by David Liss
“You have let yourself be outdorked,” Charles assured me.
“Also, it was episode twenty-one,” Alice said.
Ardov led us to the same building in the government compound where we’d been housed last time, only now there were a couple of Movement for Peace goons checking data bracelets for ID signatures at the door.
“Got some primitives, I see,” said one of them. It looked like a big floor lamp with limbs. It moved its hooded head over toward us as if giving us a good sniff. “Try not to contaminate your betters.”
“As if they could help it,” Ardov said.
“Did you guys memorize the evil-oppressor handbook or something?” I asked. “Because you have the moronic banter down cold.”
The floor lamp pivoted toward me slowly. “Amuse yourself with your savage conception of humor,” it said. “For all the good it will do you.”
“Maybe I will,” I shot back.
Alice looked quizzically at me.
“Okay,” I admitted. “I couldn’t think of anything punchy. But next time for sure.”
Ardov walked us to our rooms, explaining the facilities to the colonel and Alice like we were all guests at a fancy resort. He said we would have freedom to move around the compound, but not to leave it for any reason. We were not to speak with data collectors, and our ability to communicate with anyone outside the compound had been neutralized.
“I know you lost all your possessions when you destroyed a Confederation vessel full of loyal citizens,” he said, “so you have all been provided with clothes sufficient for your stay.”
He led us down a hall and gestured toward a room, which Charles and Colonel Rage were to share. Neither was very happy with that arrangement.
“Does Zeke not have to share a room?” Charles asked.
“I’d worry about bigger things than who you’re bunking with,” Ardov told him. “All of you have really stepped in it, and there are going to be some serious consequences.”
Colonel Rage leveled his gaze at him. “Your boss told us the same thing, but it seems to me that if we hadn’t overturned the apple cart, we’d be dead right now, so you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not feeling too apologetic about messing up anyone’s plans.”
Ardov was tall, but not as tall as Colonel Rage. Still, he didn’t look even slightly intimidated when facing off with the soldier. “I guess we’ll have to hope it all works out for you, then.”
“I think these kids have shown they can look after themselves,” the colonel said.
“If you want a demonstration of our power,” Ardov said, “I’m sure something can be arranged—something even primitives like you could understand.”
“How about we all just go to our rooms and get some sleep?” I said.
Ardov smirked. “I can always count on Zeke to find a diplomatic way to avoid getting smacked around.”
I met his gaze. “I have a very clear memory of being there while you were getting smacked around, Ardov.”
I shouldn’t have said it, but it slipped out. Now he was standing over me, looking down, grinning. “There will be plenty of time to settle old scores,” he assured me.
“So, are you two going to just going to make macho threats all day?” Alice asked. She was leaning against the wall, arms folded, looking bored.
Ardov smiled at her. “Like I said before, the past is the past. Thanks for reminding me.”
Alice just glared at him. She wasn’t about to be sweet-talked by this jerk. Another check in her plus column.
He looked directly at her, pouting like he was doing a photo shoot for a boy band. “You and I don’t have any bad history to overcome. Maybe we can be friends.”
Alice shrugged. “We’ll see how you treat the friends I’ve already got.”
Ardov began walking again, and we followed him past a few more doors, and he gestured to a room. “You’ll be staying here with Mi Sun,” he said, looking directly at Alice. “If you need anything, message me. I’m here to be of assistance.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “I get it. Divide and conquer. Get me on your side to make the others uncomfortable. Anything else?”
She turned away, and the two girls went into their room. Now it was just me and Ardov in the hall. Ardov moved down one more door. “This is yours,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. I did not much care for being alone with the guy—by which I mean I was struggling against the urge to drop to the floor and curl up into a ball. He and I had been enemies before, but back then there had been rules to keep him in line. Now he was hired muscle, working for a guy who had likely just arranged my murder.
“I hear Tamret is on her way to the station,” he said.
If there was something to shift me from scared to angry, however, this was it. “That’s right.”
“It will be nice to get everyone back together,” he said. “Catch up on old times.”
I let out a breath. “Ardov, maybe you’re thinking that kissing Junup’s butt and hanging out with the armband crowd makes you untouchable, but you’ve been convinced of your superiority before. I seem to recall that that didn’t work out so well for you. How about we all just do our best to avoid trouble?”
“I’m not here to make trouble,” he said. “I’m here to enforce order and uphold the right of superior species to live without primitives corrupting their way of life. The way I see it, you are the trouble that’s already been made.”
I suggest you don’t antagonize it, Smelly said. Picking fights will not help us, particularly with this being.
I knew Smelly was giving me good advice, but I wasn’t in the mood to let Ardov say whatever he wanted. “And what are you exactly? An errand boy for a coward and a thief.”
“You are Junup’s enemy,” Ardov said. “That makes you my enemy. I haven’t decided yet about your girlfriend. She got one over on me before, but that was when she was cheating and I had to follow the rules. This time? Things are different.”
Zeke, I’m getting some interesting readings from this meat bag, and by interesting I mean unexpectedly terrifying. I urge you to exercise caution.
