Three days later….

Mama Grace’s restaurant was packed to the gills. We squeezed in shoulder to shoulder, at least four hundred humans. Those of us who had been most involved in Phase Two had a couple long tables at the back of the room, and Mama Grace’s helpers served us first.

Grandpa had ordered beer and sangria, with some help to source them from Veda. The barbequed bug ribs were slathered in a solid approximation of Texas sauce. I didn’t ask what was in it. The cornbread was fresh and hot, the beans had been cooking for days, and the coleslaw was crisp. I could close my eyes and pretend I was back on Earth, just for a bit.

The crafters were the heroes of the hour. Other coalition members pushed through the crowd to shake their hands and congratulate them. I caught Dwight’s eye and raised my beer.

Juana leaned over my shoulder. “Happy birthday, by the way, Shad.”

I started. “Wait, what?”

“That’s right,” Grandpa said. “I checked the date with the System.”

“Wow.” I sipped my beer, staring at it. I was twenty-two years old now. We’d been here nearly a year. A huge chunk of my life, an even bigger part of Sage’s. I forced a smile. “You know, they said, ‘Join the Army, see the world’ but I didn’t ever expect this.”

“Also,” Grandpa said. “Got you a gift. Courtesy of Colonel Ames, but he couldn’t make it.” He tossed me a small box. I flipped it open. A set of shiny captain’s bars stared up at me.

I pulled out one of the linked silver pairs and stared at it. “Wait, really?” I looked up at Grandpa, who nodded.

“You’ve earned it. Time in grade is a little short, but what we’re doing here counts for a lot. Besides, we can’t have Earth’s finest being led by a mere lieutenant.”

“What about you?”

“Ames’s working on something. I don’t care, but if Waters shows up again it’ll make our lives easier.”

I went to put the bars back, but Juana grabbed them from me and pinned them to my shirt. “I’m not in uniform!” I protested.

“Yes, you are,” she said. “That coat’s your uniform now. Besides, I don’t think your senior officer is going to mind.” She gave me a quick kiss on my cheek and slipped away before I could react. I felt myself getting hot in the face. Grandpa laughed at me and handed me another beer.

“I got you something too!” Sage said. She pulled a pair of ammo cans out of her inventory. Grunting slightly, she put them down on the table. I flipped open the lid and smiled at the bright shiny brass cartridges. “More boom rounds, a bunch of frag rounds, and some really fun ones,” she said.

“I’ll take a look after the party.” I pulled the cans into my own inventory and dove back into the plate.

When the feasting had started to slack off a little, Grandpa got up. He pushed his way to the head of the room. Conversation died down as all heads turned to him. I swallowed the last of my food and pushed away my plate. I knew what was coming, and it might be uncomfortable.

“Well done, everyone!” Grandpa said. We all whooped and hollered. “They said it couldn’t be done. That indigenous groups never get to Phase Three. That we didn’t have any idea what we were doing. Well, we’ve showed them.”

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I raised a fist and cheered with the rest.

“But there’s more to come. Phase Three will be our biggest challenge yet. We’re going to need all of you, and a lot more. We’re going to need every human we can get to back this. Together, we have a shot at taking a tiny piece of what ought to be ours back from the assholes who kidnapped us. It’s going to be the most important operation in human history. Let that sink in a minute.”

We did, but I heard some shuffling feet and murmurs. I caught the eye of Paul, one of our crafters, and nodded. “Go ahead. Ask him,” I mouthed.

Paul raised a hand. “Major Twofeather? I — I’m on board for whatever you’re up to, of course. You’ve steered us right so far. But — why is this such a big deal? I thought we were trying to earn coin to buy out our contracts and go home, but you make this sound way worse.”

Grandpa nodded. “There’s something you don’t know. Something they’ve been keeping secret. Something our sponsor told us and I’ve been wrestling with how or when to tell you all. Well, there’s never gonna be a right time, so this is as good as any.” He took a deep breath, and I leaned forward, gripping the edge of the table so tight my knuckles went white. I knew what was coming, and this was critical. We might lose some of our people, based on the next couple minutes. But Grandpa was right. They deserved to know.

“We can’t go home.”

He let that hang there for a moment, then half the crowd was on their feet shouting and the other half still looking shell shocked.

Sage slipped closer to me. I put an arm around her. She’d already known, but her face was as pale as I’d ever seen it.

“What do you mean, we can’t go home?” Dwight shouted.

“The Reality Engine changed us. Really changed us. How do you think we can shoot lightning from our asses and teleport and all that bullshit? It’s done something to our bodies, and now we’re dependent on it, or another engine like it.”

“So we’re trapped here,” someone said.

“They’ve lied to us!”

“What’s the point? I’m done, I’m going to find that safe portal and just sit around doing nothing.” That was Phil, one of our best crafters, who had come up with the Shad Dummies plans for our final Phase Two push. I heard others agreeing with him. We needed to stop this talk, fast.

I got to my feet. “Of course they lied to us,” I said. “They kidnapped and enslaved us. But we weren’t even supposed to get here, and we did. We’ll find a way. Somehow. There’s tech that can let us go back to Earth, at least to visit. Sounds like it’s damn expensive. But if we make it in Phase Three? We can buy anything. Maybe our planet back.”

I wanted to convince them, to make everyone take time to think about what this all meant, but my words felt hollow. I wasn’t sure I believed myself. “That’s all still a ways down the road though. Right now, I’m looking at going into Phase Three and doing what we’ve been doing all along. Surpassing expectations.”

“Hear, hear!” Kirin yelled from a seat in the corner next to Arjun. “I’m with Team Twofeather!”

Mama Grace stood in the kitchen door, drying her hands on her apron. “We’re all with you,” she shouted. “Anyone who’s got cold feet, go ahead and leave, but you’ll be losing your friends-and-family discount on your meals!”

That broke the tension. A ripple of laughter swept the room. Most of the crew sat back down.

Grandpa held up his hands. “I’m not going to pretend it’ll be easy. Hasn’t been so far. But I couldn’t ask for a better team to work with. We ain’t anything special. They picked us at random, from all over Earth. Well, I’ll take randomly-chosen humans over the elite alien teams any day. We’re going into Phase Three, and we are going to make our mark. That’s my promise. Not that we win the whole thing. Not that we kicked them out and reclaim what’s ours. But that we make them remember we were here.”

I saw him touch the thong under his shirt where he wore his medicine pouch next to my Abeula’s medallion, and wondered just what he was thinking about now. His wife? My mother? His ancestors, who had been pushed off their land by more powerful invaders, fighting to keep the memory of who they’d been?

“We can’t go home,” Grandpa said. It was like he was talking just to me. “But we’ll find a way to bring home along with us, wherever we go. As long as we stick together, we haven’t lost everything.”

I met his gaze and nodded. I didn’t know what was coming in Phase Three, or where we’d go next, but side by side with my family — Sage, Grandpa, and everyone else who had joined us in this fight — I was ready.

Ready to ride for the brand, one more time.

Team Twofeather will return in Space Rodeo 3: Let’s Shake Some (Moon) Dust!