After Action

“[First things first,]” I said. “[We need to do the flight-attendants’ safety speech, you know?]”

Five human kids ranging eleven to fourteen were keeping their seats in the Jack’s cargo hold. Jordan fell outside of that range, but she was standing already.

“[This is the spaceship Jackie Robinson, and there’s some stuff you need to know about it and being in space.]”

A hand shot up.

“[…Yes?]” I called on them.

“[We’ve all been in space already,]” the boy said.

“[Yes, and I bet you whacked your head more than once when you were tumbling around in zero-gravity…]” I said, trailing off without the kid’s name. “[What’s your name?]”

“[Logan,]” he said.

I pointed to the next kid.

“[Jessie.]” She had a thick accent from somewhere south.

“[Andre.]”

“[Alan.]”

“[…Elaine,]” she said a little slowly when I pointed at her. She had already introduced herself to me after all.

I eyed Jordan, pointing at her next. “[Oh, come on now, don’t be shy.]”

“[They all know me already,]” she said. “[We were trading telepathy for months before you went and blew up everything we had. It’s you they don’t know. Me too, I suppose.]”

“[My name is Caleb,]” I told them. “[And it’s a long story, so I’ll tell it later. For now, I bet you’ve all hit your heads tumbling around in zero-gravity before, right Logan?]”

“[Sure.]”

“[Me too,]” I said. “[But—]”

“[But we’re not in zero-gravity,]” Andre interrupted.

“[Yes and no,]” I warned. “[Normally gravity pulls you down, but right now there’s nothing pulling us down so much as there is something pulling the floor up. You all are taking your sweet time taking your feet because you’re used to Cammo-Caddo planetary gravity, and this feels a bit different. That’s good. Take your time and don’t go too fast.]”

I was grateful to my alien crewmates for giving the kids some space. Nai, Nerin, Tasser, and Shinshay were the ones still present, the sisters were staying off to the side, and for now Shinshay was keeping to their improvised quarters in one corner of the cargo bay.

So Tasser and I were the ones mainly addressing our humans. And so far, they were content to be a captive audience.

Okay…okay…

What order did I actually do this in? There was a lot to cover.

A hand raised.

“[Alan,]” I called on him.

“[What do you mean about the floor?]”

“[This is a spaceship, right? You know how airplanes fly sideways? The Jack here is a rocket. It doesn’t fly sideways; it flies straight up. Always up. So when it moves, we get pushed into the floor.]”

“[…Because of inertia,]” Jessie hazarded.

“[That’s right,]” I nodded. “[It’s complicated, but the science isn’t super important. What is important is that you guys take your time getting used to this gravity. Last thing we want is you all getting hurt.]”

“[You sure went through a lot to get us out of there,]” Jordan said. “[Thanks.]”

“[Believe me,]” I told her, “[it was my genuine pleasure.]”

“[…Did you kill all those aliens?]” Elaine asked.

I glanced at Tasser. She’d done a pretty quick one-eighty on being afraid of him. That was good, but I couldn’t tell if she was asking out of fear, sympathy, or who knows what.

“Honesty’s the best policy,” Tasser said simply.

“[Not all of them,]” I said. “[I don’t know exactly which ones died and which ones lived. Casti are tough customers. They can heal from a lot more injuries than you and I can.]”

“I’ve lost this arm twice,” Tasser shared, flexing his left arm. “But it grew back. You worried about them coming after us?”

Elaine nodded, and I noticed fewer confused reactions to Tasser’s Starspeak than expected.

“Well don’t you worry,” Tasser said. “Because you were with us, you don’t know who that is over by Nerin.”

Nai gave a little wave, and the four humans she’d rescued took note. Respect, gratitude, and a little bit of fear played across their faces.

“[It’s like you and Jordan,]” Andre said, leaning over to Elaine, “[Adept.]”

“[She,]” corrected Jessie. “[But he’s right. She broke through the aliens jailing us like a bear breaks into a beehive.]”

Nai smiled at the praise, and Nerin elbowed her good naturedly.

“[She can understand you,]” I said. “[So if you want to say thanks to Miss Nai.]”

“[Thank you, Miss Nai!]” the four kids she’d rescued chorused.

“[Thank you, Mister Tasser,]” Elaine mumbled. “[And Caleb. And Nerin.]”

“Hear that, Nerin? You made the cut,” I taunted.

“Fuck you,” she chuckled in Speropi.

I grinned. This was good.

