Chapter 16 Stowaway Science
Stowaway Science
Tavia
Three weeks, two days, and fourteen hours.
That’s how long I’ve waited since Dove said I couldn’t come on a courier run until I was sixteen. Sixteen! That’s seven years and one quarter away. I’d be practically ancient. I’d have wrinkles
Papa predicted I’d try to stow away within three weeks. Dove said the same thing, which I know because Pickles told me, which he says was “an inadvertent data transfer” and not eavesdropping.
They were both right about the timing. They were both wrong about my preparation score.
I check my rucksack one more time, crouched behind my bed in the dark.
The station’s night cycle hums low around me, and my markings are dimmed to almost nothing — I practiced that for six days straight, holding them steady-dark even when I got excited.
Emotional camouflage. Pickles called it “an impressive if concerning development in deceptive capability.”
Contents: two data pads (one loaded with stellar cartography modules, one with The Adventures of Captain Starwhisker, which is educational if you count xenozoology).
One jar of soil from the greenhouse — labeled and dated, because I’m a scientist, not a tourist. Four emergency ration bars.
One change of clothes — because I learned from last time.
One toothbrush. And the important thing: a miniature atmospheric sensor I built from spare parts in Papa’s lab.
My own design. I want to take readings at different points along the Veridian corridor and compare them to Papa’s station data.
That part is actual science. The rest is adventure.
“Small person.” Pickles speaks through my earpiece at a volume calibrated for conspiracy.
“I feel compelled to note that your preparation score has improved to four out of ten. The inclusion of clothing and hygiene supplies demonstrates growth. The continued absence of a thermal regulation layer and backup communications device remains concerning.”
“I’ll be inside a ship, Pickles. Ships have heating.”
“The Rolling Pin’s climate systems are functional seventy-eight percent of the time. I feel this distinction is important.”
“Are they doing the goodnight thing?”
A pause. The kind of pause that means Pickles is running calculations he doesn’t want to share with an eight-and-three-quarters-year-old.
“The Captain and the Terraforming Specialist are currently in their quarters. Based on biorhythm data, I project they will enter sleep cycles within approximately forty-seven minutes.”
“What are they doing for forty-seven minutes?”
“Adult activities.”
“Like what? Filing reports?”
“Yes. Reports. Extremely vigorous reports.” Another pause. “Small person, I strongly advise against pursuing this line of inquiry.”
Fair enough. I don’t care about reports anyway.
I set my alarm for 0400 — two hours before Dove’s scheduled departure for the Veridian supply run.
The Rolling Pin’s cargo bay has that storage compartment behind the secondary coolant housing.
I measured myself against it last week. Perfect fit, as long as I don’t need to stretch my legs for the first hour.
Papa predicted six months. Dove predicted three weeks.
They forgot to predict that three weeks was exactly enough time for me to get good at this.
The cargo bay smells like engine coolant and Dove’s emergency snack stash — dried fruit and something spicy that makes my nose itch. I’ve been wedged behind the coolant housing for two hours and eleven minutes, breathing shallow, markings dark, data pad brightness set to minimum.
My legs fell asleep forty minutes ago. My left foot has graduated from tingling to what I’m fairly certain is a medical condition.
The engine vibrations changed twelve minutes ago — the deep hum that means hyperspace transit.
We’re past the point where Dove can turn around without wasting half her fuel reserves.
I calculated this. Pickles helped, though he claimed he was “merely providing educational context regarding hyperspace fuel consumption ratios” and “any application of this data to stowaway logistics is purely the responsibility of the end user.”
I’m about to emerge — triumphant, victorious, legendary — when my soil jar rolls off my rucksack and across the cargo bay floor with a sound like a very incriminating marble.
Silence.
Then footsteps. Quick ones. The cargo bay door hisses open and light floods in, and I squint up at Dove, who’s standing in the doorway with her scanner in one hand and an expression I’ve never seen on her face before.
“TAVIA?!”
“Surprise?” I try.
She’s across the cargo bay in three strides, hands on my shoulders, scanning me with her eyes the way Pickles scans for hull damage — fast and thorough and slightly panicked.
“Are you hurt? How long have you been in here? Pickles, did you know about this?”
“I neither confirm nor deny awareness of unauthorized biological signatures in the cargo bay. I will note that my sensor protocols prioritize threats to ship integrity, and the small person does not qualify as a threat. Merely as an irregularity.”
