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  When they were all near the door, Tamret turned to face them. “Every last one of you,” she said, “is a total piece of garbage as far as I’m concerned, but Zeke says I should trust you, so I will. But if I think you’re even considering betraying him, I will rip your throat out and never give it a second thought.”

  “Thank you,” I told her, “for motivating the troops. Let’s go find Steve.”

  When we stepped into the hall, Ms. Price was there, waiting for us. Her arms were folded. “Something is going on with all of you,” she said.

  “Uh, no,” I said. “Why do you think that?”

  “Four humans and the cat hanging out.”

  “We’re just chilling,” I offered.

  “You all seem to be chilling with overnight bags,” she observed. “I don’t like it.”

  “I’m way past caring what you like and what you don’t,” I told her.

  “Tamret, go back to your quarters. The four of you, I think you’d better follow me.”

  I didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t follow her, and we certainly couldn’t get separated from Tamret. On the other hand, if we ran, Ms. Price would alert the authorities.

  Fortunately, Mi Sun had a solution I hadn’t through of. She pivoted to her side, and her right leg shot up lightning fast. She didn’t so much kick Ms. Price as smack her in the face with the top of her foot. Ms. Price was lifted off the floor and crashed into the wall. Her eyes rolled back, and she fell, limp as a sack of laundry.

  Mi Sun’s face was totally blank. Tamret indulged in the smallest and most menacing of all possible smiles.

  “I’m sure that was satisfying,” I said, “but her sudden injury will alert a medical team. We should get out of here.”

  We ran.

  With public transport, it took almost a quarter hour to reach the docking port where Steve had asked us to meet him. I kept expecting some kind of security to catch us, but if they’d found Ms. Price, they hadn’t awakened her and gotten the details about us yet. It was also possible she hadn’t chosen to turn us in. However angry she was, and I had no doubt she was steaming, she was probably reluctant to sink Earth’s chances of joining the Confederation just for the pleasure of seeing Mi Sun get in trouble.

  We had to go through a public terminal, sort of like an airport, and then to the docks housing private ships. These were in what looked like a huge warehousing system of cubicles stretching more than a mile along one side of the station’s lower section. It rose up for fifty levels of cubes, and each individual cube was about the size of a basketball court. The interior section of each was open, except when a ship was entering or exiting. Then bulkhead doors would close, and an internal plasma field, as a secondary precaution, would seal the chamber before the outer plasma field went down and the bulkhead opened.

  We passed several signs that announced only beings with legitimate business were permitted in the docking area, and that seemed to represent the extent of the security. We traveled to the section Steve had indicated, and then took an open lift up twelve levels to get to the right docking bay. Steve was standing outside, leaning against the wall, arms folded, and looking like he was posing for the cover of Spaceship Thievery magazine.

  “Artifact carrier,” Steve said. “Fast, decent weaponry, excellent shielding. Best of all, the owner’s off-station on a commercial venture. By the time he finds out about an unauthorized launch and asks the peace officers to investigate, we’ll be long gone.”

  “Nice,” I said. “How’d you find it?”

  “I helped him.” It was Dr. Roop. He emerged from inside the hangar. Given the context, his dark, boxy Confederation suit made him almost appear like a crime lord—albeit one with an unusually long neck.

  The other humans looked nervous, like they had been busted. I hadn’t told them about Dr. Roop’s involvement in all this. I hadn’t been entirely sure I understood it all until now.

  “This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it?” I said. “It’s why you picked the other randoms. You needed Tamret to get all the data and Steve to steal a ship. Sessek, the Ganari, was supposed to help us break in once we got there.”

  “You’ll have to make do without her,” Dr. Roop said, widening his eyes. “I wasn’t counting on the rest of the human delegation joining you, and I think with all your skills, you should do well.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell us?” I asked.

  “Because if you’d known your father was being held prisoner, you would have wanted to go before you were ready.”

  “How do you know we’re ready now?” I asked.

  “I don’t,” he told me. “I’ve gambled that your having discovered what you need to know indicates that you are now ready. Waiting for you to discover the truth gave you time to train, learn ship operations, and hopefully gain the skills you needed to succeed. I’ve sent everything we know about the prison and about Phandic security protocols to your data bracelets. I’ve examined the data extensively, and I believe this is something you can do.”

  “I don’t understand,” Nayana said. “Why do we have to do this? Don’t you have trained people to take care of this sort of thing?”

  “We do, but they won’t,” Dr. Roop said. “The councils are too timid to risk Phandic anger. But that is your greatest advantage: Whatever the Phands think will happen, the last thing they will expect is a brazen rescue attempt. In the Confederation, we simply don’t do that sort of thing, and they know it. But your kind—you are daring and reckless, and you have all been training. I know you can do what needs to be done.”

  I swallowed hard. We were really going to do this, then. It was so insane, so unbelievably stupid, and we were going to do it. “You chose the three others after my father was captured,” I said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Roop agreed.

  “And me?”

  “He had already tinkered with the system by choosing you,” Dr. Roop said. “I was not so much breaking the law as continuing to work with a law that had already been broken.”

