Renegades

by David Liss

  A moment later Charles quietly told us that he had calculated our escape vector. We departed Planet Pleasant and tunneled toward the prison facility where we would, finally, rescue Ghli Wixxix and, I hoped, put everything right.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  * * *

  It would take a little more than a standard day to reach the prison facility. When we got there, I was going to have to take another dose of the powder, and I wasn’t looking forward to rolling the die again. I also wasn’t looking forward to powering up again. The beating I’d taken from Ardov may have done no permanent damage, but it left me feeling a whole lot less invulnerable than I’d thought I was. Maybe that was a good thing. I would be more cautious, less likely to make a careless mistake. Still, I couldn’t get the sensation out of my head—powerless, unable to move in spite of all those augments, while Ardov pounded on me.

  Everyone wanted to know how Villainic and I had avoided getting captured. They also wanted to know how I had managed to revive my power. I assured them I had no idea why my HUD had turned back on and why it had, since we left Planet Pleasant, turned off again. As for why we weren’t on the ship when it was taken, I left it to Villainic to tell the story. I was genuinely exhausted after my ordeal, and I needed to sleep so I could recharge. I also had a lot to think about.

  There was a small room with a bunk in the back of the shuttle. I closed the door behind me and lay down. I felt sure I would be lying there for hours, my worries competing with one another for my attention, but the moment I closed my eyes, I was out. My body must have needed sleep more than I needed to dwell on every single thing that worried me.

  I awoke because someone was hitting my arm. “Wake up. You’re a liar.”

  It was Tamret, She was sitting on the side of my bed, looking angry. She was wearing the same practical clothes she’d had on since our expedition to the Hidden Fortress, and they weren’t holding up so well. Her pants were tattered at the cuffs; her shirt was wrinkled and stained and stretched at the collar. Her hair was unkempt and in need of a washing, and even her short fur was ruffled in places. Heavy bags hung under her bloodshot eyes. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days, and she probably hadn’t, but she was still the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.

  “Let me sleep,” I said. “I think my body is about to shut down.”

  “You can shut down when I’m done talking to you. I know when you’re not telling the truth, and I know you were lying about not knowing how you got your powers back. Maybe you don’t want the others to know, but you can tell me.”

  She was wrong about that. Of all the people on the ship I didn’t want to tell, she was number one on the list. Tamret was the most likely to use the powder and not care about the consequences. She was the most likely to think she could outsmart or outmaneuver quantum entanglement, but even she couldn’t rewrite the laws of reality.

  Of course I didn’t want to tell her what was going on, but it’s also very tricky to lie to someone when they’ve just told you they know when you’re lying. My limited ability to keep my face neutral was now completely compromised.

  I must have gone too long without saying anything, because her eyes narrowed and her ears rotated back, a sure sign she was thinking through something. “Everyone sort of forgot about it because of how intense stuff got afterward, but what was the deal with Ardov and that thing he tossed in the air?”

  Leave it to Tamret to get to the heart of the matter. I couldn’t tell her what I knew about the twenty-sided die without explaining how I knew it, so I just shook my head. “I need to get some sleep. We can talk about it later.” Delay seemed to me my best bet. If I could keep her from finding out until after the danger was over, there was a decent chance she would never use the powder.

  I started to lie down again, but she grabbed my arm and pulled me back up. “No way. You’re in some kind of trouble.”

  I turned away from her. “What do you care?” I asked. “You’re going back to Rarel with Villainic.”

  “I’m not going to Ish-hi with Steve, and he isn’t mad at me.”

  “That’s different,” I said. “We’re different. I thought we were, anyhow.”

  She raised a hand to touch my shoulder, but then pulled it back. “You need to grow up, Zeke. We’re supposed to be part of a team. We’re supposed to be friends. It’s . . . it’s sweet, I guess, that you wanted me to come to Earth with you, but that isn’t going to happen, so we need to move on.”

  I hated how I was acting, and I knew I needed to snap myself out of it. I thought Tamret was insane for wanting to go back to Rarel, and I hated that she didn’t want to stay with me. I understood that if Rarel joined the Confederation, things would change there. She would want to help guide her world’s process. It was admirable, but it still hurt. I couldn’t let her see it, though. More importantly, I couldn’t let her know the truth about how I’d gotten my Former upgrades to work again.

  “You’re right,” I told her. “I’m sorry if I’m being difficult. I need more time to heal. We’ll talk later.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll leave you alone. As soon as you tell me what you did to Ardov. I know you, so don’t think I haven’t figured out you’re keeping secrets to protect me.”

  “Tamret,” I began, but I had no idea where to go.

  “I can’t believe you would treat me that way. I’m not some fragile thing you need to hide away. I’m not going to shatter if I hear something I don’t like.”

  “Tamret, believe me. I know you’re not fragile.”

  “I can handle whatever you have to tell me.”

  “I know you can,” I said. And then for good measure I added, “I don’t have anything to tell you, though.”

