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  Ardov volunteered to go next. Like the other Rarels, he wore a loose-fitting sleeveless robe thing that was tightly cinched at the waist and flared out with skirts to his knees. On Tamret it looked great. On Ardov it looked stupid. Actually it looked intimidating, but I told myself it looked stupid because that made me feel better.

  I liked Ardov even less than Mi Sun, maybe less than anyone, anywhere, and I wanted to see him fail miserably. He was good, however—fast, strong, and unpredictable. His opponent was the same sort of rectangular-headed mannequin, and it was supposed to be 25 percent more skillful than Ardov, but he defeated it in under a minute with a series of kicks, elbow jabs, and sideways punches.

  Steve went next, and that was also something wholly unexpected. Ish-hi apparently didn’t dress much differently for exercise than they did for everything else: He wore what appeared to be his usual tunic. He did remove his sandals, however, and then bounded into the sparring room looking every bit the predator I had thought him to be the first time I’d seen him in my room. He and his artificial opponent were almost too fast to watch as he raced across the floor and up the walls. They lashed out with arms and legs and, in Steve’s case, tail. Minus the web shooters, Steve had the Spider-Man skill set, but so did his opponent, and though he put up a serious fight, Steve lost after about ten minutes. He came out breathing hard and grinning his reptilian grin. “That was right fun,” he said. “I’m doing this every bloody day.”

  I figured I should get it over with, and it was better to go after Steve, who would make any human appear lame by comparison. I chose an opponent at my level, and maximum force field, and stepped into the fighting room, which smelled of rubber and alien sweat.

  Later Dr. Roop told me I could watch a replay of my fight to learn from my mistakes, but I sincerely hope I never have to see what happened in there. My artificial opponent and I faced off in the fighting style known as spastic playground rumble. He took a swing at me; I took a swing at him. We were both good at avoiding getting hit. In fact, I was better than I thought I should be. It had to be the skill points I’d put in agility.

  After we’d been fighting for about five minutes, I was starting to get tired. Most playground fights I’d seen ended pretty quickly, and five minutes of continuous swinging, dodging, and moving turned out to be exhausting work. Finally I decided to let my opponent hit me. I wasn’t planning on taking a dive, but I wanted to know what getting hit would feel like. That way I could measure how close in I was willing to move. It seemed like a smart idea at the time. My opponent took a swing, and it connected with my jaw. I didn’t feel pain—the plasma field protected me from the worst of the punch—but I was suddenly on my back, looking up, and my HUD told me I’d lost the match.

  When I went back to the control room, I saw Mi Sun trying not to laugh. Ardov was standing next to Tamret, whispering in her ear.

  She looked at me and smiled sympathetically, as if to say it was all right with her if I was the worst fighter in the galaxy. That didn’t make me feel any better. When I stood next to Steve, he looked at me and cocked his head a little. “You’re the distance guy. I’m for close-up.”

  “Yeah, but your ship beat mine yesterday,” I said glumly.

  “Good point, mate,” he agreed.

  After we had each taken a turn sparring with an artificial opponent, Ardov asked about sparring with real opponents. “I’d like to see how that works.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Dr. Roop said. “Any volunteers?”

  Ardov pointed at me. He flashed what I was sure he thought was an affable smile, but he just looked evil to me. “Let’s go, [monkey] boy.”

  “No thanks,” I said, holding up my hands, trying to act like it was no big deal.

  “There are shields to keep you from getting too hurt,” he said. “Unless you’re too much of a coward.”

  “Everyone already knows you’re a better fighter than I am,” I said, feeling my face get hot.

  “Then I’ll teach you a thing or two. You’ll thank me later.”

  Ms. Price stopped typing and glared at me. “You’re making our species look bad. Get in there and fight him.”

