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  “Of course helping Tamret was the right thing to do, but I don’t understand why you didn’t message me. You may recall that talk we had? You were supposed to trust me.”

  At the time it had never occurred to me to call Dr. Roop, but now that was kind of hard to explain. “Things were kind of crazy. I needed to do something, not wait.”

  “I am familiar with the concept of the ‘snitch,’” he said. “But Ardov was hurting another delegate. Then you left him alone, without calling for medical attention, after you knew he’d been hurt.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “Right now, your infractions are the least of my problems. As for Ardov, there is no way to banish him without destroying the Rarel delegation’s chances. I’ve had a long talk with him to make sure he understands the consequences of his actions, but he doesn’t strike me as the sort of being who is overly concerned with consequences.” He rubbed at his horns with one hand. “The selection committee really left me quite a mess.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ve been a good friend, and I’ve made your life more difficult.”

  “Next time, come to me with anything,” he said. “I’m on your side, Zeke.” He waved me off with one hand. I was halfway out the door when he said, “Oh, and please try not to break curfew again. If you don’t mind.”

  • • •

  Ardov didn’t come to class that morning, but Steve and Tamret and I passed him in the hall that evening when we were heading out for dinner. The healing facility had done its work, and he showed no sign of the beating he’d taken.

  He paused, looked at Tamret, and made some weird spiraling gesture with his hands. “I have treated you badly. I beg your forgiveness.” There was no sign of sarcasm or hostility in his voice. Was it possible that Dr. Roop had actually scared him into reforming himself? Yes, there was a chance, but there was an even better chance that he was simply waiting for the opportunity to strike at us.

  • • •

  The three of us had booked time in the ship simulation suite for the next night, but when we got there, Charles, Nayana, and Mi Sun were just showing up as well. Charles, I noted, had finally risen to level ten.

  “Look.” Steve pointed at them. “The primates are here.”

  “Hey!” I said.

  “You’re one of the good ones,” he told me.

  “There’s no need to be uncivil,” Charles told Steve.

  “We only have the suite for two hours,” Mi Sun said. “Let’s not waste our time bickering with the randoms.”

  Tamret put her hands on her waist. “Good call. You should use your time trying to learn how to operate a ship instead. For all the good it will do you.”

  “You cannot intimidate us,” Charles said, gesturing toward the number ten floating above his head. “You enjoy name calling, but there’s not one of you above level nine.”

  “Have you ever considered that we simply haven’t leveled our points yet?” Tamret asked.

  “I don’t see why you would do that.”

  Tamret smirked, like she had a secret. “You never know.”

  “What I know,” said Nayana, “is that the three of you are never going to catch up, so the normal delegates have to pick up the slack.”

  I held up my hands in a we come in peace gesture. “We’re all just trying to do what’s right for our planets,” I said. “I know none of this is personal. We all want our delegations to get our eighty levels. I know you think leaving me out is the best way to do it. I don’t agree, but I understand it. So how about we end hostilities?”

  “He’s trying to keep us out of the simulation,” said Nayana. “He figures if we keep talking, we’ll lose our reservation.”

  “He’s trying to be friendly,” Tamret said. “If you weren’t so stuck up, you’d see that.”

  “Put your animal on a leash,” Nayana snapped.

  “Hold on,” I said, stepping forward. “That’s not cool.”

  “Then tell her to stop meowing at me.” Nayana sniffed and turned up her chin.

  “How about we settle our differences in the simulation room?” Mi Sun suggested. “We’ll square off in a battle sequence, and we’ll see who is victorious.”

  “What are we playing for?” Nayana asked. “This needs to be worth my while.”

  “Honor?” Steve suggested. “Let me know if your universal translator got that one. I know it may be a tough concept for your species.”

  “Steve, you do know I am one of them, right?”

  “Just go with it,” he said.

  “You’re so eager to take us on,” Nayana said, “because you’ve got Zeke. He’s the only one of you who’s worth anything. You’d never dare to take us on if he came over to our side.”

