“Not the main one,” Uolomd said, like we were utterly clueless. “The old one, here in the Forbidden Zone.”
There was a moment of silence in which we all looked at one another.
“There’s an abandoned spaceport on the far side of the desert,” Racvib explained. “This area used to be much more populous, but an environmental glitch caused the desert to creep in. The station engineers were able to arrest the spread, but it turned out to be more environmentally stable to simply move the core of the city farther away than to try to reclaim the desert.”
“What kind of ships are we talking about?” I asked.
“They’re outdated models, to be sure, probably at least five hundred years old, but the technology hasn’t changed all that much. They’re less streamlined and a little slower than new ships, but they work and they’re safe. We have crews that maintain them, and we take them out for test runs once in a while. It’s not a lot of work, and it would be a shame to let them simply fall apart.”
“Are you telling me that we can leave?” Villainic asked. “We could abandon this ridiculous and dangerous quest and simply go home?”
“It’s what I’d recommend,” Racvib said. “Uolomd can take you there tomorrow. It’s about five hours by worm.”
“Spaceport!” cried Minti from outside. “Visiting the ships! Big ships! Rumbling!”
“Minti likes the way the ground vibrates when the engines fire up,” Uolomd explained indulgently.
Things seemed to be slipping away from me. Of course I liked the idea of escaping from this desert and avoiding danger, and I liked the idea of getting everyone home safely, but I had promised Dr. Roop I would help find the Hidden Fortress. I wanted to keep the promise I’d made to a great being and a good friend. He had died to protect me, and there was no way I could simply give up on him because an easier option had suddenly appeared. Even if keeping faith with Dr. Roop were not enough of a motivation, protecting my home planet would be. I couldn’t let Junup turn a blind eye to the Phandic threat, assuming he wasn’t cooperating with the Phands. Dr. Roop had said failing to complete mission meant that the Confederation, and Earth, would fall within ten years. It was foolish and shortsighted to take the easy way out.
“Ships we can take back home?” Colonel Rage said with a grin. “I like the sound of this. It could be exactly what we’ve been hoping for.”
“I don’t know,” Alice said. “Ghli Wixxix wanted us to find the Hidden Fortress, and so did Dr. Roop.”
I was grateful to her for saying this, so I didn’t have to be the one to bring it up. I hated being the only cheerleader for the Hidden Fortress expedition. Alice smiled at me, and I understood she had been deliberately bailing me out.
“That is true,” Charles agreed, “and I respected both of those beings, but I am a little reluctant to go in search of a place from which no one ever returns. Especially not if there is another way to leave the station.”
“A lot of bad people don’t want us to find the Hidden Fortress,” Alice continued. “That’s hard to ignore.”
That gunk-filled-balloon may be less stupid than the others, Smelly observed. I respect a being, however unevolved, who stands up for what it believes.
Alice had let them know I wasn’t the only one who wanted to see this through, but now it was time to give her some support. “We’ve come this far,” I reminded them. “I don’t want to walk away from an opportunity to make a real difference. Besides, Dr. Roop assured us that there would be ships we could use once we got to the Hidden Fortress. I’m not in any kind of a hurry to go off to a place that no one comes back from, but maybe they don’t come back because they take one of the ships in the port below. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, does it?”
“Yes, of course you are right,” Villainic said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “How can vanishing from existence be a bad thing? Certainly we should avoid the safe, dependable course and do the foolish thing in which all our lives will likely be lost.”
“Your opinion is on record,” Alice said to him. “Unless you have something new to say, why don’t we just assume you’re just going to keep on banging the coward drum.”
“Well,” muttered Tamret, “isn’t Zeke lucky to have you on his side?”
“I guess he is,” Alice snapped, “considering you’re not.”
Tamret slammed the palm of her hand down on the table and stood up. Her ears were back against the side of her head, and her whiskers twitched. Those were never good signs. “I think you need to remember your place, [young female monkey of a particularly unattractive species].”
“Please sit down, young lady,” the colonel said, his voice calm but authoritative. “We can argue in private, not among our hosts.”
Tamret sighed, then smoothed back her hair. “You’re right. Sorry,” she said in the unmistakable tone of someone who was not even a little sorry. She sat down and scowled at Alice.
“Since we arrived here, we’ve been after a safe way off the station,” the colonel said to the group in general, though I knew he was talking to me.
I nodded. Colonel Rage was a no-nonsense sort of guy who took seriously his responsibility to keep us safe, so I couldn’t count on his support, and Villainic was off the table, but I thought I could persuade the others. I didn’t want to force the point, though. We were friends, and all the crazy stuff we had done together had been because doing crazy stuff was the right call. I simply had to help them see that this, too, was the right call.
“You all know my arguments for looking for the Hidden Fortress,” I said. “You guys know who wanted us to take on this mission, and you know the dangers if we don’t, so I’m done making my case. You tell me what you want to do.”
Mi Sun groaned. She leaned forward with her forehead pressed to her palm. “Zeke, I hear you, but we’ve been through enough. It’s not our fight. It wasn’t Nayana’s fight either, and she’s dead. I know how much Dr. Roop meant to you, but he was wrong to ask you to do this.”