  I felt everything closing in on me. I was, to be honest, terrified at the idea of fighting Ardov, who I was sure had some trick in mind for making sure I got hurt, in spite of the plasma fields. The best-case scenario was that he absolutely humiliated me without actually putting me in the hospital. On the other hand, if I didn’t fight him, I would look pathetic, and I would never live it down. I hated the idea of him smacking me around, but I realized that I didn’t hate it as much as I hated having the other humans, and Tamret, see that I was too afraid to face Ardov. I told myself that if he managed to hurt me in spite of the safety measures, the Confederation medical technology would make sure nothing serious happened. There was nothing to do but accept the challenge.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but hesitated just an instant. Tamret was staring at me, her expression pointed, like she was trying to tell me something. I knew she didn’t want me to fight, and I knew she could see I had no choice. I saw something in her eyes I’d never seen before: fear.

  “I’ll fight him,” Mi Sun said, with the enthusiasm of someone who’d just agreed to empty the dishwasher.

  Ardov looked at me. “If the [monkey] boy is too afraid, then why not? You didn’t seem too helpless.”

  I felt relief and fear in equal measures, and I kept my eyes down, not wanting to look at anyone, knowing I’d see pity on their faces. I couldn’t help myself, though. I glanced up and Tamret was looking right at me, and I did not see pity. I saw relief.

  Mi Sun and Ardov agreed to fight with the force field turned down to level two. Dr. Roop advised against it, but it became clear that he would not force them to do things his way, and Ardov insisted. Mi Sun merely shrugged like it didn’t matter to her one way or the other.

  They squared off, Ardov adopting a position with open hands, arms at shoulder level, bent at ninety degrees. He had one leg in front of the other. Mi Sun stood with her legs wide apart, her knees slightly bent, and her fists balled, her arms close to her body. And they began.

  Mi Sun didn’t waste any time. She launched a spinning kick to Ardov’s face, and it hit with a sharp thud. Blue plasma flashed as Ardov went reeling back. You see face kicks all the time in comic books, and sometimes in kung fu movies. In real life it’s easier to see how much space the foot has to travel, but Mi Sun was fast and accurate and powerful.

  “Yes!” I said.

  I felt the eyes of all the other Rarels on me, including Tamret. I decided I would keep my opinions to myself.

  Ardov wiped his face with the back of his hand. There was a small amount of blood dripping from his nose. He stepped in toward Mi Sun, crouched, and leaped at her. He hadn’t leaped like that during his own match, and Mi Sun was caught off guard. He passed her in the air, and she lunged backward, but he reached out and managed to strike across her face with his forearm. She went down, her own nose bloody. Without the force field, that blow might have crushed her face.

  “I believe I’ve seen enough,” Dr. Roop said. He signaled the two fighters via their data bracelets. “You’ve both done well. Let’s end this before someone gets hurt.”

  “It’s just getting fun,” Ardov said.

  “I’m fine.” Mi Sun’s voice was troublingly distant. She was in some kind of zone, and I thought nothing anyone said was going to pull her out of it.

  Ardov lashed out with another one of his flying arm sweeps, but this time Mi Sun was ready. She ducked under it and kicked Ardov in the back. He went face-first into one of the wall mats.

  Mi Sun was not about to wait for him to regain his balance. She’d had a taste of his power and did not want to let him get the upper hand again. As soon as he bounced off the wall, she landed another kick to Ardov’s face. He tried to move out of the way, but her bare foot
still clipped his chin. She then launched a series of quick jabs to his midsection. She stood in her wide stance and lashed six times in a row. Ardov was caught in the whirlwind of her assault and could not make his body respond. He had to take it, and his face contorted with pain and rage and frustration.

  I thought Mi Sun had him, and I was breathless with excitement. I was ready to buy her a victory [pizza], but then Ardov somehow broke out of her hold, shoving her back so hard she stumbled and fell to the mats. Without stopping to catch his breath, he crouched and leaped like no human could, striking her, as she tried to rise, with an open hand under her jaw, sending her reeling back down. The force field sparked like a blue explosion. Mi Sun crab-walked back and leaped to her feet, quick and agile as though the blow hadn’t fazed her, but when she opened her mouth, I could see that her teeth were covered with blood.

