Chapter Text
It was almost too dim to see in the back of Electrical, but he had a job to do. Yellow to yellow, red to red, the thick electrical gloves not helping. He yelped as one of the sets of wires sparked, and Cellbit quickly looked around to see if anyone had heard. Thankfully, it seemed like everyone was elsewhere today.
He connected the last pair and the lights flickered for a bit before brightening the proper amount. All in a day’s work. He smiled and replaced the panel back over the wires. Electricity was not his specialty, but he could work on it in a pinch, or in this case, as a cover.
They were ninety days in on the mission, and so far, everything was smooth-sailing. The Federation was finally getting smart, hiring outside contractors to guard their precious cargo from the rebellion. Personally, Cellbit didn’t care either way if the rebellion managed to get their hands on money or weapons or data, whatever was on the ship. More power to them. But he stuck it out because the pay was good, and maybe, if he was lucky, he’d actually have a chance to flex his skills. Not that he was complaining about the lack of action, no. He’d like to keep it that way, thank you very much, if only because he liked to be alive.
Besides, this crew was actually competent, from what he could tell. Only a few hiccups here and there that, frankly, were complete accidents.
So when the alarm in the hallway started blaring, making him jump again, he wasn’t all that worried that something was catastrophically wrong.
His communicator watch said it was the reactor. First time that its alarm had gone off yet. Tubbo did a good job with upkeep. Still, no one was perfect, and Cellbit had nothing better to do.
He took off down the corridor, alarm and flashing lights more annoying than scary, stopping just for a second outside Security’s closed door with a hand raised to open it.
On second thought, he brought his hand down. Maybe not now. Not when there was a potential emergency.
He turned into the Reactor room instead. The spinning emergency lights made it difficult to see what was going on inside, sharp red shadows sent up the walls and onto the ceiling.
“Tubbo?” Cellbit called out. He could hear something over the alarm but just barely. Something clanking, and maybe someone cursing? “Tubbo? Do you need help?”
“Oh, do I!” Suddenly, there was a new shadow, joining with the others and steadily getting fuller before the kid appeared, absolutely covered in grease. “I just need another set of hands to hold down the transmission lever while I manually reset the coolant.” Tubbo pointed to a control board to the left of the door. “Do you think you can do that?”
Cellbit hesitantly nodded, but before he could ask for clarification, Tubbo had already disappeared behind the machinery.
The control panel in question was covered in levers and buttons, and of course none of them were labeled. Which one was he supposed to pull again?
“Okay, anytime now, Cellbit!”
He sighed, ran a hand down his face, and just pulled one. The alarm was starting to get on his nerves.
He could hear Tubbo distantly hitting something with a wrench and cussing it out.
This was not the right lever. It couldn’t be; he was never this lucky. Maybe he should try-
But the alarm stopped. The lights turned back on, and Tubbo reemerged with a toothy grin.
“Hey, thanks!” he somewhat cleaned his hands off on an equally disgusting rag. “Couldn’t have done it without you!” He held out his hand.
Cellbit returned the handshake, nose wrinkling in disgust, and when Tubbo turned back around, he tried to wipe the grease off on his pants. “No problem, it’s what crewmates are for.”
“I can tell you how to fix it in case I’m not here next time.” Tubbo was back to poking the happily whirring machine.
“No, no, I’m good. I’ll just stick with Electrical duty.” Cellbit shook his toolbox.
“No, come on! It’s really cool! Look-”
Their watches buzzed. Thank god. Someone had called a meeting.
“Probably to go over what happened with the reactor.”
Tubbo nodded, clearing the message on his watch. “You go on ahead, tell them what happened. I still need to figure out what triggered the alarm in the first place.”
With that, Cellbit took off, but slowed when he saw that Security was already open and empty. Next time then.
He took his time heading to the cafeteria for the meeting. It’s not like there was a true emergency. If he had to guess, just some faulty wiring. That’s what the other emergency meetings were about (that was only because some of the wiring on this ship was out of Cellbit’s scope of knowledge).
