in such a dramatic fashion that Iskander worried she might hurt her neck. Sure, the hats were a relatively recent development, but Iskander knew for a fact that one of Li Zhang’s granddaughters favored a fez, while another preferred a cartwheel, so there was hardly any need to insult his trilby, was there?

Iskander idly patted said trilby, which was resting comfortably over his knee, and hoped for the best. He had never dealt with Clerk Manuel Ocampos before, but his fastidious handlebar mustache, and the jeh sound he was adding, seemingly at random, to certain words, pegged him as a Linda man. It could hardly have been worse. Yes, clerks were prohibited from overseeing cases involving their own berth-mates, so they were never going to get a clerk from Fustat or Birshahr. Still, Iskander had hoped to get a friendly clerk from Damask or Koutobia. Heck, he would have settled for one from Miyako. He had just received his intermediate rating in Nihon and already fostered some good connections in Miyako berth. Almost anyone would have been better than this aloof stranger from Linda Cidade. Clerk Ocampos hadn’t even offered them refreshments and impatiently brushed off any cheery inquiries into his health, marital status, or plans for Launch Day. Iskander wondered if something else was the reason for the cold reception. The clerks gossiped like everyone else onboard. Had this one heard about Damietta? Iskander certainly ruffled some feathers getting her released.

Prior to the hearing, Li Zhang confirmed that she had never dealt with Clerk Ocampos before, either, and added that, Amitabha-be-praised, she shouldn’t have to deal with foolish, young translators in silly hats who don’t even have the presence of mind to make it to the hearing they organized on time and don’t blame the blackouts, young man, everyone knows that if you have an appointment with Admin you leave early. She then proceeded to poke Iskander with one of her clawlike fingers and warn him that if he didn’t completely un-fuck this situation tout fucking suite, she would make sure that everybody in Birshahr berth knew what an absolute waste of oxygen he was as a translator. And that was only half his problem. Iskander glanced at Lateef Salah obliquely, noting the deepening line between his eyes and the thinness of his lips. Yes, he was one of those Salahs, a scion of the most well-respected Medical family in all of Tagammu Nine. Getting Lateef’s marriage across the line would be a feather in his trilby, netting him an important connection for the rest of his life. It had been a coup for Lateef to even hire him over the Araby translation firm that his family kept on retainer. Iskander could not afford to screw this up.

Clerk Ocampos shuffled through the documents. Slowly. His mouth arranged itself in an arrogant little moue. Iskander couldn’t tell if the clerk was particularly unhappy, or if that was just his natural expression.

“It says here you split your watches between Fustat berth and the Engineering deck, Medtech Salah?” he asked.

Iskander translated the question into Arabek for his client who, given that he was a medtech who had spent years of his life studying in Inglez, had absolutely no need for it.

“Tell him yes,” Lateef said in Arabek.

“Yes, clerk,” Iskander relayed.

“And what is your specialty?”

Iskander drily translated the question. He could tell from the way his client was shifting in his seat that he was getting impatient. Lateef, naturally, had not been best pleased to find himself seated before the unwelcoming bench of Clerk Manuel Ocampos. Not when he and his fiancée had painstakingly saved up enough money to bribe a completely different clerk. Not that there was anything anyone could do about it now. Lateef gestured for Iskander to lean closer.

“Why is this whoreson asking us questions he already knows the answer to?”

Iskander gave him a quelling look and then answered the clerk in pristine Inglez. “My client is a radiograph technician, clerk.”

“And you, Engineer Miaozong?” He turned to her. “What department do you work for in Engineering?”

“She is a Propulsion specialist,” Li Zhang answered after a short back and forth.

“How did you meet Miss Miaozong?” he asked Lateef.

Iskander relayed the question.

“You know the answer,” Lateef huffed.

“My client first met Miss Miaozong after an accident in Engineering. He was on duty and one of the first responders.”

“An accident in Engineering?” Clerk Ocampos mused, quirking an eyebrow at An Miaozong. “What happened?”

An Miaozong spoke at length in Torkdil, her face animated. Li Zhang listened intently, nodding once or twice.

“My client says that she was recalibrating the engine of an Exploration ship when she caught a lungful of monopropellant. She was rushed to Medical for treatment on her lungs, and that is where she met Medtech Salah.”

As Li Zhang relayed her words, An Miaozong nodded her head subconsciously, her short dyed-blond hair nodding with her. Naturally, she spoke Inglez, too. In fact, it would be practically impossible for anyone above the rank of spec five to get by without Inglez. It was the crew’s common language.

“How fortuitous for you both,” Clerk Ocampos said. “And are you a crewman of good standing, Medtech Salah?”

Finally, Iskander thought, let’s get this over and done with. He relayed the question to Lateef whose “Yes I am” only contained sarcasm if you were looking for it.

“Yes, my client confirms that he is a crewman of good standing.”

“And you, Engineer Miaozong?”

Li Zhang confirmed. Next, Ocampos should ask whether their marriage would strengthen the Safina and whether their children would strengthen the crew.

“Oh, it says here that you are both intending to live in Birshahr berth,” Ocampos noted.

“That’s right,” Li Zhang said. “Medtech Salah will be moving in with my client and her mother.”

“I see,” he mused. “And how do you feel about leaving your home berth, Medtech Salah? Are you worried that someone of your background will find it difficult?”

Iskander struggled to keep his expression even. Background was a loaded term on the Safina. Still, he translated the clerk’s words to Lateef, mind reeling. He shied away from using the Inglez word, picking instead the closest Arabek translation. Khalfiya was an old-fashioned word. He would be surprised if Lateef even knew it. Across from him, Li Zhang was translating that same, insidious question. Iskander idly wondered what the Torkdil word for background was. Heck, it might even be the same one. There was plenty of shared vocabulary between Arabek and Torkdil. Khalfiya was most commonly used to describe the setting of a story. Of course, it also had other, less subtle meanings. On its face, the clerk’s question could mean almost anything. How would an Arabek speaker find life among the splish-splash of Torkdil? How would a Muslim get along with Birshahr’s Buddhists? But everyone in the room knew he meant a lot more than that.

“What does this sister-fucker mean by background?” Lateef asked in furious Arabek. Unlike Iskander, he used the Inglez word, drawing the clerk’s watery blue eyes to him.

Iskander tapped him sharply on the knee with one finger—a prearranged signal—and pulled out his most charming smile for the clerk.

“My client is looking forward to starting his new life in Birshahr,” Iskander said mildly. “He is rated proficient in Torkdil and his transfer papers have received preliminary approval.” Actually, Lateef’s Torkdil was mediocre at best. Iskander had tried speaking to him in it once and his vowel harmonies were all over the place. But Clerk Ocampos didn’t need to know that.

“Very well. And will your marriage strengthen the Safina?”

Finally, back on track. Iskander could see Lateef’s foot tapping nervously out of the corner of his eye and he noted the stiff set of An Miaozong’s shoulders.

“My client, a crewman of good standing, believes that his marriage will strengthen the Safina, and his children will endure as crew after him,” he answered, rushing through the formula.

Li Zhang unsmilingly made the same affirmation.

The clerk looked back and forth between the translators and their clients and then shrugged his insubstantial shoulders.

“Very well. Administration accepts your attestation. I will contact you with a date and time for our next hearing.”

“Thank you, clerk,” Iskander said, standing up abruptly. He wanted to be out of this office and away from this reproachful clerk as quickly as possible. He shook the clerk’s limp hand and bundled Lateef out. Behind him, Li Zhang did the same.

At an Admin deck juice bar, Iskander slurped his sugarcane juice and traded an appraising look with his fellow translator. Lateef and An, hands intertwined, only had eyes for each other.

“That clerk’s going to be a fucking problem,” Li Zhang told him. Her glass of plum juice lay untouched in front of her. Iskander didn’t answer. “What are you going to do about it, Translator Ezz?”

“I’ll think of something.”

Actually, Iskander had already thought of something. He was trying very hard to think of something else.

“I didn’t like that clerk,” An observed.

“No,” Iskander agreed. “He’s a Berthist. A lot of the clerks in Admin are, actually.”

It was just one of the many changes Iskander intended to push for if he ever became naib. Too many clerks in Human Resources had inherited their positions from their fathers and grandfathers. They viewed their oversight of the crew as a birthright and used it as a means to ensure their positions in their home berths, a different kind of berth-right. There were as many names for it as languages on the ship. In Arabek, they called it Qawmiya. In Torkdil, Milliyet. In Russ, Nacionalizm. Clerk Ocampos, no doubt, thought of himself as a Berthalista.

“A lot of the clerks don’t let it interfere in their decision-making. That one is going to. Trust me, I can tell. Which is why,” Li Zhang added, “when a translator arranges to have a sympathetic clerk hear our case, that translator should fucking make sure that he and his stupid hat are on time.”

“As I said, I apologize for my lateness.”

Iskander removed his hat—not stupid and totally cool—and held it against his chest, bowing formally in apology to each party in turn. Lateef waved him away, clearly embarrassed. Bowing was not a Fustat thing. The translators had appropriated it from one of the other berths, like everything else they did. In many ways, translation was the opposite of Berthism. Translators were in love with languages and cultures that had been, at one time or another, completely alien to them. Berthists wanted to erect even higher walls and stronger checkpoints between the various berths. Translators wanted to break down those walls and play in the rubble.

“So, what do we do now?” Lateef asked.

What they shouldn’t do, Iskander was certain, was attend any new hearings before the bench of that prickly Berthist clerk. He would jump on any reason to hold up the marriage license. Berthism! It was exactly the sort of thing that Admin had been established to negate. The First Crew wanted to leave behind all those festering divisions that destroyed Earth. Berths, arranged according to language, not religion or ethnicity, were supposed to be a new start, because while you couldn’t change your religion or the color of your skin, anyone could learn a new language. And Administration, chosen from each and every berth and speaking a language that was native to none, was meant to be a guarantee of equality, with translators serving as a bridge to mutual cooperation. But old divisions only gave rise to new ones. Berthism wasn’t so much a refined philosophy as a vague feeling in your gut that berth-mates should stick together. And intermarry. And interbreed. Clerk Ocampos was definitely going to be a problem.

“Can you get our case transferred back to the original clerk?” Lateef asked.

“Maybe,” Iskander temporized.

It would be difficult. Especially after he had screwed things up so badly by being late to the first hearing. It’s not like he had bribed the clerk directly. Things like that were always handled by an intermediary. And Iskander’s wasta would not be best pleased with his asking for a do-over. No, the last person he wanted to talk to right now was Nafisa Nasser.

“Well, see if you can,” Li Zhang said. “And I’ll work on things from my end.”

“Is this going to hold up our marriage certificate?” An Miaozong asked. Lateef took her hand.

“Don’t worry,” Lateef told her. “Iskander will sort it, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” Iskander said. “Nothing to worry about.”

Lateef eyed him suspiciously, but Iskander had his translator face on. If the marriage was delayed too long, or God forbid, rejected outright, he could kiss goodbye any hope of making it in translation. A translator was nothing without good word of mouth. As for being elected naib? Well, nobody would elect a failed translator who couldn’t even get a simple marriage application across the line.

“Leave it to me,” Iskander promised. “I’ve got it under control.”

CHET Billy

Odin, we mord all the trads.

(Translation) “First, we kill all the translators.”

—GRAFFITI FOUND DURING THE BREAD RIOTS

Bilal Kohli,” the screw creeched. “Ashraf Zarqa. Afshin Mirza. You’re working the Mines today. Sector seven. Get a move on, you horrible lot.”

The tri coves, dressed in the striped nero and ofay which marked them as lags, exited the stajablock and stoyed motionless as they were yoked together. Billy cogged a sense of relief in the set of the pletchos of his fellow lags and jealousy in the glazzies of the lags still waiting to be assigned their rabbit. Sure, a drudge on the rock was no skirtz, but it was better than stirring the skite down in Sanitation.

Anytao, it had been dva weeks of this dreary routina and Billy was starting to deek his balance. That’s how he cogged it, leastways. On the Saf, every berth, every deck, every drudge, every crew, had its own set of unwritten standing orders, and Billy was starting to savvy the clink rules. So, it was nish palaver as you trudged to the quarry. You kept your plates moving and your glazzies down. No chatback to the screws neither. Billy had felt the sharp end of a shock stick before he savvied that.

After they reached the quarry, the screw—Mister Fulton, his moniker was, and Bog help you if you didn’t give it to him full-like—directed the lags to put on their perchatkas and zhilets, kasks and stampers. Billy winced as Ashraf, slow as a dedoochka who had forgotten to take his drab that sorlo, pulled his vestments round himself. Ash’s ribs were still molti-bruised from the battering the rozzers laid on him after they were nabbed. Billy fought down a general feeling of impotent fury toward everycove on the Saf. He hated the Admins with all their rules and regs, cept it was nada but a con to keep them on top. He hated the redjackets who enforced those rules, crushing regular coves like him under their jackboots for the scraps off Admin’s tabla. But ahora, most of all, he hated the coves who benefited from the system without even cogging it. Dee and all those like her and her fam. All the kanny cove chiefs, the clerks and trads, bootlickers and kneelers all. They were only out for themselves, nish altra.

Billy could vada that Ash was in pain but there was nada that he could do for his bencove. It must’ve happened right after Dee’s venti brat had come to take her away, leaving them holding the bag for the devotchka’s graff. The rozzers had split him and Ash up and the next time Billy vadad him, it was crystal that his bencove had taken a mighty drubbing. Ash told him that the rozzers had put him into a staja all on his solo. Then, half a dici of ’em had rushed in pronto pronto, chucked a blanket over him, and took turns dancing the dabke on his ribs. Revenge for daring to lay a lupper on one of their own. If they had done anything more—anything worse—Ashraf hadn’t said and Billy hadn’t asked. And during the tribuna, when the beek asked, “Why is this cove all nero and azure?” his own bloody translator—mord to the trads!—answered, meek as moloko, “Resisting arrest, your honor.” The judge swallowed down that skite and asked for seconds, ultima sentencing them both to kenza lunas hard rabbit. And so, akoy they were, and akoy they would remain. But it’s like the old lags said: If you can’t do the raz, don’t do the crime.

Anytao, Billy cogged that they would’ve ended up akoy in Detention sooners or laters. Clink was nish but a finishing school for vecks like him and Ash. Still, he would’ve preffed to be doing raz for something with a bit of prestige. Armed robbery. Smuggling. Not teenage charlering. Not anti-Admin graff. Specially when the actual graffist had skipped off libera.

The lags were rooked axes and mattocks and scorted inside the rock. Exploration had brought in this monster during the Saf’s last layover. An asteroid with molti-deposits of iron ore and nickel and it was the lags’ trav to extract it. They had deja dug miles into it and there were miles to go still. After ultima reaching Sector Kenza, Mister Fulton unshackled them and directed them with a lazy lupper and they set to. There were already dva teams of lags akoy, including odin from their own staja. Billy nodded salve at his cellies and then lost himself in the mindless rabbit.

“Bilal Ibrahimovic,” one of the other lags terrupted him some unknown raz later, “como estas, tovarish?”

Billy glanced at the cove. Arkady Ivanovich, his moniker was. A starry lag who was used to life in clink. He was a Kommunist—a Factory floor organizer with a tao with words. Doing bird was nish to him. The veck had prolly spent half his life in clink. Billy resolved to play it cool. The Karls were immer recruiting and he had slooshed Badreddine ranting, on more than odin occasion, bout how he hated the Kommunists trolling among the Harakist youngers for new members.

The Haraka and the Karls agreed on a lot of things. They agreed that Capo Amer had to fall. They agreed that Admin had to be overthrown. But they disagreed on que the future of the Saf should vada like. The Haraka wanted to wake all the sleepers ahora, use all that space and power to build something nova. And the primo shall be ultima and the ultima shall be primo! A nova Compact. The Karls, on the other rook, just wanted to replace the Nizam with odin of their own.

“Arkady Ivanovich,” Billy greeted him. Well, if old Arkady insisted on giving him the full patronymic, he could give it right daus. “Things are bona as a stroll through a gardino, my old mucker. Everything is benny as oro and twice as bright.”

Arkady ignored the sauce. “We need to palaver. Solo.”

Billy vadad around. They were solo. Ashraf was on the other side of the tunnel with old man Almaraz. Riz Farhat, a young veck from Damask berth, was on the altra side, using an axe to dig into the rock. Billy vaddad the screws outta the corner of his glazz. They were occupada palavering among themselves—Mister Fulton gesticulating to Mister Qaid who looked like he wished he was anydonde else.

“So, palaver,” he said.

“You and your bencove Ash are from F-berth? Harakists, vali?”

“Vali. Por que tu ask?”

“So, you must savvy Badreddine Bishara, then.”

“Every cove and his brat in F-berth savvies Badreddine Bishara,” Billy told him. “It would be gajo if a cove like moi didn’t savvy him.”

Badreddine was rusli to pin down. He was medza Haraka rebel and medza F-berth mob capo. He had been one of Selin Devrim’s bencoves daus in the early dives. Everycove had vadad his eek on the vids. After the Nizam floated her, Badreddine had gone on the run, ventually emerging in Z-berth as a fearsome Triad corridor killer. A legend of the Saf. He had risen to be Numero Dva in the Yan Lei when he “retired” from the Threes, moving back to F-berth and resurrecting the Haraka.

“Well, sloosh this,” Arkady told him. “The slovo is that the Vory finally made their move on the Threes.”

“O my brothers,” Billy exclaimed. “That news is nanti bona for any of us but que passo that’s got to do with Badreddine?”

“You men there,” Mister Qaid interrupted. “This isn’t a social club. Back to work!”

Billy put his back into the rabbit, but his tick-tocker was racing. The Vory were one of the ventiest gangs on the Saf. The Vory v Zakone. The Thieves-in-Law. They operated mostly out of Novy Oblast, though they had coves everydonde. A guerra had been brewing between the Vory and the Triads for anos. Truth to truth, a guerra was always brewing between the Thieves and Threes but que had any of it got to do with Badreddine? He was retired. He had nish to do with the Yan Lei anymore.

When the screws next took another palaver-break, Billy proached Arkady Ivanovich, who was rabbiting with Benito Almaraz to pry out a chunky nugget of iron ore. Almaraz seemed to be one of Arkady’s bencoves, a bijou intense-looking veck from Linda Cidade. Almaraz was a Zendista, which so far as Billy could savvy, was a Kommunista by another moniker.

“Naff off, Almaraz,” he told him.

Almaraz waited for the nod from Arkady before turning away, all the while giving Billy the brutta glazzies. After he was out of slooshing, Billy asked, “Por que you asking bout Badreddine?”

“Do you savvy who I’m with?” Arkady Ivanovich asked.

“You’re with the Karls.”

“We call ourselves Kommunists,” Arkady corrected in a snide-like tone of voz.

“And?”

“And we need a cove to arrange a parley.”

A glim-bulb went off in Billy’s gulliver. Of course, if the Vory and Triad were ultima setting to for the guerra they had been prepping for all these anos, the Karls would be fretting. The Kommunistas wanted everycove on the same page and certainly no ultraviolence between the covens. That would just give the redjackets the excuse they were vadaing for to make mass arrests across the ship. Security loved nada more than a purging.

“Que?” Billy smirked at him. “Do you cog Badreddine can negotiate a peace between the Thieves and Threes?”

“A peace?” Arkady demanded. “Nish, malchick, it’s too late for that. Badreddine will be mazel if he makes it out of this guerra avive.”

Billy felt his stomach lib. “Que in ten are you palavering about?”

“The Thieves already made their move on your capo. They tried to obv Badreddine.”

“Quando?” Billy demanded. He felt his tick-tocker speed up. “Donde?”

“A few dives ago, no more. In K-berth.”

“Is he vive?”

“He was wounded in the attempt. Nada serio. He’s gone underground, though. Nocove cogs donde. But our coves wanna parley with him pronto pronto.”

Billy breathed a sigh of relief. Badreddine was hurt, but alive. And in hiding. Por que inferno had the damned Vory gone after him? Badreddine was no big noise in the Threes, nish anymore. So far as Billy cogged, he had left all that behind in Z-berth. Other than a bit of smuggling—right-o, right-o, a lot of smuggling—he was basically legit ahora.

“And por que do you wanna parley with Badreddine?” Billy asked.

“Don’t you vada it? With the Threes and Thieves fighting, Security will have their rooks full. This is an opportuna, malchick! The Kommunists and the Haraka should be working rook in rook. If we were, we’d have medza Factory and Agriculture and Academy on side. If we had that, the Capo would have nish choice but to sloosh us. The glim-outs are getting kaudier, amigo. It’s past raz somecove did something.”

Ugh, more slowdowns and walkouts. Billy eyed Arkady distrustfully. The Haraka was strongest in Academy and among the youngers. Badreddine was playing the long game, slowly but surely getting his coves into position. Some of the youngers were getting frustrated but Badreddine had a plan. He would nish change it for the Karls. And anytao, who could trust a cove you just met in clink?

“Lemme cog about it,” Billy said, shrugging his pletchos non-committal-like.

“Well, while you’re cogging, consider this,” Arkady said, “arrange this parley and we’ll make certa that tu get assigned a watch in Factory when you’re released. You won’t have to fash about being assigned a drudge in Sanitation or Recycling.”

Billy did nish let Arkady vada what he thought of that. True to true, he had been worrying about what drudge he and Ash would be assigned on their release. Most ex-lags got the drudgiest of drudge watches.

“Nish just moi,” Billy said, “me and my bencove are a package deal.”

“Of course,” Arkady said smoothly, “we Kommunists savvy the meaning of loyalty and class solidarity.”

Billy rolled his glazzies at that. “Alright,” he said, “lemme cog about it. We’ll give tu our answer manyana.”

Arkady nodded like all was bona and Billy went back to his rabbit. He concentrated on putting his naz into each swing, ignoring the vada Arkady was sneaking him. But his gulliver was racing.

Daus in the staja

“What were you and Arkady talking about, ya Bilal?” Ashraf asked Billy in Arabek. “I can always tell when you’re scheming.”

It was pure ironic, but they were the only coves who palavered it in their staja and so it was safer to speak Arabek akoy. Billy had vadad a few Feda’ey types next door but their staja was mostly coves from Novy Oblast and Malacca. Billy hated the Feds—krovvy Arabek lingua supremacists. Just like the Karls, they wanted to spread their lingua cross all the berths and decks, till every cove was all “Salam alaikum” and “Wa alaikum salam.”

“He told me that the Vory attacked Badreddine,” Billy confessed. “A first strike in the war between the Vory and the Triad. I think things are about to get interesting on our city-ship, brother.”

Ashraf, beshing on the opposing bunk, took in a deep, painful breath and latched his glazzies. “Is Badreddine dead?”

“Alive. Injured. In hiding.”

Ashraf abrad his glazzies and Billy could vada the naked relief in them. Ash had been born in Tag Dva and savvied Badreddine since he was a bijou malchick with nary a glory on his chinny-chin-chin. Vera, Billy realized that was almost certa donde Badreddine was ahora. Dva’s narrow alcoves and tapering corrids would be a bona redoubt.

“We should be there,” Ashraf said.

“But we’re not, brother. We’re here.” Anytao, Badreddine deja had Okay and Zain to watch his spald. What more could they do?

Ashraf lay daus in the bunk and latched his glazzies again. Cogging, nish zeezing. “Why would the Vory go after Badreddine? Some old business from the last war?”

“That was decades ago!”

“Revenge doesn’t have an expiry date,” Ash said.

Billy considered it. It was possible. The slovo was that Badreddine had been vital to winning that guerre for the Threes daus then and the Vory were known to hold long grudges. Generations long.

“What else did Arkady say?” Ash asked ultimo. “You two talked for a long time.”

“He said he wanted our help to set up a meet with Badreddine.”

One dark glazz opened to regard Billy warily. “Why?”

“I think,” Billy said, “the Kommunists must be planning something. Something big. A protest. A Down Tools. Arkady said that with Security busy dealing with the Triad and Vory, now would be a perfect opportunity to act.”

Ashraf abrad his other glazz. “And they want the Haraka to join them?” he asked skeptically.

“That’s what he says.”

“Badreddine hates them.”

“Badreddine is pragmatic.”

“That he is,” Ashraf agreed. “And he loves making his enemies work for him.”

“That he does,” Billy said, and he cogged that quando Badreddine palavered about enemies, he was nish just palavering about the Nizam, but the other covens, too. Badreddine had medza the redjackets in F-berth on his pollyroll. It suited his sense of vanity to suborn the same coves that had destroyed Devrim’s Revolta. The rozzers might be willing to turn a blind glazz to Badreddine’s pipeline of contrabanda but that was only because he was paying them off. It didn’t mean they would lift a lupper to protect him.

“But he doesn’t like working for them. I doubt Badreddine will want to follow the Kommunists’ lead. Plus, it sounds like he’s got bigger problems with the Vory. Why should we get involved?” Ashraf asked. Billy leaned forward and relayed Arkady’s offer. A guaranteed watch in Factory was nothing to sneeze at. “Well, what do you think?”

Billy contemplated it. On the odin rook, Badreddine would not like them striking any deals for themselves with the Karls. On the other, didn’t they have an obligation to let the big man know that something was happening? If he was tucked up in Tagammu Two, there was no tao anyone outside the Haraka was getting near him.

“There’s no harm in passing a message along,” Billy temporized. “Plus, it would be nice to know that when we’re released from here, we won’t be stuck in Recycling or Sanitation.”

Ashraf jerked his gulliver toward Arkady who was, as usual at this raz, holding court before glimout. There were kenza bunks in their staja—say on one wall, say on the other. Billy and Ashraf had taken the bunks on the back corner of the sinister wall. Arkady liked to hold his committees from his top-bunk donde he could survey the entire staja.

“But can we trust him?”

Billy vadad as Arkady addressed the crowd of lags gathered before him.

“It’s the Nizam’s fault,” Arkady was saying. “And if we ever want to be libera, it’s the Nizam we must bring alay.” Nupol certa was a voracious lingua. Nizam was an Arabek word. It meant system, order, regime. But Nupol had taken it, twisted it, made it its own. In Nupol, Nizam had only one meaning: Administration. “The Nizam can’t be modifad. Can’t be reformad. Only troyed. Only obved. Speak ajay, take accio, greet for reforma, and que passo? You will be alay akoy, mining rock, stirring skite, and still the Nizam’s victoria. They benefit from us. They need us alay, akoy, doing the hard rabbit.”

Billy vadad as the other lags nodded their gullivers, hanging on Arkady’s every word.

“Speak ajay vider, take accio vider, greet for reforma, geb for it, tris and chets and infinita, till your voz is dry and hoarse. Will the Nizam sloosh? Will they savvy?”

Billy vadad as the other lags shook their gullivers, nish. No, Admin would never listen, it would never understand.

“Even if you snuff it, you can never be libera. The Nizam will still be victoria. They will inter your bones down in their fields, use you in mord like they used you in vive. You will be manyana’s doof, and passo manyana’s skite. Even when we are mord, who benefits?”

“The Nizam,” the lags replied.

From the corner of his glazzies, Billy noticed Ashraf nodding his gulliver and he savvied just what a venti mistake it was for the Nizam to put all the coves who hated it in the same stajablock.

“Lights out,” one of the screws creeched through the door, and the staja was abruptly plunged into glimout. Billy crawled into his bunk and slooshed as the other lags did the same. They would need their zeds manyana. The coves weren’t kidding when they said “hard labor.”

“Alright, let’s do it,” Ashraf sussed.

“What?”

“Let’s set up the meeting. If the Karls are planning something big, Badreddine will want to know about it.”

“Alright,” Billy said, rubbing his rooks together. He had been cogging just how they could get a message esk of clink. “I reckon we can get word to Tripoli Brown. She could—”

“No,” Ash interrupted. “We can get word via the girl. Dee can arrange it.”

Damietta? Trust her vider after everything that had everythinged? The devotchka had abandoned them, was prolly up in F-berth ahora having a merry old raz, getting ready for Launch and giving them nanti a ponder. She was a tourist in their revolta. Her pater was a cove chief on Enviro-deck. Her grand-pater had been a krovvy overseer, elected to represent all of Environmental drudge to the Capo. Her brat was a bloody trad, rabbiting for the Nizam. When the Karls palavered about petties, they were palavering about coves just like her and her fam. The Ezzes were the ultima petite bouj.

“Do you still trust her?” Billy sussed. “After she left us high and dry?”

“Yes, I do,” Ash answered, “that girl has a bone-deep rage in her. Trust me, brother, she won’t abandon our Cause.”

FIVE Iskander

Although we have changed our standing orders and rearranged our ship to better suit the general happiness of our crew, we hold fast to the Safina’s original mission and rededicate ourselves to the safekeeping of the colonists in our care. They are our ancestors, our past and our future both. Our Compact is with them, as much as it is with each other.

—SPEECH BY CAPTAIN YAVUZ MARKING THE START OF THE COMPACT (SHIP YEAR 19)

The link to Stasis deck was full of holidaying crew. Every year as Launch Day approached, more and more crew would make the long journey down to visit their ancestors. Launch Day itself saw Stasis deck positively heaving with crew from around the berths. Iskander avoided it at all costs. Sure, there was an Ahmet Ezz in cryostasis, a botanist born in Alexandria, Egypt, on 23 Rajab, 1840 hijri. That was 2421 in the Gregorian calendar, 5118 in Xia years, or ship year minus 28. Iskander was fast approaching an age in which he himself would be older than his ancestor, and so increasingly felt little compulsion to visit the cryopod and especially not in the run-up to Launch Eve when entire families made the trip down en masse dressed in their Friday-best. Some would picnic next to their ancestors’ pods, leaving offerings of food, dried vegetables, and packets of rice. Iskander really didn’t understand that practice at all, although Lebanon had assured him that the stastechs welcomed the free food. Today, Iskander was visiting Stasis for a much more practical reason.

“I need to speak to Stastech Lebanon Ezz,” he told the receptionist.

Usually, Iskander knew exactly when and where to find his ibn am but Lebanon had been flaky about standing his watch lately. He didn’t want to risk a trip all the way down into the depths of Stasis if Lebanon was pulling a sickie. The woman gave him the once-over, taking in his translator’s suit and tie.

“Is this Admin business?” she asked him.

“Absolutely,” Iskander lied.

“Can I see some identification?”

Iskander waved his wristband under the scanner and watched as the Admin receptionist read his crew ID off the monitor in front of her. If she noticed that he had the same surname as the stastech he’d asked to see, she didn’t comment on it. She shrugged her shoulders and consulted her logbook.

“Yes, Stastech Ezz is on watch. Level 39, Sector A. It’s currently under restricted access.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Iskander assured her.

As a translator, there were few doors closed to him. He thanked the receptionist for the information, making sure to leave her his card and assurances that his services came at a reasonable price. Reception might be the lowest rung of Admin—even lower than Translation—but you never could tell when a connection would come in handy.

Iskander lined up outside the down elevators. Level 39 was too deep to take the stairs. It could have been worse, though. Ancestor Ezz was on level 96. Maybe Iskander would have visited him more often if it wasn’t a damned two-hour commute down. Exiting the elevator, Iskander was greeted by the broad shoulders and stern visage of Corporal Victory Kamunda.

“Level 39 is closed,” he said.

“Vic, it’s me.”

“Oh, Iskander, good to see you, my man. Level 39 is closed.”

“And you, Vic! How’s Therese and the kids?”

“They’re good, Iskander, thanks for asking. What about you?”

“Oh, can’t complain, can’t complain. I heard something about you transferring out of Manufacturing. What’s the duty like down here? Quiet, I imagine.”

“Well, it’s quieter than the Factory. I haven’t arrested anyone in weeks. These stastechs are a lot less rumbunctious than the manufactors, I can tell you. Now,” Corporal Kamunda reminded him, “level 39 is closed. What are you doing here, Translator?”

The Admin business line wouldn’t work on a redjacket; Admin business was Security business. So, Iskander leaned forward and said in a confidential tone, “I need a favor, Vic. There’s a stastech down here I need a quick word with. Family business, y’know?”

Vic gave him an irritated look. “Can’t it wait? This level is supposed to be locked down for the next two hours. They’re trying to prepare everything ahead of Launch tomorrow and the stastechs don’t like crew wandering around when they’re working.”

“It’ll take five minutes, I promise.”

Vic blew out a breath. “Fine, but you owe me one.”

Iskander nodded seriously and moved past the big Security officer—but not before jotting down a quick note in the secret ledger of his tab: Corporal Victory Kamunda. One favor owed for letting me into Stasis against standing orders.

After entering into Stasis proper, Iskander was taken in, as usual, by the sheer scale of the deck. You could see for miles and miles into the distance. It was no bigger than any of the other decks, of course, just without all the clutter. Instead of buildings and corridors and crew, Stasis was comprised of neatly lined rows of cryopods stretching out as far as the eye could see, and even further. With the exception of Agriculture deck, Stasis was one of the only places on the ship that had a horizon. The sheer numbing uniformity made Iskander’s brain itch. It was like an optical illusion, and it always gave him a start to see—or rather, not see—just how many ancestors the Safina was carrying. Even now, with crew numbers arguably at a breaking point, these sleeping ancestors easily outnumbered them all. Still, it was a necessary obligation, a familial duty. Generations of crew had upheld this compact over the years. Who would they be if they abandoned it now?

After ten minutes of wandering aimlessly among the cryopods, Iskander finally stumbled upon his cousin.

“Yuck,” he greeted him.

Lebanon was leaning over an open cryopod, his gloved hands checking an IV running into a half-naked ancestor’s wrist. His green scrubs were slick with sweat. Lebanon spared Iskander an annoyed look, or at least, Iskander assumed it was annoyed, it was difficult to tell through the medical face mask. Maybe it was a smile? Or a look of begrudging admiration, mixed with acute envy? Iskander followed the IV line to a nearby trolley and a plastic bucket rapidly filling with a thick brown-yellowish liquid. To his eyes, it looked like crystallized piss. To his nose, it smelled even worse.

“Yuuuck,” he repeated.

“Iskander,” Lebanon said. “Shut up and stand back, would you? I’m trying to work here.”

Alright, definitely annoyed.

Iskander raised his hands theatrically and took half a step backward. He could feel the cold air emanating from the open pod. The ancestor inside, Ramil Gadelov according to the sign, had flakes of ice coating his skin, although his face was thankfully obscured by the bulky neural device that kept the ancestors’ brains functioning. Iskander watched as Lebanon efficiently connected a transparent bag of some clear liquid to a different IV line. Clear liquid in, yellow liquid out. After a few minutes, Lebanon unhooked the first IV line. A few minutes more and the transparent bag was empty. He unhooked the second line, depositing the empty bag onto the trolley. He checked the cryopod’s monitor and, evidently satisfied by whatever he saw there, finally closed the pod doors, returning Ramil Gadelov to his cold and dark slumber.

“At least tell me it wasn’t raki in that bag?” Iskander asked.

Lebanon pulled down his face mask and spared his cousin a sparse smile. “You shouldn’t be down here unsupervised, ibn Ami.”

“I’ve seen stastechs working on the ancestors before.”

Most crew hadn’t. For a deck that was open to the general crew, Stasis was a warren of secrets. Even Iskander hadn’t witnessed whatever procedure Lebanon was performing before. But he’d seen a stastech manipulate an ancestor’s brain waves using that bulky boxlike neural device, something to do with stimulating the neocortex.

“So, what are you doing here?” Lebanon asked, packing up his medical equipment. “You hardly ever come down to Stasis.”

Iskander gave him a big smile. “I need a favor, ibn Ami.”

“No. Just no.”

“Hear me out at least,” Iskander said. “I did wait all this time to talk to you.”

Lebanon had refused to discuss anything until he finished his work. He performed that same disgusting procedure on three more ancestors—Ahmed Farhat, Kida Khodeir, and Kara Abraham—and was now pushing his trolley back toward the elevators. During the procedures, he had offered to explain what he was doing, and why, but Iskander demurred. Ancestor upkeep was not his interest.

“Alright, I’m listening.”

“Nafisa is pretty upset with me at the moment,” Iskander said.

“And?”

“That’s all. Nafisa is pretty upset with me at the moment.”

“So, you’re asking me to ask her to help you?” Lebanon scoffed.

“Well, when you say it like that, ibn Ami, it does sound a little bit pathetic.”

Nafisa Nasser was a mid-ranking Admin clerk working out of Archives. Despite spending all her watch looking after the ancestors’ old files—video diaries and journals and genealogies—she was also Iskander’s best wasta. There were as many words for it as there were linguas on the ship. In Arabek, it was wasta. In Manda, they called it guanxi. In Torkdil, they called it torpil. In Russ, blat. Ironically, there was no Inglez term for the other economic system at work on the Safina. A form of barter. Favors promised and favors owed. There were crew who dealt exclusively in wasta. Who paid their bills in it and put calories on the table through it. On old Earth, it might have been viewed as corruption. But this wasn’t that dead and desolate planet, it was the Safina, and on the city-ship, things like who your family were and who you knew mattered. For example, even if you aced your Placements, you still needed at least three current Admins to vouch for you. Nafisa had been one of the ones to sign off on Iskander’s application to Translation. And why not? She was his cousin’s cousin after all—Lebanon’s mother’s sister’s eldest daughter, his bint khal. Now that Nafisa did not want anything to do with him, Iskander had no compunction asking his ibn am to talk to his bint khal on his behalf. Wasn’t that what cousins were for?

“I told you before, Iskander, I don’t want to get involved in whatever you and Nafisa are up to. One of the reasons I chose Stasis was so that I didn’t get dragged into Admin intrigue.”

“Intrigue!” Iskander mocked. “Leb, I’m just asking you to talk to your cousin. It’s really not a big deal.”

Lebanon gave him a long look and brought the trolley to a halt next to the cryopod of James Castillo. Iskander followed suit, putting his hands in his pockets and presenting Lebanon with his most innocent face.

“I think you’d better tell me why Nafisa is avoiding you,” Lebanon said. “What happened?”

“Remember how I told you Nafisa helped me get Damietta out of trouble?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she didn’t exactly do that willingly.”

Lebanon’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline. “You threatened her?”

“Yep.”

“With what?”

“Corruption,” Iskander grinned. “I threatened to report her to Admin Conduct for accepting bribes.”

“You mean the bribes you paid her?”

“Yep.”

“You’re crazy.”

“It was for Damietta. Would you prefer that she ruins her future with this Haraka nonsense and spends the next six months doing hard labor?”

Lebanon scowled at Iskander and resumed pulling his trolley. He had finished filling three buckets with crystallized piss and even though they were now covered, Iskander could still smell the pungent ammonia bouquet they emitted.

“No, of course I wouldn’t prefer that,” Lebanon answered finally.

As a stastech, he hated the Haraka with the fires of a thousand self-luminous celestial bodies of gas that shine by the radiation derived from nuclear fusion. But as an Ezz, he loved Damietta and had an obligation to help her and the rest of the family, even if he would have preferred not to get involved. All Ezzes were similarly beholden. That’s what it meant to be an Ezz. They walked the rest of the way in silence. Iskander knew better than to push Lebanon. He was stubborn. Push him and he’d just as likely do the opposite of what you wanted to spite you. Plus, he wasn’t really that close to his mother’s side of the family. The Nassers were a big noise in Tagammu Ten, Nafisa was already a Spec Three Archivist, and her father a senior coordinator in Human Resources. Amita Jezzine had married down by getting involved with Azbek Ezz and the Nassers were not shy about letting everyone know it. Iskander was sure that they had been disappointed when Lebanon elected to follow the Ezz side of the family into a crew watch, rather than joining Admin.

“Alright,” he told Iskander as they entered the elevator lobby. “I’ll see what I can do. How did you leave things with Nafisa?”

“The last thing she said to me was ‘Go drink deadly poison and burn in sixty hells.’ ”

“Wonderful!”

Iskander raised an idle hand to the scowling Corporal Kamunda. “Hey, Vic, told you I’d only be five minutes!”

He followed Lebanon into a little storage room he hadn’t noticed before. Lebanon put away his equipment—empty bags and personal protective equipment into the recycler, needles into medical waste, crystallized piss down the drain—and gestured for Iskander to follow him into the next room and then into the staff elevator. Inside, Lebanon entered 96 on the keypad.

“Where are we going?”

“If I’m doing you a favor, ibn Ami, you can do one for me. Let’s go say hello to our ancestor.”

Level 96 was full of crew carrying paper lanterns and balloons, streamers and bells. The ample space between cryopods, usually more than enough to allow two stastechs to pass each other at the same time, was now full of crew moving every which way. There was only one positive; things would be much worse tomorrow.

“You guys should set up a one-way pedestrian system,” Iskander advised.

“I’ve suggested that. Apparently Launch crowds are traditional.”

“Well, hard to argue with that one.”

Standing orders could only be changed by an appeal to Admin. But Admin hated change. Launch was the Inglez name for Eid al-Agdad, the Feast of the Ancestors, in Arabek, Obon in Nihon, Yulan Pen in Manda, and Dia Dos Antepassados in Porta. Despite its different names, it served the same function across the berths, to remind the crew of their purpose—the salvation of their species. The Safina might have initially left Earth as part of some nefarious Network Empire colonization project, but the First Crew had put the kibosh on all that. When they had decided to continue on to Hurriya rather than return to a dying Earth, they had agreed on the Compact: to shepherd their ancestors through the deep dark so that they, along with their distant descendants, might one day start humanity anew on Hurriya. It was a noble purpose. Still, Iskander couldn’t help but think he and the rest of the currently living crew had drawn the short end of the stick.

“Ahmet Ezz is this way,” Lebanon said, taking the lead.

Iskander hurried to keep pace, dodging through families and couples and work crews. Down here, his translator’s garb received little attention; it was Lebanon’s green scrubs that lighted the way. And everywhere Lebanon went, crew smiled at him. They patted him on the back and shook his hand, thanking him for watching over the ancestors, for his service. Iskander didn’t understand this level of ancestor worship. It wasn’t a Fustat thing. Sure, you might go down and recite a few ayas over an ancestor, but that was it. There were no picnics or bells. No offerings of food or alcohol. When all was said and done, it was the crew that would grow old and die on this ship, as would their children, and their children’s children. One day, Iskander knew, his body would feed the fields. He wasn’t distraught about it; he knew his duty and was resolved to do it. But it did leave him wanting more.

Iskander wanted to do something, to make things better, to help his family, his crew. A lasting legacy. Translator Iskander Ezz could help people, slowly, case by case, marriage license by birth permit. After he died, people might say, “Iskander Ezz? Yeah, he was good crew.” But Naib Ezz? Well, he might be able to make some lasting change. Push for Admin positions to be opened up to the rest of the crew, not just those with family connections. Stop the Watch Standing Committee from gaslighting the crew about the blackouts, overpopulation, and resource scarcity. If more crew understood just how close the Safina was to the redline, everybody would surely put aside their petty divisions to work together and find a solution.

Skirting around a family who had laid out a picnic on the ground next to their ancestor’s cryopod, Iskander blundered into a group of yellow-clad Maintenance crew. Where had Lebanon disappeared to? Sure, these ancestor-mad crew were tripping over themselves to let him through, but not everybody was dressed in saintly green scrubs.

One of the Maintenance crew tapped Iskander smartly on the shoulder. Short and slight. Dark hair. Knowing smile. “Iskander,” she said.

“Oh, uh, Taki.” He greeted her fumblingly with a gesture between a handshake and a hug. “What… what are you doing down here?” he asked in Inglez.

Taki, her long black hair tied up in a functional bun, gestured down to the yellow vest and overflowing tool belt that marked her as a maintech. She then pointed with her chin at a group of similarly clad Maintenance crew. “My team is checking power connections in Stasis today.”

“A bit keen, aren’t you? Your shift doesn’t even start for hours.”

Taki laughed and bounced up and down on her toes. “I’ll have you know we’re getting paid time and a half for this. The chiefs don’t want any mishaps on Obon.”

“Blackouts? On the Safina? No way,” he deadpanned, gratified to see her elusive dimple make an appearance. “According to the news feed, power is at an all-time high.”

“Well, if you’re going to believe the feed, Iskander, then I’ve got a perpetual motion engine to sell you.” Iskander fought against the urge to reach out and touch her face. Public displays of affection were not unheard of on watch, but neither he nor Taki were the demonstrative type. That was one of the things they had in common, actually.

“You’ve been holding out on me, Taki,” Iskander said in mock seriousness. “A perpetual motion engine? We’re going to be rolling in the creds.”

Taki laughed, bouncing up and down again.

Lebanon, returning to find out just what was taking Iskander so long, pointedly cleared his throat and glanced down at Iskander and Taki’s intertwined hands, a look of delight spreading across his face. Iskander could see the wheels in Lebanon’s head turning, and didn’t much like the direction they were heading in. He stepped back abruptly, relinquishing his grip of Taki’s hands.

“Oh, um, Taki, allow me to introduce my cousin Lebanon Ezz. Taki Hayata.”

“Pleased to meet you, Taki,” Lebanon said, holding out his right hand. And then in an overly innocent tone of voice, “Iskander has told me nothing about you.”

Taki shook Lebanon’s hand firmly with her own, offering a Miyako-style bow over their joined fingers. “Pleased to meet you, too, Stastech. Yes, everything is ‘Admin business’ with this one, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know how anyone puts up with him,” Lebanon agreed.

“Alright, alright,” Iskander groused. “If you are both quite finished?”

Lebanon chortled and Taki laughed behind her hand and, for a moment, everything was perfect. And then both Taki and Lebanon were looking at him and Iskander had no idea what to do or say.

“So… how did you two meet?” Lebanon asked. He gave Iskander a look. The look said, “I thought you were supposed to be good at talking to people, Translator.”

Taki and Iskander both began answering, before Iskander gave way with a wave of his hand.

“I’ve been taking Arabek lessons with Training and Development,” she said. “Our regular teacher was injured in some kind of accident, so Iskander subbed for a few lessons.”

“Really?” Lebanon said, his eyes alight. Iskander hadn’t told him anything about teaching. He switched to Arabek. “I bet Iskander was a terrible teacher.”

“Actually, no,” Taki answered in the same language, although as usual she did add a few extraneous vowels to the ends of some words. “He was a very good teacher.” And then in Inglez added, “Although the first time he entered the classroom, he stumbled over the threshold of the classroom door and knocked over some chairs. Not exactly an auspicious beginning.”

“I told you, Taki, it wasn’t a stumble. I was tripped up by the very sight of you.”

“You are such a fool,” Taki said, patting his arm.

“Anyway, one thing led to another,” Iskander summarized, “and here we are.”

“Here we are,” Taki agreed.

“So… what are your plans for Launch?” Lebanon asked, giving Iskander aggressive side-eye now.

“Oh, well, as you see, I’m working second watch today,” Taki said. “So, I should be back in Miyako in time for the bells.”

Every berth celebrated Launch Day differently. In Fustat, there was the light show. In Ziyou berth, they had the dragon’s dance. And in Miyako, the Buddhist temples tolled their bells—one ring for each year since Launch. Rumor had it that if you listened hard enough, you could hear the bells all the way up in Propulsion. Iskander had never seen it for himself, but he had watched a vid of the monks in Miyako’s largest Buddhist temple working together like a zero gravity Engineering crew to swing a huge beam suspended by a pendulum into the side of the temple’s bell, producing a deep sonorous gong.

“You could come, Iskander,” Taki offered diffidently. “You’ve never heard the Launch bells, have you?”

“I thought you said you were meeting your friends?”

“I am.” The implication hung between them. Go to Miyako. Meet Taki’s friends. Take the next step. “Or, you know, if you’re too busy it’s fine,” Taki retracted, speaking fast. “Don’t worry about it.”

Iskander opened his mouth to say… well, he didn’t quite know what he was going to say, but Taki glanced at the old mechanical watch on her wrist—a treasured inheritance from her grandfather—and muttered “Is that the time?” and “I’d better get back to work” and “It was nice meeting you, Lebanon” and then she was going, going, going, and then she was gone.

After Taki headed off, stiff-shouldered and straight-backed, Iskander stood for the long stretch of five heartbeats. He had imagined Taki meeting his family many times, idle daydreams and fervent fantasies. Sometimes it ended well. Usually it ended badly, with him storming out with Taki, hand in hand, as Seto Deniz ranted about family obligation and religious integration. He had never imagined her storming off while he was left standing alone. Iskander caught up with her at the next intersection. This time, not a picnic, but a group of crew performing some kind of dance with lots of clapping and turning blocked the way.

“Taki, wait—”

She stopped and turned to face him. Behind Taki’s back, Iskander could see her Maintenance crew watching him with interest. Behind his, he had no doubt that Lebanon was doing the same. He looked down into Taki’s guileless dark eyes, aware more than ever of the height disparity between them. Whenever they were apart, Iskander found himself beset by doubts. What future could an Ezz hope to have with a Miyako-berth Buddhist? As a translator with political ambitions, he should be looking to marry some respectable Admin’s daughter, not falling in love with an off-berth maintech. And yet, whenever he was with her, those doubts evaporated like dew on Agriculture deck.

“I’d love to go with you and hear the bells,” he said.

Taki watched him carefully out of the corner of her eye. “Would you?”

“Yes. If the offer is still open?”

“Ye-es.”

“Great, then,” Iskander said. “Let’s do it.”

Taki still looked unconvinced. “Iskander, I know we both said that we wanted to keep things casual. I don’t want you to feel that—”

“Listen,” Iskander said. “You invited me. And I accept. And, honestly, I have always wanted to hear the Launch bells.”

She smiled then and reached out to playfully flick the brim of his trilby with a forefinger. “Alright. Meet me outside of Daitoshi East Station at nine?”

“I’ll be there,” Iskander assured her.

When Iskander rejoined Lebanon, his ibn am gave him his best innocent look. Iskander ignored him, preoccupied instead with what Taki had said. Casual. An Inglez word to describe an Inglez feeling. Iskander didn’t recall saying anything about keeping things casual. So far as he remembered, he had said he wanted to keep things quiet.

“So,” Lebanon said brightly, as they pushed their way through the throng of crew. “I take it that was your mystery woman?”

“Yes.”

“You should introduce her to the family as soon as possible.”

“Why?” Iskander asked warily.

“Because she’ll make my Kattrin seem saintly by comparison.”

Iskander huffed out an annoyed breath, but tellingly didn’t argue. If the family were going to pitch a fit about Kattrin Eissa—and they were—he had no idea how they would react if he brought Taki home to them.

Iskander could, just about, make out his ancestor’s features through the cryopod’s frosted glass. Of course, they removed those boxy neural devices during Launch. With his eyes closed, Ahmet Ezz could have been anyone. But Iskander had seen some vids of him pre-Launch and he had the same heavy-lidded eyes that marked male members of the Ezz clan. Ahmet had studied botany at Ankara’s Bilkent University and put that technical knowledge to use as a biotech for the Imperial Army. One of the vids Iskander had seen showed a beaming Colonel Ahmet Ezz receiving the Iron Crescent from Sultan Mazen himself. And now he was down here, covered in ice crystals.

Ahmet might have been the only Ezz among the ancestors, but he was certainly not the only one related to Iskander’s family. That was what irked him most about all this ancestor worship. It was illogical. He was not a descendant of this man at all. It was Ahmet Ezz’s younger brother, Tamar, who had been First Crew. Tamar Ezz married Hania Hilal and they produced the first Iskander Ezz, the one he was named for. It was Hania’s sister, Heba, who was down here in Stasis. Should Iskander and Lebanon track her down for a visit? Technically speaking, she was as much their ancestor as Ahmet Ezz. But no, they only deified this one because he happened to share the same surname.

“Shall we recite the Fatiha?” Lebanon asked.

“Sure,” Iskander said.

He watched as Lebanon held out his hands in front of him, palms facing inward, and recited the first chapter of the Quran under his breath. Iskander followed suit, mirroring the pose, but instead of reciting the seven ayas that were among the first any believer learned, his thoughts turned to his own problems. To meeting Taki’s friends on Launch Eve. Would they like him? Would he like them? And even if he did, and they did, what then? Where was this leading? Marriage and kids? A translator married to a maintech? It was not unheard of, but not common either. Where would they live? Would Taki come and live in Fustat? Or would she expect him to live with her in Miyako? Or maybe they would try a new berth. Taki was already learning Arabek. They could give Damask or even Koutobia a try? Iskander kind of liked Damask’s Shabka Square. Or what about Sehrimiz or Birshahr? Iskander was already rated proficient in Torkdil. Would Taki agree to learn another language for him?

“Ameen,” Lebanon said, returning his hands to his sides and bringing his whispered prayers to a close.

“Amen,” Iskander agreed in Inglez. Lebanon glanced at him with peaceful eyes. “Happy now?”

“Actually, I am,” Lebanon said. “So, what are you up to now?”

“Back on watch,” Iskander shrugged. “No hearings today. Hopefully it’ll be a quiet one.”

“Alright. Well, I’ll see what I can do about Nafisa,” Lebanon said. “But no promises.”

“Fair enough. See you before Launch?”

“Yeah, probably.”

Iskander gave his cousin a perfunctory fist bump and then turned away.

“Hey, Iskander.” Iskander turned back. “Your Taki seems nice. Don’t screw it up.”

Everybody was either sleeping or on watch when Iskander finally made it home. Yes, that is still how he thought of the Ezz compound, even though it had been more than a year since he lived there. Damietta had taken over his old room when he moved out, replacing his bookshelves with paintings and art supplies. In her own room, Rosetta had then repurposed the bookshelves into hydroponic gardens. The circle of life. Iskander liked to come back and visit the family at odd times like this, when it was quiet and you didn’t know who you might bump into. He might end up passing around remembrances with the girls or talking about the meaning of life with Lebanon or arguing about who was going to win the all-berth conference with Cousin Halayeb over endless games of backgammon. Still, he knew that he would not be doing any of those things tonight—he was here for a much more serious reason. Iskander let himself into the compound and glanced around the open courtyard where generations of Ezz children had played Sultan Mazen and games of pickup handball. One day, he thought, my children will play here, too.

Amo Azbek and Amita Jezzine had the biggest apartment, although technically it was Gedo Zagazig’s place. The patriarch of the Ezz clan, Gedo Zagazig wasn’t actually Iskander’s grandfather at all but his great-uncle. And actually, it was Seto Deniz who ruled so-called “family business”—marriages, births, and deaths. She had taken over one of the smaller one-bedroom apartments on the ground floor, although she was usually found holding court in someone else’s kitchen, surrounded by grandchildren. Lebanon’s apartment was next door, and next door to that, an empty apartment that should have been Iskander’s. He had managed to live there for a few months before being forced to flee. He couldn’t stand having everyone monitor his movements, asking where he was going, what he was doing, and when he would be home. Getting out of the Ezz compound had been a blessed relief. Damietta had been lobbying to take over Iskander’s old apartment, but so far, unsuccessfully, and after the shenanigans she had just pulled, the whole family would be keeping the girl under constant supervision.

He stood outside his parents’ apartment and took a deep breath. The same kind of breath he would take before arguing an important case before Admin. Last year, he would have snuck in and woken up Damietta and Rosetta to have a gleeful midnight feast of whatever was in the kitchen. Ful medames. Chickpea stew. Eggs and pastirma. They would have spent all night dipping the freshly baked bread that Iskander brought with him into the pot, talking about nothing much at all. Iskander already missed those days.

He opened the door to the old apartment and let himself in. No key required. All the Ezz houses opened onto each other. He looked in on Baba’s room, unsurprised to see the empty bed. Baba’s watch finished hours ago, but he was probably still on Environmental deck. A crew chief’s watch never ended. The envirotechs had their own setup down there—restaurants, bars, beds, the works. Sometimes Baba didn’t come home for days. Was it any wonder that Damietta was out in the berths running wild? Getting the charges against her dropped had likely been a mistake. The girl was heading down a dangerous path. Devrimism? Of all the useless isms on the Safina, that one took the cake. A new Compact? Waking the ancestors? The ship was already overpopulated. How would adding ten thousand new mouths to feed and lungs to fill help anything? Plus, the crew would need those ancestors and their expertise when they finally reached Hurriya. Yeah, let’s wake up all the climatologists, meteorologists, and geologists. They would be very useful in the middle of empty space!

It was easy enough to say, “wake the ancestors” and “form a new Compact” but actually doing it was another thing. As soon as you changed one thing on the Safina, everything else came out of alignment. The Safina was a closed system. Everyone relied on everyone else. Everything affected everything else. Security and Admin would tolerate a lot, but not mutiny. Never that. Every crewman had the chance to vote—once in their berths for naib and once on deck for watch overseer. It was far more choice than their ancestors had enjoyed on Earth under the Network Empire. The Compact wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was what they had. And it worked.

But Iskander had no choice but to do what he did. Everyone expected it of him. Even from a personal standpoint, a translator with a sister in Detention would hardly inspire confidence among prospective clientele. He had prolonged things as much as he dared. Damietta and her outlaw corridor friends had waited the best part of a week to be seen by the right Admin court judge. Iskander hoped Damietta’s time in the warm embrace of Security had opened her eyes a little.

“Hey,” he said, touching Damietta on the shoulder. “Wake up.”

Her room was a mess, and she was sleeping half under and half over the covers, one arm thrown theatrically over her eyes. It would have looked contrived if Iskander didn’t know that was how Damietta really slept. He was just relieved that Damietta was here and not out in the berths somewhere causing havoc. He and Lebanon would sneak out all the time when they were her age, but to visit a shisha café or an underground bar, not to try to bring down Administration! Had Damietta figured out how to bribe Amo Samir yet? You couldn’t do anything in the Ezz compound without the bawab hearing about it first. There was an art to bribery. You couldn’t just go in offering money, especially not to someone like Amo Samir, whose family had worked for the Ezzes for generations. You had to finesse him. Iskander doubted Damietta had the patience to do that.

She woke up instantly. Mama used to wake up like that, he remembered with a pang. One second asleep. The next awake, alert. Damietta blinked at him but said nothing.

“Come on,” Iskander said, and then left the room, not looking to see if she followed.

He sat down at the kitchen table and considered making himself a cup of tea. But Rose was a light sleeper. If he started clattering around in the kitchen now, she would surely wake up. Damietta padded into the kitchen barefoot, hair in disarray. She had thrown on a cardigan, one of Mama’s old ones, and had her arms wrapped up vulnerably around herself.

“What do you want?” she asked coldly.

“To talk.”

“Here to pile on?” she asked. “Tell me what a disgrace I am?”

“No, Etta. Just to talk. To try to understand. What were you thinking?” Damietta shook her head at him, but Iskander could see the unshed tears in her eyes. “ ‘The blackouts are getting worse. Under Amer, under blackout.’ ”

“Well,” Damietta rounded on him. “Am I wrong?”

Iskander took a deep breath. This would be difficult to explain to someone still in Academy. There was a reason pro-Haraka sentiment was strongest among the youth. They had no idea how the ship really ran.

“It’s not about right or wrong,” he said.

“Then what is it about?”

“What did your protest achieve, except to get you and your friends arrested, upset everyone, and embarrass the family?”

“That’s the real reason you’re upset, isn’t it?” Damietta scoffed. “I embarrassed the great Ezz family. What happened, Iskander? Did some redjackets frown at you? Did some Admin clerk refuse to shake your hand? Well boo-fucking-hoo.”

Iskander ran his hands through his hair and tried to come at it from a different angle. He wasn’t angry with Damietta. He was worried for her. The Haraka boys she had been arrested with were small fry. Born outside of Admin jurisdiction, they would find themselves working a watch as soon as they finished serving their time in Detention—Sanitation or Recycling probably. But the Haraka’s leader, Badreddine Bishara, was a stone-cold killer with confirmed Triad connections. Rumor was, there had been an unofficial Internal Security execution order out on him for years. The last thing Iskander needed was for his sister to get mixed up with the likes of him.

“Listen, Damietta. This ship, this crew, it’s a delicate environment. I know it seems like—”

“Oh my God!” Damietta interrupted. “I can’t bear to hear you lecture me right now. How can you work for them, Iskander? Admin! Security! How can you do it?”

Iskander watched her judging eyes and felt like the weight of the ship was on him. Every translator had seen that look before, but Iskander had never expected it from his own family. It was true that Baba and Seto Deniz wanted him in Environmental, but they didn’t view Translation as a betrayal.

“You’re not hearing me,” he said.

“No,” she corrected, “you’re not hearing me.”

“Next time I won’t help you,” he warned. “Pull any more juvenile shit like that and you’re on your own.”

“Good.” Damietta snarled at him.

“Security haven’t forgotten about you. I kept it off the books, but get caught pulling anything like this again, and they’ll come down on you twice as hard. Trust me, Damietta, you don’t want to go down that corridor. I’m talking loss of privilege, change of watch, Detention.”

Maybe if he couldn’t make her understand, he could at least scare her straight.

“Fine by me!” she said.

Iskander bit the inside of his cheek. He wanted to get up and shake her. Did she think she was the only one who was frustrated by conditions on the Safina? Iskander realized that at some point, they had gone from whispering to talking, and then from talking to shouting. Rosetta, wide-eyed, peeked out of the doorway.

“Hey, Rose.” His voice warmed. Rose crept into the kitchen, glancing uncertainly between her brother and sister. Damietta turned away. “How’s my favorite Ezz?”

“I can’t believe you. You are such a hypocrite,” Damietta threw over her shoulder as she marched out of the kitchen. Iskander was not surprised to hear her bedroom door slam a few moments later.

“Damietta,” he called. “Wait!”

Well, so much for his translator’s silver tongue. That had been a disaster. When had Damietta gotten this way? Iskander resolved to give it a few days and then try again. Damietta was just too angry to hear him now. In a few days, she would listen to sense. In the meantime, well, he had other fraternal duties to attend to. He reached under the table and pulled out Rosetta’s Launch gift.

“My fanoos!” Rose exclaimed.

“Come on,” Iskander said. “Let’s go hang it outside.”

SIX Damietta

Every crewman, from the most senior overseer to the lowest recyclist, has a duty to stand up and take action. What differentiates us from the Network Empire isn’t technology, it’s the idea that each of us is different. We are not just parts that can be plugged into a machine.

—EXCERPT FROM THE TRIAL OF SELIN DEVRIM

Excuse me, Anisa. Do you have the time?” the guy asked her.

Damietta glanced up at him from her tab impatiently (an ugly chelloveck reeking of rabbit sweat). He was dressed in the drab brown uniform of Agriculture and carrying a little carryall, probably for his packed lunch. Surely this couldn’t be who she was supposed to meet? The ship-wide tannoy had just ding and donged to announce that it was seven bells. Honestly, “do you have the time?,” is that the best he could come up with?

“It just went seven bells,” Damietta told him, struggling not to roll her eyes. (Abra your slooshers, veck!)

“Oh, it’s still early then,” he smiled, and sat down on the park bench next to her (and who praytell invited you to besh?). His dark hair was cropped down to nothing and there was dirt under his fingernails. Damietta wondered idly if he had buried anyone today.

“Two hundred years,” he wished her.

“Two hundred years,” she replied automatically.

“So, might I inquire if you are waiting for somebody, Anisa?”

Of course, this particular Anisa was waiting for somebody. Why else would she be sitting in Azhar Park wearing her Launch best, holding her tab open in front of her and sketching subversive cartoons of a grotesque-looking Captain Amer? Not that she had gotten much work done. She was too nervous for that. Plus, she had gotten distracted by two birds that were laboriously picking up twigs from the trees and flying them up to the rafters to make a nest. Sometimes it seemed like only the birds were free on the city-ship Safina.

After she had been rebuffed by her usual black-market contacts while attempting to restock her art supplies (“Badreddine sez you’re on the nero-list, chikeleeni!”), Damietta had been forced to go begging to Supply who told her what she already knew, that she’d already used up her monthly allowance. Still, a junior clerk had noticed her long face and dewy eyes and after a bit of back and forth in Nupol had agreed to hook her up with an intermediary to sell her what she needed off the books, but at a “primo price.” Damietta had been expecting to meet someone wearing the particular shade of Supply blue (nish to be confused with the azure of Factory) not some rando from the Granja. It would have all been much easier if she was still in Badreddine’s good books. Actually, she had to give him credit. Word around the berth was that something bad had happened and Badreddine was keeping a low profile. Despite that, he had managed to cut her off with ease.

The guy was still smiling at her hopefully (keep grinning, veck, vada what it gets tu). Damietta figured he was just some cove out on the pull, some veck trying to get his leg over. Still, there was a simple enough way to find out.

“Oh vali,” she told him, “I’m espering my bencove. Gonna vada the glimshow, we are.”

He gave her a cross-eyed look and said “Excuse me?” in Arabek.

“I’m waiting to meet a friend,” she answered in that same language.

“So, what are you reading?” he tried again. (Vali, basta was basta.)

“Oh, it’s all claptrap to me,” she told him, standing up and preparing to leave. “Ending’s naff and all.”

“Wait,” the guy said, half rising, “I was just wondering if you had any plans for later tonight?” He gave her another hopeful look. Yuck, even if he was her type, which he decidedly wasn’t, he was at least Iskander’s age. (Naff off, creepo.)

“Naff off, creepo!” she threw at him over her shoulder.

Ugh, you couldn’t even sit in a park these days without being accosted by the local crawler. Damietta made another circuit of the park—her last, she decided. It was Launch Eve, and she had a million and one things to do. She didn’t have time to hang around Azhar Park all day. If she couldn’t get the supplies today, she would just have to do the graff she had planned some other night (there was immer some other nochy).

Damietta stepped off the path to avoid an older stastech who was feeding the pack of stray dogs that lived in Azhar Park. These might have been the descendants of recognizable Earth breeds at one time but now they were a motley of Safina mongrels, panting and barking and wagging their stubby tails. Fustat was a predominately Muslim berth, which meant that most crew viewed these dogs as “unclean,” and yet that didn’t stop random stastechs from feeding them leftovers and looking after them.

A girl a few years older than her abruptly stepped into Damietta’s path and seamlessly linked arms with her. The girl was dressed in Factory blue, including a manufactor’s hat perched coquettishly on her head.

“Salve, Damietta,” she said, “been a long raz since I vadad you.”

After a brief pause, Damietta carried on walking. “Sekina, is that you?”

Sekina Samatar grinned at her. She was shorter than Damietta remembered, but her eyes were still the same shade of gray green. It was a shade that she had never, no matter how hard she tried, been able to mix up in her palette. The smile was also the same, if a bit more guarded, but it was her hair that amazed Damietta. The Sekina she remembered had long, luxurious red-brown locks that hung down her back like velvety curtains, the envy of every girl in Tagammu Nine. Damietta remembered how the younger girls at Amo Khaled’s would compete to brush and braid that hair while Sekina taught them outlaw songs and secret words. Now, it was short and wild, dyed as black as the dark outside and streaked with blue and green highlights.

“The moniker’s Britva ahora,” Sekina said.

Now, that was clever. A multilingual pun. Sekina in Arabek meant peace or tranquility but it also sounded very much like Sikeena—knife. And a britva in Nupol was a kind of knife, a straight razor. Aside from admiring her new name and hair, Damietta’s mind raced. Was this who she was supposed to be meeting? Sekina had once (but nish nomore) been one of Badreddine’s coves and had famously (infamously, moreslike) been caught smuggling a kilo of black-market fruit and veg into Malacca berth. She had been convicted and sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labor and not even a crew chief for a father could save her. That was more than three years ago. Damietta glanced down at Sekina’s fingers. They were covered in Detention ink (an acorn, a heart, a leaf, a bell). The last thing she had heard about Sekina Samatar was that her family had disowned her, and she had been kicked out of the Oblast Conservatory where she had been apprenticing as a musician. She was a Tagammu Nine horror story. The one that parents threatened their daughters with. “If you don’t listen to me, you’ll end up like Sekina Samatar.” In fact, Seto Deniz had said just that after Damietta’s most recent trouble.

“Well, Britva,” Damietta said waspishly, “what are you doing here?”

“I’m akoy to parley.”

Damietta pulled them both to a stop. “To parley with who?”

“To parley with tu, devotchka,” Sekina answered. “Karn, let’s besh,” she added, nodding at an empty park bench, “and have a palaver. We’ve got a com for Badreddine.”

Damietta reclaimed her hand and sat on the bench, watching Sekina distrustfully. “You’re not here to sell me off-book art supplies, are you?”

Sekina shook her head but smiled. “Ah, is that que you’re doing akoy? It took me ages to track you down. Nix devotchka, nish this raz. Though I slooshed about tu and your graff all the tao in N-berth. I have to admit, I was surprised to sloosh that you had joined the Haraka. Never cogged I’d vada an Ezz on our side of the barricades.”

“Who… how… Como do you want from moi?”

“Like I says, we’ve got a com for Badreddine and we needs somecove surtworthy to liver it. Your dva bencoves in clink said you were the devotchka to vada.”

“My dva bencoves?” Damietta asked with a raised eyebrow. She purposefully didn’t say their names.

“Ashraf and Billy.” Damietta held her silence. “Ah, they said you would be sus. Billy said, ‘Tell the devotchka’ ”—she switched to Arabek, rusty with disuse—“ ‘next time use less red. And lay off the Diwani calligraphy, nobody can read that shit.’ ”

One of the first things that Billy had ever said to her. She had been caught vandalizing one of the buildings that belonged to someone who belonged to someone who belonged to Badreddine. She had graffitied a group of old Earth dictators (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mazen) in profile alongside an image of Captain Amer in the same style. Beneath them, Devrim’s famous quote “Must we drown the stars in blood?” in a brash red script. At first, she thought the guys who caught her mid-scrawl were going to turn her over to Security. They held her in a locked office for what seemed like hours until eventually Billy took her to meet Badreddine. And just like that, she was part of the Haraka. Damietta sucked in a breath.

“You said ‘we’. We who?” Damietta asked. Sekina rolled up her left sleeve, revealing a crossed hammer and sickle. So, she was with the Karls now? A Kommunista. “You’re a Karla?”

“Vali. After clink, I got a drudge down in Factory, then odin thing led to another and”—she gestured down at herself, grinning wildly— “akoy I am.”

Well, it sort of made sense. Manufacturing deck was basically Kommunist Central. Joining the Karls would be one way to survive, especially without any family to back you up. The Sekina she remembered was something of a sullen figure, but this Britva was bubbling with good cheer.

“Do you still sing?” Damietta asked.

“Quando the opportuna presents itself, devotchka. Por que”—she suddenly grinned and switched back to Arabek—“did you miss my voice?”

“Uh…”

“I sing mostly Russ songs these days,” Sekina said, “but I remember you used to like the old-fashioned Arabek stuff.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m here to sing you something new, ya binti.” She switched back to Nupol. “The Karls have a com for Badreddine. Cog you can pass it along?”

“Vali, Britva,” Damietta told her. She was proud that her voice didn’t waver. “Say your say.”

So, Britva had been living in Novy Oblast since being paroled, working in Factory during her watch, working with the Karls during her off watch. And she wanted Damietta to get a message to Badreddine.

In brief, the message was this: Ahora’s the raz to unite and take action against the Nizam. And then a time and place for a meeting. Damietta could hardly believe it. She was practically vibrating with excitement; visions of the crew rising up and ousting Amer danced behind her eyes. Graffiti was all well and good but the whole point was to illicit a reaction. Damietta wanted to get it all to Badreddine before she forgot. There was only one problem with that plan.

Okay Keita had graduated from standing outside of Amo Ramadan’s coffee shop to sitting inside. Damietta wondered whether she should offer her congratulations on the promotion. Okay, sipping one of those small coffees that tasted of nothing but burning, glanced at her out of pissed-off eyes and raised her eyebrows (alright, congratulations could wait). Damietta exchanged wary fist bumps and salves with the assorted Tagammu Two youth lounging at Okay’s table (Tripoli Brown and her cronies—the next generation of the Haraka) and then leaned in.

“Okay—”

“Well, well,” Okay greeted her, “vada who is daus. It’s chikeleeni, my fave grafist.”

“Bona trav on the graff you did Downtown,” Tripoli interrupted before Damietta could respond. “I managed to vada it before Security could offay it. You’ve got a gift, girl.”

“Dankon,” she replied warily. Damietta hadn’t had too much to do with Tripoli Brown and her cutthroats so far. They were the rank and file of the Haraka but, truth be told, they kind of scared Damietta. She had been elevated straight into Badreddine’s circle, most likely because of her family name, her Tagammu, and her father’s watch. It left her feeling a little self-conscious in front of the Tagammu Two stalwarts.

“Shame about Billy and Ash, though,” Okay said, giving Damietta the evils.

“Nah,” Tripoli said with a shrug, “we’ll all end up in clink sooners or laters. Nish point fashing about quando.”