  “Make them stop,” I said. “She’s not getting enough protection.”

  Dr. Roop was already signaling them before I began to speak. “That’s enough,” he said. “I want you both to end to this.”

  “Not yet,” Ardov said.

  Mi Sun shook her head, stubbornly refusing to quit, but she didn’t look right to me. Her eyes lacked focus. Her balance was off.

  Even Ms. Price, who had stopped typing for once, looked on with concern.

  “Why don’t you raise the force-field level?” I asked.

  “I can’t tamper with the system once the match has begun,” Dr. Roop said. “The only thing I can do is cancel the program entirely, but if they don’t stop when I do that, they’ll be fighting with no protection at all.”

  “Right,” said Steve. “I’ll go in there and make a convincing case for ending the match.”

  Steve had only taken a couple of steps toward the door when Ardov spun around and kicked Mi Sun hard in the back. His foot struck hard and flat, and Mi Sun flew into the wall, face-first, connecting with a sickening slap. I thought the padding would be enough to protect her, and after she struck, she remained standing for a beat. Then she fell to the floor. Mi Sun’s jaw was slack. Her eyes fluttered momentarily and then closed.

  Ardov stood with his back to us, his head down, breathing heavily. Then he turned to face the control room, his mouth open in a sickly grin. “I win.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  * * *

  On Earth, Mi Sun likely might have died. At the very least she would have been in the hospital for months, probably never fully recovered. But as I’d seen in the aftermath of the attack on the Dependable, things worked differently here in the Confederation. Before Mi Sun had even hit the floor, the nanites in her system were at work to put her in stasis and stabilize her until she could reach the medical facility across the government compound. There they spent about six hours working their high-tech, largely automated magic on her. All the initiates, even Ardov, sat in the waiting room in respectful silence, the only sound the endless clacking of Ms. Price’s keyboard. Finally we received word, via our bracelets, that Mi Sun would make a complete recovery. She was awake and in no pain, but it was a sign of the seriousness of her injuries that she would have to stay in the facility for forty-eight hours, after which she would be back to normal.

  “I’m glad that’s finally over,” Ms. Price said. She made her keyboard vanish, rose, and walked out of the waiting room.

  I echoed her sentiment, and maybe even felt it a little more than she did. I didn’t have warm and fuzzy feelings about Mi Sun, but she was a person, if an unpleasant one, and I didn’t want anything terrible to happen to her. Nothing too terrible, at least. Setbacks, sure. Embarrassment, you bet. Abject apologizing for her rotten behavior toward me? Absolutely. The bottom line was that she was a member of my team, and I didn’t want Earth to lose one of its delegates, but that was the latter logical reaction. My first emotional response was that I simply did not want someone I knew to die.

  I felt a flood of relief wash over me, and it was only then that I realized that Tamret, sitting next to me, was holding my hand. It was nice—warm and comforting. Her fur was like the softest down imaginable, and I felt the cool of her finger pads underneath and just a hint of her retracted claws. Her touch seemed comforting and dangerous at the same time, and I liked the sensation. I couldn’t help but wonder what it all meant.

  “I thought she was dead for sure,” Ardov said. “Does this mean we can’t be killed here?”

  Dr. Roop made no effort to hide his irritation, but still answered. “You can survive most serious injuries provided you are near a medical facility. A direct wound to the heart or a catastrophic brain injury is almost always fatal.” He looked at all of us. “But I don’t want anyone to take foolish chances. And no more sparring at anything under level six from now on.”

  “That’s no fun,” Ardov said with a smirk.

  “You can all go back to your rooms now,” Dr. Roop said. “Except you, Ardov. I want to see you in my office.”