Everyone was already seated at the table when he got there. Or almost everyone. There were a few people missing, but Cellbit brushed past it. He strolled over to his seat, catching Roier’s eye and smiling as he sat down.
Roier didn’t return the smile.
In fact, the energy around the table was very weird. Very stiff. Cold. Some people would only look at their hands, others at the empty chairs like they could make the person materialize in front of them. Some bore holes into him with their stares as if Cellbit dared to be happy at a time like this.
“Where’s Tubbo?” asked Etoiles.
“He’s figuring out what went wrong with the reactor, but everything’s in working order now.”
A few people shuffled in their seats.
“Where’s Felps?” Cellbit nodded to his empty chair.
That was not the right thing to say, it seemed. The air grew colder, almost.
Foolish cleared his throat. “He’s uh… he’s dead.”
“What? How?” He couldn’t be. He shouldn’t be.
A few others seemed just as confused as he was.
Cellbit caught Roier’s eye and sent him a look that asked if this was true.
Roier nodded, gravely serious for once. “Foolish found him. That’s why this meeting was called.”
Ninety days aboard a ship without any problems. Ninety days with one of the most competent crews Cellbit had the pleasure of traveling with. Ninety days in, and their captain was dead. That didn’t just happen.
“Do we know what happened?”
Everyone looked at each other as if someone would speak up first.
“Well,” Cellbit said as he stood up, “what are we waiting for? If we don’t know what happened, let’s go see.”
Ninety days, and Cellbit could finally do work in his specialty.
He wasn’t expecting the crowd that followed him to the cockpit.
But Cellbit now had a new job, a new mission. He could feel the fire in his veins, itching at a potential mystery to solve.
The door was partially cracked open, just inches wide enough to see inside. Through the crack, he could see Felps’s body slumped over the controls, peacefully sleeping. Cellbit tried pushing the door open farther, but it was too heavy.
“It was sealed shut when I found it.”
“It’s a two-person door, pendejo. How did you open yourself?” Roier and Etoiles worked the door open.
Foolish only shrugged.
When the door was far enough open, Cellbit was the first one inside. “No one touch anything,” he warned as the others meandered in.
“Doesn’t look like there was a struggle.” Bagi hovered over the body.
True, there wasn’t a sign of a fight. Not a paper out of place on the desk. The autopilot was still on course. Why, even Felps’s coffee cup was still upright, a water ring ruining the papers it sat on.
But if there wasn’t a fight, why did the doors seal shut?
“Yep, he’s dead alright.” Tina pulled her hand away from his neck. “I’m going to take him to the Medbay to see if I can find the cause of death. Bad, can you help me with that?” Bad and Tina scooped up the body the best they could and carried it out, Bagi lingering behind before following.
“What do you think happened?”
Cellbit was only half paying attention, on his hands and knees looking for any drops of blood on the ground.
“Heart attack maybe? That’s the only thing that I can think of.”
Not likely. Not with the Federation’s rigorous health standards, especially for captains.
Cellbit moved from the floor to the walls, running a hand over the various panels and glass windows and avoiding a leaning Roier when he got too close.
“I mean, we all know what this means, right?” Jaiden asked, spinning in one of the spare chairs. “Someone killed-”
“Hey, let’s not jump to conclusions just yet,” said Fit from the hallway outside the cockpit. “We don’t know how Felps died. It could have been a genuine accident. Let’s wait to make that call until we know for sure.”
Cellbit pressed his lips together, thinking. “But why would the doors be sealed? What would have triggered the system?” He continued running his fingers along the seams to see if anything was broken.
“Don’t they do that when the oxygen levels get weird?” Pac said, also from the hallway.
“It just doesn’t make any sense.” He couldn’t find any leaks in the paneling, and if Felps didn’t manually trigger the doors to close, then who did? “There’s something missing here.”
“Well, until we hear word from Tina about what happened to Felps, I’m just going to get back to work. No use wasting space waiting.” With that, Fit left, Pac close behind.
