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  “Not unless they have a shuttle outside the hangar,” Tamret said. “I think we can assume, for now, that the cruiser still doesn’t know about us.”

  “This is still bad,” Nayana said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “but it could be a whole lot worse. We have the element of surprise. They may not know we’re in here.”

  “Unless Steve and Mi Sun told them,” Nayana said.

  “Which one of those two do you think gave us up?” I asked.

  Her face went dark. I realized that maybe it had never occurred to her that our friends might not betray us to save themselves.

  “What is the plan?” Charles asked.

  I looked out across the courtyard. Steve and Mi Sun were about two hundred feet away and getting closer. There was no plan but a showdown. “Tamret and I have pretty good aim,” I said, underselling the matter somewhat. With our maxed-out skills, either of us could both probably pick off a flea at two hundred yards. “And we’re quick. I think we can take out the guards without hitting our friends.”

  “With these pistols?” Nayana asked. “No way. They’re not that fast.”

  “In the right hands they are,” Tamret said.

  “I am so sick of your arrogance,” Nayana snapped.

  “Tell me about it some other time when I’m not busy saving you.” Tamret began to walk toward the door. I followed her. This was going to be tight, even with our skills. We had to open the door and fire off eight perfect shots before any one of those guards decided to take aim at Steve or Mi Sun. I didn’t like the odds, but I could not take the chance of these Phands communicating with the cruiser.

  Just as I threw open the door, I saw a flash of light. Several flashes, and the guards went down. They were all down. Every last Phandic guard on the planet—I hoped—was down. And behind Steve and Mi Sun, walking toward us, were the people who had taken these last Phands out: Captain Qwlessl, Urch, Ystip, Wimlo, and a dozen more of the crew of the Dependable.

  • • •

  “For the record,” Steve said, “we let ourselves get caught so Captain Qwlessl could blindside them.”

  “Absolutely true,” Mi Sun said. “We let them catch us as soon as they showed up from nowhere and took our weapons.”

  “My story is better,” Steve said.

  I threw myself at the captain and gave her a hug. “It’s good to see you,” I said. “They made us think you were dead.”

  “I thought they might do something like that,” she told me. “They likely fabricated the images. I’m sorry about that, Zeke. I also know you’re here for your father, but first things first. What’s the operational status?”

  “Our plan,” I told her, “is to take one of the shuttles and fake our way past the cruiser. We then deliver a Phandic shuttle to the Confederation and have them reverse engineer it.”

  “That’s not such a great plan,” Captain Qwlessl said, pointing at me with her trunk. “Do you really think you can simply slip past them?”

  I felt a little foolish. “I was hoping that by the time they realized we were making a break for it, we’d have enough of a jump on them to tunnel to Confederation space.”

  She shook her head. “Too many variables. You’ve been lucky so far, but you can’t count on luck holding. I have a plan that should allow us to deliver the cruiser to the Confederation, which is a better prize than a shuttle, don’t you think?”

  “Um, yeah. But how does it work?”

  “First, I can get us past the 0200 check-in.”

  That was good news. “How?”

  “We’ve been working on our escape since we got here. We’ve had the plan, just not the opportunity to execute it. Now you’ve given us that opportunity. I know the codes for the check-in, so that won’t be a problem. Then, the daily supply shuttle comes at 0400. We surprise them, load up the shuttle with a shock team of twelve or so, and take the cruiser.”

  “How many on that ship?”

  She shrugged. “It’s bigger than the one we faced at Ganar. I’d say eighty? Eighty-five?”

  “And you think you can take it with a dozen soldiers?”

  She looked at me with her huge eyes going wide, and her trunk jabbed in my direction with good humor as she spoke. “Zeke, you just led five alien teenagers, most of whom have had no training with hand weapons, to conquer an entire planet. I’m the captain of a Confederation starship. I think my trained officers can perform as well as you have.”

  “Point taken,” I said. “Fortune favors the bold.”

  “Yes, it does,” she agreed. “Do you want to be part of the team? We could use you, if you think you have the weapons skills. I don’t know how you’ve been using your points.”

  “Take Steve and Mi Sun if they want to go. They’re very good. I’d love to help, but we’re not done here.”

  “Right. The selection committee.”

  I nodded. “Do you know where they are housed?”

  “They’re in the lower level,” she said. “They’ve always been kept separate, so I haven’t seen where they’re confined.” She put a hand on my arm. “I do know he’s very proud of you.”

  “You’ve talked to him?” I asked.

  “A few times,” she said. “They never let us talk for long.”

  “How does he seem?” I asked. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. They haven’t hurt him. Not seriously. You go find him, Zeke. You and your friends have performed brilliantly, but I’ll handle things for you now.”

  I was thrilled to turn the mission over to Captain Qwlessl. I’d messed things up along the way, but I liked to think not all that badly. Still, I didn’t want to have to make decisions if there was someone around I trusted who actually knew what she was doing.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Tamret asked.

  I nodded. “Do you mind?”

  “Do I mind?” She rolled her eyes. “All those skill points in intellect, and you are still a complete moron.”

