Renegades

  Now, of course, I was thinking that maybe no spaceship theft was required—at least not immediately. If there was some kind of portal to another planet, perhaps that would be enough.

  “Where does it lead?” I asked in my most casual voice. “This escape hatch?”

  “No doubt Zeke is thinking he could use it to escape from this planet,” Villainic explained helpfully. “He wishes to be back in the conflict, you know, though I’m quite pleased to be away from it.”

  It seemed to me that bashing Villainic’s head with a rock might create the wrong impression with our new hosts, so I smiled like an idiot and hoped the moment would pass without them thinking too much about how I’d do just about anything to get away from them.

  “You don’t need to run away from us,” Hopir-ka said. “We’re on the same side. Besides, if aliens start popping up unexpectedly in strange places, it might draw attention, and then the escape hatch would no longer serve its purpose. We don’t have the resources the empress has, so we need to keep our secrets until we absolutely need to use them.”

  I decided that maybe subtlety was not my strong suit, and even if these Phands seemed to think I’d rolled a natural eighteen in charisma, I was still going to have to deal with Villainic lobbing truth bombs at my best efforts at subtlety. These renegades claimed they admired me, so maybe I should be straight—or at least straightish—with them.

  “Look, I know you don’t want to give away your secrets, but I can’t stay here.”

  “What are you even doing on this planet?” Thindly-bak asked.

  I told them briefly about Ardov taking over our ship, through what I suspected was an EMP attack.

  “Yes, we have those devices ourselves,” Adiul-ip said. “Some large enough to take out an entire planet. This Ardov you speak of must have had an insulating device on him. He could neutralize your ship while his data bracelet and various nanite upgrades remained functional.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I kind of guessed as much. But that’s why I need to get out of here. My friends are in trouble, and we were on our way to do important things.”

  “We know all about doing important things,” Adiul-ip said with a laugh that I could only describe as being full of bravado. “We mean to strike a killing blow against the empress, and we would be mad—”

  “Mad!” Thindly-bak echoed.

  “We would be mad,” Adiul-ip continued, “if we did not take full advantage of the presence of Zeke Reynolds, the Hero of Ganar, Rescuer of Prisoners, Bane of the Empress. If you would be willing to aid us, Mr. Reynolds, we know precisely where you can do some good.”

  It was a weird thing. In the Confederation, a civilization I loved and believed in, they’d called me the Butcher of Ganar because I’d destroyed a Phandic cruiser that was trying to destroy us. Now there were beings who saw everything my friends and I had done as glorious and heroic. Not only were they willing to let me back into the fight; they wanted me there. This should have been a happy moment. It would have been if I had not been so worried about the beings I cared about most. Also, I couldn’t help but be troubled by the possibility that my new allies were a bunch of crackpots.

  We reached a completely ordinary-looking crevice in a rocky outcropping, and the Phands gestured for us to stop. The heat of the day was starting to bear down on me, and my eyes hurt from the glaring sun, so I was hoping this would be the entrance to the tunnel. Adiul-ip gestured toward it with one of his meaty hands, and when I hesitated and Villainic drew back, Thindly-bak stepped forward, not a care in the world, and literally vanished into the dark.

  “We know the other side of the portal is completely safe,” Adiul-ip said, “so we prefer to go last, so our most precious guests are protected.”

  I was going to face much greater dangers than a stable wormhole if I had my way, so I supposed there was no reason to hesitate. Still, no one likes stepping into an abyss. I sucked in a deep breath and walked into the crevice, hoping I’d come out on the other side.

  • • •

  I did come out on the other side. The trip was, or at least seemed, near instantaneous, and when I came out, I felt only a little off-kilter, like my guts had been forcefully rearranged, but the sensation was pretty similar to what I felt when a ship went into or out of a tunnel. I struggled for a second to find my balance, but then I felt perfectly normal, and the sense of being out of synch with reality was less vivid than a memory—more like a memory of a memory.

