I pressed the recall button on the harness, and it quickly sucked in the chute. At this point, repacking was not a concern. As the last of the fabric disappeared, I followed my helmet's guide and ran to the rendezvous point on the edge of the cleared area. As I did, I scanned the area in both standard and IR

views and also tuned in for a last listen to the harness.

"Who's the machine?" It was practically screaming, even though it thought nothing could hear it. "I am, oh yeah, that's right! I hit that mark, couldn't have been more on target. If untalented and uncoordinated here had been able to handle the tiny bit of energy I left for him, he could have stood tall on that spot and the others would have known just what kind of master had led them down. But, noooooo, he had to run forward and almost lose his balance. I'm glad there are no judges, because I'd hate to have his limitations ruin my reputation."

I smiled despite the ongoing insults. I can't help but like machines that don't merely like their work, because all machines are built to do that, but that love what they do, that are truly passionate about it. I admire the same passion in people.

I shrugged out of the harness and tossed it out of sight into the trees. Others had joined me and were doing the same.

I checked the tops of the trees around the clearing for IR beacons. None. Good. More team members coasted down, hit the ground, and vacated the area. I'd felt pretty good about my landing, but as I watched the others I had to admit that none of them moved as far off the target before recalling their chutes as I had. I hoped none of them had noticed my landing. I told the helmet to open and disengaged it from my suit. It was strictly a sport jump cover, not even a little armored, so it would be dead weight from here on. I engaged my contacts, and a heads-up display of the jungle ahead of me appeared in my left eye. Switching to IR, I scanned the area and counted eleven people.

The last three landed in the clearing and headed toward the rest of us.

When they'd reached us and tossed their harnesses into the jungle with the others, we spread into our ground formation, staying in groups of three, each one making sure we had three-sixty coverage and could easily see one another.

I motioned everyone to stay still. We weren't in a rush, so we could afford to take a few minutes to calm ourselves and, more importantly, to focus on the world around us. Each environment possesses its own background sounds and smells and sights, and being in tune with them can help you more quickly detect when something is wrong. I hoped for an uneventful approach to the complex, but we were better off being ready for bad things that never happened than assuming all would be well and being caught offguard. Even without turning to IR, I could see better and better as my eyes adjusted to the minimal light. The very thick canopy had resulted, as is usually the case, in sparse underbrush that peaked at about a meter and half in height. None of the thick, tall trees had branches below three meters, which gave us a reasonable line of sight in all directions. Birds chirped and sang now and again, their cries always brief. I couldn't see any animals, but that was to be expected; any smart creature would have run at the sounds of our landing and gathering. Plus, the hunters in this village had probably killed everything in the area worth eating. The night air was cool but humid, its smell fertile and rich and full of life. After two minutes, my vision was completely stable and we'd seen nothing at all alarming. We'd gotten all we could from this pause.

Time to work, I thought.

I motioned us forward into the jungle.

Chapter 23

In the jungle not far from the rebel complex, planet Tumani

I hated being a protected high-value asset in an operation, but because I was the primary contact for Lobo and one of the leads, Lim had insisted that I accept that role this time. So, as we moved forward, Black Two's three-person team took point and led us onward. Two was so short and wiry that from a distance he looked no different than the children we were here to rescue. Up close, though, you couldn't help but focus on his eyes, which never settled. He was a long way from childhood.

The jungle was dark enough that even with the light-enhancement feature of our contacts on high we sometimes had to slow to make sure we didn't bump into anything. Despite that issue, we averaged a good pace while constantly maintaining perimeter surveillance. We'd hoped to sustain a fast-walk speed but had allowed enough time in our schedule for far slower movement.

After thirty minutes of great progress, it looked like we could continue to advance at a good clip the rest of the way and arrive quite a bit early.

I should have realized it wouldn't be that easy.

"Four three-person squads have left the complex," Lobo said in a burst to all our comms, "one from each of its sides. Heading into the jungle. Risk regular communication?"

Per our plan, at the first communication from Lobo, Black Two held up his hand, and we all stopped. Lobo was the only ship in the area, the others having already headed back to the hangars. He stayed because he could both do a good job of hiding himself and also detect and get out of potential trouble quickly. He was thus the only source we had for data on what was happening at the complex. If we didn't stay in touch with him, we couldn't receive real-time updates and so would not know exactly where these enemy patrols were. If we did maintain our link, and if the rebels were monitoring comm transmissions at all carefully, they'd spot our traffic.

I'd hoped the combination of the cease-fire and the relatively small number of adult troops in the complex would lead the rebels to stay close to home and not send out patrols, but I wasn't surprised at their actions. In their shoes, I would have kept teams in the forest near the complex at all times, just because it was a smart policy.

I recorded a message for Lobo. "Not yet. At two-minute intervals, send us your course projections for the rebels and where you estimate they'll be. Correct as necessary with bursts. Take each of our teams straight to those squads." I started to send the message but added, "Can you tell if any of them are children?" I triggered the comm, which shot my recording as encrypted data upward to Lobo and, via a very quick, low-power IR transmission, relayed it to receptors on the others in the unit. Lobo would relay my response to Lim and wait for her final decision.

A little over a minute later, another burst hit our comms. Two course projections appeared on my left contact: ours in a faint black, and the path of the enemy trio closest to us in red.

"Command agrees to your plan," Lobo said. "Neutralize your rebel squad as silently as possible. All twelve enemies outside the complex show adult-sized IR readings. Respond only if you have issues." Black Two looked over his shoulder at me.

