by Glen Zipper
Just before the lift closed, something snatched Bossa and pulled him deeper inside. Bix broke free, scrambling to take cover behind the closest console. Then that something stepped out into the light.
Nick.
Bossa’s legs dangled like a marionette’s as Nick held him up by the neck with one hand. Viv and Lorde stared with their mouths agape, while Bix, gaining his bearings, marveled at the same sight.
Bossa raised his pistol to fire, but Nick batted it away just as it discharged. The weapon hurtled across the bridge, coming to rest right at Viv’s feet.
Nick waited for Bossa’s eyes to roll back into his head and then dropped him to the floor. That’s when we all noticed it. The gaping pulse blast right over his heart.
Nick gently dabbed at his wound’s muculent red discharge. The sense-memory of the smell of melted flesh made me gag. Viv covered her mouth and gasped. Lorde stood motionless. Bix staggered backward in shock. Only I knew what was about to come next.
The sinewy, frayed edges of Nick’s wound were the first to repair themselves. It was as though an invisible seamstress was weaving the fabric of him back together again. Next, all the blood bubbled and evaporated, and the beating muscle of his heart disappeared behind a swiftly reconstituting husk of bone and skin.
Viv snapped up the pistol lying at her feet.
“Shoot him! Shoot him now!” Lorde shouted.
Viv pulled the trigger, but it didn’t fire.
The safety must have activated when the pistol hit the floor. Viv tried to disengage it, but her sweaty thumb slipped over the button.
“Don’t wait! Shoot!” Bix yelled.
Viv tried again, successfully disengaging the safety. The pistol began powering up, the sound of charging plasma whirring in its chamber.
I stepped in front of her before she could pull the trigger.
“Get out of the way!”
I held my ground. “Don’t.”
Nick looked into Viv’s eyes. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Do not fire,” I admonished her.
“He’ll kill us all!”
“He won’t.”
“He’s a Hybrid!”
I rested my hand on the barrel, carefully guiding it downward.
“No, Viv. He’s something more.”
CHAPTER 22
NICHOLAS
I HAD DONE NOTHING TO DESERVE THE fear in their eyes, but all they saw was a monster. Everyone except JD.
“No, Viv,” he said. “He’s something more.”
He’d repeated my words with such conviction. It was as though he actually believed them.
“What does that mean, ‘something more’?” said Viv, her voice still quivering.
JD knew I was a Hybrid the moment he walked into my quarters. The question that vexed me was how. Yes, there were things that could have raised suspicions. The implausible explanation for how I had become a cadet. My floating detail. Being locked away inside my quarters every night. But none of them should have been enough to lead him to such a conclusion.
“More than just a Hybrid. Fuller made him an individual. A sentient being with his own—”
“Free will,” Bix softly uttered.
“Yes.”
“Is that what it told you?” Viv challenged. “That it has free will?”
“He did. And I believe it.”
“Why?”
“He has a self-termination protocol. A kill switch that flipped when the Kastazi returned. He clearly found a way to override it. He chose to help us when he shouldn’t have had the option.”
Her posture still cautious, Viv flipped on the pistol’s safety. “Did your father know?”
“He had to. But I don’t know anything for sure.”
“Well?” Viv demanded, finally addressing me directly. “Tell us. What did the captain know?”
“He knew I was a Hybrid. Beyond that nothing was discussed.”
“You never discussed where you came from or why you were on this ship?”
“No. We did not.” The answers she wanted, the same answers I wanted for myself, lurked inside a cache of memories too far away for me to reach. I wasn’t supposed to remember.
“Nothing I say will make you any less afraid,” said JD. “But he’s here. And we need him. Tell them, Nick.”
“The Blink Reactor’s damaged CPU—I can replace it.”
“With what?” Viv skeptically replied.
“Myself.”
“Yes . . . of course!” Bix exclaimed, his caution ceding to the irresistible excitement of a big idea. “Your CPU is the same!”
“No,” I corrected him. “My CPU has been enhanced to Generation Two.”
My cadet comrades exchanged suspicious glances.
“There is no Generation Two tech,” Ohno challenged me, saying what the rest of them were undoubtedly thinking. “Or at least there shouldn’t be.”
“Well, there is,” JD responded. “And you’re looking at it.”
“But it’s still compatible?” asked Bix, pushing through to the only issue that was relevant.
“The fundamental principles of the two processors are the same,” I answered. “But compatibility aside, the interface remains a hypothetical.”
“What’s your take?” JD asked Bix. “Best guess.”
“I don’t know,” Bix answered, shirking under the weight of JD’s impossible question. “There are so many different variables to consider. I need time.”
“Do whatever you have to, but get started now.”
“Hold on,” Julian objected. “You’re ready to bet our lives on a hypothetical?”
“There’s a Kastazi Destroyer on an intercept course with the California. We can’t outrun them. We can’t outgun them. The Blink Reactor’s CPU is damaged beyond repair. What’s your alternative, Julian? Because if you’ve got one, believe me, I’m ready to consider it.”
