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  “What do you know about them?” Hluh asked.

  “The selection committee usually oversees the initiation process,” Steve said. He was still standing, but leaning back slightly on his tail. “This time they’re not around.”

  “And do you know why they aren’t around?”

  “They were killed,” I said. “Some kind of space attack or accident.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Hluh asked.

  I tried to think what Dr. Roop had said, but I couldn’t remember exactly. “What are you trying to tell us?”

  “I checked out the official news stories. I sent copies of some articles and video feeds to your data accounts if you want to take a look, but they’re vague. The committee was on its way from scouting out a small world when their ship was attacked. The articles don’t say by whom. It’s implied that pirates got them.”

  “Wouldn’t that be unusual?” I asked.

  “Unusual, but it is possible.” Hluh said. “Confederation space is well patrolled, but there is the occasional renegade or desperate refugee from Phandic space. The point is, what happened to the committee is left unclear.”

  “Maybe no one knows,” Steve said. “Space is big. You can’t know everything that happens, right?”

  Hluh continued to type, and the holographic image was suddenly flashing with warnings about security and restricted access. “That’s true, but my point is that everything to do with all five of these beings has since been buried or classified. Sure, I can find public information about them, articles about their elections, opinion pieces they wrote, images and interviews and whatever, but if you go deeper, into the government records, everything has been taken out of the public domain and seriously encrypted. I can’t gain access, but I know who is blocking the way: the Xeno-Affairs Judicial Council. Chief Justice Junup has made it impossible for anyone to learn anything about what happened to the selection committee.”

  “Which is why Hluh messaged me,” Tamret said.

  “I suspected Tamret would have no problem breaking every law there is protecting the privacy of information,” Hluh said. “She is both skilled and immoral.”

  “And awesome,” Tamret concurred. “But I couldn’t gain access to any of the secret files concerning the selection committee. It was all too encrypted.”

  “Too encrypted for you, ducky?” Steve asked.

  This earned Steve a smile. I wished it had been mine. “You have to understand how these Confederation types think,” Tamret explained. “To them a sign that says ‘do not enter’ has the same effect as a high-security fence. That’s already all they need, but this time they actually put safeguards on their files. The truth is, I could get around the encryption and gain access to the files without too much effort, but I would set off a zillion alarms, and they’d trace the hack to me within a few hours. I want to know what’s in those files, but not enough to get kicked out of the Confederation.”

  “Can I point out that you’re not supposed to be hacking?” I said. “Hluh, you can’t let her do this for you.”

  “It was her choice,” Hluh said.

  “After you asked her,” I snapped. “You’re taking advantage of her, and you don’t care if she gets caught. It won’t bother you.”

  “Should it?” Hluh asked.

  “The point,” said Tamret, “is that there is information out there the judicial council doesn’t want known, and whatever it is, it’s under the absolute highest level of government secrecy.”

  “I don’t think any of you are here by accident,” Hluh said. “And I don’t think the committee disappeared because of a chance act of aggression.”

  “That’s not good,” Steve said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Think about it,” he said. “These blokes have an open and free society, so why conceal information?”

  “They’re obviously trying to hide some sort of blunder,” Hluh said.

  “How could the selection committee be a blunder?” I asked.

  “Oh no.” Genuine worry clouded Tamret’s face.

  “Will you guys tell me what’s going on? I don’t get it.”

  “This is bad,” Steve said. “The committee chooses its randoms not randomly, and except in your case, we are all fairly shady characters. Then the committee is attacked, and the government classifies and encrypts its own records about the committee. I can’t help but think that maybe the Confederation itself took them out.”

  “But why?” I asked. Then the answer occurred to me. “Oh no,” I added to the chorus. “They were Phandic spies, weren’t they?”

  Steve nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. It makes sense.”

  “Then that means we weren’t chosen to help our worlds join the Confederation,” I said. “We were recruited to help the Phands.”

  “And the Confederation knows that,” Tamret said.

  “I think you are drawing unwarranted conclusions,” Hluh said. “You have been here for weeks. Has anyone from the Phandic Empire tried to contact you or recruit you?”

  “No,” I said, but I was thinking that maybe the Phands had been keeping an eye on Earth for a while. Their ships were flying saucers, after all, which were what most people reported when they claimed to have had contact with aliens. Maybe just like the Confederation had been seeding its culture in Earth’s science fiction, the Phands had been scouting my home world as well. Did the Confederation know that? If they were to find out, would that make them suspect me?

  “Any of the rest of you?” Hluh asked. “Have you had any contact with the Phands?”

  “No,” Steve said, “but if they had been planning on recruiting us, it could be that Zeke’s destruction of their ship may have made them rethink their approach.”

  “I am not convinced,” Hluh said. “Even if Zeke angered them by destroying that ship, it would not alter their position if they had invested time and agents in putting you in place. You may have been chosen to serve the Phands, but you may have been chosen for some other, less menacing reason. Either way, it doesn’t change the fundamental truth about your situation.”

  “Which is what?” I asked.