Roier, arms crossed and mulling something over himself, whistled at Etoiles and nodded towards the door, the two silently leaving.
“Well, Cellbit, I hate to leave you all alone at the scene of a crime, but Jaiden and I have to bounce, too.” Foolish patted his shoulder.
And then he was alone.
He cracked open the doors’ panel to get a good look at the wiring inside, even if it was a bit too complex.
Something happened here that ended up with Felps dead. But how?
“Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
Roier sat staring at the grainy security footage watching Foolish open the door over and over again. From the time the alarm went off to the time the group showed up, he was the only one on the tape.
Roier rewound the tape again. The alarm went off, Foolish ran down the hallway, for what, Roier didn’t know. He stopped in front of the door, and somehow, somehow, opened it wide enough to see inside, just in time for the alarm to stop.
“Can we zoom in a bit? I want to watch his hands when he opens the door.”
“Of course.”
Roier blew it up into even grainier footage. The confusion on Foolish’s face. His white knuckles pushing open the too-heavy door. The panicked fingers calling an emergency meeting on his watch.
Roier groaned and leaned back in his chair. “He’s clean, Etoiles. We can see it perfectly clear.”
“I know, but maybe he shot something through the door and hit Felps.”
“With an empty hand?”
Etoiles shrugged. “I’ve seen weirder.”
He sighed and ran the footage back again.
This was his ship. His ship. For once, he was in charge, he was head of security watching over what the Fed told him was “one of the most important pieces of cargo they had ever transported.” He was hand-picked out of hundreds of applicants for the job, boasting his perfect record to make up for his lack of experience.
And if Felps died because he had a filthy rat aboard, well. He’d sniff him out, throw him overboard if it was the last thing he did. He was not going to lose his job and be banned for life because he couldn’t find the traitor.
If he was fast enough, the Federation wouldn’t even hear about it, and his record would stay clean.
Roier pressed rewind to watch the footage again, but lost in thought, he held the button down too long.
“Shit, sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
They sat in silence waiting for the footage’s alarm to flash before something caught Roier’s eye. It was only there for a split second in the tiny corner of the screen, but it was there.
“Did you see that?” He sat up quickly in his chair, already moving to play it back. “There, right there!”
“Is that… a black uniform?”
“I think it is!”
For just a second, Bad’s shoulder could be seen in the hallway before he dipped out of frame.
“Go back further! Maybe we can see more of him!” Etoiles grasped the back of Roier’s chair in excitement.
Roier was on it, speeding to ten minutes before the alarm went off. To his surprise, there Bad was, walking down the hallway to Oxygen before stopping outside of the cockpit. The footage had no sound, and Roier was never a good lip-reader, but Bad was clearly talking to an alive Felps through an open door.
“I think Bad was the last person to see Felps alive! He had to be! The door closed just after that!”
Roier smiled despite the serious situation. “We have a lead, Etoiles. Let’s see what this rat knows, eh?”
“One, two, three!” They flipped the body onto its stomach, and Bad went back to crossing his arms, clearly not wanting to be there.
“Nothing I can see on this side, either.” Tina ran her hands lightly over Felps’s uniform, searching for any rips or tears.
“So it was an internal death, then?” asked Bagi, swinging her legs as she sat on the edge of a hospital bed.
“Probably. I’m going to draw a blood sample before we cut him open just to make sure.” Tina gave a small smile to Bad. “Can we flip him over one last time?”
Bad rolled his eyes but still helped Tina flip him onto his back.
“One, two, three!”
“I just can’t believe the Federation would send someone with such fragile organs! Like we all have to be healthy and stuff, you would think the captain would be the healthiest!”
“Accidents happen all the time, Bad.” Tina drew a vial of Felps’s blood before capping it and sticking it into a machine. “You never know when your health will drop.”
“I mean, you would know.” Bagi smiled. “It’s literally your job to make sure we’re in tip-top shape.”