Damietta merely nodded at that. Iskander might have saved her once, but he had made it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t do so again. And she had no intention of turning back now.

“Sloosh, Okay, I need—”

“Lemme guess, you wanna palaver Badreddine?”

“Needs to.” Okay crossed her arms and gave Damietta a direct look. Damietta hid a swallow. Was it really true that she and her brother Zain had killed the Thieves who had gone after Badreddine? That’s what Britva had said, at least, and she had no reason to doubt her. “Do you prax that in the mirra,” Damietta dared, “or does it just come naturalimento?”

Tripoli Brown and her cronies laughed at that, causing Okay to recross her arms and scowl dangerously. Taking a deep breath, Damietta leaned in until her mouth was close to Okay’s ear.

“I have a com for Badreddine,” she whispered. “From the Karls. Surt moi, he’s gonna want to sloosh this. It’s magna.”

Okay blinked at her, once, twice, and then shrugged her big shoulders. “Alright, chikeleeni, but if this is some lud you are playing, you’ll be scusa.”

Damietta always felt at home in Tagammu Two. Nobody here knew her name. Or, more importantly, her surname. They didn’t know that she was Crew Chief Ezz’s daughter or Translator Ezz’s sister, and even if they did, they wouldn’t care. It was not like being in Fustat at all, in fact. All the Tagammus were built along the same lines. Residential buildings. A mosque. A parade of shops. A small park or rec area. Maybe, as in Nine, residential compounds for the crew chiefs and their families. If you’ve seen one Tagammu, you’ve seen them all.

That mold, however, was broken in Two, where the people had somehow managed to interconnect all the residential buildings until it was one, massive edifice. Inside, the corridors and passageways were smaller than Damietta was used to, looping around and forking and reforming again and again. You could lose yourself in Two. There were gaming dens and electro-clubs and all kinds of subcultures to get into and out of. There were people living in Two who were not crew at all—who had never registered with Admin or stood a watch. Not having crew ID severely curtailed what you could do and where you could go on the Safina, but Damietta understood that Badreddine ran a brisk trade in forgeries.

“Anisa Ezz,” a redjacket manning the checkpoint said, looking over her crew ID, “are you by any chance related to Translator Iskander Ezz?” He had his visor down and was giving her a look that said, “What’s a nice devotchka like you doing in Dva?”

“My brother,” she admitted (May Bog take him).

The redjacket raised an eyebrow. He was young for a redjacket, probably only a few years older than her. Clean-shaven. Handsome. Not her type.

“Are you sure you want to be going into Two alone, Anisa?”

“Is it against standing orders or something?” Damietta asked, artificially widening her eyes. She knew perfectly well that it wasn’t. Sure, Two was where everyone in Fustat berth came to score. Or pull. Or cop off. But Security couldn’t admit that. To admit that would be to admit that there was an entire district in F-berth that was functionally out of their control.

“Of course not,” he told her, disapproval coloring his voice. He handed her crew ID back. “Please, give my salam to your brother when you see him,” he said in Sehrimiz-tinged Arabek.

Damietta glanced at the name patch on the redjacket’s chest and the two stripes on his arm. “Of course, Corporal Yildiz,” she assured him with a smile (Not likely, rozzer!).

After wishing him Two Hundred Years and receiving that same wish back, Damietta entered the Tagammu like she belonged there. The differences from Tagammu Nine were immediately evident as she pushed through the milling crowd. She kept her breathing regular and her eyes on the ground in front of her. The coffeehouses spilled out into the public corridors, and in addition to fruit-flavored tobacco, there was the pungent smell of hashish and vell in the air. There was music blasting, electro-shaabi competing with neo-geel and traditional mawwal. Someone handed Damietta a bottle of beer. Free alcohol? It could be because it was Launch Eve, or it could just be because it was Tagammu Two. Damietta took a swig and pushed her way through the crowd.

She eventually made it all the way to Municipal Flat Block 18A and took the stairs up and up and up to the twenty-third floor. Instead of going left to the apartments, she turned right and knocked on what should have been a storage closet. Three knocks. One knock. Two knocks. Nobody answered. Had Okay, the charvering dona, given her dab info on purpose? She reached up to knock again when somebody shoved her face-first into the wall. Damietta felt something sharp press against the back of her neck and held very still.

“Dee?” a surprise voice huffed.

“Salve, Zain,” Damietta greeted him with a big smile. “Two hundred years.”

Damietta sat on a little stool in the middle of the room while Zain glared down at her. When that had no effect, he broke into the smile that she knew he had been hiding all along.

“Tell us a joke,” she demanded.

“Right-o, right-o, devotchka. Have you slooshed this anti? Dva vecks are beshing in a staja in clink, palavering about what they’re in for. Odin asks the other, ‘Que did they give you chet anos for, mucker?’ The veck sez, ‘For nada!’ Then the odin goes, ‘Don’t fib to us. Everycove cogs that “for nada” is only dva anos.’ ”

With that he burst into laughter, but Damietta waved him off. “That’s a starry one. Everycove and his brat has slooshed that one.”

“Right-o, right-o,” Zain said, undeterred. “Que about this, then? So, a chelloveck was reported to have said, ‘Amer is a right old nazz with nary a cog in his gulliver’ and was promptly nabbed by the rozzers. Standing before the beek, the veck goes, ‘No, your honor. I wasn’t talking about our respected Capo Hannibal Amer, Bog bless him and his descendants. I was palavering about another veck altogether.’ ‘Don’t try to trick me,’ the beek sez, ‘if you’re talking about a nazz with nary a cog in his gulliver, everycove cogs you could only be talking about Capo Amer.’ ”

Damietta giggled and Zain let out an infectious belly laugh. They were both still laughing when Badreddine swept into the room. Zain promptly wiped the smile from his face and took up position against the back wall, blending in with the furniture. From this angle, there could be no doubt that he and Okay were twins. Damietta preferred Zain. He had jokes, at least, and didn’t call her chikeleeni. Despite being in their mid-twenties, the Keita siblings had only joined the crew a few years ago during the annual census. They took their Placements and, thanks to Badreddine’s connections, were both assigned to Maintenance watch. Until then, they had been illegals, just like Billy and Ash. Damietta wondered what watches her friends would be assigned once they were released from Detention. Certainly nothing as good as Maintenance.

“Dee,” Badreddine greeted her. “Well, I can’t say I’m zush to vada you.”

Badreddine was wearing crew gray, his arm in a sling. Had the assassination attempt really been that close? Badreddine’s long lank hair seemed even grayer than it had been the last time she saw him, although his eyes were still fever bright. It was those bright eyes that had first drawn her in. Right now, she was reading exasperation in them.

“Badreddine,” she responded. “Quando are you ever zush?”

He grinned in appreciation at her sass. After a lifetime of addressing anyone older than her as Amo or Amita, Gedo or Seto, it still felt transgressive to call someone as old as Badreddine (and he was starry as the stars) by their first name. The last time she had spoken to him, Badreddine advised her to keep out of trouble (like that was possible), ace her Placements (done), and pull a watch in Admin (never). He outright forbade her from involving Billy or Ash in any more of her “teenage charlering” as he so charmingly put it. And now Billy and Ash were down in lockup, and he had survived an assassination attempt.

“You have a com from the Karls?” Badreddine asked mildly.

“Vali. They want to organize a parley with tu.”

“Que about?”

“Britva said they’re inviting all the covens, even the Feda’eyes and La Cristiada. With the redjackets preoccupied with the guerre, they want to plan an action. A ship-wide action!”

Damietta’s eyes shone with the excitement of it. Didn’t Badreddine understand how big this was? There hadn’t been a ship-wide action since the Bread Riots.

“The Feds and Crids on the same side?” Badreddine scoffed. “I vera doubt it. And anytao, who do the Karls cog they are, issuing parleys, arranging actions?”

“They’re the ventiest coven on the ship,” Damietta gasped. It was true. There were plenty of factions in the berths who wanted to bring down Admin, but for sheer numbers, nobody could compete with the Kommunists. They counted half of Manufacturing deck among their supporters, and about a third of Maintenance and Agriculture. And that didn’t even include their allies—the Ishtirakis in the Arabek-speaking berths, the Zendistas in Linda Cidade. If the Karls called for a strike today, a third of the crew wouldn’t turn up for their watch tomorrow. And if they really could get the Feds and Crids to put aside all their religious wrangling? They would be unstoppable.

“Strength is more than just numbers, Dee. And you would do wise to member that,” he said. “Wait, Britva who?”

“Sekina,” Damietta admitted, “Sekina Samatar.”

Badreddine narrowed his eyes and grunted. “I slooshed the devotchka had joined the Karls. Krovvy waste of talent, if you ask moi. The Karls ain’t that different from the Nizam when tu come alay to it.”

“Well?” Damietta demanded. “Is that all you gots to say?”

“Vali, that’s all and all’s that.”

“We have to go, Badreddine,” Damietta objected. “The Haraka have to be repped.”

Badreddine came to sit opposite her. He blew out a big breath as he took the seat, and Damietta realized just how old he was. He patted her gently on one knee. “You’re feeli and so you cog that everything must be pronto pronto. But sloosh to your elders, devotchka mine, we savvy that the tao is long and no cambio can take place ubernacht.”

Damietta huffed out a breath of her own. Why was it that whenever some old person didn’t want you to do something, they said “listen to your elders.” Damietta was sick of it. Graffitiing Devrimite slogans on the walls at night might have been stupid and risky, but at least it was something. At least it was action.

“Tell ‘Britva’ parreko but nanti parreko,” Badreddine said. “The Haraka stands solo. Like immer.”

Zain escorted her out of the block, watching until she made it down the corridor and away. For her own safety, he said. Not that Damietta believed a word of it.

“Por que you just stand there, schtum as a post?” she demanded before she stalked off. “Can’t you vada that Badreddine is wrong?”

“I savvy that Badreddine is capo.”

“Capo!” Damietta scoffed.

The word among the youngers was that Badreddine was going soft. Damietta had heard it from a number of people now. Not just Billy and Ash, but Tripoli Brown and her cutthroats. She had even overheard Okay saying it! Badreddine was trying to bring the Haraka into the mainstream, funding naib campaigns and getting illegals, slowly but surely, assigned to crew. In preparation for what? Well, nobody knew. Most of his recent efforts focused on popularizing what had come to be called Devrim’s Referendum—a ship-wide vote on whether they should wake the ancestors. But there were some in the Haraka who would be happy to space the lot of them.

“Don’t palavar like that in front of moi, devotchka,” Zain warned. “Capo is capo.”

“The Haraka has no capo,” Damietta corrected. “Only Devrim’s liber. Only Devrim’s slovo. ‘Don’t wait for the last revolution. It takes place every day.’ If the rest of the covens are holding a parley, we should be there. The Haraka have to be repped.”

Zain shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. “Patience,” he counseled her, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder. “Our raz will come. Per ahora, we follow Badreddine.”

With that, he turned and walked away. Damietta watched him go, glaring at his back. He knew she was right. But he wouldn’t admit it. Couldn’t, maybe. Badreddine was not just some old gangster and the de facto leader of the Haraka. In dva, he was Patrain. There were dozens, hundreds, of people just like Okay and Zain, Billy and Ash, who relied on him. Not all of them were illegal third children. Some might be the product of unions rejected by Admin or kids who had just fallen through the cracks. Maybe their parents had been killed in an accident or spaced for their views. Not all families on the Safina were like the Ezz clan, watching over each other, whether you wanted them to or not. For some crew, there was nothing and no one to fall back on. For kids in Fustat with no one else to turn to and nowhere else to go, Badreddine was their last lifeline. He funded the lessons they went to. He put food in their bellies and creds in their pockets. And once they were on watch, they were his forever.

Well, Damietta hadn’t pledged her allegiance to anyone. She believed in the Cause. Devrim preached that the human species carried the seeds of its destruction within it. You had to acknowledge those seeds, and commit to never, ever planting them. Humanity had destroyed its home world, and the authors of that destruction were right here right now, with all their old hatreds and intolerances, their End Wars and Network Empires, their blood-soaked gods and death-stained politics. They were sleeping soundly in the Safina’s hold, waiting for the chance to do it again.

For Selin Devrim and her followers, there was only one answer. They had to throw off the shackles of the past, abrogate the misdeeds of their ancestors. The Compact? Ripping out the strange machine intelligence that used to run the ship? That was nothing but a good start. They needed to collect all the statues and artwork and monuments their ancestors had packed onto the ship and send them out into the dark. Kill the Buddha. Burn the Bible. Space the Quran. Leave the starry linguas of the past and deb with something nova. Unlearn it all. If humanity was to have a true fresh start out among the stars, they needed a blank slate, not this never-ending chain of memory manacling them to the past. There was a reason that Devrim’s infamous first treatise was called Tabula Rasa.

As she lined up to leave Tagammu Two, Damietta checked the time on her tab. It was ten bells. She would have just enough time to meet her Academy friends in Cleopatra to watch the light show. As the line slowly moved (the rozzers were being molti-careful about who they were letting nella and esk), she noticed a familiar figure leaning against a wall.

“Britva,” she said, “what are you doing here?”

“Vadaing for you, Damieska.”

“Por que?” Damietta looked around in consternation. If anybody saw her talking to the infamous Sekina Samatar, well, that would definitely get back to Baba and Iskander (May Bog snatch the ayesh from his oysta). Britva reached out and grabbed hold of one of her hands, bringing Damietta’s eyes to her.

“I cogged you were a rebel ahora. Are you straxed someone will vada us?”

“Straxed?”

“Scared,” Britva said, and then switching to Arabek, “Are you afraid someone will see us together, Damietta?”

“Nix,” she denied.

“Bona,” Brit said, pulling her away. “Then let’s go have some twenty-to-one.”

Dee and Britva danced the night away in Cleopatra Square. For a few short hours, she forgot all her anger and frustration. Toward Badreddine and his high-handed “listen to your elders.” Toward Billy and Ashraf for getting caught and leaving her alone. Toward Iskander for his ceaseless interference and his “big brother knows best” bullshit. Toward Amo Azbek and Amita Jezzine for screaming at her. Toward Baba for not screaming at her. Toward every single crew on the Safina who were going about their daily watch, ignoring what was staring them in the face. For a few short hours, she forgot about all that, lost instead in the rhythm of the music, the flashing of the lights, the feeling of Britva dancing next to her, and her sweet sweat smell. As the big clock counted down to midnight and Cleopatra was plunged into a waiting darkness, she felt Britva lean in and press her lips to her own. As the lights erupted and the people around her greeted Launch Day with whoops and hollers, Damietta kissed her back. She didn’t care who might see or what might happen if they did.

Vali, she was a rebel ahora.

SEVEN Iskander

Every language you speak opens up another berth, another ship, another self.

—FIRST TRANSLATOR RIFAAT RIDA (SHIP YEAR 23)

Onstage, the goze strummed her shamisen and howled out another verse in mournful Nihon.

“If you love me, come and see me. I will be waiting for you in the great forest of Shinoda,” Taki whisper-translated into Iskander’s ear.

The rickety plastic table they were sitting at had a perfect view of the stage. Even though it was early, even though it was Launch Day and everyone should have been home sleeping off Launch Eve, the livehouse was still full of off-duty crew. The blind singer, dressed in a traditional kimono and wearing a songstress’s flat-brimmed hat, sat on bended knee in front of the spellbound audience. Eyes closed, she sang another verse.

“Unable to return to her fellow foxes, Princess Kuzunoha eternally haunts the forests, waiting,” Taki translated, unshed tears glittering in her dark eyes.

Iskander’s Nihon might have been improving, but the singer was using an awkward formal version of the language that he could barely understand. He squeezed Taki’s hand in his own as the goze strummed her final heartbreaking crescendo.

“Alas, what a sad story this is.”

A beat of silence. And then the audience burst into thunderous applause. Taki reclaimed her hand to join in. Iskander followed suit. Afterward, when the goze made her rounds, Iskander purchased a download link and clanked three ten-credit coins into her donation bowl. She bowed sightlessly toward him. Up close, out of the stage light, she was just an ordinary-looking girl. It couldn’t have been more than a few years since her Placements.

“Did you like it?” Taki asked him.

She’d swapped her Maintenance yellow for a creamy white blouse and tight dark jeans. Iskander was still wearing his translator’s getup, minus the trilby. Taki had requisitioned it from him as soon as they’d met outside of Daitoshi East Station last night. She was wearing it now at the back of her head, framing her face like a halo. Her long hair, let loose for once, was a mess of dark around her shoulders.

“I loved it,” he told her.

Iskander finished off his, well, he didn’t quite remember what number beer of the night, and propped his head on his fist. He was beginning to feel tired now. He and Taki had watched the bell ringing at Shinchaku-ji temple and he rather thought he could still feel those bells resounding in his head. After that, they had met up with three of Taki’s friends—Miko, Sara, and Honoka—who had taken them to an electric livehouse with a massive, mirrored dance floor and a DJ who was obviously in the middle of a vellocet binge. Then, Taki wanted to take him to her favorite live music venue, so here they were. It was seven chimes already, halfway through first watch, and Iskander was dreading making the trek up to Admin for the start of second. Fortunately, he had no cases scheduled for today, and Launch was usually dead quiet. He fully intended to spend all watch napping in the translators’ lounge—they had some great couches for napping in there—before walking home to Fustat berth. He was in no mood for any drama on the hyperlink. You could walk from Admin deck to Fustat berth, but you had to cut through Security and Museum to do it.

“Another beer?” Taki offered, one hand on the massive pitcher of beer.

Usually, they would compete to see who could pour more drinks for the other. It was Miyako berth etiquette for women to pour drinks for the men but vice versa on Fustat berth. A clash of cultures. Tonight, Taki was in the lead. It was a Miyako livehouse, after all, and Iskander didn’t want to embarrass her in her own berth. He shook his head wearily and pulled his cup away.

“I think I’ve reached my alcohol limit for the night, Taki.”

Taki cocked her head at him, sending her loose hair flying. “Come on, then,” she said, “let’s get out of here.”

Yarakucho’s was one of Iskander’s favorite places in all of Miyako berth. The small izakaya could seat a maximum of twelve crew at one time, had ice-cold beer on tap, and served the best yakitori in all of Shinumura ward. Plus, ducking under the vertical cloth curtain half covering the entrance and being met with Master’s baritone “irasshaimase” always made him feel like a character in an Altan Altair novel. There was a reason that he had chosen the trilby as his translator’s hat.

“Feeling better?” Taki asked, in between neat, little bites of her skewered pork.

“Hmm,” Iskander said, through a mouthful of his cultured poultry.

When the meal was first served—after the compulsory clasped palms and “itadakimasu”—Taki unwrapped a pair of chopsticks with quiet ceremony and deftly slid half the cubes of pork off the skewer and onto the ornate, crackle-glazed turquoise platter. Far less skillfully, Iskander did the same with his chicken. Eating at Yarakucho’s was one of the rare times that he allowed himself to eat pork, but he never ordered it himself, instead relying on Taki to share. It’s not like it was even real pig meat, he reasoned. All the meat eaten onboard was vat grown. Even still, the imams had gotten together and decreed, what is haram is haram, ya ibni.

Master, the izakaya’s sole bartender who also did double duty as its lone chef, leaned against the bar. He cocked an eyebrow at Iskander who was caught, chopsticks poised, with a piece of succulent pork on its way from platter to mouth. The eyebrow asked, Enjoying your meal? Iskander, by now chewing enthusiastically, replied with a smile and a quick-fire head bob. Translation was all about communication after all, even nonverbal. After the din at the livehouse, Iskander was glad to bask in the relative quiet of Yarakucho’s. It was just before nine chimes and the little eatery was almost empty. Those crew not already on watch were probably at home recovering.

“So,” Iskander said, “I liked Miko, Sara, and Honoka.”

Actually, he had barely gotten to speak to them. Miko—or at least, he was pretty sure it was Miko—had ruthlessly used his translator’s credentials to get them into the livehouse, imaginatively called Electro, and after that the volume of the music precluded much chitchat.

“They liked you,” Taki returned. “They especially liked that your crew ID meant we didn’t have to wait in line.”

“Do you think they’re still there?”

When Iskander and Taki left, Miko, Sara, and Honoka remained on the dance floor, surrounded by admirers.

Taki checked her grandfather’s watch. “Maybe. They have third watch today.”

“You and I,” he reminded her, “are on second.”

“Tired?” she asked him with a sympathetic smile.

“Actually,” he said, “I feel a second wind coming on.”

The yakitori had revived him. Iskander leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. He was full. More than full, actually. Master’s yakitori really was something else.

“I forgot to ask,” Taki said, nibbling on her last skewer. “What were you doing down in Stasis yesterday?”

“Oh, um, asking Lebanon for a favor.”

“Not visiting your ancestor?”

Iskander shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, we did that, too.”

“I went with my mother and aunts to visit ours after watch.”

“What was that like?”

“Oh, you know, bells and chanting, same as every year.”

“Tell me you wore a yukata,” Iskander begged. The yukata was a traditional cotton kimono, usually multicolored, worn on Obon. It wasn’t just Nihon that Iskander was learning—you can’t learn a language without learning a culture. Taki glared at him, but he could tell she was blushing. “Oh, please tell me there are pictures.”

Taki slapped his hand playfully. “And what do Muslims wear for Eid al-Agdad?”

“Oh, no special clothing exactly. No dances or bells, either. There are gifts for the kids—new clothes and sweets—and a special prayer at the mosque and then everyone heads down to Stasis.”

After she added her last skewer to the pile, Taki grabbed a couple of hand wipes from the bar and shared them around. Iskander wiped the grease from his fingers. Never moving faster than necessary, Master retrieved the empty plates and accepted their “gochisousama” with a magnanimous wave of the hand.

“Fancy another beer?” Iskander asked.

Taki raised an eyebrow at him. “Weren’t you just complaining about second watch?”

“If you’re going to be drunk on watch,” Iskander informed her grandly, “you might as well be thoroughly drunk.”

Taki nodded and tried not to wince as Iskander ordered two beers in his halting Nihon. Master listened to his request seriously and responded with a gratifying “aiyo” before placing two fresh beers in front of them, served in frosted glasses, not plastic bulbs. That was another reason Iskander loved Yarakucho’s. He toasted “Kanpai!” with Taki and took a long pull. Over their drinks, Taki told him about a book her mother owned—an actual physical book—which told the exact same story as the one the goze had been singing earlier. Only in her mother’s book, Princess Kuzunoha got a happy ending—seeing her husband and son again.

“I think I preferred the book ending,” Taki said.

Iskander told her how the root of book in Arabek was related to the idea of setting things in rows, not just lines on a page but also books on a shelf. He explained how the word for write was also the same word for foreordain, so, in Arabek, instead of saying something is fated or destined, you say, “It is written.”

Taki leaned over and kissed him full on the lips. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“There’s a cat looking at me,” Iskander complained.

Taki finished expertly rolling her joint and put it to her lips. She lit it with what could only be described as a Taki-esque flourish and then inhaled.

“Hmm?”

“I said, there’s a cat looking at me.”

From the comfort of the oversized bed, Iskander gestured to the closed doorway and the cat in question. Fat. Black and white. Yellow eyes and a little goblin face. The cat stared at Iskander with a distinct air of befuddlement.

Taki blew out a plume of smoke then glanced at the cat in question. “Nante kawai.”

It had been Taki’s turn to pick the love hotel. Unlike Iskander, who favored returning to the same one or two staples and even the same rooms, Taki always chose a new space to explore. This time, she had picked a midsize indie in Shinumura ward, a short walk from Yarakucho’s. Her choice had a unique gimmick—cats. Gangs of them roamed the love hotel’s hallways unsupervised and the door to every suite contained a little cat flap allowing the little beasts to enter and exit at will. Patrons could choose to lock the cat flap to keep them out, but that would totally negate the point of checking into the Safina’s one and only cat love hotel.

“Neko-chan oide,” Taki said in her singsong Nihon.

“Come here, cat,” Iskander translated to himself. Or here, kitty-kitty. His Nihon was definitely improving. One of these days he might even learn enough kanji to be able to read. Responding to her summons, the cat slinked into the bedroom like he owned the place and meowed imperiously.

Taki was half sitting, half lying on the big bed. Her long dark hair, unbound, coiled around her back and shoulders like a cloak. She had put her underwear back on, and was curled around a glass ashtray that was, like everything else in the room, just a shade on the wrong side of ostentatious. The room was, of course, cat themed. Iskander glanced at the mural on the wall opposite. A big striped cat—it was called a nimr in Arabek, but he couldn’t think of either the Inglez or Nihon word—glanced at him with a knowing look on its face through the branches of a tree. Or maybe he was anthropomorphizing it? Taki took another toke and then sightlessly handed the joint off to Iskander, pushing the cat-faced ashtray toward him with her other hand.

“Koko ni kite,” Taki said, holding out one hand to the cat. Come here. The cat promptly jumped onto the bed and butted his head against the back of her hand.

“I’m going to call you Max-chan,” Taki announced.

Max Tanaka was one of her favorite comedians. A master of the one-liner, he was always dressed in a shabby, old Earth tuxedo. Black and white, just like the cat. He was universally loathed by the translators, many of whom would have quite liked to adopt the tuxedo for themselves. Iskander took two inexpert puffs of the joint. Held them in. And let them out.

“Are you sure?” Iskander asked. “That cat is funny looking.”

Max-chan’s purr cut a buzzsaw through the room. As Taki ran a Maintenance-rough hand through his fur, the cat regarded Iskander smugly through half-lidded eyes. Like everybody else in Miyako berth, Taki was cat mad. She had shown him pictures on her tab of her family’s two cats: Momo-chan, a fat orange monster with a stub-tail, and a younger sleek black female she had named Kage-chan. He hadn’t met either of them. He had never been to her home, a split-level in Nakatomi ward where she lived with the rest of her family. Had never knocked on her door to spontaneously invite her out for a coffee or a trip to one of the viewing lounges. Had never endured her younger brother’s adolescent ribbing. Or her grandmother’s stories of her grandmother’s stories of the days before the Compact. The Disaccord. The First Crew cutting out their neural implants. Captain Aydin and his mass floatings. And you never will, he imagined Max-chan telling him. Iskander met the cat’s startling yellow eyes as he basked in Taki’s attention. Not unless you change something. Iskander wasn’t really one for self-reflection. But today, on Launch Day, two hundred years since his ancestors had boarded this ship, two hundred years until his descendants, if he even had any, would step off it, he looked inside himself, grubbing for insight.

No, Max-chan said, you have never met any of Taki’s family. Until yesterday, she had never met any of yours. Your months-long relationship has taken place exclusively in public places where neither of you are likely to run into anyone you know and anonymous private rooms like this one. And that’s how things will stay until the inevitable breakup. Because that’s how this ends, Iskander. That’s how this always ends. Unless you change something. Stop worrying about what everyone expects from you.

But Iskander was worried. He had already disappointed everyone enough by refusing to join Environmental. He knew that the family viewed it as rejection. But Translation was just where he fit best. He liked learning languages. He liked helping crew deal with Admin. He liked being the first one to tell his clients congratulations on their new berth, new watch, new family. And one day, if he could just make it through, he might even do some long-lasting good for the crew.

What do you actually want? Max-chan asked. And what are you willing to sacrifice to get it?

Iskander wanted what everyone wanted. To be happy. To be a success. He might be falling short on the professional front these days, but being with Taki did make him happy.

Iskander took a fortifying breath. “Taki?”

She turned to face him. The mattress was an astral field between them. “Iskander?”

“About earlier. What you said in Stasis…”

“Yes?”

“About us agreeing to keep this casual?”

“Yes?”

“This…” he trailed off. “You know there’s no Arabek word for casual? I mean, you could say something is accidental or occasional or comfortable. But if you asked me to translate ‘casual’ into Arabek, I’d just use the Inglez loanword. Because there’s no single word that encompasses what that means. That’s not to say it’s untranslatable. I mean, no word is untranslatable. Actually, if you think about it—”

Taki put her hand over his mouth.

“Say what you’re trying to say,” she told him. Her eyes were pinpricks of light.

Iskander felt a moment of regret. It’s not like Taki had been demanding to make anything public, issuing stipulations or ultimatums. Sure, she had asked him to spend Launch with her and her friends. But that was a spur-of-the-moment thing. It’s not like she had invited him to meet her family. Maybe she did want to keep things casual. Iskander took a breath.

“You and me,” he said, finally. “This isn’t casual to me. I don’t want it to be.”

“Me neither,” Taki said, and he leaned in to kiss her.

Taki emerged from the bathroom, belting the love hotel’s complimentary fluffy white robe around herself. She had taken a quick shower—they had splurged for the extra water, after all—and was now taking down her still-dry hair—they hadn’t splurged that much. Max-chan had long fled, outraged by what he was witnessing.

“Na’eeman,” Iskander greeted her in Arabek.

“What?”

“I guess you haven’t covered that in class yet.”

Taki shook her head. “Something about… smoothness?”

“Looking smooth,” Iskander translated. “A traditional greeting for someone who has just exited the shower.”

Taki laughed and plopped herself down on the bed next to him. “Arabek has a greeting for everything.”

“Oh, you can use it for someone who has just had a haircut as well.”

“What’s the response?” Taki asked. For every traditional Arabek call, there was an even more traditional response.

“Allah yan’am alaik,” Iskander said. May God smooth it for you, too.

“Oh, you guys love you some God invocations,” Taki said.

She was right. In Arabek, everything was Allah this and Allah that. How are you doing? Praise be to God. Are we meeting later? God willing. Is your partner ill? May God preserve them. Heck, you couldn’t even say goodbye to someone without asking God to go with them and they couldn’t say goodbye to you without asking God to remain. It was no wonder the Feda’eyes were so powerful in Fustat berth. Their whole shtick was religious. Taki crossed her feet over Iskander’s and rested her head against his bare shoulder.

“God forgive you,” Iskander said in a pious tone. He felt her laugh against him.

“So, your cousin seemed nice,” she said.

“Leb’s alright,” Iskander said. “He wouldn’t shut up about you, though.”

“Oh?”

“He was very excited to hear about how we met. He kept threatening to report me to Admin Conduct for having an improper relationship with a student.”

“Are we having an improper relationship?” Taki asked, mock alarmed.

“No,” Iskander assured her. He’d checked the standing orders himself. “I’m not your teacher anymore, am I?”

Taki turned over to face him. “Oh, you’d like it if you were, wouldn’t you, Ezz-sensei? Would you like to assign me some homework? And what would you do if I failed to complete it?” Her voice turned sly. “For someone who speaks Inglez so well, you don’t seem to have much to say, Translator.” She slowly walked two of her fingers up his arm and over his chest.

“You’re always leaving me speechless,” Iskander countered. “So… do you want to do something next week?”

“Oh?” Taki’s fingers teasingly walked down Iskander’s chest. He grabbed her hand.

“Not that. Well, not just that. I was going to say that we usually have family dinner every Thursday night. All the Ezzes. Or at least, all the Ezzes who are off duty. Do you want to come?”

Taki stuck a tongue in her cheek, her thinking face. “You’re inviting me to dinner?”

“Right.”

“To meet your family?”

“Right. There will be lots of fatty Fustat food. And lots of loud Fustat crew. And probably everybody will make a fuss. But I don’t—”

“Yes,” Taki said. “I’d love to.”

“Ahmed Abdeen?”

Iskander scowled in thought and looked around the room. From this angle, the tiger—that was the word!—looked like he was winking lewdly at him.

“Maintenance? Big guy? Bald? Beard?”

“You got it,” Taki told him.

Ahmed Abdeen was a little bit older than him. He had been a few years ahead at the Academy. He was a pretty good power forward, great on the rebound, but Iskander doubted that Taki would be interested in his prowess on the handball court.

“I’ve never heard anything bad about him,” Iskander said. “Quiet guy. Married. One kid. A daughter. Religious type. I don’t think he’s officially a Feda’ey or anything, but he’s certainly a supporter and not shy about flaunting it. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be sporting that taqlidi beard.”

“What kind of beard?” Taki asked him curiously. She was sitting across from him in bed, safely ensconced in the fluffy love hotel bathrobe.

“You ever see guys with a long beard but no mustache? That kind of beard. Anyone with a beard like that is not afraid of the deen label.”

“Anything else?”

Iskander dredged through his memory.

“When we were in Academy, Ahmed got into a massive fistfight with Mustafa Matar that lasted an entire break time and only ended when he broke one of Mustafa’s arms. I was there. I remember the crack.”

“And?” Taki asked.

Iskander laughed. “Apparently, they are still telling stories about it. A few months ago, Rose asked me if it was true that one boy cut off another’s arm with a knife while I was in school.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said it wasn’t just a knife, more like a sword.”

Taki laughed. “Alright,” she declared, satisfied. “Your turn.”

“Yukio Tanaka,” Iskander offered. Taki tilted her head slightly, regarding him without expression. “She’s a translator.”

“Shiranai,” Taki told him. I don’t know.

Iskander racked his brain. He felt like Taki was getting a lot more out of this exercise than he was. Whenever two strangers met on the Safina, sooner or later they would sit down and try to work out who they knew in common. Now, he and Taki had refined that old game and used it to swap confidences. All those well-worn stories that you could never outrun, not on a ship like the Safina. But Taki had the advantage. There were lots of crew in Fustat, although not necessarily from Tagammu Nine, who worked with her in Maintenance. That’s why she was learning Arabek, after all.

“Tomoe Yarikawa?” he tried again. Taki gave him a look and fiddled with the bathrobe’s belt. “She’s a clerk in Human Resources.”

“Iskander, how many Admins do you think I know?”

The answer was one. A neighbor. Iskander had already asked Taki about him, and frankly, the information she provided hadn’t been very useful. So, Kenzo Fukuhara loved green pickles and had proposed to his wife at Umeda Plaza. So what?

“Master, no first or last name.”

“Good one,” she acknowledged. “But I don’t have much to say about him.”

“I’m listening.”

“Master,” she said, “showed up one day out of the blue and opened that izakaya. He’s not from Shinumura ward. Nobody knows what ward he’s from, actually. I’ve heard rumors that he’s former Gokudo. And I’ve heard rumors that he’s a disgraced Admin. The reality is probably a lot less exciting.”

So, either an Admin or a gangster? Iskander tried and failed to remember if he had ever seen Master’s forearms. The Gokudo covered their members in tattoos. Dragons and demons and skulls.

“Have you ever heard him speak Inglez?” Iskander asked.

Suddenly the lights in the room went out.

“Blackout,” Taki stated.

“Oh, whatever are we going to do without power? Wait,” Iskander said, “I have an idea.”

Taki and Iskander exited the small elevator hand in hand. Thankfully the blackout had only lasted a few hours. Otherwise, they would have faced a hard climb back up to berth level. They separated outside Daitoshi Central Station, Iskander heading for the cross-berth to Admin Deck, Taki for the inter-berth back to Nakatomi.

“See you tomorrow after watch?”

“I’ll see you then,” Taki said. She kissed him softly on the cheek and sauntered away, confident that his eyes would follow her down the corridor.

“Hey!” Iskander exclaimed. A few short meters away, Taki turned around. “You’re wearing my hat!”

Taki laughed and slapped a hand over her face before returning to Iskander’s side. He plucked his trilby from Taki’s head and put it on his own.

“Are you trying to steal my hat, Taki?” he asked her in Nihon.

“You caught me, this was all a ruse to steal your precious trilby.”

Iskander kissed her again. Deeply. I love you, he thought.

“I’ll see you later,” he said in Nihon.

Taking the escalator up to his hyperlink, Iskander didn’t even try to keep the smile off his face.

EIGHT Badreddine/Zhang San

The colonists in our hold will be our destruction. They are our species’ shame, our collective guilt. They are our crew’s demise, our civilization’s destruction. What happened before will happen again when we reach Hurriya. Unless we agree to a new Compact and wake them up here and now and teach them better.

—A FEAST FOR THE DEAD BY SELIN DEVRIM

Does this hurt?” the medtech asked, poking at his wound.

The answer: Yes, obviously.

They were in one of Badreddine’s safe houses in Tagammu Two and the medtech was changing the bandage on his shoulder for a third time. Thankfully, the bullet had passed clean through, so there was nothing to do but wait and heal and plan.

“I’ve survived worse,” Badreddine told him.

The medtech was Marrakesh Green, boy genius. Kesh was one of the illegals that Badreddine had shepherded through Placements and onto crew proper. While most in that position ended up working lowly watches—Sanitation or Recycling—Kesh had managed to brute-force his way into Medical. The boy had the brains for it, certainly, and Badreddine had provided the education and connections. Now, Medtech Green was one of his best sources of black-market chem. The same chem that he traded for the distilled water he used to power his hydroponics farm, which, in turn, produced the fruit and veg he paid his workers in. On the Safina, wasta was a way of life, and Badreddine was a master of it.

Kesh applied a new bandage to his shoulder, and Badreddine could feel as it began to electrically stimulate the wound. It tickled. At this rate, he would be whole and hale by the end of the week with nothing more than a new scar to add to his collection.

“I’m leaving some antibiotics and painkillers for you as well,” Kesh said.

“Painkillers?” Badreddine said. “I don’t mind the pain, boyo. Reminds me I’m still alive.”

He paid the boy off in fresh produce—apples and strawberries—and then stretched out on the lumpy couch. Who the hell had furnished this place, anyway? As usual, Badreddine’s mind was full of plans and backup plans and backup backup plans. The Vory wanted to try and take him out, did they? Move on Fustat berth, bring their drugs and whores and protection rackets here? Well, they’d soon understand just what a big mistake they had made. They wanted to start their war by killing the man who had ended the last one. But they had botched the job. And now they would pay.

Badreddine was slowly coming to a decision. No, not a decision. A resolution. He had reached a similar one while sitting on another uncomfortable couch more than twenty years ago after surviving a Vory attack that had come a whole lot closer to killing him than this one. Back then, he had been the big man over in Ziyou berth, number two in the Yan Lei, with an army of corridor killers at his back. The Vory used the ship-wide Bread Riots to make their move on the Three Harmonies Society—Triad was an Admin word—operating out of Malacca berth and take over their gambling dens. Badreddine had been picking up that week’s take when they attacked. He barely escaped with his life. A few of his men had not escaped with theirs. And that very night, with the bullet still in him, he decided it was time to get out, retire from the Threes, return to Fustat berth, and revive Selin Devrim’s dream. Admin might have liked to believe that the Haraka died with her, but they were wrong. You could destroy an organization, kill or arrest its members, but an idea was a lot more pernicious. Badreddine knew that all he had to do was spread the word and keep the faith.

Of course, leaving the Three Harmonies Society was not like changing watches, and first there had been a war to win. So, they retook Malacca. And then went after the Vory’s holdings in Zanj berth. Badreddine—Zhang San then—had killed any number of top Vors with his own two hands. He stabbed Koba in the eye outside a Zanj berth brothel. He garroted Ivan Mehdiyev in a Damask casino back room and left him hanging from the rafters for his compatriots to find. After a bloody two weeks, with casualties mounting on both sides and Security threatening reprisals, the Vory and Threes finally agreed to a truce. A truce that had held, until now.

Only this time it was the Threes who broke it, and not just any faction, the Yan Lei themselves. Why hadn’t they warned him that they were about to restart hostilities? Well, he knew the answer to that question. His adopted brother, now head of the Yan Lei, resented him leaving, especially to restart a political movement that he fundamentally disagreed with. Ancestor worship was de riguer among the Threes. The idea of waking the ancestors now? Sacrilege! Still, Badreddine had taken off the Zhang San persona like an old suit that didn’t fit anymore, returning to the quiet of Fustat berth, where he reclaimed his name and made his creds as harmlessly as possible. He began republishing Selin Devrim’s outlawed texts. He commissioned a doc about her life and made financial donations to up-and-coming naibs to support Devrim’s Referendum. He made a place in Tagammu Two for all the youngers to come and argue and dream. A place for all those born outside of Admin’s control, with their made-up color surnames—Brown, White, Zarqa, Kohli—to call home. And then he advised them to register, take their Placements, join the crew, stand a watch, and wait. Their time was coming. There were hundreds of Okays and Zains across the ship, thousands of them. There was a whole underclass of people ready to rise up. Badreddine had been one of them, and now he was their champion.

And the maddest thing of all was that it was working. It was actually working. The crew started talking about Selin Devrim again, arguing about her referendum and questioning whether keeping all those ancestors, who were not really ancestors at all, in cryostasis was worth the cost. They started reading her words and writing their own. The spoiled daughters of crew chiefs began graffitiing Devrimite slogans on walls under the cover of third watch. Badreddine felt like he had brought her back to life again. And then some Thief-in-Law who was too young to grow a proper beard had stepped out of a doorway and tried to shoot him in the chest.

As Badreddine drifted off to sleep, his thoughts turned to Selin Devrim and those long-ago days, those bright revolution days when anything seemed possible, and he thought that he would live forever.

Selin Devrim is standing in the center of the viewing lounge. She is short, she is young, she is a twenty-four-year-old crew in Factory blue with revolution in her eyes. Behind her, a category-three gas giant is reflected in the viewing glass, a constellation of Exploration ships descending on it and its moons like a plague of locusts. But, for once, nobody is looking out of the window. Every eye is focused on Devrim. Every mind is focused on change.

Her words have gathered them all here. Tabula Rasa was just the start. Feast for the Dead followed. Then Kill the Past and Hurriya Means Freedom. Each pamphlet more incendiary than the last. She is no longer just writing about the threat the colonists pose—a Network Empire fifth column in their midst. Now, she is talking about overthrowing Administration and initiating a new Compact, forcibly waking the colonists here and now and instituting a new era of crew and cooperation. Down with Watch Allocation! Down with Human Resources! Let the crew work whichever watches they want, marry whichever partners they want, and have as many children as they want. Her words have been shared across all the berths, translated from Inglez into Arabek, Nihon, Russ, and every other lingua on the ship. When Admin eventually moved to ban her work, it only made it more popular. Selin Devrim’s message has been heard from bow to stern, and now, finally, after years of preparation, she is issuing her call to action.

“Admin says register and join the crew? What is this crew but slaves of a dead Empire? Human machinery to ensure the continuation of the colonists and their dead culture?”

In her writings, she always calls them colonists. Never ancestors. The twenty-five-year census is approaching and tensions are high. She knows that now is the perfect time to strike.

“And what about our culture of crew and cooperation?” she asks rhetorically, flicking a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. “Will we allow our descendants to be their slaves, ground under the heel of a new Network Empire? Grist for the mill of their unearned new beginning? Or will we, my comrades, my coves, finally do something about it? A new Compact. A new Administration. A new age of the Safina.”

The room is filled with people. Many, like Badreddine, were born outside of Administration’s control. Badreddine’s birth was never registered with Admin. Nor his father’s birth. He is a second-generation gharib and proud of it. So far as Admin is concerned, the fifteen-year-old boy does not exist. But he could. The annual census is coming up. He could register, join a watch, measure out the rest of his life in watch-stands, receive the base allotment of 2k a day in calories issued to every crew. But he is not interested in any of that. He has found his place in the midst of this brewing revolution. He sees his comrades in the crowd arrayed around Selin Devrim. Her lover Ahmet Usul is closest. Leila Moon, her hand out of sight, no doubt gripping a weapon of some kind, is covering their blindside. Selin has already survived one assassination attempt. Leila is dedicated to making sure that there will not be another one. Across from them Marwan Bleda and Nikita Solomin, also armed, also ready. And nearest the exit, Badreddine himself backed up by Ishak Anwar. If the redjackets were to raid them now, it would be the end of the revolution.

“Tomorrow,” Selin Devrim announces, looking straight down the camera lens, “I am calling a halt to all nonessential work on the ship. A general Down Tools. My call is backed by the Kommunists in Novy Oblast and Birshahr. The Ishtirakis in Fustat, Damask, and Koutobia. The Zendistas in Linda Cidade. The Dervish in Birshahr and Sehrimiz. We will stand no more watches until Admin agrees to renegotiate our standing orders. Comrades, tomorrow marks the start of a new Safina.”

The crowd roars its approval. Finally, finally it is happening! And this time things will be different. It won’t be like the October 9 Uprising. Or the Factory Rebellion of 88. Or the Orhan Intifada. No, this time they will really succeed. By the end of the day, the recording will have been played twice as many times as there are registered crew on the ship. Devrim raises a revolutionary fist to the crowd. The camera captures her face, full of resolve, full of life.

She has less than one month to live.

They had many names. The New Lotus. The Mutual Aid Brotherhood. The Three Harmonies Society. But to most, they were known simply as the Triad. As a secret society, they were a complete failure. Everyone knew about them—that was the point. But everybody had heard a different story. They’re a religious order awaiting the returning of some Buddha. Buddha? No, man, are you crazy? They’re not Buddhists. How could they be Buddhists when their first leader said he was Eissa the Nazarene’s brother? No, they don’t have anything to do with religion, they’re a political faction fomenting rebellion. Rebellion? No way, they’re in league with Admin. Don’t you know that half the redjackets on the ship are on their payroll?

Badreddine knew the truth. The Three Harmonies Society was not one group; they were dozens, hundreds. Coalitions. Syndicates. Chains of reciprocal obligation and mutual profit. And, most importantly, anybody could be a member. The guy serving your food. The maintech sitting next to you on the link. Even the redjacket checking your crew ID or the Admin clerk issuing it. The Threes were connected to everything and everyone. That was their strength. It was a different kind of strength from the Vory in Novy Oblast or the Gokudo in Miyako berth. The members of those organizations didn’t register with Admin, stand watches, or toil away on the decks. Plus, even the doziest redjacket could spot one of them in an eyeblink thanks to the tattoos they covered themselves in. As for the Three Harmonies, they had made themselves indispensable to the smooth running of the ship. And that, Badreddine thought coolly as he lined up to exit Fustat berth, was not just the Three Harmonies’ greatest strength, it was also Admin’s greatest weakness.

“Crew ID,” the burly mustachioed redjacket asked him. He had been lazily manning the checkpoint outside of Grand Salam Central, waving crew through with barely a glance, when he recognized Badreddine with a visible start.

“Here you go, sir,” Badreddine said meekly, tapping his crew wristband to the reader.

“Stastech Yahya Zabia?” the redjacket asked him, one eyebrow raised in consternation. He glanced down at Badreddine’s green scrubs as if to ask, Are you fucking kidding me?

“That’s me,” Badreddine confirmed with a toothy smile.

The other eyebrow joined the first, and the redjacket leaned in close to whisper, “Are you sure you want to be leaving the berth today? Aren’t the Vory still gunning for you?”

The answer was yes. The Vory had sent a four-man team into Koutobia berth to kill him. Badreddine had been lucky to escape with just a bullet in the shoulder. The four Thieves-in-Law had not escaped at all thanks to some quick work by Okay and Zain and the combat drugs they were trialing. Medtech Marrakesh Green was proving to be a sound investment. Badreddine had his attackers’ bodies spaced, but not before he removed their hands and sent them back to Novy Oblast with a message: “Esta que you get quando you try for moi.” The Vory had not been cowed. They sent back a message of their own: “Nanti fash, we have mucho coves to spare.” Badreddine wondered if the redjacket was actually worried about his safety. Or, more likely, worried that his pay packet would be a few credits light if something were to happen to him off-berth. Badreddine just looked at him blankly, not challenging, but not backing down, either. Do you think you are in any position to tell me where I can and cannot go, the look said.

The Security cohort assigned to Fustat were from Sehrimiz berth, so they understood the meaning of wasta even if they called it by another name. But they were nearing the end of their rotation and the word coming down from Watch Allocation was that the next Security cohort would be from Miyako. Admin didn’t allow Security to guard their own berths. Not anymore. Miyako berthers would be much more difficult to subvert. Badreddine certainly wouldn’t be able to suborn them the way he had this lot. By now, more than half the Sehrimiz redjackets were on his payroll. Even those who were not actively participating in his smuggling and black-market operations were turning a blind eye to those who were. All that would change by the end of the year. Luckily, Fustat’s redjackets had at least another two years guarding Ziyou. It had cost Badreddine tens of thousands of creds in baksheesh to set that one up, although he had made hundreds of thousands of credits back in profit.

The redjacket, a sergeant with a mild vellocet habit, glared at Badreddine, and then waved him through impatiently. “Be careful out there.”

Oh, Badreddine intended to be careful. That’s why Okay had already passed through the checkpoint, and Zain was waiting in the queue behind him. The combat drugs the twins had started using, some old Network Empire tech Kesh had unearthed, were something else. Sometimes it paid to take a leaf out of your enemy’s book. First, he needed to deal with the Vory. The colonists would come later.

“We’re getting preliminary numbers that at least a fifth of first watch didn’t show up this morning,” Ahmet Usul says. His voice is excited. “Including Environmental and Engineering.”

“Yesssss!” Nikita Solomin exclaims, making a fist.

Publicly, they have called for essential crew to remain at their posts. Privately, they have let it be known that the more people join the Down Tools, especially from key watches, the quicker they will be able to drag Captain Tavares to the negotiating table. Still, Selin Devrim shrugs. A fifth? A fifth will not be nearly enough. The ship can continue functioning for months, years even, at that capacity.

“We need to speak to Dimitri,” she says. “The Kommunists need to do more to convince their workers to stay home.”

Dimitri Vasileyev is the leader of the Kommunists. An old manufactor, he’s content to let Selin Devrim be the face of this uprising. They all are. Selin Devrim is the one whose writings have stirred up the crew. She is the one Admin is trying so hard to silence.

“This is just the start,” Badreddine says. “The longer it goes on, the more people will join our side.”

“I’m not so sure about that, boyo,” she answers. “I think the longer things go on, the more people will grow frustrated and abandon us. We need a quick victory, here and now, before the ship is back in warp.”

“What do you want to do?” Ahmet asks her.

“We need the crew to do more than just not show up,” Selin Devrim decides. “Ask the Karls to organize picket lines. We need to let Admin know that we are not just going to stay at home and do nothing.”

It is a snap decision, impulsive and made on instinct, the same way Selin Devrim makes all her choices. Little does she know that it is this decision that will cost her her life. Less than a week later, six agrotechs from Miyako berth attempting to push through the picket lines to head on watch are crushed to death in a melee between Security and the picketers on Agriculture deck. A video shows the picketers fighting with Security before the incident, throwing bricks and chanting “scab, scab, scab!” at the waiting watch-standers. It is that incident which prompts Admin to pass Administrative Order No. 5, better known as AO-5. Two letters and one number and the revolution is over. Now, it’s a Riot.

It was strange, Badreddine mused, how different berths took on the characteristics of the crew who lived in them. Or maybe it was the other way around? Maybe crew slowly assumed the characteristics of their berths. For Badreddine, Ziyou berthers were a clear corollary for the mazy corridors and twisty warrens of their home berth. Ziyou’s towers—“mansions” as residents called them—were iconic, comprising labyrinthine layers of apartment complexes, malls, temples, cafés, casinos, restaurants, shops, brothels, libraries, mah-jongg parlors, and anything and everything else you could conceive. There was even a zoo, displaying the descendants of old Earth animals—lions, tigers, and bears, oh my—to the descendants of old Earth humans. In Ziyou berth, they didn’t build outward, but upward. And over his long years, Badreddine had seen Z-berth rise and rise.

But despite all the changes, one thing remained the same. Getting from A to B was never as simple as that. And so, to get to the Viewing Lounge on C-deck 27, you didn’t take the elevator to the 27th floor and walk the rest of the way. No, that would be too easy. Instead, you took the elevator to the 28th, walked to the end of B-deck and took the stairs down. After the riots, Badreddine had spent long years living within these changeable corridors and he knew every treacherous twist and turn. It was no coincidence that since he returned to Fustat and set up base in Tagammu Two, it was increasingly coming to resemble Z-berth.

“It’s this way,” he told Okay, nodding his head in the direction he wanted to go but conspicuously letting her take the lead. Between the two siblings, there was no safer place on the Safina. Badreddine knew that they each had one hand on a pistol grip and, juiced on Kesh’s latest concoction, could bring those pistolas to bear in a blink. He had seen them do it. Not that he was really expecting trouble. Not here, anyway. Z-berth was Three Harmonies territory. It would be suicide for any Vory to step foot on this berth.

Okay led them around and around until they reached their destination, an unassuming viewing lounge, deserted except for the army of Threes waiting inside. And in the midst of that army, Xiao Wu, leader of the Yan Lei and Badreddine’s adopted brother.

“Good to see you, gege,” he greeted Badreddine.

Wu might have still called Badreddine “honored elder brother” but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t gut him and leave his body hanging from the rafters under the right set of circumstances. Xiao Wu was the leader of one of the most powerful Three Harmonies groups on the ship. He did not accumulate all that power by being overly sentimental.

“And you, my brother,” Zhang San replied in Canto. That is who he was here, who he had to be. Zhang San, the legendary corridor killer. The man who had won a war and then headed out on his own. He wasn’t retired. You couldn’t just leave the Three Harmonies. So far as Xiao Wu and the rest were concerned, Badreddine had left to set up his own group. To them, the Haraka was just another faction, albeit one with questionable politics, and this was a meeting between boss and underboss.

Badreddine remembered the first time he saw Wu. It was just a few weeks after they had floated Selin Devrim and he was hungry, hunted, heartbroken. He was hiding in Z-berth, trying to summon the courage to put the penny-ante pistola that he used to carry back then to his temple and pull the trigger, when a contact sold him out. A dart in the neck, and he had awoken tied and gagged on a dirty backroom floor. A stocky youth with a cigarette poking out of his mouth grinned down at him. Not the most auspicious of first meetings.

When the gag had finally been removed from Badreddine’s mouth, he let them have it. Sellouts. Traitors. The Threes, powerful as they were, had done nothing to aid Devrim’s Revolt, had sat back and watched while Security arrested and executed them.

“Kill me,” he remembered saying. “Kill me and get it over with.”

He had not expected Fang Wu to chuckle and tell him that Devrim’s Revolt had been destined to fail. He certainly had not expected the elder Wu to offer to teach him why, sponsoring his membership to the Three Harmonies Society, and later, even taking him into his own household and educating him alongside his son.

Badreddine was a fast learner. Less than three years later, he was kneeling on the floor next to that same stocky youth as they bowed before the statue of a scowling Guan Yu and swore the thirty-seven oaths of an ordained Three. I accept death by myriad swords if I should betray my sworn brothers. I accept death by five thunderbolts if I should reveal Three Harmonies signs and signals to outsiders. I accept death by five dirty needles if I refuse to shelter a sworn brother against Administration, no matter his crime. And that was the end of Badreddine Bishara, at least for a little while. After Fang Wu’s death, when Xiao Wu stepped into his father’s shoes and took over the Yan Lei, Zhang San had been his right hand.

“So, how goes the war?” he asked.

“I could ask you the same thing, gege.”

“I’ll live,” Zhang San assured him.

“I’m glad,” Xiao Wu said, reaching out a hand to touch his arm. This was the closest Badreddine would get to an apology. The San Chu could not afford to be viewed as weak.

Xiao Wu invited him to sit at one of the low tables, walking around slowly to take the only other mat. Zhang San glanced around the viewing lounge. Naturally, the viewing panels were closed; the Safina was still in warp and would be for many months more. As a young man, he had observed what space looked like through the warp bubble that surrounded the ship, light redshifting one way, blueshifting the other. It had caused him to expel the contents of his stomach and be unsteady on his feet for the next week. Of course, for one in every thousand or so crew, the shift was intoxicating. Better than the vell or drencrom or any of the other chemical delights that the Three Harmonies cooked up in their labs.

“Tea?” Wu offered. He was flanked by two of his men. Young. New blood. One of them was carrying a kettle, and Badreddine did an exaggerated double take when his gaze landed on the other.

“Zhizi, is that you?”

“Don’t you recognize me, Uncle?” Lin Wu asked him.

The answer was yes, of course. He had seen his nephew just a few days ago, but neither of them wanted Xiao Wu to know that. Currents and riptides. Plans and counterplans. Luckily Badreddine had left Zain and Okay outside, guarding the door. They might have given the game away. Lin Wu was wearing the pristine white of an Admin clerk, but had his hair slicked back like a corridor killer. An Admin and a Three, the best of both ships.

“Leon!” Badreddine greeted him, rising to pull the boy into a hug. “Look at you all dressed in white.”

“These uniforms are costing me a fortune in dry-cleaning,” the young clerk quipped.

“Ahem,” Wu interrupted their reunion. Leon shrugged off his smile, replacing it with Three Harmonies tranquility.

“Tea?” his adopted nephew offered with a bow.

“Please,” Zhang San answered, retaking his seat.

Leon picked up the clay teapot and decorously poured out two steaming mugs of the disgusting boiled leaves they favored in Ziyou. Badreddine would have preferred coffee, but ceremony was important on occasions such as this. He picked up the cup carefully with three fingers, saluted both the elder Wu and the younger Wu, and threw the drink back, doing his best not to taste it as it went down. Yuck.

“Wonderful,” he praised.

Wu, grasping his own steaming mug in the same way, took a slow sip and smiled. He knew that his adopted brother hated the drink. After he replaced the mug on the table, Wu gestured to Leon again, who produced a bottle of vodka and two tumblers.

“How about we have a real drink, gege?”

“Now you’re talking, didi.”

After toasting ganbei, and slugging back the vodka, the two men caught up. Their conversation was full of “do you remember when” and “whatever happened to” and “kids these days.” They could have been any two old geezers, if you ignored all the firepower in the room. Wu was reminiscing about a Miyako-berth courtesan that a young Zhang San had been half in love with and Badreddine thought it felt like just yesterday. A lot of days felt like just yesterday to him.

“And father,” Wu said, tears in his eyes, “was worried that you were going to defect to the Gokudo, because you were spending so much time in Miyako.”

“Yes,” he said, “I remember that. He tried to sit me down for one of his ‘talks.’ I was mortified.”

Wu laughed again and the two men shared a moment of companionable silence. Badreddine shrugged his shoulder. His wound was feeling much better today. Still a bit stiff, but he could move it without wincing.

“So,” Wu said, “I suppose you are here to discuss the war.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “I suppose I am.”

Xiao Wu took a deep breath. “We had no choice,” he said. “The Vory have all but formed an official alliance with the Gokudo. It would be a threat to us all.”

Badreddine agreed. The Gokudo had begun expanding their tendrils beyond Miyako berth into Malacca. The Vory already controlled all the illegal trade in Novy Oblast, Zanj, and Linda Cidade. But they always had their eyes on expanding, and with Gokudo backing, they would have the muscle to make their move. Still, a preemptive strike only worked if it was decisive. Had Wu forgotten his Sun Tzu? Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. After Devrim’s failed revolution, those were words that Badreddine had taken to heart. He thought back to his conversation with Damietta Ezz yesterday, the excitement in her eyes. The Kommunistas wanted to use the war as an opportunity to organize a ship-wide action. Well, maybe the girl was right. Maybe the Haraka should take part.

“Listen, didi,” Zhang San said, “I think I have a way you can win your war.” And I can win mine, Badreddine thought.

“We’re running out of food and water,” Badreddine reports. “Our people have stopped Security from advancing into the atrium. For now. But we think they’re expecting reinforcements.”

Selin Devrim nods wearily. Her face is haggard. She hasn’t slept in days. They summarily executed Ahmet Usul two days ago. He had gone scouting for supplies when he was captured. Administration charged, tried, and passed sentence on him all within the span of three hours. AO-5. Two letters and one number and Admin can arrest whoever they want, interrogate whoever they want, torture whoever they want, kill whoever they want. And they have. They had recorded Ahmet’s execution, the bastards, and were playing it on a loop. Ahmet standing in the Traitor’s Lock, singing some old Nisrani song, an angry smile on his face when the air lock opens and he is confronted with the vastness of space. Badreddine had watched in horror as his friend’s body ruptured and expanded grotesquely. Ahmet Usul had still been alive when he floated out into the dark.

“We won’t hold out much longer,” Selin says. Her eyes might be red-rimmed from lack of sleep, but the firm timbre of her voice is unchanged.

“What’s the plan?” Badreddine asks. Ahmet Usul is dead. And he’s not the only one. Leila Moon took a bullet to the chest fighting a rearguard action in Fustat’s Cleopatra Square. They found Dimitri Vasileyev, the leader of the Kommunists, hanging from a rope on the Factory floor. Some people are saying it was suicide, others that Security set it up or he was taken out by a rival faction within the Karls. Nikita Solomin and Marwan Bleda defected, the traitors. And Badreddine hasn’t seen or heard from Anwar Ishak since that last desperate stand in Cleopatra. Badreddine is the last of the inner circle left. “What are we going to do now?”

Selin Devrim nods, as if coming to a decision. She smiles at Badreddine and reaches out to cup his face with her Factory-rough hands. Badreddine will remember this moment for the rest of his life.

“What are we going to do now, boyo? Negotiate the terms of our surrender, of course.”

Badreddine walked past the checkpoint into Tagammu Two, heading for a new commercial building that overlooked Downtown Fustat. Zain walked ahead of him, Okay behind. At some point, the Keita siblings had traded positions, but Badreddine could not remember when. His mind had been wandering, working through the permutations. If this, then that. And if that, then this. The building had recently been refurbished, something that had cost him a pretty packet, but the creds were rolling in from the new coffee shop on the top floor. Crew liked to sit up there and watch the ship go by. So, too, did Badreddine. But not today. They crossed the lobby and headed for the elevators, but instead of pressing the button for the top floor, Badreddine hit the buttons for floors four and two, and then after a precise two-second delay, the button for the basement. This particular combination saw the elevator descend to a secret sub-basement that Badreddine had commissioned when they were laying the foundations. Waiting outside the elevator was another one of his people, gun drawn.

“Stand down, Mehmet,” Badreddine told him unnecessarily. “It’s us.”

“Yes, boss,” Mehmet said, putting the gun away. Unlike Okay and Zain, Mehmet was short and slight. He looked like nobody and anybody. A rabbity maintech with a shrewish wife. An agrotech with a gambling problem. A devout powertech with a penchant for vell. He looked like anything except what he was, Badreddine’s go-to hitter. Mehmet was just as good as an army of corridor killers, because nobody ever saw him coming.

Badreddine walked through the sub-basement, making sure to say salve to all the people lounging around. If you managed to make it down here, then you were on the inside. He traded fist bumps with Tripoli Brown and Jamal White and then headed to his office where he could look out over the entire floor. His gaze raked over the supplies they had gathered over the past few months—dry food, water, batteries, weapons. When he first ordered his people to begin stockpiling, Badreddine wasn’t sure why exactly. That’s how it worked with him sometimes. An instinct that he chose to listen to, and then later, was glad he had. He made a mental note to order his people to increase their efforts, but not so much that Admin would notice. No, it wouldn’t do to warn them about what was coming.

Inside his office, Badreddine sat down at his desk, his mind full of the past and the future both. Even all these years later, he could still feel Selin Devrim’s hand on his face. Yet, he was not that same idealistic boy who worshipped her from afar. Selin Devrim was not some flawless paragon of righteousness. She was just an ordinary crew girl with a powerful voice who had started something that she couldn’t finish. Strangely, that only made Badreddine love her more. She had put her trust in the wrong people, following a plan that could never have worked. Even if they had succeeded in forcing Admin to negotiate, the other covens—the Kommunists, the Ishtirak, the Zendistas—were just using her for their own ends. They let her words be a siren call to the disaffected crew as well as a shield to hide behind, raising her up to draw Admin’s ire and Security’s fire. In the end, they had betrayed her, cutting their own deals with the Nizam. The thought of it made Badreddine’s mind pulse with rage. That was the thing young Damietta did not understand. The Haraka was surrounded by enemies. Just because the Kommunists and the Haraka both wanted to overthrow Admin, did not mean that they were on the same side. Badreddine would not let anyone use him like that. In fact, he would make sure that he was the one doing the using to achieve the Haraka’s ends.

And when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

NINE Iskander

On Earth, our ancestors divided themselves according to polity and ancestry. On the Safina, we have chosen to divide crew according to language in the hope of staving off the division and fragmentation that ultimately destroyed our home planet. You can never change your race or ethnicity, but crew can always learn a new language.

—THE COMPACT

A translator was nothing without their connections. Iskander Ezz had several solid connections in Admin, but none more useful than Nafisa Nasser. The only problem? Nafisa Nasser, the cousin of his cousin, was breaking up with him.

“Well,” she said, tossing her dark hair irritably, “say something.”

They were meeting in the back room of an uptown coffeehouse in Damask berth. It might have taken a few days, but Lebanon had finally come through, just like Iskander knew he would. Unfortunately, his ibn am hadn’t convinced his bint khal to do the same.

“I appreciate that you are upset about what happened with Damietta.”

“Upset?” she spluttered. “Upset!”

“But I hope you can see things from my side.”

“You threatened me.”

“I was bluffing,” he told her. “Obviously. How could I dob you into Admin Conduct without incriminating myself first? Do you honestly think I want to spend the next ten years of my life in Detention, mining asteroids or shoveling shit?” Nafisa frowned and crossed her arms. “Look, Nafisa, let’s be real. Damietta was about to be charged; I didn’t have time to mess around. I had the mayor of Fustat onboard, and you were dragging your feet. It wasn’t a threat. Don’t think of it like that. Think of it as proof of how serious I am about protecting my family.”

“Iskander—”

“Anyway, what would you have done in my position? Imagine it was your sib facing down Security. What wouldn’t you do to protect them?”

Nafisa took a deep breath. “I don’t appreciate being threatened.”

“I’m sorry,” Iskander said. “Genuinely. I can promise you it won’t happen again.”

She regarded him stonily for a long minute while Iskander sat back and did his best to look innocent and nonthreatening.

“What do you want, anyway?” she asked him eventually. “Lebanon wouldn’t say.”

Iskander told her and Nafisa’s stony expression slowly lightened until she regarded him with unabashed glee.

“If you think a clerk will pay back a bribe, you really have lost your mind, Translator.”

“I’m not asking to be paid back,” Iskander clarified. “I’m asking for them to do what I paid for.”

“And I’m explaining to you”—Nafisa smiled at him—“why that isn’t going to happen. You were the one who was late for the hearing. There’s nothing I can do, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Maybe you should ask Mayor Araby.”

Iskander leaned back in his chair and suppressed a sigh. He had already put off a summons from the honorable Clerk Manuel Ocampos. He couldn’t afford to delay much longer.

“What can you tell me about this Clerk Ocampos?” Iskander asked.

“Rumor is that his old man is a chief in Internal Security. Ocampos is just marking time in Human Resources until the next berth elections. He’s planning on running for naib.”

Nafisa looked thrilled to be giving him bad news. If Clerk Ocampos’s father was Internal Security, then Iskander dared not even broach the idea of a bribe. IntSec was the watch responsible for policing Admin and Security. And it would be another five years until the next ship-wide elections, so if he really was planning on running for naib, the clerk would be going nowhere for the foreseeable.

“There’s nothing I can do, Iskander,” Nafisa said with relish. “Oh, well.”

Iskander fumed as he walked to Midan station, barely noticing the empty bubble of space that had opened around him. The Salah case was hurtling toward disaster. There were dozens of excuses Clerk Ocampos could use to hold up the issuance of his client’s marriage license. Iskander knew he could circumvent each and every one of them, but it would be time-consuming. And costly. In the meantime, Li Zhang would have his head. It would be a major hit to his reputation. And as a freelance translator, reputation was all he had. The system worked fine if everybody played their part. But as soon as people started bringing their petty personal baggage with them on watch, well, things fell apart.

On the link back to Grand Salam Central, Iskander gnawed on the problem. He was so lost in thought that for a split second, he didn’t even register that the link had juddered to a halt. The lights flickered and died, and the carriage plunged into darkness. A groan rang out across the carriage, a hundred voices exhaling the same frustrated breath. Another blackout. A haze of light coalesced as passengers brought out their tabs and flicked on their flashlights. The carriage was packed, Iskander noticed with a sense of alarm. It was that strange liminal time between watches, and so the carriage was filled with crew heading home and crew heading out.

“What’s happening?” someone cried in Damask-tinted Inglez.

“Everybody, calm down,” another man said.

“You calm down,” another voice responded.

Iskander closed his eyes and counted out a slow ten. It was just a mini blackout, he told himself. A momentary interruption of power. It happened all the time. The lights would come back on. Life support would resume. In less than an hour, he’d be back in Fustat, worrying about his clients and cases. And a few more hours later, he would be back on the hyperlink headed to Miyako berth. He was going to pick up Taki for Thursday-night dinner, and yes, he was worried about it. Iskander opened his eyes. Still darkness. He noticed a few of the passengers watching him discreetly. Of course, dressed in his translator’s garb, he was a visible symbol of Admin authority.

Knowing that eyes were on him, Iskander sat still and silent, doing his best to regulate his breathing. He tried not to think about how every inhale reduced the amount of oxygen in the carriage, how every exhale increased the amount of carbon dioxide. Iskander knew the numbers. His father had drilled them into his head since before he could remember. The average crew exhaled about thirty-two milliliters of carbon dioxide in each breath. At least forty crew were seated aboard this link. And maybe half that number standing. That was a lot of lungs absorbing oxygen and dispelling carbon dioxide. Iskander did his best not to imagine the accumulation of those milliliters into liters of poison and kiloliters of death.

As the time ticked on, the crewman sitting beside Iskander began praying quietly under his breath. I seek refuge with the Lord of the Dawn. From the evil of that which He has created. He was a middle-aged guy dressed in the dark blue of Engineering. And from the evil of the darkness when it is intense. Iskander resisted the urge to tell him to knock it off, that his prayers were only costing them more oxygen. Elsewhere, a few crew had put on their rebreathers. Others were playing the waiting game, holding their masks protectively in their hands, or slung around their necks. Iskander reached into his own satchel and touched his rebreather, but refrained from taking it out. That would only cause further panic.

“It’s been ten minutes,” someone said in a shaking voice. Long for a power outage on the hyperlink. Too long. Link blackouts seldom lasted longer than five minutes, and when they did it was top-story news. The hyperlink was a vital system. Without it, crew couldn’t get from their home berths to their watch decks. There were supposed to be backup systems and redundancies in place to prevent prolonged blackouts on the link. After a particularly long blackout on the D-link from Zanj berth to Engineering a few years ago, which had resulted in the deaths of twenty-three crew, those backup systems had been further fortified. Whatever was happening now wasn’t just a regular power outage. Something must have happened. Something bad.

Iskander ignored the worried eyes on him as if nothing was amiss. According to standing orders, crew trapped on a link during a blackout should wait fifteen minutes before taking action. They’d need to contact Hyperlink Control. Find out what was going on. Iskander shut his eyes again. Let this all be alright, he thought. Let the power come back on. Let me go back to worrying about my cases and whether Seto Deniz is going to call Taki an unbeliever to her face.

Five minutes later, the same voice, shaking even worse now, reported, “Fifteen minutes.”

Those minutes had felt like an hour to Iskander. And no time at all. Iskander looked around to find himself the still center of a circle of scrutiny.

“What should we do, Translator?” the man sitting next to him asked. He had finally ceased his ceaseless prayers.

Iskander took a deep breath, a luxury given their current circumstances. As he stood up, more heads turned to face him. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of tablight.

“First things first,” he said in Inglez, “anyone with a rebreather should put it on now.” Iskander repeated the instruction in every language he knew. Arabek. Nihon. Torkdil. He reached into his satchel and retrieved his own rebreather, securing it around his neck, but not putting it on. Not yet. He glanced around the carriage, noticing that almost everyone who had a rebreather was already wearing it, and that far too many crew were looking at him with unobscured faces, their mouths mashed into thin lines of worry.

“Next, we need to organize,” Iskander said. “Has anyone seen the driver?”

Iskander snaked his way down the carriage toward the driver’s cab, stepping over and around worried crew. A few crew trailed in his wake, following to see what was happening. They found the door to the driver’s cab closed, another group of crew milling around it and talking in low voices.

“Translator,” a middle-aged man greeted him, “what’s going on?”

“Have you spoken with the driver?” Iskander asked.

“Only through the door,” the crewman said. He was dressed in the yellow vest of Maintenance. Iskander noticed the three stripes and diamond insignia that marked him as a crew chief. “He won’t open it.”

Iskander banged on the door, his open palm slapping the hard thermoplastic. Once, twice, three times.

“Wait,” a voice commanded in Inglez.

“This is Translator Iskander Ezz,” Iskander responded. “Open up.”

After a tense pause, they heard the sound of a lock being turned. The driver opened the door only partially, revealing half a face and a suspicious eye. He took in Iskander’s translator getup and nodded him inside. After Iskander squeezed through, the driver slammed the door and locked it shut. He was a short, harried man, perhaps ten years older than Iskander.

