Diggers: The Sharp Edge of the Universe (18 page)

“What do you think everyone will do when we get back?” Mikayla asked.

“Freak,” Reggie said.

“My mom will probably cry.” Finn felt the heat in his cheeks at the thought of his blubbering mother.

“My dad will probably grill me about what we found and then try to see if he can get any publicity for it,” Mikayla said.

Looking through the microscope, Manuaar aimed the dropper at the
SS Vortex
. Finn held his breath and tried to think of what he’d say first when they arrived back in their own galaxy.

Manuaar’s squeeze on the dropper forced them into their galaxy at three Quiglarian blazars, thousands of times faster than the
Vortex
could travel.

“All stop!” Finn yelled.

Reggie’s hands flew over the screen and they came to a stop just past the Space Station. Overwhelmed, they simply sat and stared at their old home for what seemed like hours.    

“It seems so….” Mikayla broke off.

“Little.” Reggie said.

“This is the Space Station
Vortex
.” A voice came over their communications array. “Identify yourself immediately or we will take defensive measures.”

“This is the United Galaxy Scout One.” Finn announced.
“Finn O’Reilly, Mikayla Fishborne, and Reggie Waddington on board.
How are you all doing?”

Mikayla huffed and added, “We would like to speak to Captain Windblown. Please.”

Silence was their response, and it lasted until the hairs rose on the back of Finn’s neck.

“What’s taking so lo—” A burst of weapons fire that missed them by inches cut Finn off.

“Stop shooting! It’s us!” The words died in Finn’s throat as a pathetic squeak replaced them. Swallowing hard, he forced a command past the sudden dryness. “Quick, Reg, do something with the shields."

“On it.”
Reggie raised the defense shields just in time.

“Why are you firing on us?” Finn’s voice cracked. “We come in peace! Peace!”

“
Scout
can take it,” Reggie said.

Over and over the
SS Vortex
fired, but the shield absorbed most of the hits just like a baseball glove. A few ricocheted into space, and Finn marveled at the Quiglarians' technology. In a strange way, this assault eased his concern about
Scout
's ability to ward off aggressive aliens when the Three began their explorations through the other microscope slides. Finn couldn’t imagine any alien weapons would be able to penetrate the shields. The Quiglarians had built them an amazing ship.

“Give us a chance to prove we’re Mikayla, Finn, and Reggie!” Mikayla screamed over the boom of the next fire blast launched from the
SS Vortex
.

The firing stopped, but only for a moment. Finn felt his heart beat in his throat as he watched the
Vortex
change weaponry from guns to planet-cracking bombs.

Mikayla frantically tried to explain. “We’re friends! I’m Mikayla Fishborne. My dad is Lee Fishborne. He’s made over five million new discoveries.
Me
, Finn, and Reggie drilled through the anomaly and we’re back. Please, just put us on the view screen so we can prove it!”

The bomb blasters aimed at
Scout
, but didn't fire. The Three kept their eyes glued to the view screen and remained at the ready.

Suddenly, the image on the screen changed, and the
Three
saw, standing on the
SS Vortex
's main deck, Captain Windblown and—Quinn.

Quinn looked bigger than Finn remembered. His shoulders must have grown at least six inches wider, and he had to be taller than their dad by now. He still wore the brown suit used by the Diggers, but now it had the unmistakable stripes on each shoulder signifying an officer. He’d cleaned up a lot, which probably made their mom happy, and he’d slimmed down in the mid-section, which probably made her worry. She preferred her boys to be thick, a sore spot for Finn.

“Hey ya, Noodle.” Quinn smiled.

“Hey ya, Bear.” Finn smiled back.

“
Lieutenant
Bear to you.”

“Well, then I guess you’ll have to call me Captain Noodle.” Finn laughed.

“What the…how did you three…
explain!
” Captain Windblown pushed into the center of the screen, expecting an immediate answer.

“How about if we dock and then we can explain everything,” Finn suggested. “You’re gonna want to be sitting down for this anyway.”   

Chapter 27: Leader Pains

Finn sat in the
Scout
's high-backed Captain’s chair with his arms wrapped around his knees. He wanted to be in a relatively safe hideout in case someone came looking for him. He’d endured three days of inquisitions, two days of explanations, and a full week of conferences with every interstellar official alive—including the president of the Milky Way—not to mention the family meeting, which was by far the worst of them all.

During the debriefing period, he’d only gotten to see Mikayla and Reggie a few times because they'd all been dragged in different directions. The entire galaxy was scrambling to fully comprehend what the Three had been telling them.

Finn had kept Manuaar's name out of the meetings, which only succeeded in infuriating every adult involved, but Finn didn’t care. If the Three were going to explore different galaxies, they needed to figure out how to deal with alien species on their own and not have to ask Manuaar to intervene every time something didn’t go quite right.

Finn stared at the blank wall-sized screen and let every moment of doubt and anger he’d tried to ignore over the past two weeks consume him.

“Stupid,” he muttered.

They were all so—stupid. After their disappearance, the
SS Vortex
had spent every moment trying to find a way around the anomaly—the piece of microscope glass. Of course, they’d failed because the entire galaxy had been sitting on the microscope slide. Because the Three had never
came
back, no one would try to penetrate the anomaly like they had done. Captain Windblown couldn’t even get someone to do it after giving a direct command.

They'd been in the final stages of conferences with the Milky Way Council to begin mining the glass and sell it for profit when the UGS-1 appeared out of thin air.

