For a moment the interface was utterly indecipherable to me. It had been too long. Standard protocol for outward communication was to record the message and pass it to the ship’s central comm, which would compress it for inclusion in a scheduled data burst. That wasn’t necessary when the ship was in orbit around Earth, but communications had remained regulated to avoid overwhelming Orbital Control’s relays and satellites. I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do. Every minute I wasted, the more danger we were in. I kept thinking about the panic in Ariana’s voice as she swatted at her own arm. The casual way the man on the radio had talked about killing me to persuade SPEC to stay away. The way Zahra had stared at House of Wisdom from the shuttle as though it held the answer to every question.

Everything I tried came up with the same response: ACTION PROHIBITED. I couldn’t get into the open transmission system. I couldn’t send an emergency or distress signal. I couldn’t even record a message to transmit via a private file transfer. ACTION PROHIBITED. Whatever Malachi had done to get the radio in the mainframe control room to work, it had not opened all the comm systems.

Baqir bumped into my shoulder, caught the edge of the terminal to stop himself.

“Drink,” he said. “We can’t get dehydrated.”

He had found tubes of nutrient beverages in the kitchen. He tossed one to Xiomara and one to me. I remembered the flavor well: sweet orange, with a foul chemical aftertaste lingering on the tongue. It was what my father would make me drink when I was sick, or give to my mother when she had been working too long without stopping for a meal. The memories as much as the bitterness made me gag, but I forced myself to swallow. Baqir was right: we couldn’t get dehydrated. Our shuttle lunch had been a long time ago.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, looking at the screen over my shoulder.

“I can’t send anything,” I said. “This is all I get.”

Again: ACTION PROHIBITED.

“Fuck,” Xiomara said. “Can we do anything about that?”

“I don’t think so. Not from here.”

“Let me try.”

I moved aside; they were both more adept at computer systems than I was. They huddled over the terminal for a few minutes, but all they could get out of the system was the information that outbound messages were prohibited by order of a command override that had been issued by Captain Ngahere on the date 01.04.393.