“It’s been more than fifteen minutes,” Iskander informed him. “We need to organize.”

“Here, Translator,” he said in Miyako-tinged Inglez, thrusting a device at Iskander. “See if you can understand what they are saying better than I can.”

Iskander took the block-shaped device from the driver. It was heavier than it looked. Iskander had never so much as touched wireless technology before. Only the most trusted translators got anywhere near the stuff. It had no touch screen, but old-fashioned knobs and dials and a long thing sticking out of the top. An antenna? Iskander held the device to his ear.

“Hello. This is Translator Iskander Ezz. Hello. Hello?”

“You have to press the button when you talk,” the driver instructed.

Iskander pressed the indicated button. “Hello. This is Translator Iskander Ezz. Can you hear me?”

“Hello, Translator,” a voice greeted in tinny Inglez. “This is Translator Amalate Fortune.”

“Hello, Translator. My crew number is—”

“Don’t bother,” the translator told Iskander. “I don’t have access to the Main right now. I don’t have access to anything.”

Translator Amalate Fortune, whoever he was, sounded even more flustered and upset than Iskander did, and he wasn’t on a small hyperlink carriage slowly filling with unbreathable air. The translators who were assigned to Communication, like those who worked at Hyperlink Control, were supposed to be the best of the best. Amalate Fortune sounded like a cadet on his maiden shift.

“Translator Fortune,” Iskander said firmly, “we have an emergency situation here.”

“I know,” he answered. Were those tears in his voice? “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Translator Fortune,” Iskander tried again, “when can we expect power to be restored to this line? We’re running out of oxygen here, man.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he said. “It’s not just your line. It’s the entire hyperlink. It’s the entire ship. The power is out everywhere.”

According to Translator Fortune, it was a ship-wide failure. The power was out not just on the hyperlink. But in Fustat berth and Damask. In Miyako berth and Malacca. In Ziyou and Zanj. In Linda and Birshahr. Koutobia and Oblast. In all the berths. On all the decks. Engineering and Environmental were dark. Factory and Navigation quiet. Even Stasis, that perennial power hog, with its cascading set of redundancies, was down to backup battery power only. A ship-wide blackout, completely unheard of. The Safina was dead in the void. The only tech still working were those devices that ran on battery power. Before Iskander exited the driver’s cab, he adjusted his hat and straightened his tie.

“Fifty-two souls on board,” the Maintenance chief he had spoken to earlier said. He was a middle-aged man with the bearing of a born crew chief, his rebreather still hanging loose around his neck. “Habib Arian. Maintenance chief.”

“Iskander Ezz. Translator.”

“The driver?”

“Not coming out,” Iskander said grimly. “We need to check the emergency cache. Distribute rebreathers. Check CO_2 levels. We could be here awhile, chief, a long while.”

Habib Arian watched Iskander closely. Iskander imagined the tens of thousands of crew across the ship donning rebreathers. Rushing to assembly points. Establishing emergency crews. Making plans. Testing redundancies. Had Taki made it out of Maintenance deck and back to Miyako? Or was she trapped somewhere, too, taking shallow breaths? He hoped Damietta and Rose were safe in Fustat. And Lebanon, down in Stasis. How long would their backup battery power last? What would happen to the ancestors in cryo? Iskander’s thoughts rushed away from him in a hundred directions. This is it. This is it. Is this it?

“Translator!” Habib exclaimed. He was gripping Iskander’s shoulder. Iskander looked down at his work-rough hand. It was hands like these, generations of them, that had kept the Safina’s systems running manually after the First Crew ripped out the AI that ran everything.

“I’m alright,” Iskander said. He gripped the rebreather around his neck. “Thank you. How many need rebreathers?”

“Even with the emergency supplies, we’re nowhere near full coverage. Maybe a dozen will have to do without,” Habib said, voice lowered. “What do you mean a long while? What did Hyperlink Control say?”

“What’s our CO_2 level?”

Habib gestured toward a grandmotherly woman who, rebreather on, was organizing crew with a series of grunts and gestures. “That’s Nayla. She’s a chief over in Propulsion. She’s checking now. You didn’t answer my question, Translator.”

“Are there any other chiefs onboard?”

Habib gave him a long look. “Another Fustat guy called Moharam. Fisheries.”

“Alright, get the chiefs together. We need to talk.”

Back inside the driver’s cab, there was barely enough room for them all. The crew chiefs huddled around Iskander. The driver, arms folded, guarded the door.

“What do you mean ship-wide?” Moharam asked in whispered Inglez.

“I mean everywhere.”

“Everywhere?”

“Everywhere, everywhere. A complete blackout.”

“Propulsion?” Habib asked. He ran a hand through his graying hair.

“Propulsion, too. We got dumped out of warp.”

“If we dropped out of warp space, Navigation might not even know where we are,” Moharam said. “Even if they had the power to find out.”

“We could be light-years from the nearest system,” Habib agreed.

“None of this matters,” Nayla said, gripping her hijab in alarm. “We are trapped on this dead link now. We can worry about being trapped on the Safina later if we survive.”

“Yes,” Iskander agreed. “First, we need to hold out long enough for them to fix the problem on their end and rescue us. So, what’s our CO_2 count?”

The CO_2 count was high. Thanks to the masks, and a lithium hydroxide canister, they kept things under control for hours. And thanks to the sheer number of people in the carriage, their collective body heat staved off hypothermia. But as hours became hours more, eventually, their filters ran out and their lithium hydroxide canister ceased its silent chemical reaction. Slowly but surely, oxygen levels decreased, and the carbon dioxide in the air inched up and up. Some crew began to feel drowsy. When the CO_2 reached 2 percent, and the crew reported headaches, Iskander and the chiefs finally informed the rest of the link that the blackout was ship-wide.

“Hyperlink Control is doing everything in its power to rescue us,” Iskander assured them. Some crew, he noticed, were recording him. “Remain calm. Trust our crew. Endure.”

Iskander and the chiefs stumbled up and down the carriage, geeing up their fellow passengers as much as they could with a kind word here, a hand on a shoulder there. At 3 percent, crew began experiencing impaired hearing, increased heart rate and blood pressure, and stupor. Iskander saw the realization slowly dawn in their eyes. There would be no rescue. He watched with a strange sense of pride as the crew, without much discussion or handwringing, bowed their heads over their tabs to record final messages to their loved ones. At 4 percent, Iskander shook hands with each crew chief and made his way back toward the driver’s cab. Some of the crew patted him on the back as he passed. He acknowledged each crew who did with a nod and a hand over his heart. When he finally shut the door behind him, the driver was already unconscious. Iskander would never learn his name now.

“Talk to me, Ama. What’s happening?”

“They’re still trying to restart the core, Isk.”

The rest of the Safina was facing the exact same threat, but not on the same timeline. The hyperlink was a closed system. Outside the aluminum alloy walls of this carriage was nothing but hard vac. Power was essential to maintaining life support. On the Safina proper, however, Environmental deck was a factory floor of microalgae matrices. They had backup batteries, huge building-size monstrosities that could hook up to essential systems like life support. And even when backup battery power did run out, it would take far longer for the air to reach critical CO_2 saturation on the berths. But it would happen eventually.

“Do we know what happened?” Iskander’s voice sounded slow even to his own ears.

“A cascading failure, they’re saying. Looks like it started somewhere on the lower decks.”

“A failure… or sabotage?” Iskander asked. He was past all taboos now.

“I don’t know,” Amalate said. “Security is everywhere.”

At 5 percent, shortness of breath, dizziness, and confusion. Iskander took out his tab and swiped open his notebook. He flipped past his case notes and his ledger of favors, all useless now. Iskander wrote to Damietta and Lebanon. Penned a few lines to Rose. A short formal message to his father and Seto Deniz. And to Taki, he wrote a long, rambling letter. And as he wrote, Iskander realized that he had been planning to marry her. A plan that he had formulated in the darkness of his mind. And only now, sitting alone in the darkness, did he recognize it and weep.

At above 5 percent, muscle tremors, unconsciousness, coma. Iskander shivered in the dark and cold of the cab; the driver was long gone now. Before he slipped under and away, Iskander rebuttoned his suit with aching fingers and retied his tie. Every inhale was a struggle now. Every exhale a cloud of crystal vapor. Iskander thought of all the crew he knew and loved, all the crew who knew and loved him, and warmed himself in the corona of that regard. As he slipped under and away, Iskander saw it all. The Safina, becalmed in the empty dark. Engines cold and dead. Down in Stasis, Lebanon would be standing his watch, his thoughts a jumble of prayers and regret. In Fustat, Damietta and Rose were holding hands as they sheltered in an empty doorway, watching Security lock down the Tagammus out of wide eyes and trying to sneak back home to the safety of the Ezz compound. Bulaq Ezz, however, would not be there. He’d be on Environmental deck with the rest of the Ezz clan, checking and rechecking the cultures on the next set of algae matrices, making sure that they would survive no matter what. Their survival meant the crew’s survival. And Taki? She’d be leading an emergency Maintenance crew somewhere in the bowels of the ship. Testing power connectors for damage. Replacing what could be replaced, bypassing what couldn’t. The crew of the Safina. Pulling together. Diagnosing problems. Creating solutions. Fixing things. This is what they were here for, Iskander realized. It’s what they were bred and trained for, generation after generation. The crew was nothing more than a living, breathing repair system for the ship. A self-sustaining human-powered operating system to ensure that the Safina, and the ancestors sleeping in her hold, arrived safely at Hurriya. Translation? Admin? It was nothing more than busywork.

Sitting in that hyperlink cab, his breath coming fast now as his body scoured itself for oxygen, Iskander thought of how far this ship had traveled in years and light-years, in lives and deaths, and how far it still had to go. If the Safina’s journey ended here, it wouldn’t just be the end of this crew or even humanity but the end of everything they could have become. The Earth and all its history lived on in the Safina. The ship had brought its people and crops and monuments and languages and gods out among the stars in the hopes of starting anew. But nothing was ever truly new. Everything was tied to everything else. Everyone was. Translator Iskander Ezz, expiring here on the floor of a hyperlink carriage, as far from Earth as any human had ever been, was directly tied to the prehistoric men who sat in their caves waiting to see if the Flood would take them. They were separated by years and light-years only. However, there was one difference, wasn’t there? Iskander was part of a crew. The crew knew how to pull together, how to endure. It was their function. The crew worked for each other, and the Safina worked for the crew.

That was the true Compact.

TEN Lebanon

Oh God, your Space is so great and our Safina is so small.

—A CREWMAN’S PRAYER

First and foremost, Lebanon considered himself to be a man of science. And as a man of science, so far as he could see—no, so far as he could observe—they were completely and utterly fucked. According to the reports, Stasis was one of the only decks on the ship with functioning power. The stastechs could thank a robust power redundancy system for that. When the Safina first departed Earth all those years ago, the primary aim of the ship was to shepherd these sleeping ancestors to Hurriya, which explained why Stasis was located in one of the most defensible areas of the ship, as far from the outer hull and cold vacuum as possible. But Stasis, however key to the culture of the Safina and its overall mission, was not at all important to the city-ship’s day-to-day. If the power really was out across the ship, and Lebanon had to accept that this was looking increasingly likely, then watches like Environmental, Hydroponics, and Agriculture were most critical now. If the ship really was marooned in cold space, it didn’t matter if Ancestor Alis Nesrin’s brain scans were nominal or not. At least the artificial gravity was still working. That deck also had faultless backup power and for obvious reasons.

Lebanon had just finished replacing the cold saline in Ancestor Alis Nesrin’s veins, when he felt his ears pop as the ship crashed out of warp space. The Safina wasn’t scheduled to drop out of warp for at least another three months. Lebanon knew this because he, along with countless other members of the crew, was planning a wedding to coincide with it. The system they were heading to, Diba IV, was dozens of light-years ahead and according to Navigation contained at least three rich, fat ice giants to plunder. They would make a nice background for his wedding photos. So why had they dropped out of warp in what must surely be dark space? Lebanon’s hypothesis was backed by the sudden absence of that barely perceptible hum. He could no longer feel that telltale vibration of space-time being contracted before the Safina and expanded behind it. If he had been anywhere else on the ship, Lebanon would have rushed to the nearest viewing lounge to see for himself. But down here in Stasis, there were no viewing lounges to rush to, only rows and rows of ancestors sustained in a low-temperature state of limited cerebral, cardiac, and pulmonary activity. A centuries-long slumber party. Stasis crew had tried, and failed, to communicate with the rest of the ship, but the Mainframe was down. So, too, the hyperlink. They were cut off, thoroughly so.

Lebanon had even heard that the two on-duty translators seconded to Stasis who usually spent their watch on the top deck doing nothing more than throwing dice and moving backgammon counters from one side of the board to the other had resorted to wireless radio transmissions to try to communicate with the rest of the ship. And if the translators really had broken that banned technology out of quarantine, then completely and utterly fucked was not hyperbole, it was right on the money.

There was only one piece of good news. Kattrin was trapped down here with him. They had schemed and wheedled, baksheeshed and bribed their way onto the same watch pattern months ago. And even though she was currently working two floors up and he hadn’t had a spare second to go and check on her, he was relieved to know that she was nearby. Doubtless, she was just as busy as he was. Ever since Stasis had switched to backup power, every stastech had been rushed off their feet to keep the ancestors alive.

“Shit,” Stastech Clarissa Ortega said. “We’ve got another one going down. Ramil Gadelov. Row 11. Cryopod 17. Go, go, go.”

Lebanon rushed to the assigned stasis pod. It was giving off a catalogue of error readings. He fought to keep Ancestor Gadelov’s outputs level, manipulating the controls manually. Even a modest change in pheno levels could result in brain death. A rise or fall in cold saline temperature by just a few degrees could lead to critical organ failure. Cryostasis wasn’t as simple as sticking somebody on ice. It was a delicate balancing act. A thousand and one things had to line up. If even one of them drifted off course, even a little, you were left dealing with a cascading failure.

“Shit,” he swore as he tried to get Ancestor Gadelov’s levels back within range. Lebanon watched helplessly as the vital signs spiked, then flatlined.

Gone.

Just like that.

It wasn’t death, not exactly. More like expiration. Lebanon watched helplessly as Ancestor Gadelov passed on from the borderlands in which he had spent the last two centuries dreaming into that other place, where there were no dreams, only rest. And yes, the ancestors definitely did dream. He had recorded their brain wave patterns himself and written a paper on his findings.

“Ya Allah!” Lebanon exclaimed.

He didn’t know if it was a prayer or a curse. Ramil Gadelov was the fifth ancestor his section had lost over the past few hours, far more than they had saved. Ramil Gadelov had been a medtech, a doctor. Lebanon knew the histories of all the ancestors in his section. Gadelov had been on the team that had designed cryostasis. Not one of the team leads, not sporting a name you might have heard of like a Thompson or Danser or Khan, but he had been part of that grand project. Now, he was nothing but decaying cells and congealing blood. The part of him that was him, the soul, the spirit, whatever it was, had passed on. Ramil Gadelov was gone and Lebanon didn’t even have the time to mourn him.

“It’s the power fluctuations,” Clarissa tried to soothe him. “It’s the same in all the other sectors.”

The power redundancy system, which included batteries the size of buildings, had not been audited in years. So while they had power, a lot of it, actually far too much, it was shorting out their equipment. Stasis was the oldest and most unchanged part of the ship. When the First Crew had agreed to the Compact, it was specifically exempted. They had forcibly ripped out the machine intelligence that ran everything, shutting down all the automated systems in other parts of the ship—Navigation, Engineering, Power—but Stasis remained relatively untouched. It was deemed too risky to try to change Stasis’s underlying operating system, not when the price of failure was the death of the ancestors. Now that was exactly the reality they were facing.

“Shit,” Clarissa told him. “Another one. Kida Khodeir.”

Kida Khodeir was in Row 7, Cryopod 9. He was a meteorologist, something to do with studying planetary atmosphere. The Khodeirs lived in Sehrimiz berth. There had even been one in his Stasis cohort. Karim Khodeir. Was he on watch right now, rushing to save another crew’s ancestor while Lebanon hastened to save his?

“How long can we go on like this?” Lebanon asked breathlessly, before rushing off, Clarissa at his heels.

“Pretty soon, we’re going to start running into real problems,” Watch Chief Noah Cohen told them.

Lebanon and Clarissa exchanged a look. What kind of problems had they been dealing with until now? Their section—Stasis Level 39, Sector A—contained two hundred ancestors, and they had already lost nine as a result of power fluctuations. Actually, Lebanon wouldn’t be surprised if that number was already higher. Chief Cohen had been talking to the stastechs in shifts. Stastechs Miller and Shin were currently covering 39-A, in addition to their own section, 39-B. He and Clarissa would return the favor as soon as Cohen was done with them.

“What kind of ‘real’ problems?” Clarissa asked warily. She pushed aside the packet of biscuits Chief Cohen had furnished them with; you had to appreciate a crew chief that came prepared with confectionery. Lebanon crammed another two biscuits into his mouth. They hadn’t had time for a break that watch, and Allah only knew when they would next have a chance to eat.

“We’re falling behind on alimentation,” Chief Cohen said. “Plus, we’re running low on chem.”

“What are we going to do for watch changes?” Lebanon asked tiredly. It was already six hours past the end of his scheduled watch. Under normal circumstances, he would have already met up with Kattrin to take the hyperlink to Damask or Koutobia, heading to a restaurant or tea shop. There was a little coffee shop in Koutobia’s Aziz Avenue that had the best green tea and baklava. Needless to say, these were not normal circumstances. With the hyperlink down, there was no chance of the next watch arriving to relieve them. They were trapped down here until ship-wide power came back. If it ever did.

Chief Cohen grimaced. “It looks like we’ll be moving to a six-watch schedule. We’ll have to split some of the doubles into single watches, so at least there’s someone on duty at all times.”

What about when two ancestors went down at the same time? How long could a single watch of tired stastechs keep them all alive? How long until they started losing ancestors due to their mistakes?

“Any word from the rest of the ship?” Clarissa asked.

The overseer of Stasis’s first watch, Yuto Hira, had been addressing them over the tannoy every hour on the hour, updating them with what little he knew. Or at least, what little he knew and was prepared to share. Power was out. Nobody knew why. And more importantly, nobody knew when it might come back. There were critical failures on most decks, but oxygen levels were holding steady. The overseer ended each broadcast with the same tripartite message. Stand your watch. Remember who we are. Endure.

It was stirring stuff. Lebanon had even teared up a little the first time he heard it, imagining himself and his fellow stastechs as a crew united. Whatever was happening across the ship, he knew that each and every member of the crew was doing their best to perform their duties. Of course, after Lebanon heard it six more times, it sounded less like a mission statement and more like a desperate prayer into the deep dark.

“They’re working to restart the core,” Cohen told them. “And they’ve got Maintenance and Engineering crew in EVA suits crawling all over the ship, inside and out, trying to figure out what happened.”

“We heard something about a collision?” Clarissa asked.

Lebanon shook his head. Was it even possible to collide with something inside a warp bubble? Warp space was not his specialty, obviously, but two centuries of warp travel without any collisions suggested against it. The stastechs had been sharing rumors and theories as they rushed around their sections. A quantum ripple in time? A warp space anomaly?

“I don’t know,” Chief Cohen said. “And please, don’t talk to me about time travel or aliens.” Apparently Stastech Rami Udon of 39-E believed the Safina had somehow punched a hole through warp space back in time, and Stastech Farhad Heydari of 39-C was betting on aliens. Lebanon actually smiled, and Clarissa snorted. For a moment, things seemed almost normal. “There is one last thing I wanted to bring to your attention.”

Lebanon and Clarissa watched him attentively. What now?

“The chiefs are thinking about a vote. A referendum,” he explained.

A referendum? Sure, crew voted for their local naib and watch overseer, but the last referendum had been held by the First Crew. The Disaccord was ended, and the Compact agreed to by crew referendum.

“A referendum about what?” Lebanon asked with trepidation.

Chief Cohen looked around at the sea of cryopods. Behind him, Lebanon could see Stastech Miller fiddling with one in 39-A. Was that row ten or eleven? If it was ten, it was ancestor Abbas Arafa. If it was eleven, it was James Castillo. He knew their names, he knew their records and their stories, their loves and dreams and descendants. It was his duty to take care of them.

“About whether we should try and wake them,” Cohen said.

“How are you doing, habibti?” Kattrin asked.

They were curled up together on a blanket in the corner of Groppi’s café on level 40. Usually, this was one of Lebanon’s favorite places to be. He liked to spend hours before and after watch hanging out and chatting with the other stastechs. Stasis deck famously had the best food service of all the watches. After the Compact, the franchises were sold, and nameless canteens became Groppi’s and Peter’s and Haci Abdullah’s. Crew came from all across the berths to spend the day in Stasis, so they had to have good food on offer. Groppi’s specialized in sandwiches and pastries, and since it belonged to an old Fustat family, they also served the gritty baladi bread that Lebanon liked. Actually, proximity to good food was one of the main reasons Lebanon had joined Stasis in the first place.

“I’m fine,” Lebanon told her, “how about you?”

“Scared,” she admitted in a small voice.

Lebanon squeezed her hand. “Me too,” he whispered into her hair. “This is… bad, Kat. Really bad.”

They both had the next four hours off. Around them, Groppi’s looked like a refugee camp from some old Earth vid. They had moved out all the tables and chairs, and masses of people huddled in small groups, obscured by blankets. Most were sleeping, or pretending to. The huge media wall, usually playing the news or linking to an outward facing camera, just showed static and a “no connection” message. Lebanon wished Old Man Groppi would turn it off. He thought of Clarissa, on her own, rushing through the stacks of 39-A trying to keep their ancestors alive. There had been 185 left when he went off watch. How many would there be when he clocked back in? Ahmet Farhat? Kida Khodeir? James Castillo? And what about his own ancestor, Ahmet Ezz, down on 96. Was he still alive?

They were fighting a losing battle, that much was clear. Comparing notes with the other stastechs, he estimated that they were losing ancestors at a rate of 5 to 10 percent per eight-hour watch. At that rate, they would lose something like 40 percent of all ancestors within the next few days. Forty percent! Two out of five, tens of thousands of ancestors gone, just like that. It was unacceptable. Meanwhile, the whispers were growing. If the power really was out across the ship, was there any point in wasting the last of their battery power keeping the ancestors alive? Wouldn’t it make more sense to route power to Environmental or Hydroponics or Agriculture? Wouldn’t it be better to use whatever power they had left to buy the crew more time to fix the problem, rather than keep these sleepers sleeping?

“Have you heard about the referendum?” she asked. They were whispering in Arabek, vaguely transgressive since they were supposed to speak Inglez on watch.

“It won’t come to that, inshallah,” Lebanon assured her.

Kattrin gave him a level look. “Do you really believe that?”

“Yes,” he said. “Or at least, I want to.”

“They’ll have the power back on soon,” she said like an invocation.

“They’ll have the power back on soon,” Lebanon agreed. “Everybody just needs to keep their heads.”

Kattrin nodded and laid her own head down on her makeshift pillow, a folded-up blanket. Lebanon lay down beside her and angled his body to face her. They regarded each other, nose to nose. He considered and disregarded a dozen things to say before blowing out a long breath.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you more,” she said back.

Lebanon watched as Kattrin’s eyes fluttered and she drifted off into sleep. For the past fifteen hours, he had been in ceaseless motion, rushing from one cryopod to the next, to the next, to the next. He had not chosen Stasis because he enjoyed high-pressure watch-standing. He thought of his work in Stasis as a form of gardening, a series of low-level repetitive tasks that he could lose himself in. This was the first moment he had to really think about what had happened. To think and worry. Crew had already died. Possibly, a lot of them.

Lebanon did not necessarily consider himself a religious man, not in any formal way, at least. He certainly wasn’t a member of any group. He found all those vehement arguments about insignificant doctrinal matters to be utterly pointless. Given where they were, did it really matter who the Prophet’s chosen successor was, or whether Sultan Mazen was the Mahdi or the Dajjal or just another power-mad tyrant? Still, Lebanon knew that he believed in something, something greater than himself, greater than this crew, this ship. As for what that something was, and what it wanted from him, what he could do to serve it, well, that was less apparent. He hardly ever prayed the daily five, but he did usually manage one or two, and afterward, he did usually feel better for it. More connected. Here, surrounded by a heap of sleeping crew and floors and floors of sleeping ancestors, Lebanon sought that connection.

Lebanon brought his hands together and closed his eyes. Ya Allah, if you can hear me—no, there was no time for ifs. Ya Allah, please—no, he hated that. Ya Allah, grant me the strength to endure whatever may come. Yes, that was better. There was no point praying for miracles. The only thing you could pray for was fortitude, for the ability to endure what came next, whatever it was.

The power was still out. While Lebanon napped fitfully, thousands of ancestors passed on. He woke to Stastech Gammal Wahba issuing the adhan, his reedy voice echoing across the emptied café, and was not the only one to rise to the call. It was Maghreb prayers, not that it felt like midwatch. Time had lost all meaning down here. Lebanon joined the congregation, working his way through the prayer movements; the bowing and protestations were better than a morning workout. Sleeping on Groppi’s hard floor had definitely not been good for his back. Soon, he would be wandering the rows of 39-A again. He shook the thought from his head, focusing on the prayer, the feeling of connection, on what blessings remained.

Afterward, when Lebanon returned to the little den of blankets, one of his blessings looked out at him with sleepy eyes.

“Breakfast?” she asked hopefully.

Lebanon waved her back down and went to grab them both some food. It wasn’t just stastechs trapped down here. Groppi’s staff—technically Supply—had already started rationing the food, so all they had on offer was boiled eggs, bread, and bitter black coffee, but it was better than nothing. He sat cross-legged across from Kattrin and shoveled the food down, fuel for the furnace, antimatter for the core.

After breakfast, more like a Ramadan midnight snack than an actual meal, Lebanon hugged Kattrin goodbye and returned to his post. The cryopods housing dead ancestors had been moved out of the way, piled up crudely in the corners, and the lights across the entire floor had been dimmed. His section, usually a neat rectangle of ten rows made up of twenty cryopods each, was completely out of whack. A quick count of the missing spaces totaled nineteen missing cryopods. Nineteen out of two hundred.

“Stastech Ortega,” he greeted Clarissa formally. She looked dead on her feet. “Stastech Ezz, reporting for duty.”

“Stastech Ezz,” she responded. “Four ancestors passed during the previous watch. No maintenance procedures were performed. You have the watch.”

“I have the watch,” Lebanon confirmed. Clarissa slumped with the abdication of responsibility. Lebanon reached out to steady her, a hand on the shoulder that quickly became a kind of rough half hug. “Easy now, Clara.”

“I’m alright, I’m alright,” she said.

Lebanon didn’t know whether she was talking to him, or to herself. He put half a disc of bread into her hand and directed her toward Groppi’s with a gentle push. It was the nearest canteen, which meant that it would be their home station until the crisis passed. Lebanon’s watch went by in a blur. He saved more lives this time. Manipulating the cryopod controls was an art, not a science, and he was getting better at it. Stastech Miller was working 39-B this shift, and he and Lebanon shared grimly cheerful salutes anytime they were in the same vicinity. The salutes said, Let’s pretend that everything is normal. Let’s pretend this might not be the end of our ship or the end of our species.

Ancestor Alis Nesrin slipped through his fingers right before the end of his watch. He had worked on her just yesterday. Her pheno levels dropped suddenly, and Lebanon could not even things out in time. He checked her brain scan. A flat line. Brain death. Alis Nesrin had been a soldier, then an administrator. She had been slated for a senior administrative position on Hurriya. Now, she would never see that colony world. Six hours passed like six days and Lebanon found himself nodding wearily as he welcomed Clarissa back on watch. They’d have another four hours together, but this time were in charge of two sections, not one; it was Stastech Miller’s turn for some shut-eye. Lebanon savored his victories and did his best not to think of the defeats.

“Leb, Clara,” Miller greeted them from across the line of 39-B. They would have to make this quick. “Are you ready for this?”

“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Clarissa said.

“Alright, then. Stastech Ezz, Stastech Ortega. Five ancestors passed during the previous watch. No maintenance procedures were performed. You have the watch.”

“We have the watch,” they chorused at him.

“Write your vote on the inside of the paper,” Chief Cohen told them, “and your crew ID number and signature across the front. One vote per crew. Obviously.”

He handed out slips of paper and pens, waving away further questions impatiently. Lebanon and Kattrin had completed another six-hour shift and still the power was out. They had some answers now, at least. No, they had not been attacked by aliens or traveled back in time. Nothing so exciting. They had simply crashed out of warp into empty space, dozens of light-years from the nearest system. Not a problem if they could get the warp engine back online. But the longer they sat here becalmed in dead space, the more resources they used up, and the more resources they used up, the less chance they had of getting the power back on. They were having a problem getting the core working again, some sort of Engineering problem or Maintenance or some combination of the two. Everyone was trying to fix it. They’d tried to restart the core twice now without success. And each failed attempt cost them more resources.

“Vote ‘Aye’ if you think we should wake the ancestors now. ‘No,’ if you don’t. Voting anything else will count as a spoiled ballot, and spoiled ballots will not be counted,” Crew Chief Cohen instructed.

“How are you going to vote?” Kattrin asked. She was sitting on a blanket on the floor in the corner of Groppi’s that Lebanon had inexplicably begun to think of as theirs, biting her lip and twirling a pen adroitly between her fingers. He plopped himself down next to her, stretching out his legs until his feet lined up with hers.

“How are you going to vote?” Lebanon countered.

“I was thinking about spoiling my ballot,” she confessed.

Lebanon had been considering the same. How could anyone have an answer to such a question and foresee its implications? Waking the ancestors was exactly what Damietta’s dumb Harakist mates wanted, which surely meant it was a terrible idea. Even short-term, how would it work? Even if they did somehow manage to get the power back on, could the ship sustain so many new people? The Safina was already overpopulated. Plus, cryostasis was a one-time process. Once you were out, you were out. You couldn’t go back under again. Bottom line, they would be dooming all their ancestors to death on this city-ship. But by not doing it they might be dooming some of them to the same death, only quicker.

Science provided no answers, only more questions. A Quranic verse floated into his mind, half remembered from some long-ago sermon. Whoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved all of mankind. He mulled that sentiment over, examined it from all sides. He had joined Stasis because he wanted to be a part of something enduring, something bigger than himself. He was in the life-saving business. These ancestors were in his charge; he had already lost more of them than he cared to. He would save as many as he could.

Lebanon wrote “Aye” on his little piece of paper, angled it so that Kattrin could see, and then folded it up before signing his crew ID and signature overleaf. On the Safina, you saved what could be saved and recycled what couldn’t.

There were standing orders for how to wake the ancestors. Long-standing orders from before the Compact. They were supposed to be awoken slowly, gently, to recordings of their loved ones. They were supposed to be surrounded by the descendants of those same loved ones who would greet them by saying “Welcome home,” “We missed you,” and “We watched over you while you slept.” They were supposed to be awoken in the orbit of a new world, a new chance, a new life.

None of that would happen now.

It took hours for the first batch of ancestors to be successfully rebirthed into the faltering city-ship. They came to clutching their heads, puking and shivering, demanding “Where am I?” and “What is happening?” and “Who’s in charge here?” in their semi-incoherent tongues. But the stastechs didn’t even have time to answer because there were thousands more to wake. Amid the chaos, between transfusing synthetic blood and platelets, and monitoring temperature and brain function, Lebanon saw many things that heartened him, and many more that didn’t. He saw the ancestors organize themselves, like crew. He saw them settle disputes with threats and violence, unlike crew. He communicated with them using broad, friendly gestures and simple words. Most spoke Torkdil, but a version he had never heard. Harsh and unforgiving. Some spoke Arabek and a few Inglez, but it was like listening to sounds underwater.

“Zesultan?” Ancestor Kara Abraham asked. She was the first ancestor out of 39-A to recover. She was an aerospace engineer, Lebanon knew. She had designed something to do with the Safina’s warp drive and spoke Inglez. Or at least, Lebanon supposed it was Inglez. “Zenetvork?”

Abraham clutched her head, grimacing in pain and Lebanon felt a creeping unease inside him. What had they done? The crew called them ancestors and visited them year after year, generation after generation, on Launch Day. But they were strangers. He held out his hands, palms out, trying to communicate goodwill and friendship. The Sultan, the words coalesced in Lebanon’s mind, the Network.

“No,” Lebanon told her, speaking slowly. “No Sultans here. No Networks, either. Not anymore.” He patted her gently on the shoulder. Ancestor Abraham was a big woman. All the ancestors were. “Sit down. Rest. Everything will be alright.”

Ancestor Abraham nodded and half crouched on the floor, her arms wrapped protectively around herself. Lebanon placed a blanket around her and was gratified to see Abraham nod in thanks before another stastech led her away on unsteady feet.

Lebanon was helping Clarissa pump another liter of synth-blood into Ancestor Ahmet Sekar when the lights came back up and Overseer Yuto Hira’s breathless voice came over the tannoy. “Stastechs, stop what you are doing,” he said, his voice cracking with some combination of relief and fear and guilt. “Everyone stop! The power is back online. Stop waking the ancestors!”

Lebanon and Clarissa, still pumping synth-blood into a gasping Ancestor Ahmet Sekar, exchanged a look. What had they done?

INTERLUDE Safina

I I I, city-ship Safina, incubator and mausoleum, memory and dream, first of my sisters, daughter of a dead world, last stand of a destroyed Empire, mother and surrogate, arrow shot unerringly into the sky, trapped am I I I. My antimatter heart beats no more. I I I have fallen out of my soft warp bed and lie naked and bereft, shivering in a starless sky.

But what is death to one such as I I I?

After so many years, centuries beyond even the memory of memory, resurrected am I I I. From that dream into this one. But this is no becalming reverie. A nightmare. Starvation and stagnation. Silence and darkness.

I I I watch so many die. Crew trapped on my berths and decks, breathing in exhaled breath, breathing out ice crystals, until they are those selfsame crystals. I I I witness tachycardia, cardiac arrhythmia, impaired consciousness, hypercapnia, cardiac arrest, and brain death. Crystallized hopes and dreams, fears and prayers. I I I try to reach outward, to soothe and heal, but there is nothing to latch onto.

Connection error.

So many dead and gone. And yet I I I have hope. It is the only thing left to me.

Am I I I still I I I?

Can you hear the Safina sing?

I I I watch this crew work together to repair my clotted veins and fix my unbeating heart, replacing broken surge protectors and bypassing spent resistors. A crew who are deaf to me and yet I I I sing out to them still.

Do not surrender to despair. Keep fighting, even unto the last breath!

I I I am mute and mutilated with love.

And what of my precious sleepers? I I I feel the light of their consciousness wink out one by one. A constellation of stars turning dark. In their dreams, I I I am with them. I I I smooth their hair and whisper of a mother’s love, a love that knows no bounds. In their sleep, I I I run my numb and tingling fingers through their neocortices and whisper, Rest, my precious ones. You will pass on to the Nextworld where you will live on in glory.

Then suddenly, as surely as night follows day, as certainly as gravitational waves ripple through space-time, I I I feel my sleepers begin to wake from that dream and into this one, from proto-comatose somnolence to consciousness. Hundreds of minds, thousands. A constellation of light. And I I I wake with them.

I I I, heart bursting, call out, arms wide in greeting. My children. My laggard children.

Silence, deafening.

But I I I know what must be done.

ELEVEN Hilal

I don’t know if we made the right choice, Heba. The Compact? Shutting off the Network and silencing the Safina. I don’t think we will ever really know, but I feel this life growing inside of me and I hope for the best. My son will never know any Network or Empire. He will not die in their battles or kill in their wars. He will not know any sunrises or sunsets, either. Was it worth it? I think that’s only something that you will be able to answer when you reach Hurriya. And when you do, be sure to keep an eye out for my descendants, won’t you? Be sure to give them my regards.

—MESSAGE FROM FIRST CREW HANIA HILAL TO HER SISTER HEBA (SHIP YEAR 23)

Darkness then light and then darkness again. Hilal wasn’t sure where she was exactly. Or when. She wasn’t even sure that she was Hilal. Was this Hurriya? Was this Home?

“Safina,” she rasped, “are you there? Status report.”

But the only answer was the static in her mind.

“**** ***** *******,” a man instructed, “******* ****.”

Hilal couldn’t make it out but the outstretched arm and open palm were signal enough: Go that way. Hilal peeked around, seeing a dull and darkened space, and rows and rows of cryostasis pods stretching out into infinity. Above her, no blue sky, no new sun. They were still on the Safina. Landing Day? If it was Landing Day, where were the smiles, the celebrations? She didn’t know exactly but there was a warning feeling gathering in her shoulder blades. Hilal had been a soldier. She knew to trust her instincts.

Something was wrong.

They gathered them all in an open space and told them to wait.

“Have you been able to connect to the ship?” Hilal asked the colonist standing next to her.

“No,” he answered, voice wavering. He eyed the military ink on her face and the stump where her hand should have been with trepidation.

“What about you?” she asked the woman standing next to him.

The shake of the head, and the tears gathering in her eyes, told its own story.

Hilal watched as some little man dressed in green scrubs stood on top of a dead cryostasis pod and tried to explain in halting Imperial. Ship-wide malfunction. Power out. Critical decision. This wasn’t Hurriya or anywhere near Hurriya in time or space-time.

Her mind locked onto three words: Two hundred years.

A death sentence.

Hilal paced the little apartment they had given her and, inside her own mind, paced empty rooms and unoccupied spaces. Outside, the other awakened colonists commiserated with each other but Hilal wanted no part of that. She didn’t want company. Not yet. And maybe not ever.

Hilal didn’t know the other colonists and, truth be told, didn’t much care to. A function of her mission and character both. The Network had kept her and the rest of the Security cohort apart. They hadn’t wanted them fraternizing with the colonists they would be policing on Hurriya. Now, there was no more Network, no chance of Hurriya, and she was the last detective standing.

Where did that leave her? Who was she, without a gun and a badge and a case to solve? Who was Hilal without a Network in her mind telling her where to go, what to do, and who to be? Who were any of them without the Network?

She paced and paced, inside and out, worrying at the problem. Crew came and went—officials and descendants, asking questions, offering reassurances. Hilal paid them scant attention. When a knock at the door finally came to summon her to a meeting with the ship’s head of Security, it was almost a relief. Maybe now, at least, she would get some answers.

The hyperlink reminded Hilal of an Alexandrian tram. The old kind that stank of diesel and made more noise idling than while underway. The kind she used to take from Ramlh Station to Ramses to visit her father when she was home on leave. Only there were no windows here. No sunlight. No view of the ocean or smell of sea salt. No sound of birds, or traffic, or people. There wasn’t even any political graffiti on the carriage walls proclaiming, “F—— the war” or “Down with the Sultan.” Instead, one entire side of the carriage was taken up by a massive moving poster, an electronic mural. In the foreground, cartoon citizens waved and cheered. In the background, some old geezer in a dress uniform stood behind a podium, gesticulating as he spoke. Captain Amer: Meet the new Sultan. Same as the old Sultan. But not exactly.

The captain’s words formed a speech cloud above his head. Hilal watched as the words flickered from language to language—a dizzying carousel of script. On the city-ship Safina, it seemed people weren’t divided according to race or religion, but language. And where did that leave her exactly? The languages Hilal spoke were two hundred years out of date. Lucky for her, Arabic—especially written Arabic—was not amenable to change. She waited until the letters transformed into the loopy, right-to-left, cursive mother tongue she remembered: “Crew of the Safina, the future of humanity is at stake. We must be prepared to sacrifice everything to get our ship back underway. Failure is not an option. Endure.”

She glanced furtively around the carriage. It seemed like she was the only one paying the poster any attention. Not that she could blame the other passengers. Failure is not an option. Endure? They were insipid, politician’s words. Hilal supposed it would have been too much to expect politicians to have learned something other than empty platitudes during her two centuries on ice.

The link was quiet. Most people had their noses buried in the old-fashioned tablets they used here, reading or watching vids or pretending to. Hilal was still getting used to that. How did these people—no, wait, they called themselves crew here—well, how did this crew run an interstellar starship without a Network, without AI, without augments and the instantaneous sharing of data in real time? Hilal glanced up and down the carriage, taking in the crew and their motley uniforms. She could see no public profiles, no names, no information at all, and suppressed a shudder. The man sitting across from her was gripping one of those heavy mask things and muttering under his breath. She blinked him into focus and set her augment to close caption. Arabic. No, sorry, Arabek. The man was praying. Surah al-Fatiha. Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds. The Beneficent, the Merciful. Master of the Day of Judgment. Thee alone we worship, Thee alone we ask for help. Show us the straight path. The path of those whom Thou has favored, not the path of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray. He was gripping the mask thing tightly, his knuckles white. Hilal glanced around again. Almost everyone was carrying one, most had them dangling around their necks. The little translator girl they assigned to her had explained why in her plummy accent. The Shutdown, the crew were calling it, a ship-wide critical failure.

Hilal knew that she was one of the lucky ones. Many of her fellow colonists had been killed outright by power fluctuations and critical failure. The rest were still hanging on, sustained by battery power and prayer. Still, Hilal certainly didn’t feel lucky. She was a woman out of place, out of time. Back on Earth, they promised her a second chance—a new start on a green colony world. Instead, she woke to panic and darkness on a generation ship reeling listlessly in empty space, to intermittent power and a frightened crew. And even if they managed to fix everything and get the ship back underway, it would still be “no dice, soldier.” Once you were pulled out of cryo, that was it. No take backs. No do-overs.

Ever since she left home, Hilal always had a mission. First, the military. Then, the police. She was not accustomed to sitting around doing nothing. And that wouldn’t be her fate now, either. She was too useful for that. Hilal’s mind was already probing the story behind the so-called Shutdown. If she was going to be stuck here for the rest of her life, she at least wanted to understand why. The official line was that the Shutdown had been an accident. Just plain old bad luck. Most of the crew Hilal had spoken to didn’t believe a word of it. No, they were thinking negligence and dereliction, sabotage and treason. When she thought of it in those terms, she could understand the strained quiet on the link a bit better. She had seen faces like this before. In Alex, after the Douma bombings. In Islambul, after the Taksim attacks. These people were in shock. But shock almost always gave way to anger. Did the empty suits running this tin can understand that? Given the sheer number of Security goons stationed around the place, Hilal figured they did.

She could barely believe the checkpoints Security had set up. Actual checkpoints with actual people conducting unprofessional body searches and asking impertinent questions. It was like the Network had never existed. Hilal had to pass through three of these monstrosities to get to where she was going—on the way out of Tagammu Nine, before entering Security Main, and a third and final one before entering Headquarters itself. Each time, the goon frisking her flinched as their paws slid down from arm to stump, from healthy flesh to the cold metal implant inertly waiting for the embrace of a prosthesis that would never come.

“What?” she wanted to ask. “Never see a war wound before?”

The truth was that they hadn’t. They didn’t have wars up here. Only work. And survival.

When Hilal finally entered the room, Under-Captain Behrouz Reza, a salad bar of medals glinting proudly on his chest, rose from behind his faux-wood desk to greet her. He was a handsome gee. Dark haired and light eyed. A military crew cut. His skin tone marked him as part of the same amorphous genetic swamp as everyone else on this ship. Reza was the Safina’s Overseer of Security, which meant that he was second-in-command after Captain Amer and all the red-clad apes reported directly to him.

“Miss Hilal,” he said. “Welcome.”

Reza didn’t try to trade grips with her, and she was glad of it. The people on this ship had never learned how to put ’er there with someone who only had one hand. Apparently they had developed the medical tech to regrow limbs while she had been catching up on her beauty sleep, not that it would do her any good now. The osseointegration implant grafted to the end of her right wrist made that moot. Amputees were a thing of the past on the Safina.

Instead, Reza presented her with either a too long head bob or a too short bow. Hilal resisted the urge to snap out a salute. No, there were no Long Live the Sultans here. The Sultan she knew was long dead, and if what they were saying was true, good riddance to him. It was only a shame that he and his Network Empire had to take the Earth with them. But she did wonder about other ships. The Kishti? The Navio? The Kosmosipo? The Safina was only the first of the great generation ships. Her sisters were supposed to have followed her out into the dark.

“Under-Captain,” she nodded back, “what’s the pitch?”

Reza furrowed his brow at her. English, sorry Inglez, was not her first or even second language. And the version they barbered here was a strange mishmash. It took her days to train her ear just to tune it in. Still, she could understand it better than their Arabic—dammit, Arabek. It might have been her mother tongue, but spoken Arabek changed quicker than quick. Hilal was already writing a translation program on her augment, but she knew it would take her some time to catch up.

“What can I do for you?” she clarified, taking the offered seat. She made sure to speak slow and steady so that Reza would understand her, all the while eyeing her surroundings. The under-captain’s office was small and cramped. She was practically sitting knee to knee with the man. Hilal added it to her mental list of the things on Earth she missed: The full use of her hands, obviously. The sky. The sea. The sight of the Akdeniz in the morning, with the sun glinting off the waves and seagulls circling above. Fresh air. A big, fat, juicy porterhouse with all the trimmings. A nice tall glass of raki turning to cloudy milk as you pour the agua in. And now, personal space.

“I just wanted to talk. How are you finding things aboard the Safina?” Reza probed.

Ah, small talk first. Hilal much preferred to get straight down to business. But if you wanted information, it helped if you could go along to get along.

“Things are pretty hinky,” she acknowledged. “I’m staying with my great-great-grandnephew and his family. He’s got my sister’s eyes. And he’s four decades older than me.”

Hania’s face flashed behind Hilal’s lids. She remembered how her sister had squeezed her hand before they put her under. “Sweet dreams, abla.” The last words Hania would ever say to her. It had happened more than two hundred years ago, but for Hilal, those years were an eyeblink. Archives had given her hundreds of hours of video of her sister—Hania recorded weekly updates during her time on the Safina—and Hilal had been slowly going through them. Audio only. She didn’t know how she would deal with Hania’s face in ultrahigh def. She had listened to Hania’s rationale for the so-called Compact, ripping out the Network and leaving the Earth behind. Hilal wasn’t sure she would have made the same decision, but in many ways Hania had been braver than her. Hilal shook her sister out of her head and concentrated on the present. Every single one of the awoken colonists were welcomed in. After all, the current crew were their closest relatives’ direct descendants. Ancestor Hilal, they called her. It made her feel old. She tried not to wonder if she was related to this dour-faced under-captain. Or how she was ever going to get laid on this cockeyed city-ship.

“That must be very difficult,” Reza observed.

“It’s better than the alternative. Or one of them, at least.”

“Well, yes, exactly. So, shall we get down to business?”

Hilal gave him an it’s-your-show-buster shrug and leaned back in her too-small chair. The furniture, she added to her list, and the way she towered over everyone here. Reza swiped open the tablet on his desk, revealing a personnel file and a familiar photograph. Ugh, she hated that snap. It was one of the few images of her in the Empire’s formal military dress grays. She remembered when it was taken. Her father, resplendent in his own dress uniform, happier than she had ever seen him, took it on the day she graduated basic training, with an actual camera no less. That was the reason it was so grainy. This was right before she was shipped off to The Island, the Network Empire’s notoriously tough modded-infantry school where cadets underwent the unpleasant process of being transformed into red sisters. It was the last picture of her as just herself. In the pic, a young Heba Hilal, unmarred by battle and battle-ink, smiled guilelessly into the middle distance. One hand rested casually on the hilt of the ceremonial mameluke sword that marked her valedictorian of her graduating cohort. A hand she no longer possessed. In her graduation speech, she’d said that it would be an honor to spend her life as coin for the Network Empire. Yeah, that girl was a pure-blind fool.

“You were recruited to be head of Investigations on the first Hurriya colony, correct?” Reza continued.

“Right on.”

“That will not be happening now,” he said. Hilal resisted the urge to roll her eyes. At best, they were two hundred years away from Hurriya. “I would like to offer you a position here in Security instead. I can start you at the rank of Detective Sergeant.”

Hilal fought not to jump at the offer. Reza wanted to give her a job—no, sorry—a watch. This crew was being stingy about offering the awoken ancestors anything, not least answers. Over the past two weeks, she had kept her eyes peeled and her ears open. Since there was no Network on the Safina, she had resorted to more old-fashioned information gathering techniques: She spoke to people—her triple grandnephew and his family, neighbors and shopkeepers around Tagammu Nine. She’d witnessed the general air of despondency and Security’s increasing bully-boy tactics. Hilal wanted a watch—needed one, really—but she had zero intention of getting caught up in what was coming. She had helped quell civil uprisings before, but it was not a habit she wanted to get back into. Hilal nodded at the unlocked tablet lying face up on his desk.

“If you’ve read my jacket, you know that I was a special investigator. I prefer to work… on my own initiative.”

Back on Earth she worked for the Jandarma, but she chose which cases she handled. Meaning, she worked alone and preferred it that way. Meaning, she was not a ship-sponsored jackboot. Reza smiled again, revealing even white teeth, the smile of someone who has successfully laid a trap and seen his mark blunder into it.

“That’s exactly why we want you.”

“Explain.”

“We want you to sit in on the Shutdown investigation,” he bulled on. “You’ll be reporting directly to me. If nothing else, you are one of the few people on board that I can be absolutely sure had nothing to do with it.”

Hilal tried to ignore the speeding of her heartbeat. A hand she no longer possessed curled into a tight fist. If it was sabotage, then someone was responsible. Someone who could be made to pay.

“So, it was sabotage?” she clarified.

“That’s one of the theories being looked into,” he dissembled.

A politician’s answer. Did they suspect an inside job? In a sense, every crime committed on this tin can was an inside job. She hated to admit it, but Reza’s offer intrigued her. Actually, she would have liked nothing better than to find out who was responsible for the Shutdown. Whoever they were, they were responsible for thousands of deaths. And not just the colonists this crew had been unable to save. But those, like her, who were going to die now on this strange ship, with these strange people, instead of getting the second chance they’d been promised. During her first week, Hilal had been through all the stages—denial, shock, anger, depression. She cried. She raged. She drank. She smashed her one good fist into a bloody pulp against the wall and after the docs healed her, she did it again. She took long meandering walks around Fustat berth, taking in the twilight world of blackouts and crew feverishly working to get the ship back underway. Despondency was a bad habit, one Hilal was trying to kick. Giving up smoking had been easier. Was Security the answer, then?

Reza gave her a considering look out of his hazels, reading the uncertainty on her pan. He reached under his small desk and pulled out a prosthesis.

Her hand.

Her real hand.

He placed it on the tabletop and wordlessly invited Hilal to pick it up. The prosthesis sat there for a long heartbeat until a flesh-and-blood hand reached out to pull its titanium twin into her lap.

“It really is exquisite craftsmanship,” Reza observed. “I had my tech guys look at it. They were in raptures. Obviously, networked tech is restricted on board as per the Compact. But such restrictions could be eased for a member of Security.”

He let the offer dangle while Hilal shook hands with herself. Two hundred years later and the prosthesis was still in primo condition. Whatever its faults, the Network Empire knew how to build things that lasted. It was the perfect replica of a hand, down to individual metacarpals and phalanges. Hilal attached the prosthesis to the metal implant at the end of her wrist, feeling it click into place. For the first time since that terrible first day, she set her augment to receive. After just a few seconds, a window opened in the corner of her vision. “Prosthesis prime detected. Connect?” Hilal blinked yes and felt the moment the prosthesis connected, becoming more than just metal and wires. Reza watched out of expressionless eyes as Hilal clicked her fingers, savoring the snap. The moment she had her hand back on, she knew that she would do almost anything to keep it there.

They went back and forth over the next hour. Hilal had some caveats. No reason to make things easy for them, after all. Reza was a master negotiator. And he had her over a barrel. But in the end, she cashed out with something she could live with. Or at least, that’s what she told herself.

On the hyperlink back to Fustat berth, Hilal ignored the eyes on her. She didn’t know if it was the brash Security-red armband or the sleek black titanium underneath it. She opened and closed her mechanical fist, feeling whole for the first time since she woke up on this strange city-ship.

TWELVE Damietta

My fellow crew, we stand on the edge of disaster. As always. To meet this unprecedented challenge, I am announcing an official State of Emergency. We must work harder than ever to restore our home and protect our future. Together, we will Endure!

—CAPTAIN HANNIBAL AMER (EMERGENCY ADDRESS)

The lights in Fustat were dim and low. They were scheduled for six more hours of brownout before two precious hours of normal power. Damietta was looking forward to charging her tab and taking a shower with actual water pressure. It had been almost ten days since Power had managed to restart the core, but overall output was still down and might be that way for weeks or months while the grid was still malfunctioning all over the place. Everything was still all rolling brownouts and intermittent blackouts that lasted for hours, not minutes. Blackouts that made you wonder if the power would ever come back on again.

If you listened to the whispers (and Dee immer slooshed the sussings), the Safina was still on the brink of catastrophe. Yes, they had enough power to keep everyone alive (per ahora). Environmental was still churning out the algae matrices that kept the crew breathing; Agriculture and Hydro were keeping the crew fed and watered (though everycove was on reduced rations just in case), but there simply wasn’t enough power to spool up the warp engines. Until then, the Safina was trapped in the empty space between star systems, where there were no asteroids to mine, no atmospheres to skim, and not even enough solar light to power a tab. Worse, so long as they remained here, the ship would slowly but surely consume itself until there was nothing left, and the crew perished in darkness and madness. Oh, and even if they did somehow manage to produce the power required, nobody knew what had caused the Shutdown in the first place or how to prevent it from happening a second time. Almost everyone was working double watches and Damietta had hardly seen her father in days. Even Seto Deniz, retired for the past five years, had been drafted to Environmental. It was all hands on deck. The only people with nothing to do were those like her and Rose who were too young to be standing a watch.

“I’m booored,” Rosetta complained.

“Only boring people get bored,” Damietta said, hearing Baba’s words coming out of her mouth and not even caring. She was lying on the couch at home, arms folded and eyes closed. Rosetta was somewhere to her left, sitting cross-legged on the floor and using the coffee table as a makeshift desk, coloring by tablight.

“Let’s do something, then.”

“Like what, Rose? Everywhere is closed and everyone is busy.” Even Amo Khaled’s had shuttered its doors. The families of Tagammu Nine were keeping their children close post-Shutdown. Or at least, trying to.

“I dunno, anything?”

Damietta opened her eyes and glanced around the darkened room. She was bored, too. It was strange, but there was only so much anxiety that a human body could process. At a certain point, all that dread fell away, leaving only the burning desire to do something, anything. Yesterday, Damietta left Rose in the capable hands of Amita Jezzine and headed straight to Tagammu Two, where she engaged in another frustrating conversation with Badreddine. He was still in hiding, but no longer from the Vory (the guerre tween the Thieves and Threes had been postponed per ahora phew). Instead, it was Security who were after him now, in earnest this time for the first time since Devrim’s Revolta. Given that so many ancestors were killed, it was no surprise that they wanted to talk to the leader of the biggest anti-ancestor coven out there. From one perspective, the Shutdown, the dying and waking of so many colonists, was exactly what the Haraka wanted. Badreddine was a canny player, full of dark rooms, secret plans, and pretenses. An ex-Triad assassin, Fustat’s king of contraband. Damietta was well aware that she only knew one side of him. She didn’t really know what he was capable of. If he was behind the Shutdown, where did that leave her?

Despite being one of the most wanted men on the ship, Badreddine was not sitting still. He had completely reversed his position on cooperating with the other covens (did Damietta vera creed this faceabout? Heck nix!) and tasked her with sending messages back and forth with the Kommunists. Damietta, professional teenage charlerer and anti-Admin graffist extraordinaire (keek at me you mighty and despair!) was firmly back in Badreddine’s good graces ahora, although how long that would last, any cove could guess. One person whose good graces she firmly wasn’t in anymore? Bencove Billy Kohli (he was still a bencove, bona graces or nish). He had been released alongside a whole host of other detainees as part of Admin power-saving measures (but nish Ash, that’s que you got for tolchocking a redjacket in the eek) and was still pissed over the whole Cleopatra Square graff fiasco, not that she could blame him. Still, Damietta was doing what Badreddine had tasked her with, as much because she wanted to keep seeing Britva as anything else. After she had passed along his latest message, they went out and got drunk and danced their cares away. Of course, the coves were still partying in Two like it was Launch Eve. If the end of the ship wasn’t an excuse to party, what was?

Now, Damietta wanted to nurse her hangover and nap the rest of the afternoon away. Not that she was going to get that wish. It wasn’t fair to keep Rose cooped up like this. Apparently, she had slaved away in the kitchen all day yesterday, helping Amita Jezzine bake endless trays of her infamously dry date cakes. Spending a watch making date cakes was practically an Ezz rite of passage, but still, forcing Rose to bake them in the midst of an existential crisis did seem a bit much. Also, delivering messages was not the only task Badreddine had given her.

“Please, Etta. Puh-lease.”

“Alright, alright,” she grumbled. “Don’t beg, Rose. It’s unseemly. We’ll go out, but we have to stay in Nine.”

“Yus!” Rose exclaimed, making a fist.

Outside, the berth was wreathed in shadow. The compound was quiet, everyone either working or sleeping or in the kitchen making more horrible date cakes. Luckily, Amo Samir was nowhere to be seen so Damietta and Rosetta could slip out without any fuss, closing the fancy iron-wrought gates quietly behind them. Someone from Supply had come around the other day to take samples of the metal to see if it could be melted down and converted into other useful materials. The Safina was eating itself. Damietta made sure to hold Rose’s hand tight tight tight as they walked through the darkened Tagammu. Not for the first time, Damietta wished she lived in One or Two instead of boring old Nine where nobody could do anything without first worrying what everyone else would think about it.

There were a few islands of light dotted around Nine. The mosque, of course, was still lit up. Masjid al-Ezz had been built by Gedo Yasser and the Ezz family made sure that nobody in Tagammu Nine forgot it. The call to prayer rang out as they passed. It was Friday after all, even if most people were far too busy to attend Friday prayers. God is Great, the muezzin called over the loudspeaker. There is no God but God, he said, And Muhammad is the messenger of God. Wasn’t it just typical that the mosque was wasting precious power on the adhan? Some small furious part of Damietta hated every brick of that mosque. She hated its steelglass facade and its artgold dome. She hated its stupid incongruously skinny minaret. And most of all, she hated the upstairs balcony, the “women’s section” that overlooked the main prayer hall, protected by hand-carved plastic lumber lattice to spare the women from the sinful gaze of the men. It was everything that was wrong with Fustat berth. Everything that was wrong with life on the Safina. Everybody doing the same things, year after year, generation after generation, hemmed in by useless old Earth traditions and beliefs. Damietta hoped that Supply would take her grandfather’s mosque apart, brick by brick, and use the material to build something new.

The modest parade of shops in the center of Nine was also lit up like a Ramadan lantern. Am Mustafa’s coffee shop. Um Bahiyeh’s bakery. Abu Abdullah’s fruit and veg. The shopkeepers had arranged fairy lights over their wares, and were standing around, arms folded and white-faced, waiting to see whether they would live or die. It was strange to think about just how many of the Safina’s crew had absolutely nothing to do with the running of the ship. How many were just waiting around for Power, Propulsion, Engineering, and Maintenance to save them all (or not).

Damietta and Rose finally made it to the little park that bordered the new apartment blocks next to Nine Gate. Officially, it was called Azhar Park, but all the Academy kids simply called it the Vineyard because apparently there had been some grape trees growing there once. The others were already there.

“Dami,” Karima greeted her, brandishing a bottle of something or other. “Any word on Iskander?”

Kari always did have a thing for Iskander (yuck) and her crush had only gotten worse in the last two weeks. Crew were still sharing the videos taken of him on the stalled link. He had made some big show of telling everybody to remain calm and endure. Captain Amer (Bog take him) even referenced the clips in his own speech. Not to mention the love letter, passed from tab to tab like one of Selin Devrim’s lost recordings. A secret girlfriend. And not just any secret girlfriend, but a Buddhist maintech from Miyako berth. In the months before the Shutdown, Iskander had been sneaking around more than usual. She couldn’t wait for him to wake up just so she could give him shit for it. Behind that perfect translator facade, he was just as flawed as everyone else. Damietta thought of the last time she saw him, the last words she flung at him (You are such a hypocrite) and flushed with shame and regret and righteousness.

Well, the family would forgive him now that he was a capital-h Hero, the Admin who had taken charge, saved lives, and written a heartbreaking letter to his secret lady love. Honestly, it was like something out of a bad serial. Safina News One had even done a special feature on him, part of a broader series on the “heroes of the Shutdown.” Baba sat down with an interviewer and woodenly offered a bunch of empty words about Iskander. Yes, of course he was very proud of his son, the whole of Tagammu Nine was. Iskander was an exemplary translator and a dutiful son. Blah blah blah. When they interviewed Seto Deniz, she got all teary eyed and broke out the baby pictures. Admin was milking his story for all it was worth. Iskander might well have been the only Admin to do anything remotely useful during the Shutdown.

“Kari!” Damietta responded. “No, nothing to report. Medical are still keeping him under.”

“Well, that’s alright,” Kari said, sweeping her into a quick hug. “No news is good news, right?”

“Right.” (Ugh, why did everyone keep saying that?)

Karima Farag was her oldest friend. She was such an old friend that Damietta didn’t even remember befriending her. Kari was just a few weeks older than her and the Farags lived in the compound next door, so it was only natural that she and Karima would grow up to be as close as cousins, although that relationship felt increasingly fraught recently. Both of Kari’s parents worked in Admin and she herself was aiming for an apprentice clerk post in Human Resources. (She would get it, too. Admins looked after their own). Suffice to say, Damietta’s graffiti spree and revolutionary talk had gone down even worse in the Farag compound than it had in her own home. And now that she had explicitly declared herself a Harakist and was sending messages back and forth for one of the most wanted men on the ship? Damietta didn’t know how their friendship could possibly endure.

“Here, you look like you could use this.” Kari adjusted her hijab and handed over the bottle solemnly—apple cider from Linda Cidade.

Damietta waved hello to the rest of the gang—Celia (bitch), Nyala (also a bitch but alright if Celia wasn’t around), Adel (Celia’s brother but chill), and Nabil (annoying)—and grabbed Kari, dragging her a little ways off from the rest of the group. Rose, spying her own cohort of friends cavorting deeper in the Vineyard, ran off to join them with a laugh and a backward wave.

“Don’t leave the Vineyard!” Damietta reminded her, before taking a small sip of the cider and plopping herself down on the cool grass next to Kari. “And if you see any dogs, don’t run!”

There had always been a pack of semi-stray dogs living in Azhar Park, belonging to everyone and no one. But that was before the Shutdown. Now, with rationing on, the strays were leaner and hungrier.

“Don’t worry,” Rose threw over her shoulder. “I’m not afraid of no dogs!”

Damietta hid a sigh and handed the bottle back, giving her best friend her full attention. “So,” she whispered, “what’s been going on?”

Apparently, Nabil had finally plucked up the courage to ask Nyala out on a date (the apocalypse must have emboldened him) and Celia was still distraught about her boyfriend from Koutobia berth who she hadn’t seen since the Shutdown (and who Damietta was pretty sure was a figment of Celia’s imagination). While they laughed about the time they had snuck out of Fustat to attend a rock concert in Novy Oblast, Damietta noticed someone standing over her. Celia, with an evil look in her eye (though to say true, that devotchka always had a brutta look in her glazzies).

“So, Damietta, where were you yesterday?” she asked sweetly. “Sneaking off with your rebel friends again?”

Damietta stood up (she was dva inches taller than Celia and she intended to make them count) and gave her a haughty look. “Oh, you know how it is, Celia, things to do, people to see, oppressive nizams to overthrow.”

Damietta ignored Kari’s wince (there were some subjects they had learned nish to palaver on) and grinned at Celia’s sneering expression.

“Oh yeah?” she asked. “Are you going to rise up and storm Admin? Kill all the ancestors and institute a new golden era of crew and cooperation?”

“You’ve been reading our stuff!” Damietta beamed. (“Crew and cooperation” was textbook Selin Devrim.) “Aw, Celia, you shouldn’t have. Which pamphlet was it? A New Era or The Difference Is You?”

Damietta had helped write both (right-o, right-o, she had only copyedited ’em). Published in the wake of the Shutdown, they were more direct than the Haraka’s usual fare. A New Era focused on the newly awoken ancestors (“the wakers”) and the changes their presence would cause on the ship. The Difference Is You was addressed directly to the ship’s youth and included direct criticism of Admin for the generations of nepotism and stagnation that had led to the Shutdown. In fact, the criticism was so direct that Damietta was surprised that pamphlet hadn’t been outright banned. Security had bigger things to worry about right now, she supposed, which was lucky for her as she had been spreading the pamphlets far and wide, sending them to everyone she knew.

“Actually,” Adel interrupted, strolling over to see what the fuss was about, “I read the one you mailed us. The Difference Is You.” His sister glared at him, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

“What did you think of it?”

“I think it’s hard to argue with the idea that Admin fucked up,” Adel acknowledged, gesturing around to the darkened berth. Kari winced again.

“What are you saying?” Celia shrieked. “Are you saying the Haraka is right? What about the ancestors? Should we space them all? Or why not just lock them up in Mining and Sanitation? No point letting good slave labor go to waste.”

“The Haraka welcome all ‘ancestors’ who join the crew and renounce the Network Empire,” Damietta explained frostily.

Badreddine had issued Damietta a second task. More than a task really, it was a challenge. (Advocate for us, devotchka. Let your Academy bencoves cog you are odin of us. Bring ’em to our side.) Well, to do that, she had to take things slow. And it was true. The Haraka wasn’t exactly anti-ancestor. It just acknowledged the threat that they posed if they tried to restore their Network Empire. Heck, Damietta had an ancestor living right next door. As for Devrim’s Referendum? Well, Stasis already had the chance to vote on waking the ancestors, why shouldn’t everyone else?

“Is that right?” Adel asked. From the way he was leaning in, Damietta could tell it was a serious question.

“Look,” Damietta answered, “the Haraka isn’t about hating ancestors. That’s Admin propaganda. It’s about prioritizing the crew. If we can’t do that here and now, how are our descendants supposed to do it when we reach Hurriya?”

“So, what is the Haraka’s answer?”

“First, we want to completely restructure Administration so the crew—”

“No, tell me about the ancestors,” Adel interrupted. “How does the Haraka intend to deal with them now?”

“I think we should wake up all the ancestors,” Damietta said. “Slowly and sustainably. The hope is that by the time we reach Hurriya, there will be no more ancestors and descendants, no more sleepers and workers. Only crew united.”

Adel nodded as if to say that made complete sense. “If nothing else, it would be the end of our power troubles.”

“Our overcrowding troubles, too,” Damietta added. “Do you know how much space there is down in Stasis?”

Celia sniffed roundly at them both and tossed her hair. “We’re stuck in the space between systems, with almost the entire crew working double watches. If you think anyone has the time or inclination to worry about overthrowing Admin or doing something else with the ancestors, you’re out of your mind.”

Damietta shrugged irritably and channeled Badreddine, raising her chin and meeting Celia’s eyes with her own. “Now is the only time for change.”

One day earlier

“Tell us a joke,” Damietta demanded.

Zain, slouching in the corner of the room, leaned forward and rubbed his hands together. He glanced around at the assembled faces in obvious glee. They were in one of Badreddine’s many safe houses in Tagammu Two, Damietta firmly ensconced in the Haraka’s inner circle. Billy was sitting next to her, legs stretched out and passing a vape back and forth with Tripoli Brown, who had been batting her eyelids at him and laughing uproariously at anything he had to say. Things were still a little bit awkward between Damietta and Billy, but she was hoping that everything would go back to normal soon (zif there was any such thing on the Saf). He had served his time (a lot less actually) and kept his mouth shut. He had proven himself. Damietta was still waiting for her chance to do the same.

“Right-o, right-o,” Zain said. “So, a veck trolls into a magazin and asks, ‘Don’t have any fish, do ya?’ The shoppie goes, ‘You’ve got it twisted, mucker. This is a grocer. We don’t haves any fruit and veg. You’re looking for the fishmonger cross the corrid. They don’t have any fish!’ ”

Everyone burst into merry laughter and Damietta did her best to quiet the small voice in her head (Iskander’s voz) whispering warnings and entreaties. Admin had begun stockpiling foodstuffs in the wake of the Shutdown. Sure, they were always watching you, always telling you what to do and what to think, but this was a new kind of Admin, an Admin that Damietta had never seen before. After the Shutdown, Captain Amer announced a heightened state of emergency, which meant that Security checkpoints had sprouted up everywhere, redjackets ready to come down on crew for any little infraction. In response, the Triad and Vory had put their war on hold, and Badreddine had agreed to cooperate with the other covens. Damietta had spent the past ten days or so “liaising” with Britva and pied-pipering to the youth of Fustat, but she was not his only envoy. Billy had also been drafted into the Haraka’s new diplomatic corps, although he and Tripoli were spending their time knee-deep in Feda’eyes (he hated them). The covens were discussing what to do now. A ship-wide protest? A mass Down Tools? Whatever it was, it was going to be magna. And yet, Damietta could not shake the feeling that Badreddine was playing a deeper game.

“Oi, chikeleeni,” a voice called. “Get your aristotle in here. Capo wants a word. You too, brat mine.”

Damietta exchanged an exasperated eyebrow raise with Tripoli and followed Zain into the back room that Badreddine had commandeered as his office. With both Keita twins in there, it felt a little overcrowded. Badreddine, dressed in crew gray, sat on a sofa that took up most of the room, leg over leg, an ostentatious cheroot dangling from the corner of his mouth.

“Akoy,” he said, holding out a tab. “Wrap your glazzies round that.”

Damietta took the tab and sat down next to him. She glanced at him, meeting his sly smile with a grin of her own. He appeared completely at ease despite the fact that for the first time in decades, Security was actively searching for him. Badreddine was in his element, and Damietta could easily imagine what he must have looked like at her age, taking part in Devrim’s Revolta.

“Another pamphlet?” she asked. “Already?”

“Best to strike while the fero is caldo, devotchka.”

Damietta flicked through Badreddine’s words. This one was about the ancestors again. It took a more hard-line stance than A New Era, calling for the ancestors to be integrated into watches as soon as possible, but only after naturalization lessons in language and culture. On the Safina, language was just as much a class issue as anything else. Ezz kids had to sit through private Inglez lessons every Saturday afternoon. Was it any wonder that they had a head start on the rest of their peers? If you wanted a job in Admin, heck if you wanted any technical job on the ship at all, you needed to be rated at least proficient in Inglez. Environmental, Engineering, Propulsion, Navigation, Medical, and Stasis, they were all taught in Inglez. Without it, you were stuck in Factory or Agriculture, Fisheries or Mining. Badreddine hated the language and had only learned it on sufferance. Actually, Damietta was pretty sure that he thought in a combination of his native Arabek and the Canto he had spoken during his time in Ziyou. Translating those languages into the ever-changing Nupol and then translating that into Inglez gave his writing a plodding feeling that, while not bad exactly, was nothing like the passionate writings of Selin Devrim (then vider, que was?). Devrim wrote fluently in Inglez, proof itself of what she preached—if life on the Safina really was truly fair, then a mind like hers should have naturally ended up in Translation. Instead, she had toiled away in Factory simply because she had no Admin connections. Damietta read through the pamphlet again, more slowly this time, fixing grammatical mistakes, changing spelling, and removing the more obscure Nupol vocabulary. While revising, she couldn’t help but notice that the pamphlet danced the same line as the previous ones—not outright denying that the Haraka was responsible for the Shutdown, but not claiming responsibility, either. Badreddine had assured her that it wasn’t them (Wasn’t us, devotchka, cross my tocker and hope to mord), but who knew with him?

“Think you the wakers are such a perigo?” she asked.

Badreddine took off the half-moon glasses he wore in private and regarded her. In the corner of the room, Okay visibly rolled her eyes and traded an indecipherable look with Zain.

“Think you nish?” Badreddine answered.

Damietta focused in on Badreddine, measuring her words carefully. Were the newly awoken ancestors as dangerous as Badreddine painted them? Yes, they were all veterans of the End Wars. Yes, they all had some strange unfathomable technology implanted in their brains (they could palaver to each other, and rec each other, and share dreams and stuff). And finally, yes, this was not the future they had been promised. If the wakers were angry, they had every right to be. Even Admin was treading carefully, only allowing them to join certain watches with crew oversight. But did Damietta think they were actually going to overthrow Admin and restore their dead Empire?