I waved him in.

When we were so close we were almost touching, I whispered, "Hold our formation until we're half a klick away. Once we are, spread, flank them, and take them when they pass our front edge. Knives?" We couldn't make our guns completely silent, but our shots would probably be quiet enough that no one in the complex would hear us. Probably. I didn't like relying on probably when we had other options, however, because soon enough we wouldn't. Working so close that we could use knives carried its own risks, including that one of the rebels would get off a shot, but with two of us taking down each one of them, it seemed the safer plan.

Black Two nodded and sent a local IR transmission. "Six of us on them, one pair per, one hits, one silences and cuts. Smooth and silent. I'm on right; Black Three's on left. His hit; mine cut. Center trio: monitors in sights and fire—suppressed—if we fail."

I gave him a thumbs-up and whispered, "Put Black Four's trio on center. Mine'll back hers from the right." Lim would have vetoed any plan that put me in the direct line of fire of the enemy squad, so rather than put Black Two in an awkward position by trying to buck her, I followed her orders. Black Two returned to his trio and motioned us forward, but at a much slower, quieter pace. Now that I knew an enemy might hear us, every footfall, every brush with a branch, every long exhalation of breath sounded loud. Our contacts showed us and the enemy squad drawing closer and closer. When it looked like the gap between us was a little under a klick, a comm burst from Lobo hit us.

"Update. They sped up and are closer."

The overlay in my contact changed to show us less than half a klick apart.

Black Two and I held up our right hands at the same time, him correctly and me by habit. He motioned us to spread. We did. When we were a few meters on either side of the path Lobo showed them as taking, we adjusted so neither side was in the other's line of fire and dropped to the ground. No side trio should be shooting, but there was no point in taking any unnecessary chances.

On my contact, the dots representing the enemy trio moved ever closer.

We could hear them now, walking toward us as if they owned the jungle, as if nothing here could hurt them.

Black Two signaled us to move to our knife attack positions.

I didn't see what the other trios did, because I focused completely on hitting my mark silently. My and the other rear group stepped behind trees that would offer some protection if we ended up shooting. We lowered ourselves onto the ground. I readied my weapon and checked the rest of the team; we were good to go. I hoped we didn't have to fire, but if somehow any of the rebels made it past our other nine, their luck would run out with us.

I switched to IR and strained to see as far as possible. I could barely make out three warm shapes moving in and out of view.

I returned to normal vision and focused on breathing. The already warm, damp air had turned thick and hard to breathe, a sure sign my body was amping for battle. I inhaled slowly through my nose, counted to thirty, and exhaled just as slowly. Another full thirty count, through my nostrils. Part of my mind knew I was almost certainly going to end up being a spectator, but I'd spent enough time fighting in situations like this one that most of me was readying itself to have to kill or run.

The three rebels appeared in full view about fifteen meters in front of me. They were talking and chuckling and had their rifles slung over their shoulders.

They walked closer.

Dark shapes rose from the ground behind them and accelerated toward them. So quickly I couldn't make out all the actions in the dark, our six hit them both low and high, controlling their arms and their mouths so only murmurs escaped. The three clumps of bodies disappeared onto the ground. I aimed at the air above them, just in case.

One mass separated itself from the rest and stood. Black Two. He signaled "all well" and motioned us toward him. Black Four, a thick woman barely taller than Black Two and the color of wet sand, led her covering trio in first. The rest of us followed.

The three rebels were facedown on the forest floor. The stench of their blood and deaths hit us before we reached them. Black Three, a huge man taller than I am and nearly half again my weight, threw away their rifles, patted them for additional weapons, and rolled them over. He searched each of them for comms and found only a single small in-ear unit. Either they really were relying on very limited tech, or we had missed something, but we couldn't afford more time to figure out which it was. At some point, they would fail to check in, and our risks would go way up. We had to hope they were evening patrols reporting only hourly or possibly, given the late hour, less often. If not, well, we'd deal with that problem when it hit us.

Black Three finished and backed away.

In the dim light and the shadows we all cast as we stared at them, the dead men appeared to have second mouths, their upper, original ones small, the new, lower ones wide and large. A few of our squad stepped off, and a bit of moonlight hit the face of one of the dead. He was just a kid, a tall one, less than a head shorter than I am, but with no trace of facial hair.

Unless you're completely lost, all traces of your humanity buried under the psychic residue of repeated violence, there's a moment after a fight when you first see what you've done that you're tempted to react normally, with horror and revulsion and sorrow and an aching sense of how wrong it all is. If you let yourself fully experience that moment, you will not be able to go on, and those around you, those who are counting on you, will pay for your weakness. Yes, the weakness is a healthy, normal reaction, a completely human one, but in those times of violence you cannot be normal, and you certainly cannot be fully human. So you make a joke or perform a necessary task, and you go on about your business, which in those times is almost always the business of more violence.

I stared at the dead young man and knew I could not let myself dwell on his death or that of the two other rebels on the ground. He was an armed enemy, we'd had no way to know he was younger than the others, and we'd done our job. He would have shot us if he had a chance.

Satisfied that the job was over, Black Three rolled the corpses back onto their stomachs so the ground could absorb more of their blood. We all detoured around them, none of us wanting to get blood on our boots and end up leaving easy-to-follow trails.

"Leave or bury?" Black Three said, looking at me.