“Until we wake up one day,” I said, “and the Phands have conquered Earth. If we’re going to be rebels, isn’t it better to rebel against the Confederation than the Phands?”
“You did say you were done making your case,” Villainic told me. “If I am not allowed to repeat my position, I don’t see why you should be.”
“Because my position isn’t selfish,” I snapped. “That’s why.”
“Zeke’s not wrong,” the colonel said. “If we leave, we may be setting our world up for disaster down the line, and there’s no guarantee that anyone else will be able to do what we don’t. What we need is technology that we can reverse engineer. If we can do that with one of these ships, then that’s good enough for me. If we can get home safely, and we get a ship we can use as a basis for building more of the same, I say mission accomplished.”
“Those are wise words from the old man with one eye,” Villainic said. “I cannot even understand why this is a debate.”
I turned to him. “Weren’t you asked to keep quiet? Besides, you don’t get a vote.”
“That is unkind, brother!” Villainic said. Then he pointed to Alice. “And if I don’t get a vote, then neither does she.”
“I don’t need a vote,” Alice said. “I’m just saying that if it were my friends who’d been murdered, I’d want to get back at the people who killed them.”
“I respect your gumption,” the colonel said, “but we’re already going home without one thirteen-year-old girl. I’m the one who is going to have to tell her parents. I don’t want to have to do that more than once.”
I looked at Mi Sun. “You’re as fearless as anyone I know,” I told her.
“I appreciate you saying that,” she said, refusing to meet my eyes, “but I think you also know I’m practical. This fight over the software—that’s not ours. Anyhow, it feels wrong. No one is supposed to be able to get here, but it sounds like Urch might have been here himself a few months ago. They haven’t told us the truth about everythi
ng, and they don’t need us the way they said they do. We don’t have to be the ones to solve all the Confederation’s problems.”
“I can’t support letting you risk your lives now because of a danger that might manifest in ten or twenty years.” the colonel said. “That’s multiple lifetimes in politics. Everything could be different then. I’m also not going to tell you what to do. You kids have skin in the game, so it’s your call.”
“And I think we should see this through, the way our friend wanted us to,” I said in an encouraging voice. I wasn’t much on making speeches, but this was my last chance to rally everyone. Either I could get them on board, or I would have to walk away from the promise I’d made to Dr. Roop. “I think we stand up for the things we care about, the things that matter. I say it is better to take a risk now than to go home and wait for an overwhelming invasion force that is going to take our planet away from us. Come on! This is not the time to back down. Who will stand up with me for the things we care about?” I raised my hand.
I looked around the table. None of them moved. None of them were willing to take the chance. And then, across from me, a flash of white. Tamret slowly put her hand in the air.
“Put your hand down. Right now!” Villainic said.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Villainic. I can’t.”
“After all I’ve done for you?” he asked, the genuine hurt impossible to miss.
“Yeah,” she said. “Even after all that.”
I didn’t know if Tamret believed what I had said. I didn’t know if she wanted to avenge our fallen friends, or fight for galactic freedom, or just head into the unknown for the pure pleasure of dangerous chaos. Any of those things might have been true. It was very likely that all of them were. Above all, I understood that she had raised her hand because she did not want me to stand alone, even in defeat, even if it might come back to hurt her with Villainic.
“Might as well finish the vote,” the colonel said. “Who wants to take one of the ships at the spaceport and head for home?”
Charles and Mi Sun raised their hands. And then Steve.
“What?” I shouted.
“Mate, I want to back you up, and if it were just my scales on the line, you know I’d be there. But this lot?” He gestured toward the table. “They don’t want to risk it, they haven’t trained for it, and I’m not even clear on the goals. I can’t go on some vague mission into unknown circumstances and put my friends at risk. If one of them were to be killed, I’d be wrecked.” He gestured toward Villainic. “Except him, maybe.”
“I don’t believe this,” I said, fighting back the frustration. “I never thought you’d be the one to chicken out.”
Steve cocked his head. No doubt the translator was working on the whole chickening-out concept. Then he met my gaze. “I’m going to let that pass, because I know the situation is emotional for you.”
So I’d not only lost, but I’d just called my best friend a coward. This was turning out to be a pretty mediocre evening. We were going to walk away from our obligations to our fallen friends and turn our backs on looming danger. I needed to do something, but I couldn’t think what. It was one thing to be defeated by your enemies, but another to go down because your friends disagreed with you. The thing was, I didn’t think they were wrong. I got their point, and now I felt like I hadn’t done a good enough job making mine.
“That’s it, son,” the colonel told me. “There’s no good or bad here. You’ve got an honest and honorable disagreement, and I’ve been around long enough to know that neither side is wrong or right.”