  For a brief moment I believed everything was going to be okay.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  The members of the selection committee were housed together, away from the general population. To reach them, Tamret and I walked down a corridor lined with cells holding other prisoners—mostly Phands, but lots of other species I had never seen. They stared at us through their bars. Maybe they had heard the PPB fire; maybe they’d noticed that there had been no regular patrols. Maybe they realized that pistol-packing alien kids, one of whom was drenched with blood, did not usually walk down the corridor.

  Captain Qwlessl had told me that a lot of these people were political prisoners, but many were genuine criminals—the kind that knock off alien liquor stores or pull off alien bank heists. Other than her crew and the selection committee, none were from the Confederation, so their loyalties were unknown. We couldn’t risk taking any of them with us. Our plan was to open the gates just before we left so the prisoners would have access to the planet, which meant food and water as well as any shuttles we left behind. What they did with all of that was their business, but this was a habitable planet and they wouldn’t starve. We were doing nothing unethical, and we hoped we would create the biggest possible mess for the Phandic Empire to clean up.

  Soon the enemy shuttle would land to deliver supplies. Then our guys would capture it, and then the captain would lead her team to take over an entire Phandic vessel. That seemed much riskier to me, but she thought she could do it, and she understood that fortune favored the bold. The captain was both brave and bold, which was a pretty good combination.

  Then we were at the gate. Tamret had rigged the system so we could control it from our data bracelets, but I stood there, doing nothing. I wasn’t ready for this. I had been fatherless for five years. My mother had been without a husband when she learned she was going to die slowly and horribly
. I missed my father, and I loved him, but I was afraid that when I saw him I would feel nothing but anger.

  “There’s so much you don’t know,” Tamret said, as if reading my mind. “Why don’t you find out?”

  I nodded, activated the controls on my bracelet, and opened the doors. We stepped into a new section of the prison. Five prisoners, one per cell, each a member of the selection committee. I recognized them from the data files. As we passed each cell, the being inside nodded or waved or bowed. None of them spoke. They all seemed to understand what was happening and to respect it. I figured that their time in prison had given my father plenty of opportunities to tell them the story of who he really was.

  I passed them, hardly glancing at the beings who had changed my life, changed all our lives. I walked down the corridor and Tamret squeezed my hand.

  Then we were in front of his cell. He wasn’t wearing the cape or the ridiculous crossed red suspenders. He wore plain pants and a plain long-sleeved shirt. He was green and muscular and had a protruding brow, but under it all he was my father. He was smiling at me, and his eyes were glistening.

  “Hi, Zeke,” he said.

  “Hi.” It was all I could manage.

  He shook his head slightly. “You look more like Mal Reynolds than Zeke Reynolds.”

  “And you look like Martian Manhunter.” I couldn’t even guess what I felt—relief, pride, love, rage. All of them mixed together in a pot of boiling soup, each feeling taking its turn rising to the surface. I had no idea how my tone sounded. I didn’t want to know.

  He let out a breathy half laugh. “Yeah, I do. That’s sort of a long story.” He looked at Tamret, at the two of us holding hands. “You’re one of the Rarel girls, aren’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “I hope that’s not your blood.”

  She shrugged. “It’s fine. I’m a quick healer.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I guess so. Are you going to let us out of here?”

  “In a minute,” I told him. “I need to know why you left us.”

  “This may not be the best time to catch up,” he said.

  “I think it’s a pretty good time,” I told him. Maybe it was the adrenaline, the experience of being in combat, of thinking Tamret was dead, of having broken into the prison. Maybe I wasn’t myself, but I was now furious. He had left his family and gone off to the stars and turned himself into a superhero. I needed to know why, and I needed to know now.

  “Zeke,” he said gently, “I will tell you everything, the whole story, when we’re safe. For now, what you need to know is that I didn’t plan to leave or choose to leave Earth. That wasn’t a decision I made. I would never have done that to you and your mom.”

  “And you never had a chance to come back?”

  He looked away. “After I’d been gone a few years, I was in a position where I possibly could have returned to Earth, though getting there was always going to be a risk. But by then I knew our world was in trouble, in danger of being conquered by the Phandic Empire, and I couldn’t go home just to wait for the end. I had to choose whether I wanted to be with the people I loved or to save them. Can you understand that?”

  I did understand it. I knew it was the most terrible sort of decision a person could have to make, because it was the same decision I had been forced to make with my mother. I understood he had done what he had to do, and yet I was so angry with him for doing it.

  He gestured toward the four other beings from the selection committee, each in their cells, each watching me. It was a menagerie of strange beings, a variety of forms, but they all looked like they understood every nuance of this unfolding drama.

  “Zeke,” my father said, “I know you would do anything to keep your friends safe. Captain Qwlessl told me about you, how you saved that ship. Well, these beings are my friends. Help me get them to safety.”

  Tamret shoved me. “Open your father’s cell and give him a hug, you idiot.”