  I had no idea how my father had come to be here on Confederation Central. I had no idea why he’d left his family, why he’d left Earth. I would have to ask him when I rescued him.

  “He’s a good friend,” Dr. Roop said. His data bracelet beeped, and he looked down. “Apparently, someone assaulted Ms. Price, and the peace officers have been asked to apprehend all of you. Perhaps it is best you be on your way.”

  I nodded.

  Dr. Roop awkwardly offered me his hand. “Your father taught me this.”

  I shook his hand. “I want to know everything when I get back.”

  “And I will tell you. We both will.” He leaned forward. “Before you go, you should level up. We’re past the point of being discreet, and you’ll need every advantage you can use.”

  I nodded. It was sound advice.

  “Good luck, Zeke,” he said. Then he left.

  We headed inside the hangar and toward the artifact carrier. It looked much like a shuttle on the outside, and I recognized the configuration of the interior from the many sims I’d run. This would be just like a sim, I told myself, except we might all get killed.

  “I need a minute to level up before I go,” I said to Tamret. “Can you get everyone settled?”

  “Of course.” She began tapping on her data bracelet as she walked into the ship.

  I checked my numbers and I now had enough points to reach level sixteen, which meant I had six points to assign, and I put them all in various piloting-track skills. Again, I was tempted to add some points to strength, but I resisted. More than ever, I would need to make sure my piloting skills were strong. Steve and Tamret and Mi Sun were great fighters. Making myself a little stronger would not matter. Making myself a little better at the helm might make all the difference. Two points went into agility, two to intellect, one to constitution, and one to vision.

&nb
sp; I’d leveled up before, and was always kind of disappointed that my new skills didn’t make me feel any different. I wanted my heart to race, my senses to come alive, but I always felt like the same old me. I knew the added abilities were slight and subtle, but I hoped they would be enough to help us.

  When I got on board, Steve had taken helm. I took navigation. Everyone was already strapped in and sitting still—except Tamret, who had her keyboard out and was typing furiously. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I can do this while we move.”

  We shut the ship doors and sealed the inner bulkhead, and as soon as we were properly depressurized, we opened the outer bulkhead. A message came in over the ship’s comm from the station’s traffic server. It appeared, it said, that we were making an unscheduled departure. We didn’t answer. We simply departed, unscheduled. Steve eased the artifact carrier forward, and I watched on the reverse viewscreen as the station fell away.

  Just like that we were gone, in our stolen ship, heading away from the station. I felt a sudden jolt, almost as though we had tunneled. My senses tingled. The world instantly felt sharper, more defined, more vivid. I could feel my mind churning, purring like an engine. I wondered if it was the new skill points kicking in, but I doubted it. Even my hearing, which I hadn’t touched, seemed improved. I knew it had to be my imagination, or maybe nerves, but I didn’t care. I felt good. I felt strangely ready to take on this absurdly dangerous mission.

  This is what it feels like, I thought, to be an outlaw.

  The station’s traffic server continued to send inquiries at us, imploring us to return, and then asking if we required assistance. Finally, we sent back that we did not need help, and that seemed to satisfy them. As soon as we reached the regulation distance, we plotted our tunnel and opened an aperture. We dropped out of the universe and were on our way. It would take the better part of two days to reach our destination. There was nothing to do but wait.

  • • •

  I did a lot of waiting. The excitement I’d felt turned to fear, and finally to worry. Steve went in the back to nap, and I sat at the helm and watched panels that required no attention from me. I tried not to imagine getting my friends killed in a pointless and reckless exercise. I didn’t know what I was doing, and if I did, I would never have done it. A rescue mission on a prison planet? It was pure lunacy.

  I still felt strange, like there were bugs crawling on my skin, like every sound was magnified a hundredfold. I supposed being hyperaware was the price you paid for being a criminal. Better to be overly sensitive, I told myself, than to be oblivious.

  I sat there, thinking about what we were doing, what we had done, and despite the confidence I’d felt when we left the station, I was suddenly full of dread. What we were attempting was foolish and reckless. Dr. Roop had said we could do it, but that didn’t make it true.

  Charles came and sat next to me, and I didn’t notice he was there until he asked what was on my mind. I wasn’t really in the mood to tell him my problems, but I figured I had nothing to lose. He had followed me this far.

  “At the hearing,” I told him, “when the Phandic Ambassador said there would be no peace while I lived, I was thinking that it was exactly like Star Trek IV, and how bad it would be if things became like Star Trek V. Now here we are. Does that make you Spock? Tamret is Uhura? The girls are like Sulu and Chekov or something? Steve is Dr. McCoy? We’re all old and lame. This is going to be a disaster.”