Tina returned the smile, making Bagi’s stomach drop a bit, before she took the vial out and put a few drops of blood into another.
Bagi tried her best to stay as healthy as possible on the ship, truly she did. But if she ended up in the Medbay a few more times a week than what was common, that was fine, right? She just had space-sickness, all the new recruits got it, according to Tina. A lurchy stomach, a quick heart, a bit of dizziness. Classic symptoms. Totally nothing to do with who was usually performing the check-up.
Tina was just a sweetheart, was all. Serious and focused, caring and kind. A perfect doctor. Always busy, though. Never enough time to spend together, so Bagi did with what she had, stealing glances when she could.
And now, with Tina’s back to them, Bagi was just watching her work with no concern about getting caught. She was focused, watching the graph paint itself on the screen, then printing it out and taking a pen to it.
Bagi got up and made her way over just to see what Tina was writing on it. Chemical symbols and letters that she had no idea what they meant.
“Hmm,” was all Tina said as she drew.
“See, though, that’s the thing,” Bad continued the conversation. “What if there was foul play involved? We all know the captain is usually the first in these kinds of attacks.”
Bagi could see the way that Tina’s shoulders tensed ever so slightly.
“I don’t know, Bad. It still just might be an accident,” Bagi tried to diffuse the situation. “We won’t know until we investigate everything.”
With that, Bagi realized that Tina had stopped writing. She was simply staring down at the graph below, pen in her lap, and a few teardrops soaking the page.
Bagi wanted to give her a hug, put her hand on her shoulder. Instead, she settled on the back of Tina’s chair. “Are you okay, Tina? What did you find?”
Tina sniffled before she whispered, “Felps was poisoned.”
“He was what?!” In a second, Bad was also there, looking at the graph over Tina’s shoulder.
“Someone killed Felps. He was poisoned.” Tina pointed a shaky hand to a peak on the graph she had circled. “Cyanide.”
Bagi battled with herself for a few more seconds before moving her hand to Tina’s shoulder. “It still could be an accident, Tina. Not on purpose.”
“There’s no way, cyanide comes from fruit seeds and peach pits. You would have to take so many seeds to make a poison that…” Bad trailed off before raising a hand to his mouth. “Oh my goodness, that’s where they went.” And Bad disappeared before Bagi could say anything about how now was really not the time.
With just the two of them, Bagi felt equally more comfortable and more anxious with Tina’s sole attention.
Tina spun her chair around to face Bagi and wiped away some of the tears that continued to fall. “I’m sorry, Bagi, I just-” she sniffled, still wiping her tears.
“Hey, it’s alright,” Bagi crouched down so that they were at eye-level and took Tina’s hands. “We will find that murderer before anything else happens, okay?”
Tina nodded. “I just don’t want to be back in that nightmare.”
“Nightmare?”
Tina pulled her hands away to grab a tissue. “One of my previous missions, there was a rebel on board. They killed half the team.”
“Oh, I see.” Bagi felt useless. “Do... you want to talk about it?”
Tina shook her head, silent for a second before saying, “I was hoping that this was a natural death. I was hoping so bad, Bagi.”
She could only imagine. She hadn’t even completed one mission yet, compared to the tens of ones Tina must have been on. It was scary to think about someone you’ve lived with and worked with for months turning out to be a traitor and killing half the team. Half of your friends.
Of course she read about the attacks, studied them even. Was one of the best in her class. But to be on a ship… She couldn’t even fathom wanting to kill anyone let alone the people you talked with and ate with and played cards with.
And Tina had lived through it. Lived through it. And she came back, kept going on missions with the fear that this next one could be her last. She was so brave. She didn’t deserve to be here.
Despite the overwhelming urge in her stomach telling her to run, that this was a bad idea, Bagi pulled Tina out of her chair and into a hug. “I’m sorry, Tina.”
She could hear Tina sniffle a few more times into her shoulder.
There would be no more deaths on this ship. Bagi would find the traitor and bring him to justice. For Tina’s sake.