I’m not going to pretend that some part of me wasn’t relieved. I wanted to go home too. I wanted to remember what it was like to feel safe for a little while. When I’d been on Earth, all I’d dreamed about was returning to Confederation Central, being with Tamret again. Now here I was, and there she was, and it was nothing like I’d imagined. Back at home, my parents, finally back together, were waiting for me. And Tamret—she wanted to come with me too. I had no idea how we were going to manage that. She was an alien, after all, but the secret of alien species had to come out sooner or later. We’d work it out. We’d be fine. And maybe the colonel was right. Maybe things would sort themselves out on their own. The galaxy had survived for billions of years without me getting involved in every crisis. It didn’t seem like that much of a stretch to think it would survive this, too.
That was what I told myself, but I still felt like I was walking away from something important. I wished I had been able to make everyone else see that.
“These ships you mentioned,” Villainic began. “How can we pay you for them?”
Racvib punched a fist into the air three times—a gesture of dismissal? “They are not ours to give or to keep. They belonged to those who came before us. And, in truth, there are hundreds. We won’t miss one.”
“Or two?” Villainic asked.
“Or two,” Racvib agreed. “You are obviously different species. I suppose you have different destinations?”
From across the table Tamret was looking at me, like she expected me to say something. She kept jutting out her jaw in a Hurry up, already gesture, but I had no idea what she meant.
That female hairy thing wants something from you, Smelly observed in his usual day-late-and-a-dollar-short manner.
My heart was pounding now. I was supposed to do something, say something, but what? Was I supposed to challenge Villainic to a duel or something?
“Tamret and I will take our own ship.” Villainic was saying to Racvib. He then turned to her. “You can pilot it, can you not?”
Tamret stopped looking at me. She cast her eyes down and said nothing.
“Can you get us home? I invoke your betrothal oath.”
Tamret gritted her teeth. There were tears in her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I can get us home.”
“And by your oath you will obey me.”
“I will,” she said, though the words were hardly more than a grunt.
Something formal was going on here. That had to be what Tamret had been trying to communicate. I didn’t understand it, but I knew enough about Rarel culture to get that once promises were made, they were not broken, no matter what. I had to do something.
I rose to my feet. “On behalf of the people of Earth, I offer Tamret a home on our world.” My voice came out stilted and weird, but I was trying to sound formal. If the Rarels could have their rituals, then so could I. “I, uh, invoke the right of sanctuary, is what I’m doing. Basically.”
Smooth, said Smelly.
“Is it my imagination,” asked Uolomd, “or are these guys pretty much the most entertaining houseguests ever? There’s so much drama!”
“Please sit down, Zeke,” Villainic said. “I know you wish to protect Tamret, and as her future husband I cannot help but be touched by your devotion, but she does not want to be exiled on an alien planet, away from her family and her new caste. She is, I know, grateful for your good intentions, but she nevertheless declines your kind offer.”
“Tamret?” I asked.
She would not look at me. “I have given my oath to obey, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
I stared ahead, unable to believe this. The one bright spot in all of this had been blotted out. Somehow, I had completely messed things up. Tamret was going back to Rarel, and she was going on a separate ship. The plan for me to challenge Villainic had been a long shot, but I’d been willing to take it. Now I was never going to get the chance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
* * *
The after-dinner clean-up was more awkward than I generally like. “Wow,” I heard Uolomd say to Steve. “Your friends are intense.”
“Yeah,” he agreed wearily. “It’s pretty much like that with them all the time.”
“Must be a mammal thing,” Uolomd speculated. “All that body-temperature regulation really gets them worked up.”
“That’s my theory, love.”
Racvib had a nice place, but
it wasn’t enormous. The colonel, Villainic, Steve, Charles, and I had to share a room. Most of us were to sleep on the floor, though I suspected that “sleeping” was going to be a euphemism for “lying awake all night.”
After we were finished cleaning, we thanked our hosts, and we wandered into our room. I saw Steve crouched over his pack, looking for something, and I went over to him.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I said.
He stood up and met my gaze. “Don’t give it another thought, yeah? Believe me, if it were just the two of us, I’d sign up for any crazy, ill-conceived, recklessly planned mission if it meant something to you. But not with them,” he said, gesturing toward the others.
“I know you would,” I said. “I shouldn’t have called you a chicken.”
“They sound delicious.”
“They’re okay,” I explained. “Better than turkey, not as good as duck.”
“We’re mates,” he said, “which means you can mouth off once in a while, and in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t mean much. If I were you, I’d worry less about my feelings, given I’m a pretty rational bloke, and worry more about Tamret.”
I was more worried about Tamret, but I’d figured I’d cross the easy one off my list first. I went over to the room where the girls were staying. The door was still open, and I looked in. Nothing good had been going on in there. Mi Sun and Alice were in one part of the room, looking helpless. Tamret was on the other side, sitting on her blanket, her back to the others.
She must have heard me approach, because she looked at me, but then she turned away.
Alice got to her feet and came over to me. We went out into the hall. “She said if you showed up we were supposed to let you know that she can’t speak to you.”
“And she sent you to tell me this?”
“I think she’s mad enough at you that she’s starting to like me,” Alice said with a sympathetic shrug. “She’s a little hard to figure out sometimes.”