“[You’re very welcome,]” I told Elaine. “[Everyone feel like they can be steady on their feet yet?]”

Jordan was the only one looking ready to move around, but the others were at least upright now, rocking their weight back and forth.

“[Take your time,]” I said. “[There’s other stuff we can cover in the meantime.] Who here’s fluent in Starspeak?”

Three youngster’s hands went up.

Jordan asked, “Define fluent?” In the language, no less.

“Capable under fire,” I said. “Literally, in your case.”

She raised her hand too.

I turned to Logan and Jessie, the two to keep their hands down. “[How about you two? You know some Starspeak, and you’re just being humble?] Or do you have no clue what I’m saying?”

“[I know what you said,]” the Logan said. “[But I’m not totally fluent, you know?]”

“[I do,]” I nodded.

“[I can’t speak it for nothing good,]” Jessie said bashfully, her accent leaving no questions about why.

“Can you understand it?” I asked.

“[Real well,]” she nodded. “[I had that dictionary in my head. So I know what ya’ll are saying, I just can’t make the right sounds myself.]”

“Here, let me make you all new ones,” I said.

I took a minute to craft four shiny new intro-modules, except these weren’t the ‘intro’ module. It was the latest updated version complete with the most refined models of the basic psionic tools that we had.

One, two, three, four, I made sure the rest of the gang joined Jordan and Elaine in regaining their psionics.

“[Alright, Jordan and I touched on this a bit on the ground, but starting now, try to stick to Starspeak. You’re going to need to know it, and our alien friends’ English stinks. Use the dictionary, but, if you need—or want —help, don’t be quiet about it. Understand?]”

Nods all around.

“[Cool,]” I said. “So who wants a tour?”

That got them excited.

“Okay. Like I said, this is the Jackie Robinson, yes it’s named after the [baseball player], and this is the cargo bay. It’s the biggest room on the ship. Shinshay over there technically has a berth a few decks above us, but they spend most of their time down here. They know more about the ship than anyone. Except maybe Weith. But you’ll meet him in a bit.”

I walked over to one of the hatches in the cargo bay floor.

“Down through this thing is…well, call it engineering. But most of the ship’s machinery is either down here or accessible through there. Don’t go down there alone unless you’re told or you want to blow us all up. Yeah?”

Below engineering was our water storage and quasi-gas generators, but those weren’t critical for a tour.

“Okay, file over here to the ladder, and remember if you have trouble with my Starspeak, say so. It won’t kill me to repeat something three, four, even five times if I have to.”

I climbed up the ladder, helping the kids find places to stand as they each climbed up.

“This is our medical ward,” I said, pointing to Dyn’s lair. “If you get hurt, Nerin or Dyn are the ones to talk to. They’ll take you here. Hey Dyn, give a wave!”

“…I’m busy prepping allergen tests,” he said. But we did spy an arm poke out for a quick wave.

“Come on, you were in a firefight an hour ago. You’re supposed to decompress,” I said.

“Who’s to say I’m not?” he said. “Besides, I’m sure our guests will want to know what they can eat sooner rather than later.”

The mention of food got them more excited.

“It’ll be a little bit,” I said, “but, yes, we have food. Real food. We’re finishing the tour first though.”

“[What’s through there?]” Andre asked, pointing at the door opposite the infirmary. It was unlabeled.

“That’s the armory,” I said. “No going in there.”

I did not say that a code was required. The mechanism to disengage the lock wasn’t visible anyway: one of Shinshay’s modifications.

“Going up this ladder…” I said, “…takes us to the mess. The pantry’s…over there. We’ll be back here later, so the details can wait until then. But just know this is where we eat, and it’s more or less the best place to hang out on the ship. The tables and chairs are collapsible, so we can mess around with this space. We’ve done board games before…”

“Caleb,” Tasser nudged me. “You’re tangenting.”

“…Maybe it was on purpose,” I defended.

“Go up to the next level,” Tasser ordered, not quite succeeding to hold back his laughter.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re going,” I said. “Up one more ladder.”

The mess had two ladders on opposite ends of the room, and climbing up either one delivered you into the same corridor with a number of doors going off the short corridor. One side of the corridor had a number of doors, each unlit, while the other side of the hall featured just two doors, only one of which was lit.

There was a small plaque numbering the door, and slotted into it beneath the number was a label reading, ‘Captain’s Quarters’.

“We’re going up one more level actually,” I said. The same ladders took us up to another almost identical hall, but this time the number of doors was the same on both sides of the hall. Like the deck below though, only half the doors were lit.