"Cover as you can," I said, "but as soon as we hear from the others, we leave. We're still a little ahead of schedule. Let's keep it that way."

Black Two formed up the rest of us while Black Three's team used underbrush to hide the bodies. I recorded a message for Lobo and Lim. "Black Team done. Area clean. Will proceed on your command." I triggered the comm burst.

While I waited for Lobo to respond, I strained to listen and see as deeply into the surrounding forest as I could. Birds still sang occasionally. Leaves still rustled. A few minutes ago, those three men—those two men and that boy—had been alive, and now they were not, yet nothing in the world seemed different for the loss. Somewhere, sometime in the future, someone, maybe several people, would learn of these deaths, and their worlds would forever be changed, but not any of us in this forest, not on this night. Here, all was as if nothing had happened.

We held our positions in silence for five minutes, living ghosts standing above the dead. A comm from Lobo arrived. "All clear. No casualties. Resume and wait at target point for confirmation that all are ready to proceed." After a few seconds of quiet, his voice continued. "This part is encrypted for you only, Jon, in the spirit of minimizing the knowledge of others about what I can do. I'm now set to jam everything in this area that isn't coming from one of our frequencies. Right now, the complex is silent, but when the rebels realize their patrols are down, they may try to call for help. If so, I'll tell you. If they decide to handle the problem locally and non-electronically, however, I won't have any way to monitor them. You almost certainly already know this, but, as you like to say to me, just in case you don't: Assume the rebels back at the complex are aware you're coming. Out." He was right: I did know to do that, but I also didn't object to the reminder. I glanced at Black Two, who was watching me and waiting for my signal. He nodded in my direction, and I nodded back. He faced front and gave the go sign.

We moved forward in the night, death now behind us, more death possibly ahead of us, and though no one spoke, we were all glad that we were the ones still walking.

When we were ten meters from the tree line and could see the complex, we stopped and took a twominute break. We'd yet to hear from Lobo, so we were probably the first to reach our marks. Everyone drank a little and took turns resting on the forest floor. I triggered the preset "in position" comm burst to Lobo and indicated we'd suffered no losses or injuries.

No one shot at us. No one in the complex gave any sign that they knew we were there. Because Lobo hadn't called, we could safely assume no more patrols had exited it.

I motioned to the team leaders; it was time to set up.

Black Five, a tall thin man with the look and bearing of a high-ranking bureaucrat, fanned out his trio in front of us. They took positions on the ground, rifles at the ready, scanning the complex in case anyone came after us. With Lobo watching from above, we might have been able to do without our own guards, but I preferred redundant protections whenever possible.

Black Four and her two teammates covered the rear and flanks, all of them on the ground, one watching in each direction.

The other two guys in my trio set up the gas grenade launchers. Like the teams attacking from the other corners, we had brought five of these small but powerful devices, each capable of quickly firing ten small balls that would explode at various heights inside the complex. Two hundred gas grenades all hitting within a minute of each other was probably overkill, but we were using local ordnance, so we couldn't trust them all to detonate. Even if the did, we'd rather risk tranking the rebels for too long—or, if any of them were sick, possibly even killing a few—than leave resistance alive inside and have to shoot them. That would kill them for sure. We'd trigger the launchers remotely, because we also couldn't be positive they wouldn't explode on us or fail to operate. I'd trust milspec gear I'd test-fired and understood, but this gear represented more risk than I liked.

Black Two and Black Three had the most difficult jobs: readying the trees. As soon as the grenades exploded in the complex, we had to take off across the cleared zone. To do that safely, we had to remotely set off any traps that were waiting for us there. We knew from Lobo's scans and long-range photos that we weren't facing surface weapons, but what lurked under the ground was anyone's guess. Lobo couldn't detect any obvious IR signatures, but cheap mines or devices as crude as spiked branches on tripwires wouldn't leave any telltale signs he could detect from so far away.

Dropping half a dozen large trees on that area, on the other hand, would both trigger everything in front of us and provide a solid, if rough, platform we could use to run to the complex. The tricky and thus time-consuming part of the operation was making sure we hit the ground with the right length of each tree. The trees here ran from a meter and a half to about two meters in diameter, so we'd be crashing a lot of weight onto the booby-trapped zone. If we hit it with a tree section that was too long, we could trash part of the wall of the complex or possibly even kill anyone standing or sleeping too near it. We would need the walls to hold in the rebels once we took over, and we didn't want to kill anyone, so running long was bad. On the other hand, if we cut and dropped too short a piece, we'd have to waste time clearing the remaining open ground, and that delay would leave us all exposed. So, short was even worse. We had to get it just right.

Each of the six people on the tree teams carried logging sensors and line-of-sight measurers, and they were busy using those devices now. Each picked a tree, took measurements of both it and the distance to the complex, and used the sensor's computer to figure the cut point. The real work was climbing the tree and attaching the cutting tapes to that point. They had gecko shoes and gloves and were good at what they did, and the trunks were wavy and full of good handholds and easy to manage with that gear, but it was dark and time was short and so everyone was hustling.

Black Two scrambled up the tree as if born to climb. He paused a few times to point at Black Three and shake his head. I could see why: Black Three moved like a great beast clawing his way upward. I felt guilty for having so little to do. The evening air was cool enough that I was sweating only moderately as the humidity took its toll; the working teams had to be soaked. I walked among the tree and launcher teams, checking their work, listening for bursts from Lobo, and generally being useless. We'd agreed not to give the commanders specific duties and instead to train them as backups for everything, in case anything went wrong, but our unit was intact and so I was unnecessary. I hated it. I wanted to help, but I also knew that interfering would be both insulting to my squad mates and a sure way to slow them.