Julian had no response. There was no alternative.
“We have to protect ourselves,” Viv demanded, still not satisfied. “Unless and until this idea works, I’m not trusting that thing.”
“What do you want to do? Lock him in the brig until Bix can interface him with the reactor?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what we should do.”
“He’s a cadet, and we’re shorthanded.”
“It’s not one of us. Not anymore.”
Their needs standing in diametric opposition to their fear, I did the only thing I could to reconcile the two. I proceeded to the Analytics station.
“Stop!” Viv yelled at me.
I considered the possibility she would soon be training her pistol at my head. I worked the console as fast as I could.
JD tried to stop me, but I pushed back.
A chime noted the entry of my first set of the commands. Bix recognized it. “He’s in the biosig system!”
He was correct.
I could hear Viv’s pistol charging through its power cycle behind me.
“Don’t shoot!” JD shouted.
A second chime marked my completion of the full sequence. “I’ve established a link between the ship’s biosignature system and my termination failsafe’s trigger,” I announced. “I am now, quite literally, at your mercy.”
“Check it,” Viv ordered Bix.
I stepped aside to allow him a closer look. Resting his elbows on the console, he silently mouthed the calculations he was making in his head. “There’s definitely an active link,” he reported. “It looks like we could flip his switch at any time.”
“That work for you?” JD queried Viv.
Ignoring his question, she kept her eyes on me. “I swear you so much as look at any of us the wrong way, I’m going to flip that switch myself. Are we clear?”
“Yes,” I answered, “we’re clear.”
CHAPTER 23
VIV
THE VOICES OF THE THIRTY-NINE ANXIOUS STUDENTS echoed off the gym’s walls, conflating into a low rumble. They sat tightly bunched together in the center of the bleachers oppo
site the basketball court. Julian and I stood facing them, my tired eyes lingering on their fuzzy reflections in the shiny parquet floor.
I tried to loosen the knot in my stomach by confronting my nerves head-on.
What’s the worst that can happen?
How rough could it be?
On a good day the students distrusted us. On a bad day they outright despised us. In what universe could it have gone any way but badly?
“Remind me why we’re doing this,” I whispered to Julian.
“Because we have to,” he quietly answered.
JD walked through the main entrance and joined Julian and me.
“What’s the word?” I asked.
“Bossa’s secured in the brig, Anatoly’s prepping Medical, and Ohno will have us at full propulsion in ten.”
“Bix?”
“Making headway with Nick on the reactor . . . and the probe modifications.”
Kill switch aside, I wasn’t happy leaving Bix alone with that thing—particularly when they were poking around inside a probe that was about to become a nuclear bomb.
“We have to trust it’s going to work out,” said JD, sensing my discomfort.
“Right,” I acquiesced, albeit reluctantly. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be, I guess.”
I gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder despite probably needing just as much reassurance as he did.
“All right, everyone listen up,” JD announced, trying to settle the students.
It had the opposite effect. They got even louder—shouting out their questions one on top of another.
“What’s going on?”
“Who attacked us?”
“Where is the captain? Why isn’t he here?”
Scattered details of our predicament had already filtered down, but—not surprisingly—they had also grown exaggerated.
“Is it true we’re losing hull integrity?”
“What about life support?”
“Everyone, please calm down!” JD shouted, trying again.
The students continued to clamor over him, their energy spinning out of control.
“What are we doing about the injured?”
“How many are dead?”
Using his thumb and forefinger, Julian cut through the noise with an ear-splitting whistle. “Listen to him! If you just listen to him, you’ll get some answers.”
The students’ raucousness subsided into a more manageable frequency of restlessness.
After taking a deep breath, JD started with the hardest truth of all. “I can confirm we were attacked by the Kastazi.”
A collective gasp rose from the bleachers, followed by another string of questions.
“Are you sure?”
“How can that be true?”
“How bad is it?”
“Is it an invasion?”
“We cannot yet confirm the full extent or scale of the attack,” JD responded.
The nervous chatter amplified to a higher intensity.
“As many of you already know, we had to evacuate Gallipoli without the captain or any of the command staff. Ensigns Gentry and Lewis formally assumed command of the California at that time.”
“But what happened to Gamma Deck?” someone shouted. “Where are the NCOs?”
“Starboard side of Gamma Deck was destroyed in the attack. The damage is contained, but there were no survivors.”
Scattered cries erupted, inflaming the students’ already dangerously escalating hysteria. The knot in my stomach twisted itself into stabbing, excruciating cramps. It took everything I had to hold it together. To not let the students see even the slightest hint of weakness.
“Where are Gentry and Lewis? Why aren’t they telling us this themselves?”
Plaintive, unhinged voices threw more questions at JD, but one was more familiar than the rest. It was Liko, still wearing his bloodstained clothes.
“They’re dead too, aren’t they?” he asked. “Gentry and Lewis.”
Another cramp seized my stomach. I knew this was the moment that could send everything into total pandemonium.