  I did. I felt like I was in a trance, but I called up the command console, and told the system to open the doors. The bars slid away. My father, my big green father, stepped out of his prison cell, his arms wide, and pulled me to him. It was so weird to embrace him again, not least because he was now insanely buff. Yet as I felt his strangely massive green arms wrap around me, I knew it was him, my father, and I understood he had suffered for the choices that had been forced upon him. He had tried to do the right thing, and it had cost him.

  “Can you forgive me?” he asked.

  “I’m going to try,” I said.

  He hugged me again. “Is your mom okay?”

  I nodded. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth just yet.

  “I bet she misses you,” he said.

  “She misses you too, Dad,” I told him. “All the time. Every day.”

  He looked away, and there seemed to be tears in those hooded Martian eyes.

  Just then a message came in over my data bracelet. “Mr. Reynolds, please acknowledge.” It was Captain Qwlessl.

  I tapped my bracelet. “I’m here.”

  “Mr. Reynolds, we have taken command of the Phandic cruiser in orbit. Our mission is accomplished. Can I suggest you finish your business on the surface so we can depart before any more surprises come our way?”

  “Agreed, Captain.”

  “Oh, and your friend Steve thought you should have the honor of renaming our commandeered ship—perhaps in reference to one of those fictions you enjoy.”

  My father looked at me, and he was grinning a broad, geeky grin. It was the kind of grin he’d flash when we were watching TV or a movie and he had some especially geeky observation to make—something he was really proud of. “An enemy ship captured while escaping imprisonment. How about Reliant?” It was the stolen Federation ship from Star Trek II.

  “It’s a good suggestion,” I told him, “but I have a better one.” I spoke into my bracelet. “Ma’am, can we call her Dependable?”

  There was a brief moment of silence; then she said, “It’s a good name.”

  “I think so.”

  “How soon can you rendezvous?” she asked.

  I told her to hold a minute; then I turned to my father. “The Phands were obviously looking for something here. Did they find it, or can we take it from them?”

  “They found it,” he said, “and that’s a whole other story. There are still artifacts here, but none that are worth delaying our departure over.”

  I contacted the captain. “We’re finishing up down here. I hope to be on board within half an hour.”

  “Be quick and be careful,” Captain Qwlessl said, and signed off.

  It was time to snap out of it. My father was right. For now it was time to close up shop. I worked the security console to free the rest of the selection committee, and I ushered everyone back to the bunker.

  As we walked, my father kept close to my side. Tamret walked ahead of us, her steps cautious and careful and pretty much catlike. I watched her ears bounce as she moved.

  “Is she your girlfriend?” my father asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe. I think so. I hope so.”

  “The beautiful alien girl,” he said, shaking his head, smiling. “That is so old-school.”

  • • •

  Only a skeleton crew—Charles and Nayana—had remained behind, so we loaded up the shuttle and set the console to release the prisoners in an hour, and I sat down at the helm, Tamret by my side. I had Charles and Nayana sitting behind me, and I directed the members of the selection committee to buckle up toward the back. I wanted them far enough away that I would not have to make conversation. I was not up for it, not least because the controls were totally unfamiliar to me and I didn’t want them to see how clueless we were. Fortunately, it occurred to Tamret to overlay a holographic projection from her data bracelet, so in about five minu
tes we had figured out how to operate the shuttle—at least well enough to get us to the cruiser.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, trying to sound confident. With me working secondary stations, Tamret took the helm and eased the shuttle out of the hangar. We hovered for a moment and then pointed it toward the sky. She handled it nicely considering she’d never operated a Phandic ship before.

  It was only thirty seconds after we took off when my data bracelet chirped to indicate an incoming message. “Zeke, what’s your status?” It was Captain Qwlessl.

  “Just departed,” I told her.

  “Our sensors have picked up a Phandic cruiser, we think a much larger one, tunneling in. We’re about a hundred seconds from aperture.”

  “We need six minutes to rendezvous,” Tamret informed me.

  I swore more loudly and more vividly than I meant to in front of my father and the captain.

  “We can try to hold them off,” Tamret asked.

  “No,” I said. I’d already reviewed the weapons and shields, and I knew there was no way a shuttle like this could last for more than a few seconds against a fully armed cruiser.

  I held up my hand. I needed a moment to think. I had to figure out how we could get that stolen cruiser back to the Confederation without using ourselves as a distraction. I wanted to get the ship to the good guys, but I didn’t want to be left behind for that to happen. I was not going to let Tamret fall into their hands, and there was no way I was going to let my father be recaptured less than an hour after his escape. Yet no matter how I thought about it, I knew we were expendable. Nothing mattered as much as getting the new Dependable back to Confederation space. That was what was going to turn everything around for the good guys. But I didn’t want to have to fall into enemy hands to make it happen.

  How could I do it? I had almost no training and less experience. All those nanite improvements weren’t going to help me when I was so drastically outgunned. What did I possibly have that was going to tip the balance here? Tamret had tweaked the game, but I wasn’t in god mode. I could still be killed. In the end, despite all the improved abilities, I was still just a dork who liked science fiction.