  Once it was gone, the disorientation I experienced was from what I saw around me. I was in some sort of town square. Dusty streets shot out from the square in four directions, and on either side were haphazard wooden buildings that looked like they’d been thrown together hurriedly. There were more Phands walking the streets, and other aliens too, beings I had never seen before, but they all had the same rough homespun-looking clothes that Adiul-ip, Thindly-bak, and Hopir-Ka wore. They had boots on their feet—at least those who had feet—and cowboy hats on their heads . . . at least the ones who had heads.

  I felt a sudden shove from behind as Villainic came through the portal and bumped into me.

  “Zeke, it is very discourteous of you not to step out of the way,” he said, sounding deeply disappointed.

  I was too distracted to be annoyed. This, I realized, was an Old West town. My world had gone full Firefly.

  • • •

  The sky was clear and deeply blue, streaked by only a few wisps of cloud, but the air also sparkled with occasional flashes of energy that manifested as patches of blurriness. This, I had to believe, was the settlement’s cloak, which kept it from being discovered by the imperial Phandic forces. As a pleasant side effect, the air must have been thirty degrees cooler.

  The town wasn’t large by any means, really little more than a permanent camp with a couple dozen wood and stone buildings for, I guessed, maybe a couple hundred beings. The buildings themselves seemed to be thrown together from local supplies—mostly stone and plant fiber. The streets—which was a generous term—were just obvious straight lines in the dust between buildings. Even so, given what they had to work with, it was an impressive achievement.

  What struck me the most, though, was that these rough buildings, combined with the dirt roads, the desert environment, and the wide-brimmed hats that just about everyone wore, made this seem like a frontier theme park. It was like one of those Star Trek episodes where they beam down to discover a world that is exactly like some period out of Earth’s history, one generally familiar and American—only the aliens in those episodes didn’t have tusks.

  I wanted to be gone, and I wanted to be gone hours ago, chasing after Tamret and the others, but the truth was I had no idea where they were and what I could possibly do once I found them. If these guys had information, resources, weapons, and muscle, it was very possible they could be my new best friends. I took a deep breath, told myself to be patient, and turned to Adiul-ip.

  “You said you have some kind of plan to end the empire’s rule,” I said. “Can you tell me about it?”

  “Of course,” Adiul-ip said. “We would be honored if you and your trusted companion would hear our top-secret plan for breaking the empress’s grip on this region of the galaxy.”

  “About that,” I said, drawing Adiul-ip away from Villainic. “The thing is, he’s not really my companion. Or trusted.”

  “But your friends are legendary,” Adiul-ip said, sounding very disappointed. “The clever and resourceful children of your home world, and the heroic randoms of Ish-hi and Rarel. Surely he is one of these.”

  “No,” I said, speaking as quietly as I could so that Villainic’s excellent hearing would not pick up what I was saying. It wasn’t that I was afraid of him hearing so much as, for reasons I could not have explained, I preferred to avoid hurting his feelings. “Look, my friends are amazing. You’re right about them. Destroying the cruiser at Ganar, for good or bad, that was me acting alone, but everything else you may have heard about me was a team effort. You sh
ould admire those guys, but he isn’t one of them.”

  “Then who is he?”

  “He’s an idiot,” I said. “Really, I don’t know how else to put it. He’s a mostly well-meaning guy who comes from an important family and who until recently has never had to confront the fact that he isn’t terribly bright. He’s not bad, just kind of dim. He’s also a blabbermouth. I’ve never known anyone to blurt out more secrets than this guy, and I don’t even think he’s aware that he’s doing it. You don’t want him in on your briefings.”

  Adiul-ip looked over at Villainic, who was in the process of doing his little introduction dance to a guy who looked like a humanoid with an octopus head. “He seems harmless enough to me.”

  “Believe me,” I told Adiul-ip, “in the two seconds they’ve been talking, I bet he’s told Cthulhu over there every secret thing he’s been exposed to since he arrived on Confederation Central.”