I saw the switch in question and flicked it like I’d known what to do the whole time. Turning to my crowd of human abductees, I asked, “How many of you are dressed in Adept-made clothing?”

Only Elaine raised her hand. That tracked. Her clothes were the cleanest out of the six of them, though I noted Jordan still had her Adept-made socks and shoes.

“Of the remaining five, raise your hand if it’s been more than a month since you got a shower?” I asked.

That got everyone’s hands up.

“Are these…?” Jordan began.

“Dormitories,” I said. “Two people to each dorm. The doors in the middle are bathrooms, and believe me, you all need showers.”

I’d only seen where Jordan and Elaine were being kept, but if the conditions at the dam had been twice as good as under the auto-factory, it still would have been squalid.

“That bad?” Jordan said, trying to be subtle about sniffing the air.

“Don’t worry about what the aliens think,” I said. “We all smell weird to other species, but…yes. You all have been kept in basically dungeons for I-don’t-know-how-long, but you’re going to clean yourselves up before we eat.”

Jordan caught my eyes and she tilted her head to each lavatory door questioningly. I nodded.

“Alright, [boys] here. [Girls] follow Jordan,” I said. “Jordan, catch.”

I materialized a pair of plastic bottles and bars of soap, tossing one of each to her. We had ordinary toiletries, but it was worth simplifying anything I could for now. Figuring out the spaceship showers was going to be hard enough. No need to have them dig around for soap.

Although…

“[You three figure out who’s going first,]” I said to the boys. “[Give me a second.]”

I jumped back down the ladders, descending until I found myself back in the cargo bay. Consulting me and Shinshay’s psionic organization codes, I was looking for a crate on…that section of shelving.

Cracking it open revealed dozens of vacuum sealed packages with black and white fabric inside.

There we go.

I thought about guessing sizes, but gave up after five seconds and just grabbed the whole crate. Lugging it up the ladders was awkward, but not that difficult, since I could materialize straps to lash it to my back.

Climbing back up to the dormitory deck, I could hear the water already running in the girls side, and the missing face from their number was Elaine. She’d probably materialize herself some new clothes on her own. Jordan might too, but she was letting the youngsters go first.

Everyone else though…

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Fresh outfits,” I said, dropping the crate in the middle of the hall. “I don’t know exactly what the numbers mean, so just try to guess what size will work. If it doesn’t fit well, we can always tailor the next batch.”

It took half an hour to get everyone through the showers and into new outfits, and the kids were downright electric for every minute of it. Even during takeoff, they weren’t sure what to think. Seeing me was something new, but this was ultimately an alien ship they were flying out on, and that left them with lots of questions…

…Every one of which washed down the drain with the grime on their skin. I didn’t want to think about what our water processors would have to deal with. I’d been running, shooting, and sweating all day, so I was filthy. But I paled in comparison to the kids, almost literally.

Every single kid came out of the shower with skin at least two shades lighter, at least by comparison. Dust, oil, and grime had caked up on their skin, and I started to wonder what they’d been breathing in all this time too. Unlike me, none of the Water Boys’ abductees had worn air masks.

I would look into that later.

For now, we got these six new abductees squeaky clean and into new black pants and white shirts. None of the clothes fit perfectly, and they all had pants just a little too long or not long enough, but you could tell they were loving having new duds. If you squinted, their outfits looked like mine, sans suspenders, collars, and cuff sleeves.

Jordan picked up on that.

“You’re not wearing the same thing,” she noted. Her Starspeak really was good.

“These clothes are custom,” I told her. “An alien in another star system made them for me.”

“…You’ve been around, then.”

I nodded. “It’s a long story, but I’ll tell it when things calm down a bit. Next on the docket is food.”

A few of the kids didn’t know what ‘docket’ meant, even in English, so that earned me a quick flurry of questions. But talk of a meal caught their attention even more.

We kept it simple, basically just broth and some of the simplest Farnata vegetables we had access to. The Organic Authority might not have been very helpful tracking down abductees, but they’d been much more successful determining which alien foods were safe for humans and why.

Technically to make these ‘fuscara’ roots digestible, a certain enzyme was needed. But it wasn’t a rare one, and it was added to the dehydrated pouches by default.

I wanted to spill details like that.

The preparations we’d put into the Jack and its supplies were endless, and the impulse to show off all our hard work was strong…but I knew they wouldn’t care right now. And honestly, they didn’t need to care right now. Six humans freshly rescued from pirate clutches shouldn’t be overwhelmed. By anything.