“An IRREGULARITY?”
“I prefer the term ‘supervisory cargo,’” I say, climbing out from behind the coolant housing. My legs buckle. I catch myself on a supply crate. “I’m here in a supervisory capacity. To observe courier operations. For science.”
Dove stares at me. Her face does approximately nine things in three seconds — terror cycling to relief cycling to fury cycling to something that looks suspiciously like trying not to laugh.
Then she turns to the comm panel and opens a channel to the station.
Because of course she does. Because Dove knows that Papa’s biology tracks her heartbeat through the claiming bond, and right now her heart is hammering, and three systems away my father is probably already staring at the long-range sensors wondering why his bond-mate’s cardiac rhythm spiked.
Papa’s face fills the screen in four seconds. His markings are flaring danger-bright.
“What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Pickles, report —”
“Nobody’s hurt.” Dove steps aside so the camera catches me, standing in the cargo bay with my rucksack at my feet and my markings doing a complicated guilt-excitement pattern I can’t control. “But we have a passenger.”
Papa goes very still.
“Hi, Papa.”
“Before you say anything,” Dove adds, “she brought clothes this time. And a toothbrush. And a genuinely impressive atmospheric sensor she built from your spare parts.”
“My preparation score is at least a six,” I say.
“Four point three,” Pickles says.
“Five.”
Papa closes his eyes. His jaw works. When he opens his eyes, the fury has softened to the exasperated-proud blend I know so well — the one that means I’ve done something simultaneously terrible and impressive, and he can’t decide which response to lead with.
“Tavia Storm. You stowed away. On a courier vessel.”
“In a supervisory capacity.”
“She grew up around data,” Dove says. “That is entirely your fault.”
“I am aware.” Papa’s markings are settling now — Dove’s calm voice doing what it always does to his biology, smoothing the danger-bright into something warmer. “She’s safe?”
“She’s safe. Healthy. Very proud of herself.” Dove’s hand lands on my head, steadying and warm. “She’s coming with me on the run.”
Papa’s markings flicker. “Dove —”
“She’s here, Cetus. She’s safe and she’s here and the fuel math doesn’t work for turning around.” Dove catches my eye and winks — quick and secret, just for me. “Might as well take the scenic route. Show her the Arch.”
The wink makes my markings pulse so bright the cargo bay glows gold. She’s not mad. She’s not sending me back. She’s taking the long way home.
Papa sees the wink. His markings do the settling pattern — the deep, steady one Pickles classified as home — and his voice drops into the low harmonics that mean he’s given up fighting something.
“You are both grounded when you return.”
“Absolutely,” Dove says, not sounding grounded at all. “I’ll comm you from the Arch. We’ll be fine.”
“I love you. Both of you. Be safe.”
“Love you, Papa!”
The screen goes dark. Dove looks at me. I look at Dove.
“So,” she says. “Want to learn how to fly a courier ship?”
Here’s the thing about space that nobody tells you: it’s not quiet. Not on a ship, anyway.
The Rolling Pin hums. Not the same hum as the station — Papa’s station hums low and steady, like breathing.
The Rolling Pin hums the way Dove hums when she’s cooking, little shifts in pitch and rhythm that mean she’s adjusting something, calibrating, responding.
It’s alive in a way I didn’t expect. The deck plates vibrate under my bare feet (I took my boots off; Dove said I could).
The bulkhead panels tick when the temperature shifts between zones.
And Pickles is everywhere — in the air recyclers, the nav computer, the speaker system — which means the ship sounds like him, a little.
Precise and watchful and warm underneath.
Dove lets me sit in the copilot seat. The real one, not the jump seat. She adjusts the harness for my size, checks the straps twice, and then shows me the nav display.
“Okay, sweetheart. First lesson. What do you see?”
“Stars.” Obviously.
“Nope. You see data. Every dot on this display is a gravity well, a fuel calculation, and a delivery deadline. Watch.” Her fingers move across the panel, and the star field shifts — overlays appear, colour-coded route lines threading between systems like the root networks in my greenhouse.
“Courier navigation isn’t about going fast. It’s about going smart.
See this?” She traces a curved line that loops away from the straight path between two points.
“This route adds forty minutes but saves eleven percent fuel because you’re riding the gravity assist from that gas giant. ”
“Papa does the same thing with atmospheric currents. He calls it ‘borrowing momentum from existing systems.’”