"All present," said the comm burst from Lobo. "No dead, two casualties, all operational. Stick to plan." I checked the mission timer in my right contact. We had eighty-eight minutes to launch time, which would be three hours before sunrise, when everyone in the complex except late-night security patrols should be sleeping their deepest. We'd finish early, but even if the others had just arrived, they should be able to meet this schedule.

I inspected the inside of our perimeter. The outward-facing guards were in position and watchful, no one talking or sleeping or messing around. None of them had signaled the alarm, and Lobo hadn't sent us any alerts, so as best we could tell, we remained undetected.

All the launchers were on their marks. The two guys from my trio were loading the first one. The six on the trees were nearing their marks. Most of the climbers were only five or six meters off the ground, but one was twice that high, and another was two meters higher still. The trees were tall enough that we'd known we'd have to cut them at points fairly far off the ground, but it was still odd to see these people moving up the sides of the trunks, transforming from humans into dark shapes that blended with the jungle night and, when they were high enough, faded to invisibility.

I returned to my central observation point and checked the time again.

Eighty-two minutes before we went hot.

Chapter 24

In the jungle right outside the rebel complex, planet Tumani

Two minutes to go.

A burst from Lobo blasted through my comm. "All green," he said. "On the schedule." I checked our positions one last time. All five trios had formed up outside our previous perimeter, behind and to the side of the target trees and the launchers. Most of us were on the safe side of the action in shallow holes we'd scraped with the spare minutes available to us. If a trunk fell the wrong way or a launcher blew up or anything else went wrong, we wanted to be as far away and as protected as we could be without unreasonably slowing our assault.

Per our plan, I activated the comms of our whole team. This close, even if the rebels detected the transmissions, it would be too late for them to retaliate. From the darkness around me I heard the soft snick of helmets closing and locking out the world. I shut mine, and all I could hear was my own breathing and my pulse pounding in my ears. When we set off the launchers and cut down the tree sections, the sounds would be deafening if we didn't protect ourselves. The helmets would also, of course, filter the gas, though as an added precaution we'd all taken an antidote before we'd left the hangar. One minute.

"Like we planned it," I said to the team. "Helmets locked, stay on comms, go crisp and easy, remain on the trees throughout your approach, hope not to have to shoot. I want everyone standing at the end. Go on the mark." They knew all of those things, of course, but the review was as close to a pep talk as I could manage with people I didn't know.

Fifteen seconds.

I checked the sky over the complex to make sure no one had gone earlier; all clear. I focused on our launchers.

Ten.

I took a deep breath and twisted my head a bit to relax my neck and shoulders. Five.

One.

The launchers shook slightly as they fired the gas grenades. The mission timer on my contact changed direction and counted upward. The grenades shot into the air every three seconds, so for half a minute I watched, the world eerily silent thanks to the helmet, as we filled our sector of the complex with gas. I glanced at the huge wall across the clearing, but it was still dark enough and the gas was heavy enough that I couldn't see any of it in the air above the buildings.

At forty-five seconds, the top of the first tree began its descent. It was big enough and encountered enough resistance from the branches of the others in front of it that its fall was initially slow, almost stately, like a drunk gentleman lowering himself into his own bed. The tree section accelerated as it crashed through the last of the branches in its path, slammed onto the ground, bounced, and settled. Dirt and rock and wood chunks flew through the air. Between the darkness and the amount of debris the tree's crash had caused, I couldn't tell whether we'd set off any mines.

A second tree hit the ground. While focusing on the first and its aftermath, I'd missed this one's descent. It lay three or four meters to the left of the earlier one. This time, the air near the tree flashed orange-white for several seconds; we'd definitely triggered something. Flying fragments moving too fast for me to see cut through the branches and underbrush in front of us.

Another tree fell between the first two. More dirt, more branches, more flashes of light, one of them a meter or so inside the jungle from the cleared area. I was glad we'd stayed way back. A fourth landed and notched into place between the third and the second as if we were building a floor with trunk-size planks. It caused fewer flashes than the third, but this time something nicked into the tree closest to me and leaves rained all over me. Sweat made the wicking fabric in my uniform work harder; I hated being a passive observer in a fixed position with explosions in front of me. The fifth didn't hit its mark as well as we'd hoped. It ended up stretched across part of the central third tree and a section of the first one, but that was acceptable; we'd dropped so many to make sure we had multiple pathways to the goal.

The sixth and last tree landed to the right of the first, almost touching it at the cut end near us, a couple of meters apart from that earlier tree at the complex wall. This one triggered a long chain of flashes; the rebels had been lazy and planted a bunch of mines on a diagonal we'd accidentally hit.

"No significant damage to the complex from your trees," Lobo said, the comm now live and going to all of us.

We were up and running toward them as he continued, our helmets' night-vision displays activated.

"Take the leftmost two; their branches reach all the way to the wall." We reached those downed trees. Black Two and Black Three led their teams onto the left and right downed trunks, respectively. Black Two swung onto the tree, crouched, pulled his rifle to the ready, and moved forward three meters to make room for the other two. Black Four's and Black Five's teams followed them but stopped in the shadow of the trees, pulled their rifles, and scanned the complex, ready to provide covering fire should anyone try to shoot their squad-mates on the trees. The six on the trunks kept a meter between each of them as they walked quickly but carefully across the downed trunks. They slowed when they reached the thick branches that ran the last several meters to the complex's outer wall. They dropped and crawled the rest of the distance, descending into the thick, fallen canopy and out of our sight as they drew closer to the wall.

