Randoms (32 page)

“Uh, yeah,” I said, sitting up, because I did see it. “The space adventure you refer to is called
Star Wars Episode Four: A New Hope
. I think I've seen that one. And you're right. This totally works. I'm Luke and Steve is Han Solo. I mean, think about it. The original Han Solo was a lizard guy. This is too perfect. Tamret is Chewbacca in so many ways it's not even funny. You're Obi-Wan, so you are going to get struck down but then become more powerful than we can possibly imagine. Which I guess means you'll become a disembodied voice that gives pretty good advice.”

“And the girls?”

“They're the droids.” I told him.

“Which one is which?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Charles, if you have to ask, you're not in the game.”

•   •   •

Talking to Charles did cheer me up, but even if I could convince myself that our mission might succeed, I could not help but worry about why we were going on this mission in the first place. Why did my father look like Martian Manhunter? How had he ended up masquerading as a citizen of the Confederation?

“You look glum.” Tamret came to sit next to me. “Something's bothering you.”

I nodded. There were many things bothering me, but one thing more than anything else. I didn't want to talk about it. It was hard stuff, and it brought me back to places I didn't want to go. I was terrified that if I talked about it, I would cry, and I sure as hell didn't want to cry in front of her. But I cared about her, and she'd asked, and I owed it to her to tell her what was on my mind.

“It's about my father,” I said. “I mean, he obviously at some point learned about the Confederation and the wider galaxy. He ended up out here. He wrote about it. I can understand that he wanted to be part of it, but he left us. He left me and he left my mother. How can I forgive him for that?”

She took my hand and squeezed it. “Oh, Zeke.”

“He was a good dad,” I said. “We played together and he was funny and fun and he introduced me to all these things I loved. From the moment I met Dr. Roop, from then on, every
time there was something new, I would think, ‘Dad would have loved this. I wish Dad could have seen this.'”

She gave my hand another squeeze.

“And I know he loved my mom. I remember them together, and they were happy. I know it wasn't an act.”

“You don't know what I would give to see my father again,” she said quietly. “Either of my parents. I'm not sure I understand why you're so sad.”

“Because he went away,” I said. “There was no explanation, no good-bye. He faked his death and flew off to the Confederation. I understand why he would be tempted, but he still left us. How can I forgive that?”

“Maybe he had no choice,” she said. “Maybe he was taken against his will. Maybe he understood about the danger Earth was in, about the threat of Phandic annexation, and he decided that saving his planet was the best way to save his family.”

“Whatever his reasons for leaving, he made us think he was dead.”

She took my hand and put it to her soft cheek. I watched her do it, and I watched her looking at me with those big lavender eyes.

“Would you like to know what I think?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You don't know why he left,” she said. “You don't know if he had a choice in leaving or if he was prevented from returning to you. But here's what you do know: Your father somehow created a new identity for himself in the Confederation, one that would pass all scrutiny. That meant he could have made any kind of life for himself that he wanted, but instead he worked as a public servant. Then he got himself elected to one of the most
important committees in the government. There are trillions of beings in the Confederation, and they voted for him to be on the selection committee. And when he was on that committee, he moved the members in directions they'd never gone before so that your planet would be among the new initiates. And then he risked everything he had accomplished and broke the law so that from all the people who might have been the random member of the delegation, it would be his own son. I don't know whether or not he could have returned to you, Zeke, but I do know he went to incredible lengths to bring you to him.”

I couldn't speak for a long time. I sat there, swallowing, feeling the moisture in my eyes but not daring to say anything. Then, when I felt like I could keep myself under control, I finally looked at her. “You are, without doubt, the most amazing girl in the history of girlkind.”

“Like you would know,” she said, but the look on her face told me that however little I knew, it was good enough for her. “He loves you, Zeke. From a distance of millions of miles, it's plain as day.”

“Thanks,” I whispered.

•   •   •

“Okay,” Tamret said. “I've finished reviewing the files Dr. Roop gave us, and we need to talk about the prison and the mission in general. We've got a little less than a day until we get there at current speed. Crazy as it sounds, this might be doable.”

We were all sitting toward the front of the artifact carrier. Everyone was getting a little stir-crazy, which made it a great time for a briefing.

“I'm not done going through the files,” Mi Sun said. “Honestly, I've just started. It's hard to make sense of it all.”

“Good thing you've got me to break it down for you,” Tamret said.

“If Tamret's got a plan,” I told the group, “I want to hear it.”

“How are we going to save Earth?” Nayana asked. “That was the bargain as I recall.”

“One thing at a time,” I said. “Let's hear about where we're going.”

Tamret sucked in a deep breath, as though she were about to take a dive. “The planet is largely uninhabited except for a relatively small prison,” she said, “consisting almost exclusively of political prisoners, who are forced to work archaeological sites that contain Former artifacts. There's security, but not much of it is planetside. Mainly their defenses are designed to keep ships from coming out, less because they're worried about escaping prisoners than because they don't want anyone stealing artifacts. According to the military surveys Dr. Roop provided, it may be possible to land without being detected, but it will be pretty much impossible to leave the surface without the orbiting ship knowing.”

I had my own thoughts about that problem. “Let's say we're able to land safely and quietly. What then?”

“Then we make our way to the main Phandic outpost, hack into their system, and find our prisoners. Once we have Zeke's father, our best option is to try to steal a Phandic ship and hope to slip out undetected.”

“That's the worst plan I've ever heard,” Nayana said. “What makes you think you'll even be able to hack a Phandic computer?”

“I can do anything,” Tamret said.

“She can do anything,” I agreed.

“You can't simply take that as your motto and expect people to act as though it were true.”

“I got us this far, didn't I?”