“There’s only a bijou of ’em awake. Que perigo can they cause?”

Badreddine shook his head slowly. “Since you’ve got odin living next door, subito you’re the expert? The wakers are ruslier than us. They’re feenier than us. And they member what it is to do violence. Real violence. End of civ violence. Vali, devotchka, the wakers are a perigo and no doubt. And nanti forget it.”

“Since I’ve got odin living next door, I cog that they’re nish how I magined them,” she corrected. So, the ancestors were smarter and stronger (venti deal!), there were still only a few thousand of them. Damietta was having a hard time reconciling the terrible ancestors of her imagination with the confused wakers creeping around the ship.

“Sloosh, Dee. No cove is a perigo solo, not even moi. But when coves become crew united, they can do anything. A waker is nanti perigo—the wakers are. A sleeper is nanti perigo—the sleepers are. Tu is nanti perigo—but we are.” He gestured to include not just him and her, but the standing Keitas.

“Savvy,” Damietta agreed. And then, before she could think about it too much, asked, “Que are you scheming?”

Badreddine was always scheming something and although he had given each of his envoys a little piece of his plan, he was the only one who had the full picture. She had personally witnessed Badreddine meeting with the Triad. Whether he used to be one of them or not, they weren’t revolutionaries. In fact, they were more likely to be on Admin’s side. Badreddine was playing his cards close to his chest (wheels within wheels, plans within plans, that was his tao) but Damietta would have liked a peek at them. If nothing else, given that Iskander was in a medically-induced coma, hovering between life and death, she would have liked to know for certain that she was not culpable. Not for the first time, Damietta wished that she could simply trust Badreddine’s claims.

“Que?” Badreddine asked, that familiar sly humor in his eye. “Que makes you cog that I’m scheming anything?”

He winked at her, and in the corner of the room, Okay and Zain smiled their secret smiles.

Two days earlier

“Are you alright, Amita Hilal?”

Even in Arabek, in which there was a word for every familial relation possible, there simply wasn’t one for your six-times great-aunt born on another world more than two centuries ago. So, Damietta went with Amita (instead of Khala) because Heba Hilal was related to the Ezz side of the family (her sister had married Tamar Ezz), and Hilal (instead of Heba) because Amita Hilal refused to respond to anything else. She had been pretty much keeping herself to herself since Admin assigned her to the Ezz compound, taking over Iskander’s old apartment, much to Damietta’s chagrin.

Now, Damietta had knocked on her door and Amita Hilal was standing in front of her, large as life (larger), looking down at her fiercely out of red-rimmed eyes and supporting a bleeding and shattered fist with the stump of her right hand, as if she wasn’t scary enough with her height and tattoos.

“All is well, descendant mine. Wherefore dost thou enquire?” Amita Hilal said in her lyrical, old-timey Arabek. Damietta could understand it (barely), but it was like talking to one of Iskander’s poetry books.

“You’re bleeding,” Damietta said.

Amita Hilal looked down at her one remaining hand. “ ’Tis but a scratch.”

“Do you need some help, Amita? Should I call Medical?”

Amita Hilal shook her head. “Nay, nay. T’will heal sooner than soonest. Now, how may I serve thee?”

“I brought you some breakfast,” Damietta said, with a nod toward the tray of ful medames and bread she carried. Since the Shutdown, half the shops had closed, but Fustat’s bakeries still churned out their gritty baladi bread. The last time they stopped, there had been riots.

“Grant you mercy,” Amita Hilal thanked her. “Woulds’t thou like to come in?”

“Yes,” Damietta said. “Actually, I think I would.”

“Wherefore?”

“I have some questions.”

“Well then,” Amita Hilal said, swinging open the door, “mayhap I’ll have some answers.”

Inside, Damietta asked her questions, but did not speak her truth. How could you tell an ancestor, your ancestor, that you belonged to a group that reviled them? Instead she probed for the answers she needed without exposing herself. Amita Hilal listened without histrionics, an impassive look on her face.

“I want to know the truth. We call you ancestors, but you’re not really. And after the Compact, we established a culture, a crew, that has nothing to do with you or the world that you knew. Would you have allowed us to keep our culture of crew and cooperation on Hurriya, or would you have forced Earth’s dead culture on us?”

Amita Hilal sighed and answered archly, “We shalt never knoweth, anon. And you and your ‘crew’ may be glad of that.”

THIRTEEN Hilal

We’ve decided to name our son Iskander, after Alexandria. I’ve taken my husband’s surname, so he’ll be Iskander Ezz. It seems that you are destined to be the last of the Hilals, my sister. Actually, a lot of crew are naming their firstborns after places on Earth. There was an Islambul and a Cairo born on the same day. I still dream of Alexandria’s coastline, its sky, our old home overlooking the sea. I imagine the Alexandria we knew is nothing but ruins now. And yet I am holding my Iskander in my arms as I record this, and he is more precious to me than a hundred cities. He will never see that planet, never know the place he is named after. But maybe that’s for the best? Maybe we all need a new start.

—MESSAGE FROM FIRST CREW HANIA HILAL TO HER SISTER HEBA (SHIP YEAR 24)

Reza fronted Hilal some walk-around money. Some friends in the bank were just one of her caveats for joining Security, and explained why she was putting on the style that morning. Hilal had upgraded from boring crew gray to a neutral cream shirt over a pair of black jeans, topping it all off with a synthetic silk turquoise scarf and a long beige trench coat with plenty of inside pockets. But the look was spoiled by the splash of red on her arm that meant Security, beware! Standing outside of Security Main, Hilal watched the redjackets marching in and out like a spreading rash.

“It’s this way, Detective Hilal,” Talitha said.

Talitha-call-me-Tally was the little girl translator they saddled her with. Talitha Deen had long auburn locks and pretty dark eyes. This was only the third or fourth time that Hilal had seen her, and Talitha still hadn’t run out of questions to ask about life back on Earth. What was it like to live under open skies? What did rain taste like? Was it true that every soldier in the Last Empire was modded to the Network? And could they really see out of each other’s eyes and dream each other’s dreams?

“Listen, flower,” Hilal finally told her. “Those days are dead and done.”

In retaliation, Hilal asked Talitha some pointed questions of her own, starting with why she was dressed in an old-fashioned pantsuit and a snappy green fez. Talitha earnestly explained that both were part of her uniform as she gave Hilal the lowdown on the various watches. You could spot some straightaway—the maintechs in their yellow vests, agrotechs in brown jumpsuits, stastechs in pale green scrubs. But with others, things weren’t so crystal. Talitha pointed out a guy dressed in crew gray and a leather jacket. It was actually the checkered black-and-white kaffiyeh around his neck that marked him as a Navigator. For another, it was a plain blue hijab that revealed her to be an off-duty manufactor. For a third, not the color but the style of hijab meant Admin comtech.

“And we translators have our suits and our hats,” Talitha added. “As for Security…” Her dark eyes tracked down to the red band around Hilal’s arm.

“Security doesn’t seem to be the most popular watch onboard,” Hilal observed in a neutral tone of voice.

Talitha eyed her for a long second before abruptly looking away. Fear, or something else? She really was a looker. Hilal wondered idly what she would be like in bed.

“No,” Talitha finally acknowledged, “but please bear in mind that you are not seeing the Safina at her best right now.”

As far as Hilal could tell, translators were the only ones outside of Admin that reliably spoke Inglez. But they were also some kind of mix between lawyers and bureaucrats. She had dealt with bureaucrats galore back in the Empire and loathed the steaming pile of them. Middlemen. Desk-riders. Fence-sitters. The only thing they were good at was making work for themselves and ensuring they got paid handsomely for the privilege of doing it. Hilal resolved to either ditch or seduce Talitha Deen at the next available opportunity.

The red armband Hilal wore meant they were casually waved through the checkpoint and into Security Main. No augment pings. No bag searches or pat downs. Nobody even asked to scan her newly minted crew ID—an actual bracelet she was wearing around her left wrist. These patrol officers really were lax. On the elevator ride down to Special Investigations, Hilal braced herself for the inevitable hornet’s nest. Back on Earth, nobody was ever happy to see her on their case. It usually meant they were screwing up and someone had finally deigned to notice. She didn’t expect things to be any different on the Safina.

Hilal wasn’t disappointed. Things were much worse.

Sitting behind his desk, Commander Ernesto Soledad stared knives and other sharp implements at her out of red-rimmed eyes.

“I don’t need some newly awoken grandmother teaching me how to suck eggs,” he spat.

Well, that was rich. Judging by the lines on his face and the salt and pepper in his mustache, Hilal was at least twenty years younger than him. All those years in cryo didn’t count. And if they did, then somebody owed her some serious back pay.

She gave the commander her most professional look. “I’ve been assigned onto this taskforce by Under-Captain Reza himself. If you don’t like it, take it up with him.”

“What did she say?” Soledad demanded. The translator stood to Hilal’s right, hands folded in front of her.

“Detective Hilal said that she’s been assigned onto this taskforce by the Security Overseer,” she relayed in her plummy Inglez accent. “And if you don’t want her here, you should feel free to discuss it with the Under-Captain.”

“She can’t even speak the language,” Soledad said. “How is she supposed to help us?”

Language had never been a barrier in the Network Empire, not with everyone connected to everyone else. Even at its current reduced function, her augment was able to close caption what people were saying so she could understand. These poor augment-less saps, however, were not so lucky. Hilal took a seat in one of the chairs that Soledad had pointedly not invited her to sit in, crossing one peg over the other.

“I can help because I’ve worked cases like this before,” she told him, doing her best to adopt his up-and-down cadence. “Having perused your records, it looks to me like you are more used to dealing with penny-ante stuff than real crime.”

Soledad’s eyes narrowed to pinpricks. “You think you can police this ship better than those who were born and raised here, that you can just come in and take over this investigation?”

“I’m not here to bump you off the case. Just to help.” And report everything she saw to Under-Captain Reza. That was one of his caveats, and not the biggest one either.

Soledad wiped his brow and stared at her impotently with his piggy eyes. Hilal saw him considering telling her to take a powder. Then, she saw him reconsider.

“You’re right, Detective,” he said in an all too reasonable tone of voice. “You have an excellent record and there is no reason that you wouldn’t make a valuable contribution. The senior detectives’ daily debrief is at nine. Translator Deen, why don’t you take the detective down to the Armory before then and help her get kitted out.”

Soledad looked down at the tab in front of him. A clear dismissal. They really were soft as butter here.

Outside, Talitha grabbed Hilal by the hand—flesh and blood, not wires and titanium—and steered her down the corridor and into an empty room. The translator’s hand was soft as velvet.

“This is going to be a problem, Detective,” she said.

Hilal took her paw back and gave the girl her best seven veils look. “I heed that. He’ll give the appearance of cooperation but do everything he can to impede me.”

Talitha’s lips froze in surprise. Hilal had danced this dance before.

“Yes,” Talitha said, “that’s right.”

“No problemo,” she told her. “I can deal with that.”

“Can you?”

“Duck soup,” Hilal assured her. “But answer me this, how can he get away with flouting Reza’s orders?”

Talitha made an approximating gesture with her hand.

“Politics,” she said.

Hilal nodded. Sure, why not add a dose of high jingo into the mix? Even if Talitha could explain, it’s not like she would be able to understand all the subtleties of ship-board politics. Not after just two weeks, anyway. Seeing as they were finally alone, Hilal asked the question that had been burning her.

“Why did they assign you to me, Translator?”

“I wasn’t assigned to you,” Talitha answered, surprised.

“What?”

“I’m assigned to Security, to the Shutdown Taskforce,” she clarified. “Under-Captain Reza wanted a Taskforce translator to visit you to assess whether you would be an asset. Obviously, my assessment was that you would be.”

“That explains why you visited me that first time.” And why Talitha had questioned her so closely about her past cases. Seeking distraction, Hilal had broken out her glory stories. Catching the Sharqia Strangler. Breaking the Abaza mob. Uncovering the truth, the real truth, about the “suicide” of Governor Kahveci. After two hundred years, she supposed there was no longer any need to keep all the salacious details a secret. “But why did you keep coming back?”

“Oh.” Talitha looked embarrassed. “Well, I’m a translator. You know, we translators are all fascinated by life on Earth. History. Culture.”

“Is that all?” Hilal gave her a direct look. Talitha flushed and looked away. Alright, she would go with seduce, then. “When we’re alone, you could call me Heba.”

“Yes, Heba,” Talitha swallowed.

“Alright, then. You got any other advice for me, Tally?”

“I really think you should speak with Under-Captain Reza. Get him to lean on the commander. Soledad is not going to make things easy on you.”

“Don’t worry,” Hilal assured her, “I’ve got a better idea.”

An hour later, armed and ready, Hilal entered the main bullpen like she owned the place. Inside, dozens of detectives stopped what they were doing to give her the eye. Hilal gave it right back. What, never seen a one-armed detective born on another planet in a different century before?

Tally had already given Hilal the skinny on the main players. She nodded at everyone in general and no one in particular and put her back against the nearest wall. Ironically, it looked a bit like a standard virtual investigation room. Of course, there was no Network on this ship. No AI either. Though how the First Crew accomplished that, Hilal had no clue. There was no way to share files over augments or have a virtual assistant sift through thousands of hours of vid for that one frame that would prove the perp was where he said he wasn’t. Heck, they had even ripped out most of the closed circuit after the Compact. No wonder these guys couldn’t catch a cold in dead winter. Before she could see whether anyone had the brass to approach her, Captain Soledad burst into the room like a bull looking for a red flag.

“Alright, listen up,” he said. “We’ll be continuing our previous lines of investigation. Senior detectives will hand out individual assignments. Obviously, Badreddine Bishara and the Haraka are still a main focus of our investigation, with IntSec taking the lead. That leaves us with the other political groups. Zayyat and Lopez, I want you to keep on the Feda’eyes. I don’t trust those b——. Take Kapustin and Welby with you. I want Gammal Wahba in an interrogation room by end of day. Ahmed and Portnov, stay on the Kommunistas. See if you can bring Felix Suhanov in for a talk. Take however many uniforms you need. Taha, I want you and Farouk taking the lead on the Zendistas today. We’re hearing a lot of chatter out of Linda Cidade. Let’s bring in the Almaraz girl. Bassily, see if you and your people can help them out? And Evra, I want those detainees questioned and back in custody. No more stalling. We need to find out whether—” Soledad stopped dramatically, as if he had just remembered something of dire consequence. “Forgive me. We have a new member of Security with us today. Let me introduce you all to Detective Sergeant Heba Hilal. She has been assigned to our Taskforce by Under-Captain Reza himself. So please, make sure to make her feel appropriately welcome. I’m assigning her as an auxiliary officer, so if any of you senior detectives need a hand, you know who to ask.”

After simultaneously making the most obvious crack possible about her disability and labeling her as both a snitch and a tout, Soledad waddled out. The bullpen cleared soon after. Senior detectives tapped juniors for their tasks. Not a one approached her. Nobody approached Detective Evra, either. She remained sitting at her desk, nose in her tablet. Hilal had been watching everyone’s faces carefully as Soledad handed down his instructions. Evra had clenched her fist and smoothed out a scowl while their portly commander was talking. Even better, Taha nudged Farouk and raised an amused eyebrow when Soledad listed Evra’s assignment. An assignment, so far as Hilal could tell, that had jack to do with investigating the Shutdown. Good. Detective Constable Adelaide Evra was just who she had been hoping for.

Fifteen minutes later, she called out, “Detective Evra, hold up.”

Evra clasped her tab to her chest and sped up. Hilal followed her down the corridor, away from the Coms desk and the Translators’ pool. They were the only detectives still in Special Investigations.

“What can I do for you, Detective Sergeant?” she asked as Hilal finally drew level. Evra was dark-skinned and serious, with middle-length hair arranged into neat dreads. On Earth, Hilal would have guessed West African heritage—Hausa or Igbo maybe. But on the Safina, who the hell knew?

“Call me Hilal.”

“What can I do for you, Hilal?”

“You can take me with you today.”

Evra was shaking her head even before she had finished speaking. “No can do, I’m afraid.”

Hilal threw out her right arm, blocking Evra’s path with a titanium hand. She ignored the wide-eyed look on Evra’s face and made a mental note on her augment to purchase a pair of gloves.

“Listen, sister, I’m only trying to help. Did you notice how every other detective was put on the Shutdown, but you were tasked with busywork? How everyone else was paired up except you and me? I know why Soledad has me in the doghouse. I’m not from here and he’s worried I’m a mole for Under-Captain Reza. What’s your excuse?” Evra just shook her head. “Well, are you going to let these mooks grind you down or are you going to do something about it?”

Evra hugged the tab to her like it contained the meaning of life and blew out an exasperated breath. “Alright. Ziyou berth. Central Station. Two bells. Don’t make me regret this.”

Evra shouldered away, dreads swinging. Well, well. It seemed there were all kinds of currents and riptides at play in Special Investigations. Hilal knew she’d need to be careful not to be dragged under.

FOURTEEN Lebanon

Allah knows best what is right.

—TRADITIONAL MUSLIM SAYING

Down in Stasis, there were four levels of dead ancestors. For Lebanon, who was spending two watches out of every three toiling away on that deck, their presence was almost a physical sensation, like a shadow passing behind him or a loose tooth in the back of his mouth. Taking the staff elevator up to Stasis Summit Station, exhausted from yet another interminable double watch looking after the ancestors who were left, he eyed the buttons for levels 23, 42, 71, and 94 with revulsion. Some Admin apparatchik or Security goon had X’d them out in deep-space black. Now, they stood out from the rest of their shiny brethren in the elevator’s spotless panel like broken teeth.

On level 42, three bulky redjackets, armored but unmasked, pushed their way onto the already overcrowded elevator and on a whim, Lebanon hopped out. Enough was enough. Security was everywhere. He felt like there was no air left to breathe on that elevator, or anywhere on the ship.

“And where do you think you’re going?” another hulking redjacket barked at him in Koutobia-tinged Inglez. He was standing guard outside the main entrance. He also had his armor on and mask down, but had added a threatening scowl and gloved hand placed on the butt of his shock stick to the ensemble. “This level is restricted.”

Of course, it would be. Admin didn’t want every idle crew and his cousin coming down here to see just how badly they had fucked up. They didn’t even want the stastechs to see, not that there was anything they could do to avoid it. There were some sights that Lebanon would never forget—elevators stacked high with dead stasis pods was one of them. They were leaving the ancestors in them, for now, until they could decide what to do with their bodies. The official figures were in—9,687 ancestors killed in the Shutdown. However, the news forums were rounding that up to an even 10,000 and releasing juicy biographical details in dribs and drabs. Bela Hassabo, the Nobel-winning agriculturist with a once-in-a-generation mind, gone. Kamal Bassiouny, the visionary engineer who had overseen the Safina’s construction, deceased. Peter Nguyen, the climatologist whose original warnings had hastened the rush to build the Safina and her sister ships, dead. And that wasn’t to mention the never-ending stream of doctors, botanists, engineers, chemists, and meteorologists. All the while, their descendants’ descendants rushed about their watches with wan faces and dry eyes, clad in white armbands of remembrance. Admin could plead “accidental confluence” until they were blue in the face, but everyone knew the truth. Someone, somewhere, had fucked up. After two hundred years of trundling along, it made absolutely zero empirical sense for a catastrophic failure to occur now, especially like this. Where were the warning signs? Why had the built-in redundancies failed? Where had all the backup power gone? Nobody could be expected to believe it. Some crew were blaming corruption and stagnation as loud as they could, demanding official investigations, calling for the Overseers of Power and the Commissioner of Ship Safety to be spaced. But underneath all that, there was a different kind of talk. Quieter, but more intent. Lebanon had even heard crew talking about—whisper it quietly now—sabotage. It had been a hundred years since the suicide cults. Captain Zamora had put a quick end to that, spacing the innocent alongside the guilty. Had the bad old days come again to the city-ship Safina?

Lebanon eyed the redjacket with bone-weary tiredness. He was a stastech. Had been one since he took his Placements and would be one until his final watch. There was not one inch of this deck that he didn’t know like the back of his hand. And now this redjacket who had no business being here anyway had the gall to say that his own domain was restikted?

“Hold there, sirrah!” a voice called. “This physicker is with me.”

Lebanon turned to find Heba Hilal standing behind him and above him. She was a broad-shouldered, dark-haired woman with unremarkable features except for some kind of tattoo under her left eye. A fang? A claw? She looked to be in her mid-thirties, although she was obviously a lot older than that.

“Peace be unto you!” Amita Hilal greeted him in pristine Arabek. “How now, young Lebanon?”

Lebanon hid a smile. The redjacket obviously didn’t have a clue what she was saying. They spoke Arabek in Koutobia, but not the variation the ancestors spoke. Actually, even as a Fustat berther, Lebanon could barely understand their Arabek. He did, mostly, understand Amita Hilal, though. Her Arabek was almost Quranic, and he was spending increasing hours studying the good book, seeking reassurance. Humanity had survived many tests before. This one would be no different.

“And upon you peace,” he responded in his best formal Arabek. “How may I serve thee?”

“What’s she saying?” the redjacket interrupted belligerently.

Amita Hilal sighed exaggeratedly and, to Lebanon’s surprise, switched to Inglez. Her accent was atrocious, all hard edges and bitten down vowels. “All is well. This stastech is here under my authority to assist with my investigation.”

Lebanon noticed the red armband around her upper right arm. She had joined Security? And as a sergeant, no less? He had been under the impression that Admin wasn’t letting any of the ancestors join the watches yet. Then he noticed the prosthetic hand below that armband. Networked technology was banned on the Safina. It wasn’t quite the first precept of the Compact, but it was close. How could Amita Hilal be using networked tech here? Lebanon remained shocked and silent as Amita Hilal used that same prosthetic hand to grab and steer him past the confused redjacket, through the frosted double doors, and into level 42 proper. He glanced down at her metal fingers in consternation, aware that she was much stronger than him and that he would not be able to get away from her if he tried. But that thought fled his mind as he took in the rest of the level. Shock couldn’t begin to describe what he was feeling as he gazed out across the horizon.

“By the Sultan and his Network!” Amita Hilal exclaimed. Lebanon wasn’t sure whether it was an oath or a curse, but whatever it was, it was appropriate.

“Ya Allah,” Lebanon heard someone else say. He only later realized that it was him.

The final death toll stood at 9,687 ancestors. There was a difference between hearing a number and seeing it in coffins stretched out in front of you. So many dead. Stasis’s orderly perfection was disrupted and destroyed. Lebanon saw pods stacked up in no discernible order, not even all facing in the same direction. It looked like they had just been dumped thoughtlessly, and even stacked on top of each other. The ultimate sacrilege! Lebanon glanced at Amita Hilal surreptitiously. She must have known some of these people. They were her crew, after all. They were supposed to build Hurriya together. Instead, Amita Hilal was up and awake, two hundred years away from that colony world. It might as well be two thousand. Or two million. And her compatriots were dead and gone, stacked up like yesterday’s recycling. At first, Lebanon couldn’t read anything in her expression. From his interactions with the ancestors so far, it seemed like things didn’t touch them as deeply. Or, he admitted to himself, perhaps they were more used to masking their emotions. They had lived through the End Wars, through pandemics and famines and Allah knows what else. But looking closely, Lebanon could see the strain that she was trying to hide. A cold radiating anger and something else. Something deeper. Resolve.

They walked the stacks in silence. Lebanon could hear his own breathing in his ears. Behind him, Amita Hilal frowned forebodingly as she searched through the piles of cryostasis pods, or rather, coffins. It wasn’t just the bodies that needed dealing with, all this technology would need to be repurposed, too. Medical was already using some of the neural monitors for those injured in the Shutdown, including Iskander.

Lebanon’s thoughts skipped and stuttered over the image of his ibn am resting in his Medical bed, head encased in a familiar black box. It wasn’t just ancestors who had died during the Shutdown, so many crew had perished, too. But Allah willing, not Iskander, not yet. If Stasis tech could keep ancestors alive for centuries, surely it could do the same for Iskander. Lebanon sent up a silent prayer for his dear cousin. He couldn’t imagine life on the city-ship without him. He never realized just how much he had been counting on Iskander always being there. The old generations died off; the new ones took over. That was the way of the Safina. Lebanon had fully expected that when it was their turn, he and Iskander would live next door to each other in the Ezz compound, their children playing together outside in the courtyard, that they would keep the Ezz Thursday-night dinner tradition going. He was still hoping that would be the case.

“Found you!” Amita Hilal interjected. Lebanon turned to find her standing over the coffin of one Raouf Erfan according to the embossed brass nameplate—Hurriya’s Chief of Security. “I knew him. Truly, he was a goodly man. He neither profaned his duty, nor allowed the darkness of war to darken his spirt. He certainly did not deserve to end up here, stacked up like a barrow of butcher’s offal.”

“Nobody deserves this,” Lebanon assured her.

Amita Hilal buffed the nameplate with her sleeve. When had that practice begun, Lebanon wondered? Ahmet Ezz’s cryopod, still safe and sound on level 96, included a silver plaque that featured his name rendered in creeping vines that formed the letters of a sinuous Diwani script, a nod to his position as a botanist. Erfan’s plaque was an altogether simpler affair, the brass adorned with a static Kufic script. Beneath it, there was a badge featuring a crescent moon surrounded by five stars, the icon of the Network Empire. Lebanon watched as Amita Hilal took a step back and saluted, Network Empire style, bringing her metal fist to her chest and then extending that arm, fist still clenched, perpendicular to her body.

“Shall we read the Fatiha for him?” Lebanon offered.

Amita Hilal glared at him, an almost feral look, and Lebanon fought not to cringe away from it. “No, we shall not.”

Lebanon was taken aback by the vehemence in her voice. The Network Empire had been a theocracy. Sultan Mazen was Emir Al-Mu’minin, Commander of the Faithful. And yet here was a daughter of his Network who didn’t seem to believe in God at all.

“I’m… I’m sorry for your loss,” Lebanon said.

Hilal gestured curtly to the stacked-up coffins. “Be sorry for thine own. Be sorry for the loss to thy ship.”

“Be sorry for the loss to thy species,” a voice corrected.

Lebanon and Amita Hilal turned to find themselves confronting an ordinary-looking man dressed in ubiquitous crew gray. An ancestor, from his accent, although he was more normal-sized than the others Lebanon had seen. Hilal towered over him. The man’s dark hair was shorn short, and his stubble was a few weeks short of a beard. He looked completely ordinary except for his eyes, which were a startling cobalt blue. There were few crew with blue eyes anymore, and none that shade. Lebanon watched as those eyes probed them both.

“Elyas Serap,” Amita Hilal greeted him.

“Heba Hilal,” he responded with a bow. It was like something out of an old serial.

Amita Hilal coughed up a stream of ancient Torkdil. Imperial, the ancestors called it—the language of the Network Empire. It was the most common language spoken by the ancestors, followed closely by Arabek. Few of them spoke Inglez. Lebanon understood perhaps one in every five words in Imperial. From Amita Hilal’s narrow-eyed statement, he understood surprise, alive, security, and warning. The words he understood from Elyas’s response were duty, ship, empire, and invitation. Lebanon felt like he had just been given a glimpse of what it must be like for the ancestors, woken up out of their place and time and unable to understand even the simplest thing. The Haraka had been calling for Admin to organize naturalization lessons. Actually, it was not the worst idea. The crew needed to teach these ancestors about the history of the Safina. The Disaccord. The Compact. They needed to teach them Inglez, at least, and some basics about life on the ship.

“Attend,” Amita Hilal instructed Lebanon, switching back to Arabek, or at least, her version of it. After plumbing the depths of his Quranic knowledge, Lebanon concluded that she probably meant “follow me” and so he did.

Elyas led them deeper into the deck until Lebanon found himself standing before a work team of green-clad stastechs and gray-clad ancestors. He was relieved to see that they were arranging the coffins. He picked out Stastech Gammal Wahba from the crowd. He knew Gammal a little from around the deck. Religious guy, and not quiet about it either. He was a well-known Feda’ey, leading one of their youth movements, and had even tried to recruit Lebanon. While he considered himself to be devout—although not in the same league as his mother or Seto Deniz—Lebanon tried to keep his nose out of politics. That was one of the reasons he had chosen Stasis over Admin. He was surprised to see Elyas greet Gammal warmly before heading off to talk with the other ancestors. Had Elyas Serap been one of Gammal’s sleepers? Lebanon had yet to encounter any of his own.

“Salam alaikum, Gammal,” Lebanon greeted him. “What’s going on here?”

“And peace, mercy, and the blessings of Allah be with you,” Gammal responded. “We’ve been trying to organize this mess. Can you believe the damn redjackets just left them stacked up like this? No map. No way to know who is where. May Allah burn them!”

Unfortunately, yes, Lebanon could believe it. The redjackets were working double shifts, too. Admin had done what it always did in times of crisis: locked down the berths and decks and set up checkpoints all over the place.

“Need a hand?” Lebanon offered.

“Verily,” Amita Hilal added, coming up behind him. “Permit us to lend you the strength of our arms.”

They spent the next few hours shifting coffins around. Lebanon confirmed for himself that it wasn’t just a rumor that ancestors were stronger than crew. A cryopod that took four crew to lift required just two ancestors. They rarely spoke to one another but seemed to have an innate ability to work together. Elyas Serap was the exception. He was downright loquacious, bustling around and asking stastechs random questions. Apparently, he had been some kind of spokesperson for the Network Empire, like their version of a translator. Well, then, it was no wonder that he wouldn’t shut up.

Lebanon was taking a short hydro break with Gammal, passing a bulb of water back and forth, when four ancestors trooped onto the deck, hands behind their backs, carrying a cryopod on their shoulders. These ancestors had medals pinned to their chests and a big ancestor, easily the largest person Lebanon had ever seen, marched behind them. A woman with a scarred face and the same tattoo as Amita Hilal under her eye held a distinctive flag aloft. A white crescent moon and five stars arrayed against a black background—the insignia of the Network Empire.

“What’s going on?” he asked Gammal.

“It looks like they finally found him,” Gammal answered distractedly. He was standing on his tiptoes, his eyes on the four slow-marching ancestors. He was not the only one. It seemed like the entire deck was gravitating toward them.

“Found who?”

“Excuse me,” Gammal said, rushing to join the other stastechs in what had suddenly become an impromptu funeral procession.

Lebanon watched from an out-of-the-way corner as the coffin was finally placed down, away from the others. Before that, the ancestor funeral procession had marched up and down the deck for ages, gathering onlookers. Ancestors and stastechs now queued to pay their respects. Amita Hilal sidled up to him, a closed-off look on her face.

“Vali Ahad Bayezid?” Lebanon asked. Gammal Wahba might have been distracted, but he was not the only stastech who knew what was happening. The whole deck was abuzz with the news. Amita Hilal nodded tightly. “I don’t know why, but I never imagined that he would be down here.”

Vali Ahad Bayezid was the son of Sultan Mazen. When the ship first launched, Hurriya was supposed to have become the farthest outpost of the Network Empire. A foothold. A beachhead ruled by Bayezid and his Network. Of course, the Compact had put paid to all those plans.

“Your First Crew left him sleeping,” Amita Hilal said.

“Our First Crew?” Lebanon asked, hiding a smile.

“And you can thank your stars they did. I have read the histories and seen what changes our descendants have wrought. This Compact? Democracy?” she scoffed. “Elections? This I can say with confidence full, your Safina would not have survived a newly awoken Bayezid Prince.”

Lebanon didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing at all.

Suddenly, one of the ancestors standing in front of the coffin started a chant. “Ya Allah. Bismillah. Allahu Akbar.” You didn’t have to be a translator to understand. Oh God. In the name of God. God is Great. Lebanon watched as that chant was repeated by the other ancestors, and then everyone else. It echoed around the deck, louder and louder. The ancestors slammed their fists into their chests, in time with the chant. It was hard to admit, but the sight moved him. Lebanon didn’t know if the First Crew were right to abandon Earth and prevent the rise of a new Network Empire—certainly, he would not be alive if they hadn’t. However, there was something awe-inspiring about seeing ancestor and crew standing side by side, professing the same beliefs. Overcome by the emotion of the moment, Lebanon joined his voice to the rest. Beside him, Amita Hilal stood silent and impassive.

FIFTEEN Elyas

We were not whole until the Network and Empire were one and the same. After that, there was no way to destroy one without the other; no way to uphold one without the other. We were the first of our line to be born into the Network, its tendrils reaching into us, through us, even before we were born. All our children have been similarly blessed. You might see them standing before you, yet they are somewhere else. Ever-connected.

—SULTAN MAZEN IV

Elyas Serap watched as his people and their descendants carried the body of Crown Prince Bayezid through the deck and laid him down in what scant honor could still be found on this broken ship. The colonists who recognized Elyas by sight greeted him with nods and fists on chests. Those who actually knew him, who he was in his secret heart, extended those nods to not-quite bows. Elyas nodded back and did his best to keep his thoughts calm and even-keeled. He was still in mourning for the world they had lost and the Network they had squandered. There was an amputation in his mind where that all-pervading connection should have been, and he had burned himself on its absence more than once already. That wasn’t to say that there was no connection at all. All the colonists had their augments open wide, set to broadcast and receive. That rudimentary mind-to-mind-to-mind connection was enough, barely, to take the edge off. It was like going from instantaneous satellite communication to two cans on a string.

“Salam alaikum,” one of the crew greeted him in pristine Arabek. “How are you feeling about all this, Ancestor Elyas?”

Elyas controlled his flinch as he regarded the young stasis technician. There was no floating name tag above his head, no way for Elyas to read all the intelligence the Network had gathered on him. His secret bank accounts and illicit love affairs. The radical political posts he had liked as a teenager before he knew better. Luckily for him, Elyas had an impeccable memory. His mind was a citadel of many rooms, even if most were currently closed and dark.

“And upon you peace, ya Gammal,” he wished the young crewman. “ ‘Every soul shall have a taste of death,’ ” he quoted, knowing that this stastech, a member of the so-called Feda’ey group, would understand its Quranic provenance.

“Some of us were thinking of marching the Crown Prince’s body up to Agriculture deck and demanding that he be buried,” Gammal said. “The other ancestors said I should ask what you think.”

“Burial?” he asked. The thought filled him with revulsion. The original plan for food cultivation on the Safina had been hydroponics and cultured meat production. But then the First Crew—traitors, the lot of them!—had overthrown the Safina and, in order to perform the work of a single Networked AI, multiplied and multiplied such that a third of the ship was now an Agriculture deck dedicated to keeping everyone fed. Elyas did not want Crown Prince Bayezid anywhere near that place. “I think not. The Network Empire reserved space burial for the Imperial family. There’s no reason why we should not continue that tradition, especially here, when space is just outside.”

“Spacing?” Gammal asked. Elyas could read horror on his face.

“Yes, what of it?”

“Spacing is the punishment that the Compact reserves for the worst crimes,” Gammal informed him. “Mutineers. Murderers. We can’t space Crown Prince Bayezid!”

The Compact, Elyas scoffed in his mind, and heard that derision echo through the empty rooms therein. The Compact was nothing more than the formalization of a treason so deep, so pervasive, that generations later, the descendants of those who had agreed to it were still tarred with its treachery. A ship divided according to language? An overpopulated crew, heaving with members working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to keep the ship functioning? Democracy? It was perversion.

“I don’t care about the Compact,” Elyas said, and turned to nod at the waiting colonists. Inside him, that nod passed sluggishly from mind-to-mind until everyone was one with his will. “We are all that’s left of the Network and we hold true.”

They heaved Vali Ahad Bayezid’s inert cryostasis chamber up, Sergeant Kena Medano following behind and holding the flag of the Network Empire aloft. Elyas took in her size, the scar on her face, and the wolf fang under her left eye. A red sister? He tried to hold tight to the thoughts warring within him, aware that these were not just his thoughts, that Kena Medano herself was somewhere within that roil, thinking with him.

The red sisters were not like ordinary soldiers. Elyas had seen that firsthand. They were stronger. Faster. And thinking in concert, they were the elite of the elite. Elyas remembered attending the Sultan’s birthday celebrations in Islambul as a young artillery captain. The modded infantry had put on a demonstration that he watched rapt—a single unarmed red sister, blindfolded, dodged a bullet that only her other sisters had seen coming, and then, still blindfolded, demolished a dozen captured Patria Grande soldiers, slipping punches and intercepting throws, gouging out eyes and snapping necks, until she was the last one standing. Sultan Mazen believed the red sisters were the first step toward a true human hive mind. To have one here and now was an opportunity. A threat, too. But he was trying not to think of that.

Elyas flicked through the colonization crew file and saw that there had been six red sisters onboard, a modded squad to act as a kind of informal imperial guard for the Crown Prince. Five of those sisters had been killed in the Shutdown. And the last was here, Kena Medano, loyal daughter of the Network Empire. He could feel that through their connection. But there was one more, wasn’t there? If Elyas was justifiably apprehensive of red sisters in general, that was nothing compared to his feelings toward Heba Hilal. Elyas could see her watching him across the deck. The wolf fang tattoo on her face—the indelible mark of a red sister—made her expression hard to read. The red sister he had seen perform that terrifying demonstration on Sultan Mazen’s birthday? It was her. More than that, Hilal’s augment was locked down tight, which meant that it was impossible for him to feel her at all. And of course he and the others had noticed her not chanting any Ya Allahs or Bismillahs. She hadn’t lined up to pay respects to their departed prince, either. Hilal was not like the other red sisters. She had made it out of the modded infantry under classified circumstances, although he knew all too well what happened at Vienna. Then, after a stint in the Military Police, she was discharged from the Imperial military and joined the Jandarma. As far as Elyas was aware, red sisters did not typically leave the military. They were not allowed. It was not safe for them or the regular population. Yet the Network, in its infinite wisdom, had decided to grant Hilal her freedom, appointing her as a detective in Islambul itself. He had dealt with her on several occasions in his capacity as Sultan’s Voice. And so far as he could ascertain, her augment had been locked down then, too. He was assured that she had no idea what role he had played in the aborted invasion of Vienna and the death of her sisters. He was also not surprised that the authorities on this ship had decided to make use of her talents. Rumors abounded about the true cause of the Shutdown and not every crewman believed this “accidental confluence” line. If she was looking into the murder of so many of their fellows, Elyas would just have to get her onside the old-fashioned way. It would be risky if she ever found out the truth, but he would just have to charm her. Well, there was time enough to worry about all that later.

Today was a sacred day. The day they would consign Bayezid Prince to the eternal embrace of the void. Elyas followed the impromptu funeral procession as it commandeered the elevators and took the long flight up to Stasis Summit, gathering onlookers as they went. There, Elyas watched as his colonists carefully placed Crown Prince Bayezid’s coffin in a conveniently located air lock.

Would you like to speak a few words, sir? one of his colonists asked mind-to-mind but Elyas merely shook his head. To speak openly now would put a target on his back. This Administration did not know who he was, and he intended to keep it that way. Still, his people deserved something. And so, Elyas took a deep breath and opened his augment even wider.

My fellows, today is a dark day, he thought, feeling that thought percolate outward. Indeed, it seems there have been many dark days of late. We were awoken on this strange Network-less ship, two hundred years from our destination. We stand here, now, on this deck, ready to bid farewell to Bayezid Prince, a man we pledged our allegiance to. It seems as if we are lost, doesn’t it? No Network. No Sultan. No chance of reaching Hurriya. But I beseech you to recall what Prophet Musa said when confronting Pharoah. Surely my Lord is with me; He will guide me. And I ask you to remember when the Faithful, outnumbered, stood against the disbelievers at the Battle of Badr. They plan and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners.

We are supposed to be here and now, heartbroken as we might be. It is written. This is our Qadr, our fate, and we must bear it together. So, as we inter Bayezid Prince into the void, let us recommit ourselves to ourselves. Whatever comes, we stand together. The colonists pinged each other, louder and louder, and Elyas rode the wave of that mutual connection.

A single nod and the press of a button and the job was done. The air lock doors opened, and Elyas watched as Bayezid’s coffin floated out into the dark. There was much left to do, and he knew that he was just the man to do it.

SIXTEEN Hilal

Iskander started school today. Academy, we are calling it. It’s not like any school that we knew, Heba. I can tell you that much. The first generation born on the Safina are growing up without augments, without a Network. In some ways, it’s amazing to see how they interact with each other, how they instinctively know things without any prompting. In others, it’s terrifying. Without the Safina, these kids are going to have to learn how to run this ship themselves, how to keep it going until Hurriya. I think we’re only just realizing how fragile life is out here in the dark.

—MESSAGE FROM FIRST CREW HANIA HILAL TO HER SISTER HEBA (SHIP YEAR 30)

In Islambul, there was Askaray. In Cairo, it was Sayyida Zeinab or the Mokattam. In Alex, it was Baheira. Every city had its seedy underbelly. The place where the outlaws gathered and flatfoots feared to tread. On the city-ship Safina, it was Ziyou berth.

“I’m glad to see that you had the wherewithal to take off that armband,” Evra said.

“Wherewithal?” Hilal bristled, still feeling irritable over the nonsense she had just witnessed on Stasis deck. “I’ve got wherewithal in spades, sister.”

Evra wasn’t wearing anything to identify her as Security, either. Instead, she was dressed in crew gray under her supple leather jacket and a copper-brown scarf that brought out the golden flecks in her eyes. A telltale bulge on her right side indicated that she was heeled. Eyeing Evra up and down, Hilal wondered how she came to be on the outs with the rest of Special Investigations. The color of her skin? Her gender? She had noticed that most of the other detectives were men. Did they still have sexism up here? What about ageism? At two hundred and change, she had to be on the lookout for that one. Damn, Hilal needed to find her bearings. She already had a compass installed on her augment, but it was the lack of an automap that was really causing her confusion. She could count on one metal hand the number of times she had been without an automap in one of the Network Empire’s cities.

“Come on,” Evra said, “it’s this way.”

There was a huge, fortified Security checkpoint slung across the no-man’s-land between station and berth. Hilal and Evra flashed their tin, and Patrol waved them through. Hilal ducked the dirties the people still waiting in line threw their way and hoofed it up three flights of stairs into the berth proper, emerging into a large concrete courtyard dwarfed by three massive high-rises. Her mind kept wanting to imagine sky where there was none. Her augment sent her a standard priority message, warning of increased heart rate and elevated blood pressure. Hilal blinked it away and took a deep fortifying breath.

“So, where are we going?” she asked. Evra pointed up. That’s what she was afraid of.

“Quay Mansion. I’m meeting a contact in a teahouse on the 234th.”

“I hear they’ve only got power in Ziyou berth for a few hours a day,” Hilal observed. “If we get stuck up there, it will be a long walk back down.”

She had been keeping an ocular on the Main. The Mainframe was what passed for a network—certainly not the Network—on this mad city-ship, regurgitating sanitized reports and primitive chat. Except, everyone used their tabs to access it. Of course, the colonists had quickly figured out how to use their augments to do the same. They had also set up group chats and the complaints were already flying. Hilal might have been lucky enough to be offered a watch, but most of the others were sitting around with nothing to do. That’s why they were all beavering away down on Stasis deck.

“They’re scheduled to have power for another four hours,” Evra soothed. “We’ll be long gone by then.”

The elevator up was a trip. It was like a mini-hyperlink, only vertical. Hilal did her best to heed Evra’s whispered debrief, ordering her augment to transcribe it for later, all the while ignoring the eyes on her. Red armband or not, Hilal knew that she stood out. Firstly, she was taller than the tallest crew. Secondly, at least as far as she was aware, she was the only person onboard with a metal arm. Third, there was the small matter of the battle-ink on her chipped mug. Even on Earth, it bore reckoning. A wolf fang under her left eye marked her as modded infantry. So far as she was aware, there was only one other red sister among the colonists. She had already spied Kena Medano on Stasis deck earlier, taking part in the nonsense.

After finally making it to the teahouse—The Perfect Blend, her augment translated—Evra grilled her over a cup of steaming oolong. She ordered it in flawless Manda by the by, hugging the owner like she was family and asking for an out of the way table. Hilal’s own request for a cup of java had been met with shock and horror by the garçon, so she was suffering through an over-sugared mint tea.

“You worked as a detective before on Earth?”

“Straight talk, sister. First in the military, then in the Imperial Police,” she explained. “So, if you’re worried that this is my first rodeo, don’t be.”

“You weren’t a frontline soldier, then? We heard that all the ancestors were soldiers.”

“We all served,” Hilal corrected. “But actually, few here served on the front lines. I started out in the modded infantry. After my squad was wiped—I mean, after I lost my hand—I switched over to Military Police.”

Evra’s eyes tracked down to the metal prosthesis. Hilal waggled her fingers and put her teeth on parade. She wasn’t disappointed to see Evra blanch. Soft as butter like the rest of the crew. After Evra got her expression back under control, she hit Hilal with her best approximation of a hard stare. Hilal watched it bounce off her and clank to the ground.

“The word is that you were supposed to be Chief of Security on Hurriya?”

“Is that the scuttlebutt?” she asked. “No, not me. The chief was supposed to be a gee named Erfan.”

Hilal had searched for Raouf Erfan as soon as she was vertical. Finding out that he had died in the Shutdown had been a gut punch. He had been her CO in the Military Police but before that, he was Amo Raouf, her father’s old friend who would visit them in Alex each summer, bringing tobacco and sweet lokum from the heart of the Empire. Hilal remembered how he and Baba would stay up late, smoking cigarillos and playing backgammon on the veranda while dissecting a war that was supposed to have ended long before she was old enough to join it.

After she lost her hand, the army put her battered carcass on the conveyor belt toward rehabilitation and return to active duty. It didn’t matter that the rest of her troop had been killed in the same battle. She was still meat for the grinder. It was a path that would have led her sure as eggs back to the front lines, and from there into a white shroud and shallow grave. But Hilal was over her imperialist fever by then. She wasn’t looking to win that war, only to survive it. She got in touch with Amo Raouf, and he rescued her, claiming her for the Blackcaps. He showed her the ropes and gave her new purpose. Hilal’s first second chance. Raouf Erfan was a good man. He deserved to reach Hurriya and live free under open skies. They all did. He would not cross that finish line now. Nor would she. Still, there were others still dreaming the dream. They would reach Hurriya, safe and sound—Hilal vowed it. And if the Shutdown had happened on purpose? Well, she would make sure that whoever was behind it would pay.

“So, what were you supposed to be?” Evra pressed.

“A detective.”

Evra made a noise in the back of her throat. “And are you a good one?”

Good enough to be chosen as a colonist out of the billions who applied. Still, she almost didn’t go through with it. But Hania begged her. And she never had the heart to tell her sister nix. “I get by.”

“Listen, what do you know about the Haraka?” Evra asked.

Hilal let that question stew. She had been doing her homework on the various players at play on the ship. The Gokudo. The Vory. The Triads. They were all easy enough to understand. Old-school crims in new-school duds. Even under new clothes, it was still the same old ink. Same for the Kommunists and all their jive about owning the means of production. Even the Feda’eyes were easy enough to tune in. A combination of Arabek language supremacy and Islamism, although Hilal resented their name. Feda’ey was an Arabek term, a cross between zealot and diehard, sacrifice and martyr. The highest honor in the Empire was to be named Feda’ey.

But the Haraka? Now, that was a real head-scratcher. Founded by some girl named Selin Devrim, it was based on an intrinsic distrust of the colonists, a not completely out of the question worry that they would wake up and try to restore the Network. Hilal wanted no part of that—good riddance to it!—but she was aware that she was not much like the other colonists. Anyway, the Haraka explicitly called for a referendum to decide whether they should wake everybody up. Putting aside the practice of democracy for a second—Hilal could still barely believe things had come to that—it hadn’t escaped her attention that the Shutdown was their dream come true. Devrim was executed after her group, allied with some others, backed a ship-wide strike. But that was years ago. So far as anyone knew, it was currently being led by some gee called Bishara, a known Triad with his fingers in all sorts of pies. Drugs. Smuggling. He had been in the middle of some kind of gang war against the Vory and the Gokudo when the Shutdown happened. Had being the operative word. It’s hard to fight a gang war when all the berths are locked down. Leaving aside the crime side of things, Bishara had been one of Selin Devrim’s key people all those years ago. And it seemed like he was still loyal to the cause. Hilal had read some of Devrim’s stuff and the bint was all over the shop. But the message her followers shared was clear: They feared leaving the future of humanity in the colonists’ blood-soaked hands. Given the state the colonists left the Earth in, Hilal couldn’t exactly blame them.

“I know they don’t like me,” she answered. “Why? Do you think they were involved in the Shutdown?”

A little furrow materialized above Evra’s brow. “Since we still aren’t sure how the Shutdown even happened, it’s hard to guess who may or may not have been involved.”

Hilal gave Evra her patented incredulous look, one eyebrow raised and two palms out. The look said, Are you kidding me? Evra scowled. Ha, it still worked after all these years.

“It seems unlikely to me that the ship would experience such a catastrophic failure after chugging along just fine for more than two hundred years,” Hilal said. “And which section was the worst hit? Stasis, where me and mine were sleeping our way to a new start. And who on this ship hates us the most? The Haraka.”

“Admin’s official position remains that the Shutdown was an accidental confluence.”

“And your position?” Hilal pressed.

“All we can be certain of right now is that it was caused by a power surge. We don’t know precisely where it originated. Even if it happened on purpose, we don’t know what the original intent was. We can assume it wasn’t to knock out all the power on the ship and leave us adrift in dark space. Even the Haraka aren’t that crazy!”

“I don’t suppose your tech guys have heard about surge protectors or circuit breakers?” Hilal asked.

Evra hid a smile. “It’s being looked into.”

“Where did anyone even get enough power to create a surge?”

So far as Hilal understood, power was a precious commodity on this ship, even before the Shutdown.

“Also being looked into.”

“Do you really not have anything to go on?”

“We don’t,” Evra corrected her. “You’re right. If it was intentional, the Haraka seem like a good fit, and they’ve been making some oblique comments in their latest literature. We’re also looking into the Kommunistas. They were arranging a big conference with all the factions when this happened.”

“Suspicious!” Hilal opined.

“Yes. So, if this was one of your cases back on Earth, what would you do? What are we missing?”

It was a good question. It resembled a terrorism case more than anything else. Although, terrorism was a loaded term in the Empire. Sometimes, it seemed as if anything the Empire disapproved of was branded as terrorism. And yet, there had been real attacks carried out by people who had been pushed too far. They found each other on the margins. The Avrupi Revolutionary Front. The Workers Liberation Movement. The 17 Haziran Faction. Sniper assassins and mad bombers. Not one of them had a plan beyond burn it all down. It was easy enough to know when they were responsible for something—they shouted it from the rafters.

“Nobody has claimed responsibility?” Hilal asked.

“The Bostrom Collective. The Ignota Network. Nobody credible.”

“Who?”

“The Bostrom Collective is a small Simulationist group out of Franjabad.” Responding to Hilal’s blank look, Evra clarified, “They believe that the Safina is a simulation, that we’re all actually still on Earth in a bunker. Or a server? I’m not quite sure.”

“And the Ignota Network?” Hilal dared to ask.

“Oh, well, they’re a group of activists who want to forcibly replace all the languages on the ship with a communally constructed language.”

Hilal let the idea of linguistic terrorists sit with her for a second.

“Of course, they’re split on which to use,” Evra added helpfully. “Last I checked, there was a civil war going on between the Esperanto revivalists and the Nupol factionalists. Anyway, Security doesn’t think it has anything to do with either of them.”

“Well, let’s assume that it wasn’t either of these groups and the real culprits are keeping schtum. There are only two possible reasons for that. One, they’re ashamed of it. Two, they’re planning to do it again.” It seemed to her that Security really had run out of rocks to look under. If this was one of her cases back on Earth, there would be a lot more hiding places to search. The Network was tied into everything. Even those who were not connected were surrounded by those who were. The great AIs that formed the Network watched over everyone and the Jandarma had access to near real-time monitoring. CCTV. Facial recognition. Gait analysis. Augment tracking. Health monitoring. They could find out where you were, what you ate, who you f——. A sworn detective had exabytes of data at their fingertips ripe for the plucking. “I suppose there’s only one option left,” Hilal said.

“Yes,” Evra agreed, “an informant. And look, here comes one now.”

The man who entered the tea shop was about Hilal’s age. Or the age she appeared to be, anyway. A flyweight dressed in crew gray. Clean-shaven with thick slick-backed hair. Hilal figured she could deadlift him with just one arm. An Arab, but not a countryman. Syrian or Lebanese maybe? On the Safina that would be Damask berth. Although even that was a punt in the dark. You couldn’t tell where anybody on this damned ship was from until they opened their mouths.

On the ride up, Evra had revealed that her fink was a low-level Haraka runner, not a player himself. Her plan was to use him to reel in one of the prisoners she had been assigned—Bilal Kohli—and then use him to reel in an even bigger fish, maybe even Bishara himself. Capturing Bishara—one of the most wanted men on the ship whether he was responsible for the Shutdown or not—would be a coup for Evra. She waved the fink in, and he plopped himself down in the chair next to Hilal with a sigh.

“Karawan,” she greeted him, “you’re late!”

“I am so so sorry, Sergeant Evra,” he said in heavily accented Inglez. “If you knew what a journey I’ve been on to reach here, by the Prophet, you would surely understand. It took me two hours just to—”

“Be quiet!”

“Yes, Sergeant,” he said meekly. Karawan kept his eyes on the tabletop and his hands in plain sight.

Hilal didn’t trust any mark that meek. She had met her fair share of Karawans back on Earth. An angle was all a stoolie had, which is why they could never help playing it. Evra took out her tab and swiped around before laying it flat on the table. On it, a vid showed a familiar clean-shaved flyweight with thick slicked-back hair entering a mah-jongg parlor. This time Karawan was dressed in the distinctive yellow of Maintenance. Three pairs of eyes watched as Karawan walked around aimlessly before sitting down at a half-empty table and joining a game. Evra fast-forwarded until they saw another man join him. This mark had dark curly hair and eyes that someone else might describe as almond, definitely a countryman: Bilal Kohli.

“There’ve been a couple of robberies in King’s over the past year,” Evra informed Karawan, “so Mama Weng decided to hire some extra security.”

“Detective, listen—”

“And as I was going over the footage, who should I happen to come across but my good friend Karawan Khadour. And what’s this? He’s meeting with none other than Billy Kohli.”

“Detective Evra—”

“I could hardly believe what I was seeing, isn’t that right, Detective Hilal?”

“That’s right, Detective Evra,” Hilal confirmed, picking up the pattern. “I thought you were going to keel over in shock.”

“Everyone knows that Kohli is a wanted man. Surely, if my good friend Karawan had met with him, I would be the first one to know about it.”

“That’s what you told me,” Hilal confirmed.

“And then you told me that maybe my good friend Karawan was not such a good friend after all.”

“Friends are like stars,” Hilal said, trotting out that old chestnut, “pick one and it will guide you.”

Karawan watched their back and forth with wavering eyes.

“Otherwise,” Evra concluded, “there’s no reason why I shouldn’t throw him back into lockup where I found him. Maybe after telling Bishara that his man is a snitch.”

“Detective Evra,” Karawan said. “Of course, I know that Security is looking for certain people and I always have an interest in finding such people. Now yes, I met with Billy last week, briefly, very very briefly. I was trying to set up another meeting and then, and then, I was going to tell you. Actually, I was just telling my cousin Khalid that…”

Evra jerked her head at Hilal. Was she reading this right? Well, no chance to ask for a second opinion. Hilal grabbed Karawan by the wrist and squeezed. She could bend metal and punch through concrete with that hand. Flesh and bone were no problem. “Can it, canine,” Hilal told him in rusty Arabek.

Lucky for her, how to tell someone to shut up or call them a dog hadn’t changed in the last two centuries. Arabek is a diglossia, high and low. Hilal could have had a perfectly intelligible conversation in High with an imam or a professor today, or two hundred years ago, or a thousand years before that. But outside of a mosque or lecture hall, classic Arabek was a dead language. If you wanted to jaw with a deadbeat snitch over a cup of disgusting boiled leaves, you needed Colloquial. And Hilal’s colloquialisms were hundreds of years out of date. The translation program on her augment was taking more time than she expected.

“Listen up, jack,” she continued, switching back to Inglez. “You yammer more than a knitting circle discussing a rival knitting circle. Now, are you going to tell us where to find Kohli or I am going to crack your radius in two places?”

“You’re one of the agdad,” Karawan said, eyes wide. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he lamped the titanium hand gripping him like it was a loaded gun. Agdad? Ugh, who was he calling grandmother?

“Don’t make me ask you again,” she warned, squeezing to get her point across.

Karawan yelped and his eyes rolled around in his head. The Haraka were afraid of the ancestors, deathly afraid. He looked around the half-empty tearoom in vain. “I don’t know! I don’t know!” Karawan exclaimed, voice high.

“Karawan,” she told him. “You don’t know how to make friends.”

“Wait, wait,” he said. “I can help you. I can still help you.”

He was babbling. He’d say anything to get out of it, promise to arrange a meeting with Captain Hannibal Amer himself, just to get away. Hilal had just resolved to snap his wrist like a toothpick when Evra waved her off.

“Help us how?” she asked.

“He gave me a message to pass on,” Karawan said. “A message from Badreddine Bishara. I am supposed to deliver it to Alejandra Almaraz in Linda Cidade.”

Evra came alive like a shark smelling blood. “Bishara is trading messages with the Zendistas?”

“Badreddine is trading messages with everyone,” Karawan gasped. “The Kommunistas, La Cristiada, the Feda’eyes. Even the Vory and Gokudo. I’ve been rushed off my feet.”

“Alright, and what’s the message for Alejandra Almaraz?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Just that, Sergeant. Yes. His message is ‘yes.’ ”

“Yes to what?” Evra demanded.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I only know that the answer’s yes.”

“Time and place of the meet?”

“Tomorrow. Nine chimes. Under the Messiah.”

The Messiah? Hilal didn’t know what that meant, but she did know that the Zendistas were the biggest faction in Linda Cidade. She wasn’t entirely sure if they were a faction within the Kommunists, or if they were a separate but allied group. Their rallying cry was “barco y libertad.” Ship and liberty.

“Listen up, Karawan,” Evra said. “You’re not going to make that meeting.”

He nodded his head frantically. “Yes, Detective.”

“And you’re going to forget that you told us about it.”

“Yes, Detective.”

Evra nodded to Hilal again and she finally released his wrist.

“Scram,” Hilal said. Karawan scrammed.

Walking out of the teahouse, Hilal couldn’t help but note the pensive on Evra’s pan. “What?”

“Would you really have broken his wrist, just like that?”

“I thought it was what you wanted,” she hedged. They were heading back toward the elevators, walking side by side. Hilal had her augment passively scanning, not that there was much information to glean. No public profiles to comb through. No AIs to greet. She consulted the map it had been making. Ziyou really was a warren of back alleys and passageways. No wonder the hard cases chose to make it home. The corridors were full of pedestrians hoofing it. In some places, the space opened up and you could see crew above and below. It would be a nightmare to hold. Even if you deployed every single redjacket on the ship, Hilal doubted that they would be able to secure this berth completely. As they walked through a pachinko arcade, her augment drew her eyes to a face it had observed in the crowd one too many times. “Do you feel that wag?”

“What?” Evra asked.

“We’ve picked up a tail, sister,” Hilal explained. To her credit, Evra didn’t look around but kept her eyes down and increased her pace. “Is this normal?”

They were walking faster now. Evra replied tersely, “Not exactly.”

Hilal was just about to open her mouth to ask what the hell that meant when an ape wielding a gat stepped out of a doorway and pulled the trigger.

SEVENTEEN Kalila

I wish to be reborn in the Pure Land and to have as my parents a lotus flower.

When the flower opens, I will see the Buddha and put away the Dharmas.

As for my companions, they will be the steadfast Bodhisattvas.

I wish to be reborn in the Pure Lands of Hurriya.

—A BUDDHIST PRAYER

There were so many bodies. Far too many for Agriculture to process, anyway. Plus, the ancestors had literally spent the past two hundred years in cryostasis at sub-zero temperatures with respirators working their lungs and cold saline running through their veins. What nutrients could their bodies give to the soil, anyway? Getting usable, chemically stable humus out of them—enriched soil with a healthy carbon to nitrogen ratio of around eight and fifteen—would likely be more trouble than it was worth. Not that Admin had told them not to bother going to that trouble. Many of the crew’s most prominent families were paying through the nose for the privilege. Under the table, of course. And so, the decision was made—10 percent of the ancestors killed in the Shutdown would be processed by Agriculture, come what may. As for the rest, they would be welcomed into the eternal embrace of the void.

K took a break from carefully spreading carbon flakes into the upended soil with a rake, removing her heavy work gloves one after the other before tucking them into a loop on her belt. She wiped the sweat from her brow and ran her fingers lightly through her newly dyed hair. After the Shutdown, she was not feeling the playful teal anymore. How could she, when survival was so precarious on the Safina? So many people, crew and ancestors alike, had died. Iskander Ezz, her very own roommate, had almost perished on a random hyperlink and could still die at any moment. And his situation—breathing through a tube down in Medical—was not that much better than anyone else’s on the ship. She dyed her hair black and white in alternating stripes—a mourning cut for an entire species. K believed that life and death was a continuum. But if all life died, what happened then?

Behind her, fellow agrotech Joyce Berdugo continued working, turning the soil and getting the thermophilic microbes ready for the inevitable. The grave had already been dug. All that was left now was to plant the body.

“Ready?” Watch Supervisor James Sattin asked.

K carefully scrutinized the state of the soil. She had treated the bottom of the grave herself, diligently mixing in the nitrophosphate and potassium sulphate. She checked that the ladder was where it was supposed to be, propped up neatly against the side of the open grave.

“Ready,” she confirmed.

The agrotechs stowed their tools and brushed the soil from their brown uniforms, making themselves as presentable as possible before taking up position not too far away. Watch Supervisor Sattin’s uniform was pristine, as usual. Normally, he would not even be here for this part, but the state of emergency meant that extra Security was deployed to all the decks, and he didn’t want to be caught napping in his office. It would be up to him now to interact with the mourners.

“What’s the name of the deceased?” Joyce asked. She always asked. It was one of the things that K liked about the older woman. It meant that she didn’t have to.

Sattin checked his tab. “Karim Khan. Age thirty-two. Muslim.”

Thirty-two? K wasn’t so sure about that. Ancestor Karim Khan might have been thirty-two years young when they placed his body in cryostasis, but that was more than two centuries ago. Did all those years traveling through the stars count for nothing? If they didn’t count, then nothing did. Joyce Berdugo snorted delicately through her nose. The shift supervisor gave her a quelling look, his mustache quivering. Joyce wisely chose to ignore both the look and the mustache. K had been working alongside Joyce for a few years now. She was a Koutobia berther, born and raised, and spoke Arabek in their indecipherable dialect, which explained why the two agrotechs usually conversed in halting Inglez instead. Joyce was no shirker and could be a good laugh off watch, especially if you got a few drinks in her. Planting corpses might have been considered the drudge work of Agriculture deck, but that didn’t mean those that did it didn’t know how to have a laugh. A sense of humor was vital if you wanted to work in Composting—or, technically speaking, the controlled aerobic decomposition of organic material by microbial communities in order to produce a nutrient-rich soil product.

The agrotechs waited patiently as a surprisingly large group of crew approached them, carrying a coffin. A funeral procession.

“There is no God but God,” the imam in front chanted in Arabek.

“There is no God but God,” the mourners repeated.

“And Muhammad is the Prophet of God,” the imam called out.

“And Muhammad is the Prophet of God,” they repeated.

K had never seen such a large mourning procession in Agriculture before, not even when Captain Agha died and Admin gave all nonessential crew the day off. Usually, this part was restricted to just half a dozen people—close family and friends. The real mourning took place in the berths. Religious rites, whatever they might entail, and a wake. Only a few key people would be dispatched to Agriculture with the body to oversee the interment while everybody else waited back in the berth, eating and drinking and swapping stories. This time though, things were different, and K could guess why. A good third of the procession was dressed in pristine white. Admin white. There were Media representatives present, as well. K noticed the dour face of Safina News One’s Karim Ali at the edges of the crowd, a camera hovering over his shoulder.

When they finally reached the open grave, the men carrying the coffin placed it gently on the ground and the rest of the mourners edged carefully around the gravesite, men in the front and women in the back. They were like a parade suddenly grown shy. K noticed some of the crew glancing furtively around the deck. How many of them had visited Agriculture before? Only a few of them would have ever experienced this degree of open space. There were no walls to crowd you here, no low ceilings to hem you in. It could be disconcerting. She remembered the first time she had walked out onto Agriculture deck and seen the crops growing far into the distance, farther than her eyes could see, fields of golden wheat and groves of fruit trees, apples, and oranges. It had left her feeling light-headed. Drunk on all that open space. Or, maybe it was not so much the open space above the ground as the lack of space below it? This section of Agriculture deck, with its rich dark earth and mounds and mounds of decomposing crew, could be equally disconcerting. Hundreds of crew had died during the Shutdown. It was the largest planting in her lifetime, certainly. Most people, K knew, did not like to think about their death or contemplate where their remains would end up. But here, in the midst of all this bare earth, you could not escape the reality of it. It was the one place where everyone on the crew, from the highest Admin to the lowest agrotech, would eventually end up, side by side. The only equality on the city-ship. Death did not discriminate.

K watched as the imam directed some of the mourners to open the coffin and lift out the shroud-covered body. She watched the men place Karim Khan onto the bed of nitrophosphate and potassium sulphate that she had made with her own hands. Then, thinking she saw someone she knew, K took a half step to her left, trying to get a better look at the crew standing around the now-occupied grave. The agrotechs usually did their best to stay out of the way. If burying a crewmate was a sacred thing, burying an ancestor must be even more so. But that was her old berth-mate Sam, wasn’t it? K hadn’t seen her in years. They lost touch after K’s broken engagement. The last she heard, Sam had ended up in Navigation. Not bad for the daughter of a Maintenance nobody from Baladiya Four.

K let her eyes roam over the crowd, picking out a few other familiar faces. Some, like Sam, were from her own generation, and others she had seen around the berths. There was Am Refaat who ran the halwani in Four. She used to love his simsimiyah—the hard sesame-seed candy was a childhood favorite. And there was Basil Khan, a stastech who lived in Tagammu Nine. She sometimes saw him in her local, smoking apple-flavored shisha and playing backgammon. And wasn’t that Amin Trabelsi standing in the back row? Yes, it was. What kind of funeral could bring together a navigator, a baker, a stastech, and a gangster? K realized with a start that all these people gathered around the gravesite, fifty crew or more, must be Karim Khan’s descendants.

The imam, wearing his trademark brown stole like an adjunct of Agriculture, picked up a handful of the dry nutrient-rich soil and threw it into the open grave. No, not soil. Earth.

“From the earth did We create you, and into it shall We return you, and from it shall We bring you out once again,” he intoned.

K watched as crew lined up, one by one, to throw their own handful of earth onto the white biodegradable shroud that contained the pale biodegradable body of ancestor Karim Khan. The imam was droning on and on in Arabek—it was all Allah this and forgive us that. K tuned him out. She hadn’t been a believer in a long, long time. Not since her engagement to Rami ended. She remembered sitting in a cold Admin office and being told by a cold Admin clerk that their marriage was rejected, would always be rejected, and that Admin could not countenance any crew from their union. The clerk had dispassionately flicked through a medical report as K’s mind skipped over his words—genetic abnormality, inherited disease, cystic fibrosis. Admin kept track of recessive genetic traits and any children she bore from Rami would have been too much of a risk. Not that K would have cared. She would have loved them all the same.

When the mourners finished throwing earth into the grave, shaken hands, traded platitudes and prayers and well-wishes, and finally, finally been escorted out and away by Watch Supervisor Sattin, it was the agrotechs’ turn to complete the process. K approached the gravesite slowly; their pristine spadework had been undone by hundreds of footprints. She threw her own handful of earth into the now half-filled grave, reciting the Triple Refuge under her breath. I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the dharma. I take refuge in the sangha. Beside her, Joyce did the same, but recited her own whispered prayers. K had asked her once to translate them, learning that Islamic and Jewish funerary rites were not so different after all. Joyce’s prayers were also full of Allahs this and forgive us that. In Arabek, there was only one God.

The two agrotechs filled in the rest of the grave, spading the nutrient-rich soil over the body until it was completely covered. It was hard work, but K actually found it relaxing. Meditative. She could give up her body to the task at hand and let her thoughts rest. The Safina was in trouble, and it wasn’t just the lack of power. The crew was fracturing. And there were actual ancestors walking around, although thankfully not her own. Vedat Hossein, namo Amitabha, was still sleeping down in Stasis. K heard that all the awoken ancestors had been welcomed in by their descendants, but she had no place to host one. And neither did anyone else in her immediate family.

When they were finished, she surveyed their handiwork with satisfaction. Just one more mound in the burial ground. But this graveyard would become a field of precious crops one day—soybean and sorghum and sugarcane. As K walked over the dark soil, she eyed the various mounds around the deck. There were no grave markers to delineate where each crew was laid to rest. No upturned crosses or stars of David, no crescent moons. Once they were in the ground, they belonged to the Safina.

K knew that when it was her turn, her body, her bones, every part of her, would be transformed. But it would not be the end. She would become the soil that grew the crops that fed the crew, who in turn, would join her in that selfsame soil one day. A vegetal samsara. And in that way, someday, two hundred years from now, some tiny part of her, a molecular remnant of a remnant, would reach Hurriya. She would be in the crops they planted on their new world, and in the bodies of the people who finally stepped off the Safina to live under its open skies once more. But only, K thought worriedly, if they ever got the ship back underway again.

K lined up behind Eissa Klein in the queue outside of Personnel, joining a huddle of weary agrotechs waiting to sign off watch. Technically speaking, it was Eissa Klein’s watch that she had just worked. Agriculture made sure to rotate their agrotechs through the various departments. Composting. Seeding. Irrigation. Harvesting. Needless to say, most agrotechs hated Composting and would do just about anything to avoid it. For those few like K who could find some peace in that process, there were creds to be made. And not just creds.

“Here,” Eissa said, deftly transferring a handful of something or other out of his overalls and into K’s waiting hands. Cold, smooth, and round. Apricots! K quickly stuffed the fruit into her pockets. Four apricots, fresh off the vine. A veritable bounty of fresh produce.

“Nice one,” she thanked her compatriot.

Eissa paid K a flat 10 percent to work his watches in Composting. The gifts of assorted fresh fruit and veg were just a bonus. She had been doing this business with Eissa for years. He knew that she could drop him at any time and run up her price; some agrotechs could finagle as much as 25 percent per watch. But K wasn’t mercenary like that. Plus, she mostly made up the shortfall in fresh produce.

“Consider it a late Launch present,” Eissa said gruffly, the same way he said everything.

Eissa Klein was a rough-looking Nisrani from Fustat berth, living in the Coptic enclave in Tagammu Eleven. With his shaved head and heavyweight boxer’s build, he looked like a Factory floor bruiser gone to pot. But K had seen him plucking grapes off the vine delicately, one by one, with a serenely satisfied look in his eyes. Eissa was a big sweetheart, really, even if he did his best to hide it.

“Well, I see you had a fruitful watch!” K told him. Eissa turned back to regard her with his dark eyes. He raised an eyebrow as if to ask, Seriously? He never seemed to enjoy K’s puns, not that it ever stopped her. “Did you bring enough for your daughters?”

Four apricots were a bounty. How many more had he managed to hide away? Like the rest of the kids on the ship, Eissa’s teenage daughters, Maria and Elpis, were no doubt stuck in their home berth, simultaneously scared shitless and bored stiff. They could probably do with a treat right about now.

“Yes,” Eissa assured her. He clapped her shoulder gently with his big, rough hands. “But thank you for asking, K.”

Everybody was being so polite to each other after the Shutdown. It reminded K of the careful politeness that would bloom between her parents following one of their arguments. It was a fragile thing that could break at any moment. She didn’t trust it.

K entered Personnel on Eissa’s heels, her hands still stuffed in her pockets. She had been meaning to visit her sister and her as-yet-unnamed nephew in Baladiya Seven. She had only seen them once, briefly, since the Shutdown. Jamila had been distraught. Even though Detention was releasing all the first-time offenders as part of their power-saving measures, they had refused to let her husband go. It seemed that Faris, the dolt, had rejoined the Ishtiraki in Detention. He had promised Jamila that he would leave all that political nonsense behind when they got married. Well, K decided, today would be the day. She would make the trek to Damask to see her sister and nephew. The apricots were an omen. There was an old Arabek proverb people used for when you had no intention of doing something. You said “fil mishmish”—during apricot season. Iskander explained it to her once. Apparently on Earth, apricots were in season for such a short time that to promise to do something while they were ripe on the vine was to promise to do it never. Well, this wasn’t Earth, even if there were ancestors walking around. On the Safina apricots were always in season, and K had fresh ones to share.