  “We’d be down a man, wouldn’t we?” Steve said.

  “Then how about me and Zeke against the two of you?” Nayana proposed.

  For an instant I liked the idea. It wasn’t that I wanted to go up against Steve and Tamret; I had nothing to prove by taking them on, and I didn’t want to beat them or be beaten by them. But suddenly Nayana wanted me on her team. I had a chance to be with my own kind, to prove once and for all that I was a valuable member of the delegation.

  Then reality set in. No matter what happened, I was never going to be one of them. It was wishful thinking to believe otherwise. “No way,” I said.

  I looked over at Tamret. Her eyes were narrowed and her jaw was set. She had seen my moment of indecision. She had seen that I’d been tempted to throw them over and run back to my own species. “I see Ms. Price was right about you,” Tamret said quietly.

  “No, she wasn’t,” I told her. I then turned to Nayana. “Me and my friends against you and your acquaintances.”

  “That works for me,” Nayana said. “We’ll use artifact carriers. And the winner gets all the experience points. The loser gets docked an equal amount.”

  “Winner take all is fine,” I said, “but you can’t take someone else’s points.”

  “The kitty cat knows how,” Nayana sneered. “Ardov told me that she was siphoning off his points, which means she can tinker with the system. So let’s play with real stakes.”

  “Works for me.” Tamret folded her arms across her chest and glared at Nayana. “The winning team splits the points between them. The losing team gets an equal penalty.”

  “Forget it,” I told her. “You are not doing that. You’ll get caught, and then you’re out of here. That doesn’t help you or the Rarels. It’s not worth it.”

  “I won’t get caught,” she said. “And your human friends have to promise not to tell.”

  “You can’t trust them,” I said. “We’re a totally untrustworthy species.”

  “I guess you are,” Tamret said, glaring at me, “but I’ll take my chances.”

  “This is not necessary,” Charles said. “It is dishonest, and I don’t wish to see anyone get into trouble.”

  “I don’t see why this is worth breaking the rules,” Mi Sun agreed.

  “We’re doing it,” Nayana said. “I want to put these losers in their place once and for all.”

  Everyone was against this except Tamret and Nayana, and yet somehow we were all going ahead with it.

  • • •

  We went into our suites and synched our systems, which would drop us on opposite sides of a gas giant orbited by twelve moons, which ranged in size from a large asteroid to atmosphered worlds larger than the Earth. Both teams were to be in artifact carriers—so called because they were often used to whisk Former artifacts away to safety as soon as they were discovered. These vessels were not much larger than transport shuttles, built for speed and defense. They were reasonably well armed and had powerful shielding and tunnel drives. Most importantly, they could easily be manned by three beings.

  It was never in doubt that Steve would
take command. He had defeated Nayana before, and we were counting on him to do it again. He also took the helm position. I was on his right, operating the weapons console. Tamret, on his left, was running navigation and comm. Once the sim kicked in and our HUDs created the illusion of being on a real artifact carrier, we were spaced a little farther apart, but I was happy to see our positions remained more or less the same, particularly since I was not next to Tamret. She was still angry I’d considered Nayana’s offer, if only for a second.

  As soon as we dropped in, Steve worked the console and angled us up hard as he hit the throttle. I felt a slight pressure as the inertial compensators kicked in, knowing they were the only reason we were not jelly on the backs of our seats—or would be if this were real rather than simulated. Steve then turned us hard to port and gave it more speed. “I love how these things handle,” he said dreamily. I had a sudden and clear vision of Steve the reptilian car thief.

  “Oh, and check for the enemy,” he said as he dipped suddenly downward, moving us dangerously close to an ice moon’s gravity well.

  “Let’s see where they’re hiding,” Tamret said as she worked her console, searching for Nayana’s ship.

  “You want to take it easy?” I said as Steve suddenly banked hard to port. “I’m not going to be much use to you if I’m puking.”