  “The selection committee was up to something illegal,” Hluh said, “and clearly the Confederation doesn’t want this discovered. It seems to me that the only thing the two greatest political forces in the galaxy have in common is that they would rather you were not around.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  * * *

  Were we originally recruited to be enemy agents? I didn’t want to work for the Phandic Empire. I liked the Confederation. I liked being on the side of peaceful exploration and expansion. But if a Phandic agent had come to me and asked me to spy for them, I’m sure they wouldn’t have taken no for an answer. They would have had leverage, and whatever it was, it would have made it impossible for me to do anything but obey.

  Except if Steve was right and the Confederation knew about the committee’s betrayal, then it would have known we were going to be recruited as spies. Would we have become double agents? Not likely, because if the Confederation had wanted us as double agents, they’d never have tipped off the Phandic Empire by getting rid of the committee.

  It was easy to get lost in a maze of partial information, but the truth was we had no idea what these discoveries meant. Hluh said she would keep digging, and I begged her to leave Tamret out of it, but I don’t think I made much of an impression. I had to hope that Tamret would not get caught, and I had to hope that whatever mysteries swirled all around us would not interfere with our ability to do what we had come to do. Whatever the reason we’d been chosen, no matter how devious the plan, we were part of our delegations now, and the only thing that mattered was helping our worlds get into the Confederation. We couldn’t control what people thought of us. We could only change those things that were in our power.

  So that was how
we lived for another ten days. Then things got worse, as they are inclined to do.

  • • •

  Dr. Roop came to see me as I was sitting on my bed, reading that night’s homework. His suit looked rumpled, and when he walked into my room, he sat on my bed and buried his giraffe face in his furry hands.

  “This can’t be good,” I said.

  He looked up. “There’s a hearing in three days regarding your actions on the Dependable. In addition to the Xeno-Affairs Judicial Council, a member of the Phandic governmental advisory council will be there.”

  I needed a moment to process this. “That’s definitely not good.” Apparently, I had taken skill points in understatement.

  “It’s worse than not good. This particular Phandic representative was the brother of the captain of the ship you destroyed.”

  I was on my feet. I believe I was pulling at my hair. “His brother? You’ve got to be kidding me! Is the judicial council going to give me up?”

  He took a deep breath. “They may try, Zeke. I have to tell you some things now, and they are secret. You can’t repeat them to anyone—not even to your friends. I’m only telling you because they now affect you, and you need to understand.”

  I nodded. I did not like how this was going, and just in case I fainted, I sat back down.

  “You know that we’ve been in a state of conflict with the Phandic Empire for a long time. They believe in conquest; we believe in self-determination. Those two things can never coexist peacefully.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much the first thing we learned about them.”

  “You know that the détente has been maintained because their skills with weapons are countered by our skills with defensive technologies.”

  “Yes,” I said, drawing out the word. I had a feeling that what I thought I knew was going to turn out not to be the truth.

  “That stalemate ended about twenty years ago,” Dr. Roop said. “Their weapons have improved faster than our ability to defend against them. We’ve been losing engagement after engagement. The truth, the terrible and secret truth, is that if the balance of power does not change, the Confederation is going to fall within another fifty years, possibly even much sooner. Hundreds of worlds will be overcome by the Phandic Empire, which will become the sole galactic superpower.”

  “I agree that this is terrible, but I don’t see why you’re telling me. What does this have to do with my destroying that ship?”

  “You embarrassed the Phands,” Dr. Roop was saying. “They want to punish you for that, and the Confederation may not be in a position to say no. If the empire offers some kind of truce, even if it’s just a small and temporary one, the leadership may feel compelled to take it. Anything to buy time may be too tempting to resist.”

  All the pieces were coming together, forming a full picture, and I did not like what I saw. “So the Confederation may violate its own principles and hand me over in the hope that inevitable collapse might be put off for a few more years.”

  “Time is the only thing the Confederation has,” Dr. Roop said. “It’s the only thing that stands between trillions of innocent lives and Phandic conquest.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked Dr. Roop. “That I have to sacrifice myself for the good of the Confederation?”

  “No,” he said. “I am going to do everything in my power to prevent that. Ms. Price and I will try to use all legal means to keep you safe.”

  “Ms. Price won’t help me!” I was starting to sound a little hysterical, even to my own ears, but maybe hysteria was called for. “She’ll wrap me in a bow and hand-deliver me if she thinks it will help Earth.”

  “Not this time,” Dr. Roop said. “I’ve made it clear that the Confederation does not look favorably upon those who do not defend their own citizens, who sacrifice the innocent in the hopes of advancement.”

  “And yet that’s exactly what the Confederation is planning.”

  “It’s not our best showing,” he admitted. “But please understand that you have friends.”

  “Not a whole lot,” I said bitterly.

  “Nevertheless, the ones you have are powerful. I’ve spoken with Bliauk. She is coming in to testify at the hearing, and if things don’t go our way, she is prepared to smuggle you off the station and put you in hiding until the crisis is over.”