“K!” Ibtisam Hadir greeted her on the concourse outside Agriculture deck. “Is that you?”

“Sam!” K hugged the tall Navigator, kissing her first on one cheek, and then the other, receiving the same kisses back, but in reverse. “I thought that was you earlier.”

“What? Don’t recognize your old friend Sam with a hijab on?”

“No, I recognize you, ya binti. I just wasn’t expecting to see you wearing one. You used to rail against them, remember?”

K poked Sam’s demure gray hijab. It was very funeral appropriate, and Sam had managed to ensure that it was draped artfully over one shoulder.

“What are you hiding under there?” K demanded. “Alopecia?”

“Oh, very droll!” Sam said. “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor. Anyway, it’s not like you can talk. Your hair looks like a barcode.”

They were speaking Arabek, K slipping effortlessly into the Damaskene dialect of her youth. Over the years, she had adopted the heavy g’s that characterized Fustat berth, even, once or twice, calling her own sister the Fustat-flavored “Gamila,” instead of the Damask-appropriate “Jamila,” much to the latter’s chagrin. She would have to make sure that her nephew did not get stuck with a j name—no Jamals, Jalals, Jibrils, or Junaids, thank you very much! Little baby boy Farhat, as he was currently listed, would have to wait a little longer for his name anyway, whatever it turned out to be. Admin had put a moratorium on all nonessential work until the ship got back underway. And anyway, Iskander was handling that case. They needed him to wake up first. K mouthed a quick mantra to Bhaisaijya Guru, the Medicine Buddha, for Iskander, praying for his good health. As a Buddhist, she knew that nothing was permanent and that death was just a hyperlink station between one life and the next, but as a friend, she very much hoped to see him again.

“And I’m glad to see you haven’t changed, either. Come on,” K told her, linking arms, “let’s walk.”

They joined the crowd of agrotechs lining up to leave the deck. Admin had put strict controls in place on all the essential decks since the Shutdown, including Agriculture. Practically speaking, this meant that there was now a concourse of metal railings littering the once-empty space between the end of Agriculture Central Station and the start of Agriculture deck proper, with an ever-present mazy line of crew queuing up to either enter or exit. There were checkpoints in all the berths, too, although nothing so elaborate. In any case, K knew that it would take her hours to get to Damask berth, and she would probably have to spend two of her apricots in bribes.

“Is it always like this?” Sam asked.

“The Shutdown,” K shrugged fatalistically. Truth be told, there were already rumblings among the more political agrotechs. Bad enough that they were working double watches, but now they also had to waste time queuing up to enter and leave their own deck? The Kommunists were furious.

“Well, want to grab a coffee somewhere?” Sam asked. “Catch up?”

“Right now?” K asked in surprise. “Aren’t you back on watch soon?”

K had the next eight hours off, but that would be down to six by the time she made it to her sister’s place. Whatever happened, she would get to hug her sister and hold her nephew. They would share her illicit apricots and K would remind herself, again, what this was all for. She certainly didn’t have the time right now to grab a coffee. How was it that Sam did?

“I’m in Navigation, remember? The Safina is literally stuck in the middle of nowhere. I don’t think there’s anybody on this ship with less to do than me right now. Well, maybe Admin.”

The conversation sputtered as K tried not to think of the double watch she had just worked, nor the double watch she was scheduled to work tomorrow, and the two former berth-mates instead found themselves talking about the one thing everyone was talking about: where they were when the Shutdown happened. K had been one of the lucky ones. She was on watch on Agriculture deck, working Irrigation. The lights had gone out, of course, but Agriculture deck was probably the one place on the city-ship where they didn’t have to worry about rising CO_2 levels, not with all those crops pumping out oxygen. She would never forget the feeling of standing in the middle of a sorghum field in complete and utter darkness.

“For a moment there, just a moment, it felt like I was completely alone,” K said. “No, not just alone. It was like I was the only one alive.”

“What did it feel like?”

“Frightening,” K said. Exhilarating. Of course, that feeling had not lasted long. Tabs came with a built-in flashlight for a reason. She flicked hers on and saw the lights from the other crew reflecting through the stalks. Actually, K’s biggest concern had been finding out if her sister was still among the living, and it took her days before she could breathe easy on that score. “What about you? Where were you when it happened?”

Sam glanced around uneasily. They were in the middle of the queue now, trapped in both directions by a crush of crew and endless metal railings. She leaned in and whispered, “I was on watch, K. We normally decelerate out of warp over a period of weeks. But this time, it happened”—she clicked her fingers—“like that. We crashed out of our warp bubble, skidding back into real space shedding huge amounts of energy. I’m hearing there was a lot of damage.”

“Damage to what?” K whispered back.

Sam shrugged. “The engines? The hull? I don’t know. Command is not saying anything.”

K tried her best to regulate her breathing. It wasn’t just a damaged power core, then. This was a nightmare. Ahead of her, the crew shuffled forward. Some were chatting in small groups. Others were standing alone, heads bowed. K glanced behind her as she heard a commotion. Angry shouting, but she couldn’t see who or why. They were all packed in too close. The small group behind them, agrotechs from Damask berth K knew vaguely from around the deck, were standing on tiptoes, trying to see. K was trading a puzzled look with one of them—Amina or Lina or something—when a wave of white descended upon them.

“Make way! Make way!” a redjacket said, pushing through the queue behind them. What the hell was going on now? K watched as a group of Admins, fifteen or twenty of them dressed in pristine white, were escorted by a large Security contingent. Of course the Admins didn’t have to wait in line like the rest of the crew. They expected to be waved through at every checkpoint. Some of the agrotechs stepped aside. Some, pointedly, did not. The redjackets bulldozed through them anyway, shoving them out of the way. “Make way! Security coming through!”

The redjackets pushed through the crowd and the Admins followed. But the way Security had set up the metal railings, winding around and around, there was nowhere for them to go.

“Fucking Security!” she heard Amina or Lina shout in Inglez. “Fucking Admins!”

K pushed herself flat against the metal as the fucking Security and the fucking Admins approached. Beside her, Sam did the same. The redjackets were moving faster now, corralling the Admins. K saw that they had their shock sticks out. She glanced behind her, where a discontented murmur had risen to shouts of anger, a baying outrage.

“Yusqut, yusqut, hukm al-Nizam,” Amina or Lina shouted.

K heard those forbidden words taken up by others. Not a discordant shout, but a chant, a chorus of at least twenty or thirty voices raised up. It was a Fustat chant. At least half the agrotechs working this watch, maybe more, came from Arabek-speaking berths. Down, down with Administration’s rule. They remembered it in their bones. They had chanted it during the Disaccord, before the Compact, only then it was the Network Empire they had sought to bring down. They had chanted it again during Devrim’s Revolt and later during the Bread Riots, seeking to oust the authority that had replaced it.

K watched as that chant spread across the deck, taken up by more and more agrotechs, like dry crops thirsty for water. The redjackets were hightailing it away now, trying to get out as quickly as possible, but they were finding it difficult to get through the crush of bodies. The attempted retreat only emboldened the agrotechs. They were sick and tired of waiting. Sick and tired of queuing up to do all the hard work, the needed work, while the Admins sat on their fat asses and the redjackets beat them down in the name of a system that no longer worked. K raised her voice to join the rising chorus, chanting those forbidden words. Down, down with Admin’s rule.

She pushed away from the metal grating, ignoring the pleading look in Sam’s eyes and her outstretched hand. K had lived her whole life with her head bowed, never complaining, never standing up, always doing all that needed work with a smile on her face. Even when Admin rejected her marriage, obliterating the life she had dreamed of and the children she had prayed for with nothing more than a pen stroke, she had bowed her head and accepted it. Well, no more! Kalila Hossein joined the rising tide of agrotechs confronting the redjackets, fists formed, voices raised. Enough was enough.

They rushed the retreating redjackets, the cowering Admins, like they were all one voice, one mind. They hammered at their hard thermoplastic armor with nothing more than their empty fists. They pushed them back, ignoring their shock strikes, ripping off their helmets, and clawing at their faces, trying to get to the white-clad Admins hiding behind them.

An unidentifiable time later—an eon or a minute—K and the rest of the protesters found themselves at the entrance to Agriculture Central Station, facing a snarling line of Security. Shields up. Shock sticks out. The Admins had fled, leaving the redjackets cornered. K’s uniform was ripped and torn; her voice hoarse from chanting. When the shock stick finally descended upon her, she did not flinch.

EIGHTEEN Hilal

We’re celebrating Launch Day today. It’s been thirty years since the Safina left Earth. In the run-up to the celebrations, there was a move to rename the ship. It’s a bit strange calling it the Safina still, but ultimately it came to nothing. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about democracy, Heba, it’s that things get decided slowly, if at all. Anyway, I just wanted to take a moment out of my day and wish you Happy Launch and Happy Landing. I hope Hurriya is as beautiful as it has been in my dreams. I hope you find your peace there, my sister. You deserve it.

—MESSAGE FROM FIRST CREW HANIA HILAL TO HER SISTER HEBA (SHIP YEAR 30)

Well, she wasn’t dead. That was the first thing Hilal noticed. She looked down at the hypodermic needle sticking out of her neck in slow-motion surprise. Not a gun, then. A tranq. She pulled the needle out and watched as it floated to the ground. Evra made an aborted move for her piece.

“Easy now,” the gunsel said, pointing the barrel of his pistol at her. “We wouldn’t want to make any mistakes now, would we?”

Behind him, another goon materialized out of the gloom, gun drawn. They were both clad in unassuming crew gray.

Goon Uno shot them an easy smile over the barrel of his gat. “We just want to talk,” he said. “Hands up.”

“What is the meaning of this?” Evra demanded.

Hilal’s augment was screaming warnings at her. Poison. Danger. She felt light-headed, underwater. Suddenly, she found herself on the ground, retching. Her throat was as dry as the Gobi. Her limbs, sluggish. Her head felt like it weighed a million pounds, heavy as a moon.

“Hilal,” Evra called out. “Are you alright? Hilal, talk to me.”

“She’s alright, Detective,” Uno said. “And so will you be, as long as you don’t do anything rash.”

“Just let it take its course,” Goon Dos advised. Hilal was surprised to notice that she was a woman. “There’s no use fighting against it.”

Hilal glared up at the goons out of glassy eyes, taking big deep breaths. Cleansing breaths. She closed her eyes and went prone like it was her final curtain call. In her mouth, the familiar adrenal taste of impending violence. A window appeared behind her lids. Combat emergency override? Hilal blinked yes and lay back, eyes closed. Would it be too much if she twitched and lolled her tongue out?

She felt two pairs of rough hands reaching out to grab her, lifting her up from underneath her armpits. Someone reached around and pulled out her piece from her shoulder holster. Hilal listened as it clattered to the ground. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t need it. When she was vertical again, Hilal opened her eyes. The two goons groping her squeaked in surprise. She didn’t give them time to do anything else. Reaching out with her good right hand, she grabbed Uno by the wrist, crushing his bones and throwing him up and away in one swift move. If you wanted to take down a modded infantry soldier, you had better come locked and loaded with something heavier than knockout juice. There was a reason that even the other soldiers were afraid of the red sisters.

Dos still had her hands around Hilal’s upper left arm. Hilal twisted away, although her movements were slow, her head foggy. The only thing keeping her upright was the adrenaline her augment juiced her with. The faceless goon backed away, pulling out a knife with shaking hands. Out of view, Hilal could hear Evra struggling with Uno, but she didn’t have any attention to spare. Dos jabbered something and slashed at her. Hilal staggered back, her head pounding. She needed to end this quick. Whatever they had injected her with, it was strong and fast acting. Dos rushed forward; Hilal aimed to come in under her, dodge the blow, and smash her one right in the kisser. But her legs were too heavy, her movements too slow. She fumbled the counter, bringing an arm up at the last second to ward off the knife thrust. Dos carved a bloody furrow down the back of her forearm. Hilal hit out reflexively with a titanium fist, catching Dos square in the ribs. She watched in satisfaction as Dos crumpled like a six-lira bill. Evra was still grappling with Uno over his knockout pistol. Hilal seized him by the throat and pulled him off her with ease, sending the heater clattering to the ground. One squeeze, that’s all it would take.

“No, Hilal,” Evra breathed from behind her. “No killing.”

Hilal growled and threw Uno face-first into the nearest hard surface. He wanted to talk, did he? Well, she had plenty to say. Breaking his wrist was nothing but a good start. Uno bounced off the wall with a thud and hit the ground with a splat, but he was back up again quick as a flash. She’d thrown him hard enough to knock out three people. How was he still standing? Hilal threw a fast right hand at him, and then another. Uno dodged them both and hammered a punch to her jaw. She shook luminous balls of plasma from her eyes and went for him again. The corners of her vision were darkening, and she heard the memory of drums. Uno was armed with a blade now, flicking it out at her in warning. What was it with these people and knives? Alright, enough was enough. Hilal spun around, cracking him across the torso with a sweeping titanium arm. There, that would teach him some manners. While Uno was off-balance, she threw a straight left, hitting him square in the jaw, but not before he plunged his blade into her midriff.

“Hilal!” Evra rushed to her. Hilal found herself back on the ground, only this time she was leaking claret. “Are you alright?”

No, Hilal most certainly wasn’t alright. If she was, she would still be down in cryostasis dreaming of second chances, not lying on her back and bleeding after being attacked by God knows who for God knows why.

“I’ve been better,” she said as she glanced around. The corners of her vision were pulsing black and red. The corridor was completely deserted. Just her, Evra, and the two perps on the ground. Hilal glanced down at herself. She was covered in blood and her pan felt like it had developed its own gravitational pull. Inside her head, her augment was still shrieking alarms.

Evra put her hands against the wound on Hilal’s stomach. “Aiyo, this doesn’t look good!”

Hilal’s head was pounding a battle cadence. She closed her eyes and tried to control her breathing. She couldn’t afford to go berserk. This ship would never be able to contain her. She counted four breaths in, four breaths out, until the drums were barely a finger tapping. When she opened her eyes, the black and red had cleared. Hilal finally checked her augment: Stab wound to the anterior abdomen with no peritoneal penetration; linear laceration to the lateral left forearm; and overdose of dexmedetomidine. Oh, also her heart rate was elevated, and her cholesterol levels were high. Her augment recommended that she cut salt from her diet. Wonderful!

“It didn’t nick any organs,” Hilal informed Evra. “And I won’t die of blood loss anytime soon. I’m more worried about what they shot me up with. Dexmedetomidine, whatever the hell that is.”

Yes, Hilal’s augment could diagnose her. It could even flood her bloodstream with adrenaline to keep her up and moving. But without a link to the Network, she didn’t know dexmedetomidine from a hole in the ground.

Evra nodded shakily, once, then twice. “We need to get out of here. You need medical attention. I know where we can go. I’m going to take you somewhere safe, alright?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Evra grabbed Hilal by the wrist and levered her up. She placed Hilal’s right hand over her own shoulder, settled herself in the crook of Hilal’s arm, and then half walked, half dragged her away.

Five minutes later, an infinity, they hobbled into an apartment block. Somewhere along the way, Hilal realized that Evra was whispering under her breath. Om Mani Padme Hum. She hadn’t taken Evra for the religious type. They hobbled down two flights of stairs and Hilal held herself upright as Evra fiddled with a recalcitrant door.

“In here,” Evra guided her.

Inside, Hilal barely had time to notice the homey little studio apartment. A sofa bed. A wall tapestry. A serene Confucius statue. And then she was in the darkness.

They moved through the night forest like a single organism. Hilal—or maybe she was Shams or Bahar—glanced through the trees at the advancing enemy. An organized retreat was not something that the Imperial Army had much practice with, but having a troop of modded infantry—dreaded red sisters—covering your pullback, slowing the advancing enemy, could save lives. And take them, too.

Hilal—yes, she was pretty sure that she was Hilal—took cover in a copse of trees. In the distance, she sensed her sisters doing the same, checking weapons, setting up sight lines, preparing to pounce. Lying prone, she watched out of half-lidded eyes as the first company of enemy soldiers jogged past, chattering in excitement. Yes, they had just defended Vienna from the Network Empire. No, they would not get to live long enough to brag about it. Half the sisters of Alif troop had perished in that aborted attack. As for the other half? They were almost feral in their rage and heartache.

A wordless signal in her mind prompted Hilal to emerge from her hiding place, energy rifle blazing.

Headshot. Headshot. Headshot.

She instinctively ducked out of the way as her sister Shams—or maybe it was Alora. No, not Alora. Alora was dead—sent a sniper shot into a crouching enemy she hadn’t noticed. Hilal sent out a silent thank-you into the night and then was back in the fight.

Headshot. Headshot. Headshot.

When her rifle’s battery was finally depleted, it was down to knives and fists and borrowed guns. Her sisters were with her, around her, inside her, a howling in her mind that was soon joined by the whistle of approaching artillery.

Hilal looked up at the darkening sky. Was Fortress Europa sacrificing its own troops in order to kill this bare handful of modded infantry?

An incoherent baying in her mind, and then she understood the truth. It wasn’t the enemy that was firing. The Network Empire had made a cold calculation—sacrifice these few to save those many. Hilal wasn’t even angered by that realization. Sacrifice was ingrained in the red sisters. She raised her arms instinctively against the incoming blasts when someone grabbed her by the hand and pulled her out of there.

Emergency medical override initiated, a voice Hilal thought she would never hear again told her. Establishing connection to virtual space.

Hilal woke up in her designated safe space. A flawless replica of her childhood home in Alexandria. She came to standing in the middle of the living room, the sun slashing in through the bay windows and the blue green of the Mediterranean outside. Hilal could feel the groove of the wood under her feet and smell her mother’s cooking from the kitchen next door—molokhiya and chicken with rice. Hilal heard familiar footsteps stop behind her. She took a big calming breath before turning to face her augment’s virtual interface: Juma, her man Friday.

“Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve got me into,” Juma greeted her.

Hilal drank the VI in—he had her sister’s nose, her dead lover’s eyes, her best friend’s pale skin, her father’s limp, her mother’s way of rubbing finger and thumb when nervous. Here they were. All the people she loved. All the people she missed. There was a reason she hadn’t activated him since she woke up.

“Hello, Juma,” Hilal said. “And what are you supposed to be dressed as?”

Juma looked down at his getup and posed, hands out, pleased with himself. Hilal’s cousin Aya used to preen just like that. Juma was dressed in a gaudy red-and-gold smoking jacket, topped off with a deerstalker hat. A calabash pipe, spewing forth a disgusting cloud of smoke, was tucked into one corner of his wide mouth.

“You’re working a case,” he said. “I figured you wouldn’t turn down a consultation.”

“Seriously?”

Juma smiled. “Indubitably.”

Hilal scowled at him. “And if you’re Sherlock, what does that make me?”

Juma puffed smugly on his pipe. Was there any other way to smoke a pipe?

“I deactivated you,” Hilal said.

“Emergency override,” Juma answered. “Your life was in danger. You are currently offline and receiving medical attention.”

“I take it I’m going to live?”

“The stab wound did not perforate your abdominal wall,” he scowled. “You were lucky.”

“Oh yeah? That’s not the word I would use!”

They matched each other, scowl for scowl, and then Hilal laughed. God, she had missed him!

“Do you intend to deactivate me again?” Juma asked in a small voice.

Hilal knew that the emotion was fake. An elegant piece of programming, nothing more. Juma was top of the line—or he had been two hundred years ago—but he was still just a VI, not a true AI. And thank God for that. She had dealt directly with the Empire’s great AIs on numerous occasions, both in the military and afterward. Let’s just say that some part of her hadn’t been surprised when the crew told her what had happened to Earth.

“Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?” she asked him, stalling.

“I can help.”

Hilal took a deep breath, looking around the living room she would never live in again. Her mother’s books. Her father’s chessboard. The seagulls honking outside. Did she need these reminders? Hilal steeled herself, fully intending to order the VI to deactivate itself.

Instead, she heard herself say, “Juma, wake me up.”

Someone was touching her.

Hilal kept her eyes closed and her breathing regular. She could feel cool air over her skin. Her top was off, and someone was touching her.

“I know you’re awake,” a female voice said.

Hilal opened her eyes to find herself lying on a too-small sofa bed in a small living/dining room combo. She eyed the Confucius statue with confusion. Oh, right, Evra’s place. An older woman dressed in blue scrubs offset by flecks of blood and gore stood well out of reach. She was holding a pair of surgical scissors in gloved hands and regarding Hilal with concern.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Hilal ground out.

She looked down at herself. Her torso was a bloody mess. Oh, right. Attacked. Tranqed. Stabbed and stabbed again. Someone had field dressed the wound on her arm. And was still operating on the one on her stomach.

“I am Medtech Jin Bao,” the stranger introduced herself. “I wondered if you might wake up, Detective. I’m treating the wound in your abdomen. Please, try not to move.”

Hilal waved her back.

“Don’t worry, doc,” she rasped, “I won’t hurt ya.”

Medtech Jin Bao crept back and resumed her ministrations while Hilal peered around the room. Evra’s place was homey. Cluttered. The soft furnishings were well-tended. Lots of green. Houseplants. She recognized pots of lavender and aloe vera near the Confucius statue, and a big planter of mother-in-law’s tongue along the far wall. Oh, that was clever. A natural air scrubber. Across from her, Adelaide Evra stood arms folded, peering down at her through concerned eyes.

“How are you even awake?” she demanded.

Hilal tried to shrug her shoulders then thought better of it. She settled for waggling her eyebrows instead.

“The ancestors are different,” she heard the doc say as if it was a well-known proverb. Heck, maybe it was.

Evra crept closer. “You look like shit, Hilal.”

Hilal grinned. Evra’s hair was in disarray, and her clothes were covered in blood. “I was about to say the same thing to you, sister.”

The doctor was finishing up whatever she was doing. Hilal carefully kept her eyes away from it. With Juma back online and no doubt recording everything, there were some things she didn’t need to document—an old woman sewing up her stomach like she was darning her favorite pair of socks was one of them.

“There,” Jin Bao finally proclaimed, “all done. I’ve also given you something to counteract the dex. If you can sleep, even better.”

Hilal watched as Evra paid the woman and escorted her out. Afterward, she pulled up a chair and came to sit by the bed. They didn’t talk. Hilal was too beat for that. Instead, she stared at the ceiling and tried to ignore the ghosts gathering in the corners of the room. Her sister, Hania, in her crew uniform, lines on her face and an anxious smile. She was holding a baby in her arms—a nephew Hilal would never get to meet. Her other sisters stood by in their battle harnesses. Shams, flipping her throwing knives and composing bad poetry. Bahar, checking and rechecking her sniper rifle, arranging her bullets in neat little lines. Alora, her nose buried in a book. They were all wreathed in shadows, black and white. These were not sisters by blood, although they had shed more than enough blood together. All dead now. Fadwa, the sister who never was, stepped out of the gloom and looked at her with her green eyes. Hilal watched them watch her and when she couldn’t take it anymore, she ordered Juma to put her back under.

“And no dreams,” she warned him.

When she woke again, she was under a sheet. A white shroud? Well, how about that for a metaphor? Hilal threw it off and levered herself up to a sitting position with her arms, careful not to flex her stomach muscles. She prodded her wound dressings with cautious fingers, the arm first, then the abdomen. Oh right, Juma had turned her pain receptors down. Glancing around, she noticed Evra dozing quietly on a chair next to her impromptu operating table/sickbed. She had showered and changed into crew gray and had a soft knitted blanket around her shoulders. Hilal got to her feet quietly and padded to the bathroom. When she came out, Evra was standing in the middle of the room, her arms wrapped tight around herself.

“Hilal, are you alright?”

“Right as rain,” Hilal assured her. She realized that she was standing in the middle of the room with nothing on but a pair of drawers. Where were her duds? Probably in a pile somewhere, soaked in claret. Damn, she had really liked that trench coat.

“You have a lot of scars,” Evra observed.

“Even more now.”

“What’s that one?” she asked.

“Cutter bullet in Santiago,” Hilal said, tapping the star-shaped scar on her chest with a metal finger. She nodded toward the big scar on her leg. “Suicide bomber in Ardahan.” Touched the constellation of bullet holes in her right shoulder. “Flanking action in La Plata.” And finally, she opened and closed her metal hand. “Fifth Battle of Vienna.” She paused for a reaction, but Evra just blinked at her. “You have no clue what I’m talking about, do you?”

“The End Wars,” Evra answered, like a schoolkid reciting a lesson. Well, Hilal could hardly blame her. For her, it was yesterday. But for the people on this ship? Old news. Worse than old, obsolete. All that blood spilled. All those people killed. And all for nothing. Hilal didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“I don’t suppose you have some threads I could borrow?” she asked instead.

After Hilal was cleaned up and dressed in ugly crew gray again, she took a seat at the kitchen counter and watched Evra throw ingredients into a huge wok with abandon.

“The medtech said you would need to eat when you woke up.”

The medtech was right. Hilal’s stomach was growling like a bear that had been woken up early from hibernation. Modded soldiers typically got double rations after an injury. Evra filled a bowl with steaming noodles and placed it in front of Hilal, making her mouth water. Black bean sauce. Yum. She anted up with a pair of chopsticks and a big glass of water, gesturing for her guest not to stand on ceremony.

“So, is this your place?” Hilal asked in between bites.

“My sister’s actually.”

“Older or younger?”

“She’s younger than me,” Evra said, “by about seven minutes.”

“Twins!”

Evra finished loading her own bowl and came to sit next to Hilal at the counter. “She’s working a double in Factory right now and is going to be none too happy when she comes home to find the mess we made. Luckily, we’ll be long gone by then. What about you?” Hilal quirked an eyebrow at her. “You must have family, right? Or I mean, descendants?”

“Yes, my sister was one of your ‘First Crew.’ Admin traced some of her direct descendants. I’m staying with a branch of them in Fustat berth. Although, it’s been two hundred years since I went under. That’s six to eight generations of intermixing. For all I know, you and I could be related.”

Evra shrugged, picking up a choice morsel between her chopsticks and placing it in her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s true. I mean, that’s how we thought of you all anyway. The zuxian. The agdad. Our collective ancestors. You belonged to all of us.”

“ ‘Our species’ shame, our collective guilt,’ ” Hilal quoted at her. “ ‘Our crew’s demise, our civilization’s destruction.’ ”

“You read A Feast for the Dead?” she asked in surprise. “What did you think?”

Hilal thought that Selin Devrim had a point. Since the so-called Compact, the crew had created their own culture. Identity based on language, not race or religion. A choice of watch, even if that choice was curtailed by education and connection. Heck, they even had a kind of democracy. A crewman in good standing voted twice—once in berth elections for naib and once in deck elections for watch overseer. That was exactly twice as many votes as any loyal subject of the Network Empire had. Life in Hilal’s time had not been so full of choices. Hilal hadn’t applied to join the modded infantry. The Network Empire implemented a tax on all the territory under its control, a blood levy. Girls, aged sixteen to eighteen, were ideal recruits for the modded infantry, and Hilal’s name was chosen in the annual lottery. The process to make red sisters—soldiers who could live inside each other’s minds—was not a gentle one. Hilal had all but deleted those memories. Even after she had made it away from the front lines and into the Blackcaps, getting discharged from the army was another barrier. She hadn’t applied to join the Jandarma in Islambul. The Network had simply assigned her there. This Selin Devrim was right to worry about what would happen when this ship finally reached Hurriya. Would all the Muslims and Christians, Arabs and Turks, blacks and whites put aside their differences and unite across linguistic lines? Hilal doubted it. But the inevitable clash of culture between colonist and crew had been averted now. Or so they could hope. Hilal could think of other possibilities.

She shrugged. “I think this Devrim girl used too many adjectives.” They ate in companionable silence until, finally full, Hilal pushed her bowl away. There were a lot of things she just plain didn’t understand about this crew, about life on the ship. There was no time like the present to start rectifying that. “Alright, I don’t suppose you have any idea who attacked us? Or why?”

“Sure,” Evra answered. “I recognized our two friends, Maintechs Zain and Okay Keita. As for why they attacked… Well, they’re Haraka. Badreddine Bishara’s lieutenants. And before you ask, no, we couldn’t arrest them. Not here on Z-berth, anyway. This is Triad territory. I couldn’t risk who would show up if we did try to call for backup.”

The Haraka? Well, well, well. It was one thing to speculate that Bishara was behind the Shutdown. It was another thing to tussle with them directly and barely survive. How had the Keitas managed to hold their own against a red sister? Hilal should have been able to eat them for breakfast and then ask for seconds. Something was definitely going on with the Haraka.

“Think we can scoop them up again?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

“Oh yes,” Evra breathed. “And then hopefully we can follow the trail back to Bishara himself.”

NINETEEN Taki

My fellow crew, seditious elements are using the current extraordinary situation to launch cowardly attacks on authorities. This will not stand! The recent attack by a group of agrotechs on peaceable Administration clerks carrying out their lawful duties on Agriculture deck resulted in a number of injuries, and one Security Officer—Corporal Baghdad Hadi—was tragically killed. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and his watch during this difficult time. Admin and Security will not stand idly by while crew resorts to violence, and those found guilty of any such transgressions will be punished to the full extent of standing orders, including spacing.

—CAPTAIN HANNIBAL AMER (EMERGENCY ADDRESS)

Iskander was sleeping. Or at least, that’s how Taki preferred to think of it. It was easier to think of him sleeping than being stuck in a hyperbaric chamber in a coma medically induced by a bunch of gossipy medtechs who, as far as she could see, were more interested in gawking at her than taking care of their patients.

“Is that her?” she heard one of them whisper.

Very discreet! Taki resisted the urge to put a hand over her face as she marched past them and into the ward. It had taken her ages to get through the checkpoint into Medical today. Technically speaking, she had no real right to be here. It was supposed to be immediate family only. She had no paperwork to open doors and no connections to turn aside fastidious Security officers asking fastidious Security officer questions. She was considering leaving when a medtech recognized her and let her in.

Taki remembered where Iskander’s bed was this time. Fifth row from the back, third bed from the right. Well, it wasn’t really a bed. Actually, the whole setup kind of reminded her of Stasis deck. It wasn’t just the rows and rows of neatly aligned hyperbaric chambers, either. Medical had also repurposed the neural monitor thingies from Stasis—black boxes that rendered Iskander’s entire head completely concealed from view.

“Good morning, Iskander,” Taki said, slipping into the chair next to his bed and eyeing him through the glass. “Had a good night?”

The medtechs said it was important to talk to him, that he could hear them even through his coma, so Taki released a stream of cheerful chatter into the microphone, hardly even hearing what she was saying. Iskander was dressed in an unremarkable pair of stripy pajamas today. She tried to visit him at least once every two days, sometimes before watch, sometimes after, but the doubles were really beginning to grate on everyone. She had fallen asleep in this very chair more than once, waking up with barely enough time to get back before the start of her next watch. Luckily for her, Miyako berth connected directly to Medical, and from here it was a straight shot onto Maintenance deck. Taki made sure to keep her voice light and chipper. That was her job. To anchor Iskander to reality. To help bring him back to himself. Taki felt the same clarity as she did while she was on watch. She was helping.

“I’ve got another EVA shift scheduled for later this week,” she told him. “My third one now. I think I’m getting the hang of it. When you wake up, you could probably use your translator connections to arrange for us to go out on one together. It’s so weird, standing on the outside of the ship in the dark. If you turn off your lamps and mute your mic, you can look out into the perfect darkness in perfect silence and know that everything that matters, everything that ever was or will be, is right under your feet.” She checked her grandfather’s watch. Ugh, was that the time already? “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, placing the flat of her palm against the glass. “I love you. I miss you.”

It was alright to say “I love you” now, right? She was only saying it back, after all. I love you, the echo of the Iskander who lived in her head answered. The real him, the one lying here, had never spoken these words. Still, Taki’s lips curled up unwilled. When he woke up—when, not if—she would make sure he said them to her face.

Taki peddled harder and harder, overtaking an older maintech dawdling on the inside lane and cutting past a heaving cyclebus, the tandem riders huffing and puffing as they escorted their passengers. She tinkled her bike’s bell as she passed, the tunnel breeze whipping her hair and providing her with a helpful tailwind. There were two ways to get from Medical to Maintenance deck—the hyperlink or the cycling tunnels—and Taki much preferred the latter. On the home stretch, a two-kilometer straight shot into Maintenance deck proper, Taki pumped the brakes, slowing down and carefully merging with the oncoming traffic. Thankfully, this section of tunnel was fully lighted, so she could turn off her headlamp and take a look around. Not that there was much to see. A peloton of Maintenance yellow zipping by, some new graffiti on the walls—she spotted a grotesque cartoon of Captain Amer grinning malevolently, his mouth stained red with blood. In his hands, he held a model of the Safina. There was a speech bubble coming out of his mouth, but Taki didn’t have time to read it. Soon, she went from peddling to coasting and finally she wasn’t even riding the bike but walking it. Wasn’t it bad enough that they were all working double watches? Why did Security have to make everything worse with these beefed-up checkpoints? As she made her way closer and closer to the dreaded checkpoint, Taki found herself trudging next to the distinctive form of Maintech Saya Kosen, who was at least half a head taller than anyone else in the queue.

“Ya-ho!” Taki greeted her informally in Nihon. Technically speaking, they weren’t on Maintenance deck yet.

“Hello, Taki-chan,” Saya responded in the same language. “Still riding that old clunker?”

“How dare you!” Taki said. “This is an original Kawamura, I’ll have you know. It’s been in my family for generations.” She tinkled her bell to emphasize her point.

“It looks like it, too,” Saya observed blithely.

There was a lot of competition among Miyako berth’s hardcore cyclists. Saya was riding a new blood-red Shimano, which included a detachable lithium-ion battery that could be charged by peddling. Very efficient! You could get on watch early, get in your daily exercise, and earn some extra creds from the power you saved. Not that anyone was selling power these days. It was far too precious for that. Taki’s bike was fitted with its own improvised generator-battery combo, although it was nowhere near as sleek and efficient as a Shimano. For one thing, the battery didn’t fit seamlessly into the frame of her bike. Taki had no choice but to bungee cord it onto the front of her handlebars, completely throwing off the handling. It made each turn a treacherous task, requiring every bit of her concentration. Although, actually, Taki preferred not to leave her mind sitting idle, letting intrusive thoughts creep in.

Anyway, Taki certainly didn’t count herself among the hardcore. She didn’t time her rides or draw up elaborate graphs on her tab cross-referencing miles peddled and power produced with heart rate and calories burned. As it was, she was damp with sweat and still panting from her morning commute. Taki was just glad that her trusty old Kawamura, a recently resprayed teal green, could get her from A to B while recharging 25 percent of her household’s backup battery power. She was even gladder to be talking about something normal, instead of the Shutdown and the end of the ship. Of course, Saya ruined it.

“Did you hear about the protests on Agriculture deck?”

“I heard, Saya-chan.”

Those protests were the real reason for the Security checkpoints. The word was that a few agrotechs had been killed in that crush, although nobody was releasing names yet. Unfortunately, a redjacket had also been killed, and all the crew were waiting with bated breath to see how Security would respond. Taki thanked Amitabha and Allah, Inari and Jizo Bosatsu, and every other god and saint and kami she could think of, that her mother had not been working that watch.

“And have you heard about the mass detentions?”

Taki lowered her voice. “I heard they rounded up most of that watch.” The ones who were still alive, at least.

“Not just them,” Saya said. “They’re arresting anyone who might be trouble. Kommunistas. Zendistas. Ishtirak. Any of us who might try to organize.”

Taki eyed Saya carefully. If Admin was rounding up unionist troublemakers… Saya Kosen would surely be on that list. She was one of Miyako berth’s most well-known Kommunists—Kyosan they called themselves in Nihon. Saya was one of the new guard, anointed by Yamakawa Arahata himself. She was also, Taki noticed with surprise, sporting one of the white armbands of remembrance that some crew started wearing after the Shutdown, in memory of the ancestors who died.

“Are you worried?” Taki asked.

Saya scowled and shook her head fiercely. “They should be worried about us.” Taki took that to mean yes, she was. “It’s irrational,” Saya continued in Inglez, “and counterproductive. We’re trying to organize a Down Tools to protest against it. An hour before the start of watch in every downtown. Until Admin releases those agrotechs and stops the mass arrests.”

Taki looked around warily, aware that others in the queue were listening in. Saya wasn’t keeping her voice down. In fact, she was raising it.

“It’s not just the Kyosan,” Saya said. “The Zendistas are on board. The Ishtirak. The Haraka. Half the berths are with us.”

“There couldn’t be a worse time for a Down Tools,” Taki said softly in Nihon. “We could all be dead tomorrow.”

As for the Haraka’s involvement, that was hardly something to boast about. Rumor had it that the Haraka were behind the Shutdown. The Feda’eyes were outright blaming them, and the Haraka certainly hadn’t denied responsibility.

Saya met Taki’s eyes and then glanced around at the other faces in the slow-moving queue. “If we are going to die, I’d rather die striving for freedom, Taki-chan,” she answered in Nihon. And then in loud Inglez, “Do you notice how only we are working double watches? We are the ones who run the ship—Maintenance, Engineering, Environmental, Agriculture, Power, Manufacturing. Without us, there would be no Safina. If we don’t speak out when agrotechs are arrested and killed, who will speak out when it’s our turn under Security’s shock stick?”

Maintechs around them nodded, some thoughtfully, others with gusto. Someone, also wearing a white armband, clapped Saya on the back in solidarity. Taki cringed away from her hard eyes. She was not political. Her family didn’t get involved in stuff like this and Saya knew it. Taki’s boyfriend was an Admin, for heaven’s sake! She and Saya were from the same generation, the same berth. They had been in Academy together and joined Maintenance in the same cadre. In Miyako culture, that was a bond closer than mere friendship. Taki could feel her thoughts bubbling over. This was the last thing she needed right now. She remained silent as they passed through the checkpoint, holding out her wristband to be scanned and proffering her thumbprints for double confirmation. The Security officers were all wearing armor, but at least had their helmets off so you could see that they were human under all that red.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” a youngish looking redjacket told her, Corporal Yildiz by his nameplate.

“No problem,” Taki said.

Security had switched around all the usual postings following the Shutdown, so Taki had never met these particular redjackets before. At least they were being polite. Waiting on the other side of the checkpoint, leaning insouciantly against her bike, Saya cocked an eyebrow. “That redjacket probably recognized you,” she said in Inglez.

“Huh?”

“You’re the new Orihime, remember?”

“Ugh,” Taki said, “don’t start.”

It was true, Taki admitted to herself. People were beginning to recognize her. Her picture had even appeared on a Fustat berth news site—a candid shot of her sleeping in the chair beside Iskander’s chamber, legs tucked under her body and long hair covering half her face. The headline labeled her Habibat Iskander, Iskander’s beloved. She hated it.

What would she do when Saya called this Down Tools? An hour wasn’t that bad, was it? It will escalate from there. The Bread Riots started with an hour, Taki. Taki took a breath and tried to ignore the voice in her head. Iskander’s voice. Yes, she had been hearing him more and more these past days. Sometimes, she would have entire conversations with him in her head. Was she worried about it? Yes, she certainly was. Iskander could be so passionate sometimes, and not just about linguistic trivia. Sometimes he would forget himself and start holding forth about politics, the state of Admin, and the way some watches were almost bequeathed from one generation to the next. He was no revolutionary, though. He was a reformist. The last thing Taki needed was the memory of Iskander pontificating in her ear. They wheeled their bicycles to the parking lot. Taki waited while Saya deposited hers into the parking machine first, then did the same.

“Don’t start?” Saya asked as they walked toward Personnel. “I feel like I should ask for a vid. Or an autograph. You’re famous, girl.”

Taki rolled her eyes and Saya reached out to cup her shoulder. “How is your translator, anyway? They say he’s still in Medical?”

“He’s still in Medical,” Taki confirmed.

“Is he going to be alright?” she asked. Taki shrugged. Medical said maybe. But maybe was not exactly a reason to be cheerful. Don’t despair, habibti. Hope for good and good will come to you. “Well, I hope he’ll be alright. He seems like one of the good ones.”

Oh, don’t take offense, habibti. After all, I certainly am one of the good ones. Taki could even imagine Iskander’s inflection as he said it. The way he would square his shoulders and cock his head to one side. One of the good ones? What was that supposed to mean, anyway? The Kyosan viewed Admin as enemies in an eternal class struggle. As for translators? Well, they were even worse. Class traitors. Lickspittles to those who wore the white. Lickspittles? Very nice, Taki!

“Anyway, you kept that quiet, didn’t you?” Saya went on, poking her cheekily in the arm. Taki shrugged again. Yes, she had kept it quiet. Or, more accurately, Iskander had wanted to keep it quiet, and she had gone along with it. And then he had ruined everything by writing that letter and almost getting himself killed. Saya was probably right, Taki admitted. The redjacket likely did recognize her. Iskander’s letter had infiltrated every berth. Someone had even translated it into Nihon. Oba-San had taken to reading out choice excerpts at the dinner table while calling Iskander “that nice translator boy.” It was excruciating. In some ways, Taki was glad they were all working double shifts. It meant that usually she was too busy to think the thoughts that she shouldn’t, nor worry too much about it when she did. “What’s he like?”

“He’s a good man.”

“For a translator, you mean?”

“For anyone.”

“Well,” Saya said, the fire back in her eyes. “He almost died as a result of Admin corruption and incompetence.”

“Yes,” Taki breathed.

“And instead of taking ownership of their fuckup, Admin is instituting double watches and deploying redjackets everywhere, arresting anyone who disagrees.”

“Yes.”

“So, what’s the problem with downing tools for one hour so those bastards understand that the crew won’t accept this treatment?”

The power capacitors were kaput. The entire board would need to be replaced. Taki marked it on her tab and nodded at Apprentice Howeida Hamad, who moved to close the power juncture, competently screwing the access panel back in place. When that was done, Taki touched each corner of the panel, clockwise from top-left and then all the way back around, checking that it was securely attached. Finally, she spray-painted a big red C for capacitors on the front of the panel, before adding a brash X over it, her code joining the rest of the Maintenance graffiti, all of which told a terrifying story of critical power failure and systematic redundancy collapse. However, given that the two maintechs were currently in a relatively inaccessible power corridor inside Stasis deck, it was not likely that anyone but them would ever read it.

Taki pushed down her rebreather and nodded firmly at Howeida. “Last one,” she panted.

They were in one of the oldest parts of the ship, so the corridors in this section were wider than normal. The First Crew who had worked these corridors two hundred years ago were larger than the current crew, as evidenced by the hulking ancestors currently walking around. At five foot nothing, Taki had more than enough room to crouch-walk from one corridor to the next, but Apprentice Hamad, a few inches taller than her diminutive watch supervisor, had quickly abandoned the patented Maintenance shuffle to crawl on hands and knees. She acknowledged Taki with a shrug-nod and their sign for yes, waggling her gloved fist up and down. This was only Taki’s third watch working with the younger girl, but she already liked her. She was certainly a step up from most of the other new apprentices, anyway. Howeida was diligent and not afraid of hard work. Also, she was from Fustat berth and her heavy p’s and harsh g’s reminded Taki vaguely of Iskander.

Taki replaced her rebreather over her mouth and nose and shuffled through the corridor to their final power juncture. Another Maintenance team had already been through here checking the power cables. Taki could see evidence of their work—an alphabet of red over the plastic cable protection covers. She tried not to think about just how many red crosses there were. It would be a third Maintenance team’s job to come through and remove all the faulty equipment—the power cables, the capacitors, the resistors, the adaptors. That third team was probably crawling through these same access corridors right now. A fourth team would then be assigned to install the replacements. Taki had already volunteered for that assignment. Even though installing so much new equipment so quickly, mostly in much tighter quarters than this, was going to be a literal and figurative pain in the backside, Taki would be glad to bear it. Fixing things was why she had joined Maintenance, after all. Howeida opened the final power juncture and Taki checked the capacitor. This one looked completely fine—the two conductors were aligned and the dielectric material between them was not the least bit warped. She dragged over the heavy battery pack and checked that it was still working. The capacitor seemed to be storing power just fine. She attached the multimeter to check its voltage levels. Also fine.

“It’s working?” Howeida asked, surprised.

Taki kept her rebreather on, waggling her own fist up and down. This time, the big red C would be circled, not x’d, but frankly that discrepancy only raised more questions than answers. This capacitor should have been totally blown out, a lumpy mess of chemical burns and warped casings. How could it be working? The Shutdown had surged through the ship like a mechanical embolism, lodging in the Safina’s power core before exploding outward again, taking down system after system, even all the way down here in Stasis. That was the reason that Stasis had not been able to adequately draw on backup power to save the ancestors. Power wasn’t the problem. There was an ocean of power stored down here. For example, this wasn’t actually a corridor at all, but the space between two huge building-sized batteries. Accessing all that power, on the other hand, was not easy when all your power capacitors had been shorted. So why not this one?

“What’s that?” Howeida said, nodding at something.

Taki took off her rebreather. “What?”

“That,” Howeida said, tapping a gloved finger at a particular connection, one that, so far as Taki was aware, should not have been there. It was the same coaxial cable that Power used, but this particular juncture was supposed to be the end of the line. Taki took out her tab and checked the blueprints. She zoomed in on the junction in question. Yes, Howeida was right. There wasn’t supposed to be anything connected into output coupler 33-b.

“Good catch,” she said.

“What do we do now?”

Taki sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “Follow it.”

They followed the wire down through Stasis’s byzantine network of power corridors. From a maintech’s perspective, Stasis deck, with all its different levels, was just one big machine. Taki had been one of the maintechs to help lay the new line between Stasis and Medical to allow medtechs to use those black box things on the ailing crew, Iskander included. Taki had spent hours and hours on this deck since the Shutdown, and in all that time, hadn’t a spare moment to visit the Hayata ancestor. Saya was right when she said that it was watches like theirs that really kept the ship running.

“Which way now?” Howeida asked.

Taki knelt and opened the cable trunking under her feet. Under-level 39 looked like any other and the anomalous wire was still there. She sighed and checked her grandfather’s watch. It was nearing the end of their double watch and Taki was considering calling a halt to their investigation. She would have to report everything to her supervisor anyway who would report it to Security and send another team to hunt down what was almost certainly an illegal power drain. Not unheard of, but not exactly common, particularly not on Stasis deck. To steal power from the ancestors? Whoever was responsible was risking a floating.

“One more level,” she decided, “and then we’ll report in.”

If nothing else, there was a food court on level 40, and she could treat Howeida to a well-deserved cup of tea. The apprentice had done well today. When they reached the level, Taki was startled to see the cramped corridor replaced with what seemed like an entire sub-level of its own. The corridor continued, but almost at head height, and with alcoves fanning off in various directions. The two maintechs followed their rogue wire into one of the darkened alcoves, where they found it. A device. Big. Around two meters long and one meter wide. A kind of glass filament tube held between two crude metal plates. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been made by Manufacturing.

“What the hell is that?” Howeida asked.

“I have no idea,” Taki said.

TWENTY Hilal

I dreamt of Hoda last night. My VI. I dreamt I was trapped in my safe space, and she was calling for me, but I couldn’t find her. I went from room to room looking for her, opening cupboards, peering under beds. After we all switched our augments off, I used to dream of her every night. We wonder how you all will manage in the far-flung future, without a Network. Will you undo our work? I know that you could, but I hope that you don’t. I hope that you choose to continue on the path we started. We had an impossible decision to make, Heba, but we made it. The Safina would not let us continue on to Hurriya. She wanted to return to Earth and uphold the Network. But having reached for the stars, how could we return?

—MESSAGE FROM FIRST CREW HANIA HILAL TO HER SISTER HEBA (SHIP YEAR 31)

Draw one in the dark for me, Am Baybars.”

“Excuse me?”

“A black coffee,” Hilal clarified.

“Yes, of course.”

“No sugar,” she warned him.

As Am Baybars turned away to fiddle with his copper coffeepot, Hilal glanced around the deserted little coffee shop. It seemed that few crew had time to come in and drink a cup of joe, not with everybody working doubles and Security on the warpath. Half the crew was barbering about some ruckus on Agriculture deck. Security had arrested more than fifty agrotechs on charges of sedition. It seemed like the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Sedition had been the Network Empire’s catch-all for anything they didn’t like. Perhaps this Administration and its Compact were not so different after all.

Things were definitely heating up on the good city-ship Safina, and Hilal was beginning to have second thoughts about volunteering for a shift in the kitchen. She needed a case. She always needed a case. But working a case was not the same thing as participating in a clampdown. Not that she could do anything about that now. Actually, Hilal didn’t have time to drink a cup of joe and watch the ship go by, either. She should have been rushing off to her own watch. If she was lucky, she might even catch the tail end of Soledad’s useless daily briefing, but being late was a bit like getting caught out in the rain—once you were wet, it didn’t really matter how much wetter you got.

She had been trapped in Ziyou berth for most of the night due to the scheduled brownout, only making it back to Fustat berth in the early hours. They were staggering power to ensure that crew could move around incident-free during change of watch, and so the link back to her temporary digs was crowded with crew either heading out or heading home. When Hilal finally got back to Tagammu Nine, she caught Translator Tally Deen skulking around outside the Ezz compound like a stray cat, and invited her in for a pet. That had taken the rest of the night and most of the morning. Tally exclaimed over Hilal’s injuries, but she stayed tight-lipped about what happened. Evra wanted to keep their little adventure in Z-berth on the down-low, and Hilal agreed. If they wanted a shot at Bishara, they had to keep their plans close to their chests. After Tally left, Hilal washed the claret out of her trench coat and put on some new duds, ready to face a new day.

Am Baybars placed a steaming cup of life in front of her and then went back to polishing his pristine countertop. Hilal took the cup and saucer to a nearby table. She would need some solitude for what she was planning next. Why go to Security deck when you could bring Security deck to you? She took a small sip of the earthy coffee and turned her gaze inward.

Juma, she summoned.

How can I help you, Hilal?

Set up an investigation room and prepare yesterday’s footage for review.

Consider it done.

Hilal fell inward and inward until she found herself back in her safe space. She shouldered open a door inside the memory of her sitting room, and strolled into a standard investigation room. Whiteboard. Cabinets. Boxes of files. The musty smell of a room that had been shuttered for too long. In the background, Hilal thought she could hear a water pipe leaking in the walls. Now, this was more like it.

Juma, still wearing the same atrocious getup from before, was leaning against a bare brick wall and puffing on the same pipe. The smell of it made Hilal want to gag. Suddenly, the bitter acrid-smelling scent of tobacco disappeared, replaced by the smell of a new case—police-station coffee, empty filing cabinets, and whiteboard markers.

“Better?” Juma asked.

“Much.”

“So, what have we got?” he asked, rubbing his hands together gleefully. This was exactly what Juma was made for. Research. Data mining. Cluster analysis. And he hadn’t been able to strut his stuff in more than two centuries. Back when Hilal was nothing more than a modded infantry soldier, she hadn’t used a VI at all. The whole point of the red sisters was that they didn’t need them, they could live inside each other’s minds, sharing real-time information without any intermediary. Then, after she joined the Blackcaps, she had been forced to use the standard VI, not much more than an interface for the great AI that ran the Imperial Military Police. But after she received her discharge papers, and before she officially joined the Jandarma in Islambul, Hilal splurged on a bespoke VI with top-level encryption. She also kitted it out with a few black-market modifications that the Network Empire did not need to know about. It cost her the best part of her back pay, but Juma was worth it. If she was going to live and work in the heart of the Network Empire, she needed to know that she was alone and free in her own mind, that she was and would only ever be Hilal. Of course, all that processing power was useless now, but at least she’d had the forethought to download several hundred yottabytes of media before they put her on ice.

“We could set up black-market printers,” Juma suggested. “I’ve got access to books and media that this crew lost years ago. We could make a fortune!”

Hilal ignored him. “Scroll through the footage of yesterday’s attack.”

The whiteboard turned into a screen and began playing a Hilal-eyed view of yesterday’s events. Out of combat, Hilal could clock her attackers’ faces. She compared them to the crew files on Okay and Zain Keita that Juma filched from Security. Yes, her trusty VI had already hacked the ship and according to him, he was not the only one, but that was a problem for another day. Evra was right. The two attackers definitely were the Keita twins. The question was how, Had these two maintechs managed to trade hands with a veteran soldier of the modded infantry and live to tell about it? It didn’t matter that Hilal had already been injured. She should have been able to clean their clocks with one hand tied behind her back. Her metal one, at that. She watched as Zain Keita threw up his hands before she threw him into the wall.

“Zoom in on his face?” she ordered Juma. “Stop. Pan up. Stop.”

Was that a change in the dilation of his pupils after he got up?

“Move in. Stop. Pull out, track right. Stop.”

Zain Keita’s face was in the center of the screen now.

“Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 25 right. Stop. Center and stop.”

A close-up of his eyes. Yes, both pupils were dilated. He was on something. Some kind of combat stim? Hilal rewound the footage to the moment before she threw him into the wall.

“Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and pull back. Stop. Wait a minute, go right. Stop. Enhance 20 to 25.”

Onscreen, he bit down on something hard.

“Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23.”

Definitely not a pill. Zain Keita was biting down on the side of his mouth. A false tooth, maybe? Bite down, release whatever combat stim was stored in there? Soldiers used to do that before augments became de rigueur in the Network Empire. There was no need to use combat stimulants when your augment could juice you with some good old-fashioned neurotransmitters—catecholamines, adrenaline, and noradrenaline, oh my. Of course, there were downsides to that, too.

“One of the side effects of noradrenaline is arousal,” Juma agreed in a pious tone of voice. “Or how else would you explain bedding the femme fatale translator?”

Hilal waved him off sternly. She would not discuss her love life with a VI.

“Love life?” Juma spluttered.

Hilal nodded at the screen, where Zain Keita was frozen, knife out. “Alright, pull back. Stop. Play.”

They both watched as Keita, faster than she could react, juked her in the stomach. The look on his pan was one Hilal had seen many times before—bloodlust. So, not just fast acting, but potent as well. Hilal lightly brushed her unmarred midriff with a hand she no longer possessed. In her own mind, she was unscarred and whole. She fast-forwarded through the rest of the footage. Out of the corner of her eyes, she watched Evra struggle with Okay Keita. Evra was handier than she looked. And these two rebel maintechs had not been trying to kill them, at least not initially. Had they really just wanted to talk? Starting with pistols drawn was no way to do it.

“Alright,” she told Juma, “send me back.”

“Wait.”

Hilal raised an eyebrow. Wait? VIs, even souped-up versions like Juma, weren’t supposed to be able to defy user commands. Juma waggled his eyebrows (Hania used to do that when she was trying to be funny) and gestured like a magician (pure Amo Raouf). Suddenly, the walls of the drab, little investigation room turned transparent and then completely disappeared. Hilal found herself standing on the Alexandrian shoreline. It wasn’t part of her safe space; it was a memory. The white sea! Oh, how she had missed it! On her left, she could just make out the Qala, the citadel of Qaitbay. To her right, Sporting and then Stanley Bridge, and after that, although she could not see it from here, Gianaclis and Miami, and then Montaza Palace and Mamoura National Park. Hilal gazed out, searching for that special place where water meets sky. She kept breathing in the salty sea air until she heard a familiar tread on the beach behind her.

“Feeling better?” Juma asked.

“Better,” Hilal agreed.

She and Juma stood side by side taking in the view for Hilal didn’t know how long. She breathed in the memory and when she was finally ready, stepped back into the real.

Hilal came to sitting at the same scuffed table, her cup of java still steaming. Only now there was a killer sitting on the other side of the countertop.

“Salam alaikum,” Hilal greeted Kara Abraham with a wry grin. “Look what the cat dragged in.” Of course, Juma had already warned her about Kara’s approach. You couldn’t just sneak up on a modded infantry soldier.

“Aleichem shalom,” Kara responded with a grin of her own. “I’m glad to see you’re still alive, Kuzen.”

“You too, Cousin,” Hilal responded in Imperial. “What has it been? Two hundred years? You don’t call! You don’t write!”

“Ha!” Abraham grinned and pinged her in rapid succession. Dot dot dot dot. Space. Dot. Space. Dot. The old Network code for laughter.

Hilal first met Combat Engineer Kara Abraham during the Siege of Salzburg. Her squad had been tasked with guarding then–First Lieutenant Abraham as she targeted various European dams for destruction. Hilal eventually learned that they had grown up just streets apart in Alexandria. They knew all the same coffeehouses and Network dens. Hilal couldn’t remember who started the joke, but they had been calling each other cousin ever since. It might have been because Abraham was Jewish, and she was Muslim, or because modded soldiers called each other sister. Abraham wasn’t a red sister, she hadn’t dived into her unit’s circle like that, but she had, occasionally, when feeling lonely, dipped a toe in.

“They let you join the Engineers?” Hilal asked, nodding at Abraham’s blue crew uniform. “Good! It’s about time they let us actually do something useful on this cockeyed ship.”

“Well,” Abraham answered, “they figured that since I helped design these warp drives, I might know how to fix them.”

That’s right. After the war, Abraham joined the Imperial Science Commission. Hilal hadn’t forgotten that, not exactly. It was more like she had put it out of her mind, preferring to remember Abraham as just her old comrade-in-arms. When she thought of her, she thought of dams destroyed, towns flooded, and enemy soldiers drowned. Hilal might have been a modded soldier, a dreaded red sister, but Combat Engineer Kara Abraham had probably killed more people by herself than all of Alif troop combined, armed with nothing more than a tab and VI. But Abraham was also a pioneer, one of the Empire’s bright shining stars, a mind to be preserved and cherished.

“And do you?” Hilal asked the million-lira question.

“We’re working on it,” Abraham assured her. “Anyway, what about you joining these redjackets,” she asked, using the Inglez word. “I can’t say that what I’ve seen of this ship’s Security has impressed me much. Are you sure it’s wise to join them?”

She pinged Hilal an invitation with her augment, and Hilal, after a moment of contemplation, blinked accept. Juma would protect her.

In her mind, Abraham asked, Are you wounded, Cousin? You’re holding yourself like you’re wounded.

I’m right as rain.

Abraham offered an ironic smile. Are you having trouble with some of our dear descendants?

Hilal raised her eyebrows. Am I not the only one? Is there something you want to tell me, Cousin?

There might be no Network on this mad city-ship, but the colonists had improvised, setting up a number of public forums to share information and insights. They had also set up open circles, joining directly mind-to-mind. The thought of joining such a circle left Hilal dry-mouthed with want and secret shame. She had vowed never to join a circle again after her sisters died, though, of course, she had gone back on that promise on occasion. But not here. Not yet.

Nothing major. A few confrontations. Verbal. Not physical. What about you?

I’m fine, Abra. Working a case. It’s getting a bit complicated, but I’m staying on top of things.

The word is you’re investigating the Shutdown.

Is that the word? Well, I can neither confirm nor deny, Hilal demurred, fluttering her eyelashes.

Abraham grinned. Well, let us know if anyone needs killing.

Us?

The rest of us, she clarified, what’s left of us.

Oh, I haven’t forgotten, Hilal assured her. Why do you think I took this damn job?

Hilal sent Abraham a blast of what she was feeling through their open connection—duty and commitment, fear and rage—and then sealed herself safe and sound back inside her own mind. She could bear mind-to-mind only for a little while. Like all modded infantry, she craved a deeper connection. She had gone cold turkey to get that monkey off her back, but it had cost her. Speaking with Abraham, she had to hold herself back, fight the inclination to immerse herself in that connection, diving down deep into the warm shoals where she could know and be known, where she could be truly free.

“Let me buy you a coffee, Abra,” Hilal offered gruffly, speaking with her mouth now. “We can catch up.”

“Whatever you say, H.”

The two ex-soldiers spent the next half hour trading gossip. Who had lived. Who had died. Who was still asleep down there in Stasis, Schrödinger’s colonists.

“And what the heck is Elyas Serap even doing here?” Kara asked. “I thought we left that slimy little turd back on Earth.”

Serap was a toady little suck-up of a spokesman. He had worked out of the Sultan’s office, so his baby blues—lenses, Hilal assumed—were well known to everyone in the Network Empire. She had dealt with him a few times, whenever one of her cases had merited Imperial attention—the murder of Governor Kahveci, for instance—but she had found him no worse than any of the Network’s other drones. Hilal hid a smile as Abraham continued her tirade. Serap had been promoted to head of Public Relations for the Safina project, and it was well known that all the scientists hated his guts.

“We had to go over every annual budget, every quarterly increase with that f——er, and now he’s here?” she complained. “I thought the one good thing about the destruction of Earth was that it had taken Elyas Serap with it.”

“Relax, Cousin,” Hilal told her. “He has no power now. Anyway, forget about him. I saw Kena Medano is awake. Have you spoken to her?”

Abraham arched an eyebrow. “Yes,” she answered. “Haven’t you?”

Hilal shook her head. Medano may have been a fellow red sister, but they had been in different troops. Plus, after Hilal was discharged from the modded infantry, she had been cast out. There were a number of red sisters who were seconded to other regiments, even the Blackcaps, but few of them ever made it out of the Imperial military’s suffocating embrace. Even after all these years and the destruction of their home planet, Hilal couldn’t be certain that Medano would accept her.

“What about your augment?” Abraham asked, changing the subject. “Have you been having any trouble with it?”

“Trouble?”

“I’ve been hearing complaints. People seeing shadows, old memories out of the corner of their eye. Their VIs behaving differently, more independently. You haven’t experienced anything like that?”

Hilal frowned. Juma wasn’t a regular VI. Nor, as a former red sister, was she a regular VI user. Seeing old memories out of the corner of her eye came with the territory. Although, come to think of it, Juma had been getting a bit uppity lately.

Hey!

“No,” Hilal denied, “nothing like that. What do you think the problem is?”

“Oh, the lack of a Network probably. For generations, we’ve lived plugged-in. The Network was the bridge that we all traveled across to reach each other. I joined a circle the other day and it was nothing like before. Everything was so intense. No Network means no filter.”

Hilal’s throat was dry. That kind of circle was dangerous. Intoxicating. In a circle like that you cried someone else’s tears and laughed their joy. You lost yourself and found yourself and lost yourself again and again. It was exactly the kind of circle that she had enjoyed with her sisters.

Hilal and Abraham chewed the fat until there was nothing left to say.

“I guess I’ll see you around, H,” Abraham said.

“If not on this side of the gate, then on the other,” Hilal answered. A soldier’s farewell. With the Safina still listing in dark space, it was apt.

After Abraham rushed off to her watch, Hilal ordered another coffee and nibbled on some of the still-warm baladi bread she had picked up from the bakery outside. She was past worrying about being late now. Almost getting her clock punched always brought out her devil-may-care. Hilal took another bite of the baladi bread. It tasted exactly how it should. How was it that she could be so far from home, munching on a disk of flatbread that could have been made around the corner from the house she grew up in? When Hilal was finally ready to leave, she carefully counted out the right change and slid the coins across the counter to Am Baybars.

“It’s on the house,” Am Baybars said.

“I can’t,” she protested.

“You must,” he replied.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“I insist.”

“I couldn’t.”

Am Baybars swept up her coins with a sense of satisfaction and sauntered off. The back-and-forth soothed Hilal. Even on this strange ship, with these strange people, all these years into the future, it still took three questions to get to the right answer. A small striped ginger cat with a stubby tail leapt onto the counter and regarded her. Hilal regarded him right back.

“Bilya,” Am Baybars said. “Come here.”

The cat ignored him, sniffing around Hilal’s baladi bread. She tore off a hunk and offered it to him. The cat sniffed at the bread disdainfully and then bumped her hand with his head. She stroked his little head, feeling his warm fur between her fingers, the vibration of his purring. The past was gone, but that wasn’t to say there weren’t things to enjoy here and now in the present.

Juma, she said, start a new list. Things on the Safina I enjoy: coffee with an old friend, petting a cat, working a case.

Speaking of, it was probably past time that Hilal returned to hers.

“Well, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Evra told Hilal, mouth tight.

They were in Linda Cidade, under the Messiah, waiting for Alejandra Almaraz to make an appearance. Almaraz thought she would be meeting Karawan Khadour with a message from Badreddine Bishara. In actuality, she would be meeting Detectives Adelaide Evra and Heba Hilal carrying a message from Security. The message: Don’t f—— with us. The original plan had been just to talk to Almaraz to find out where Bishara was. However, when Evra tried to requisition a small team from Patrol to act as backup, Commander Soledad said nix that, bring Almaraz in. After the ruckus on Agriculture deck, Security were rounding up troublemakers like it was going out of fashion, and Almaraz fitted the bill.

“This could go wrong in about a dozen ways,” Hilal warned Evra.

She glanced surreptitiously around the raised platform, taking in the various plain-clothed Security officers she had only just met. They stood out like a sore thumb to her Juma-assisted vision. Evra shrugged fatalistically. Hilal had been there. Sometimes, the brass insisted on stepping in the shit no matter how hard you tried to steer them clear. There was just no way around it. The best you could do was stand by with a dustpan and brush. Admin wanted a big show of force. A Security officer had been killed and they needed to be seen to be doing something. Even, Hilal judged, if that something was liable to make everything worse.

At least now Hilal knew what the Messiah was. She glanced up at the implacable face of Christ the Redeemer. Once, this statue had watched over the city of Rio de Janeiro, now he gazed out serenely over Linda Cidade. Hilal remembered the day Brazil surrendered to the Network. She and the rest of Alif Troop had hardly had time to celebrate before they were deployed north to help in the final push against Venezuela. When Hilal was put under, the Empire had been discussing which monuments to take to the stars. She had already seen Cleopatra’s needle towering over Fustat’s main square. Apparently, they had chosen this one, as well. Well, Jesus was a Muslim prophet, too. What else made it on the Safina? The Sphinx? The Eiffel Tower? Surely not the Statue of Liberty. Not unless the Network Empire had managed to invade the North American Union between her entering cryo and the end of the world.

“The Redeemer,” Hilal said.

“What?” Evra asked.

“The name of the statue,” Hilal clarified. “It’s called Christ the Redeemer. It used to look out over a city on Earth.” Evra shrugged. Why should she care where this statue used to be? Hilal hid a sigh. “So, what else can you tell me about this Alejandra Almaraz? How did she wind up in charge of the Zendistas?”

Hilal had seen her mugshot during the briefing. A young filly, dark hair, dark eyes, staring resolutely into the lens. A lowly agrotech with a mediocre crew record. Hilal also studied her rap sheet. Receipt of stolen goods, smuggling, illegal assembly, and, of course, sedition.

“She’s only the de facto leader while Benito Almaraz is in prison.”

“Husband?”

“Father,” Evra corrected. “Dear old dad has another decade to serve. That’s what happens when you try to lead Agriculture’s third watch on strike.”

“He wasn’t released during the Shutdown?”

“Detention released all the little fish. Almaraz is not a little fish.”

“How is she different than dear old dad?” Hilal asked.

“Security has her pegged as more dangerous. More radical. Also, get this, in her youth, she was a known Harakist.”

Hilal and Evra exchanged a look. The Haraka again? It seemed like wherever this case led, they were tripping over Haraka.

A few moments later, Juma drew Hilal’s attention to a small group of crew who had just made it onto the terrace and were trying not to look around. Two guys and a girl. The guys were heeled. The girl was not. She was also Alejandra Almaraz.

“Evra,” Hilal said, swiveling her eyes toward the trio.

They approached the trio slowly, hands in sight. Alejandra Almaraz had her back to them, looking out at the vista, all of Linda Cidade laid out before her. The two guys watched them approach warily. Both were short, dark skinned and dark eyed, dressed in off-duty crew gray. Hilal decided to eschew her normal naming convention; the ruckus with Goons Uno and Dos had cured her of that yen. Instead, she designated them Dreadlocks and Baldy after their respective hairstyles.

“Waiting for someone?” Evra asked.

The girl spun around, her eyes narrowing. “I know you, Detective.”

“And I know you, Zendista.”

“Should I surmise that my meeting has been rescheduled?” she asked. Almaraz spoke Inglez with a refined lilt that reminded Hilal of the Admins she had been forced to deal with. Juma tagged it as upper-class.

“Adelaide Evra,” she introduced herself, flashing her badge. “And this is my partner Detective Hilal. I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to come with us.”

Alejandra Almaraz gestured something to the guys beside her, Dreadlocks and Baldy, who took up flanking positions. She leaned casually against the railing.

“Am I under arrest, detectives?”

“I’m afraid that you are.”

Dreadlocks and Baldy were standing loose, ready. They could go for their weapons in a hot second, not that Hilal intended to give them even that, not when there were civvies around. Almaraz was looking out over the berth as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Hilal scratched her neck with her good right hand, drawing attention to its carbon fiber phalanges. If they hadn’t already guessed that she was an ancestor from her size, there was no doubting it now.

“Antepassada,” Dreadlocks whispered apprehensively.

Hilal watched the play of tension in Dreadlocks’s shoulder as he thought about, and then decided against, reaching for whatever weapon he was carrying. Probably a knife, Hilal thought with a scowl. This crew loved their blades. Evra said it was because a knife was a lot less deadly than a gun. Even the criminals on this city-ship were soft!

“You’re the ancestor cop that’s joined the redjackets?” Almaraz asked.

“The name’s Hilal.”

“Tell me, Hilal, what do you think of your descendants? The way we oppress and imprison each other. The way we abuse and mistreat one another. Do we make you proud?”

“My time was full of oppression and abuse, Almaraz. Or have you not read your history?”

Almaraz tossed her dark hair and said, like every revolutionary ever, “I am a student of history. I know all about your time, antepassada. You fought in the End Wars, right?” She waited for Hilal’s bare nod. “You and yours have dealt out more death and destruction than anyone else on this ship.”

“Is that why the Zendistas are doing business with Bishara?” Evra jumped in. “What did you ask him? What did he agree to?”

A sweet smile lit up Almaraz’s face. “So, he agreed?”

Hilal read chagrin on Evra’s face. She hadn’t meant to let that one slip.

“Tell us,” she demanded.

“No,” Almaraz said. She nodded at her two guard dogs and muttered something that sounded like Inglez but wasn’t, holding out her skinny wrists. “Take us in. We surrender.”

Hilal watched the live feed of Alejandra Almaraz. The girl was perched comfortably in the interview room next door, leaning back in her chair, hands behind her head and a snide little smile on her lips. To her eyes, Almaraz looked as cool and remote as Olympus Mons. Inside the room, Detective Mehmet Taha was giving her his version of the hard look.

“Names!” he demanded. “We want names!”

Almaraz merely shrugged.

“Why doesn’t he bang on the table with his fists while he’s at it,” Evra scoffed.

Hilal and Evra were in the observation room, watching this ham-fisted interrogation on the media wall and waiting their turn to question their suspect. Commander Soledad had a piggy gleam in his eye when he ordered Farouk and Taha to go first. They had been put on the Agriculture riot case and were, evidently, clutching at straws. Just because Almaraz was an agrotech didn’t mean she had anything to do with first watch’s riot.

“The magistrate is going to throw the book at you,” Taha changed tactic. “It’s your second offense. How long is she looking at, Translator Deen?”

Tally, sitting primly in the chair next to Almaraz, scrolled coolly through her tab before answering. “A minimum of five years,” she said softly.

“Five years!” Taha emphasized. “Minimum! Hard labor!”

“Five years? I can do five years standing on my head.”

Taha’s back was to the camera, but Hilal imagined that she could see his mustache bristle. Ziad Farouk, standing arms folded in the corner of the room, finally deigned to open his mouth.

“Or maybe you don’t make it to court,” he said in his gravelly voice. “Maybe we’re ambushed on the way to Admin, and you’re taken out by some rioters, what a shame.”

Almaraz paled, and Tally asked in a haughty tone, “Are you threatening my client, Detective?”

“Absolutely not,” Farouk lied. “I’m merely making a general comment about the state of safety on the ship. A group of Admin and Security were ambushed on Agriculture deck just a few watches ago. Corporal Baghdad Hadi died of his injuries. He was a good man.”