  “I have not seen that film,” Charles said, “but I do recall another American space adventure in which the heroes must force their way into an alien fortress. I believe in that one it was to rescue a princess. Do you know this story?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, sitting up, because I did see it. “The space adventure you refer to is called Star Wars Episode Four: A New Hope. I think I’ve seen that one. And you’re right. This totally works. I’m Luke and Steve is Han Solo. I mean, think about it. The original Han Solo was a lizard guy. This is too perfect. Tamret is Chewbacca in so many ways it’s not even funny. You’re Obi-Wan, so you are going to get struck down but then become more powerful than we can possibly imagine. Which I guess means you’ll become a disembodied voice that gives pretty good advice.”

  “And the girls?”

  “They’re the droids.” I told him.

  “Which one is which?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Charles, if you have to ask, you’re not in the game.”

  • • •

  Talking to Charles did cheer me up, but even if I could convince myself that our mission might succeed, I could not help but worry about why we were going on this mission in the first place. Why did my father look like Martian Manhunter? How had he ended up masquerading as a citizen of the Confederation?

  “You look glum.” Tamret came to sit next to me. “Something’s bothering you.”

  I nodded. There were many things bothering me, but one thing more than anything else. I didn’t want to talk about it. It was hard stuff, and it brought me back to places I didn’t want to go. I was terrified that if I talked about it, I would cry, and I sure as hell didn’t want to cry in front of her. But I cared about her, and she’d asked, and I owed it to her to tell her what was on my mind.

  “It’s about my father,” I said. “I mean, he obviously at some point learned about the Confederation and the wider galaxy. He ended up out here. He wrote about it. I can understand that he wanted to be part of it, but he left us. He left me and he left my mother. How can I forgive him for that?”

  She took my hand and squeezed it. “Oh, Zeke.”

  “He was a good dad,” I said. “We played together and he was funny and fun and he introduced me to all these things I loved. From the moment I met Dr. Roop, from then on, every time there was something new, I would think, ‘Dad would have loved this. I wish Dad could have seen this.’”

  She gave my hand another squeeze.

  “And I know he loved my mom. I remember them together, and they were happy. I know it wasn’t an act.”

  “You don’t know what I would give to see my father again,” she said quietly. “Either of my parents. I’m not sure I understand why you’re so sad.”

  “Because he went away,” I said. “There was no explanation, no good-bye. He faked his death and flew off to the Confederation. I understand why he would be tempted, but he still left us. How can I forgive that?”

  “Maybe he had no choice,” she said. “Maybe he was taken against his will. Maybe he understood about the danger Earth was in, about the threat of Phandic annexation, and he decided that saving his planet was the best way to save his family.”

  “Whatever his reasons for leaving, he made us think he was dead.”

  She took my hand and put it to her soft cheek. I watched her do it, and I watched her looking at me with those big lavender eyes.

  “Would you like to know what I think?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “You don’t know why he left,” she said. “You don’t know if he had a choice in leaving or if he was prevented from returning to you. But here’s what you do know: Your father somehow created a new identity for himself in the Confederation, one that would pass all scrutiny. That meant he could have made any kind of life for himself that he wanted, but instead he worked as a public servant. Then he got himself elected to one of the most important committees in the government. There are trillions of beings in the Confederation, and they voted for him to be on the selection committee. And when he was on that committee, he moved the members in directions they’d never gone before so that your planet would be among the new initiates. And then he risked everything he had accomplished and broke the law so that from all the people who might have been the random member of the delegation, it would be his own son. I don’t know whether or not he could have returned to you, Zeke, but I do know he went to incredible lengths to bring you to him.”

 
I couldn’t speak for a long time. I sat there, swallowing, feeling the moisture in my eyes but not daring to say anything. Then, when I felt like I could keep myself under control, I finally looked at her. “You are, without doubt, the most amazing girl in the history of girlkind.”

  “Like you would know,” she said, but the look on her face told me that however little I knew, it was good enough for her. “He loves you, Zeke. From a distance of millions of miles, it’s plain as day.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered.

  • • •

  “Okay,” Tamret said. “I’ve finished reviewing the files Dr. Roop gave us, and we need to talk about the prison and the mission in general. We’ve got a little less than a day until we get there at current speed. Crazy as it sounds, this might be doable.”

  We were all sitting toward the front of the artifact carrier. Everyone was getting a little stir-crazy, which made it a great time for a briefing.

  “I’m not done going through the files,” Mi Sun said. “Honestly, I’ve just started. It’s hard to make sense of it all.”

  “Good thing you’ve got me to break it down for you,” Tamret said.

  “If Tamret’s got a plan,” I told the group, “I want to hear it.”

  “How are we going to save Earth?” Nayana asked. “That was the bargain as I recall.”

  “One thing at a time,” I said. “Let’s hear about where we’re going.”

  Tamret sucked in a deep breath, as though she were about to take a dive. “The planet is largely uninhabited except for a relatively small prison,” she said, “consisting almost exclusively of political prisoners, who are forced to work archaeological sites that contain Former artifacts. There’s security, but not much of it is planetside. Mainly their defenses are designed to keep ships from coming out, less because they’re worried about escaping prisoners than because they don’t want anyone stealing artifacts. According to the military surveys Dr. Roop provided, it may be possible to land without being detected, but it will be pretty much impossible to leave the surface without the orbiting ship knowing.”