  “That is unfortunate, Mr. Reynolds,” Adiul-ip said sadly. “Our organization is built on trust.”

  “Then you see why you have to keep him out of any briefings.”

  “If we do that, then our organization is no longer built on trust.”

  I was starting to think I liked the narrow-minded, bloodthirsty Phands better than the kind and trusting ones. I was also starting to detect some disappointment in Adiul-ip’s expression, as though he might be wondering if Zeke Reynolds might not be the hero he’d previously believed. I had to put the brakes on that, and do it quickly. I didn’t need to be admired by the greater galaxy, but I wanted to be trusted by the beings who could help me get to my friends.

  “You guys have built all this,” I said, “so I have to think you know what you’re doing. We’ll do things your way.”

  Adiul-ip bowed at me. “I am so glad to hear it. Now come with me. There are some beings you must meet.”

  The building we entered could only have seemed more like an Old West saloon if the word “saloon” had been painted above the door. Inside was an assortment of aliens to rival Maz Kanata’s castle. They sat at tables talking, laughing, eating, drinking, and, in one instance, pouring some sort of sludge into what looked like a blowhole. A machine that vaguely resembled a tractor played music on an instrument that looked a little like a bathtub filled with rubber balls. The sound was nothing like a player piano. Frankly, it was less like music and more like someone pouring buckets of nails on a marble floor, but the beings inside seemed to enjoy it. Behind the bar, a gigantic sympathetic-looking bumblebee wearing a leather vest and a bandolier was pouring a drink for a depressed-looking alien of the same species. Its antennae were drooping.

  As soon as we entered the saloon, the music and conversation stopped. It was that moment, like in a movie, where the guy who obviously doesn’t belong steps into the place where he absolutely should not be. For a brief instant I got to feel like the good-guy sheriff making his first appearance in a crooked town, but then everyone went back to their food and drink and conversation, which was fine by me. I didn’t want to have to get into any shoot-outs.

  Adiul-ip led us to a table and brought us “biologically appropriate” food and drink, which was welcome. The two other Phands who had escorted us had drifted off somewhere, and the conversation went into suspension mode while I ate and drank. The food and moisture packets had kept me alive and given me energy, but they hadn’t really satisfied me the way an actual meal and an actual drink would have. This food was some sort of bread with some sort of cheese. A little dry, but not bad. The drink tasted like a combination of sweet tea and pineapple juice, and hit the spot like maybe nothing else I’d ever had.

  When I was done, I wiped my mouth and turned to Adiul-ip. “I really appreciate the hospitality, but my friends are in trouble, so if you have a plan to help them, I’d like to hear about it, and sooner is better than later.”

  “I am not the one to brief you,” he said. “But here is the being you want to speak with.”

  I had not seen anyone walk in—maybe I’d been too focused on eating and drinking—but now a being stood by our table, silent and motionless in a way that it had to know was intimidating.

  From the neck down, it sort of looked like a classic Star Trek alien—it had a vaguely humanoid body, with clothes of an inexplicably retro design but made from a shimmering “space age” fabric. These included a form-fitting silvery tunic that went all the way to the floor so I could not see its feet. Over that was a robe that went all the way to the wrists and had a high, pointed collar that overlapped the back of its head. Its hands were covered with silver gloves, so no part of its body below the gown’s high collar was visible.

  I thought of the alien as an “it” because there was nothing about this being to indicate maleness or femaleness. Absolutely nothing in its face, because it didn’t have a face—no eyes, mouth, nose, or ears that I could see. It did, however, have a head, which sat resting on top of the collar, probably connected by a neck, though I could not see it. The head was covered with material that looked neither natural nor artificial—smooth and skinlike and vaguely synthetic all at once. Its color changed constantly, not in flashes, but more like a gentle shift from one point on the spectrum to another. Red easing into yellow into green into blue.

  Also, it is worth pointing out that its head was shaped exactly like a twenty-sided die.

  “This,” Adiul-ip announced, “is Convex Icosahedron. Convex Icosahedron, may I present Zeke Reynolds.”