  I was getting backed into a corner now, and with her sitting next to me, staring at me, it was becoming increasingly hard not to tell her what was going on.

  “Look at me,” she said, “and tell me if you know how to activate the Former tech.”

  This was now impossible. I wasn’t going to be able to convince her if I lied to her face, and saying nothing wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Telling everyone I didn’t know why I had been reactivated had been a mistake. I should have told a better lie—maybe that there had been something back at the facility that had switched things on, something we no longer had. Now it was too late.

  “If there is something you don’t want me to know,” she said in a quiet voice, “you can just tell me that. I trust you, Zeke, but you have to trust me too.”

  “There’s something I don’t want you to know,” I told her. “And it’s not about trusting you. I know you think you can handle anything, and maybe you can, but I just need to know you’re safe so I can do the things I have to do.”

  “Are you in danger?” she asked me.

  “What kind of question is that? We’re in the middle of a fight between an evil empire and a really, really small rebellion. I’d say that counts as dangerous.”

  She nodded. “Does keeping your secret make you safer?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think it does.” Maybe having more people by my side with abilities would be an advantage, but worrying about Tamret would distract me. I felt pretty sure that I was not actually lying to her.

  She took a moment to consider this, and then her face set, like she’d made a decision. “Then I’ll trust you.”

  “If everything goes well, this will all be over soon, and in a good way.”

  She stood up and opened the door. “Yeah,” she said. “But when has everything ever gone well?”

  • • •

  The nanites working inside me must have given me a sedative, because I fell asleep almost as soon as she left. I woke up a few hours later, feeling a little bruised and still tired, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. I went out to join the others, who were also in various stages of sleepiness.

  Dr. Roop immediately grabbed me and took me aside. I thought he was also going to interrogate me about my abilities, but he had something else on his
mind. “Villainic told me about your time with the renegades.”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking up at his face. I still felt tired from all the repair work my body had been undergoing, and straining my head to get past his long neck was giving me a cramp. “I never knew there was a Phandic resistance.”

  “There has been for a long time,” he said, “but our best information suggested that they were largely ineffectual. Phandic culture promotes strict conformity, so the resistance has tended to attract dreamers and misfits. They have always been most earnest, but they rarely accomplished very much. From what Villainic tells me, they have not much changed, but in sending you to Planet Pleasant, they may have saved all of us.”

  “I was just desperate for them to abandon their plan A.”

  “Which was what?” he asked.

  “Villainic didn’t mention that part?”

  “No.”

  I shook my head. That was just like him. Maybe he’d been daydreaming when the renegades were discussing destroying one of the greatest cities in the history of everything. “They were going to destroy Confederation Central,” I explained. “They still are if we can’t get Ghli Wixxix out and back in charge within the next ten days. Maybe nine now. They have this idea that Junup’s corruption runs so deep that there’s no other way to get rid of his influence.”

  Dr. Roop took a moment to think about this news. “Can they do it?”

  “They have the station schematics,” I said. “They definitely believe they can.”

  He shook his head. “They understand little about Confederation politics,” Dr. Roop said. “Junup has been very successful at deceiving a large number of beings, but he has few genuine allies—those who know his true goals. Destroying Confederation Central may ultimately produce the results they desire, but it is rather like destroying an insect with a dark-matter bomb.”

  “They seemed to feel that in a thousand years, it would all even out.”

  “I prefer to work with a shorter timetable. We will have to make sure we can rescue Ghli Wixxix; then we will have done all we wished to do, and with a minimal loss of life. Otherwise . . .”

  “Otherwise what?” I asked.

  “We will have to warn Junup of the attack, and you’ll have to send a complete briefing of all you know about it.”

  I felt a sharp pain, which I realized was me biting my lower lip. Betray the renegades to Junup? It was crazy, but then so was letting the renegades destroy Confederation Central. I decided it wasn’t worth thinking about. We were going to make our plan work so I wouldn’t have to make a choice between two horrible things.

  “There’s something else,” I said quietly. Maybe I just wanted to change the subject. “I understand why Steve shook Ardov off the shuttle: We didn’t have a lot of time or a lot of options, and it was us or him. I know sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to, but Villainic killed a couple of guards at Planet Pleasant when it was totally unnecessary. He could have stunned them, but he seemed to think killing them was a better idea.”

  Dr. Roop rubbed at his horns. He looked genuinely worried. He also looked tired. None of us were at our best. “Soon enough Villainic will not be our problem, and with any luck, he won’t be in such a situation again anytime soon.”

  “I’m just saying that he has a dark streak that took me by surprise. I think he’s got more going on in his head than he lets on.”

  “I hope never to find out,” Dr. Roop said. “But as your experiences with the Phand renegades have shown you, not all cultures share our values. One of the goals of the Confederation is to spread our philosophy of tolerance and the preservation of life. Those Phands you met, and Villainic, prefer to find the most expedient way to achieve their goal. I think that the means must count as much as the end.”