  I felt panic rising, ready to overflow. How could there be players involved I’d never even heard of? “Who is Bliauk?” I demanded.

  “Captain Qwlessl,” he said, his eyes widening for an instant. “She does have a first name, you know.”

  I could not believe this was happening. “She can’t help me. Won’t she get in trouble?”

  “She would likely lose her commission,” Dr. Roop agreed.

  “She loves captaining a starship,” I said. “I can’t ask her to sacrifice her career for me.”

  Dr. Roop lowered his neck. “You have not asked her to do anything.”

  “I don’t see how they can get away with this,” I said. “People think I’m a war criminal because they don’t really understand how close we were to being destroyed. If this is a hearing, then the truth about what happened on that ship will get out. Isn’t the judicial council worried they’ll look corrupt if they hand me over once all the facts are known? Won’t it look like they’re in league with the empire?”

  “The hearing won’t be public,” Dr. Roop said. “Technically, it should be open, but they will find a way to keep it a secret.”

  “Doesn’t that sort of thing make it hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys?” I asked.

  “That is most definitely part of the problem.” Dr. Roop stood up. “I hope the council will have the courage to uphold the principles of the Confederation. I believe it will, but no matter the outcome, I will not allow you to be handed over to the enemy.”

  “You’d sacrifice the Confederation for me?”

  “Delivering you to our enemies will not help the Confederation,” he said. “It will only allow some frightened beings to believe they’ve put off the inevitable, and I won’t surrender you so that cowards can be, for a little while longer, a little less afraid.”

  • • •

  “You’ve got to get off-station now,” Steve said.

  As soon as Dr. Roop left, I called Steve and Tamret to my room. I didn’t tell them the super-secret stuff, but they didn’t need to know all the details. They were both from flawed worlds, like my own, and they understood that governments sometimes do bad things for what people convince themselves are the right reasons.

  “I can’t just go,” I told him. “I have like thirty-seven credits left in my account.”

  “I can get you the money,” Tamret said. “Credits are just data, which means I can hack them. I can have as much as you need in your account in an hour.”

  “If I leave, the Earth is out of the running. I can’t do that to my world.” Or to my mother.

  “If you’re handed over to the Phands,” Tamret pointed out, “your group is short a delegate, anyhow. Maybe the time has come to think about saving yourself.”

  “But where would I go? There aren’t any public transports to Earth, and I don’t know anyplace else. What kind of life would that be, on the run, entirely alone?”

  Tamret looked at me, and for a minute I thought she was going to offer to go with me. I wouldn’t have let her. I wouldn’t have allowed her to sacrifice her future and her world’s future so that I would be less lonely, but it would have been nice if she had offered.

  “I guess the question is, how much do you trust Dr. Roop?” Steve said.

  “I trust him.”

  “Me too,” Steve agreed.

  Tamret nodded. “If he says he’ll protect you, riding it out may be your safest bet.”

  • • •

  I had no choice but to wait, and the waiting was exc
ruciating. I had three more days, and then I would be sitting in a closed room with the brother of a man I had killed. Me. I had somehow, along the way, killed a guy—a bunch of guys, really. And yes, that guy had just killed a bunch of kids, and we all know the rest, but even so. There was no denying that this was all very serious.

  In three days this might all be resolved for good, and I would never have to worry about it again. Or in three days I might be smuggled onto a spaceship and on the run with a renegade maternal alien. If that happened, would I ever get home again? And where was home now? I’d seen the stars, I’d met incredible aliens, and I had become more than what I had been before. I had molecule-sized machines coursing through my veins that made me faster and smarter than I used to be. If and when I got back to Earth, would it seem too small, too limited?

  And what of Earth? If I ran off with Captain Qwlessl, the rest of the Earth’s team would never reach eighty levels. We would be out. The Earth would be left behind, and my mother would die. The bottom line was that the hearing had to go my way, and I needed to do everything in my power to make sure it did. I trusted Dr. Roop. He was a good guy, a good friend to want to protect me, but I needed to protect more than myself. I needed to protect my mother and the world where I had been born.

  At lunch the next day I was picking at my food, too nervous to eat. Across from me, Steve was not having the same problem. He had an extra-large goldfish bowl of his rat things, and they were dripping with hot sauce. I was too distracted to even turn away as he popped one in his mouth.

  Tamret was suddenly there. She threw herself down in a seat and turned to Steve. “Beat it,” she said to him.

  “What? I’m having my lunch.”

  “We’ve got mammal business here. Find a rock and go sun yourself.”

  He pointed at her with a hot-sauce-covered rodent. “That’s not very nice.”

  “We’ll do sensitivity training later. Scram.”

  Steve cocked his head and looked at Tamret. He tasted the air with his tongue. “Oh,” he said. “That.” He picked up his goldfish bowl, cradled it under one arm, and went in search of a table at the far end of the room. I wasn’t quite sure what emotional stew he had caught wind of, but he had clearly decided that there was nothing to be gained by arguing with Hurricane Tamret.