“This far,” Nayana observed, “is on a stolen ship on the way to Phandic prison while we just happen to have on board a person they'd really like to imprison. I'm not terribly impressed. And let's get back to the business about saving the Earth. How are we doing that?”

“Tamret just told you,” I said. “Our carrier will be detected if we try to leave, so we'll be grabbing a Phandic ship on the way out. We deliver that to the Confederation; they reverse engineer it and end the technological advantage the Phands have. We change the balance of power in the galaxy, the Confederation becomes dominant, the Phands retreat, and Earth is safe.”

“If it's so easy, why hasn't anyone done it before?” demanded Nayana.

“Because they haven't had us before?” Steve ventured.

Nayana was nearly ready to scream in frustration. “Uhhh! I suppose you can do anything too?”

“Not quite anything,” he admitted, “but I'm not so bad at a few things. And you see, ducky, that's the point, isn't it? I like the Confederation. They're good blokes, but they're cowardly custard, if you haven't noticed. They don't like to get their hands dirty. They wet their nappies when Zeke here fires a few extra missiles at a ship that attacked first. They have big brains and big ideas, but they don't have a ton of nerve. Now, you get some of us hooligans together, and you've got another story.”

“This is so stupid,” Nayana said. “Don't you see what's going on? Dr. Roop admitted that this is what he intended all along.
We're not rebels and we're not heroes. We're pawns.”

“No,” said Charles. “I don't think Dr. Roop is that deceptive. If we were pawns, it would mean we were sacrificing ourselves in the service of another, more meaningful assault, and from what we have seen of the Confederation, I think we know that is not the case. They've maintained equilibrium for so long that they've forgotten how to fight. That's what we're for.”

“So if we're not pawns,” Nayana asked, “what are we?”

Mi Sun met her gaze. “The whole game is riding on us. That makes us kings.”

•   •   •

We came out of our tunnel about ten thousand miles from the planet and went to work. If everything we'd learned was true, then our sensors were vastly superior to what the Phands' have, which meant we were close enough to watch them safely, and as long as no one tunneled out close enough to pick us up, the enemy would never know we were there.

We monitored and recorded Phandic activity for a complete twenty-six-hour cycle, and then I handed the data over to Charles and Nayana. “Let's assume every rotation is like this rotation. Study it, find a weakness, and we'll figure out our next move.” Meanwhile, Tamret had been trying to work her way into their computer system, which she explained was much more sophisticated and had far more safeguards than anything she'd seen in the Confederation.

“I can overlay a private network onto their planetary grid,” she told me. “That means we'll be able to communicate through our data bracelets, and they won't know about it. Unless they are specifically looking for it. But if they're looking for us, we'll have bigger problems.”

I nodded. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, actually, some good news.” She called up a three- dimensional map of the main compound. “Okay, so this big building here is the main prison. I was able to retrieve their personnel specs, and I think we should be able to take them. But that's not the best part, which is that the only projectile weapons on the planet are in this other building, the main command bunker. I guess they don't want to risk harming the artifacts, because all their firearms are locked up, and they're only for emergencies. If we take the bunker, we take the weapons, and we have more or less an insurmountable tactical advantage.”

“How do they manage a prison if they're unarmed?” I asked.

“They're not exactly unarmed. They have plasma wands, which are essentially high-powered energy sticks. They can be deadly, but on the low setting they're just meant to hurt—to provide incentive for cooperation. A few guys with plasma wands can control a large prison population, but if we have the PPB pistols and they don't, they've got no chance.”

Six hours later, after Charles and Nayana had reviewed the planetary security data, we had a plan. We sat down, and they called up a hologram of the planet.

“That trick you used to cheat us when we did that sim,” Nayana said to Steve. “Did you come up with it by yourself?”

“I wish I were so clever,” he said. “Dr. Roop wanted to run through a couple of sims together. He taught me that one.”

“Figures,” she said. “The sun in this system just happens to be extremely active, and there is a great deal of radiation bursting out in regular intervals, just like in that sim. Dr. Roop taught you that little maneuver for when you came here.”

I lightly smacked Mi Sun's arm. “I told you.
Ender's Game
.”

“Don't touch me,” she said. “But yeah.”

“So here's how it will work,” Nayana said. “The patrolling ship's orbit is not geosynchronous. It's not hovering above the prison, but regularly moving all around the planet. That makes things tougher, but just a little. When the cruiser is on the far side of the planet, we wait for the sun to be at the part of its cycle when flares are most active, and then we beeline for the planet. The solar radiation will conceal our ion trail, so we'll be invisible to the Phands' sensors. As soon as we hit atmosphere, we do what Steve did in the sim: We cut the engines to drop down hard and fast to the surface so if they notice us at all, we'll look like a meteor. Once we've dropped as far as we can, we fire up the engines and skim under their detection net to a landing site about ten miles from the main prison compound.”

“That sounds too easy,” Mi Sun said.

“She is leaving out the most significant problem,” Charles said. “Steve learned how to execute that maneuver on a fairly small moon, which didn't have nearly as strong a gravity well as an Earth-size planet. This ship's g-force inhibitors won't be able to compensate for our approach speed. Have any of you allocated skill points in constitution or endurance?”

Steve, Tamret, and I all said we had. They were standard spaceflight skills.

“Who has the most?”

“Zeke and I,” Tamret said.

I had no idea how she had applied her skill points, and I had never told her about how I had applied mine, but respect for privacy was not one of her many fine attributes.

“Our nanites will keep the rest of us from actually dying,” Charles said, “but we will likely pass out. You two have the
greatest chance of remaining awake long enough to prevent us from crashing into the surface of the planet and being killed in a fiery explosion.”