As soon as those first six were out of sight, the guard trios ascended the trees and my three advanced to provide covering fire. The other two covered the outer, leftmost tree; I took the right one. I could feel the rough texture of the bark through the thin gloves. We'd had no way to drill this process, but everyone here was a pro, and the passage continued to proceed smoothly.

"At the wall," Black Two said. "Preparing entrance."

The six now on the trees picked up their pace, eager to be in position for the breach of the wall.

"Switch to twenty-five-percent audio," Lobo said over our comms. "Maintain gas protection." Sound leaked through the helmet's filters. Even though it was only the faintest whispers of the scraping of boots on trees and the rush of air through branches, it was a welcome taste of the audible world. A few seconds later, a loud boom broke the quiet. Four louder explosions followed it.

"Entrance open and additional gas away," Black Two said. "Holding for cover teams." As the sound of our blasts faded, much quieter rumbles filled the air. The teams at the other corners of the complex were doing their work, but I didn't pay any attention to them. My job was here; Lim would relay new orders through Lobo if she needed us elsewhere.

"At the wall," Black Four said, "and giving cover. Come on over."

"No hostile contact," Black two said, "as per plan." Though everyone inside should be unconscious, he was to hold his position until we were all there and ready to go.

The three of us on my team shouldered our weapons, climbed onto the trunks, and started across, our focus on the wood below our feet. It wasn't a bad surface, but I didn't want to be the first to slip, so I moved carefully. The canopy was denser than I'd thought: Almost immediately after hitting it, I had to climb down and crawl along one of the thicker branches. The ones who'd gone before me had left an easy to follow trail of bent and broken smaller branches, so I made good progress and was quickly in sight of the wall. I followed the path of the others down to the ground and stepped in their footprints. The others remained in position near the entrance.

"Still no signs of movement in the open areas," Lobo said. "Reminder: I can't read IR signatures through the roofs of the corner guard buildings. Proceed with caution."

If this had been a normal mission, we'd have addressed that limitation by blowing up those four structures, or at least shooting enough rounds into them to kill anyone inside. Here, though, we couldn't be sure where kids might be, so we had to clear each building and capture all the hostiles. We also didn't want to lose any of our team, so we were carrying live rounds, not tranks. I hoped we didn't have to use them.

Gunfire sounded in the distance. Either some rebels had avoided the gas, or someone on our side had gotten too excited. Either way, not my problem, not right then.

"Go," I said.

Black Two and Black Three lead their trios through the entrance in alternation, Black Two's group going right, Black Three's heading left. The teams moved like their leaders: Black Two's in quick, staccato motions, Black Three's slowly and carefully.

The rest of us took up positions on either side of the entrance and at different heights and aimed our rifles toward the guard building.

The six on point rushed to the left and right edges of the building, staying low as they ran, and leaned against the walls as soon as they reached them.

We could spot no sign of activity in the guard building.

"Black Team!" Lobo said. "Roof!"

We were sloppy to need the warning, so focused on dealing with the possibility of people being awake inside the building that we hadn't checked its roof. I glanced up in time to see a man, his silhouette barely visible against the night sky, crawling along the peak of the roof. Another's torso emerged from an access hatch. Both appeared to be wearing masks.

Our six at the building flattened themselves further against the walls.

"Four," I said, "on my mark. Two and Three, enter on same. Go." Black Four's led her team inside and opened fire, each of them squeezing off a short burst. The men on the roof twitched from multiple impacts and stopped moving. One of them hung partway out of the hatch. At the same time, the six of us at the building ran to the door facing us and kicked it open. We cleared to the sides as soon as it started to move.

Gunfire sounded from within.

Our teams pulled back.

Black Five dropped to the ground, crawled forward until he could aim through the opening, and squeezed off three short bursts. He lifted his fist, then his thumb.

His teammates headed in, one on his left and one on his right. He stood and followed them.

"Inside clear," Black Five said. "One down, one unconscious and now secure."

"Roof clear," Black Four said. "Two hostiles down."

"Black Team," Lobo said, "no external motion in your quadrant." Black Four fanned out her team so they could guard the other three sides of the building's exterior. I had my helmet display a map of the six remaining buildings we were responsible for securing. Three were small, structures we'd guessed held supplies or quarters for senior staff. Three were almost certainly barracks for kids. We'd clear the small ones first, and then we'd secure the barracks.

"Let's go visiting," I said over the comm.

Chapter 25

In the rebel complex, planet Tumani

The smaller buildings housed only sleeping guards, their open windows perfect entrances for the gas. We secured all of the people and left them where they slept; we'd round them up later, after we'd cleared the rest of our area.

Windows were also open all along the side of the first dorm we approached, so we peeked through them to verify that no one was moving. The third or so of the beds that we could see were occupied, and all the occupants appeared to be asleep. I considered trying to save time by sending in one trio to secure the kids and taking the rest of our unit to the next dorm, but I rejected the notion: Sloppy work way too often proves to be its own reward.