Now, the
SS Vortex
and the Milky Way Council's main dilemma were to figure out how they could profit from working with Finn and his small new crew. The Council wanted to force Manuaar to give them at least 50 percent of every discovery and when Finn tried to tell them they weren’t going to be making those kinds of discoveries, a yelling spree broke out.

But those spats were nothing compared to Finn’s reunion with his family. Finn’s mom actually tried to ground him in his room. She swore he’d never leave the
SS Vortex
or her sight again. “I
won’t
go through another funeral for one of my children again.” She even cried—just to make Finn feel worse.

Finn did feel bad. He hated reading all the old news articles about how everyone had assumed he, Mikayla, and Reggie were dead. They'd held elaborate funerals for each child. People Finn didn’t even like, his Digger teacher for instance, stood up and said nice things about him. Their friends and families had suffered terribly and all because of him.

Finn swiveled around in the chair and almost fell out when he saw Quinn standing right behind him.

“Hey ya, Captain Nood.”
Quinn patted him on the shoulder a little too hard and Finn spilled onto the floor. “Or should I call you Captain Tank now?”

Finn scrambled to his feet. “Hey ya, Bear.”

Mikayla must have spilled it about the nickname she’d given him. He felt his usual frustration toward Mikayla rise. She'd never even used the name before, but she’d picked
now
to tell everyone else.

Great.

Quinn took a long look around the main deck and whistled. “Nice place. These massively huge aliens sure know how to build a nice ship. Or at least the bots they designed do.”

“Yep.”
Finn looked around at the clean, comfortable space. “But Reg and I built the first bot.”

He wasn’t sure why he'd just told Quinn that. Doing so only made the silence even more awkward.

“I’m just sorry I can’t go with you,” Quinn finally broke the silence.

“Why can’t you?” That had been the question he’d wanted to ask Quinn since they'd started selecting a crew.

Quinn smiled.
“Because I’m not like you, N—Finn.
I don’t want to go traveling to unknown places. Well, I mean, we live on a space station, so space travel is sort of a given, but I want a peaceful life.”

He nodded. When Quinn put it that way, Finn understood. Sometimes, not very often, but every once in a while, Finn just wanted something—anything—to be easy, peaceful, like things were right now, hiding in the Captain’s chair all alone.

“So, have you got all your crew figured out?” Quinn asked.

“Yeah, we’ve got a few people, plus the Quigbots,” Finn said.

It was true. Very few people had wanted to join. It turned out most of the people on the Space Station thought the Three were crazy to want to go traipsing off into other galaxies just to learn about them and gather information. They were also wary of working with bots as crew members because of the Great Rebellion of 3515. Back then, the robots had almost taken over the Milky Way Council. The bot-human battle had lasted three years. No one had really trusted bots much since then. Fail safes had even been installed in every computer across the galaxy to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.

The few who had applied for crew positions were people who'd always hated being a part of the Space Station. After suffering through one application conference with a bunch of stuffy old people, Finn made a rule that they would only accept members age seventeen and younger. When he told Manuaar what he wanted to do and why, the alien agreed.

“Your species seems to get more violent with age,” Manuaar had said.

Mikayla and Reggie liked the idea of having only kids on the ship. “I just hope you pick kids who can take orders,” she warned.

Mikayla hadn't been wrong. Finn rejected Angelina Motsenbocker because she spent an hour telling him all the things she’d do differently if she got to go on the expedition.

“Look Noo—, uh Tan—, um Finn,” Quinn’s voice yanked him out of his memories. “I’ve never understood you.
All that sneaking around and never coming to Digger classes.”

“Umm…” Finn didn't know what to say.

Quinn laughed and slapped Finn on the back. Finn went flying toward the floor again. “But when I got the chance to become an officer,” Quinn said, “that’s when I started to understand. You wanted something different.”

Finn looked at Quinn—really looked at him. Quinn had become a bigger version of the brother who'd made fun of him and bossed him around every chance he got, but his brother didn’t sound like the same person.

“Yeah.”
Finn heard the word, but it sounded as if it were coming from somewhere else. “I mean, yeah, I wanted to be a scientist more than anything, but now….”

“You suck at being a scientist,” Quinn said. “But you’ll be great as an explorer, and you'll be a fair captain.”

“How do you know?” Finn had been asking himself the same question since he'd accepted the offer from Manuaar. And he still couldn’t help but to wonder if he’d be terrible at exploring too.

Quinn put his hand on Finn’s shoulder, which almost took him out at the knees again.
“Because the only other living thing to see more of this Space Station than you is Jasper.
And you were born a bossy pain in the rear.”

Finn thought about that for a long time, perking up more by the minute. Jasper
had
seen more of the
SS Vortex
, but not much more. For the first time since his return, Finn looked forward to the coming expedition.

“You’d better round up your pathetic crew,” Quinn said. “It’s time for you to go, before the Milky Way Council forces you to stay.”

The crew
was
sort of pathetic—a hundred kids ranging from age nine to seventeen. No adults. They were all good kids, but Finn wondered if any of them were ready for whatever adventures would come next.

“Make sure you say goodbye to Mom and Dad.
What the—” A long tabby tail wrapped around Quinn’s leg.

Jasper jumped into the Captain’s chair and began cleaning his face.

“Looks like you picked the right backup, Captain,” Quinn said, walking out the door.

Finn smiled,
then
called everyone to attention over the intercom.

“This is Fi— the Captain. I need Mikayla and Reggie up here on the bridge,” Finn said, “on the double. It’s time to leave.”