  “The Hero of Ganar!” cried Convex Icosahedron in a voice so deep it almost made my teeth rattle. It definitely sounded masculine, so I’d assume he was male unless someone told me otherwise. The being’s voice seemed to somehow emanate from the being’s entire head, as though the words were formed through vibrations. “It is good to meet you, for my analysis of the data suggests our efforts will be thirty percent more effective simply because you are part of our organization, Zeke Reynolds.”

  Anyone who has ever traveled in deep space knows the awkwardness of that moment when you meet a stranger and want to ask it what exactly it is. This was that moment. I had no idea what kind of biology, if any, was going on with this being.

  After my encounters with Smelly, a construct from the age of the Formers, whose nature had remained an almost complete mystery while it was living in my head, I had realized that the universe was a stranger place than I had even begun to suspect. Now, with this faceless being in front of me, I realized I had to up the strangeness quotient another notch.

  “Hey there,” I said with a halfhearted wave, hoping someone would explain something to me.

  “In my culture, Zeke Reynolds,” said Convex Icosahedron, “there are conditions when it is customary to speak a being’s name when addressing him, her, it, thrum, flikim, or ixmo.”

  There are things I want to learn about, but at that moment, the nature of an ixmo was not one of them. “Hey there, Convex Icosahedron?” I tried.

  “Hey there unto you, Zeke Reynolds,” he replied, bowing deeply. “Great tales have been told of you, Zeke Reynolds. Songs have been sung, Zeke Reynolds. Puppet shows have been performed, Zeke Reynolds.”

  “That is super excellent, Convex Icosahedron,” I said, wondering how quickly and politely I could get out of this conversation. “I’m really honored to hear that.”

  Everyone stared at me like I’d just belched at the cotillion.

  “I’m really honored to hear that, Convex Icosahedron.”

  The sighs of relief were audible.

  I now officially hated this guy. There was nothing appealing about having to say his stupid name every time I spoke to him, but everyone seemed to think it was utterly vital, so the only solution I could think of was to avoid speaking to him entirely. I hoped I didn’t have to do the name thing when talking to everyone. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could remember all three Phands’ full names.

  “While you’re with us,” Adiul-ip said, “Convex Icosahedron will be your main liaison with our operations. He will be the being you speak with m
ost frequently. Isn’t that wonderful, Convex Icosahedron?”

  “I’m so pleased to be able to assist you, Zeke Reynolds. I hope you are also pleased, Zeke Reynolds.”

  “You bet I am, Convex Icosahedron,” I said, and tried with all my strength not to groan.

  • • •

  Convex Icosahedron suggested that I might want to sit in on a strategy meeting with some of the other high-ranking renegades.

  “I’d like to see my room first,” Villainic announced. “I want to be sure I’ll have a nice place to sleep, given how uncomfortable I was last night. That escape pod of Zeke’s is very inhospitable.”

  Adiul-ip led Villainic off to Old West Motel or whatever while Convex Icosahedron took me out of the saloon and down the street toward some other building. We walked in the heat, and I looked around at the variety of aliens who were going about their business. Toward the far end of the road, a tall, broad-shouldered being with a head like a weasel used a stick to guide a couple of dozen cow-size creatures into a pen. They were four-footed and seemed docile enough, but instead of hair they grew what looked like thin planks of wood on their sides.

  “What are those animals, Convex Icosahedron?”

  “Those are nerfs, Zeke Reynolds. We harvest their spiny growths to construct our buildings, Zeke Reynolds.”

  “Nerfs,” I repeated. “So, that guy is a nerf herder, Convex Icosahedron?”

  “Precisely, Zeke Reynolds.”

  The wonders of the universe truly never cease.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question, Convex Icosahedron?”

  “I cannot know the answer to that until I hear the question, Zeke Reynolds.”

  That was fair enough, though at the same time completely annoying. “I am sorry if this is insensitive, but are you alive or an artificial entity of some sort, Convex Icosahedron?”