That said, even the alien equivalent of potato soup was looking awfully overwhelming to them.

“[…Damn, that’s good,]” Jordan murmured. The kids were too absorbed in their own bowls of the stuff to notice her language.

“The pirates fed you nutrient blocks?” I guessed.

Jordan blinked, suddenly being reminded of my existence.

“[Yeah. I think we forgot what real food tastes like,]”

I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. Humans! It felt good to know we hadn’t been wasting our time these last few months. It taken longer than we expected, but six abductees were safe today because of our efforts.

Jordan, however, was sharper than her younger brethren. Glancing around the mess deck, she seemed cognizant of how many crew members were elsewhere on the ship, even with six new faces aboard.

She was halfway through her bowl of fuscara soup when she gave me a hard stare and asked, “[So what comes next?]”

·····

Sleep came next.

It had been a long day for the whole crew, and the abductees needed rest too. We herded all the new faces into bunks, and everyone passed out in minutes. Serral and Shinshay took the night shift while the everyone else rested.

The next ‘morning’ we got started in earnest. I handed Fenno the psionic documents I’d ripped from the mind of the .pirate leader, and she started chewing through them.

I would be paired up with Nai for the day, since she could understand English as well as I could.

I poked my head up the ladder into the mess. “[Hey Jordan, can you come down to the cargo bay real quick?]”

She stood up from a game of…Catan? I couldn’t be sure from this angle.

<[So it’s my turn?]> she said, beaming the message directly to me.

I slid down the ladder and showed Jordan to where Nai had Adepted some basic chairs and a table.

“[And here I thought we were being subtle about it,]” I said.

“[You were, but I’m not blind,]” she said. “[Why’d you talk to all the kids before me?]”

“[They would have noticed and wondered what we needed to talk to you alone for,]” I said. “[And we don’t want to color any of what you say.]”

“[So this is debriefing,]” she said. Not a question.

I nodded, hefting a bulky tape-recording device onto the table too.

“[Should I switch to Starspeak?]” she asked. “[Is this going on some kind of record?]”

“[Nah,]” I said. “[Well, it is going on record, but we can provide Starspeak translations too.]”

“[Wouldn’t your translation be suspect for bias?]” she asked.

“[We’ll just include the whole Starspeak-English dictionary in the package,]” I said. “[Let them translate it themselves if they think we took some liberties.]”

Jordan really was sharp. She’d gathered enough to know why we would put this kind of thing on record; we were building up a very thick and heavy book, so we could throw it at whoever wanted to get in our way.

Fenno had already put together a list of Cammo-Caddo colonial authorities that should know just what had been happening on their planet. Just from the younger kids’ testimony, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility for an intraplanetary war to ignite.

But Jordan was old, smart, and mature enough to come across as adult to aliens. Her words would carry the most weight.

“[So what do you want to know?]” she asked.

“[Start from the beginning,]” I said. “[Where are you from?]”

“[Manitoba,]” she said.

My eyes widened. Nai understood the words, but didn’t recognize why I was shocked.

“[Wait, really?]”

“[Yeah. Has everyone else been American?]”

“[I’m in contact with a bigger group of abductees, but yeah. Moreover, you’re the first one I’ve met to be from outside California,]” I said. Even Jessie, sounding like a southern belle had still been living in Bakersfield for four years before being nabbed.

Jordan winced.

“[Well, I might be more of the same then,]” she warned. “[I lived outside Winnipeg, but my family was visiting the west coast when we were abducted.]”

“[We?]” I asked.

“[My sister was too,]” she said. “[We weren’t on the same ship, but I know she was there.]”

“[We’ll get to the rest of that in a second…where on the west coast, specifically?]” I asked.

“[Eureka,]” she said.

I frowned. That was really far north…Nora said she’d been abducted from Berkley. I’d been last outside Sacremento. Andre from near Fremont. Alan outside San Jose. All of us were taken mostly from the same Bay Area. I was pushing it with Sacremento, but Jessie had thrown the curve off even more.

Why hadn’t I pestered Dustin for more information on where all the Archo enclave’s newcomers were from?

I’d get the chance soon enough.

“[What can tell about the actual moment of abduction?]” I asked.

“[I was in the middle of a field with my sister,]” she said. “[It was late at night and I was helping her with a light physics homework problem. She was shining a light across the field and I was recording if I could see—doesn’t really matter. I’m waiting on her to shine the light again when she suddenly screams.]”