“Lewis was killed,” JD answered before hesitating. “Gentry was incapacitated.”
“Then who is in command?”
“We are.”
The crowd burst into a roar, seemingly ready to spill out of the bleachers and trample us.
“The cadets are in charge? Where is the Alliance? Why haven’t they come for us?”
JD held his ground. “We’ve lost contact with Alliance Command, but we’re doing everything we can to—”
“What are you doing, exactly?”
“And why should we trust you?”
“You should trust us because we’re the only ones here trained to carry out the critical functions of this ship,” I hollered back, the growing pain in my gut adding some venom to my retort. “We’re the only option you’ve got!”
A bunch of students jumped up and shouted back at me, yelling one on top of another. All I could make out was their swearing.
“Enough!” shouted Julian. “If anyone has a legitimate objection, step forward and be heard now. Otherwise we need to let the cadets do what they’ve been trained to do: protect this ship and keep us all alive.”
The bleachers fell quiet as the students craned their necks, waiting for someone to step forward.
“No objection, only a question,” Liko said, addressing JD.
“Go ahead.”
“What are you not telling us?”
JD had to lie. Considering the tempest that was brewing, the truth could’ve sent the students into a riot.
“Nothing,” JD answered. “Right now we’re safe and trying to reestablish contact with the Alliance. If we can just hold out awhile longer, we’re confident help will find us.”
I watched Julian’s face, concerned how he might react to such a vast understatement of the danger we were in. He had a faraway gaze, just like he did staring out the breach in the California’s hull.
Where is he?
What is actually going on inside his head?
Taking advantage of a lull, JD moved to bring the assembly to a close. “If any of you have injuries that have not yet been attended to, please report to Medical. Cadet Kuzycz will do his best to assist you. Also, please listen closely for additional announcements from the bridge, and as a precaution, remain vigilant in your awareness of your closest safety positions. We will continue to update you as additional information becomes available. Thank you. You’re dismissed.”
And with that, the students climbed off the bleachers and made their way to the exits. Liko lingered slightly behind the rest, taking a final opportunity to observe us with a healthy dose of suspicion.
Emptied, the gymnasium felt like a vacant bubble—JD, Julian, and me standing awkwardly alone, each of us waiting for someone else to say something first.
“I was right,” said Julian, as though coming to a sudden realization. “They trust me.”
“Yes, you were,” JD acknowledged. “We couldn’t have gotten through that without you. Thank you.”
“Anything I can do to help, I stand ready.”
“Stay with us. We can use you on the bridge.”
I was relieved they were cooperating, but something about their battlefield truce didn’t feel quite right.
“We need to get back to work,” I prompted JD.
“Give me a minute. I’ll be right behind you.”
“You all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Bridge in five?”
“In three.”
I peeked back at JD on my way out. Sensing my presence, he turned and caught me watching him. I self-consciously smiled, which he returned with an uneasy smile of his own. Just then the Command Synth materialized right between us.
“You’re needed on the bridge immediately,” he reported.
“Why? What’s happening?” JD asked.
“The Kastazi Destroyer has accelerated signifi
cantly. It will intercept the California in approximately twenty-five minutes.”
CHAPTER 24
JD
I STARED OUT AT THE DECEPTIVE SERENITY on the Holoview from the captain’s chair. All I saw were bright, glistening stars strewn across a wilderness of never-ending quiet. Nothing about it revealed the terror quickly gaining on us from just out of view.
Behind me, Bix and Ohno exited the lift and hustled to their stations. Nick followed behind them but stopped after just a few steps.
“Your orders?” he asked.
“I need you at Nav.”
Viv looked on disapprovingly as Nick settled himself into Safi’s station. I held up my hand to acknowledge her concern was noted.
With the Destroyer only a few minutes away, I had ordered Bix to cease work on the reactor. He was nowhere close to cracking the interface, so our immediate survival was going to hinge on the jerry-rigged sensor probe.
“All right, Viv,” I called out. “Run it.”
One by one, she called out for each station’s report from Piloting. “Hostile’s position?”
“Approximately twelve minutes, thirty-two seconds from intercept,” Nick replied.
“Go, no go for full propulsion?”
“Go for full propulsion in T minus thirty seconds,” Ohno answered.
“Probe status?”
“Modifications complete. Fusion generator at max critical,” Bix reported.
“Armed?”
“Locked and loaded in Torpedo Bay Two. Ready to fire on command,” Lorde responded from Weapons.
Viv activated her com. “Medical?”
“Medical prepped and standing by,” Anatoly confirmed from Beta Deck.
“Bix, activate shipwide automated Emergency Alert Two.”
Bix, eyes wide as saucers, carried out her command. A moment later the alert began to loop throughout the ship: All hands immediately report to your safety positions. This is not a drill. All hands immediately report to your safety positions. This is not a drill.
Responding to my kill sign, Bix muted the alert on the bridge.
“You’re absolutely sure there’s no other way to drop their grids?” Lorde prompted me one last time.
“I wish there was.”