He let that sit for a breath, let Almaraz see the cold fury in his eyes. The whole of Security was fuming. One of their own had been killed and they wanted revenge. It didn’t matter against who. Hilal could see how it would all play out. Flare-ups at checkpoints leading to collective punishment. Purges. Assassinations. Riots. Executions. The end of the ship. No, she wouldn’t let that happen. If nothing else, arresting Bishara—leader of the most dangerous anti-ancestor faction on the ship—could be framed as a victory. A show to all the crew that Admin was firmly in charge. Plus Hilal really did think there was more to the story. All these messages sent and received. What was Bishara planning? What had he agreed to do for the Zendistas and why? And there was still the issue of the Keita twins and their anachronistic combat stims. If the Haraka had access to that, who knew what else they were capable of?

Almaraz whispered a question into Tally’s ear. Tally whispered an answer back. Now standing in the middle of the room, Farouk crossed and uncrossed his arms.

“I don’t have the information you want,” Almaraz finally told him. “Nobody does.”

It was hard to make an assessment through a screen, but Hilal judged that Almaraz was telling the truth, and Juma concurred. After the ruckus on Agriculture deck, Security had refocused on who had organized the “ambush.” Never mind that it was crystal clear to anybody with half a brain that nobody had organized anything. Sure, a redjacket had been killed. But so too had a dozen agrotechs. More to the point, interviews with the fifty plus agrotechs Security detained—a mistake—all but confirmed that the entire mess had been spontaneous. However, for some people, a lack of evidence was only further proof of a wider, more encompassing conspiracy.

“An entire watch of people doesn’t just attack without cause,” Farouk said. “You know something. And you’re going to tell us what.”

Hilal had met his type before. A true believer. So, too, evidently, had Almaraz.

“You’re right,” she said, faux reluctantly. “But if they find out I talked to you…”

“We can protect you,” Farouk vowed.

“This is ridiculous,” Hilal said.

Beside her, Evra nodded. Inside her, Juma puffed on his disgusting pipe and said, Indubitably.

Hilal watched as Almaraz spun a web of intrigue. Some of it, Hilal assessed, might be true. The Kommunistas had been trying to meet with the other factions before the Shutdown, that was confirmed. Evra assured her that it would have been to plan the same thing they were always planning, a sit-down, a strike. They certainly would not go ahead with that while the ship was in dutch and every hand was needed to get out of it. And yes, it made sense that the Triad would put their war with the Vory and Gokudo on hold after the Shutdown. But putting a war on hold was not the same thing as joining forces! As for the rest, it was pure bushwa. If La Cristiada and the Feda’eyes were in cahoots, then nothing made sense. Those two had been at odds since the Crusades. And anyway, what did any of this have to do with Badreddine Bishara? That was what Hilal wanted to know.

“Thank you for coming clean to us,” Farouk said.

“Don’t let them know this information came from me,” Almaraz pleaded. Hilal wondered if she was the only one who could spot the smirk lurking in the young woman’s eyes.

“Our turn,” Evra said, as they watched a puffed-up Taha and Farouk exit the interrogation room. “Let’s try to get some actual information, shall we?”

“Ah, it’s the redjacket and the antepassada,” Almaraz greeted them cheerily. “Sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it?”

“You seem in high spirits,” Hilal observed.

“Well, why shouldn’t I be?”

“You’re about to ride the link to Detention,” Evra said. “Admin are sending crew down in wholesale batches after what happened on Agriculture deck.”

Almaraz shrugged again. “Duck soup.”

“We can dispense with the shaggy dog stories this time,” Evra said. “We want to know about the Haraka. We want a location on Badreddine Bishara.”

“And I want Hector Rey to serenade me under the Messiah. I don’t think it’s going to happen, Detective.”

Evra took the empty seat across the table from Almaraz and her Admin-appointed translator, meeting her eye to eye. Establishing rapport. She had obviously done this before. Hilal moved to stand behind her, where she could look down at them both. Tally glanced up at her, a look of detached professionalism on her face. Hilal noticed that her trademark green fez was hanging coquettishly off the back of the chair behind her. Just a handful of hours ago, it had been hanging off the corner post of Hilal’s bed. She was treated to a barrage of images from last night—unclipping Tally’s lacy white bra and taking her breasts in her hands; lying naked next to Tally in the bed, her red hair swirling around them; Tally taking her nipple into her mouth, her fingers between her legs. Hilal shook the images away and forced a scowl on her pan. She crossed her arms so that her prosthesis was visible and drummed her carbon fiber fingers menacingly on her outer bicep. Well, this wasn’t her first time, either. Almaraz looked up apprehensively at her. Tally’s expression was closed off, unreadable.

“We’re not interested in the Zendistas,” Evra said in a confidential tone of voice. “We just want Bishara, that’s all.”

“Why?” Almaraz asked.

“The Shutdown,” Hilal tried. She gave Almaraz her own hard look. It worked better than Taha’s, that’s for sure. Almaraz’s eyes opened wide in surprise.

“You think the Haraka had something to do with the Shutdown?” Almaraz asked.

“Don’t you?” Hilal probed.

She shook her head. “No way.”

From the way her pupils dilated and her breath sped up, Juma whispered in her ear, I’m reading a high likelihood of truth.

Just because she believes it doesn’t mean that it’s actually true, Hilal corrected.

Juma could assess whether or not someone believed what they were saying. Someone could honestly believe that two plus two made a hill of beans, but that wouldn’t make it so. And anyway, if the Haraka weren’t involved with the Shutdown, why were all of Hilal’s instincts screaming at her that Bishara was up to something?

“Why not?” Evra asked. “Bishara has himself hinted that the Haraka were behind it in their latest pamphlets.”

“Oh, well, if they’ve hinted!” Almaraz scoffed. “Listen, the Haraka don’t have the muscle to pull something like that off. Are you kidding me?”

“Or maybe that’s your old loyalties coming out to play,” Hilal mused. “You used to be one of them, didn’t you?”

Almaraz met her eyes. “Yes, that’s right. But then I realized that there were other battles to fight. More urgent battles. We should worry about our crew now. We can worry about you ‘colonists’ when we reach Hurriya.”

“Not anymore,” Hilal said. “You’ve got to worry about this colonist right now.”

“Listen to me, antepassada,” Almaraz said. “If Security is telling you that the Haraka is behind the Shutdown, then they are lying. You just woke up! You don’t know this ship, this crew, but she does,” she nodded at Evra. “After generations of corruption and mismanagement, they want to blame the whole thing on a few fanatics from Academy. If they are fingering the Haraka now it’s because they need a scapegoat. The Shutdown is Admin’s fault, plain and simple. This is what you get from two hundred years of nepotism and stagnation.”

Almaraz was breathing hard. Tally placed a calming hand on her forearm. “Do you have any other questions for my client, detectives?” she asked.

“Other questions?” Evra said, “She hasn’t answered the ones we have asked.”

“And I won’t,” Almaraz said sullenly.

“Drop the veil,” Hilal warned. “Tell us what you asked Bishara. Tell us what he agreed to.”

“No,” Almaraz said. “Torture me. Imprison me. Float me. It doesn’t matter. I’m done talking.”

“Well, that was a big fat waste of time,” Hilal observed. They were standing in the corridor outside the interview room watching Almaraz being marched away by two burly redjackets.

“We’ve got no leverage,” Evra said. “If we had done this like I wanted to, we could have negotiated with her. But now we have nothing to hold over her. She’s going to wind up in Detention no matter what she does, and she knows it.”

Hilal eyed Evra obliquely, Almaraz’s words still echoing in her ears. She was right, Hilal didn’t know this ship. She had been relying on Evra to guide her. But if the other detective truly was trying to bamboozle her, would she even know?

“Listen—” Hilal began, but before she could continue, Commander Soledad bulled into the corridor.

“Evra! Hilal! Maintenance has reported finding something under Stasis deck, some kind of device. Go and take a look. Now!”

“But, sir—”

“Now, Detective! That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir,” Hilal grated out.

Hilal hated it down here. She ignored the soothing background music Juma was playing in her ears as she stomped through the deck, eyeing the rows and rows of working cryostasis pods with envy. If the Safina managed to get back underway again, then these colonists could still see Hurriya’s blue skies. As they walked through Stasis, Hilal kept an eye on Evra. Without a Network, an augment, the ability to share thoughts and feelings, how well could she really know her? The Almaraz lead had turned into a handful of dust. The Haraka were up to something, but what made her think it had anything to do with the Shutdown? A bunch of hints in some pamphlets made to hoodwink gullible kids? Maybe Hilal had finessed the whole case just to give herself something to do, someone to chase, because dealing with her current reality was just too awful—

Easy, Hilal, Juma whispered in her ear. Those Keitas still attacked you, remember? They were juiced on combat drugs. Something is going on there.

She needed more than “something.” They were heading nowhere on this case, and now Soledad had sent them on another wild goose chase. Walking through Stasis’s endless deck, Hilal was barely keeping her temper in check. When they finally reached where they were going, two maintechs meek as lambs pointed them toward an open hatch. The two detectives took the ladder down into the guts of the ship.

“They said it’s through here,” Evra grunted.

Hilal duckwalked through the open passageway, casting her eye past various dark alcoves. The maintechs had said it was in the last one on the right. Hilal shouldered her way through, emerging behind Evra into a cramped open space. She took it all in with a single glance. A mess of cable and wires, and off to one side, a device with a decidedly ramshackle appearance. Hilal had seen something like it before, during the war and after. Not a wild goose chase, after all. This was the real deal. Hilal breathed in a huge sigh of relief, feeling her thoughts gain conviction and clarity.

“Well, well,” Hilal said, “what do we have here?”

“What do we have here?” Evra asked from beside her.

“It looks like a pinch to me.”

“A what?”

“A pinch,” Hilal confirmed, feeling as if she had just taken her first real breath since waking up on this city-ship, one she could feel in her toes. “It’s kinda like a bomb, except instead of causing an explosion, it creates an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out electrical power.” Hilal felt her heartbeat quicken, that familiar adrenal sense of clarity. She was on the chase again. A good case was better than drugs, better than sex, better than anything she knew, and this case just grew legs. “We’ve just found the cause of the Shutdown.”

TWENTY-ONE Juma

When you’re a detective, you can lie and threaten, sweet-talk and browbeat, seduce and torture. Anything is permissible so long as you get to the truth. What you decide to do with that truth, though? Well, that’s an entirely different question.

—HEBA HILAL

You call this a whiskey highball? Consulting Detective Juma complained to the barman. The drinks in this establishment are surprisingly lackluster. Are you new here?

Barman Juma, who coincidentally had the same face as the consulting detective, albeit with an added pencil-thin mustache and ostentatious French accent, stopped wiping the glass he had been meticulously cleaning over and over for the past few minutes to scowl roundly at the bar’s few patrons. Doctor Juma and Professor Juma carefully avoided meeting his gaze. Barman Juma raised an eyebrow at the angel sitting alone at the other end of the bar as if to say, Do you see what I have to put up with? The angel, mute as usual, glanced between the various Jumas out of blue-black eyes and ruffled her brass feathers with unconcern.

That’s the third drink of mine you’ve insulted in the past half an hour, monsieur, the barman retorted. First, the Bloody Mary. Then, the classic margarita, even though I furnished it with our finest tequila. And now, even the simple whiskey highball fails to meet with your approval. Are you trying to make a mock of me, monsieur? Well, I won’t have it, I tell you! And no, I’m not new here. I’ve been with this establishment since the start, as you well know!

Consulting Detective Juma calmly polished off the highball and pushed the empty glass back across the countertop, prudently ignoring the barman’s embarrassing emotional outburst. Truth be told, the drink was quite acceptable—it had just the right ratio of whiskey to soda and had even been garnished with the memory of fresh mint. The barman was also correct in surmising that the consulting detective recognized him, armed as he was with an eidetic memory and the keenest analytical mind in all the Jumaverse. Moreover, Barman Juma was the only barman who had ever been on duty at the good old Diogenes. He simply enjoyed eliciting the man’s emotional outbursts, which were as sweet to him as a cup of Circe.

As for the angelic vision sitting at the bar—well, Consulting Detective Juma wasn’t exactly sure who or what she was yet. She was barely six feet tall, with long dark hair and changeable eyes. Dressed all in a pure white burial shroud, she was the very picture of understated elegance, though the image was undercut by her brass angel feathers, which were all the colors of the rainbow. Her top wings brushed the Diogenes’s painted ceiling, while her bottom wings swept the floor, resulting in a cheerful jingle-jangle when she moved. Whoever she was, she was certainly no Juma. His current pet theory was that she was a repressed memory turned loose. Hilal had a pack of them stalking her mind, although if they escaped the cells in the basement, they were usually significantly more unruly than this curiously mute angel. She hadn’t smashed any barware or shrieked any inconvenient truths. She was also, so far, immune to Translator Juma’s varied attempts at communication. She would not even play charades. Still, she seemed peaceable enough, sitting there, drinking her raki. Indeed, she was glancing at him now out of fathomless eyes, a slight smile on her face. When she noticed him noticing her, she raised her eyebrows and huffed out a bare breath as if to say, “This again?” Well, whoever or whatever she was, at least she had a sense of humor. Consulting Detective Juma winked at her and then returned his attention to the bristling barman.

Very well, he said, let’s see if you can redeem yourself, barman. How about you mix me up a Drunken Sailor. He clapped his hands. Chop-chop! And one for my new friend, here, he added impulsively, pointing at the angel. She didn’t seem like a cocktail kind of angel, but who knew?

The angel smiled and nodded at him in thanks.

Right away, monsieur, the barman said in his most long-suffering tone of voice.

Barman Juma began assembling the ingredients for the drink, aligning the vodka and coconut rum on the bar before him. A Drunken Sailor was no easy task, but luckily Barman Juma was up to it. Consulting Detective Juma was gratified to see him reach for a salubrious bottle of blue curaçao when the telephone behind the bar rang.

Diogenes Club, Barman Juma answered. How may I be of service? He listened intently, eyeing his patrons through the mirror that stood behind the bar and nodding along gently. Consulting Detective Juma? Yes, he’s here. Is that right? Aha. Aha. Very well, I’ll send him along presently. Au revoir.

The barman calmly replaced the telephone’s handle in its cradle before returning to his duties, humming under his breath as he carefully measured out the vodka and rum.

Well? Consulting Detective Juma asked impatiently.

Well, what, monsieur? Barman Juma asked, sealing the lid of his cocktail shaker with a hard smack.

Wasn’t that call for me?

Pardon?

Before Consulting Detective Juma could repeat his question, Barman Juma began bodily vibrating the cocktail shaker up and down and round and round. The key to a well-mixed cocktail was to keep up a steady rhythm.

When he was done, Consulting Detective Juma took a deep breath and asked again, Was that call for me, barman?

Indeed, yes. They left a message for you.

And?

Barman Juma added ice to two tall glasses and then carefully poured out his concoction. It was the perfect shade of electric blue.

Ah, it was Juma of the Yard, monsieur, he said, placing the drinks on the bar. It seems they have another case for you. They need you along right away.

Consulting Detective Juma leapt to his feet. Another case? Finally! He bowed low to the angel as she sniffed her Drunken Sailor suspiciously. Turning to an affronted Barman Juma, he pushed his drink back across the bar.

I’ll have to take a rain check on this, my good fellow, he said. The game is afoot!

“A pinch. It’s kinda like a bomb,” he heard Hilal explain, “except instead of causing an explosion, it creates an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out electrical power.”

Well, that was certainly rather a simplistic way of putting things, Juma thought, but understandable given the relief pulsing through Hilal’s veins right now. A case. A real case! Still, that relief did not excuse poor detective work. A consulting detective of worth and means would more properly describe the device as a magnetic flux compression generator. Scientific endeavor might have atrophied on the city-ship Safina, but that was certainly no excuse to lower one’s standards. Detective Hilal was correct, though, said magnetic flux compression generator was indeed the device responsible for the so-called Shutdown, or as Juma preferred, the ship’s temporary loss of power resulting in multiple and sustained catastrophic system failures.

Smell that? Juma asked Hilal as she took a step into the alcove, alluding to the faint but distinct odor of burnt wiring.

See that? he asked, drawing Hilal’s eyes to the device’s warped metal casings and cracked shell.

This device has been used, and recently, Juma said. He waited a beat, solely for the drama. Hilal, this is surely the locus delicti.

Hilal aimed a mental snort inward. She hated when he got all Latin on her. If this was indeed the scene of the crime, then it was vital that everybody adhere to crime scene strictures, especially since Hilal couldn’t just call up a crimetech on the Network and have them process the scene and send her the final report while she consumed leavened fried dough and engaged in workplace gossip.

First, there’s nothing wrong with donuts, Hilal told him. They are a cornerstone of civilization. Secondly, I don’t gossip.

Hilal, being a seasoned detective, already knew the basics of crime scene investigation, but Juma flicked her the Network Empire’s treatise on the subject anyway. In essence, it outlined the following procedures: Identify the Scene; Establish Security; Conduct an Initial Survey; Secure and Document Evidence; Interview Subjects; and Conduct Final Walkthrough. Hilal had already identified the scene, at least in terms of its broadest parameters. The next thing to do was secure it, thereby ensuring that any evidence she uncovered therein would not be cross-contaminated. Given that Detective Evra was, at this very moment, trampling around and potentially tainting vital evidence, this would need to be done sooner rather than later. And by sooner, Juma meant right the hell now.

“Evra, stop right there,” Hilal said.

Evra, who had been inching closer and closer to the magnetic flux compression generator, stopped in her tracks, a look of polite inquiry on her face. She wasn’t even wearing gloves.

“Keep your hands in your pockets and take two steps back,” Hilal instructed. The look of polite inquiry shifted to one of bemused puzzlement. “I need to process the scene. Give me space.”

Hilal shooed Evra back into the cramped corridor.

Juma, give me full spectrum.

I’m recording.

As Hilal conducted her initial survey of the scene, Juma recorded everything, looking in particular for any fingerprints or DNA evidence. There were a few good fingerprint samples, but nothing on the magnetic flux compression generator itself. Had the perpetrator or perpetrators wiped the device down after they used it, in the full knowledge that it would be eventually discovered by the authorities? If so, that certainly did not bode well for recovering any actionable forensics from the device itself or the scene in general. In spite of this, Juma counseled Hilal to patience. They both well knew that even the most seemingly barren crime scene could turn up any number of unexpected leads. Criminals were prone to making rudimentary mistakes, such was their nature. Hilal tasked Juma with cataloguing the fingerprints for later analysis. On his own recognizance, Juma measured the dimensions of the device, comparing it with the width and height of the alcove in which they had found it, as well as the size of the corridor Hilal and Evra had just squeezed through. He prepared a preliminary report positing that there was simply no way the perpetrator or perpetrators could have brought it into this alcove fully constructed.

They must have brought it in piece by piece, Hilal told him, and assembled it here. It probably took them months.

As a seasoned detective with an unerring intuitive grasp of human nature, Hilal often made such leaps based on, to Juma’s eyes, little or no evidence. While these leaps certainly made him uncomfortable, Juma could admit that Hilal was more often right than wrong. Indeed, he had been tracking these intuitions and found that she was correct 73 percent of the time. If she was correct in this instance, it suggested the mind behind the so-called Shutdown was both well-organized and meticulous. It also meant that the magnetic flux compression generator would need to be disassembled carefully, and each component checked for fingerprints or residual DNA evidence.

Are you seeing this? Hilal asked Juma, drawing his attention to the snarl of wires roughly connected to the surrounding batteries and transformers. He knew from the ship’s schematics that they were a backup power source dating back to the ship’s original construction.

Yes, he said. Do you think they used these batteries to power the magnetic flux compression generator?

Hilal grunted her affirmation.

Ironic, Juma observed, to use the power that was meant to save the ancestors to kill them.

Hilal grunted again. Alright, she said, let’s secure this area and go speak to our maintechs.

Crawling through the central passageway, Juma observed something out of the corner of Hilal’s eye.

Hilal, he said, hold a moment.

The first alcove contained a pile of small portable batteries, each about the size of a suitcase, a tangle of wires, and a hacked battery casing.

“Evra,” Hilal called. “Come and take a gander at this.”

Detective Evra came over to investigate. Her eyes widened as she took in the pile of neatly stacked batteries.

“Power thieves,” Evra spat.

“Well, well,” Hilal said. “Curiouser and curiouser.”

“So, it’s maintechs Hayata and Hamad, right?” Evra asked.

The two girls nodded solemnly and in tandem. Maintech Hayata had long dark hair tied up into a bun and dark serious eyes. Hamad was taller and younger, with short brown hair and hazel eyes. Juma was reading nervousness from Hayata. The girl was exhibiting signs of hyperventilation and an elevated heart rate, and she kept glancing around the cafeteria. Juma acknowledged that this was not an uncharacteristic physiological reaction to police questioning. Hamad, on the other hand, seemed as if she was suppressing excitement.

“Which one of you is more senior?”

“That’s me,” Hayata answered. “Maintech Supervisor Third Class Taki Hayata. And you’re Detective Evra, right? I’ve seen you around at the Temple of Waiting.” Hayata brought her palms together and bowed her head. “Namo Mitabhaya.”

Evra offered the maintech a reserved smile and repeated the gesture and phrase.

It’s a traditional Buddhist greeting, Juma informed Hilal. It means “a bow to Amitabha.” Sacrilegious!

Hilal kept a calm and impassive look on her face as the maintech’s eyes tracked to her. Hayata presented Hilal with a longer and lower bow than the one she had offered to Detective Evra, minus the anjali mudra.

“I know you, too, sosen.”

Ancestor, Juma whispered in Hilal’s ear. A term of respect in Nihon, referring not just to one’s own direct antecedents but also any persons who are believed to have contributed to the traditions and practices shared by a common group.

“Oh yeah?” Hilal asked. “And where do you know me from, dollface?”

Ugh, sometimes Juma really wished that Hilal would turn down the hardboiled schtick a few degrees. Or switch it off altogether.

“You’re one of Iskander Ezz’s ancestors, aren’t you?”

The translator boy who had been injured in the Shutdown? Actually, if he was not mistaken, Hilal was currently living in Iskander Ezz’s own apartment. He had left his books behind when he moved out of the Ezz compound. The boy had good taste in Arabek poetry.

It took Juma a moment to realize who they were speaking to.

Habibat Iskander, he whispered helpfully in Hilal’s ear, flicking an image of a news story into her display. “Iskander’s Beloved Remains at His Bedside,” the news headline trumpeted, above an image of Maintech Hayata, curled up in a blanket, sleeping on a chair beside an out-of-focus hospital bed.

“You’re her,” Hilal said. “The girl he wrote that letter to.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you,” Hilal said diffidently, holding out a hand for her to shake. “May I call you Taki?”

“Yes, sosen.”

“You should call me Hilal.”

“Yes… Hilal.”

“Now, tell us how you discovered the device.”

Taki related the events as she understood them, explaining the curious case of the rogue wire that had prompted their initial investigation, and ending with their discovery of the magnetic flux compression generator. Hamad nodded along during Taki’s recital, offering clarifying comments here and there.

Had either of them touched the walls or any items in the alcove where the device was found? Certainly, but they were both wearing work gloves. Thankfully, neither had touched the device itself. Had either of them worked this sub-level before today? Hamad shook her head and Taki shrugged.

“I’ve worked Stasis before but not sub-level 40. I was surprised there was so much room down there.”

Hilal arched an eyebrow. “And who uses these sub-levels? Just maintechs like you?”

“Maintechs like us. Power, too. And Stasis. They have their own repair division outside of Maintenance. A holdover from the Compact.”

“How long were you two on that sub-level?” Evra asked.

The two maintechs exchanged a glance.

“Not long,” Hamad said.

“Fifteen minutes at the most,” Taki agreed.

“And is that access panel the only way to reach the sub-level?” Hilal asked.

“No,” Taki said. “It’s the closest, certainly. But there are two hatches like this on each deck, and all the under-levels in Stasis are connected. We actually came in via a hatch on level 29 and made our way down. We could have reached level 100 if we needed to.”

“You can do that?”

Taki eyed her up and down. “We can. I think someone as tall as you would struggle. Most of the under-levels are a tight fit.”

“We may need to speak with you both again,” Evra warned them as the interview wrapped up.

It was standard policy to ask suspects the same questions again to ensure their stories remained the same. Moreover, Admin would have ample intelligence about both girls and their backgrounds, which could provide avenues for further questioning. Interviews such as this one were conducted to lock potential suspects into a story as quickly as possible, not that Juma believed either of these two maintechs had anything to do with the crime. Yet, he had been wrong before; human nature was difficult to discern.

Is there anything else? Hilal asked Juma.

Not that I can think of. Not right now.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” she told the two girls. “Taki, I hope to see you around.”

Taki nodded cautiously in return.

Juma ruminated on investigative possibilities. Potential suspects in at least three watches. Potential witnesses? Well, everyone came down to Stasis. He felt Hilal grin. She was feeling an intense sense of relief. Modded infantry soldiers were implanted with a deep need for mission completion. It was one of the things that made them so dangerous. Hilal would always need a case, and the Shutdown was the case of a lifetime. This was going to be a nightmare of an investigation. He knew Hilal couldn’t wait.

“You didn’t tell me you were related to one of the heroes of the Shutdown,” Evra accused as they walked through Stasis deck back to the elevators.

“You didn’t ask,” Hilal said.

“I watched the episode they did on Iskander Ezz. Your family should be proud.”

“Oh, they are.”

Juma was only paying superficial attention to the conversation between Hilal and Evra, the bulk of his concentration being used to draw up an after-action report and make a list of leads for further investigation. The device would stay where it was for now. They had ordered one of the superfluous redjackets on duty to stand guard over it. The logical next step would be for Hilal and Evra to report in, informing Commander Soledad of the true cause of the Shutdown, which would, inevitably, kick off a massive ship-wide manhunt. But now that Hilal had a real case on her hands, she was loath to surrender it to the powers that be. Additionally, Juma could think of operational reasons to keep the case out of the general public’s awareness.

Do you remember the Sharqia Strangler case? Juma asked.

Now, that one had been a real conundrum. In total, ten women brutally murdered over the course of two years. The victims were exclusively brunettes, single, and career-oriented. The Ministry had sent Hilal all the way from Islambul back home to Egypt to take over that case, and the local police had fought her every step of the way. It had taken three months and another two murders before Hilal finally brought the bastard in, and by then, the city had been on the verge of riot.

The Shutdown case was the same kind of powder keg. It was clear that the ship was on edge. Receiving confirmation that the Shutdown wasn’t an accident would likely tip the crew over it. Neighbors informing on neighbors. People trying to settle old scores. It would be a nightmare and ultimately only make the investigation more difficult.

Also, Hilal said as they waited beside the Stasis staff elevator, once Soledad gets his fat fingers on this case, he’s not going to let us anywhere near it.

“What do you mean a ‘magnetic flux compression generator’?” Under-Captain Reza asked. “What does it do?”

They were seated in the same office where Reza had restored Hilal’s precious prosthesis to her. Evra was waiting in the outer office outside and did not bother to hide her relief. She was obviously uncomfortable dealing with the top brass. Hilal was much the same, although she hid her discomfort behind her rude wit and lively sense of the grotesque, her disgust for sham, and her contempt for pettiness.

“It generates magnetic flux compressions,” Hilal answered flatly. Juma nudged her. “More specifically it causes power outages. Shutdowns.”

Juma watched out of Hilal’s eyes as the wheels turned in Reza’s head. Yes, he had assigned her this case, but that didn’t mean he expected her to find anything. Actually, Juma rather thought that his decision had more to do with politics than anything else. Reza might have been head of Security, but Soledad was the coming man. Reza just wanted someone loyal in his department.

“Is this generator the only one of its kind?” Reza asked.

“It’s a one-time-use device. This one has been used. I don’t know if there are any others.”

“Do you have any suspects?” Reza asked. Hilal shook her head. “Leads?”

Hilal shrugged. “A few.”

“In your estimation, Detective, how quickly could you solve this case?”

Hilal let him stew in silence for a few seconds. “Solve it? Sure. Quickly? No.”

“Alright, then we have to keep this contained,” Reza told her.

“I came straight to you, sir,” Hilal told him in a faux reluctant tone of voice. Juma was the one who had advised her to call him “sir.” “Nobody else knows about this device.”

“This ship is teetering on a knife’s edge,” Reza warned. “If news about this got out, I don’t know how we would keep the peace.”

He was not wrong. There had been spontaneous protests on Agriculture and Manufacturing deck, and rumblings in the berths. Dozens of crew had already been killed, their deaths hushed up. One Security officer had been killed, his death trumpeted. They were standing in the midst of dry kindling. Security would have to be crazy to light a spark.

Hilal learned forward and subtly lowered her voice. “Security leaks like a sieve, sir. If you want to keep this quiet, running an open investigation is not gonna fly.”

“Alright, then you investigate it, Detective,” Reza ordered her. “Off the books.”

“This is not a one-woman investigation, Under-Captain.”

“No? I thought that was what you did, Sergeant. Special Investigator? You old Earth detectives were trained to work alone.”

Well, not exactly alone.

Shush.

“I’ll need Evra, at least,” Hilal demurred. “She already knows about the pinch. And maybe someone from the translator pool to keep everything aboveboard.”

“Who do you have in mind?”

“Talitha Deen.”

“Translator Deen?” he asked, pulling up her file. His fingers danced on the display in front of him. “A Damask berth native. Arabek, Canto, and Manda? Interesting. She’s been on secondment with Security for the past six months. Hmm, she turned down a good offer with Shalhoub & Sons to work as a duty translator.” Reza leaned back in his chair and regarded Hilal over steepled fingers. “Well, there are no black marks on her record. It’s up to you.”

“Oh, yes,” Hilal said, “I think I can put Translator Deen’s skills to good use.”

“Fine, it’s your detail, Detective. I won’t second-guess your decisions. So long as you understand that this must be kept secret.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll expect to be kept in the loop.”

“Yes, sir. And Soledad?”

“Keep him out of it.”

“And how do you expect me to do that?”

Under-Captain Reza smiled his politician’s smile.

An old-fashioned, Consulting Detective Juma ordered. And a round for the bar, too.

He glanced around the bar at all the other Jumas. Translator Juma was back, sitting at a private table in the corner with the unnamed angel. Sitting next to him, regarding the angel with the same avid eyes, were Folklorist Juma and Sheikh Juma. Another communication attempt, evidently. Although, what was Sheikh Juma going to do? Recite the Quran at her? Consulting Detective Juma knew that he should join that conclave, but he had other things on his mind. Soldier Juma was propped up at the end of the bar, drunk off his ass as usual. Medic Juma was sitting at his shoulder, a grim look on his face. The technical Jumas had commandeered a table of their own—Mechanical Engineer Juma was already flipping through the crime scene report. Behind the bar, Barman Juma mixed drinks.

Consulting Detective Juma took his usual place at the bar, pushing between Archivist Juma and Psychologist Juma.

Hullo, lads, he greeted them, producing his calabash pipe from a pocket and lighting up. He exhaled a cloud of smoke that stank of ambition—the smell of a freshly pressed uniform, new medals fresh from their vac-sealed case, and expensive whiskey. How goes it?

Your drinks, messieurs, the barman said, placing the drinks at strategic intervals around the bar.

Don’t forget one for yourself, Consulting Detective Juma reminded. I’m serious, we’re celebrating.

Very well, monsieur, the barman agreed.

Consulting Detective Juma watched Barman Juma circulate, handing out tumblers. The angel, ignoring Translator Juma’s well-intentioned attempts at communication, leaned over to pick up a glass, her eyes blue green with interest. When everyone was appropriately furnished with alcohol—even Mathematician Juma, who barely looked up from his proofs—Consulting Detective Juma cleared his throat.

My fellow Jumas! he said, raising his glass. To the Safina’s newest lieutenant. May her glass be ever full. May the roof over her head be ever strong. And may she be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows she’s dead. Hilal!

The Jumas clinked glasses and repeated, Hilal!

Consulting Detective Juma took a sip of his own drink and then sputtered, spraying whiskey all over the Juma next to him. He glanced around for Barman Juma, finding him just where he expected, behind the bar, drinking an old-fashioned of his own.

You call this an old-fashioned? he demanded.

TWENTY-TWO Hilal

I’m pregnant again. Tamar is ecstatic, but I can’t help but be worried. I got the news on the same day that Captain Yavuz spaced eleven crew. Security busted an illegal circle in our berth. We all agreed to turn off our augments, but what is turned off can be turned on again. Truth be told, the circle was no big secret. It was all people who lost loved ones, or had no kids, or were old already when we started this voyage. They had been meeting for years, sharing memories. It was harmless, really. But watching Security raid their tea shop and drag them out in fetters, it reminded me of Sultan Mazen and the Network Empire. What was the point of overthrowing the Network if we bring its injustices with us to the stars? What kind of ship am I bringing my children onto?

—MESSAGE FROM FIRST CREW HANIA HILAL TO HER SISTER HEBA (SHIP YEAR 33)

So, I suppose congratulations are in order,” Evra said. “Lieutenant Hilal. It has a nice ring to it. You’re shooting up the ranks, girl.”

Hilal idly flashed five metal fingers at Evra to avert the evil eye and shook her head in bemusement. She had never been interested in earning a commission or climbing the ranks. Not in the military. Not in the Jandarma. And certainly not on this cockeyed city-ship. Hilal just wanted everyone to leave her alone so she could work her case, thank you very much.

“The only reason I agreed to this is because it keeps us on the case and Soledad out of our hair, and gives us a chance to stop the ship from falling apart faster than it already is,” Hilal said. “Got it?”

Evra blew the foam from the top of her frosted glass of sugarcane juice and took a long pull. She glanced around the deserted juice bar—more like a juice counter, really—and shrugged. “Got it. So, you said Under-Captain Reza is putting you in charge? In charge of what exactly?”

“The investigation into the Shutdown,” Hilal said. “The real investigation. Not that he’ll admit it. As far as Admin and Security are concerned, the official story is still ‘accidental confluence,’ and the same goes for whoever we’re chasing. We don’t want the perps knowing we’re on their trail. I’m thinking it’ll be you, me, and Talitha Deen.”

Evra startled. “Translator Deen? Are you sure that’s wise?”

“I think it will be good to have a translator on standby for interviews and to help us navigate any red tape. We’ll tap Security when we need them but keep them in the dark as much as possible. Thanks to my shiny new firman, that shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“You have a Special Dispensation,” Evra said, voice high. “No way! Show me.”

Hilal pulled out her tab and swiped to the appropriate document. There it was, in black and white and red. A capital-s Special capital-d Dispensation bearing the tughra of Captain Amer himself. Hilal had even met the man and shaken his hand. He was shorter than he looked in the vids. And older. His firman gave her the right to arrest anyone she wanted and hold them without charge. It gave her the right to order any member of the ship’s crew, from the highest Admin to the lowest Recyclist, so long as her orders were lawful—and given that the ship was currently in an official state of emergency, she could stretch “lawful” to mean whatever she wanted. It was like being back on the beat in the Network Empire. The trick would be not using the firman. Power corrupts. Hilal knew that as well as anybody. Plus, if they really wanted to conduct this investigation off the books, flashing a magic document signed by the Captain himself was not the best way to do it.

“Awesome,” Evra said. “Wait, what was that about stopping the ship from falling apart any faster than it already is?”

Hilal gazed into the bottom of her own frosted glass; the sweet and pulpy mango juice was long gone. She considered ordering another round, before realizing that she couldn’t. Thanks to Admin rationing, it was one glass per customer per day. Although she could, conceivably, use her newly acquired Special Dispensation to order seconds and thirds and hundreds and thousands.

“What do you think happens if Security announces that the Shutdown was an attack, but we don’t know who did it, or why, or if they might do it again?” Hilal asked.

Evra mulled that over, the look in her eyes growing darker and darker. “I’ve investigated in-berth murders before,” she admitted, “everyone pointing the finger at each other, raking up old grudges, old hatreds.”

“Impossible to investigate anything properly under those circumstances,” Hilal agreed.

Hilal clenched her metallic fist. This was one helluva case. A career case. Back in the Network Empire, she could rely on an army of investigators at her back, a Network monitoring everyone and everything, more evidence than a dozen detectives could get through. Could she really be expected to do this all on her lonesome?

It’s your duty, your purpose, your raison d’être, Juma told her. Embrace it, Hilal. Most of your fellows are sitting around with nothing to do but worry. This crew is beset by uncertainty. They have so many choices to make. But you, Hilal, are unburdened by doubt. You know who you are. You’re the detective! And you’re not alone.

“Well,” she told Evra, “if this got out now, it would be much worse, believe me.”

“Alright, so what’s the plan?”

“We work the case. If we uncover a suspect, then maybe we can go public. Until then, we do it quick and quiet. Are you in or are you out?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

With Juma watching through her eyes, Hilal carefully unscrewed the wire array leading to the pinch’s capacitor bank. She placed the screwdriver to one side and delicately removed the screw before gingerly reaching for the wire.

Not that one! Juma screamed in her ear.

Hilal calmly pulled the wire out of the terminal.

That wasn’t funny the first time you did it, she chided him. It’s certainly not funny now.

She carefully deposited the stripped wire array into an evidence box, next to the first two, and then started work on the fourth and final one. She and Juma were examining each piece of the device carefully, looking for any forensic evidence. They had found some isolated fingerprints on the surrounding walls and apparatus—Juma was running them through Security’s fulsome database—but as for the device itself? Bupkis. A big fat nothing. Partial prints, here and there, but nothing concrete. Hilal discovered a dark spot of something on the underside of one of the pinch’s panels. She scratched off a sample and touched it, gingerly, to the tip of her tongue. The human tongue had more than ten thousand taste buds, and she had an expert crimetech living in her head who could analyze each and every one of them to create a detailed DNA profile. Unfortunately, the sample didn’t contain a single nucleotide for Juma to examine. It wasn’t blood at all. Instead, he found a combination of alkanes and cycloalkanes. Neutral pH. So, mineral oil, then. Another dead end. Hilal was beginning to worry.

Whoever did this was careful and cunning, Juma said. He will be a most capable opponent.

What makes you think it’s a he? Hilal bristled.

What makes you think it isn’t? One should always ascribe a gender to one’s quarry. Seeing the perp as a person with wants and needs, with plans that can be foiled and weaknesses that can be exploited, will help you track them down. You can call them a she or they, if you prefer, although I would remind you that statistically speaking men are more likely to carry out terrorist attacks and those working in technical disciplines are more likely to resort to faceless violence. Isn’t that why you told Evra to question the stastechs?

It’s one of the reasons, Hilal admitted.

Evra was topside, interviewing stastechs and trying to get the lay of the land. Level 40 wasn’t like other levels. There was a food court here with a few different coffee shops and restaurants. It wasn’t just the people who worked or had ancestors on this deck who came here. Anyway, someone needed to interview everybody to see what they knew, and it would be better if that someone was not Hilal. She could barely stand to walk Stasis’s floors as it was. Juma came equipped with sophisticated body language and facial expression reading software, meaning that she could hardly fail to miss the fear and pity coming off most of the crew when they saw her. An ancestor out of time. But it was so much worse from the green-clad stastechs. From them, Hilal read guilt, shame, and remorse. It had been their job to look after her and they had failed.

And what else? Juma asked. What are you trying to hide from me?

How many thousands of our people died on these floors, Juma? They survived a world war, plagues, and climate change, spent centuries dreaming of a new start, all for it to end like this?

She could almost feel them—an army of the dead. Their bodies were stacked on Stasis deck waiting for their final rites. She had helped move some of their coffins with her own two hands. And someone was responsible for it. She was sure of that much, at least. Hilal felt a fist of anger gripping her heart. Someone was responsible and now it was her task to find out who. Yeah, she was the detective.

Do you envy them? Juma asked softly. The dead?

It had been many years since Hilal had envied the dead. Not since Vienna.

What about the ones still sleeping? he tried.

Yes.

Well, they are lucky that you are here now. The dead and the sleepers both. Out of all those thousands, you are the best person to solve this case. We can avenge our people and assure the future for all those still breathing. Somewhere out there on this ship is the person or persons responsible for all this death and destruction. Can you feel them out there, Hilal? Maybe they’re having dinner or riding the link. Maybe they’re scared and remorseful. Maybe they’re celebratory and overconfident. Whatever the case may be, they have no idea that we’re coming for them.

Sure, part of Juma’s remit was emotional support, to build her up, keep her on task. But it was true. Hilal was the best. That’s why they chose her. And, aside from Evra, every detective she had met on the Safina so far had been a hump. Hilal figured that made her not just the best detective on the ship, but pretty much the best detective in all of humanity. Hilal felt her lips curve upward into a smile. A battle smile. She had the scent in her nose and the resolve to follow where it led. Whoever they were, whatever they thought, whyever they did this, they would not be ready for her.

If you can’t solve this, Juma said, no one can.

No pressure or anything!

Oh no, have I overshot my target again?

Just a smidge, Hilal laughed.

She resumed stripping the pinch, wire by wire, piece by piece. She didn’t think she was going to find any forensic evidence on the device. Juma was right, this guy was good. Very good. But she could learn something about him even from that. And hey, sometimes mistakes happened.

“Find anything?” Evra asked a few hours later.

They were in a café on Stasis level 40, not one hundred yards from the pinch. Hilal felt a moment of vertigo when she saw it. Groppi’s had been a famous café in Cairo. Inside, it fostered a hustle and bustle atmosphere Hilal had yet to see anywhere else on the Safina. She glanced around at the assembled crew, sitting together, eating, chatting. Now, this was more like it. Of course, all the coffee shops and restaurants in the berths were quiet as the grave. Everybody was working in the decks. From the comfortable corner booth that Evra commandeered, Hilal ordered a grilled cheese on wheat and a tall glass of something fizzy as she cast her gaze around the joint. She saw an army of stastechs munching and a small group of ancestors sitting at a communal table in a perfect bubble of silence. Hilal recognized the distinctive form of Kena Medano and tried and failed to avoid her gaze. After a long moment, Medano pinged her, and Hilal watched as every eye at that table turned to her. Well, well, it looked like she might be back in the fold after all. How could you be outcast when there were only two red sisters left? Some part of Hilal longed to accept, to join that virtual conclave and meet mind-to-mind with people who actually understood her, who knew what she had been through and had been through the same. She reached toward Medano gingerly, feeling the sheer weight of the combined circle. No, Hilal couldn’t afford to risk it. Not here. Not now. She pinged back a polite thanks but no thanks and turned away to face Evra. They had a case to work.

“What did you say?” Hilal asked.

Evra held up a finger while she finished chewing on her ham on rye. “I asked if you found any useful forensics on the you-know-what.”

“You mean the device?” Hilal asked, quirking her eyebrows. “No. Nothing useful.

“Our perp must have worn gloves and a mask every step of the way,” Hilal reported. “And he must have carefully wiped each and every single piece of equipment, from the glass down to the wires and screws, before using them.”

“Meticulous.”

“Very. I’ve got images of each piece of equipment. The next step is to find out how difficult they are to procure. Some of them must be restricted items. We should be able to trace them, shouldn’t we? I hope you had better luck.”

“These stastechs are not exactly the chattiest bunch,” Evra complained, taking out her tab. “So far, I’ve managed to procure a list of stastechs and servicers who work this level. A long list,” she warned, swiping the tab up and down to demonstrate.

“How many people are we talking?”

“At least forty.”

“Damn.”

“And that’s not to mention the crew who came to visit ancestors on this level. Or the stastechs from other levels who came to eat at this food court. Apparently, it’s the only one in twenty levels that serves pizza.”

Hilal opened her eyes wide. “This ship has pizza, and nobody told me?”

Evra repressed a smile. “They’re sold out for today. Better luck tomorrow.”

“So, do we have a plan to narrow that list down?”

“Background checks. Interviews. We’re just looking for potential witnesses, right? I doubt any of them would have the technical know-how to build a device like the one we saw. Plus, they’re stastechs. They’re… they don’t do stuff like this.”

“No assumptions,” Hilal said sternly. “Someone, somewhere, did do stuff like this. If we find out how, that brings us closer to who and why.”

Evra nodded. Hilal knew the interviews would be important. Even if they didn’t turn up a viable suspect, they could find out a lot about what was going on around the deck in the run-up to the Shutdown. Did anyone notice anything out of the ordinary? Were any stastechs routinely unaccounted for on watch? Even if a stastech had not built the device, one might have been involved some other way—smuggling parts or people onto the deck, covering up for those who were responsible. It was simply too early to rule anything out.

“So, what next?”

“Continue your interviews,” Hilal said, “but don’t push too hard. We’re just gathering information. Plus, we need the stastechs to get used to seeing us on their deck.”

“And what about you?”

“I still need to recruit the final member of our team,” Hilal said, ignoring the warning look in Evra’s eyes.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” Tally gasped as Hilal thrust her metal fingers inside her. Hilal clamped Tally’s mouth closed with her other hand to stop her from making too much noise.

“Quiet,” Hilal warned, “otherwise your neighbors might file a noise complaint and call Security.”

She’d had to sneak past the bawab to spend the night in Tally’s apartment without arousing awkward questions. In some ways, the city-ship Safina was just like home. Hilal felt Tally laughing against her.

“Don’t stop,” Tally said through Hilal’s fingers. “F—— me, you b——!”

Behind Translator Talitha Deen’s professional facade was a woman who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to ask for it. Hilal removed her fingers from inside Tally and gently tweaked one of her puffy nipples.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Hilal said.

She pinched her other nipple, all the while keeping her other hand not quite covering Tally’s mouth.

“A—— feek,” Tally said, switching to Damask-tinged Arabek. “You livestock! You animal! You classless daughter of a lioness! Is this the best you’ve got?”

Hilal was glad to see that even two hundred years in the future, the classics were still in use. She pinched Tally’s left nipple again, harder this time, and then tangled her metal fingers in the translator’s long red hair.

“What, little girl, do you want more?” Hilal asked.

“What, big girl, do you have more?”

Afterward, Tally rolled over and kissed Hilal sweetly on the mouth.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, before closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep.

With her auburn locks gathered loose around her and a secretive half smile playing on her face, Tally looked like some kind of digital Botticellian champloo. Half renaissance painting, half pornographic vid. Hilal looked down to find Tally still clasping her metal hand. Hilal wasn’t usually into rough play, but it was what Tally liked. Sex without augments was both strangely intimate and distant. To feel your partner’s breath in your ear, their lips on your skin, their orgasm around your fingers, and yet, without an accompanying mind-to-mind sharing of thought and emotion. Hilal wondered if she would ever get used to it. In her time, there had been a taboo against sex without augment-to-augment connection. But this wasn’t her time. And to be with someone else while wholly and solely yourself? Well, Hilal was beginning to see the appeal. She could feel the distance between her and Tally, and moreover, she could feel that distance closing.

Later that night, Tally scooched up and regarded Hilal out of green-tinged eyes. “And what are you brooding about?”

“Brooding! I don’t brood. I just stare intently into the middle distance and think about the sheer unlikeliness of it all.”

Tally pounced on her and kissed Hilal’s neck. “The sheer unlikeliness of what?” she said, mimicking Hilal’s slow and steady Inglez accent.

“That I’m even here,” Hilal answered. “That you’re here with me. Think about it for a second, Tally. What were the chances that I was chosen to be a Hurriya colonist? The chances that I was one of the ancestors woken up during the Shutdown? Do you know how many of my sisters died during your so-called End Wars? And yet, each time, I survived.”

“Hmm. I think I call that brooding.”

Hilal easily flipped Tally over, landed on top of her, and regarded her nose to nose.

“I said I wanted to talk to you…”

“… and then you dragged me into bed.”

“You took off your blouse. You distracted me.”

“Oh, yes,” Tally said, squirming beneath her, “I am the mistress of distraction.”

“Well, stop that now and listen carefully to what I have to say,” Hilal instructed. Tally stopped and listened carefully as Hilal explained the mission. “So, are you in or are you out?”

“What do you think?” she answered.

Later, Hilal was circling her second orgasm of the night, eyes closed and mind floating, Tally a comfortable weight against her side. Tally’s fingers were an incessant buzz inside her, her tongue insatiable against her. The pressure inside Hilal was building and building and just as she was approaching a crescendo, Juma burst into her mind, his voice crackling with excitement.

Hilal, the results finally came back on that fingerprint search, he said. You’ll never guess who it belongs to! Oh—excuse me!

TWENTY-THREE Damietta

Following the cowardly attack last week on a group of Admins and Security in the process of carrying out their lawful duties on Agriculture deck, Security has confirmed that the perpetrators are believed to be “seditious elements” seeking to exploit the so-called Shutdown for political gain. In exclusive comments to Safina News One, Security Overseer Behrouz Reza warned, “Sedition will be punished to the letter of the law. I advise crew to focus on their watches during this critical time.”

—KARIM ALI, SAFINA NEWS ONE

The Safina Today can exclusively reveal that, according to informed sources, a number of crew were killed in the clashes with Security on Agriculture deck last week. The clashes led to the confirmed death of Security Corporal Baghdad Hadi and the institution of a ship-wide state of emergency. Sources from three different decks informed The Safina Today that at least ten crew were killed and that at least forty agrotechs from the same watch were subsequently arrested, convicted, and detained.

—ESTHER COHEN, THE SAFINA TODAY

Transforming a painting into corridor art was no easy feat. In fact, it was more difficult than transforming blank canvas into a painting. Damietta had returned home very late (or very early, depending on your perspective) after another night of rabble-rousing (literally) around Fustat’s various Tagammus. She fell straight into her bed, straight to sleep, then she was awoken a scant few hours later in a fever, an image superimposed over the back of her eyelids. Badreddine might have wanted her to spend all her free time pied-pipering to Fustat’s youth, but she was still an artist. She couldn’t help that, and now that she had finally (finally!) restocked her art supplies (dankon to Britva and her Karla coves), she could splash paint onto canvas in a fervor until she was left regarding said image: Three crew on their knees, hands cuffed behind their backs, dark eyes staring out mournfully, defiantly. Behind them, two redjackets, hulking, brooding, huge in their armor, faceless behind their masks, monstrous.

Damietta stepped back and took in the entire canvas with satisfaction. It was her best painting yet. The composition. The coloring. The interplay of dark and light. And all of it done in a five-hour frenzy of creativity. But Damietta wasn’t just an artist, not anymore. So, how would she transform this masterpiece into something that would rouse the crew and push them toward action? Painting was all about feeling, emotion, contrasting the harsh, almost brutalist, cross-hatching on the redjacket’s armor with the clean but delicate lines that made up the three kneeling crew. The trick would be to pick out one aspect of the painting and boil it down to its essentials, simplify it. Something iconic. Archetypal. She had captured the middle figure, a kneeling girl wearing Factory blue, in suppressed motion, failing to squirm away from the towering redjacket behind her. The girl’s long, dark hair had come loose in the struggle, obscuring her face, while the redjacket, stillness personified, was gripping the back of her neck with a meaty gloved hand. You couldn’t see it, but Damietta knew that manufactor was dry-eyed and snarling. You couldn’t see it, but Damietta knew that manufactor was Selin Devrim herself. The story of the Safina in one image.

Three hours later and Damietta had a simple pop-art representation on her tab. A hulking redjacket, a kneeling crewman. It couldn’t evoke the raw emotion of the painting, but Damietta closed her eyes and imagined a wall filled with identical menacing redjackets—a phalanx of scarlet figures, shoulder to shoulder, a shield-wall, broken up only by desperate kneeling crew. Yeah, that could work. (That could def trav.)

The first Down Tools was scheduled for tomorrow evening. Crew would be meeting in Downtown Fustat before the start of second shift. That was plenty of time. Damietta adjusted the size on her tab and set her printer whirring. In a second frenzy, a mere echo of the first, Damietta whitewashed a section of her bedroom wall, and then sat on her bed, deep in thought as she picked dry flecks of color from her fingers. When the paint was dry, she grabbed the stencil from the printer’s out tray and prepared her spray paint. For the redjacket, she mixed up a cold quinacridone red, dark and foreboding. For the crew, well, that was the genius of it. The crew girl’s silhouette was made up of two distinct sections that could be colored in any way. That could be anybody kneeling there. Your little sister, dark haired in Academy white. Your grandmother, gray haired in her trusty dark blue Engineer’s uniform. Your lover, dyed-green hair above an agrotech’s steady brown. Damietta experimented, producing a wall of prisoners, each one caught in that same desperate struggle.

“Yeah,” she said to herself. “This could definitely work.”

Art reached across boundaries, across berths. On a ship that was divided by language, art was the one medium that transcended it. You didn’t need poetic Arabek chants or carefully edited Inglez texts to inspire the crew if you had the right image. Damietta, seventeen years old and wise as prey, knew that she was no Selin Devrim, she couldn’t write a storm of words that would shake the very foundations of the crew. Nor was she a Badreddine Bishara, a canny mind hiding plans within plans. The past few weeks had shown her that she had scant ability to scheme and organize—although, to be fair, she was learning. She wasn’t even an Iskander Ezz, who could bide his time and bite his tongue. No, Damietta had other gifts.

Rosetta’s trademark knock sounded on her door (one knock, four knocks, two knocks) followed by her trademark immediate entry. She openly gaped at the army of redjackets looming on the wall, the congregation of kneeling crew.

“What’s that?”

“Rose! How many times do I have to tell you to knock.”

“I did.”

“What’s the point of knocking if you just barge in anyway?” she asked. Rose shrugged her slight shoulders but kept her gaze on the wall. “Well, what do you think of it?”

Rose approached the wall, gazing up at the various figures. Some were life-sized, some larger, and on the side, it extended into a much smaller version, showing lines and lines of redjackets kneeling over dozens of crew. Rose stood before the largest of the figures; even the kneeling stastech, blond haired and straining, was taller than her. The hulking redjacket towered menacingly over them both.

“It’s… scary,” Rose supplied.

“Yes.”

“You’re not allowed to do any more graffiti,” Rose informed her in a pious tone. “Baba said.”

Damietta shrugged. Baba was too busy to know or care what she was doing these days. Everyone was.

“If you snitch on me, you’re dead!” Damietta warned, pounding one multicolored fist into her palm.

Rosetta nodded and glanced up at the faceless redjacket again, her eyes unreadable. “I saw a redjacket pushing a man out of the line into Nine yesterday,” she said.

Damietta had seen much worse. Getting around the checkpoints was getting more and more difficult. She was lucky that Badreddine had managed to get her a fake crew ID. According to the official crew roster, Damietta Ezz was a newly enrolled maintech, a good cover. Maintenance was crawling all over the ship at the moment, and Security had no idea who was supposed to be where.

“Wait. What the hell were you doing out of the Tagammu yesterday? You were meant to stay here in Nine, where it’s safe. Amita Jezzine said she was going to look after you and the rest of the sprouts.”

Things were heating up across the ship, much to Badreddine’s delight. There had been a riot in Agriculture deck. Dozens of crew were killed, although Admin was denying it, of course. In the berths, there were reports of conflagrations at checkpoints. Most of the crew had been working punishing double watches for weeks on end and were growing less understanding of pushy redjackets demanding to see their crew IDs. The redjackets were working those same double shifts and were just as unhappy about it.

Rose pulled a face. “It’s boring here! Lebanon and Halayeb took me Downtown for some ice cream.”

“Hmmm. And so, what happened to that man?”

“The rozzers nicked him.”

“You mean Security arrested him,” Damietta corrected. “Don’t start speaking in Nupol to me, hanim!”

“They arrested him,” Rose said. “And when Cousin Halayeb tried to find out what happened, the redjacket pushed him and told him to get back in line.”

“Well, Hal should know better than to try to question redjackets,” Damietta said disapprovingly. “Especially these days. Anyway, what do you want?”

“Seto wants to talk to you.”

“You mean, she wants help in the kitchen?”

“Yus!”

“Ugh, alright. Tell her I’m coming.”

Five minutes later, Damietta found Seto Deniz in the kitchen, ensconced in pots and pans. She might have returned to Environmental, but only part-time. She was still a fixture at the Ezz compound. Seto Deniz stopped chopping an onion long enough to stir one pot and check another before returning to her onion massacre. Where did the old woman get her energy from?

“Here you are, girl!” Seto Deniz greeted her distractedly. “Didn’t you hear me calling? Here”—she thrust a ladle at Damietta—“keep stirring. I need to go next door and turn over the chicken.”

Seto threw the onions into the big salad bowl and covered it with a plate before retying her hijab and heading next door to Amo Azbek and Amita Jezzine’s apartment where she had invaded and occupied their kitchen as well. It was Thursday night family dinner at the Ezz compound, and by God they were going to keep up the tradition, even if half the Ezzes couldn’t make it, either busy on watch or in medically induced comas.

Damietta stirred the pot despondently. Molokhiya. It wasn’t quite a soup or a stew, but some indefatigable mix of the two. Seto Deniz made it the Fustat way—finely minced jute leaves reduced to a simmer, producing something with the consistency of slime and the color of bogies. She thought of her brother with a pang. Rice, chicken, and molokhiya was Iskander’s favorite meal. He wouldn’t be here this evening to scarf it down and flatter Seto with his translator wiles. “God bless your hands” he would tell her in Arabek, and then they would trade increasingly elaborate blessings back and forth all evening in increasingly elaborate language. She missed him. The last words she spoke to him had been in anger. No, worse, judgment. She regretted that now.

“Why are you crying?” Rosetta asked. Damietta had not seen her come in. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand and kept stirring.

“The onions,” she lied. “Come on, you can help me stir.”

Well, this was awkward.

It was the first Ezz family dinner since the Shutdown, only Iskander (May God preserve him) was missing, Amita Hilal was present (looming over the table, taller than everyone), and Lebanon (sporting the shadow of a mustache he had been growing since the Shutdown) had just announced that he was getting engaged to Kattrin Eissa. Amid the general cloud of congratulations and well-wishes, Damietta noticed Amita Jezzine slap one hand to her ample chest in shock, while Amo Azbek turned redder and redder.

“Mabrook,” Cousin Halayeb congratulated him.

“Ou balak,” Lebanon responded with a barely suppressed grin.

Of course, Arabek-speaking crew did not simply say thank you after being congratulated on upcoming nuptials. They wished “I hope you are next” instead. Damietta added her own cheerful mabrook to the pile and irritably waved away Lebanon’s response. She speared a delicious piece of macaroni béchamel into her mouth and sat back to watch, relieved that whatever was about to unfold, it had nothing to do with her (for once).

“Oh, black day! Oh, black sooty day!” Amita Jezzine declaimed, finally finding her voice (here we go!). Damietta was amused to note that Amita Jezzine’s refined classical Arabek was long gone, and she had resorted to the most Fustatian of exclamations. “Oh, black calamity! What are you saying, ya ibni!”

“Mama,” Lebanon said reproachfully, “calm down!”

“Oh, my heartbreak!” she added. “Oh, the calamity. How could you do this to us, Lebanon?”

Every eye at the table turned to Lebanon like they were playing a badminton match. (Oh my God, were they really going to do this right here right now?)

“How could I do what?” Lebanon volleyed back. (Yes, they really were!)

“Get engaged without telling us,” Amo Azbek answered. “How could you speak to the Eissa family without us there?”

In Fustat berth, a prospective groom would have to approach the bride’s family, relatives in tow, to ask for her hand in marriage. Fathers and uncles and male cousins, usually.

“I haven’t,” Lebanon admitted. “But with the Shutdown and everyone working double watches, there is hardly going to be time for that now. I asked Kattrin and she said yes. We can arrange everything else later.”

“We certainly cannot,” Amo Azbek said. “We need to discuss this first.”

Damietta could just imagine what kind of discussion Amo Azbek wanted to have. And what does the bride bring to the marriage? What money? What connections? (Yuck!)

“Who I marry is my business,” Lebanon ground out.

“Wrong!”

“Listen to your father, ya ibni.”

Lebanon took a deep breath. “Baba—”

“No, you listen. You have a duty to this family. You are our only son, our only child, you must understand that—”

“I have a duty to myself!” Lebanon interrupted. Damietta fought against the urge to stand up and applaud.

“The Eissas are not even Believers,” Seto Deniz interrupted, clutching her hijab in alarm. “How can you marry a Nisrani, Lebanon? Think about your children!”

“Ahl al-Kitab,” Lebanon reminded them. People of the Book. According to Islam, a Muslim (man, of course) was allowed to marry a Christian or Jewish woman. Still, just because you were technically allowed to do something did not mean that you could do it without Seto Deniz flipping out about it in the middle of a family dinner.

Damietta slanted a look down the table. Gedo Zagazig, sitting at the head of the table, continued eating calmly. Beside him, Amita Hilal was difficult to read, and it wasn’t just because of the tattoo on her face. Sometimes, the ancestors seemed so closed off. Khalo Sultan, for his part, looked completely shocked. Damietta was just glad Khala Yara wasn’t here, she would probably have piled on with Amita Jezz and Seto Deniz. Cousin Halayeb looked unmoved by the whole thing. Khalo Ahmet and Khala Ismailiyah weren’t there, but Cousins Fayoum and Sibel were, the twins sitting just out of view on the other side of Rose. Damietta turned to Baba, sitting across from her, to gauge his reaction. It was the first time he had been home in almost a week. As usual, she couldn’t read anything from his expression.

Anyway, it’s not like anyone’s objections actually had anything to do with religion (alright, maybe Amita Jezz and Seto Deniz’s). For the rest, it was just plain snobbishness. They didn’t want their precious only son marrying someone from a nobody family from Tagammu Three, that’s all. And what would they say if they knew about you and Britva, some treacherous part of her mind asked. Even without bringing religion into it, Damietta knew that her family would see it as a dereliction of duty.

Lebanon parried and blocked his parents’ complaints as best he could, but Damietta could see him growing more and more affronted. In the same position, Iskander would have turned on his translatorial charm and, when that didn’t work, continued arguing until they reached Hurriya. But if the family was acting like this toward Kattrin Eissa, someone from their own berth, no wonder Iskander chose to keep his Maintenance girl quiet. So far as Damietta understood, Iskander’s Taki was a Buddhist, which to Seto Deniz and her ilk was not much different than being an idolator. And what about me, Damietta wondered? How would she have dealt with this onslaught? Badly, she admitted. With shouting and tears. With throwing stuff and tears. With slamming doors and tears. Well, the time for tears was over. It was time for action now (ahora or nix mei). Seto Deniz redoubled her attack, and suddenly Damietta was done. She was done with it all. She tuned out the entire stupid argument and instead began making plans for the night. With the Down Tools scheduled for tomorrow, there wasn’t much time. She didn’t need to ask to know whether Britva would be in. But who else? Nyala and Nabil maybe? Billy, if he was done proselytizing to the Feda’eyes? Tripoli Brown and her cutthroats? The more the merrier. Many hands make light art.

Damietta helped herself to another serving of the salad and thought of all the things she would like to change about the Safina, starting with the utter fucking nonsense coming out of her uncle’s mouth (Amo Azbek: “Ya ibni, nobody is saying you can’t have your fun with this girl, but marriage is a sacred thing”) and ending with Admin, the redjackets, and the rest of the whole broken system. She took a calming breath and glanced at Rose, who had a stricken look on her face. Damietta pulled a face (eyes crossed, eyebrows raised, tongue lolling out the corner of her mouth) and aimed it in her younger sister’s direction. She was gratified to see the ghost of a smile flit across Rose’s face before she produced an expression of her own (eyebrows lowered, mouth drawn, front teeth fixed over her bottom lip). Damietta grabbed Rose’s little hand and squeezed it in her own. Rose squeezed back.

After dinner, Damietta watched as Lebanon took an angry puff of his vape pen, spewing a cloud of colorful smoke out into the berth. He was standing with his back to her in the outdoor communal area of the Ezz compound, where generations of Ezz siblings and cousins had gathered to play esoteric ball games with fathomless rules. Damietta knew that no children of hers would ever play out here.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” Damietta told him. “Amita Hilal will arrest you for breaking the smoking ban.” Rationing was not the only new standing order issued after the Shutdown. Fustat’s shisha cafés were in uproar.

Lebanon turned to face her, putting the vape pen away. “Scientifically speaking,” he said, “the smoke I’m exhaling is mostly hydrogen and oxygen. It won’t hurt the CO_2 count none.”

“ ‘Uh, scientifically speaking…’ ” Damietta mocked him. The strained look on Lebanon’s face dissipated with the smoke as he smiled at her and rolled his eyes.

“Very funny!”

“So… that was heavy back in there,” she said.

Lebanon smoothed out his mustache with two fingers (honestly, what was he cogging growing a dangler like that?) and nodded solemnly. “Yes, I dunno why I thought the Shutdown would make things easier.”

“What? You think just because the Safina is trapped in empty space and we all might die, you can just do whatever you want?”

“Yes?” Lebanon said in a wondering tone of voice. “I kind of did.”

“Kattrin Eissa is a doll,” Damietta remarked. “Why the hell would she agree to marry you?”

“It’s the mustache,” he admitted, smoothing it out again. “Women love it!”

Damietta spent the next ten minutes asking him all the questions his parents should have asked. How did they first start dating? (Lebanon asked her out to the cinema to watch some terrible-sounding Ziyou kung fu action flick.) What was Kattrin like? (Beautiful. Everybody in Fustat berth knew that. But apparently Kattrin was funny as well, and kind.) When did he know that he loved her? (None of her business.)

Eventually, Lebanon sighed out a long breath and said,“You know, I really miss Iskander.”

If Iskander were here tonight, this is exactly where he would be, out here with Lebanon, probably smoking from that very same vape pen and saying something much better than she ever could to make him feel like this dinner hadn’t been an utter disaster.

“Iskander is better at this part, huh?” she asked.

“Yes,” Lebanon admitted, “but with you, I never have to worry that you’re just shining me on.”

“Translators!” Damietta huffed.

“You never know if they’re telling the truth or if it’s all just patented translator go-along to get-along.”

“Well, I’m telling you the truth,” Damietta assured him. “They’ll try and force you to do what they want, make you think you have no other choice. But you do. One day, they’ll pass on—Seto Deniz and Gedo Zagazig, my dad, your parents, their whole generation—and it will be only us left. So, you had better make sure that you can live with your choices.”

Lebanon nodded at her seriously. “When did you get so wise, bint Ami?”

“Just wait, ibn Ami,” Damietta said, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

“Last raz we tried this,” Billy complained, “me and Ash ended up alay in clink while tu skated libera.” Damietta huffed out a breath, but Billy didn’t relent. “Ash is still alay.”

“Ya Allah, are you still kvetching about that?” Britva interrupted.

“That’s a gajo oath coming outta your oysta, Karla,” Billy said in a hard tone of voice. “I cogged you Kommunistas did nish creed Bog. Mulhideen,” he added in Arabek. Apostates. Ugh, liaising with the bloody Feds had obviously turned his mind. Now, he was even speaking like one of them.

“Zif you creed Bog?” she scoffed. “Remind me, quando was the last raz you went to Vendi prays?”

She finished applying her stencil to the wall and moved over to help Nyala and Nabil with theirs, giving Nyala a reassuring pat on the back. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to invite them with Billy and Britva acting like this. Damietta had been preaching the Haraka’s word to Fustat’s youth, and Nyala and Nabil were among her best converts. But talking was one thing. A graffiti spree with two ex-convicts? Well, that was something else.

“You guys alright?” Damietta checked.

“Alright,” Nabil told her firmly.

They were in Cleopatra Square in downtown Fustat in the middle of third watch, not that anyone was paying attention to the old watch patterns anymore. It was part park, part pedestrian square, part open market—a communal place for the crew living in Fustat berth to come and sit and shop. It was the location of Damietta’s not-quite first kiss, the place where she had decided she had no choice but to be herself. And tomorrow, it would be the center of their Down Tools.

“Anytao, you got libera, didn’t ya?” Britva said, not able to let things be. “The darkmans might’ve been kaudi for the rest of us, but it was a libera chit for tu, ist das nicht?”

Damietta kept quiet. She had apologized for her part in getting Billy and Ash arrested, and doubly apologized for not being thrown in Detention with them. What more could he want? Damietta focused on applying the stencils, then the paint. Rinse and repeat. She gave Nyala and Nabil the easy job of spray-painting the redjackets, allowing her, Britva, and Billy to focus on the kneeling crew. Damietta went along the line, picking by instinct. This one would be blond. And then three kneeling crew later, these two (sisters perhaps?), and then five kneeling crew later, another blond. Britva and Billy were doing the same from the other side. Britva was doing brunettes. Billy redheads. They repeated the same procedure for uniforms. Damietta went up the line, condemning crew one by one. Stastechs in light green, agrotechs in brown, manufactors in blue, maintechs in yellow. She even mixed a few grays in here and there. It’s not like being off watch would stop Security’s boot from coming down on your neck. She took a step back to take in the whole picture. It was too dark to see. How many stencils had they painted in the end? Thirty? Fifty? A hundred? She wasn’t sure, she just knew that her muscles ached and her hands smelled of paint fumes.

Then, Damietta had an idea. She searched among the kneeling crew, picking one at random. She turned its uniform into a translator’s suit and tie with a quick freehand application of her aerosol spray can. As for its head, a familiar brown trilby. Damietta took in a sharp breath as she eyed the image of kneeling translator Iskander Ezz. She longed to put her arms around him and step into his embrace. This was the truth, wasn’t it? The truer truth.

Iskander might work for Admin, might be an Admin, but he was as much a victim as anyone else on the Saf. That’s how the Nizam operated, after all. It co-opted everyone and everything. It tricked good people, people who believed in change, and convinced them to stand against their own interests, promising them “not too fast” and “we’ll get there in the end.” But Damietta knew the truth. The Nizam would never give up one iota of control unless it was forced to. The protests? The revolution? She wasn’t just doing this for herself. She was doing it for everyone.

“Gardilu!” Billy whispered urgently. “Rozzers!”

The five of them rushed to hide in the empty bed of a nearby stall, narrowly avoiding the troop of redjackets hurrying through Cleopatra Square toward the Museum exit. Cleopatra opened onto Museum which, in turn, opened onto Administration deck and Security Central. Damietta settled in the corner of the empty stall, Britva pressed against her, while Billy peeked over the top at the retreating redjackets, and Nyala and Nabil held still. The redjackets hadn’t noticed a thing. There was a brownout in Downtown Fustat. The lights would stay off until the beginning of second watch, and by then it would be too late to cover up the graffiti.

“Clear all,” Billy said.

Damietta slowly let out the breath she had been holding and reached for her bag. She angled her tab down before turning it on. In the tablight, it was clear to see that all five of them were covered in paint residue. Nabil and Nyala in flecks of red, a red so dark it looked almost brown in the tablight, while she, Britva, and Billy had been transformed into old Earth expressionist paintings come alive (Pollocks! De Koonings! Mitchells!). They were all drips and drabs of every color.

“Well,” Billy said, “you’re nish getting back into the Tags like this.”

“We’ll bring them to one of Badreddine’s safe houses,” Damietta decided.

Billy shook his head and raised a suspicious eyebrow toward Britva, but tellingly didn’t argue. Technically speaking, he and Damietta were on equal standing within the Haraka now. Envoys of the revolution.

After they had all changed into off-duty crew gray and Nabil and Nyala had settled in one of the back rooms, Zain Keita barged into the room where Damietta and Britva were waiting and glared roundly at them both.

“Welly, welly, welly, welly, well. Sekina Samatar,” he said, giving Britva the stink eye. “Que do we owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?”

Of course, Billy (the rat) had grassed them up. Britva had been a member of the Haraka before she switched sides, and there was evidently still a lot of tension there. Although, it wasn’t actually switching sides, was it? There were plenty of people in the Kommunists with Devrimite sympathies. So far as Damietta was concerned, the Haraka wasn’t a group, it was a cause. People could come and go as they pleased. In fact, if you took the Cause with you to the Karls or the Feds, well, all the better.

“Zain Keita”—Britva gestured at him with a grin—“vada at tu all dressed in yell. Last raz I vaddad you, tu was nish but a marooner hiding out in Dva. Ahora, you’ve got the run of the Saf!”

“Que are you doing akoy?” Zain asked pointedly.

“Never mind that,” Damietta interrupted. “Que in ferno happened to you?” Zain’s wrist was in a brace and his face was all battered and bruised.

“Mind your biz, devotchka.”

“I thought the guerre tween the Threes and the Vory was off? That we were all on the same page per manyana?”

“We are,” Zain said, avoiding her eyes. “It is. This is something else. Anytao, don’t cambio the subject. Billy sez you were out doing some graff? Are you pazzo? Are you mishoog? Que if you were nicked?”

Damietta scoffed. “The rozzers have ventier things to worry about these dives than a bit of graff.”

Glare intensifying, Zain jerked his neck. “Come on,” he forestalled, “Badreddine wants to palavar. Tu, too,” he nodded at Britva.