There was one particular phrase I was waiting for. The thing I’d noticed from my own abduction.

‘Something perfectly the same color dark as the night sky.’

“[I run over and she’s completely gone,]” she continued. “[It was really windy though, and even just walking up to where she was, I could feel something wrong. The air was thick with static, like standing under a powerline, you know?]”

“[Did you see anything?]” I asked.

“[I can’t be sure,]” she said. “[Whatever I might have seen was dark though. Completely invisible in the night sky.]”

That was close enough for me.

The details of her sister’s abduction were consistent with everyone else’s. We were all outdoors. All taken at night.

But this was what happened to her sister.

“[What about what happened to you?]” I asked.

“[That came the next day,]” she said. “[Police talked to me, trying to figure out where Drew had gone. Everyone went ballistic. But I’d dropped my wallet in the field when I ran over to look for Drew. I didn’t realize until the next day, so my dad took me back to the crime scene the next evening and I tried to look for it.]”

“[And you got nabbed then,]” I surmised.

“[Almost the exact same spot too,]” Jordan said. “[I felt the air go staticky again, and then something just… yanked me upward.]”

That was the third consistency.

Everyone had been abducted after sundown, outdoors, by a very physical force. Yanking was exactly the word to describe it. They weren’t teleporting us out of our bedrooms. They were snatching us with camouflaged air craft of some kind.

Given ENVY’s involvement, possibly even invisible drones.

“[What then?]”

“[I mean…how much detail do you really want?]” she asked. “[Once we were actually on the ships, things got boring fast. I guess it was odd, because my sister wasn’t anywhere on the ship I was. But that’s where I met Elaine.]”

She and Logan had been abducted from the northern end of the Bay Area, and Jordan had been even further north. Was that related or coincidence?

“[Big white flashes?]” I asked.

“[Yeah. We were on the ship for…well, I’m not really sure how long, but there was a big white flash, then two more over the course of the next day or so.]”

I nodded.

Daniel and I had only experienced two skips, but Jordan’s ship had gone through three. The abduction ships had to spread themselves out somehow, so multiple skips tracked with moving through multiple star systems.

“[Something happened with the ships to cut out the gravity for a few minutes,]” she said. “[Then there was a big thunk and gravity’s back. We stayed like that for months.]”

“[On my ship, there was only enough food to last 24 abductees for one month,]” I said. “[Did you get new deliveries?]”

Jordan nodded.

“[Yeah. Every other week or so there’d be a new pallet delivered into the airlock in the cargo bay.]”

“[And then one day some Casti find you,]” I said.

“[Five months ago, give or take,]” she agreed. “[Some big ship shows up outside, and we can even see it through the windows. It tows us to this asteroid and aliens start cutting into our ships.]”

“[Ships?]”

“[Our rocket was end-to-end with another abduction ship,]” she said. “[One girls ship, one guys.]”

No way were they flying in that configuration…maybe…that was why the gravity had cut out for a few minutes. Transitioning from thrust-inertia gravity to an artificial field source…

Two rockets could be kept end-to-end so they could share the same symmetrical artificial gravity fields. I made note of that possibility, reminding myself to cover it when we contacted Dustin.

“[What did they do on the asteroid?]” I asked.

“[Don’t know much. It was mostly chaos. They separated a lot of us. I know some kids got hurt. Killed too. But we weren’t there long. First there’s this big scream, and suddenly psionics pop into our heads, and there’s that dictionary. So we tried communicating, but it didn’t do much good. A day later though, this ship starts shooting the asteroid. It seemed like a rescue at first, because they were shooting the aliens—Casti—who were imprisoning us. But whoever it was focused more on the asteroid than any of the aliens—pirates? Are they pirates?]”

“[Pirates,]” I nodded.

“[Well the gunship shoots up the asteroid, and there’s debris everywhere. The pirates starting throwing us all onto different ships and scattering. I tried staying in psionic contact with other abductees there, but I couldn’t glean much. The gunship stopped a few crates of abductees from being loaded, but most of the pirates got away with abductees in tow.]”

“[How many were with you when the pirates took you from the asteroid?]”

“[Just me and two other Adepts,]” Jordan said. “[They’d sorted us on the asteroid based on who showed powers, then who got psionics, and who got both. We started hiding them fast, but not fast enough to hide everyone.]”

“[Did the pirates take you directly to Cammo-Caddo?]” I asked.

“[Where?]”

“[The planet we just left in a hurry,]” I said.