Instead, we went in properly, Black Two slithering in first. He and his team quickly verified that the main area was indeed secure, every kid in it asleep, but it wasn't the only room: The space also contained a pair of large closets, one at either end, and a bathroom that ran two-thirds of the way across the rear. Black Three's team joined to provide cover fire if necessary as Black Two's cleared those three rooms. I doubted a single person in either trio believed they were going to encounter resistance, but they did their jobs properly and precisely; they were pros.

The front closet was empty. So was the rear.

As they worked, the rest of us fanned out in the main area and secured the sleeping kids with ties on their hands and feet. The gas must have hit them hard, because none of them even stirred. Black Two, standing well to the side of the bathroom entrance, knocked on its door. A shot blasted a hole right where his hand had touched the wood. The sound echoed despite the open windows. Two more shots followed the first blast.

Black Two motioned to Black Three to return fire.

The big man raised his rifle.

"Hold," I said over the comm. "Black Five, check for other exits from the bathroom." That trio ran out of the barracks.

"We're on a schedule," Lobo said to me privately. "You need to deal with this quickly." I ignored him.

"Black Two and Three, force open the door, toss in gas, and keep your teams to the sides." The two trios spread along the bathroom wall. Black Two pulled a small charge from his pack and stuck it to the door's handle.

Ten seconds later, it blew with a loud pop. T

The door flew inward.

Black Three stooped and rolled in a gas grenade.

Two more shots from inside the room smacked into the wall at the opposite end of the barracks. Five seconds later, a small, thin boy ran out of the smoke, a damp rag tied over his nose and mouth. He carried his rifle like a club and swung it to the left as he cleared the doorway.

Black Three grabbed the weapon at the same time Black Two caught the boy's arm. The kid let go and tried to spin free, but Black Two maintained his grip on the kid.

"Government assassins!" the boy said. Black Two looked to me for instructions, so the boy stared at me, too. "You can't mess with Bony, no, not with me. I'll show you."

I pointed to the bathroom.

Black Two nodded and pulled the rag away from the boy's face.

The kid kicked and screamed, wordless animal sounds ripping out of his throat. Black Three picked up the boy and carried him into the bathroom as easily as if he was a sleeping baby.

"You'll see!" the boy said. He coughed several times. "You'll see." His voice trailed off. Black Three reappeared a few seconds later, the unconscious boy looking even tinier cradled in his arms.

"Tough, clever little bugger," he said. "You gotta give 'im that." He set the kid on first empty bunk. The boy didn't come close to filling the small bed. Maybe a meter and a half tall, with short hair, a body so thin it might have been composed of sticks, and skin as dark as the bark of the trees we'd create our path over the mines, he looked like a starving child, not a soldier.

Black Three shook his head. He secured the kid's hands and feet anyway.

I stared at the child, at all the other bound and sleeping boys in the barracks, and helpless rage rose in me, fury that made me want to kill those who had turned these children into fighters and the leaders who had decided that doing so was a good idea.

"Bathroom clear," Black Two said.

I nodded, shoved down the rage, and headed out of the barracks. We weren't done. "Two more to go," I said. "Move out."

The first stains of daylight were oozing along the horizon when Lobo touched down in a large landing area near the center of the complex. As my body consumed the last dregs of adrenaline, aches and fatigue flooded through me. The nanomachines would remedy the pains soon enough, but in that moment they seemed appropriate, even necessary; violence should never come without cost. Lim, Gustafson, Schmidt, and I walked inside Lobo through a side hatch he'd opened. Sweat had carved small trails in the dirt on their faces. They moved stiffly, as if they were ancient. I wondered if I appeared to be in equally bad shape.

"You all look like hell," Lobo said privately, "particularly you, and you smell worse." So much for that question. "Thanks," I subvocalized.

Small currents of air played across my neck; Lobo was dealing with the odor. "It's so much harder," he said, "being human than it is being me."

We stood in his front. I could have asked him to bring out couches, but I was afraid I might fall asleep if I relaxed.

"Five casualties for us," Lim said, "but no fatalities, and all the injured should recover fully. Not bad."

"But also not what we dreamed," Gustafson said, "though it never is."

"Half a dozen hostiles dead," Lim said, as if she hadn't heard him, "and another eleven shot, including two boys. Don't know if they'll make it."

None of us had anything to say to that. No one had wanted to shoot any of the children, but we'd all had to defend ourselves. I was glad Black squad hadn't shot any of them, but I couldn't take credit for that; we'd just been lucky.

"A Tumani unit is inbound," Lim said. "I've spoken to their commander, and they're honoring our deal: They'll make camp in the trees around the perimeter and hope the rebels come back. They'll also take away our adult prisoners. The children and the complex are ours."

"The rest of our people?" Schmidt said.

"Also inbound," Lim said. "Two more small ships have cleared the jump gates since we started, so we should get seventy-five more people. A few more may join us later, but that's basically it." I hadn't been part of the planning for the follow-on reintegration work, because my job ended when we controlled the complex. "The kids will outnumber you four to one," I said. Schmidt shrugged. "We're not here to fight them; we're here to help them. I know our numbers aren't ideal for reintegration, but they also aren't horrible. Besides, group counseling is common."

"More to the point," Gustafson said, "it's the best we can do."

"I understand your intentions and plans," I said, "and I obviously support them. But what do you do if the boys want to fight you?"

"What do you think?" Schmidt said, her voice strained. "We know this isn't perfect. We know we can't plan for everything. We know we probably won't save them all. But we'll do what we can. We'll do everything we can to avoid conflict, and if it comes, we'll deal with it—and try to teach them that they no longer have to fight."