  “I’m sure even puking you can thump those tossers,” he said, and then pulled up fast at an uncomfortably steep angle.

  “Found them,” Tamret said. “Sending coordinates to your consoles.”

  An outline image came up at once of Nayana’s ship, which was still a good fifteen thousand miles distant. We were down near the gas giant’s south pole; they were circling above the north.

  “If we see them, they see us,” I said. I checked my data bracelet. “The clock’s ticking, and if this ends up a tie, it will be a waste of time for everyone.”

  “Right,” Steve said. “Tamret, can you check that sun for unusual activity?”

  “Sure.” Then, after a minute, she said, “Yeah, this star is really flaring. How’d you know?”

  “Thought I recognized that planet,” Steve said. “I ran this exact sim with Dr. Roop a few days ago. He showed me a little trick. How long until the next radiation spike?”

  “Two minutes, seventeen seconds,” she said.

  “Zeke, have we got missiles?”

  “No,” I said. “They’re not standard on artifact carriers. This ship is made for speed and safety, not fighting back.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “Maybe this won’t work.” He smacked the console. “Except it will if we have a plasma lance.”

  I checked. “Yeah, but it’s designed for minimal cabling. Six miles in vacuum.”

  “Not nearly enough,” he said.

  “Enough for what?”

  “Hold on,” Steve said, ignoring me. “You know how the cables on plasma lances work, right?”

  “Sure,” I said. I’d tried to learn as much as I could about ship weaponry after being branded a war criminal and all. “It’s some kind of quantum effect. They convert the ambient atoms floating in space into solid matter.”

  “If we were on a physical surface, like one of these moons, would we be able to produce more than six miles of cable?”

  I checked the calculations. “Yeah,” I said. “With enough engine power, we could produce hundreds of miles of cable, no problem.”

  “We won’t need hundreds, but we’ll need quite a bit,” he said. “Here’s my idea. We’re going to go to the far side of that icy moon here, and the instant the solar energy spikes, we’re going to drop straight down. With a little luck, the radiation will conceal us, and to them we’ll have simply vanished. They’ll likely need a minute or so to figure out what we’ve done, but by then we’ll be on the moon’s surface, and we’ll have cut power.”

  “If we cut power, we’ll die,” I noted.

  “Not really, because this is a simulation suite, not an airless moon,” he said with a grin. “Anyhow, we should have at least enough breathable air in this ship to last an hour, so the sim won’t declare us dead.”

  “Nayana may not be as smart as she thinks she is,” Tamret said, “but even she can figure out that if we drop off sensors as we pass a moon, we’re probably on that moon. She’ll come looking for us.”

  “She’d better,” Steve said. “Otherwise this plan is total pants.”

  “Wouldn’t want that,” I mumbled.

  We positioned ourselves so that the moon was between us and Nayana, and when Tamret signaled the crest of the radiation wave, Steve pointed us toward the surface and throttled hard.

  The nanites must have been messing with my brain chemistry, because my stomach felt like it was coming out my nose, and my eyes were being pushed into my brain. It was horrible, and I had no doubt that if we were trying this in real life, it would be a whole lot worse.

  We dropped like a stone toward the blue menthol surface, and then, with lightning reflexes, Steve leveled us. I felt another violent, nauseating jerk, and he must have felt it too, but he remained calm and in control. He carefully set us down, and he killed the ship’s power.

  We were in complete darkness. Pure blackness. I sat there, listening to the three of us breathe.

  “Here’s a question,” I said, keeping my voice low as if somehow Nayana and the others might hear me. “How are we going to know when they’re in lance range if we have no power?”

  Steve, I couldn’t help but notice, did not answer.

  “You do have a plan, right?” Tamret asked. “Because if I have to kill you, I’m going to feel bad about myself.”

  “Why is it I have to think of everything?” he asked.

  “Oh, my glob!” I shouted. “You just lost this for us.”