“[Um, yeah. But not really. I didn’t wind up in that basement directly,]” Jordan answered. “[The other two Adepts with me tried to fight back against the pirates on the ship. We hit the atmosphere and something went wrong with the ship. The three of us figured we were about to die anyway, so we tried breaking out. I made it. The other two didn’t. We crashed…somewhere…on the planet, and I dragged myself to the closest piece of civilization I could find.]”

“[How’d you wind back up in pirate hands?]” I asked.

The other five abductees had told a similar story, but instead of a crash landing, the pirates had just thrown them into cells we’d pulled them out of.

“[I found a village near—well, not really ‘near’, but near ish— the crash site. Thought I was going to die, but they took me in. Clothed me. Fed me. Tried to talk with them, but they didn’t speak Starspeak. It seemed like an alien hippie commune out in the middle of nowhere. But they took care of me for the last four months, about. They saved my life.]”

The gratitude was heavy in her voice, but there was a note of fear to it too. Uncertainty.

Ah.

“[And then the pirates came back looking for you,]” I gathered.

“[I ran before they got to the village,]” Jordan said. “[I don’t know what happened to them. But the pirates found me soon enough. Dragged me to that place and kept me locked up for the last few weeks. Then you guys came along.]”

I nodded.

It was a fairly abridged version, but it confirmed more than a few details in my mind. Nai nodded thoughtfully, but I wondered how differently she would hear that story compared to me. Our brains might have copied each other’s understanding of our native tongues, but I wasn’t sure that was enough to internalize the whole tale.

It was a heavy story. Maybe even heavier than mine.

“[If you’re going to spread the word on these events, I’d like to find out if that village is okay,]” she said. “[If they are, give them help or something.]”

“[We are going to spread the word, and we will make sure everyone gets what’s coming to them, good and bad,]” I promised.

Jordan nodded, satisfied.

“[Good. We’ve all got a million questions, a lot about what happened to you too, but I don’t want to push you guys yet. But you haven’t answered my question from earlier. What comes next?]”

“[…Technically, this ship is a diplomatic one—]” I began.

“[A diplomatic spaceship has an armory?]” she snorted.

“[Air Force One has an armory,]” I frowned. Not the point right now. “[We’re probably going to go after that gunship that attacked your asteroid. We think we know who it belongs to, and they have humans with them too.]”

“[…I’m really not sure what to think of that,]” she said. “[They attacked the pirates, and looked to be rescuing some of us. So I don’t know if whatever alien flying that ship just couldn’t rescue us all or wasn’t trying to.]”

“[I’m not sure either,]” I said. “[But before we commit to that course of action, we need one last crucial question answered: did we miss anyone?]”

“[On…Cammo-Caddo, was it?]”

I nodded. “[We still don’t know how many humans might have been held there. And since we had to get out of there in a hurry, we’ve been dreading the possibility that we missed someone.]”

“[…Every human I saw on Cammo-Caddo is on this ship,]” Jordan said. “[The two Adepts I crashed with didn’t even survive our escape attempt. They were dead before we hit the ground and their bodies burned in the wreckage.]”

“…So as far as you know, there are no more humans on Cammo-Caddo?” Nai asked softly.

“[As far as I know,]” Jordan nodded.

All three of us let the words hang ominously. The possibility was undeniable, but we’d have to live with the uncertainty.

“[So how does that affect what we do next?]” Jordan asked.

“[Right now we’re burning toward a Beacon that connects to Shirao system,]” I said. “[That’s where that ‘bigger group of abductees’ I mentioned is. We’re meeting up with them first.]”

Jordan frowned.

I could see the moment her brain connected the implications.

“[You’re handing us off, so you can go after the rest of the abductees,]” she realized, confused. Maybe even hurt.

“[…Yeah,]” I said. “[It’s going to be dangerous, and it’s bad enough for someone my age to be along for the ride. There’s no reason to put kids in that kind of danger. We still have another few hours before we flip and start our deceleration burn. We’ll have more to talk about when we actually arrive and meet up.]”

Jordan nodded.

“[You’ve been trying to keep the kids from settling in,]” she recognized. “[Having them spend time in the mess instead of their bunks. You guys don’t want them putting down roots.]”

“[…Yeah,]” I said lamely. I hadn’t really been trying to hide it. But still, she was sharp.

There was an obvious question still left open, and Jordan didn’t hesitate to go for the throat.

“[What about me?]”

“[…I don’t know,]” I admitted.