Smelly was making about as much sense as it ever had, but I was not about to let Ardov get away with threatening Tamret.
“If you even think about laying a finger on her,” I began, but that was as far as I got. I should clarify that it was as far as I got in the conversation, because in physical terms I got much farther—down the hall, to be precise. Ardov pushed out with one hand, and I was airborne, shooting down the corridor like a potato out of a spud-shooter. I landed a good thirty feet away from Ardov, who still had his hand out, and I slid a few body lengths along the carpeting before finally coming to a halt.
The strange readings I’m getting, Smelly said, may be related to his augmented skill tree. He has decoupled it from the leveling system, so other beings can’t detect it, but he has achieved maximum levels in all fields.
As I sat there, feeling the pain spreading from my butt into my legs, as well as an entirely separate ache in my ribs, I realized that I understood why Junup had picked Ardov. Only non-Confederation citizens could have their skill trees hacked. Junup had wanted Ardov so he could hack him, so he could have his own personal supersoldier.
“Now do you get the picture?” Ardov asked. He walked over to me and held out a hand to help me up. I ignored it and scrambled to my feet on my own.
“So, yeah,” he said. “Anything you need, just message me. You disgust me with your savage ways, and you are an insult to the Confederation even being on this station, but hey, I’m here to help, so let me know how I can make your stay here as comfortable as possible.”
He turned and strode gracefully down the hallway while I limped to my room.
• • •
As with most private spaces in the Confederation, the door was biometrically sealed, which meant that only a being authorized to enter could enter. I needed no key. I pushed the door open, not quite sure what to e
xpect. After a terrible series of days, I was ready for yet another unpleasant surprise, but this time the surprise was pretty good.
“I get the bed near the door, mate. Better that way if I need to get out quick.”
Steve stood there, tall, muscular, and lizardy, wearing one of his Ish-hi tunics and looking as much like a deadly predator as he had the first moment I’d seen him. Back then, I thought he was there to kill, possibly eat, me. He’d not been planning to do either, and he’d turned out to be someone who always had my back.
He moved in, lighting fast, for a big squeeze, nearly shoving my organs out through my mouth before he finally let me go. I fell to the floor.
“Sorry, mate,” he said, holding out a hand. “Not used to being around anyone so fragile. Didn’t mean to crack your delicate bones.”
“Not a problem,” I said, grabbing hold and letting him hoist me up. I tried not to think about how that was the second time I’d been knocked down in less than two minutes. “I’m just a little off my game from having nearly been launched into orbit by a shove from Ardov. He’s here, you know.”
“Yeah, saw that git.”
“He’s been hacked.”
“Know that, too,” Steve said. “Smacked me around a bit to show he could do it. Kept calling me primitive, like his planet is somehow more advanced than Ish-hi. I’m waiting for my chance to get back at him.”
“I’m with you on that. So, yeah. Welcome back to the Confederation.”
Steve sat down on the bed, hit some keys on his plasma keyboard, and called up a video image of the assassination attempt. “Not off to a good start. You come off like a chump, and Mr. Shaggy Bloke looks like the hero.”
“No kidding. Getting killed would have been only slightly worse than letting Junup save me.”
That scaly lump of flesh clearly doesn’t understand that the assassination attempt was a sham.
I couldn’t say anything without tipping Steve off, and I wasn’t sure how I wanted to broach the subject, even with my friends, so I merely nodded, hoping Smelly would take that as a sign to continue.
“Why are you nodding at me like you’ve got a secret?” Steve asked. “You look daft.”
“I think it was a setup,” I told Steve. “I think Junup staged the whole thing to make him look like a hero and make me look like I cause trouble when I’m not even trying.”
“That was pretty obvious, yeah?” Steve said. “First thing I thought of. So what do we do about it?”
I gestured to the room around us, hoping to indicate that I felt sure we were being listened to. Steve nodded, and I knew he got it.
“I’m sorry about Nayana and Urch, mate.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“She got on my nerves, but she was one of us, and she came through when it mattered.”
“She did,” I agreed.
“I don’t know what we’re doing here,” he said, his voice very quiet, “or what all of this is about, but the geezers responsible for what happened to her? They’re going to pay.”
I nodded again. This was something that Steve wanted the eavesdroppers to hear. It was foolish bravado, and it would only make our enemies more cautious, but I didn’t care. It was good to have my friend back.
• • •
I showered and changed into some of the new clothes Junup’s people had thoughtfully provided. To my surprise, they hadn’t been designed to humiliate me. I put on olive-green pants that had the thickness of denim and a black long-sleeved shirt. All in all, I almost looked like I came from Earth.
I messaged the others to meet outside. Before we left the room, I excused myself to use the bathroom in order to get a minute alone with Smelly.
“Can Junup’s people listen to our conversations through our bracelets?” I asked him.
Accessing another’s bracelet data is illegal within the Confederation, and there are safeguards in place to prevent abuse of power. I suspect Junup would only risk listening through your bracelets in an emergency. Nevertheless, I will be able to monitor systems and alert you if he attempts to listen in.