I'd never found that lesson to be true, never experienced more than a year or so without a battle of some kind, but whether the violence found me or I sought it was something I've never really understood. Before I could upset Schmidt further, Gustafson put his hand on her shoulder, stared at me, and said,

"Look, Gunny, you should understand by now that we know what're doing. Teams are already locating and securing every weapon in the place. Others are clearing the felled trees and repairing the damage we did to the four entry points. We won't finish all the work tonight, but even with the assault group sleeping in shifts, we should have the place secure within a day. The kids should remain unconscious for at least another four hours. When they're all awake, we'll explain the situation to them." He patted Schmidt's shoulder lightly. "The rest will be up to the counselors."

"And when we've proven to the kids that fighting is behind them," Schmidt said, "the real work will begin."

Lim and Gustafson nodded their agreement.

"Jon," Lobo said to me privately over the machine frequency, "why are you provoking arguments? Our role in this is over. Let's go."

He was right. I'd done what I'd promised, Lobo had delivered on his end, and the operation had gone as well as anyone had a right to expect. I could fight, but I couldn't help now that the attack was over; I knew nothing about teaching children how to live after fighting. No one had ever taught me. I couldn't even really believe in a life without fighting.

I held up my hands. "I didn't mean to criticize. I'm sorry. I think it's time for me to call it a night."

"I know you're tired," Lim said. "We all are. I'd like one more thing, though."

"What?" I hoped my voice didn't sound as angry to her as it did to me.

"Would you be willing," she said, "to wait here and watch for trouble until the rest of our ships arrive? I don't expect any rebel attacks, and the window of exposure is only four hours, but I'd just as soon play it safe."

I stared at her. She couldn't be concerned about the rebels; they had no ships that could pose any problems for her team. She had to be worried about the government double-crossing her.

"You need to sleep," Lobo said privately, "but I've got nothing better to do. It's not like I can rest"

"Sure," I said to Lim, "I'd be happy to do it."

"I wouldn't go that far," Lobo said.

Lim nodded and headed out of Lobo. Gustafson and Schmidt followed her. I trailed them. At the hatch, Lim paused and turned to face me.

"This is where you always make your exit, Jon," she said, "and I understand that. It's what people like us do. It's what I usually do. Don't you ever wonder, though, what happens to the messes we leave behind?" Anger flushed my face. I'd done what I'd said I'd do. I'd kept up my end of the deal. "What right—"

"I'm sorry," she said, interrupting me. She rubbed her eyes. "That was uncalled for. I appreciate your help. We couldn't have done it without you." She stepped out of Lobo, turned, and vanished. Gustafson glanced back at me and nodded. "Gunny."

"Top," I said.

Without looking at me, Schmidt said, "Thanks."

I nodded in acknowledgment even though she couldn't see me.

The two of them left.

Lobo sealed the hatch behind them.

I stared at the blank wall and thought about what Lim had said. When the fighting was over and the mission was complete, I did leave, but it was always what everyone wanted me to do. People needed me—needed us, Lobo and me and others like us—to fix their problems, to do the dirty work they wouldn't do, but when we were done, they wanted us to go somewhere else. Our skills, our abilities, even our willingness to do those jobs made us unwelcome when the fighting was over. I turned and headed for my quarters. "Thank you for agreeing to watch the skies," I said aloud to Lobo.

"I'm going to sleep."

Chapter 26

Dump Island, planet Pinkelponker - 139 years earlier

Light was fleeing the purpling sky and still Benny would not let us rest. The heat of the day hung on as if fighting to survive. The air squatted on us, wet and thick and so heavy that every movement was a struggle. Sand coated my shirtless body and ran in sweat streams down my chest and back and arms. My right hand and wrist and forearm ached from gripping the knife and practicing with dummies stuffed with dirt and grass and the thick branches that Bob wielded like clubs.

"They'll have rifles," Benny said, his voice hoarse, "and we'll have only knives. We've got to be good with what we have."

I circled Bob, looking for an in, watching the branch. If I could stab the grass-filled sack he was wearing like a shirt, I would win that round. I jabbed, but he danced back and avoided any contact. He swatted with the branch a second later, but I had already slipped out of range; he was definitely slowing. I advanced, tempting him to close the distance.

Something slammed into my forearm.

I yelped with pain and dropped the knife. I glanced in the direction of the blow and saw Alex preparing to hit me again with a branch thicker than my forearm.

Something smashed into my left shoulder.

I stumbled. I'd forgotten Bob!

"What?" I yelled. "It wasn't supposed—"

A weight landed on my back.

I fell forward onto my hands and knees. I turned in time to see Bob and Alex diving for my arms. Scaly arms wrapped around my throat and started choking me.

Something pulled on my legs.

I hit the ground face-first. I turned my head in time to avoid hurting my nose, but I breathed in dirt and couldn't see clearly. I pushed off hard with my left hand and managed to roll onto my back. I pushed down with my body and tried to lift my head to butt it backward into Han's nose. Bob and Alex leapt on me and locked down my arms and grabbed my head so I couldn't hurt Han.

I screamed and thrashed in rage, but they all held on, Han slowing my air supply even though I tucked my chin as Benny had taught us.

I heard the sound of Benny's cart rolling in the sand. He came into view over my left shoulder. His right arm flipper gripped my knife. He brought it down on my face and eased it between Han's arm and the underside of my chin.

