End

The tribunal room was a mix of chrome and wood, blending the archaic decor of the hex wing with the high-tech atmosphere of the rest of the ship. Pilar was detained stiff-backed in a metal chair, her ankles and wrists bound by shackles that had erupted as soon as she sat down. She’d been guided in by the man who had collected her from her cell as soon as her eyes had fluttered open after being stunned. The room she awoke in had been unfamiliar, but was clean, just like the new clothes she was inexplicably wearing.

Her stomach had heaved thinking about who had changed her.

A dozen empty wooden thrones, a deep mahogany just like Nicola’s desk, sat before her. She didn’t attempt to see the audience behind her. She heard them shuffling about; that was enough. She didn’t want to know if Twyla was watching. Or Nicola, Christof, Marsh, Horace, or Letzl.

If she didn’t see them, she could believe they didn’t know. She could believe they all held her in high esteem, whispering amongst themselves theories about where she had gone, why she had disappeared. In her mind, none of the theories involved her being a criminal.

A door hissed open and resealed behind her, and footsteps heavier than those she’d heard before came toward her and past her. A line of hexes, six in all, their black robes billowing behind them approached the thrones and took their seats. A soft thud sounded as half a dozen bottoms met leather-bound cushions at once.

Staggered footsteps of another half-dozen people joined them, four men and two women. The man who had collected her was among them; the others all wore the same charcoal grey uniform as him except one–one wore the proper uniform of an officer, the deep blue complimenting her dark skin.

The lights flickered, and a wave of hushed murmurs filled the room until they brightened once again and remained that way. The hexes' faces were obscured by the shadows of their hoods, but Pilar scanned those of the officials. Each remained completely blank-faced; purposely so. For the first time, she twisted her neck, trying to read the faces of those in the room. She had assumed the power issues were relegated to the brig cells only. That they would allow such failures here, in the presence of an officer was inconceivable.

But the few faces she could see–unfamiliar ones, thankfully–didn’t seem concerned in the slightest. Only a bit annoyed.

“Pilar Armada,” a deep voice rang out, pulling her attention back to the front, “you have been charged with three counts of murder, sixteen counts of misappropriation of funds and equipment, and a crime so unspeakably abominable we have yet to label the charge.”

A man in grey read the accusations, a fluffy white mustache twitching with the passion of his judgement. Pilar swallowed.

“The evidence brought against you,” he continued as a giant holoscreen burst to life in front of the judges, “is incontrovertible.”

Images flashed across the screen: the flammables cabinet, the methanol she’d taken, the inventory logs, the dates. Rory’s autopsy report, zoomed into the cause of death: Alcohol poisoning. The reddish-brown gas. A list of the known effects of the poison compared to a list of the findings on Florence’s autopsy report.

A scream of outrage and hatred pierced the tribunal room–Christof.

But that didn’t stop the images. The anomalies Pilar discovered. Her code. The nanobots. A single black hair in a glass tube, labelled as Pilar Armada, recovered from the Head’s bedroom. The flowers she’d given Nicola. A clip of the P.I., shackled to a chair just like the one Pilar now sat, eyes hollow, confessing she discovered her protege’s wrongdoing and didn’t report it.

Pilar couldn’t ignore the pain she’d caused. Not with Christof still hurling curses at her, nor with the holoscreen paused on Nicola’s drained, hopeless face.

Silent tears streamed down her face, noticed by no one. All attention was on the screen.

Nicola’s face became fuzzy, lines disrupting it. The lights flickered in time. Christof had stopped yelling, though his loud sobs were still audible over the murmurs that once again crescendoed in the hall.

All at once, the screen blinked out entirely, the lights snuffed. A few startled gasps sounded in the inky blackness, with not even pin pricks of stars to dot the nothingness. Pilar made no noise.

Not even as those peppered gasps turned into a handful of stuttered screams as Pilar’s body disconnected from her seat. Weightless.

She couldn’t see the chaos unfold in the dark, but she could hear it. Confusion, fear, concern. It lasted less than a minute, but it seemed like ages.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Pilar was glad for the shackles that anchored her wrists and ankles. When the lights and artificial gravity returned, she plopped back down with no issue.

Those that had floated higher weren’t as lucky.

Bodies came crashing down, thuds on metal or others’ flesh, groans of pain.

Pilar focused on the judges, waiting for an explanation, an apology, something.