We met up with the others on the lawn, sitting as far as possible from any buildings or benches other structures that might have listening devices. Everyone else had washed and changed as well, and they were all dressed more or less like I was—except the colonel, who wore a tan suit with a military cut.
I introduced Steve to Colonel Rage and Alice, and then, keeping my voice low, I told Steve what Ghli Wixxix had wanted us to do. Then we recounted the mutiny on the Kind Disposition and its aftermath. He listened but said very little as he took it all in. When I finished, he just shook his reptilian head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s hard.”
“I wish I hadn’t brought you back into all this,” I told him.
“You didn’t know it was all going to fall apart. And now that it has, better I should be there to keep you from mucking everything up.”
“I heard a great deal about you when I debriefed Zeke after his return,” Colonel Rage told Steve. “I like your swagger, son, and everything about you tells me you’re a natural leader. I’m glad to have you on board.” Now he turned to the rest of us. “What we need is a plan. We’re among enemies and we have no way back. I think our approach needs to be twofold.”
“We’re not among enemies,” I interrupted. “Junup is an enemy, and he is powerful, and his Movement for Peace lackeys are a problem, but it’s a mistake to think of the entire Confederation as the bad guys.”
“I understand how you feel,” the colonel said, “but the good side of the Confederation hasn’t made an appearance yet, and the bad side seems awful busy. I don’t want to sugarcoat this, because you need to hear the hard truths. These people tried to kill us, and if they don’t try again, it will only be because they’re going to lock us away for the crimes they themselves committed. We need an escape plan. We need to steal some transportation and go home. Given that last year you stole a ship and broke into a prison, I think this should be a piece of cake.”
“We are not at full strength,” Charles said, shaking his head.
“This alien Tamret,” Colonel Rage said to me. “Your account made her seem pretty important to your success last time. You think we can count on her to help us out?”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “She lives for this sort of thing.”
“Then we bide our time. Haste is our enemy. We need to find a ship, and we need to make sure we know how to get home. Finally, we need to collect as much technology as we can.”
“For what?” I asked.
“This is the new reality, son,” the colonel said. “One group of aliens almost conquered our planet. They got pushed back, but now there’s only one power in the galaxy, and they’re turning out to be a bunch of thugs who don’t much care for backward worlds like ours. When we return to Earth, I want it to be with the means of developing ways to keep our planet safe. We got hold of one of those flying saucers back in the forties, but the engineers didn’t know what they were doing. Now we’re all walking around with instruction manuals on our wrists. We get the tech, we figure out how it works, and we bring it back home.”
I didn’t say anything to this, but I didn’t love the idea of bringing dark-matter-missile technology back to Earth. I also believed that the colonel was wrong about the Confederation. Someone like Junup could rise to power temporarily, but he did it with lies and tricks. The truth would eventually come out, and the real Confederation—embodied by beings like Dr. Roop and Captain Qwlessl and Ghli Wixxix—would show itself. I knew that if I tried to make that case, the colonel would see me as just a naïve kid, so for once I kept my mouth shut. The best argument, I decided, was the Confederation itself. The longer we stayed, the more the colonel would see what this place really was.
“We’ll take it slowly,” I said, “and see what develops that we can use.”
“Right you are,” the colonel said. “We gather intel, skills, and tech. I plan to log as many hou
rs in the flight sim room as they’ll let me. But we have to play it smart if we’re going to give ourselves enough time. That means no more outbursts, Zeke. Don’t make them angry or let them get you angry. Act like you’re not a threat, and they’ll let their guard down.”
“Okay,” I said, though I knew I wasn’t terribly good at keeping a low profile.
“How did you manage to talk at the news conference, anyhow?” Charles asked. “I mean, you broke though that dampening field. Does that mean you can manipulate their systems?”
Tell them you did it with the power of imagination! Smelly suggested.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It must have been a glitch in the program. It just wasn’t there anymore.”
The colonel looked at me for a moment, like he was trying to figure out if I was lying or not. “Maybe it was sabotage,” he said after a little while. “Could be there are people on our side after all. That would be good news.”
“It would show you that we don’t have to fear the Confederation,” I said.
“Negative,” the colonel said. “I was just thinking that if there were criminals, and they were armed, we could commandeer their weapons.”
• • •
We decided we had no choice but to settle in Confederation detainees. The people who worked or stayed in the compound had been instructed not to speak to us, but we received plenty of nasty stares. I thought that eating at a compound cafeteria was going to be particularly unpleasant, but we weren’t allowed to go anywhere else, so once everyone started getting hungry, we decided there was no choice but to put up with it. I helped the colonel and Alice through the food offerings, and then we wandered over to an empty table large enough for all of us.
We’d only just sat down when a deer-headed alien walked over and stood behind Charles. He said nothing for a long time, just kind of leaned forward and leaned back. Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice was telling me to ignore him and he’d go away. In the front of my mind was another voice telling me that I knew it wasn’t true. Right in the center was Smelly, saying, That guy is starting to bug me.