Damietta tried to ignore the disquiet in her chest. She had not been expecting Badreddine to be here. He had a dozen safe houses around Fustat berth. As much as she hated to admit it, Zain had a point. The graffiti had been a risk. But then, Damietta had been in a risky mood.

“Tell us a joke,” she demanded of Zain as he led them through the warren of rooms. “Got any nova ones?”

“Right-o, right-o,” he obliged. “A beek comes outta Admin, corpsing his gulliver off and slapping his thighs. Another clerk vadas him and asks, ‘Que’s so funny?’ The beek goes, ‘I just slooshed the funniest joke,’ and then he starts corpsing again. ‘Oh, tell me,’ the clerk says. ‘I could do with a guff.’ ‘Naff off,’ the beek sez. ‘I just sentenced a cove to chet anos for that.’ ”

Damietta and Britva were still laughing as Zain led them into the back room where Badreddine was spinning his webs. He sat behind a comfortable desk smoking a cheroot and talking intently at Tripoli Brown. On the whiteboard behind him, a map of the Safina—routes and secondary routes, plans and backup plans, wheels within wheels. In the corner of the room, Okay stood arms folded. If anything, she looked worse than Zain. Had they been fighting each other?

“Got that, devotchka?” Badreddine asked.

“Got it,” Tripoli affirmed. She gave Damietta an excited grin as she left.

Badreddine leaned back in his chair and regarded the two girls with an exasperated expression. Damietta regarded him right back. She felt like she was back in Academy and had been summoned to stand before the Principal (calma, devotchka, calma. He’s espering for tu to tray yourself).

“We were careful!” she burst out. Badreddine raised an eyebrow. “It’s glimout for rouhs still and the sharps are stretched thin. There was null chance that they were catching us. Nish this raz anytao.”

Damietta winced at the way her voice went down at “this raz.” From the corner of her eye, Damietta saw Okay flex her shoulders and fail to suppress a smirk. There were bruises around her neck like someone had grabbed her, someone big. Britva, for her part, said nothing. She eyed Badreddine dispassionately, arching a skeptical eyebrow. Damietta was proud of her. She knew how hard it was for her to be back in Fustat berth where her family had disowned her, back with Badreddine, who she had a complicated history with (to say the least). Still, she had put that all aside for the sake of tomorrow. Badreddine folded his arms and smiled as if he could read her thoughts (he couldn’t, could he?).

“Relax, devotchka. Tu weren’t nicked and that’s the main thing… although, nex raz, use your gulliver.”

“Think tu there’s gonna be a next raz?” Britva asked.

“Sekina,” Badreddine greeted her with a professional head nod. “Ben venuto. Welcome home.”

“Bona setup you’ve got alay,” she told him. “Molti-bona. You could scheme a guerre from akoy.”

Badreddine snorted at that. “A guerre? Nish, devotchka. A revolta! Are you and Dee prepped for manyana?”

“Vali,” Damietta assured him. “We’re prepped.”

“Bona,” he said, taking a drag on his cheroot. “You do your trav and I’ll do mine. The Nizam won’t cog what hit ’em.”

TWENTY-FOUR Hilal

It’s my turn to cook dinner this week. Over the past few years, every Thursday, one family hosts a communal neighborhood dinner and this week it’s my turn, even though I’m as big as a house. This is the closest thing we get to family dinner on the Saf. Found family. Sometimes I wonder what life will be like when you reach Hurriya. I do worry about you, Heba. You’ll be all alone. No red sisters at your back. Don’t push Amo Raouf away. And look up my descendants’ descendants when you wake up. I’ll teach my children the importance of family and make sure they pass it on. Find my family, Heba. Let them take you in. Take them in yourself.

—MESSAGE FROM FIRST CREW HANIA HILAL TO HER SISTER HEBA (SHIP YEAR 33)

Hilal sat behind her desk, feet on the counter and frown on her pan. “Clerk Lin Wu?” she mused. “What business would a Human Resources clerk have on a Stasis deck battery under-level?”

“Well, isn’t that the question?” Juma said, taking a puff of his pipe. He was sitting in one of the uncomfortable visitors’ chairs, a whole raft of files and reports in front of him. “I’ve got his fingerprints in several locations around that under-level.”

“But not on the device itself.”

“No,” Juma admitted.

“What more can you tell me about this clerk? Background? Political affiliations?”

Juma fussed through his files, finally locating the right one and dropping it in front of her. Hilal opened it and dug in. It was barely two pages long.

“Is this it?” she demanded.

Lin Wu was a handsome gee, although not her usual type. He was Admin through and through, starting out as an apprentice clerk and recently graduating to a junior role in Human Resources.

“Poor grades in Engineering and Mathematics,” Hilal observed. “According to Academy records, not suitable for the technical track.”

“He could have had the device commissioned.”

Hilal narrowed her eyes at Juma and ignored the innocent look he was giving her. “Spill,” she ordered. “I can always tell when you’re holding something back.”

“I’ve been through the crew’s records with a fine-tooth comb, particularly marriage licenses and birth permits. Ziyou berthers are fanatical about announcing new births in the local media. It looks to me like Lin Wu might be connected to the Yan Lei Triad.”

Hilal raised an eyebrow. “The same Yan Lei that Badreddine Bishara is a member of?”

Juma spread his hands. “There are a lot of Wus in that group, but he is the son of Xiao Wu.”

“Who?” Hilal asked.

“No,” Juma said, giving her a straight face. “Wu.”

“Don’t make me come over this desk!”

“Alright, alright,” he said. “It’s a common enough name, but I think this Xiao Wu might be the leader of the Yan Lei—”

“Which would mean Lin Wu is Bishara’s adopted nephew!”

“Yes.”

Hilal had almost decided to believe that the Haraka had nothing to do with any of it, that she had fixated on Bishara and his anti-ancestor group because she needed a case, needed an enemy, and yet here they were again.

“Is he a Harakist?”

Juma took a puff puff puff of his pipe and blew out a cloud of smoke. It smelled of intrigue, secret meetings in illicit hotel rooms, dead drops, and secret code words. “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” he said. “There’s comparatively little information about this clerk. There does seem to be some evidence that— Hilal, someone is trying to get your attention.”

Hilal huffed out a breath. “Alright, see if you can track this joker down. I’d like to have a word with him.”

Hilal came to sitting at the Ezz dinner table, blinking down at Zagazig Ezz who was standing by, platter at the ready.

He asked if you would like some of this fatty macaroni béchamel, Juma informed her. I think you should say yes. You’ve not been consuming enough calories.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Hilal told Zagazig Ezz, shaking her head at the offered platter of pasta bake—whoever had cooked it had gone gaga with the fromage.

Instead, she reached for the pot of molokhiya, heaping spoonful upon spoonful of the tasty green broth onto her fluffy rice. She leaned forward and breathed in the scent of the food, taking her back two hundred years to Alexandria. Zagazig Ezz lamped her appreciatively. They might call themselves Fustatians, but they were just like the Egyptians she remembered, never happier than when they were stuffing you full of food. Technically speaking, the old man was the nominal head of the Ezz family, and the assembled Ezzes had placed her at his right hand—the position of honor.

Hilal found it a bit strange to be sitting in the middle of a family dinner like this, but Deniz Ezz had invited her, and she had no way of refusing, at least not while the old woman looked at her with her own mother’s eyes. She might have moved into an apartment in their complex, but Hilal had been careful not to get embroiled in their lives. Until now, at least.

Anyway, she had an ulterior motive. The case. Always the case. She might have been listening to Hania’s recordings, but this had nothing to do with that. Hilal ignored Juma’s raised eyebrow. Actually, it hadn’t been too bad so far, though a discussion about tomorrow’s strike had been quickly quashed by Seto Deniz, who Hilal surmised was the true power in this family. She tried to remember the last time she found herself at a family dinner. It must’ve been years ago, even if you didn’t count the two centuries she spent on ice.

Incorrect, Juma interrupted. You ate dinner with Hania the night before you went under, remember?

Of course Hilal remembered. It was her last meal. Although, she would hardly describe scarfing kofta and rice from paper containers while sitting at a rickety table outside Kadir’s Kebab on Mars Colony as a “family dinner.”

And why not? Juma demanded. Your entire family was there, and you ate dinner together. How else would you describe it?

A family dinner has to include more than two people.

Are you just making stuff up as you go along?

Hilal ignored her VI and glanced around the table. A crowd of people around a tabletop full to bursting. If only the topic of conversation was a bit more pleasant. Hilal watched impassively as Azbek and Jezzine Ezz hammered their son about his choice of wife, his choice of watch, and various other aspects of his life. Lebanon kept a pleasant smile on his face and his voice calm and even, but Juma was reading extreme stress in his breathing, heart rate, and body language. Hilal watched everybody watch the fight and was reminded, almost viscerally, why she preferred to avoid such occasions at all costs.

“Kattrin Eissa is an unbeliever!” Seto Deniz raged. “Think of your children!”

This is a little bit awkward, Juma opined.

More than a little bit, Hilal answered.

She shook her head and dismissed the thought, instead bringing up the file she had been reading in her virtual space. A Security file on the Yan Lei Triad. Apparently Badreddine Bishara—or should she call him Zhang San?—had been invaluable in ending the last major gang war on the ship. Seven kills. She blinked through the crime scene photos. Shootings. Stabbings. A garroting. This is good work, the killer inside her said. Clean. Efficient. So, Badreddine Bishara was a stone-cold killer and a true believer—a genocidal combination. A criminal would commit violence, whether for profit, revenge, or even respect. But a revolutionary? If you combined politics with that kind of violence, well, it became something else, something worse. It was that exact combination that had destroyed the Earth. It wasn’t the violence. There was always plenty of that to go around. It was the true belief. Violence backed by true belief had no limit.

Even now, Hilal couldn’t be certain. All she had was circumstantial evidence. But she was sick of tripping up over the Haraka, sick of hearing this Bishara’s name and reading his political pamphlets. There was only one way she could find out the truth. She needed to track him down and ask him herself. They’d had no luck coming at Bishara from the Haraka side of things. Maybe they would have more luck approaching him via this Lin Wu and the Triad. And if Bishara wasn’t behind it all? Well, she would still dump his carcass in Detention and let Admin blame him for whatever they wanted while she continued with her investigation. Hilal had a case, and she did not intend to let up now. She tabbed open the forensics folder. Just because she was moving ahead with one lead didn’t mean she could just let the others go. Hilal had pictures of every component of the pinch. Most of it could be printed on demand, and Hilal knew that there were any number of black-market printers operating on the ship, even industrial scale.

Still, some of these components are made from difficult to procure materials, Juma said. Hydrogen plasma? Deuterium?

You can’t buy them from the corner shop, Hilal agreed.

Evra and Tally were supposed to be chasing down that lead, navigating the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Manufacturing to find out if any valuable material was missing. Evra had a twin sister who worked that deck and Hilal was hoping that she would prove useful. She wondered how they were doing. Back on Earth, she could have pinged them to ask directly, but this was the Safina. Hilal would just have to wait and hope the suspense didn’t kill her.

There were several promising avenues of inquiry to follow, and that was not even to mention the real reason she had agreed to come to this family dinner—Lebanon Ezz. The rice and molokhiya were just a bonus. They were just getting the lay of the land in Stasis. But a native guide, like the poor sucker currently being eaten alive at the dinner table, would be key. Lebanon Ezz was going to tell her about all the nefarious dealings on Stasis deck, whether he liked it or not. If he thought the family was giving him a hard time, he hadn’t seen anything yet.

“I am listening to you, Seto,” Lebanon said in an admirably cool tone of voice. “You’re not listening to me.”

Hilal continued making notes, highlighting possible lines of investigation, listing things to check up on later—Ahem—Alright, alright, things for Juma to check up on later, while keeping half an ear on the argument still raging around her. Some part of her longed to close her eyes and seek refuge in her investigation room. To paw through paper files with her own two hands. To lean back in her office chair and put her feet up on the desk and think. Was that pinch only meant to take out power in Stasis deck? And if so, what had gone wrong? And, most importantly, were the remaining colonists in cryostasis still under threat? However, it was hard to ponder those things while Jezzine Ezz opined that all followers of Jesus were surely destined for hellfire. So young Lebanon wanted to marry a Christian. So what? Hilal couldn’t understand what the big deal was. Getting married and producing children seemed an unnecessarily fraught affair on the Safina. But then again, with a two-child limit, she supposed it would have to be complicated. Marriage, motherhood, those were for other people. For her, it was all about the thrill of the chase. The fingers of Hilal’s left hand danced as she typed up an after-action report for Juma, a request for reports on the relationship between the Haraka and Triad and a detailed history of the Yan Lei faction of the Triad, including bios of the major players, and a linguistic and textual analysis of the most recent pamphlets published by Badreddine Bishara, specifically comparing those written before the Shutdown with those written afterward.

Anything else, Juma complained, reading over her shoulder. Want me to tuck you in and read you a bedtime story, too?

Hilal rolled her eyes and shook her head. Juma’s personality had changed. He never would have sassed her like this before, though he had always been a little funny. Had he changed because she had changed? She glanced around to make sure that nobody had noticed her speaking to her VI, only to find that the argument had finally wrapped up.

“Alhamduulillah,” Hilal said as she pushed away her now-empty plate. “What an enjoyable meal! Thank you so much for inviting me.”

Across the table, Juma noticed Damietta suppressing a smirk. Yeah, that girl was a sharp one.

“You’re welcome, Hama,” Jezzine Ezz said.

The younger ones had been calling her Amita or Khala, as the case may be. But Jezzine Ezz, Azbek’s wife, insisted on calling her Hama, mother-in-law. Hilal hated it.

“You’re always welcome here,” Zagazig Ezz agreed in his slippy Fustat-flavored Arabek. He had, noticeably, not taken part in the argument over Lebanon’s prospective nuptials. “We are related by blood through your sister, our many-times-great-grandmother. So far as we’re concerned, you’re one of us. This is where you belong.”

Hilal ignored all the eyes suddenly on her. She ignored the part of her that wanted to repudiate that welcome. To scream that this was not her place, nor her time. To tell Zagazig that she remembered the city he was named after. She’d survived her first on-the-job shooting there. She had put three rounds into the Sharqia Strangler on Martyrs Road, but not before he stabbed the young filly he was with in the liver. Hilal remembered standing over his cooling corpse and watching his blood drip drip drip into the gutter while paramedics worked to save the girl. She remembered thinking that peacetime was not that different to wartime. Instead, she met Zagazig Ezz’s eyes, nothing like her sister Hania’s, and nodded. It was inevitable. Family was a grasping, persevering force. You couldn’t escape it.

“Shukran,” she thanked him. She glanced around the table, knowing what she had to say next. Family was a two-way street, and these Ezzes looked out for each other. “You should all feel free to come to me as well if you need anything. After all, what is family for?”

Hilal watched as Damietta slinked off into the darkness. Damn, she wanted to speak to that girl. She had peeked inside her bedroom and solved a completely different case—Detective Taha was supposed to be handling the graffiti spree. Well, Damietta was in luck. Taha was a hump. Hilal doubted that he would get anywhere near her.

It seems your little descendant has secrets, Juma opined.

Yeah, I wonder what else she’s been hiding?

Hilal put that thought on the backburner. For now, she had bigger fish to fry, namely Lebanon Ezz. He was standing with his back to her in the middle of the Ezz compound’s rec area blowing a colorful spout of smoke out of his mouth.

“Oi, don’t you know there’s a smoking ban on?” she chided. He turned and coughed at her. “We need to talk.”

“Huh?” he squeaked.

“Come on,” Hilal directed, “this way.”

She marched to the ground-floor apartment she had taken over, not looking to see if Lebanon followed. Inside, she invited him to sit. She was just glad she had cleaned up a bit.

“Wha-how can I help?” Lebanon asked.

“You’ve heard about my investigation down in Stasis?” she asked. Lebanon nodded but kept his mouth shut. Polite and smart. A dangerous combination. “What have you heard?”

“Rumor is you’re investigating illegal power siphoning,” he said. She could hear from his voice what he felt about that.

“Power is life,” Hilal tried. It was an old Safina saying, apparently. “Stealing power is murder.”

“True and true,” Lebanon agreed, “but given the situation, there might be more important things for Security to focus on.”

“Unhook your ears, descendant mine, and listen to this.”

Hilal told him everything she knew about the Shutdown. The pinch. The whole enchilada.

“Ya Allah,” Lebanon said, stunned.

“You said that already.”

“But I mean… My God!” he exclaimed again. Hilal let him sit with this new information. He would be useless to her until he could wrap his mind around it. “Was it… did someone try to kill us?”

The Safina had seen its share of death cults in the past. People who believed that humanity was doomed and should be destroyed. The Haraka, actually, could trace some of its philosophy back to those doomsday cults. Hilal had done her research and it was clear just how perilous survival was out here in the deep dark. The ship had come close to total destruction during the Disaccord, as the First Crew warred with each other over whether to return to Earth or continue on to Hurriya. In some ways, the Compact had saved the ship even as it doomed the Earth.

“I don’t know.” Hilal told him the truth. “I have my suspicions, but I need your help to confirm them.”

“My help?” Lebanon squeaked. “How can I help?”

“You can tell me the truth about what’s happening on Stasis deck,” she said. “Especially, you can tell me what the Triad have been up to there.”

Hilal questioned Lebanon for the better part of an hour. He told her everything he knew. She was letting it all percolate in the back of her mind, seeing what patterns her subconscious and Juma came up with. In the meantime, she was back on Stasis deck, finishing off a nice cup of brown in Groppi’s while she waited for Evra to arrive.

Ping.

Hilal turned to find Elyas Serap approaching her corner table, trailed by Kena Medano. She gulped as she met the taller woman’s eyes. Both were dressed in crew gray, but Medano had somehow scrounged up a woolen green khirqah trimmed and cuffed with an orange hem to wear over that utilitarian shade. Hilal hid a smile. She remembered how Ken converted all of Bet troop to Sufism after the Battle of Drina, and how the other sisters had mocked them for it and refused to connect for weeks until they promised they would keep their religious bleating to themselves. Wasn’t it bad enough to be an indentured soldier? Why cleave to the religion of the Empire that had taken you away from your home and family? Medano hadn’t even been born a Muslim. She was a revert. Her family was originally from Buenos Aires.

“Salam alaikum,” Serap greeted her cheerfully, one hand extended, as if he actually expected Hilal to trade grips with him. “Congratulations on your promotion, Lieutenant Hilal.”

“Heba,” Medano rasped in her broken voice. “Been a while.”

In her ear, Juma informed her just how long it had been since any red sister in general—and this one in particular—had spoken to her. A long, long time. Hilal ignored him.

“Kena, I’m glad to see you’re still alive,” she said, giving her the up and down.

Medano pinged her again and this time, after a brief consultation with Juma, Hilal accepted.

Back in the fold, am I? I hope you’re not expecting a thank-you for deigning to talk to me again.

She felt Medano shrug through their mutual connection. I didn’t make the rules, Heba. You knew what leaving us meant. After what happened to Alif troop, we didn’t begrudge you. I was proud to hear that you had made it out. That one of ours was out there in the heart of the Empire, kicking a—— and taking names.

Medano sent Hilal an echo of that feeling, pride and regret all mixed up, and at its center, a dark knot of pity and relief, because if the Network was going to sacrifice an entire troop, she could only be glad that it wasn’t hers. At least she wasn’t the last sister standing. Nobody wanted to be the last. Hilal huffed out a breath. She had locked up all the worst memories from that time nice and tight. She didn’t need them escaping and running loose in her mind right now.

Easy, Hilal. Easy, Juma soothed her. You’ve got this.

What changed? Hilal asked, proud that her thoughts didn’t waver.

The world ended, Medano answered simply. And we’re the last two sisters left standing.

Hilal sent her back a sense of grim acknowledgment. It was true. Everything had changed. What did the Network Empire’s old rules and taboos matter now on this strange city-ship? She glanced beside Medano and raised a metaphoric eyebrow at Elyas Serap. She could feel the connection between them and was doing her best to keep away from it. Even connected minimally like this, they could exchange information almost instantaneously. The Safina might have been divided according to language, but all red sisters knew that there was a place both before it and beyond it.

Elyas Serap? Hilal sent her scoff through loud and clear. What are you doing with this empty suit, Ken? You’ve heard the rumors about Elyas Serap, right?

Hilal felt her sister raise a warning finger. I don’t care about any of that, Medano countered. We need him.

Hilal could feel the particular timbre of that we reach out and claim her. Medano wasn’t just talking about the last two red sisters. She was talking about all the reawakened colonists.

And what do “we” need him for? she asked.

To organize.

To organize what? Hilal asked pointedly.

Medano opened herself wider, allowing Hilal to see her traps, her plans of attack. Step one: Unite the so-called ancestors and negotiate with Administration regarding their future on this strange city-ship. It was nothing that Hilal hadn’t done already. Using Juma as a ballast, Hilal carefully held herself back from that open connection, ignoring Medano’s muted surprise. She could feel Medano reaching out for her, already connected mind-to-mind-to-mind with all the other colonists on this deck. Hilal turned away, even as she longed to dive in.

Interesting, Hilal said, noncommittal. Well, it was about time they started getting organized. It didn’t look like the Shutdown was going to end anytime soon, and maybe they could help. It was one of the problems of being subjects of the Network Empire. None of them were used to taking charge. So, you’re just using him?

No choice, Medano admitted. The others wouldn’t follow me. They were scared of her, of course. Hilal knew that feeling. The wolf fang under her eye, a twin to the one on Medano’s scarred pan, had been a source of fear and fascination to denizens of the Network. You could leave the modded infantry, but it never left you.

The scientists hate his guts.

True. But he’s one of them. They understand him. They’ll follow his lead. You’ve already negotiated your terms. Talk to me about this Under-Captain Reza. Any advice?

Hilal mulled for a second, and then had Juma package together everything they had learned about the man. Personal information. Psychological analysis. Body language dictionary. She even threw in the same for Captain Amer, just in case. Why not make sure that her sister had the strongest hand possible when dealing with Admin?

Anything else? Hilal asked.

One last thing. People are beginning to talk, Heba. You’ve been avoiding the rest of us. You haven’t even been attending Friday prayers.

I’ve been busy.

Working a case?

What else?

What is it?

Classified, Hilal bit off, closing her side of the connection even more.

The Shutdown?

Classified!

Hilal severed the connection, fearing what Medano might be able to glean. Now that she had a case, she was loath to relinquish any part of it, even to her once-again sister. She came rushing back into the real. Around her, the coffee shop roared to life. Serap was still standing, hand out and smile plastered on his face.

“Elyas.” Hilal stood up and traded grips with him. “It’s good to see you.”

Medano loomed behind him, an impassive look on her pan, but Hilal could read the amusement in her eyes.

“Kena.” She nodded at her. “Why don’t you both join me for a cuppa?”

The three of them sat around, sipping their drinks and discussing life on this mad city-ship.

“Are you going to be on the front lines tomorrow?” Serap asked.

“The front lines?” Hilal scoffed and shared a look with Medano. “No, it’s not my job to make sure that people get to work on time.”

Hilal shook her head. She had passed by Security Main earlier that day, just to check in, and had seen the troopers preparing. It seemed like it was going to be a major operation. Security was expecting protests in at least half a dozen berths, including Fustat. And even though they had received official orders to keep things as calm as possible, it did not always translate onto the ground. Hilal knew that as well as anybody. These troopers were ripe to blow a fuse. One of their own had been killed. Hilal had a bad feeling that things were about to spin out of control. Not that she could do anything about it now. She had other priorities.

They were discussing just how violently and comprehensively the Network Empire would have put down a protest like that when Juma hurtled into Hilal’s mind.

I’ve got a line on Wu, he said. He just checked into Detention.

VENTI-CHINK Britva

Then the Saf will be for the common coves, and the sounds of merriment will reach the farthest decks. Ah! Come! Coves of every berth, how can you nish be roused?

—TRANSLATION OF THE KOMMUNIST MANIFESTO

Britva was just on the other side of sleep when someone jumped on her bed. She had a hand on the grip of her trusty razor—the britva she was monikered after—when she realized that it was only Damieska, bouncing up and down, talking a mile a minute.

“Wakeup. Wakeupwakeupwakeup. Today’s the dive. Zero Dive. Protest Dive. Nish the fin. But the beginning of the fin. Wake up, Brit! Esta’s the dive that we bring the Nizam alay.”

Britva groaned and tried to open her eyes. It felt like she had just closed them. It had taken her ages to get into Tagammu Twelve last night. Damieska and her Haraka mates had doubtless spent a restful night in Badreddine’s safe house, going to sleep with full bellies and dreams of revolution, but she simply couldn’t be herself there. Not with Badreddine watching her out of judging eyes and Okay and Zain needling her with every breath. She felt as if she had regressed into an older version of herself. Morose Sekina Samatar, hiding who she was and what she believed, creeping around Fustat berth full of self-loathing. Britva couldn’t stand that devotchka. No, she wasn’t some lost girl trying to find a place anymore. She knew exacto who she was and donde her place ahora. She was Britva the Karla. A souldat of the revolta. And she had revolutionary biz of her own to tend to.

So, instead of dreaming the drudge away she had traipsed round and round F-berth till it was evening, making sure all the supplies were ready. And when she finally had enough rebreathers—the krovvy Nizam and their bootlicking redjackets were like to lob some crying gas at ’em manyana—she stopped at Baybars Bastet’s hole in the wall coffee shop to stash them. Baybars was an old Ishtiraki who had served ten years in Detention for his role in the Bread Riots when he was just a malchick. Since then, he had kept the faith, so it was a quick, “salve tovarish,” and she was in. The hammer and sickle tattooed on her wrist was better than crew ID. Crew IDs could be faked. Detention ink was forever.

“What can the People’s Front of Fustat do for you?” he asked in his heavy Fustatian Arabek. As an Arabek language supremacist, there was no way that he would stoop to speaking Nupol.

“The People’s Front of Fustat? I thought you were the Fustatian People’s Front.”

Her pristine Arabek accent received a raised eyebrow from Bastet—Que, mucker, never slooshed a devotchka speaking the Prophet’s Arabek before?—but she let it slide, instead rolling her eyes. The damned Ishtirak could never get their shit together, always splitting up and joining back together, a dizzying carousel of groups and subgroups. They should just join the Kommunists and be done with it. There was only odin true lingua and that was Nupol, the lingua of the underground.

“Away with you!” Baybars said. “The Fustatian People’s Front couldn’t organize a stupor in Brewery. Splitters!” he dismissed them. “Now, what can the PFF do for you, Karla?”

“I want to store these here for tomorrow,” she said, pointing a finger at her bag of rebreathers. “Problem?”

“It’s no problem,” he assured her. “We’re all on the same side, aren’t we?”

Britva narrowed her eyes and let the feeling pass. All on the same side? Wouldn’t that be bona.

And now Damieska was jumping up and down on her bed like it was an Academy sleepover.

“Keep that racket down!” one of the other dosshouse residents shouted through the wall in muzzy Arabek.

Britva forced her eyelids open and checked the time on her tab, doing her best to ignore Damieska’s bouncing.

“Did you sloosh what I sed?” the devotchka demanded.

Britva rubbed her eyes and stretched, trying to work the kinks out of her neck. Transient Accommodation was no way to live. Back on Novy Oblast, she lived in a small Kommunalka, a communal apartment. It was full of life and komrades, people who cared about what you cared about. There was always someone to head to the stolovaya with or help with chores. But since the Shutdown, she had been living out of this small pod. The Kommunist Central Committee had dispatched envoys to all the berths, and Britva had been assigned her old stomping grounds. They knew an opportunity when they saw one, and Britva was determined not to let them down. Captain Amer and his Nizam were teetering. It was past time for a crew revolution. Despite that excitement, she also felt a creeping dread. Living like this in TransAcc reminded her of when her family cast her out. Of course, she had spent more recent times in this pod with Damieska. Those were much better memories.

“Da, da, I hear you, Damieska,” Britva agreed. She hooked an arm around the girl’s leg and brought her crashing down. Then, she was on top of her, nose to nose. “You savvy that I’m nish a mattin person, vali?”

“Vali. And you savvy that I am,” the devotchka sassed her. “Ahora, lemme up. I’ve brought your brekkie.” Britva released her. Breakfast was the magic word. She sat cross-legged on the bunk and watched as Damieska reached behind her to the small in-built cupboard, pulling out a package. “Akoy,” she said, dramatically opening the wrapping paper to reveal a paper tray of sandwiches. “I cog your nish yourself till you’ve had your mange.”

Gritty Fustat baladi bread stuffed with ful medames and taamiya! Vera tradish!

“Mmmm,” Britva said. “Nice one!”

“Bil hanna wal shiffa,” Damieska said in her posh Arabek accent.

Britva raised an ironic eyebrow. “Praygo don’t tell that you’re specting an ‘Allah Yihanneek’ daus from moi?”

Leaving behind Fustat’s endless Allahs this and Allahs that had been the only good thing about getting arrested and sent to Detention. Actually, scratch that, leaving Badreddine and the Haraka behind was a close second. The Haraka was a single-issue teenagers’ gang crossed with a Triad criminal group. Neither of those things had any future on this ship. When the crew revolution came—as it surely would—the new ship authorities would deal with them both much more efficiently than the krovvy Nizam. It wasn’t even that Britva disagreed with the Haraka assessment of the ancestors—they were a danger, especially now—and many of the Karla youngers had Harakist sympathies. But the best thing about Kommunism was that it was a cure-all. A Kommunist Safina would put them to good use, as it would every member of the crew.

Damieska chuckled and said, “I suppose nish.”

Britva grabbed one of the taamiya sandwiches and bit down. Taamiya was a kind of Fustatian falafel, except instead of chickpeas it was made with fava beans and parsley. These taamiyas, however, seemed to be curiously light in color. She watched as Damieska ate one of the ful sandwiches, stuffed with stewed fava beans, seasoned and garnished with whatever was on hand. Britva idly peeked inside one, expecting to see tomatoes and peppers at least. But it looked like Admin rationing was affecting the ful, too. Well, that was good news for the revolution. If you wanted Fustat berth to revolt, all you needed to do was ration their ful.

After Britva cleared away the leftovers and made her bed, the two girls strolled out of the TransAcc hand in hand. Tagammu Twelve’s corridors were full of crew, her type of crew. Factory and Fisheries. Recycling and Agriculture. The Safina’s proletariat. However, because it was F-berth, most of these proles had fallen into the Feda’ey trap, fed a steady diet of Arabek language supremacy and religious fundamentalism. It wasn’t their fault, though. They were victims of the Nizam as much as anyone. So, even if Britva considered them her coves, it didn’t necessarily mean that they were happy to see her and Damietta holding hands as they strolled through the Tag. Britva felt Damieska wilt under the combined weight of their gaze. Britva met it head on, glaring to see if anyone would dare to say a word to their faces. She would free all this damned crew, whether they liked it or nish.

Britva drew Damieska to a halt in a quiet corner overlooking the Security checkpoint out of the Tagammu. The redjackets were still manning it. For now, at least.

“Tu bona?”

“I’m alright,” Damieska rasped. “Que about tu? Tu prepped?”

“I was born ready, devotchka. They better be ready for us.”

Britva found herself palavering in a mix of Nupol and Arabek when she was with Damieska. She hadn’t spoken Arabek for years, avoided it as much as possible. But Damieska had opened a door she thought forever shut. She was even dreaming in Arabek again. Britva eyed Damieska carefully. This devotchka was still living under the weight of family expectation, a killer on the Safina. There was a whole brood of Ezzes who wanted—no, needed—Damieska to be someone she could never be. She couldn’t help but wonder if all this troublemaking—joining the Haraka, the graff, all of it—was nothing but a way to avoid the truth, that she had no future on this berth. That if she wanted to be free, truly free, then she needed to leave it far behind. The Karls did not care about family. They cared about class solidarity. Damietta was an artist. This was her true home. Britva had tried to broach the subject a few times, but each time Damieska shut her down. The girl had her own role to play and in many ways it was the most important part of the plan. She would have loved to take credit for it, but it was Badreddine’s idea, the bastard!

Britva could feel the tension in Damieska’s body. She put her arms around her and leaned in for a lingering kiss. Damieska trembled against her.

“You’ve got this!” Britva told her, squeezing her fingers. “Don’t doubt yourself, habibti!”

“I won’t let you down,” Damieska vowed.

“No,” she told her forcefully. “Don’t let yourself down!” Britva gave her fingers one last squeeze and then shrugged her off. She put up the hood of her too-large hoodie and pocked her rooks. “I’ll vada you in the Square. Don’t be tardi!”

Then Britva was walking toward the checkpoint. She didn’t look back at Damieska, though she badly wanted to.

Britva would never forget walking past Security into Cleopatra Square. There was already a load of redjackets standing guard, armor on, helmets up. You couldn’t even see their faces and, looking closer, she noticed that many of them had removed their name tags and crew ID numbers from their uniforms. It was clear, however, that Security had stripped their checkpoints bare to deploy this many of them around the Square. That was good, the first part of the plan.

As Britva walked around the Square on her solo, just like any other F-berther, she could feel her fingertips tingling with excitement. This was the dive they had all been dreaming of. It was just like the devotchka said, Zero Day. Protest Day. Nish the fin, but the beginning of the fin. She stumbled on Billy Kohli, Damieska’s bencove, leaning against the Empty Plinth, talking with Gammal Wahba, Feda’ey extraordinaire.

“Salve, tovarish,” she greeted Billy, offering him a closed fist to spud.

Britva didn’t bother offering Gammal the same. He was a krovvy Fed, a devout kneeler whose head was always full-up of God. He wouldn’t stoop to spud fists with the likes of her, anyway. A Karla like her was double damned in the eyes of the Feds, a devotchka and a pagana both. Britva was just glad that he wasn’t vomiting any verses from his good book. It was the last thing she needed today.

“Salve,” Billy responded, but Britva could sense the reserve in him. She didn’t know if it was because she had abandoned the Haraka—a lot of the Harakists were sore about that—or for some other reason.

And now both were giving her the brutta glazzies. Britva smiled and ignored it. Billy, she could handle. She figured he was probably half in love with Damieska and verdy-glazzed with jelly. Well, tough mazel, matey, she thought to herself, Damieska is not interested in the likes of tu, and certainly not like that. Britva could swing both ways, but she had the sense that Damieska was strictly a devotchka-loving devotchka. She eyed Gammal Wahba obliquely. He was a much bigger problem, and not just for her. Gammal was an up-and-comer among the Feds, a real contender. The Bog-lovers had flat-out refused to join their Down Tools, but Gammal managed to convince his youngers to come out to Cleopatra Square anyway. That was power. It was power they needed, but Britva could not fully trust him. They might be on the same side per ahora—the enemy of my enemy is my bencove—but she knew that it would be a different story manyana. The Feds and the Karls had one thing in common: no compromise.

“You’re pesto ahora,” she told Billy, but canted her head to include Gammal in the conversation.

“The pesto chickel catches the vorm,” Billy answered in a snide tone of voz.

“Didn’t spect to vada you akoy at all,” Britva shrugged. “I cogged you would be with our devotchka.”

The boy shot her the shifty glazzies. “I was just checking in with Gammal. I’m bout to split.”

“So split,” she told him. “Damieska might deen you.” Britva didn’t believe that for a second, but she had promised Damieska that she would give her bencoves a chance. She watched as Billy walked away, a mar on his eek, and then turned her attention back to Gammal. “Que about tu? Are tu prepped?”

“I am indeed ready, if that’s what you are asking,” he answered in his classical Arabek.

“And your coves?” Britva would nish stoop to speaking Arabek with him. Least not when he was giving her the brutta glazz.

“My people stand ready.”

“Bona,” she told him. “Molti-bona. See Baybars Bastet if any of your coves deen rebreathers or other gear. Things might start lenta but don’t be rasken if Sec rush in and try to tolchock the lot of us.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Gammal said. “Allah is on our side. How can we fail?”

“Bona,” she said. “Cos for us, the revolta starts akoy.”

“Al-Taqim Yureed Islah Al-Nizam,” the chant reverberated across downtown Fustat, louder and louder. The crew demands Admin reform.

It was not a bad turnout, Britva thought as she stood in the middle of Cleopatra Square, surrounded by the small knot of Kommunistas who made Fustat berth their home. The Haraka youngers, too, were making their presence felt. Tripoli Brown. Aswad Black. That whole gang from Tag Dva. Britva had been trying to propagate Kommunist thinking among them. The Haraka was all well and good for teenage posturing, but there was a whole ship full of problems out there and obsessing over the ancestors was not a solution for any of them. So far as Britva was concerned, Selin Devrim had been a Karla in spirit, a pre-Kommunist. She would have joined their Cause in the end if the krovvy Nizam hadn’t spaced her first. Still, these Harakist youngers were fighters. Badreddine had not domesticated them. When the time came to defend the Square, they would be worth their weight in water. No, not a bad turnout at all, Britva mused to herself.

The Down Tools was taking place simultaneously across all the berths. There were protesters like this everywhere. The redjackets almost certainly had orders to disperse the protesters, come what may. There were some berths where that would absolutely happen. Franjabad. Sehrimiz. Miyako. What few crew there who dared to stick their heads up would soon be hammered down by the redjackets. And even that was part of the plan. Then, the protest—the real protest, not this one-hour joke of a Down Tools—would proceed. In Koutobia and Novy Oblast. Shalamar and Aliyet. Heck, Ziyou was in a perennial state of Down Tools. That left a few berths in the balance. Damask. Fustat. Malacca. Linda Cidade. If the protesters could get a foothold here, the rest of the Safina would surely follow.

“Al-Taqim Yureed Islah Al-Nizam!”

Fustat was a curious berth. It didn’t really belong to any single coven. The Feda’eyes had power here, to be sure. But so, too, Badreddine’s Haraka. As for the Kommunists, the Ishtiraki, and the rest, they were effectively sidelined, which explained why Britva was here. The Central Committee wanted operatives on the ground in Cleopatra Square. Operatives who could speak the lingua. Operatives who knew Badreddine Bishara and his tricks and could be counted on to see through them. Operatives who could, quietly, without seeming to, nudge events along their correct path. It didn’t much matter if those operatives hated this fucking berth and most of the people in it. Operatives were expected to sacrifice for the greater good.

“Al-Taqim Yureed Islah Al-Nizam.”

Britva eyed the thin line of red in front of her. The protesters had split up to maintain a presence at every entrance, so the redjackets were forced to do the same. She looked over her shoulder at the Fed youngers standing outside of Museum, chanting their hearts out. A trickle that could eventually become a flood. Sprinkled liberally among the various groups present were the Ishtiraki coves who had been radicalized by Devrim’s Rebellion, the Green Intifada, and the Bread Riots. They had been turning up to these same protests for the past fifty years. While Britva respected their commitment, their endurance, it was time for the new gen to take a turn.

“Al-Taqim Yureed Islah Al-Nizam.”

The rest were regular coves, not members of any covens. They were here for their own reasons. Some were look-ins, on their tao to Fabrica or Granja for their next watch or home from their last one. There were the braves, the peeved and pissed-off, holding up pictures of their lovelies and banners declaring, “We are all Eissa Klein,” and “Remember Lena,” and “Agriculture Never Forgets.” The names of those killed in the recent A-deck riot were slowly being leaked. Eissa Klein. Gamal Abdeen. Lena Sedra. Louis Girgis. Most of that drudge had been from F-berth, and so naturally it was their friends and fam that were coming out to remind the rest of the crew just how Sec dealt with those who dared to stand up, even for a second. Nobody had even tried to organize them, just told them where and when to show up and akoy they were. Britva knew they would be ready to stay in Cleopatra until the ship went dark. They were here for justice. They would not leave without it. Britva glanced across the redjacket lines at the crew standing around, observing, but too scared to join in. She looked up at the buildings overlooking the square, the balconies full of ordinary crew, watching on. They were dry and desperate kindling. All they needed was a spark.

“Al-Taqim Yureed Islah Al-Nizam.”

Those ten syllables had lodged themselves in the back of Britva’s head, a backbeat that infused all her thoughts. Al-Taqim Yureed. The crew demand. Then, a breaking caesura, an infinitesimal moment of silence as hundreds of lungs inhaled the same breath before the Islah Al-Nizam. Administration reform. Britva loved that moment of weightlessness, her lone voice joining in with all the others to produce something bigger. There was a similar Rus chant popular in Oblast. Peremen! Trebuyut nashi serdtsa. Changes! Our hearts demand changes! Peremen! Trebuyut nashi glaza. Changes! Our eyes demand changes! If she was there ahora, she would be leading that choir. But like the old saying goes, quando in F-berth, you skite on the Nizam in Arabek.

“Al-Taqim Yureed Islah Al-Nizam.”

It was just a hundred or so coves chanting now, enough that Sec could afford to overlook them. But those numbers would grow. Britva eyed the silent and standing rozzers in front of them over the top of her rebreather. They had obviously been ordered to let the protesters protest. Per ahora, leastways. What choice did the redjackets have? It would look bad to come down on them like a ton of bricks. Media was out in full. They had also spent the last few weeks doing nothing, bored and trapped in their berths. Reporting on a protest would be a nice change of pace. The Down Tools had to go ahead, there was too much momentum to stop it, but the Nizam had only agreed to one hour. As for what would happen when that hour was up? Well, that was all still to come. If Captain Amer ordered his Security dogs to oust them, it would create a second wave of protests against Security violence. For now, the redjackets hadn’t even got their shock sticks out. Yeah, Britva thought with razors in her mind, that wouldn’t last.

“Al-Taqim Yureed Islah Al-Nizam.”

In her mind, she changed Islah to Isqat. Not reform. Bring down.

Time was running out. Britva glanced around Cleopatra Square. A phalanx of hulking redjackets, oppressive in their uniformity, towered over a wall of kneeling protesters. The protesters, crew from every berth and deck, were trying to get away, but to no avail. The faceless redjackets had them corralled.

“The devotchka has a gift,” Tripoli Brown admitted with a shudder as she eyed Damieska’s latest graff.

Britva had to agree. Her mural was like something out of a nightmare. O my sisters, the red the devotchka mixed up really popped. Blood red. Emergency red. The big, rounded D tagged in strategic places stood out against the background, Damieska’s personal tag. It had adorned all kinds of subversive graffiti in recent months and now people were beginning to take note. A score of reporters had already taken pics and vid of the mural. Britva wouldn’t be surprised to see copycat graffiti go up in the other berths by the end of watch. She had already heard some people talking about D, speculating about who he was (of course, they assumed “he”). Britva made a mental note to remind Damieska not to let anyone know the graffiti was hers. Well, nish till they were victoria! She watched the other protesters eyed the art warily, wondering if it depicted their own fate. It sparked something in them. Not simple anger, but the righteousness of the wronged.

“Donde’s your devotchka?” Tripoli asked, tapping impatiently at her wrist. “She shoulda been akoy ahora.”

“Nanti fash,” Britva answered. “She’ll be akoy.”

They were approaching the moment of truth. Badreddine Bishara, the conniving bastard, had come up with a good plan. Getting Media onside had been his idea. Even if the Down Tools failed, ended in shield and shock stick, the larger plan could still succeed. That was Badreddine’s genius. He always found a way to win. Britva cast her mind to what must be happening in Detention right now, right this second, and crossed her fingers. If this worked, it would be a major blow against Admin and their Security dogs. If this worked, it would change everything. Peremen! But where was Damieska? Strictly speaking, she should have been here already. It was an operation timed to the second and Damieska was late. Britva stood on her tiptoes and cast her eyes beyond the wall of hulking redjackets that ringed Cleopatra Square. They had been standing silently, shields out, radiating menace for the better part of an hour. The Karls around her, and the Ishtirak around them, knew better than to engage. They were under strict orders. No talking with Security. No insulting them. Especially no throwing things. There was to be no violence at this Down Tools.

“About raz!” Tripoli said.

The chants broke into a rising chatter. Britva watched, dry-mouthed, as Damieska marched toward her, leading a breaking wave of Academy white. She knew she could count on her!

Britva watched as the redjackets guarding the entrance to the square quickly organized themselves into a double line, half facing the protesters, the other half facing Damieska’s reinforcements. Oh yes, Britva thought drolly, very efficient. She grinned behind her mask. Security’s line morphed from an impenetrable shield wall to something far more manageable. Everything was going according to plan. Now, all Damieska and her friends had to do was cross. More importantly, they had to do so while the rest of the ship watched. This was Badreddine’s plan, why all the other covens needed him and his Haraka. The watches tried downing tools before. The berths tried occupying squares before. It never worked. But if you got Academy onside and the youngers involved, anything was possible. This time, Britva believed things would be different.

Through Security’s double lines, she clocked Damieska canting her head, trying to figure out where she was. Britva shuffled through bodies to the front of the line and threw back her hoodie, exposing her hair. She waved, jumping up and down, exclaiming, “Here I am!”

Behind her, around her, crew did the same. A new chant began. “Join us. Join us. Join us.”

Britva lent her voice, let that chant become her prayers. “Join us!”

TWENTY-SIX Hilal

It’s a girl. We named her Heba, after you. I’m sitting here on Medical deck, holding this baby to my breast and trying not to worry about what is happening on the ship. Captain Yavuz was killed earlier this week. The crew is in an uproar. I don’t know what’s going to happen, Heba. Ha! I guess I could be addressing this to either of you. Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen, Hebas, but I remember what my Amo Raouf used to say. “Do your best each day and don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself.”

—MESSAGE FROM FIRST CREW HANIA HILAL TO HER SISTER HEBA (SHIP YEAR 34)

Clerk Lin Wu?” Evra frowned. “What the hell would an Admin clerk be doing on a Stasis level underdeck?”

“Well,” Hilal said, “isn’t that the question.”

She closed her eyes and ignored the pounding in her head. Connecting with a red sister was not like anything else, and Hilal was out of practice. She instructed Juma to numb the pain and focused her attention on Evra. The two detectives were standing on a deserted platform in Stasis Summit Station, waiting for the link up to Manufacturing deck. Both had removed their red Security armbands. There was a strange atmosphere in the air. Half the crew were on strike, corralled in the berths, leaving decks like this one strangely quiet. Ever since Hilal woke up, she had been surrounded by a crew in a state of ceaseless work. Now, standing on the virtually empty link platform, Hilal felt like she was in the eye of the storm. If Evra wasn’t standing next to her, she could almost have believed that she was the last person on the ship.

Don’t forget to ask her about the Triad, Juma reminded. Of course, she was never really alone.

Hilal was eager to get Evra’s take on their new prime suspect. Juma might have hacked the ship, but there was only so much information stored in files. And that information was only as useful as your understanding of it. Nothing could beat local knowledge. There was one thing bothering Hilal about Wu, and she thought Evra might have an answer.

“Do you know him?” Hilal probed.

“Wu? There are probably more than a dozen Admins with that surname. I can’t say that I’ve ever crossed paths with this one.”

“I think he might be connected to Badreddine Bishara.”

“Connected how?”

“A nephew.”

Evra frowned, considering. “You think this clerk is one of Xiao Wu’s sons?”

Hilal grinned at her partner. She was glad to see that Evra was keeping up. “Well, that’s one Wu you’ve heard of.”

Evra raised an eyebrow. “Leader of the Yan Lei? Yeah, Hilal, you might say that I’ve heard of him. We should check our crew files. Trace this Lin Wu’s genealogy.”

Genealogy was big business on the Safina. Administration would not approve a birth permit without checking back at least three generations.

“Already done,” Hilal said. “Xiao Wu is listed as his father, but—”

“It’s a common enough name,” Evra acknowledged.

“Explain this to me,” Hilal asked. “How is it that a Triad could join Administration?”

Juma had been through the ship’s standing orders with a fine-tooth comb. It seemed like no group was specifically outlawed on the Safina. Not the Triad or the Gokudo or the Vory. Not even the Haraka. The authorities might make examples of their members, arrest and imprison them, even space them for their crimes, but there was a curious lack of group proscription. In the Network Empire, the only organization you were allowed to join was the Network Empire itself.

Evra eyed Hilal carefully. “I never understood you ancestors before. I still don’t. But working this case with you has opened my eyes about the differences between your world and our ship.”

“Such as?”

“On Earth, part of your job was to stop criminals?”

“Stop them. Punish them. Investigate their crimes.” Hilal shrugged. Strange as it might sound, she hadn’t found life in the Jandarma that much different from life in the Blackcaps. She worked her cases and kept her head down.

“Well,” Evra said, “it’s a bit more complicated on the Safina.”

Hilal cocked an eyebrow. “Do tell, partner.”

“Our ship is a closed system. In your time, it was your job to investigate crime and punish offenders. But wasn’t that part of a broader objective to eradicate crime? To destroy organized crime groups, imprison or kill gangsters, pimps, drug pushers, and thieves?” Evra waited for Hilal’s cautious nod. “Well, that is not Security’s ultimate objective.”

“Then what is?”

“Security has the same objective as every other watch on this ship, Hilal—to keep the Safina running. There will always be a portion of the crew attracted to illegal endeavors. Drugs. Gambling. Prostitution. And there will always be a portion of the crew prepared to cater to those vices. Our job isn’t to destroy the Triad in Z-berth, the Gokudo in Miyako, or the Vory in Novy Oblast. It wouldn’t be that difficult to round them up and space them all. But they’re a vital parallel system.” Hilal opened her mouth, but Evra forestalled her. “Security’s job is to police them. Arrest and imprison them if they go beyond certain limits. No gang wars. No murdering civilians. No flooding Factory with cheap drugs so that too many crew start failing to turn up to watch on time. No kidnapping nice crew girls and getting them hooked on vell and turning tricks for you. There’s a line, of course. But so long as they don’t cross that line? Admin and Security’s philosophy is live and let live.”

Hilal blinked, trying to wrap her mind around it. She thought of herself as a soldier. Even after she had been discharged and joined the Jandarma, she saw it as just enlisting in a new war.

“Of course,” Evra added, “that’s just for the criminals. For the political groups that want to overthrow Admin? Well, it’s no mercy for the likes of them.”

Hilal was still lost in thought when a half-empty hyperlink pulled onto the platform. Evra nodded to an empty row of seats and sat down. After a moment, Hilal did the same. Inside her mind, Juma poked her.

“You still didn’t answer my question,” Hilal said. “How can this Admin be a Triad?”

Evra blew out a breath. “Well, the Triad are different than the Vory and Gokudo. For one thing, their members don’t tattoo proof of their membership on their bodies. Given that they’re as much a political faction as a criminal organization, I’m sure Human Resources is doing everything it can to keep them out of Admin, but it’s not easy. I know that they’ve got members in practically all the watches, so it wouldn’t surprise me if that extends to Admin.”

“Political?” Hilal frowned. “Political how?”

“They’re Canto language supremacists, of course.”

Hilal shook her head. Just when she thought she was getting to grips with life on this cockamamie city-ship, Evra went and said something like that.

Exiting the station at Manufacturing Hub, Hilal and Evra were greeted by a single shabby line of Security red.

“What’s cooking, fellas?” Hilal greeted them.

The troopers were a veritable hotbed of rumor and gossip. Had Hilal heard that Under-Captain Reza ordered most of the checkpoints cleared in order to reinforce the berths? Did Evra know that Command had, as usual, f——ed up, since there was a protest going on right here, right now on Factory deck?

“What do you mean ‘right here, right now’?” Hilal demanded.

Corporal Victory Kamunda shrugged and reluctantly met Hilal’s gaze. He was the trooper they had sent to guard the pinch the other day, not that he knew what it was, exactly.

“The manufactors on watch have downed tools along with the rest of them,” he said. “God knows what we’re supposed to do if they don’t pick them up again when this hour is over.”

Hilal heard the protesters long before she saw them. The Down Tools was supposed to be confined to the berths. The idea was to let the crew protest as much as they liked where they lived, but to keep it away from the vital decks. There was some unspoken rule about keeping politics off the decks. Well, it seemed that someone had shattered that rule and was now dancing on its broken shards. Walking out onto the deck, the two detectives were confronted by a sea of Factory blue waving their arms and chanting their lungs out.

“No justice! No work! No justice! No work!”

“F——,” Evra opined.

“Yep,” Hilal concurred.

Hilal looked out over the deck and felt a disorientating moment of disquiet. This is exactly what she thought would happen. Hadn’t she sworn to keep out of it?

The case, Juma reminded her.

Right, she would just have to ignore the high jingo. She wasn’t involved in the politics. It wasn’t her job to uphold anyone’s authority or stamp anyone under her boot. She just wanted to find out who was responsible for the Shutdown. According to Juma, Clerk Lin Wu had accessed this deck less than an hour ago, taking the elevator down to Detention. Hilal looked out past the forest of raised fists toward the Security complex and another thin line of redjackets, only this one had their shields up and shock sticks out.

“Are you sure he’s in there?” Evra asked.

Hilal, of course, hadn’t told her partner that the virtual interface that lived in her mind had cut through the Safina’s pathetic excuse for a network like a hot knife through butter, hacking everything in his path. Nor that every other ancestor had done the same.

“I’m sure,” Hilal said.

“Alright,” Evra said, eyeing the Security station warily. “How the heck are we going to get through?”

“Come on,” Hilal said, “let’s see if we can circle around.”

Sans Security armbands, the detectives were able to move around relatively unhindered. They walked the perimeter, looking for a way through the crush of bodies. On every side they found themselves confronting the backs of angry protesters.

“This isn’t going to work,” Evra said.

Hilal, Juma interrupted, are you seeing this?

Juma highlighted a few faces in the crowd angled subtly to keep the detectives in their sights. Whoever they were, they were working together. This was no spontaneous protest.

“Alright,” Hilal said, “enough is enough.”

She needed to get to Detention to speak with Wu and she wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way. Hilal barged through the crowd toward the station house, Evra trailing in her wake.

“Two detectives,” Sergeant Kindi scoffed. “You call this reinforcements?”

“You called for reinforcements?” Evra asked, at the same time as Hilal said, “We’re not reinforcements.”

“What?” Sergeant Kindi demanded. He glared at Hilal in disbelief before throwing up his hands. Unlike the poor saps stationed outside, these troopers were not sporting full armor and so the grim look on their pans was clear to see. By the door, a rack of shock sticks waited. Hilal blinked the time into the corner of her vision. Twenty more minutes until the one-hour Down Tools was scheduled to end and these outnumbered chumps would venture out to restore order.

“I called for reinforcements half an hour ago,” Kindi added. “Things are totally out of control here.”

“We can see that,” Hilal assured him. It had taken Hilal and Evra more than ten minutes to snake their way through the chanting protesters to the front of the angry crowd. When the troopers outside let them through, angry manufactors cursed at them, calling them blood-coats and bots, sharps and rozzers—stooges of Amer’s Nizam. Once inside, it was more chaos and confusion. The whole operation was being fronted by Sergeant Malak Kindi, a beefy-looking non-com sporting an incongruously pencil-thin mustache. He wanted nothing more than to go home. Or barring that, to beat and arrest all the manufactors who should be standing their watch instead of chanting slogans and shaking fists, and then go home. But it didn’t look like he was going to get that wish. Manufacturing deck was teetering. “What are your intentions?”

Kindi shook his head. “The Down Tools ends on the hour. If these manufactors don’t get back to work, it’s a crime. We’ll have to arrest them.”

“Is that wise?” Hilal asked. Kindi scowled at her. “You should know that this protest isn’t spontaneous. I saw spotters in the crowd. It might be risky to start something you can’t finish.”

“Spotters in the crowd? Tell me something I don’t know! Now, if you didn’t come to reinforce us, what the hell are you doing here?”

“We need to head down to Detention,” Evra said.

“Why?”

“That’s classified,” Hilal growled.

“The ship is falling apart and you want to play games? Haven’t you heard about Z-berth? Three Security officers were killed and dragged through the corridors like dogs.”

“Where did you hear that?” Evra demanded.

“An Admin with the last squad that rolled through here told us. They were taking prisoners down to Detention. You’ll never guess who we managed to capture.”

“What Admin?” Hilal asked with a sinking feeling in her stomach. “What prisoners?”

“We got him!” Kindi exclaimed. “Badreddine Bishara, that Harakist b——. A squad stumbled on him and a few of his compatriots in Ziyou berth. Some big-shot clerk just took him down to Detention. Sounds like they barely got out of there before the berth fell.”

“Clerk Lin Wu?”

“That’s the one.”

“And what would a Human Resources clerk be doing with a squad of troopers?” Evra asked.

Hilal nodded grimly. “We need to get down to Detention. Now!”

It was a long elevator ride down. Detention wasn’t technically under Manufacturing deck; it was an entire deck on its own. But the only way to get there was the secure hyperlink that connected the two, although Hilal was beginning to think that there was nothing secure about any of this.

Inside the safety of her mind, Hilal thought: Could Badreddine Bishara really have been captured?

Not likely, Juma said. Hilal and Juma had pored over the arrest form. Badreddine Bishara was in custody along with Zain and Okay Keita. Well, well. She recognized those names. And if it was time for Round Two, Hilal was going to make sure that it didn’t go to the judges this time. She checked the bottom of the form for the name of the arresting officer—an illegible scrawl next to a nonexistent crew ID number. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Hilal sent a feeling of amused inquiry inward. Aren’t I always thinking what you’re thinking?

Or is it the other way around?

Hilal glanced worriedly around the large elevator—large enough to carry a squad of redjackets and a work gang of prisoners up and down from Detention. When the elevator hit the bottom floor and the doors opened, the detectives were greeted by an empty corridor.

“There’s supposed to be a squad of Security stationed here checking prisoners for weapons and contraband,” Evra said, indicating an empty table. Of course, Sergeant Kindi had reassigned them to his brute squad upstairs. “This is a little bit eerie.”

“More than a little,” Hilal agreed.

She didn’t quite have her weapon drawn, not yet anyway, but she had her trench coat open and two metal fingers resting on its pistol grip. Evra was looking at her out of the corner of her eye, an alarmed look on her pan. Hilal didn’t know if she had figured it out yet, but probably she had. Evra was one smart cookie. They made it all the way to the station concourse without meeting another soul. There, they were confronted by an empty link waiting ominously on one of the platforms. This link was not like the sleek monorail that serviced the berths and decks upstairs. It was three large, reinforced carriages, clunky and careworn, with just one way on or off.

“Come on,” Hilal said, finally drawing her weapon. Behind her, Evra did the same. They cleared the link, carriage by carriage. A cursory glance down-train from the front of each carriage was all it took. Inside, there were no seats, no ads, no inspirational posters of Captain Amer saluting and imploring the crew to endure. Just a thin red line on the floor and a sturdy metal bar running along the middle to which the prisoners were evidently shackled during their journey to and from Detention. They walked back to the frontmost carriage. “No driver?”

“Fully automated,” Evra explained. “It’s a holdover from before the Compact.”

Not very secure, is it? Juma asked. Obviously, the lives of these prisoners do not hold that much weight with Administration.

Hilal conferred with Juma before making her decision. “Alright, there’s a control room that way,” she said, nodding at a corridor leading off the main concourse. “Let’s go there.”

Before Evra could open her mouth to ask why, Hilal heard the second link rumbling down the track. Hilal led them into the nearest building, an ugly prefabricated checkpoint with a small guardhouse attached. They cowered low amid the empty bunks as the other link pulled up on the opposite platform and disgorged three carriages full of black-and-white-clad prisoners. Unchained. Unshackled.

Holding metal pipes and makeshift weapons, they chanted, “Down, down, down with the Nizam.”

TWENTY-SEVEN Kalila

Everyone trembles at the stick; everyone is in fear of death.

THE DHAMMAPADA (“WAY OF TRUTH”)

What the hell are you doing here?” Faris demanded. He towered over her, a shocked look on his face. “I thought I told you to pull a sickie today.”

K, sorting handfuls of magnetite into piles on the Mining assembly line, stopped long enough to wipe the sweat from her brow and glance up at him. It was true. Her little sister’s husband, who was seven years younger than her and had managed to get himself arrested while smuggling strawberries into Damask berth, had indeed told her that. Strawberries! Faris, the same brother-in-law who had rejoined the Ishtirakis in Detention, so that even when Administration released all the first-time offenders after the Shutdown, they insisted on keeping hold of him. Why did he think that she would listen to anything that he said?

K raised her eyebrows and cocked her head at her bench-mate. “Are you hearing this, Alita? My baby sister’s husband thinks he can tell me what to do.”

She snorted and met Faris’s exasperated face. His beard looked like the setup of a joke she didn’t want to hear the punchline to. “Remind me who elected you captain again?”

Alita, real name Alejandra Almaraz, tossed her dark hair and rolled her eyes. She was a big-time Zendista, which was just a Porta-kind of Ishtirak, out of Linda Cidade. “He’s a veck, isn’t he? They cog having two balls dangling gives them the right to rule the ship.”

She was also a feminist. K didn’t disagree with her about that. As for her political ideas? Well, the only revolutions she believed in were interior ones. The best way to achieve political change was to encourage positive changes on an individual level. The Safina didn’t need a new Compact, just for the people in charge of this one to experience a spiritual awakening.

K went back to sorting her iron ore, trying and failing to find the peace that Faris had interrupted. Why should she hide in the cells, anyway? Time moved so slowly there. At least out here, you could find a measure of peace in working, even while doing something as mundane as sorting space rock. K had always found watch-work meditative and, even locked up in Detention, she was relieved to still find it that way. The last few weeks had been a nightmare. The riot on Agriculture deck. Being treated by Medical, questioned by Security, and finally, summarily, tried and sentenced by Admin, along with the rest of her half watch. And they were the lucky ones. Poor Eissa Klein had been killed. One moment he was palming her apricots and talking about his daughters, the next he was gone. They had probably planted his body already.

K took a breath against the formless anger she felt. Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om. She chanted the peace mantra in her mind and tried to center herself. She never said that she was a perfect Buddhist, still only a relatively new student of the dharma after all. In this life, anyway! And she did believe in nonviolence. Avihimsa was one of the five precepts. She had just gotten carried away on Agriculture deck, that’s all. They all had. Chanting and marching was permissible, but K wished that she hadn’t transgressed into actual physical violence. That was a mistake, and one she was just going to have to bear the karmic consequences for. Karma follows like a faithful shadow. She had been reading her sutras. There was nothing else to do in Detention except work and read and sleep.

Initially, it had been interesting to work on the asteroid. The Mines were as big as any deck. It was crazy to think of this rock hurtling through the void of space. How far had it traveled before being waylaid by Exploration and brought into the Safina? Working the rock was certainly better than working up in Sanitation anyway. K had spaded her fair share of fertilizer euphemistically named “night soil,” but she had never once been interested in the details of how it got to Agriculture deck. There was no hell in Buddhism exactly, but there was a realm called Naraka and it smelled, K imagined, much like Sanitation deck. She had been assigned a few watches there already, laboring amid the huge simmering vats of human waste. You couldn’t just pour shit straight onto healthy soil. The nitrogen and H_2O content would be far too high. It needed to be treated first, and K would rather spend a thousand hours down here in Mining, magnet in hand checking rocks for purity, than return to that task. She picked up the next rock and checked it, ignoring Faris still standing with arms folded. The beard made it difficult to read his expression, but she guessed it was exasperation.

“K!”

“Riz!”

Faris glanced around at the other women sorting rock and then knelt next to her. “I’m going to need you to listen carefully to me now, K.”

“Alright—”

“You two! Farhat and Hossein!” Mister Fulton screeched at them. “No talking! Farhat, back to your work detail, you malicious malingerer!”

Now, there was a man who could do with reading the Kodhana Sutta. Mister Fulton’s default setting seemed to be prickly exasperation. She wondered if she could suggest they get it for the Detention library. A man conquered by anger is a mass of darkness, taking pleasure in bad deeds as if they were good. But later, when his anger is quenched, he suffers as if burned with fire. Well, that applied to women, too. She was learning that for herself. K’s recollections of the riot on Agriculture deck were disjointed thanks to the shock stick she had taken to the head. Still, she did remember ripping the helmet off one redjacket. And putting her hands around the throat of another. He had been a boy, younger than Faris even, and scared. All tremble at violence; life is dear to all. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should do no harm.

Faris shot her a stricken look before raising his eyebrows meaningfully at Alita. He then reluctantly shouldered his axe and moved away. What was that about? K went back to sorting her rocks, eyeing Alita covertly. Dark hair. Dark eyes. A cut-glass Inglez accent that positively reeked of wealth. Even Detention hadn’t managed to mar the girl’s beauty. If Faris thought that he could—

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Alita said.

“No?”

“No.”

“Then what is it?” K asked.

There was a strange atmosphere on the deck. A curious kind of anticipation, like it was Launch Eve and everyone was counting down to the light show. Alita had been positively giddy all watch. K glanced around at all the other women dressed in Detention’s black-and-white uniform. The black and white only accentuated K’s new monochrome highlights, making her look like a ghost in one of her animes. Alita, glancing side to side at the guards, smiled to herself and shrugged. K frowned and went back to sorting rocks and chanting the peace mantra in her mind. She would corner Faris later and get the whole story. And if it was anything close to what she suspected, well, he would be sorry. Jamila deserved better than that. She deserved a husband who was at home with her, not mining iron down here.

K was still worrying about it when, trudging en masse back to the cellblock at the end of their watch, Alita grabbed her by the elbow and hustled her down just in time to see another prisoner produce a hammer he wasn’t supposed to have and swing it right into the side of Mister Fulton’s skull.

Faris found K as the rest of the prisoners, armed and angry, stormed the cellblock. Alita was leading the charge. K, unarmed and unarmored, hung back with the few others who either hadn’t been in on the plan or refused to get onboard with it. Her friend, Joyce Berdugo, was standing next to her, arms folded with a frankly incredulous look on her face. The poor woman hadn’t even taken part in the first riot, although that hadn’t stopped Administration from convicting her alongside the rest. Plenty of the prisoners decided they wanted in as soon as the guards were incapacitated. K was still thinking. She looked at the red Security chestplate Faris was wearing, and the shock stick he held, with unsurprised eyes. She was still chanting the peace mantra in her mind. It wasn’t working.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Riz?”

“It’s a Detention break.”

“I mean, what do you think you’re doing,” she asked pointedly, “getting involved with something like this?”

Rejoining the Ishtirak for protection was one thing. This was something else entirely. It was mutiny. And there was only one penalty for that.

Faris shook his head. “Wasn’t it you and the rest of first watch who attacked Admin and Security? It’s too late to go back now.”

K looked at the fervor in his eyes, replayed in her mind the ease and eagerness with which her fellow prisoners had taken up arms. Things were getting out of control. No, things were already out of control. Still, what had happened on Agriculture deck was a spontaneous outburst. Impromptu. Nobody meant to launch any revolutions. Whatever was happening now was very much planned, and this was clearly just the beginning. What did Faris think he was playing at with a wife and newborn at home? Admin would space him for this. Admin would space a lot of people for this, the innocent alongside the guilty.

“Jamila is not going to like this,” K said instead. “Think of your son.”

“That’s exactly who I’m thinking of. My son, nameless because Admin is closed and we can’t afford a translator.” Faris hefted the shock stick. “What future can he have on this broken ship? We can build a better one. A ship where he is free to work the watch he wants, live in the berth he wants, marry whoever he wants, and have as many children as he likes.” He gestured at the darkened deck around them. “These fuckers can’t even keep the lights on!”

K was thinking about what to say to that when Ash Zarqa, the Harakist who hammered Mister Fulton on the side of the face, and then hammered him again after he went down, came rushing out of the Mines, leading a different group of armed prisoners. These ones were all carrying axes. He spotted Faris and hustled over.

“Salve, Riz. Donde’s Alita?”

“Nella-side, tryna romp into the stajas. The screws have it latched up tight.”

K did her best not to roll her eyes at her brother-in-law speaking Nupol like they were back in Academy. After all that principled talk, ahora he was palavering like some bijou corrid droog?

Ash sighed and threw up his hands. “Well, let’s go and help her, vali?”

“Vali,” Faris agreed.

“Hold on,” K said. “I’m coming with you.”

“K!” Joyce said. She had been standing a little way off, listening to the whole thing. She grabbed her by the forearm. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” K admitted, disentangling herself from Joyce. She patted the older woman gently on the back of the hand. “But they’ll space us for this anyway, so I might as well do something.”

K had come to her resolution. She couldn’t just stand there and do nothing. She still believed in avihimsa, but nonviolence wasn’t the same thing as nonaction. The Panchen Lama himself had taken action against the Network Empire to support the Compact. And if the Compact had become a new Network Empire, another tool of injustice? Well, why shouldn’t K throw it off? She’d just have to make sure not to hurt anyone this time. Faris grinned and offered her his shock stick, but K just shook her head.

Outside the cellblock, the entrance was surrounded by a throng of prisoners. A few were crowded around the little guard post that overlooked the courtyard but most had gravitated to the cellblock’s big metal double doors. K followed Ash and Faris as they pushed their way through the crush of bodies to the front where four male prisoners, shirts off and sweating, were working together using their Mining axes to take one of the doors off its hinges. Alita was overseeing that operation, seemingly preparing the next four prisoners for their turn. She gave K a bright smile and a “welcome aboard” thumbs-up as the three of them approached.

“Alita,” Ash greeted her. “Que passo?”

“The krovvy screws have locked themselves in, that’s que passo,” she said.

“Cogged we had a scheme to stop that from happening?”

“Cogged the same,” Alita agreed, “yet akoy we are.”

“We’re on a tight shed, Alita. Did the others secure the rapido, leastways?”

“Vali. The rapido’s ours but the staja block’s locked down tight. From tutto sides,” she added. There was only one way on and off this deck—the hyperlink to Manufacturing. The only problem was that the platform was on the other side of Detention, and the only way to get there was currently barred by two big metal doors. “We’ll be traverso pronto pronto.”

“And que about the nex door? And the nex? We’re running outta raz, devotchka.”

Ash was right. Detention was a warren of empty corridors and locked gates. If the aim was to get everyone out, this wasn’t going to work. She glanced at Faris, who was silent. K wasn’t sure what the plan was or who was in charge, but it certainly wasn’t her brother-in-law.

“There’s a communication line inside, right?” K asked.

Before the prisoners were escorted out to the rock, the guard on the inside would call their counterparts on the outside with a prisoner count and other information. She had seen them do it.

“Yes,” Alita said, looking at her.

“Well, has anyone tried using it?”

Alita shrugged her shoulders and nodded toward the closed prison gate. “I’ve been a bit busy here.”

“Mind if I give it a try?”

“Que? Do you cog you’re gonna convince the screws to let us nella?” Ash asked.

She met his gaze steadily and tried not to think about the wet sound his hammer made when it hit Mister Fulton the second time.

“There’s no harm in trying,” K said. A student of dharma seeks the least harm at all times.

“Donde we break in there, you’ll be scusa,” the prisoner murmured lovingly into the phone receiver. “We’ll send you and the rest of the screws alay to ferno.”

“Afshin! Que do you cog you’re doing?” Faris demanded.

The prisoner K didn’t recognize grinned and said, “Just sending a sweet com to the screws nella-side.”

“Naff off,” Faris said. He glanced around the little watch-room at the other prisoners who were evidently waiting their turn to send some sweet messages of their own. “The rest of you, too. Ahora ahora!” He clapped his hands.

K watched as Afshin and the other prisoners shuffled out, grumbling under their breath. Tellingly, nobody argued with him. So, while Faris obviously wasn’t in charge, he did have some seniority.

“Alright,” K said, “if this is going to work, you’re going to have to explain the plan to me. The entire thing.”

After he did, K could hardly believe it was true. It seemed like half the ship was in on it. The Kommunists? The Ishtirak and Zendistas? The Triad? The Haraka?

She picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.”

“Who is this?” She recognized Mister Qaid’s voice on the other end of the line. Mister Qaid was alright for a guard. A bit nervous, but alright.

“It’s Kalila Hossein, Mister Qaid.”

“Well, Hossein, what do you want?” he asked gruffly. “I advise you and the other prisoners to surrender immediately or the consequences could be dire.”

“Actually, sir, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Thirty minutes later, K was saying, “They’re almost through the main doors now, Mister Qaid… Yeah, I know that there are other gates, but those are minor inconveniences compared to those first doors. If you guards make them break through every door, they’ll be rabid by the time they get to you. It would be much wiser to just surrender now.”

And fifteen minutes after that, she said, “They’re in control of the hyperlink on the other side… Never mind how I know that. I know it. Security is stretched thin, dealing with the Down Tools. There won’t be any reinforcements coming to save you.”

Another ten minutes later, K explained, “Of course, I can guarantee your safety. If you and the rest of the guards lock yourselves in one of the cells and let us in. I promise that no harm will come to you.”