  I agreed with him, which is why I said nothing about the powder and the die in my pocket.

  “Tamret is planning on going back to Rarel,” I said. “With Villainic.”

  “I know,” Dr. Roop said quietly. “Her time on Earth did not present the most welcoming impression of your people.”

  “Do you think that’s why? Is this about what Nora Price did to her?”

  “Tamret has also experienced the worst of her own culture, but there are many wonderful things about Rarel and its inhabitants,” Dr. Roop said. “She knows that too. I believe Rarel will be given another opportunity to join the Confederation, but joining is only the first step in the process, and there is no one better than Tamret to help her world succeed as it tries to move toward full membership. A being who has lived as she has, suffered as she has, will want to make sure that it is the good that triumphs over the bad.”

  “That’s why you think she’s going back?”

  Dr. Roop stood up. “It may be that she has chosen her world over her attachment to you. If so, it must have been a difficult decision. Friendship is important, of course—look what you and your friends have accomplished together—but loyalty to one’s world is also a virtue. Her choice may be painful for you, but I suspect it must be equally painful to her, and very likely, she would benefit from your support.”

  “Maybe I have been selfish,” I agreed. “You’re right that I should encourage her if she’s trying to do the right thing for her world, but what if that’s not the real reason?”

  “I think Tamret is the most loyal being I’ve ever met, and if you want to understand anything she does, you have to figure out who she is trying to help.”

  • • •

  Three hours later, Steve announced that we were ready to come out of our tunnel. We had no idea what to expect, but we were far enough from the planet that housed the prison to believe that we would be able to make our initial approach unnoticed. From there, I had no idea what the others had in mind. We were only ordinary people now. I was planning on taking the powder once we learned as much as we could about the prison below, but I had no idea how I was going to do that without revealing everything.

  I might have to confess the truth if we were going to get Ghli Wixxix, Captain Hyi, Urch, and Nayana out of that prison. The only way I could think of telling the truth, while keeping my friends from risking death, would be to flush the powder out an airlock after taking it and before telling them. That meant that whatever we did would have to work, because it would be my last chance to use my Former skills. If I rolled a three or lower, it would be my last chance anyhow.

  I hoped I might have a decent amount of time before having to do all of this, though. The clock was ticking with the Phandic renegades and their ridiculous plan to destroy Confederation Central, but I hoped we could take the better part of a day, at least, to learn more about the prison. That seemed like a safe bet.

  It was a losing bet, though. The moment we emerged from tunnel, ships were firing on us.

  Steve punched in some immediate evasive maneuvers, and we were thrown hard against the side of the ship.

  I felt my shoulder slam against the bulkhead, but I ignored the pain, which was very real. Any injuries I sustained I’d have to heal the old-fashioned way, given that my upgrades were now a memory.

  Steve banked hard again, too fast for the artificial gravity to compensate, and I was thrown in the other direction. A deep rumble told me we’d just been hit by something—more likely grazed, since we weren’t spiraling chaotically or exploding. Still, our ship was little, and any damage was likely to be bad news.

  There was another quick turn, and I threw up my hands in time to prevent myself from slamming headfirst into the bulkhead. Then, in a moment of relative stability, I scrambled up and pushed myself over to the weapons controls. No one had to suggest it. We’d been through this enough times that I knew how it went.

  I checked my readout to see how bad things were. Things, as it turned out, were bad. There were four Phandic cruisers in our vicinity, all of them firing weapons. They were making no effort to communicate. These ships wanted to destroy us—not stop or capture or interrogate. They wanted us dead.

 
; I thought about the powder and the die in my pocket. I could try to augment my abilities, but I wasn’t sure it would do me much good. I was limited by the speed and power of the shuttle itself. Any advantage I might gain in increased reflexes would be lost by the time I took to ingest the powder and roll the die.

  I fired a few PPB bursts at a passing saucer. They were direct hits, but we were no match for their defensive capabilities. We were a simple long-range shuttle up against four death machines. We were not going to win this battle. We were not even going to survive it. Our only chance was to get out of here, and I had no doubt that Steve and Tamret were working on that.

  “Can you do that quick-reverse thing again?” I asked Steve.

  “We’ve taken some engine damage,” he grumbled. “I can’t get the readings I need to execute.”

  So a quick and easy escape was not in the cards. We were going to have to get through this the old-fashioned way—with space weapons. I checked our armaments, hoping we had something more powerful than PPB cannons. There were no dark-matter missiles, but there was something simply marked classified. Planet Pleasant was, after all, an experimental research facility. It was entirely possible that this shuttle was fitted with a cruiser-busting prototype. On the other hand, it could be the latest and most advanced model of self-destruct features. There was no way of knowing.

  Steve took us into a steep dive, and I felt like my stomach was squeezing itself out of my nose as his evasive maneuvers pushed the artificial gravity to its limits. He’d managed to dodge a killing blow, but the PPB grazed one of our engines, and I felt the ship lurch out of control.