The officer pulled herself up; she’d landed on one of the grey-suited men and only limped a bit as she marched toward the representative hexes. “What the hell are you doing!?” she demanded.

The hexes said nothing, only shifted their hooded heads toward one another and snapped their fingers; whatever power they had cast made no physical manifestation in the tribunal room. The officer was not pleased.

“Get. Your. Shit. Together,” she seethed, straightening her coat and retaking her seat. The others slowly made their way back to their thrones, acting as if they weren’t injured, though their grimaces weren’t entirely concealed.

The door behind Pilar opened, and the shuffling bodies and cries announced several of the spectators were abandoning the spectacle for medical attention.

The mustachioed man in grey cleared his throat. “Do you have any defense, Mrs. Armada?”

“I—” she began, but her words were cut off by another descent into darkness, madness, weightlessness.

A voice called over the din, “Hang on to your seats!”

It lasted longer this time. Over a minute. When the lights and gravity returned, Pilar noticed far softer thuds and far fewer groans, the occupants of the room obeying the command.

The officer stood, a finger pointed at the hexes. “Enough! Get back to your wing and work with your sisters to fix this. This is unacceptable!”

Nobody moved as the woman in blue stormed out. Then the hexes snapped their fingers as one, but nothing happened. Pilar watched with narrowed eyes as the hooded women remained in their thrones a beat too long–proof of their trepidation–then rose and exited as one.

All but the man who had collected Pilar followed after the mustachioed man called for a recess.

She flexed her fingers and toes. “Power outages?”

The man nodded.

“The Head must have been pulling more than her fair share then, eh?”

He flared his nostrils. “This is your doing.”

She swallowed, determined to admit to nothing despite the evidence presented.

“You still haven’t figured it out?”

Pilar’s heart hammered, more out of anger than fear. “Figured out what?” she hissed.

The man raised an eyebrow at her.

“Are you stupid, or do you just never listen?”

Again the room plunged into darkness, the man calling out a curse. When the power returned, after a much longer delay than before, he quickly walked past her and out the door, murmuring, “I’ll be back. It’s not like you’re going anywhere.”

Alone in the tribunal room, Pilar waited. She waited as her extremities fell asleep and her back ached. She waited as the blackouts continued, for longer stretches each time.

She waited, as the lights blinked out for the last time, the gravity causing the shackles to dig into her wrists as her body attempted to float away.

“They’re not coming back,” it said after what seemed like hours.

“They have to come back.” She wouldn’t admit she was beginning to have her doubts. But they had to. They couldn’t just leave her here.

“You really forgot what she said. I was wondering why it was so easy to convince you.”

The voice was just messing with her. Flipping back and forth between cruel and kind, as it always did.

“Twyla told you the ship would explode without the hexes controlling it.”

It took a moment for her to wrap her mind around the truth of it. But when she did, the rock in her stomach felt heavy enough to weigh her back into her seat—though it didn’t.

“They’re not coming back because they’re preparing for death, Pilar. The death you alone doomed them all to. The death of every last person on board.”

Pilar said nothing as she flipped through information in her mind, searching for anything that would contradict the voice. But hearing it, being reminded, she knew. Her only hope…

“Twyla! She still has power!”

“What can one hex do?”

The only thing that mattered right now. “She can save herself. She can transport herself to safety. Can’t she?”

“No, Pilar.” It almost sounded remorseful. “There’s nothing close enough.”

She tried to tell herself it was lying; but if Twyla could leave the ship, that would mean other hexes could arrive and save it.

The darkness and ache on her wrists reminded her that wasn’t the case.

Every now and then, she heard a noise. A scream, a clang of metal. But for the most part, she was encased in pitch black silence. If it weren’t for the shackles, she’d be weightless, too, and it would be easy to imagine she was already dead. That all of this was a nightmare. That the rest of the Renicoff was safe–safe from the danger she created.

But the metal continued to dig into her flesh, a reminder of the life that still clung to her.

Eventually, her breaths became shallow, her mind muddled as the oxygen depleted.

Where was she? What was she doing here?

“Rory. Florence. Head Morgana. Twyla. Nicola. Christof…” In her last moments, the voice listed the names. The names of every last person on the spaceship Renicoff.

A name for each life Pilar had brought to an end by heeding the whispers of the stars.

She exhaled for the last time.

“Pilar.”