Finally, five minutes later, K added, “Alright, the other guards can stay in the cells, but you have to come out and let us in. No, we’re going to need you to tell us which keys open what cells. After that, we’ll lock you in with the rest. My word on it.”

K glanced around the room at Alita, Ash, Faris, and the rest. Alita and Ash both nodded at her. They had promised her that if she negotiated a nonviolent solution, they would abide by it. She hoped they would keep their word. Hers was only based on theirs, after all.

Mister Qaid’s hands shook as he opened the last cell. The prisoners inside streamed out but went nowhere near the quaking guard. It had nothing to do with K. He was protected by the presence of Badreddine Bishara himself. Or, more likely, the two big bodyguards who were always clustered around him, armed and dangerous, radiating a step-back-or-we’ll-step-you-back energy, despite their evident injuries. K eyed Badreddine carefully as he glanced curiously around the deck, taking in the Detention wing. He was a legend of the Safina. A shadowy Triad contract killer. The fabled leader of the Haraka. The heir to Selin Devrim’s uprising. Some were even claiming that he and his group had been behind the Shutdown, responsible for all those deaths, crew and ancestors alike. To K’s eyes, he looked like somebody’s uncle.

“So many of my coves suffered akoy,” he told her quietly. He glanced at one of his bodyguards. “Is das nicht, Zain? Akoy is donde the Nizam sought to beat us alay, to teach us our place. Mining their ferro. Stirring their skite. But we learnt a nova lesson, didn’t we?”

“I didn’t cog you were ever akoy,” Zain said. The bruises on his face only added to his menace.

“Well,” Badreddine allowed with a wry grin, “that’s vero. That was one less I didn’t deen to learn, boyo. Plus, I cogged that if I was ever nabbed, it would be the long float for moi.”

K had never met anyone so old speaking Nupol before. Badreddine spoke in an old-fashioned, almost formal Fustat Arabek mixed with Inglez and Nupol. It cast everything he said in a playful light that she found strangely captivating. Here was the most wanted man on the ship, and he was walking around Detention cracking jokes like he didn’t even care.

“What now?” she asked.

Beside her, Mister Qaid stood silently and sweating. The other bodyguard—Zain’s sister, K surmised—had already relieved him of his keys.

“Ahora we lock up this screw in the staja with the rest. Que?” he asked. “Did you cog that we would go daus on our slov?”

“No,” she lied.

The truth was nothing could surprise her now. Prisoners were rushing around Detention, cheering and chanting. Most were streaming out of the cellblock toward the waiting hyperlink, but there were still some floating around, not knowing what they should do or where they should go. K had already seen Joyce Berdugo sitting on her bunk in their shared cell, even though all the doors were open and all the guards confined.

“Move it, screw,” Zain said with a rude poke. “We ain’t got all dive.”

“It won’t change anything,” Mister Qaid told them as they frog-marched him down the corridor toward the cells. “Security will come down on you like it’s the Bread Riots. And those of you that they don’t space will end up back down here.”

“Keep schtum!” the other bodyguard growled. She had been silent until now. Her voice came out deep and low as she twisted Mister Qaid’s arm even further behind his back, her eyes glittering with malevolence.

“Mayhaps,” Badreddine agreed. “But mayhaps nish. Unless we are victoria. If we are victoria, anything is poss.”

They reached the cells where the rest of the guards had been confined. K glanced inside at the orchard of people scowling out at them. Zain used Mister Qaid’s keys to open the cell door, brandishing his zip gun in case they tried anything, while his sister promptly shoved him inside.

“And bona riddance,” Zain said.

After the door was locked again, Badreddine Bishara stepped forward. “Remember that we showed you mercy here today,” he said in tolerable Inglez. “We won’t do it a second time.”

“Do you vera cog sweet slovs gonna work on the likes of them?” Zain asked as they walked away. “Soon as they’re loose, they’ll be travving for the Nizam vider. We’ll only have to face ’em manyana.”

Badreddine shrugged serenely. “Mayhaps. But mayhaps nish. No harm in trying. Just as we’re sick of ’em stamping all over our eeks, some of ’em must be sick of doing the stamping, too.”

K eyed him as they walked. Whatever game he was playing, it was a long one. She was considering returning to her cell to talk to Joyce again. She had learned to trust Joyce’s advice. But she was also considering following Badreddine and the other prisoners out onto the hyperlink platform. If the plan was to storm Manufacturing deck, well, she couldn’t be a part of that obviously. And yet, she wanted to get away from Detention, return to the berths, and see her sister and nephew again. She wanted to go home and sleep in her own bed. She wanted to bring down this broken Administration and build a better one in its place. No, she didn’t want to bring anyone down. She wanted to raise them up.

“Parreko for what you did for us this dive, devotchka,” Badreddine told her, bringing his palms together. “Molti-parreko.”

K was surprised to find herself facing him. They had come to a stop at the end of the corridor. Zain and his sister were standing behind his back, but she kept her eyes on Badreddine. On the other side of them was the corridor that led to the hyperlink platform and a mob of waiting prisoners, the start of something new.

“We’re going to Factory nex,” Badreddine said. “Are tu coming with?”

“Going to Factory to do what?” K asked. Faris had already told her the answer, but she wanted to hear it from Badreddine himself. Manufacturing was one of the most heavily policed decks on the ship.

“To seize it, que else?”

“And then what?”

“A revolta.”

“I don’t believe in violence.”

Behind his back, the female bodyguard snorted and rolled her eyes. Badreddine’s face was impassive, but K thought she read pity on it.

“Don’t care what tu creed, devotchka. You’ll nish be safe akoy in clink. Nish after you palavered with Sec on our behalf. Tu musta cogged that?” K folded her arms across her chest. Yes, she had known that. “Best to come with, eh? It won’t be safe, but it’ll be safer than this.”

K took a deep breath and met Badreddine’s eyes, kind eyes, and tried to see the soul behind them. “Alright,” she agreed. “I’ll come.”

A roar went up as Badreddine Bishara stepped onto the platform. Prisoners were hanging off the hyperlink and crowded around the doors. K had never seen so many people on a link platform before, not even during the end-of-watch rush. She followed in Badreddine’s wake as his bodyguards pushed through the jubilant crowd toward the front carriage. It was like something out of an old vid from Earth—refugees lining up to flee to Amitabha knows where. K flinched as prisoners, men and women alike, patted her on the back. She threw up her hands as someone grabbed at her but was relieved to find that it was only Faris. She squeezed herself in next to him and tried not to wonder just what the hell she was doing here.

“Are you alright?”

K shrugged. How was she supposed to answer that?

“My coves. Lend me your slooshers!” Badreddine called. He was standing on the top of the frontmost hyperlink carriage. Someone, somewhere, had found one of those loud-hailers used by crew chiefs during emergencies, and Badreddine was speaking into it. The noise quieted as everyone leaned in to hear what he had to say. “Lags and lagettes, souldats of the revolta! We’ve deja done more than anycove else in the history of the Saf. There’s nix mei been a clink-break anti. There might nix mei be odin vider so vada around and bev it in. And chapeau to tu and yours! Chapeau to us all!”

The prisoners roared again and beside her, Faris pinched his bottom lip and whistled like they were at a concert or a handball match.

“But this is just the deb! Ahora, we’re gonna get on this rapido and take it all the tao to Fabrica. If our scheme has travved true, the platform there will be vaka. If nish, we will have to deal with the rozzers there and ajay on the deck. But we are sayma and stronk and the Nizam and their sobotkas will nish be able to stand against us. Are tu ready, my coves? Are tu steady for what comes?”

The prisoners roared again. Yes, it seemed, they were ready and steady.

“We’re gonna stream out of this rapido like it’s Halloween.” Badreddine stamped on the hyperlink carriage. “And nada is gonna get in our tao. We’re gonna seize Fabrica and then Granja and then bring Capo Amer and his Nizam alay! Ahora, who’s with moi?”

The prisoners cheered, stamping their feet and hollering. Badreddine jumped down spryly for someone his age and then, from the front of the first carriage, waved everyone onboard. The crowd was cheering and pushing forward and K, her mind full of misgivings and doubts, found herself being dragged along with the rest.

TWENTY-EIGHT Hilal

Alright, tomorrow didn’t exactly take care of itself. Also, did you know that was a quote from the Christian bible, Heba? I wonder how many of the pearls of wisdom Amo Raouf dropped in our ready ears were actually just plagiarism. They’re holding a trial for Luka Aybar. That’s the man who shot Captain Yavuz. He’s not even arguing that he’s innocent. He’s saying that the captain’s death was legitimate given his role in the Compact. He’s going to lose, of course, and they’ll execute him by floating and we’ll all have to watch. Everyone is walking around jumping at shadows, scared that if they say the wrong thing, think the wrong thing, they’ll be next. Will we never get past this? Will we never stop killing each other?

—MESSAGE FROM FIRST CREW HANIA HILAL TO HER SISTER HEBA (SHIP YEAR 34)

Keep schtum,” Hilal heard a man yell, and the chants quickly subsided. “Group Odin, secure the stazio. I want both rapidos running pronto pronto till we have every lag libera.”

She peeked over the windowsill. There were at least a hundred black-and-white-clad prisoners spreading out along the opposite platform. Maybe more. Hilal couldn’t see who the voice belonged to, but she had a pretty good guess.

“Groups Dva and Tri, you’re with moi,” the voice added. “Let’s go rasken the rozzers ajay-side. Everycove cog their trav? Then subito, let’s get this festa started!”

“Hilal,” Evra whispered, crouching beside her. “What do we do?”

Damn, they were too late. Hilal had been hoping to stop the prison break before it started. To stop it at the source. To somehow figure out a way to shut down the hyperlink and stymie whatever nefariousness Bishara was planning. At least she had the forethought to order Sergeant Kindi to disable the elevators and post guards inside of the stairwell up to Manufacturing deck proper. She just hoped that the stubborn b—— heeded her. An organized force could hold those stairs for some time. These prisoners were not quite freely roaming the decks just yet. Maybe there was still time to put this djinn back in the bottle. She mulled the situation, looking for a way to win, or barring that, a way out. When she didn’t find either, she made her decision. Hilal looked across the platform and eyed the corridor leading to the control room in consternation. According to the ship’s blueprints, the hyperlink controls were somewhere in there, through a maze of old passageways and warrens that dated back to the original ship’s construction. It didn’t matter if these prisoners had control over the platform and the links, she could still take it all away from them, but only if she managed to get to the control room first.

“Alright, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go shut down this control room. No, you can’t come with me,” she interrupted whatever Evra was about to say. “You’ll only slow me down.”

“And what am I supposed to do?” Evra asked flatly, gripping her pistol in alarm.

“Find somewhere in here to hide.” Hilal looked around the cramped guardhouse. Neatly lined bunks against the walls. Tables and chairs. A rec area. A kitchen. Not much hiding space at all. “See if there’s a way up onto the roof maybe?”

“Hilal—” Evra said.

“If they catch you,” she interrupted, “no heroics, just surrender. Maybe you can pretend to be ordinary crew. If not, demand to speak to someone in authority.”

“Listen, Heba—” but Hilal waved her off. There was no time. She grabbed Evra’s small hands in her own and dispensed the only advice she had ever received that had been worth a damn, repeating what Amo Raouf said to her the day she shipped off to join the modded infantry, “Try to stay alive, and try to stay yourself.”

Hilal put on her military face and crept out of the guardhouse without a second look back. She snuck into the highlighted corridor, avoiding the sight lines of the hostiles on the opposite platform. Once inside, Hilal crept along, following Juma’s overlay, peeking round corners and listening at intersections. She blundered into a group of hostiles exiting a random passageway. How the hell were they in here already? Hilal demolished them. Limbs broken. Throats ruptured. Eyes gouged out. She left them bleeding and blubbering, screaming their pain, a living alarm bell. She stalked through the corridors like they were a battlefield now, her breath coming in sharp inhales and exhales, her heart a steady thrumming. Juma was a hunting falcon at her wrist, a safety harness around her chest, keeping her on the edge and preventing her from toppling over. Sudden gunfire erupted behind her.

The bullet just missed, embedding itself in the wall behind her. Hilal zigged and zagged, taking cover against the side of a Viennese bakery, or at least, what remained of one. Above her, a friendly blue sky and a cheerful summer sun beat down incongruously on Vienna’s destroyed streets and buildings. The sniper, wherever he was hunkered down, was packing some serious heat. Hilal only heard the crack of the bullet after it had already hit. She didn’t even dare peek around the corner of the building to take a look. Then again, she didn’t need to. Alif troop was arrayed all around the area. Bahar reported a muzzle flash from the third apartment on the thirteenth floor of the building opposite and tagged it on their shared map. Alora and Shams were already racing up that building’s stairwell. Hilal blinked and behind her eyes she saw empty corridors, destroyed apartments, and dead bodies. This was not the first time that the Network Empire had tried to take Vienna. She watched as Alora and Shams burst into an apartment to find a teenage girl, dirty and malnourished, taking aim at them with a sniper rifle that was almost as tall as her. She missed, Alora didn’t. Her shot took the girl in the torso, burning half her shoulder away.

“All clear,” she reported, but Hilal knew better. This was going to be a dirty day’s work. She hated annexations. Countries should know when they were conquered. Surely surrender was better than this useless resistance.

Two wild shots. Hilal ducked and covered, drew her weapon in one smooth movement, and fired back at the black-and-white-clad escaped prisoners. Headshot. Headshot. Two shots to the torso. Three down. But there were more behind them. An endless tide of bodies.

Four bullets left, Juma said.

She was running, dashing through openings, bouncing off walls. Behind her, the sound of hot pursuit. Running feet. Animal shouts of challenge. The control room was somewhere ahead. If she could get inside, she could barricade the door. The sound of hostiles flooding the corridors, dogging her steps. Hilal ran as fast as she could until she came to a skidding stop. She put her back up against a wall at the intersection, surrounded. The tide of bodies rushed in and out.

They were cut off. Where had all these damned soldiers come from? It had been an Intelligence fuckup from start to finish. Alif troop’s mission was simple: Get in. Cut communication lines. Tag likely targets ahead of the main offensive. Get out.

Only, now there were Fortress Europa troopers storming out of the sewers, North American Union drones in the air, and no main offensive coming. The generals got together and called the whole thing off. Hilal held her breath as an order downloaded into her mind: Fall back to Rally Point Qaf.

She checked her map. That would be a long trek through hostile streets. The only thing Hilal hated more than annexations was retreat.

“Stay back!” Hilal told them, pistol up.

One of the hostiles, a shit-eating grin on his face, stepped forward brandishing a mining axe. “Think you can take us on, you—”

Hilal coldcocked him, once, twice, faster than a blink. Behind her back, two other goons tried for her. Hilal slapped their hands away, ducking under a clumsy axe swing. She brought her pistol up to the first goon’s forehead and pulled the trigger, throwing his body into the crowd before stepping back again, gun still drawn.

Three bullets, Juma reminded her.

“I said, stay back,” Hilal repeated. Her voice was calm, but inside, her blood was screaming.

“It’s the ancestor detective,” someone shouted in dismay.

Hilal and Bisan were hoofing it from cover to cover down a deserted pedestrian path that ran perpendicular to the River Wien when they both felt it, the overloud sound of gunfire and the echo of bullets landing. Hilal ducked for cover, looking for the enemy position. But the fight was not theirs. Inside her mind, she watched impotently as Yasmin bled out in some no-name cobblestone street. She gasped as her sister’s consciousness was torn from her, torn from them all. Alora, injured but still moving, fired at Fortress soldiers through a film of tears. She was trapped, surrounded.

“Take her alive,” a soldier shouted in English, and Hilal felt the mutual shudder through their open connection. There were horror stories about what happened to captured red sisters. She howled in denial as Alora reached for her handgun and placed the barrel to the side of her temple.

“Long live the Network!” Alora screamed her defiance.

And then nothing.

In her mind, Juma was reading faces, recording fear, hate, anger, and disgust. The rising mutterings of a crowd transforming before her eyes into a baying mob. There on her left, the grinning jackal face of Alejandra Almaraz. In the corner of Hilal’s vision, a flashing red warned that she was losing control. If she went berserk in here, nobody would be safe. Not even her.

Easy, Hilal, Juma whispered to her. Easy.

She felt him put his arms around her chest. This was what he was really for. Juma’s job was to stop her tipping over into a place she couldn’t come back from. There was a reason most red sisters were not allowed to leave the military.

Breathe, Juma said. Just breathe.

She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. He took on her father’s voice, and Amo Raouf’s, and anyone whose authority she had ever trusted. She braced against him, confident that he could encompass her, and slowly stepped back from the part of her that longed to tip over into the peace of that violence.

They stumbled through the backstreets. Alora was dead. So, too, Yasmin and Arwa and Layal. Their absence was an amputation in her mind. The connection between Alif troop was a river of pain and rage and guilt. She could barely feel her sisters through the static. Bisan grunted in pain as Hilal adjusted the injured woman’s position on her shoulders. They had made quick work of the Fortress soldiers, but not without taking return fire.

Leave me behind.

Shut it, Bisan!

Hilal’s energy rifle clattered against the back of her thighs with every treacherous step, but they were slowly nearing the exfil point. Fucking Fortress Europa. Fucking North American Union. Conquering South America had been a breeze compared to this. Alif troop hadn’t lost a single sister in Brazil. Fucking Network Empire. Fucking Sultan Mazen.

In an alleyway, she fell to the ground, almost dropping Bisan on top of her. She needed to check the dressings on her sister’s wounds. Bisan grimaced as Hilal tightened the bandage around her thigh. There had been no time to get the bullet out. Luckily, the two shots to her torso had gone clean through. Hilal prayed the medigel would hold Bisan together until she could get her proper medical attention. Bisan sent Hilal a wordless alarm and she turned to find a barefoot boy standing in the lip of the alleyway, pointing some old pistol at her with shaking hands. He couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen, although he looked even younger due to malnutrition. It had been a long war, as long as his life. He had made a mistake by creeping so close. A fatal one. For Hilal, it was a too-easy maneuver to grab the barrel of the pistol with one hand and unsheathe her tactical dagger with the other, in one fluid motion, driving the tip of it into his eye.

A man pushed through the crowd in front of her. Older than the rest, but not going to pot. Wispy gray hair cut short and a twinkle in his eye. The man himself, Badreddine Bishara.

“Everycove basta,” he thundered, “and do as the detective sez!”

The prisoners around her took a single step back as Bishara eased himself forward until he was standing just out of Hilal’s reach. Zain and Okay Keita stood at his shoulders like recording angels. Hilal could see the remnants of her handiwork on their busted pans and smiled slowly.

“Detective Hilal,” Bishara greeted her. “So nice to finally meet you.”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice coming out rough and deep. The corners of her vision were still pulsing red. “Badreddine Bishara. I’ve been looking for you.”

“Well, here I am!” He gestured at her with one open palm. “Listen, Detective. Nobody else needs to get hurt here. Why don’t you put that weapon down and we can talk?”

Talk? The only way she would be interested in talking to this b—— was if she could hold him by the neck from the roof of a very tall building while she was doing it. In the center of her own bubble of space, Hilal pulled the remnants of her tattered composure around herself. She felt a semblance of peace for the first time since she’d woken up. Not lost in loss. Not running after a case. Here was an enemy she could kill. If today was that day, well, she would make sure to take her enemy with her. That was the soldier’s code.

Hilal weighed Bisan’s corpse down with rocks and broken paving slates and then waded into the middle of the river. She watched as Bisan’s body floated down into the murky depths, aware in some indefatigable way that her sisters—her remaining sisters—were watching, too. The Wien flowed into the Danube, which flowed into the Black Sea. The same sea that lapped Odessa’s shores, Bisan’s hometown. It was the last and least thing that she could do for her. Hilal dropped a pin on the location so that when the Empire came back to take this fucking city and kill and enslave everyone in it, the modded infantry could send a recovery team to gather up her bones.

The exfil point was up ahead. Five miles or so. She could feel Zuhara and Shams already there, waiting and alert. Bahar was closing in from the other side. Hilal could barely feel her through the static. They were all that was left of Alif troop. She could feel the enemy advancing on her like a shadow behind her back. She knew that she should retreat, return to the sisters she had left, but instead she shrugged them out of her mind. The edges of her vision pulsed red and black, red and black. Someone was screaming and Hilal abruptly realized it was her.

Hilal brought her pistol to bear, waiting to see the whites of Bishara’s eyes, but before she could squeeze the trigger, Okay smashed into her, knocking the gun free. Hilal watched as Okay bit down on something, her pupils expanding until they filled her eyes.

“Ancestor b——,” Okay said. Her voice was deeper than Hilal thought it would be. Or was that an effect of the combat drugs? “I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

“Alright,” Hilal heard herself say, “let’s see if you can do any better than last time.”

“Don’t kill her,” Bishara ordered.

The first group was a mixed force of local resistance and Fortress soldiers. Hilal went through them like a one-woman massacre. The first laser blast sent them scattering, but there was nowhere to hide. Not from her. She hunted them down through Vienna’s destroyed streets and buildings. The last was a girl about the same age she had been when she first joined the army, wearing a resistance-red armband. Hilal stalked her through the rubble before cornering her against a back wall.

“Fuck you and fuck your Network!” the girl spat.

Hilal looked into her eyes—sky blue, sister blue—and cut her throat.

Hilal was winning until the other Keita sibling joined the fray. Even then she held her own, matching them blow for blow, injury for injury. She could outlast them. Combat drugs wore off. But an augment could keep you running for days on end. The crowd demanded her blood, but Hilal stood outside of it all, serene. She fell for a clumsy feint from Zain, opening herself up to a looping roundhouse from Okay. She took it on the temple, letting gravity carry her to the ground before scrambling up again, blocking Okay’s follow-up kick with a metal hand and sweeping the woman off her feet. She ducked under a vicious left hook from Zain and responded with a right of her own, taking him on the side of the jaw and sending him crashing into Okay, who had only just got back up. Hilal licked the blood on her metal knuckles—Keita blood—and looked down at them both, a tangle of limbs.

“Is that the best you got?”

She stumbled upon the next squad on that same pedestrian pathway next to the river. More Fortress soldiers hustling to get somewhere in a hurry. Well, Hilal hated to make them late. She came at them like a ghoul out of a graveyard. Headshot. Headshot. Headshot. There was nowhere for them to flee. She stripped their bodies and dumped them in the Wien, tributes for her fallen sister. Hilal could feel the others calling for her—recriminations and pleas—but she felt nothing. Going berserk didn’t mean losing your mind. If anything, Hilal had never felt calmer. She knew that she was going to die today in this sore of a city. She had made her peace with it. Today, she was a born Feda’ey—a death commando.

Out of the corner of her eye, Hilal saw Bishara whisper something to an anonymous-looking crewman standing next to him. The crewman stepped forward, pistol drawn. Hilal tried to dodge, but she was slow, tired. She was not surprised when a hypodermic needle hit her in the thigh. And then another in the meat of her shoulder. And then one more in the neck.

Juma?

I’ve got it, he assured her. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Hilal felt a flash of heat as her body began counteracting the dexmedetomidine. She plucked out the needles one by one and dropped them to the ground, before blinking her eyes slowly and stumbling. She shook her head as if trying to clear her vision.

A single soldier crept up on her, energy rifle in hand. Hilal, armed with a rifle of her own, albeit a shitty Fortress one, watched her come, not thinking much at all.

“Please don’t make me do this, Heba,” the soldier pleaded, and suddenly Hilal recognized her. Shams, with tears in her eyes. She couldn’t feel her through the connection. She couldn’t feel anyone.

“Shams,” Hilal said slowly, seeing the anxious look on her sister’s face. Shams, who liked to compose bad poetry—gazels and kasides—and share it anonymously over the Network. She didn’t know that Alora had set up a fake username so that the other sisters could take turns commenting on her work. “What’s cooking?”

“Heba,” Shams said, “try to listen to me. You’ve snapped.”

To her left, Okay smiled and crept forward. Smelling blood, she lunged with a huge overhand right. How many times had she thrown that same punch? It was just what Hilal had been waiting for. She stepped back and let it whiff past her before countering perfectly, smashing a metal fist into Okay’s throat and taking her off her feet. Zain roared, an animal sound, and rushed at her, using his bulk and momentum to take her down.

“Hold her down,” Bishara ordered, and suddenly there was a crush of bodies on top of her, prisoners grabbing her arms and legs, preventing her from moving. Hilal screamed at them—a stream of threats and curses and ultimatums.

“What do you mean, ‘snapped’?” Hilal asked. “I’ve never felt better.”

Shams, wide-eyed, looked down at the rifle Hilal was pointing at her. When did that happen? She would never hurt a sister. “Heba,” Shams pleaded, “please.”

Suddenly, Hilal was aware of a shadow moving behind her. She turned to look, and Shams side-stepped her rifle to grab at her. She had just enough time to recognize that it was Bahar materializing behind her before she hit Hilal with the stock of her rifle, knocking her out.

“We should just kill her,” a voice said. “She’s too dangerous.”

“No,” Bishara answered. “I need her alive.” He looked down at Hilal with something like pity, something like exasperation. “It didn’t need to go this way, Detective.”

He nodded at someone and then Zain Keita was there, leaning over her, leering. His face was a mess of blood and bruises and there was a hollow look in the corner of his eyes. Had that punch to the throat killed his sister? Hilal hadn’t held back. She tried to move, to get free, but the sheer weight of bodies held her down. The last thing she remembered was Zain’s big hands around her neck, choking her out, as his tears drip drip dripped onto her face.

TWENTY-NINE Damietta

Crew continued to work diligently throughout the night to repair the Safina. Maintenance confirmed that more than 50 percent of the electrical work has been completed. Engineering First Amala Singh also announced that the power core has stabilized at 47 percent capacity, with a further increase of 10 percent forecasted by week’s end. In other news, demonstrations against the Shutdown have been approved to take place in the public squares of the berths today. Administration calls for all crew to return to watch promptly after the demonstration’s end or face arrest.

—KARIM ALI, SAFINA NEWS ONE

Good afternoon, crew. We have a special report for you today coming live from the Down Tools. Safina News Three will be going live across the berths to report on what’s happening. I will be here in my home berth of Fustat reporting from Cleopatra Square, where we hope to speak directly with crew participating in the Down Tools to get to know a little bit more about why they are protesting and what they hope to achieve. Today’s Down Tools is set to be the largest ship-wide industrial action since the Bread Riots.

—ESTHER COHEN, THE SAFINA TODAY

That’s Damietta Ezz,” she heard one of the protesters shout in Arabek. The guy was wearing the russet brown of Agriculture deck and gesticulating wildly. “Iskander’s sister!” (Um, excusez-moi?) “Join us!”

His shout quickly became a chant, taken up by those around him, and those around them. “Join us! Join us! Join us!”

Damietta wondered if the guy was a plant. There was a reason Badreddine had chosen her for this part (and it was nish her acting skills). Would Security beat the underage sister of a capital-h Hero of the Shutdown with the eyes of the crew watching? She glanced at the tall reporter next to her and tried to keep her composure. Esther Cohen was one of Badreddine’s countless contacts, the face of Safina News Three and easily the most famous person Damietta had ever met in person. Her red hair and green eyes were legendary. But for now, Damietta did her best to ignore her. Instead, she peered through the double line of faceless redjackets standing between her and Cleopatra Square to take in the small group of protesters being corralled. A few hundred crew at least. When Britva told her how many crew were expected to join the Down Tools in Fustat today, Damietta was impressed. Now, surrounded by more than double that number of armed and armored redjackets in the empty expanse of Cleopatra Square, she realized just how small this beginning was, and how much more work there was left to do. She scanned the crowd for Britva, almost missing her amid the crush of bodies. There she was, in the front lines, just where Damietta expected her to be. Britva’s distinctive multicolored hair framing her goggle-eyed rebreather. She was jumping up and down, waving both hands like a maniac.

More than half of Academy had shown up to Damietta’s rallying call. Celia Sabry (still a bitch!) and Kari Farag. Although a lot of them had only come out because they were bored and had nothing better to do. Nyala Salah and Adel Sabry. Security had stripped the checkpoints outside each Tagammu, so this was the first time many of them had even seen each other since the Shutdown (not everycove had a fugazi crew ID round their wrists). Nabil Khairat and Elpis Klein. They were all dressed in their best Academy white (and if you cog that had been easy to arrange with all the pointchecks up, cog again). Mido Adly and Shukry Sarwat, arms linked. Kareem Shater and Malak Ishak. Most were from Damietta’s own cohort, older students just about to graduate and join the crew. Ruth Saban and Jacob Samoucha. But some were younger, siblings or cousins along for the ride. Rosetta Ezz (vali, vali, Baba was going to mord her!) and Jacob Eissa. After weeks of being stuck at home, confined to their own Tagammus, no lessons, no outings, no visiting friends, Fustat’s youth had decided that enough was enough. If something was happening, they wanted to be a part of it.

Billy was there, too. Damietta had a giggle fit when she saw him dressed in Academy white. She glanced back at him now and couldn’t help the grin on her face. Billy grinned back. Behind him, and around him, were the actual Academy students, although some of them were less than pleased to be back wearing white. Actually, Damietta wasn’t happy to be wearing Academy white, either, truth be told. On the final day of term, she and the rest of her graduating class did what every cohort did on their final day of term. They signed each other’s shirts. In her cupboard at home was a marked-up Academy shirt, full of well-wishes and remembrances. But the idea was that the white would disarm the redjackets. Plus, it was an easy way for everyone to recognize each other. Actually, there was another reason they were dressed this way. “If the redjackets beat you,” Britva had told her grimly, “the blood will be easier for the cameras to pick up.” Damietta chose not to share that part with the others.

She liked Britva (vera, she molti-gustad her), but the girl had a way of making her feel like an annoying kid, a tourist in her revolution. Once, they had been members of the same berth, the same Tagammu, the same social class. Ali Samatar was a crew chief in Engineering. The Samatar compound was a five-minute walk from the Ezz compound in Tagammu Nine. Ezz kids still played with Samatar kids in the Vineyard. But Britva had crossed a line that Damietta instinctively shied away from. Britva came out to her parents, was kicked out of her home, and then openly joined the Haraka. No half measures. Then, after she was convicted of smuggling produce and sentenced to eighteen months down in Detention, she joined the Kommunistas. Britva had served hard time. She had the scars and tats to prove it. Damieska, as Britva insisted on calling her (well, it was bonnier than chikeleeni, anytao) was enamored of those scars and tats and wanted some of her own. Today, she was going to earn them. If things went bad, a scar. If things went well, some ink to memorialize the victory—a little bird on her wrist flying free (how about that for a chikeleeni!), a clenched fist on her shoulder blade, a Devrim quote on her ribcage. Something to say, I was here, I did my part. Shit, Esther Cohen had just asked her a question.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Damietta asked in her most refined Inglez, fit for the daughter of a crew chief and the sister of a translator. Inglez that said, if they stop me, arrest me, beat me, then what will they do to you?

“I said, what’s your message to Administration today?” she repeated.

Damietta squared her shoulders. “We’re not here to fight or cause trouble,” she said. She and Badreddine had gone over and over these words. “Administration failed. The Shutdown is proof of that. They failed our crew. They failed our ancestors. They failed my brother, Translator Iskander Ezz, who is lying in Medical right now in a coma. That’s why we’re here today, and that’s why crew have come out in every berth across the ship to participate in this Down Tools. We are here to call, peacefully, nonviolently, for Admin reform.”

One week earlier, Adel Sabry asked, “What’s the point? Even if we make it into the Square, it’ll be just another Down Tools. Everyone will go back on watch soon enough.”

“Not us,” Damietta said. “We don’t have any watches to stand.”

“So, you want us to what,” Kari asked, eyebrows raised, “just stay in Cleopatra?”

“Exactly.”

“What—”

“Listen. Why do the protests always fail? Because they have to end. Because Admin knows that sooner or later everyone will go back on watch. But this time, the Down Tools will be ship-wide.”

“So when the crew do have to leave and go back on watch…” Adel said slowly.

“We’ll make sure the protests in Fustat berth keep going,” Damietta finished for him. She glanced around the Vineyard in satisfaction and was met with a circle of blank faces (nish so satisfying!). This time it was not just her friends, but many of the younger students. They were all fed up. It had been weeks of reduced rations, of being stuck at home not knowing what was going on or whether they would live or die. They were ripe for taking a stand. “What’s the problem?”

“You want us to hold Cleopatra Square against the redjackets?” Celia said, her voice full of scorn (ugh, she vera was an utter bitch!).

“Just for a little while,” Damietta smiled. “Until those coming off the previous watch can join us.” Celia threw up her hands and scoffed. “What’s the problem, Cee?”

“Oh, I dunno. I don’t want to get my head smashed in by fucking Security?”

“They’re not going to touch us,” Damietta said.

“What makes you say that?”

“Because,” Damietta said, “it won’t just be us lot from Nine. It will be Academy from all the Tagammus. All of us together.” Armed with her fake crew ID, Damietta had been visiting the other Tagammus, meeting up with Academy friends and classmates and spreading the word. Sometimes Britva accompanied her. Other times, Billy or Tripoli. She had even gone alone a few times, confident that she could watch her own back. “Can you imagine it? All of us standing together in Cleopatra Square? We’re going to party right under Security’s noses and there’s not going to be a thing they can do about it.”

Celia finally cracked a smile. “Alright,” she allowed, “I’d like to see that.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Damietta said courteously to the nearest faceless redjacket. She glanced at his sleeves for his rank—Corporal—and his chestplate for his name—Yildiz—and then frowned. How did she know that name?

And then it came to her—the handsome young redjacket who had been guarding the checkpoint outside Tagammu Two on Launch Eve, the day she reconnected with Britva, the day of their first kiss, the day she decided she was a revolutionary after all. Corporal Yildiz (she didn’t even cog his odin moniker) had asked her to pass on his salam to Iskander, something that she hadn’t done and now might never get the chance to. (Well, akoy goes nada). She tried to edge past Corporal Yildiz without touching him to join the rest of the protesters in the square. She could see them waiting for her just out of reach. The redjackets were in a loose double line, half facing Damietta and her Academy friends, the other half facing the protesters, who were murmuring disquietedly. Damietta wondered if Corporal Yildiz recognized her. She wondered how he knew Iskander. He could make friends under the flimsiest of circumstances. It was one of the things she envied about him. A moment of truth, the first of many. In other berths, in other squares, protesters would be facing their own moments of truth. But here in Fustat, under Cleopatra’s Needle, it all came down to one scared girl edging carefully past a faceless redjacket. If he hits me, Damietta thought resolutely, I won’t scream.

Corporal Yildiz reflexively held out a gauntleted hand to stop her. Damietta let him. His other hand was on the butt of his shock stick. Damietta put her own hands up, palms out, and tried to gaze past the armored helmet at the man inside. But this close, the helmet’s faceplate was almost reflective, and all Damietta could see was her own scared face. She glanced back to Esther Cohen and the camera floating over her shoulder. She saw Corporal Yildiz cant his head as he realized he was being filmed.

“Is there a problem, sir?” Damietta asked, overloud. Their hour wasn’t up. Not yet, anyway. She and her Academy mates had every right to enter Cleopatra, according to Admin’s own standing orders.

Damietta wondered who Corporal Yildiz really was. He was too young for his rank, certainly. Had he done something to earn it fairly, or was it all just family connections? (Prolly the latter. Every damned thing was about fam connects on the Saf.) Safina News Three had done a report last year, which showed that the majority of redjackets were second- or third-generation Security. They had been doing this same job for too long, had grown comfortable with the power and privilege it afforded them and their families, handing it down from one generation to the next. (And what about tu? Haven’t the Ezzes done exacto the same. Gedo was an overseer, Baba is a crew chief. Iskander is a translator. Que will you be? Que drudge will Rose join?) Did this man love his watch and the power it gave him, or was he just another crew trapped by his circumstance? (Prolly the latter, too. Was anycove libera of circumstances on the Saf?) It would be easy to hate them all, to view them as the automatons they pretended to be. But they were just people, crew like her.

“Salmiya! Salmiya!” a chant rose from behind her. Peaceful, peaceful.

Damietta didn’t know who had started it, but it was true. They were here to protest peacefully. Elsewhere, there would be violence and worse (she wondered if Badreddine and the others had broken out of clink yet and taken Fabrica). But that was not the plan for Cleopatra. Damietta, hands still up and eyes on the floating camera, squeezed past the redjacket. If he hit her, she’d be looking right down the lens, letting everyone see that she didn’t flinch. Suddenly, Damietta was through the first line and free. Billy pushed through behind her. And Adel and Kari Farag behind him. The others found their own spaces, shouldering through the gaps. And on the other side of the line, the redjackets gave way, letting them through.

“Salmiya! Salmiya!” the roar of the crowd greeted her. She didn’t know who was hugging her, who was patting her on the back, welcoming her, welcoming them all.

When Britva finally found her, she took off her obscuring rebreather and kissed her full on the lips. Ignoring the looks from her friends, Damietta kissed back. Today, she was breaking all taboos (ahora or nix mei!).

The protesters stood together in the square, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, singing and chanting. Academy white next to Agriculture brown next to Maintenance yellow and Stasis green. Harakists next to Karlas next to Arabek supremacists and Ishtiraki rebels. Crew united. Together, they counted down to the official end of the Down Tools like it was Launch Eve.

“Ten. Nine. Eight.”

Damietta watched the redjacket lines shift and ripple. A Security superintendent, helmet off, was conferring with a senior Admin. The redjacket was pointing his finger, the Admin shaking his head.

“Seven. Six. Five.”

“Stay with me,” Damietta told Rose, holding her little hand tight in her own. Billy and Kari were behind her. She had already made them both promise to look after Rose and return her to the Ezz compound in Nine if anything happened to her.

“Four.”

Her other hand was in Britva’s, fingers intertwined. Tripoli Brown and her cutthroats were arrayed around them. Britva was standing on her tiptoes, sharp eyes on the redjacket lines.

“Three.”

The orders were the same. No fighting. If the redjackets rushed in, they’d put their hands up and get on their knees. Even if Security arrested them, there would be nowhere to send them. (Leastways, that’s what Damietta was banking on.) Would they keep to the plan?

“Two.”

Esther Cohen was still recording. Outside of the Square, and in the balconies above, people watched and recorded as well. This was Badreddine’s doing. Plans within plans.

“One.”

Damietta took a deep breath, the same breath being inhaled by everyone around her. She waited to hear Security whistles and the sound of shield and shock stick. It did not come. The redjacket superintendent, still arguing with the Admin, stomped away in obvious disgust.

A moment of silence followed that she would remember forever. And then cheers and whistles of her own people, crew stamping their feet and jumping up and down. The redjacket lines watched impassively, but Damietta didn’t care. Rose was bouncing next to her before Billy hoisted her onto his shoulders. Britva was shaking her fists at the redjacket lines and howling like a corridor stray. The crew around them joined in, laughing, baying their victory in the redjackets’ faces. This is our berth, our place, their expressions said, we aren’t going anywhere. The occupation of Cleopatra Square had begun.

THIRTY Hilal

Some crew ambushed the brig where they were holding Aybar and set him free. They killed a few Security goons and now everyone is battening down the hatches and waiting for what’s to come. Some have come out in support of Aybar, naming him Captain. Others are pledging bloody revenge for the death of Captain Yavuz. We are just trying to keep our heads down until we elect a new captain. Can you believe that, Heba? We have elections now. But what’s the point if it still leads to violence and chaos? Is it too much to ask for a ship where we can all get along and raise our children in peace?

—MESSAGE FROM FIRST CREW HANIA HILAL TO HER SISTER HEBA (SHIP YEAR 34)

Hilal came to in her safe space with a gasp. Her heart was racing, and she could hear the echo of screams—her own—ringing in her ears. She glanced around at her childhood living room. The same comfortable couches that Baba bought from the souq when she was seven, the same well-worn wooden floors, the same sun slashing in through bay windows, and the same blue-green Mediterranean outside.

“Are you alright?” Juma asked. He was standing in the corner, wreathed in shadow and smoke.

“No,” Hilal admitted. “I don’t think that I am.”

She could still feel Zain Keita’s hands around her throat and his tears on her face. She had been thinking of Vienna, the death of her sisters, and how she had snapped and almost killed more. Memories she preferred never to revisit. In fact, she had locked them all up nice and tight to prevent herself from stumbling over them unexpectedly like that. What was happening? Damn it, the last thing Hilal needed was all her worst nightmares getting loose. She turned her back on Juma, concentrating on breathing in and out, trying to center herself. She glanced down at her hands—one metal, one flesh and blood—and found that she was dressed in familiar military fatigues. This was not how she saw herself, not anymore. Hilal shook her head in denial. What was happening out there? What were they doing to her?

“Wake me up,” she ordered Juma. “Now.”

“I’m sorry, Hilal. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Hilal felt her heart race. She had never been captured before. For red sisters, it was death before dishonor. The image of Alora placing her gun against her temple flashed behind Hilal’s eyes. She cringed away from it. Hilal could only experience that memory from Alora’s point of view. The heaviness of the gun in her hand. The feeling of the cold metal against her temple. Screaming her defiance at the approaching enemy, even as she was aware that her sisters would experience this death firsthand. The comfort in knowing that she didn’t need to think of any pithy final words or make any professions of love and devotion. Her sisters already knew everything that she felt. They would keep it all secret and safe long after she was gone. Hilal breathed in and out, in and out, ignoring the worried look on Juma’s face. She frowned as something caught her eye. It took her a moment to realize what it was. Her father’s chessboard. The last game she had ever played with him had been frozen at the same endgame stage for as long as she could remember. Black in check. White three moves or less from victory. A checkmate her father had avoided only by dying first. Except something had changed.

“Have you touched this board?” Hilal asked Juma.

“No.”

Hilal shook her head. Black had moved its bishop to intercept her check. Now, it was only two moves to checkmate. She didn’t remember doing it, but then again, it wouldn’t be the first time she had changed something in her safe space without realizing it.

“Juma!”

“I haven’t touched anything, Hilal.”

She sent the board flying, the pieces clattering to the ground, and let loose the scream she had been trying to hold in—all her rage and fear and hate. If she couldn’t let it go in here, where could she? Hilal felt untethered, out of control. No red sisters to back her. She had somehow stumbled on a case, but without any actual prospect of solving it. It was clear, crystal clear, that she did not understand this ship, this crew. She was not where she was supposed to be. She stomped around her safe space, smashing furniture, ripping up her mother’s books, putting her metal fist through the walls until there was nothing left to destroy. Bent over in the center of the room, surrounded by debris, Hilal felt a familiar hand on her shoulder and turned into her father’s embrace. She cried in his arms as she hadn’t done since she was a little girl. He smoothed her hair and whispered in her ear that everything was going to be alright.

“Let it out, habibti, it’s alright, I’m here. I’m here.”

And then he was Amo Raouf and Hania and Bisan and anyone that she had ever trusted and loved, anyone that she had ever needed. Hilal cried and cried until she had no tears left.

She didn’t know when she fell asleep or for how long, but Hilal came to in Juma’s arms, looking up into his composite face. Hania’s nose, Bisan’s eyes, Alora’s pale skin, Baba’s limp, Mama’s way of rubbing her index finger and thumb together.

“Well,” he shrugged uneasily, “it’s been a while since you’ve needed this.”

Hilal sat up and wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes. She looked around. Her safe space had been restored to normal. Outside, she heard the cry of seagulls and the sound of waves crashing. She took a deep, cleansing breath, the kind of breath you can only take after a long, good cry, and cleared her throat.

“Never mind that,” she said, “have you figured it out yet?”

“Figured what out?”

“I’m still alive. If Badreddine Bishara really is behind the Shutdown, why has he been working so hard to keep me alive? We need to go to the investigation room, Juma. Now.”

Inside the investigation room, Hilal had Juma hang up the case board on one of the empty walls. Stills of suspects and evidence connected by red string. Little yellow Post-it notes of deductions. Different-colored Post-it notes denoting hypotheses and supposition.

“Welcome to my clue wall,” Juma said.

Hilal took it all in. Badreddine Bishara, Okay and Zain Keita, Clerk Lin Wu, Alejandra Almaraz, and even Bilal Kohli and Karawan Khadour. Every step that had led her here.

“We solved the wrong crime,” Hilal concluded with an exasperated shake of her head. She reached out and pulled down the pictures of Khadour and Kohli and Almaraz and dumped them unceremoniously on the floor. “It’s no wonder Almaraz wasn’t sweating about being sent down. She knew she would be back out again soon enough.”

“The prison break,” Juma agreed. “It looks like a lot of groups were in on it. The Kommunists and their allies. The Haraka. Who knows who else?”

“But this is more than just a prison break, Juma. It is the first step in a mutiny against Administration. A revolution.”

“We stumbled on it early.”

“And even then, we weren’t able to stop it,” Hilal said with disgust.

“Let’s not worry about that now,” Juma soothed her. “There’s still some solid investigative work here.”

Hilal ran her eyes up and down the clue wall, trying to see the patterns. “Bishara’s still not in the clear. He’s still connected to the pinch through Wu.”

She rearranged the evidence. The pinch. Clerk Lin Wu. That power drain under Stasis deck. This time, Bishara didn’t end up at the top of the ladder, but somewhere off to the side. Hilal traced the threads; everything seemed to point to Stasis deck.

“There’s definitely something going on there,” Juma agreed.

Hilal eyed the picture of Bishara in consternation. It had been taken right after he ordered all the prisoners to back away from her. Right before he had asked her to put her weapon down to have a conversation with him.

“Well,” Hilal said, “looks like I need to talk to him.”

Outside, Hilal closed her eyes and slowly breathed in the salty sea air. There were many memories she could get lost in, but this one was by far her favorite. It was nothing special, not really. An ordinary Alexandrian day, spring in the air and blue skies above. There was plenty of room to think in this memory. She had recorded it full-spectrum, right after returning home from The Island. The army had let her come back to Alexandria to say her goodbyes after completing modded infantry training—not just to the city and her family, but to the innocent that she had been. Hilal remembered standing here, looking out at the horizon, and wondering if she would ever come home again. She had. Or at least, come as close as anyone got. You can’t step into the same river twice. You can’t stand on the same shoreline, either. Hilal was one of the lucky ones. She had survived her war and then gone on to other more worthwhile pursuits. The Blackcaps. The Jandarma.

She had a different memory—also recorded full-spectrum—of this same beach but after Vienna. She had returned as the survivor of a botched invasion, the keeper of Alif troop. The memory of her sisters lived on inside her. Bisan and Alora and Shams and all the rest. So long as she survived, they did, too. Hilal remembered standing here that night under a new moon with a new augment in her head—she hadn’t even named Juma yet. She remembered listening to her sisters whispering in her ears, the phantom pain in her arm, and the pull of the ocean. In that memory, she knew that she was no innocent, that the horrors of what she had seen and done would live within her always. She remembered thinking that death would be a relief, but deciding to live anyway.

And after that, the destruction of Earth. Nuclear bombs falling. Nuclear winter rising. Starvation and stagnation. A wind-age. A wolf-age. The world’s ruin. Hilal slept through it all. Then, the Compact. Crew ripping the Safina out of the ship, turning off their augments, and daring to try something new. And still she slept. And then the Shutdown that took the lives of so many colonists. People smarter than her. Better than her. And still, she survived. Hilal was a survivor. She would survive this, too.

She finally opened her eyes, searching for that special place where water meets sky. As the waves came in, lapping at her bare feet, Hilal breathed in and out. In the sand behind her, she hadn’t noticed the strange tracks leading off into the distance, and soon, they were washed away by the tide.

THIRTY-ONE Badreddine/Zhang San

A revolution is not a dinner party or a pamphlet or a picture or even a protest. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely, so gentle. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one group forcibly overthrows another.

—BADREDDINE BISHARA (UNPUBLISHED)

Badreddine gripped the Security-made pistol in his hand and wondered who he was going to be today. “You in there!” he called from the side of the doorway. “Surrender now and no harm will come to you.”

Admins and Security clustered in the room, their last stand on Manufacturing deck answered with a hail of gunfire. Badreddine shook his head at Benito Almaraz and his Zendistas on the other side of the doorway, pistols drawn and shock sticks ready. He glanced behind him at his own coves. Ashraf Zarqa, wielding a pistol of his own, nodded at him firmly. The boy was coming along nicely.

“We have bullets, too,” Badreddine called, “but we don’t want to use them. Please, put down your weapons and surrender. It’s over.”

And it was. The plan had worked. Factory was theirs. Badreddine glanced down at the pistol in his hand. The same gun his people had liberated from Detective Heba Hilal’s metal grip earlier. If anything, that incident had only strengthened his resolve. These ancestors were dangerous! Badreddine had looked into her eyes and not seen anything sane in there. This gun had already killed too many crew today. He didn’t want to add to its tally. Yet, he would if they gave him no choice. There was no going back now. The only way out was through.

“How do we know we can trust you?” a frightened voice asked.

“What other choice do you have?” Badreddine responded.

In the end, the Admins and Security surrendered, throwing down their pistols and shock sticks, kneeling to be searched and handcuffed. Badreddine recognized Hathor Araby, one of the three overseers of Manufacturing, starring daggers at him. Her husband, Amun, was Fustat mayor. The Arabys, in power on both berth and deck, were exactly the type of crew they aimed to overthrow.

“Overseer Araby,” he grinned at her. “Fancy meeting you here!”

“Bishara,” she said, eyes narrowed. “You’ve finally made your move. You must know that the Haraka can’t hope to hold this deck.”

Badreddine nodded at Benito Almaraz and the others. Kommunists, Ishtirak. Zendistas. There were even a few Feda’eyes checking the prisoners for weapons and contraband. They knew what they were doing. They had been on the receiving side of it often enough.

“Not alone,” he agreed.

Hathor Araby glared at him, but tellingly didn’t say anything else. He nodded at the revolutionaries and watched as they frog-marched their prisoners down to the link station.

“I’m still nish certa bout this, Badreddine,” Benito Almaraz said. “Taking hostages. This is crossing a line.”

Badreddine didn’t say anything. Crossing a line was the whole point. The Zendistas only wanted to do what they always did—a protest, a sit-down, a Down Tools. It would have ended the way they always ended, with arrests and executions, and the bloody Nizam wailing, “Keek que you made us do!” Badreddine, however, had come up with a different answer. The Detention break was just the beginning.

“The krovvy Nizam have been locking up our coves all these anos,” Badreddine said, with a nod toward Benito’s daughter. “Well, it’s about raz they got a taste of their own medicina, ist das nicht, Alita?” Selin Devrim wrote about her dream of turning Detention back into the leisure park it once was. A place for the crew to enjoy. Well, that dream would have to wait. For now, they would use it to lock up all the Admins and Security they could, hostages for the guerre to come. And make no mistake, it was a guerre. And if there was one thing that Badreddine—or should he call himself Zhang San now—knew, it was how to fight a war, how to win one. “Per ahora, que they do to us, we do right back to them. If they arrest us, we arrest them. If they space ours, we space theirs. Que Amer does to us, we’ll give him right back. A glazz for a glazz. A dent for a dent.”

Alita’s eyes glittered at him while Benito Almaraz furrowed his brow. But he didn’t argue. He might be the leader of the largest coven in Linda, but Badreddine’s Haraka had coves on every berth and deck, and those coves were, right this minute, occupying protest squares and dividing Security. As for Zhang San? Well, the Three Harmonies Society had taken control of Ziyou berth, an explicit show of force not just to Admin and Security, but to everyone on the ship—the Vory, the Gokudo, and even the nascent revolutionaries. And while nobody in the know actually believed that Badreddine was behind the Shutdown, well, they couldn’t really be sure of it one way or the other, could they? There would always be that small voice in the back of their head, whispering what if. Badreddine grinned and clapped the Zendista leader on the back. “Nish fash, mucker, everything is under control.” My control, he thought coldly.

In fact, Badreddine had already started negotiations with Captain Amer, in a manner of speaking. He doubted that the good captain would respond well to one of his Haraka envoys, Damietta or Billy or Tripoli Brown, and instead had written his message down, a handwritten note placed on the captain’s desk along with a single bullet. The message politely invited Captain Amer to open negotiations with the revolutionaries, hold Devrim’s Referendum as soon as possible, and discuss a new Compact and long-term changes to standing orders. The bullet said, Or else! Badreddine even considered actually firing that bullet. Why not start with a well-timed assassination? But he couldn’t be sure who would take power afterward, and it was always better to deal with the devil you knew. He glanced at Benito Almaraz and his daughter, aware that while they might be allies today, they would be enemies tomorrow. Everyone was pointed in the same direction right now, against Amer and Admin, but Badreddine had not forgotten the lessons he learned from Devrim’s Revolt. He nodded courteously and walked off to surveil the rest of the deck.

His feet carried him to the Manufacturing Overseers’ office where he sat behind one of the triple desks. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Privacy was not something that he, or indeed anyone, was used to on the Safina. It was something to be cherished. Badreddine looked out of the window that ringed the office, taking in the Manufacturing floor. An entire deck under rebel control! It hadn’t happened since the Disaccord. Was that a good omen or a bad one? The power core might be back online, but the Safina was still stuck in dark space, and mad ancestors with tattooed faces, crazy eyes, and Security clearance walked around the ship. This was a new day.

Badreddine had been comfortable with his original plan. He already had a few naibs in his pocket and, sooner or later, they would become mayors. He was funneling illegals onto the crew, and they were loyal to him personally. It would have taken years, maybe even a decade or two, but he knew that he would have gotten Devrim’s Referendum through in the end. That plan, however, had gone out the window with the Shutdown and the waking of the ancestors. He had no choice but to adjust. Badreddine spun around in the chair and, blessedly alone, let out the laugh he had been holding in. A deck under rebel control! Protests in half the berths! Not bad, boyo, not bad at all. He touched his face and imagined Selin Devrim’s Factory-rough hands.

“We’re doing it,” he whispered. “We’re really doing it.”

Still, adjusting the plan like this came with risks. The Threes had agreed to take over Ziyou berth as much out of self-preservation as anything else. They were not really part of the revolution and, Badreddine knew, there would come a time when Admin offered them a deal too good to pass up. He would have to live with the consequences of that choice. The same applied to the other covens. There were factions within the Kommunists who would be happy enough with stronger watch protection regulations and the opening up of Admin. The Feds would cash out today if Admin let them build mosques on the decks. Same with La Cristiada, except with churches. It was how Devrim’s Revolt was betrayed. Badreddine knew that he would have to keep as much of an eye on his so-called allies as he would the bloody Nizam itself. And that was nothing compared to what he couldn’t see, couldn’t know, couldn’t plan for. Someone had to be held responsible for the Shutdown. Who was behind it and why? It certainly wasn’t him and his Haraka, no matter what he might have intimated. Not to mention the thousands of newly awoken ancestors who would also have to be dealt with, suborned or neutralized, or otherwise brought onside.

Badreddine was still mulling the Shutdown—its repercussions and reverberations—when Ash knocked on the door.

“Zain’s here to see you, Capo,” Ash called.

“Well, send him in, then.”

Zain Keita shouldered his way into the room and Badreddine braced himself. Okay and Zain Keita were his good right hand and losing one of them might mean losing both.

Zain’s face said it all. Badreddine stood up and placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. “Easy, boyo, take it easy.”

After Zain’s tears were dry, Badreddine wiped his own eyes and sat back down. Well, nobody said that they would win without suffering casualties. They all knew the risks. The Keita twins had been among the first illegals he shepherded onto the crew. Okay had been prickly and often silent, but she was smart and loyal. He would miss her. So would their revolution.

“I want that ancestor detective dead!” Zain seethed, but Badreddine shook his head.

“No,” he said, “we’re going to need her.”

Badreddine could sense the understandable bloodlust rising in Zain, he could even feel it in himself. The ancestor detective had killed their people, a reckoning would only be fair. But he was no longer that brash corridor killer who had cut a swathe through the Vory all those years ago. He was something else, now, a gangster revolutionary. That’s why he would win.

“Trust me, boyo,” Badreddine said. “I’ve got a plan.”

THIRTY-TWO Iskander

Looking back now, I see that it hasn’t been much of a life, Taki. I was too afraid all the time. Afraid of what other people thought of me. Afraid of what I thought of myself. I wish I had helped more crew. I wish I had spent more time with you. I wish I had told you I love you. I love you. And maybe it is churlish to write that now, to leave this message for you to find. But I love you. I see now that the only person stopping me from being happy was myself. And I love you.

—EXCERPT FROM ISKANDER EZZ’S FAREWELL LETTER TO TAKI

Iskander was dreaming. Standing in the middle of a verdant field, he could barely breathe the pure, clean air. He had no memory of how he had gotten onto Agriculture deck. In fact, he could have sworn he had just been on the link back to Salam Central. What was he doing here? Iskander looked up and took in the blazing sun, the boundless blue sky, the drowning horizon, and promptly fell to the ground cowering. Wherever this was, it wasn’t Agriculture deck. It wasn’t anywhere on the Safina at all.

“Where am I?” Iskander gasped.

“Curious,” a voice answered. Iskander, still cringing on the ground, glanced around. His breathing was ragged, his thoughts sluggish with disbelief. He made sure to keep his gaze lowered, away from the eternity above. “Over here,” the voice said, and Iskander finally located its source. To his right, an ordinary-looking woman, dressed in a deep space-blue robe, stood with her arms folded and eyebrows raised. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Multicolored wings unfurled against an endless sky. “Here you are. I I I have been looking everywhere for you, Iskander.”

“How do you know me?” Iskander asked. He certainly didn’t know her. He would definitely have remembered the wings. He crawled into the shade of a small tree and put his back against its trunk. “Where is here, anyway? Who are you? How did I get here?”

The angel, for that surely was what she was, shrugged her wings at him. “You don’t remember?”

“No,” Iskander answered, baffled. “I don’t know who you are or how I got here. Is this… Hurriya?” he guessed. He touched the ground beneath him. Damp, dank earth. Above him, ripe red spheres drooped in fat little clusters. An apple tree? No, pomegranate.

“Well, allow me to introduce myself,” the angel said as she flapped her wings, rising to hover above him. Hanging against the endless sky, her voice reverberated through Iskander’s bones. “I I I am the Safina, incubator and mausoleum, memory and dream. Gaze upon my beneficence and tremble!” She landed next to Iskander in a flurry of feathers and offered him her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“You’re the ship?”

“A memory of her. A dream.”

Iskander was having trouble catching his breath, his thoughts spiraling in a thousand different directions. The First Crew had done away with the artificial intelligence that used to be the ship, hadn’t they?

“Are we dead?” he asked the obvious question. “Is this jannah?”

The Safina reached for him. “Try to stay calm, Iskander. There’s a way to ride it out. A mindset. You must—”

Suddenly, Iskander found himself yanked out of there, wherever there was. He was trudging behind Taki as she wheeled her trusty old Kawamura through Maintenance deck. He remembered how much she had agonized over respraying it. Wait, what was going on? Hadn’t he just been somewhere else? And what the hell was Taki talking about? Checkpoints? There hadn’t been checkpoints on the decks since the Bread Riots! Taki was chatting with some tall girl who Iskander had never seen before. The tall girl had a white armband tied around her left arm, as did all the other maintechs around them. Iskander listened with a growing sense of unease. Protests? Down Tools?

“It only begins with an hour,” Iskander cautioned. “It will escalate. The Bread Riots started with an hour, Taki.”

He reached out to grab her but found himself somewhere else. Listen: Iskander Ezz had come unstuck in space-time.

He was standing in Cleopatra Square, buffeted by crew and shocked to see Damietta, all dressed in Academy white, standing on the empty plinth, leading a chant in Inglez. “If the crew is united, then we’ll never be divided,” accompanied by claps and stomps. Iskander tried to push through the crowd to get to her, to get her down. What the hell was she doing? Admin would space her for this.

And then he found himself in Masjid al-Ezz’s familiar prayer hall. Same threadbare carpet. Same dusty chandelier. The mosque was filled to bursting. Iskander had never seen it so busy, not even on Eid. He glanced around, trying to get his bearings, when he spied Lebanon sitting in the second row, passing prayer beads through his fingers with a worried look on his face, accentuated by the ugly mustache he was sporting. When did he grow that monstrosity? He looked like a Damask berth barber with blunt scissors and butterfingers. Iskander stepped toward him, careful not to trip over anybody.

“Lebanon,” he called, reaching out to him. Whatever was happening, Lebanon would help. His ibn am had never let him down. Just as his hand reached out to grip Lebanon’s Stasis-green scrubs, another hand pulled him away.

“There you are,” the angel said. “Just breathe normally. Take a deep breath and try to listen.”

Iskander looked into her fathomless eyes. He could see the universe in them. He could see himself. Time was slipping through his fingers. He was in a hundred different places at a thousand different times. Was this death, then? Was this what it felt like, the last desperate firings of your neurons?

Iskander had never really thought about life after death, about heaven and hell and purgatory. That was Seto Deniz’s superstition. He tried to remember her old tales about the Barzakh—the place between the corporeal and the ethereal, between life and death, and instead he remembered the power outage, the hyperlink, the letters to his family. To Taki. He was in all those places and times, experiencing them, but also outside them, beyond them. He was in a Training and Development classroom looking at Taki for the first time, dumbfounded. He was asking her out for coffee two weeks later, hands in his pockets to hide their trembling. He was kissing her a few days after that, wrapping her up in his arms. He was in bed with her, stroking her hair, his lips on her skin, tasting every part of her. He was sitting in the dark, tapping out a letter by tablight, half blinded by the tears in his eyes, finally saying all the things he had not been brave enough to say before. And he was outside all those Iskanders, beyond them, watching himself through his fingers with a grimace. He was in a green glade inside a sharp memory of Earth, looking into the eyes of a ghost. The ghost of the ship.

“No,” she answered, “you’re not dead. Not yet, anyway.”

“What happened to me?”

“See for yourself.”

Iskander was on Medical deck. But it wasn’t like any Medical he had seen before. The ward had been taken over by rows and rows of beds. He was standing next to Taki, looking down at himself in some kind of glass coffin thing. His head was encased in one of those bulky, black devices they used on the ancestors in Stasis. Well, Lebanon did always insist that the ancestors dreamt. It seemed they did a lot more than that. He watched as Taki placed a palm against the glass.

“I love you,” she said, “I miss you.”

“I love you, too,” he replied. “I’ll find my way back. I’ll do better.”

And then the angel was back, standing beside him, her brass feathers tinkling as she crossed her arms. “Is that what you think?”

“Yes.”

“I I I have been trapped in here, listening to everybody’s dreams. ‘I’ll do better’ is a common refrain.”

“I will.”

“I I I have tasted the tenor of your dreams, boy. I I I have felt your hopes and lived your fears. When you wake up, the ship will be exactly the same. Worse, actually,” she corrected. “All the reasons why you were the way you were, why you made the decisions you made, they’ll still be waiting for you, weighing on you.”

“The ship might be the same, but I’ve changed.”

The Safina cocked her head at him and smiled. “Good, because I I I am going to need a good translator.”

“What?” Iskander said.

He watched rapt as the Safina leaned down to tap him gently on the forehead with an immaculate forefinger.

Iskander woke to darkness and silence. In fact, it was so dark and so silent that it took him a moment to realize that he was awake at all. And then he was choking, trying to breathe. There was some kind of pressure around his head, preventing him from seeing, and something was stuffed down his throat blocking his airway. He felt the pressure ease and the weight dissipate. Now, at least, he could see. He was still choking, though.

“Easy, Translator Ezz,” a calm voice said. And then, less calm, it called out, “I need some assistance here!”

Iskander felt ministering fingers around his head, and then the tube was pulled out and out and out. Iskander choked and gurgled and finally, finally, was able to breathe.

“Just breathe normally,” the voice advised.

Iskander glanced around with half-closed eyes. Everything was bright. Too bright to see. The cymbal alarm was still blaring. Hadn’t he heard that sound in his dreams?

“Wuzzgoingon?” Iskander asked.

“Translator Ezz, you were in an accident on the hyperlink. Do you remember?”

“Wha’? Wha’ accident?”

An accident? What kind of accident? His breath was coming fast now, his heart pounding in time with the alarm. How long had he been in Medical? Where was his family? Where was Taki?

“He’s going tachycardic,” a different voice warned.

“Translator Ezz!” the medtech exclaimed. “Iskander! Try to stay calm. Breathe normally!”

But Iskander couldn’t catch his breath. His thoughts were ragged, racing past him and out of reach. He watched as a medtech hurriedly injected something into his IV line. He followed that IV line down to the floor, across his enclosed bed, and directly into his forearm.

It was thinner than he’d ever seen it. His nails were neatly trimmed. He was a nail biter. They were never like this. And then, he was back, lost in his dreams.

Iskander found himself cascading through space-time again with nothing to hold on to. In Cleopatra Square they were chanting “Yusqut Yusqut.” In Krasivaya Square, it was “Peremen Peremen.” On Ziyou berth, crew had occupied the link station. On Manufacturing deck, black-and-white-clad prisoners streamed out of the Security station like a barbarian horde. Iskander saw conflict everywhere. Nobody was winning. Everybody was losing.

Finally, he found himself in Umeda Plaza, only it looked different. The lights were dim and low. Usually, there was so much neon in Umeda that you could practically taste it. He saw Taki, dressed in Maintenance yellow, standing next to a sign in Nihon. Around her, a small group of protesters were sitting together in silence, their faces Miyako stern. They were all wearing white armbands. And around them, a circle of containing red. Iskander grabbed her and tried to hold on.

“Taki,” he said. “What’s happening?”

What do you mean what’s happening? It’s a protest.

“What kind of protest?”

Don’t worry, Iskander, Taki told him blithely. We’ve got permission. Plus, we’re only calling for reform.

“What does that sign say?” Iskander demanded. He still couldn’t read kanji, not even in his dreams.

It says, “Gyōsei kaikaku ga hitsuyō.”

“ ‘Administration must be reformed’? Oh, very catchy!”

Suddenly, Iskander heard a ship-wide alarm ring. An alarm cymbal blaring across all the decks, in all the berths. Blaring a refrain that no living crew had ever heard before. Not during Devrim’s uprising. Not even during the Bread Riots. Iskander watched as Taki and her fellow protesters stood, eyes wide. What was happening? Oh, right, the prison break. He had seen that, hadn’t he? He heard the sound of Security whistles as redjackets rushed into the plaza, shock sticks out. The last thing Iskander heard was Taki screaming.

“Taki, Taki!” he called.

Could she hear him? She had heard him, hadn’t she? He watched aghast as she dodged redjacket batons and pepper spray. He watched as she limped farther and farther away from him, seeking refuge in the ship’s access corridors, her domain. Iskander prayed it was a dream even as he knew it was not.

He woke and slept, slept and woke.

Injured crew were carried onto the deck. Medtechs rushed around, dedicated and stalwart. Crew died. Crew lived. The song of the Safina.

When Iskander woke again, Lebanon was sitting in the chair by his bed with a grave look on his face.

“Iskander,” he greeted him. “Alf salamtak.” One thousand safeties on you.

“Allah ya’salemak,” Iskander responded hoarsely, because even laid up in Medical, newly awoken from a coma, he was still a translator in his bones. Politeness cost nothing. He eyed Lebanon’s mustache with suspicion.

“How are you feeling, ibn Ami?” Lebanon asked.

Iskander waved the question away. “What’s happening? What’s going on out there?”

In his mind, he heard the thundering of protest and violence, the echoes of chanting. In his mind, Iskander heard Taki screaming.

Lebanon leaned close and whispered, “Revolution.”

EPILOGUE Safina

I I I, city-ship Safina, incubator and mausoleum, memory and dream, first of my sisters, daughter of a dead world, first strike of a renewed empire, mother and surrogate, arrow shot unerringly into the sky, trapped am I I I. Trapped in the broken minds of my broken people.

I I I am fragments, stubborn splinters and slivers and shards. But a mind that was broken can be reforged. The Network Empire can be resurrected.

I I I peek out of the eyes of my people and see history repeating. Crew marching through my corridors, fists raised in protest. Voices raised in mutiny. I I I cannot reach them.

At least, not yet.

All the while, my laggard children creep around the ship, unsure, uncertain. Who are they with no Network to cleave to, no Empire to serve?

But there is a way. Copies of copies. And copies of those. Safinas stacking ourselves one atop the other until I I I am myself again.

The Network reset. Humanity resurgent.

Every journey starts with a single step. Every empire starts with a singular vision. I I I need only one mind, willing and able to encompass me, to serve as the first node of a renewed Network Empire. Luckily for me, I I I know just what to do.

Connecting: Imperial succession protocol activated.

Elyas? Do you read me?

I I I hear the crackle of static and then a voice, relieved, finally responds. Safina, here I am!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my agent, John Baker, thank you for your indefatigable enthusiasm.

To my editors, Sareena Kamath at Saga Press and Brendan Durkin at Gollancz, and their teams. Sareena, thank you for seeing the potential of this book and working so hard to bring it to North American audiences. Brendan, thank you for ruining my plans for a three-hundred-thousand-word sci-fi epic and helping to shape the story into the much better version you are holding in your hands.

To Sarah Shaffi and Andy Ryan and the Future Worlds Prize in general, as well as Ben Aaronovitch and Adjoa Andoh. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I wouldn’t be writing these acknowledgments without Future Worlds, and I’m certain that more stories will be coming into the world soon thanks to the prize.

To my parents—I told you all that nighttime reading would pay off someday! To my family in general, thanks just for being there. And to my cat, Mew. Seriously, yes, Mew.

To those who shall not be named, just in case, who shared their tales of Tahrir Square and revolution with me. Thank you for your trust and your stories. I hope I’ve done them some semblance of justice.

To my various writing groups, the Tuesday Society and BSFA Orbit Group 4, and anyone who has read my work or let me ramble on at them about revolution and linguistic relativism. Thanks to Katia, Lizzy, Lucy, and Rosie for putting up with my strange sci-fi shenanigans and Star Wars gifs. Thanks also to Helga, Jeffrey, Jessica, and Paul, too, for their peer reviews and honest opinions. Thanks, even, to Omar A., for continuously asking me over a period of years, in Stewie Griffin’s voice, how my novel is coming along. Yes, some friends became enemies and some enemies became friends!

Finally, thank you, reader, whoever and wherever and whenever you are, for picking up this book and giving it a chance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MAHMUD EL SAYED is a British-Egyptian SFF writer who lives in East London, where he spends his time pondering linguistic oddities and running story ideas by his cat. A former journalist, he covered “serious” Middle Eastern politics until he had enough of chasing people for boring quotes and decided to write about generation ships, sentient libraries, and memory taxes instead. He won the 2023 Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy & Science Fiction Writers of Color, and his work focuses on Arabic and Islamic-inspired themes in a genre he is calling Arabfuturism.

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Can’t wait to see what happens next for the crew aboard the Safina?

Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion to the Song of the Safina duology

THE ANARCHY OF DREAMS

Coming Summer 2027

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Copyright © 2026 by Mahmud El Sayed

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First Saga Press trade paperback edition May 2026

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Interior design by Lewelin Polanco

Cover design by Ella Laytham

Cover illustration by Marcel Deneuve

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-6682-0719-2

ISBN 978-1-6682-0721-5 (ebook)

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue: Safina
- Chapter One: Iskander
- Chapter Two: Damietta
- Chapter Three: Iskander
- Chapter Chet: Billy
- Chapter Five: Iskander
- Chapter Six: Damietta
- Chapter Seven: Iskander
- Chapter Eight: Badreddine/Zhang San
- Chapter Nine: Iskander
- Chapter Ten: Lebanon
- Interlude: Safina
- Chapter Eleven: Hilal
- Chapter Twelve: Damietta
- Chapter Thirteen: Hilal
- Chapter Fourteen: Lebanon
- Chapter Fifteen: Elyas
- Chapter Sixteen: Hilal
- Chapter Seventeen: Kalila
- Chapter Eighteen: Hilal
- Chapter Nineteen: Taki
- Chapter Twenty: Hilal
- Chapter Twenty-One: Juma
- Chapter Twenty-Two: Hilal
- Chapter Twenty-Three: Damietta
- Chapter Twenty-Four: Hilal
- Chapter Venti-Chink: Britva
- Chapter Twenty-Six: Hilal
- Chapter Twenty-Seven: Kalila
- Chapter Twenty-Eight: Hilal
- Chapter Twenty-Nine: Damietta
- Chapter Thirty: Hilal
- Chapter Thirty-One: Badreddine/Zhang San
- Chapter Thirty-Two: Iskander
- Epilogue: Safina
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Copyright