  Charles and Nayana were already leaving. I let go of Tamret’s hand and looked at her and Steve. “Will you guys hold on? I want to go talk to Mi Sun for a minute.”

  Tamret squinted at me. Her whiskers twitched. “Why? She hates you.”

  “It could have been me in there,” I said.

  Tamret lowered her eyes, and her ears rotated back. “You’re right. But you’re nicer than she deserves.”

  I wasn’t just being grateful and a good teammate. I wanted to talk to someone from my own world about something I’d been thinking about. Charles was impossible to talk to, and I didn’t think Nayana would have any insights. Mi Sun was my best shot, and I hoped her near-death experience would maybe take the edge off of her.

  She sat propped up on a bed in a private room, a million machines monitoring her, beeping and humming softly. There were tubes wired into her arm. It looked like a high-tech version of an Earth hospital room. For all the seriousness of her injuries, she was now awake and reading off her data bracelet. She looked at me in surprise when I came through the door.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I couldn’t stay away. I’m in love with you, Mi Sun. I have been since the moment we met. From my first taste of your antisocial rudeness, I’ve longed for your scornful gaze.”

  She wrinkled up her face. “Gross. You’re messing with me. Aren’t you?”

  “I am totally messing with you,” I said, sitting in a chair across from the foot of her bed.

  “Way to go—trying to stress out the girl who practically died.” She was almost smiling when she said it, though. I don’t think I’d ever seen her smile before.

  “I’ll try to work on my sensitivity,” I told her.

  She sighed and closed her eyes. “So, what do you want? You don’t have to thank me. I was just trying to keep our planet from—” She stopped herself, and her face softened. I had the feeling she’d been about to say something nasty, and then changed her mind. “If the situation had been reversed, and there was some kind of incredibly dorky thing that needed doing, I know you’d have stepped in for me.”

  It was the nicest thing she’d ever said to me. It was maybe the nicest thing any human being had said to me since I’d left Earth. “I would,” I told her.

  “Now that we’ve settled that, you can go.” She turned away.

  I was not ready to go. I took a deep breath because I knew this was not going to go well. “Did you ever read Ender’s Game?”

  “Why are you such a geek?” she asked me. “I was almost killed, and you come visit me in the hospital to ask me about a stupid science-fiction story?”

  “Just hear me out,” I said. “It’s about this kid who—”

  “I saw the movie, okay?” She rolled her eyes.

  “The book is better,” I told her.

  “Whatever,” she said. “Make a point. I’m tired.”

  “You remember how they have Ender playing all
these games supposedly to train him to fight the enemy, but it turns out he’s really been fighting them the whole time? It looks like training, but it is really the actual battle, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “What are you getting at? You don’t think that’s what’s going on here, do you?”

  “No, it can’t be, but I do think we’re being used, or at least trained. Everything we’re doing is either to train us to fight the Phands or to help the Confederation understand Former tech, which is in the service of fighting the Phands. I’m starting to feel like humans were chosen because we’re more, I don’t know, violent than other species in the Confederation. Before we left Earth, Ms. Price kept talking about how they’re all sheep compared to us.”

  “So what?” she asked. “They picked us because we have something they need to help the Confederation. I don’t have a problem with that.”

  “The problem is that they’re not being honest. Tamret and Steve and I—”

  “Stop,” she said. “I don’t care what you and your Scooby-Doo gang get up to, but don’t make me part of it. I just want to keep my head down and gain levels. You should do the same. I can’t make you stop acting like an idiot, but I don’t have to listen to your theories, either.”

  “I understand, but—”

  “I said I don’t want to hear it,” she snapped.

  I sighed and rose from my chair. “Okay, fine.” I went toward the door, and then I turned back. “You really put up a fight.”

  She frowned. “He still won.”

  “He’s still a jerk.”

  “So am I,” she said.

  “The universe is so vast and full of wonders that it actually contains a bigger jerk than you. Feel better.” I was turning to leave again, when she called me back.