  “This plan,” Tamret observed, “is total pants.”

  “Look at it this way,” Steve said. “At worst it will be a tie. They’ll never find us.”

  We were silent for a few minutes. I was irritated, not really angry. Steve’s plan had been good up to this point. The problem was that there was no way to track Nayana’s ship. If only we had some means of following their movements that wouldn’t register on their sensors.

  Except we had exactly that.

  “Okay, guys,” I said. “How do you feel about working maybe a little bit outside the rules?”

  “Cheating? I feel fine,” Tamret said.

  “Prefer it, if you want to know the truth,” Steve said.

  I turned on my data bracelet. “You can follow the sim from an outside channel, right? We saw Ms. Price doing it. So, we’ll be spectators.” I found the sim and called up a three-dimensional representation of the contest. There we were, on the surface of the moon. And there was Nayana, making her way toward us.

  “Brilliant,” Steve said. “As soon as they’re in range, we power up.”

  Suddenly I felt bad about bending the rules. “I know it was my idea, but maybe we shouldn’t do this. When you think about it, it’s not really fair.”

  “Sure it is. We’re using the resources we have available.” I could tell from Tamret’s voice that she was grinning.

  “Absolutely,” Steve agreed. “Besides, she’s welcome to use her bracelet, same as us. Nothing unfair about it.”

  “Except she’s hunting for us with her ship’s sensors, not her bracelet,” I said.

  “Her mistake,” Steve said. “Let’s wait until she’s about thirty miles out, and then we’ll power up and strike.”

  “I love this!” Tamret shouted. “We’re going to totally destroy her.”

  We sat there for ten minutes, watching Nayana’s slow progress on a three-dimensional grid projected from Steve’s bracelet. She was being thorough, performing slow and deep scans, but she was circling slowly into our range. A couple of times she tried to send messages to us, as if we would forg
et we were hiding and answer. I suppose I couldn’t fault her for trying.

  “She should be within thirty miles in less than thirty seconds,” Tamret said.

  “Let’s wait for twenty, just to be safe,” Steve told me. “I’d hate to get this close and blow it because the cable isn’t up to spec.”

  We waited until she was within range and powered up the ship. The lights turned on, and our consoles chimed as they instantly came to life. I went to work, and it took me another twenty seconds, which felt endless, to get a confident lock on her ship. There was no messing around here. We had one chance to get this right.

  I found my target, locked it in, and fired.

  The plasma lance is incredible technology. Both the lance and the cable itself are made entirely out of ionized particles, the lance composed essentially from the same stuff as lightning. In space, where there is no sound, it would make no noise, but the moon had some kind of unbeatable atmosphere, and we set off a deafening sonic boom as the lance flew free.

  As soon as the forward tip of the lance came in contact with the energy shields surrounding Nayana’s ship, it sensed the resistance, and its own nanoparticles instantly began to restructure its atomic makeup, deionizing and turning the lance and its cable into a superstrong metal alloy. It passed effortlessly through the shields and affixed itself to their hull, bonding with the metal so that there was, for all practical purposes, no way to detect where the hull ended and the lance began. Meanwhile the nanoparticles were generating gravitons that caused Nayana’s ship to be drawn to ours, as if caught in a gravity well. Nayana could not pull away. She could only resist or be pulled down to the planet’s surface. She chose to resist, and her ship came to a full stop.

  The technology was powerful, but it had its limitations. All Nayana had to do now was reconfigure her shields, just for a moment, to protect against physical impacts. The cable would then be severed on the atomic level. That was precisely what she did. The cable fell away.

  That was the moment our victory was assured, because I’d been waiting for her to switch shield frequencies, and the instant she did, I unleashed a steady stream of PPB bursts. She had been at full stop, and we were at full stop, so her systems were easy to target. My first blast took out her shields. Then I took out her engines, and then the weapons. In a matter of seconds, she was dead in space, drifting and powerless to defend herself.