I felt the sharp blade and stopped moving; I'd seen how easily it could cut.

"You screwed up," Benny said, "several times. First, you didn't watch for other threats. When they came, you forgot how to handle them. Finally, you lost your temper." He shook his head. "You know better. I've taught you better."

I tried to respond, but I couldn't get enough air to speak clearly.

"Han," Benny said, "let him talk."

Han relaxed but did not release his grip on my neck.

"That's not fair," I said. My voice didn't sound right. I coughed a few times but couldn't clear my throat.

"We weren't doing that sort of practice."

"Fair?" Benny said. He leaned closer to me. "Haven't you been listening? What's so hard to understand?

Nothing about our situation is fair. Not this island, not my body, not the way we were born, nothing. And the soldiers who guard the shuttle definitely won't worry about being fair. We won't know for sure how they'll react, and they won't follow any plan of ours or any rules. If they have to, maybe even if they simply feel like it, they'll kill every single one of us who attacks them."

"But you don't make these attacks on any of the other people." I said. I realized I was crying. Alex and Bob looked away, but they didn't release my arms.

"Don't you cry!" Benny said. "I've told you before: Don't you ever cry. You don't get to cry. No one else goes through these drills because no one else can. You can. You have to lead the attack. You have to be ready for anything, because you're the best we have. So, you'll keep doing the drills and doing them and doing them until I say you're ready."

"I don't want to," I said. My cheeks were wet, but I couldn't stop myself, couldn't stop the tears. "I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to."

Benny lifted the knife and tossed it away. He nodded, and Alex and Bob got off me. I rolled onto my side and hugged my knees to my chest.

Han wriggled out from under me.

Benny put his flipper on my shoulder, but I wouldn't look at him. "I don't want this," I said. "I never wanted any of this. I just want to be home, with Jennie, with everything the way it was."

"You can't have that," Benny said. "I'm sorry, I really am, but you can't."

"You can at least stop doing this to me. You can leave me alone."

"Look at me," he said.

I didn't move.

"Look at me."

He wouldn't stop until I did, so I turned onto my back and stared up at him.

"I will," he said, "if you tell me that's what you really want. But before you do, think about what I said: If we're ever to get off this island, it's going to be because you led the way, because you made it possible for us to beat the guards. You. We can't do it without you. You're the only one of us with a whole body and a whole mind."

"I'm just a kid," I said. For a moment, I remembered being treated like one, an oversized, too-old one, but a kid who Jennie always played with and treated like a kid. My time with her, only a couple of months ago, now seemed so far away.

"I know," Benny said, "and we can wait for you to get older if you want, but however long we delay, it's going to come down to you. The only way any of us wins is if you lead the fight and if you can beat the guards. For you to do that, you have to become a better fighter than they are—and you have to be ready for anything that can happen. You have to be tough, tougher than they are, and they're full-grown men with a great deal of training."

My nose was clogged from crying and the sand, so I blew it on my hands and wiped them on the ground.

"I never wanted to be tough," I said. "Jennie used to tell me I had a smart heart, and part of the reason is that I was always nice. The tough people I knew were mean a lot of the time."

"You can stay soft, and you can stay nice," Benny said, "but then you'll never leave Dump, and you'll never see your sister again."

I looked at the others. None of them would face me. I knew they liked me, and I didn't think any of them enjoyed the sneak attacks Benny made them launch at me, but still they did what he said. They wanted to escape from Dump, and they were willing to do whatever it took to make that happen. Even if that meant hurting me.

"I'm sorry," Benny said, his eyes glistening in the last of the daylight, "but if you want to leave here, you don't get to be a kid any longer. You have to learn to fight, to harden that heart, and to do whatever it takes, including killing those guards if it comes to that, or we'll all stay here until we die."

"It's not right," I said. "It's wrong of you to put so much on me. There has to be another way." He shook his head. "No, there's not, or if there is, I've missed it." He paused a few seconds. With a very low voice, barely louder than a whisper, he said, "Tell me what I've missed." I honestly believe he wanted me to show him another way.

I couldn't. I thought about the day the guards had dropped me on the island and how careful and strong they'd been. I looked at the others training with me. Benny was right: None of them could do it. None of them would even meet my gaze.

I shook my head slowly and sat up. I closed my eyes and thought about living here forever, about never seeing Jennie again, and the anger rushed into me. It came like a storm from the ocean bringing fresh drinking water, like hot food, giving me energy, feeding me, making me stronger. Making me harder.

I opened my eyes and looked at Benny. I slowly nodded my head, my arms trembling as the anger kept coming, as I flashed on the guards and the ship taking away Jennie and the men who'd dumped me here. I wanted to scream, to howl at the coming night like a hurt and cornered animal, but I didn't, because I might lose the anger, and I couldn't let myself do that, not yet, not then. Without it, all I had was pain and loss. I kept it in me, let it fill me but held it, and when I spoke, my voice was calm and, despite the heat in me, colder than I'd ever heard it.

"You're right," I said. "There's no other way." I hit the ground with both fists. "I will learn, and we will get off this island."

"Okay," Benny said, nodding his head. "Okay." He raised his voice. "That's enough for today." As he turned away from me, I'm sure I saw tears, but I didn't care. He didn't need to cry about anything. None of us did. Crying wouldn't help; I understood that now. Only the anger would save us.

Chapter 27

In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

I awoke drenched in sweat and still wearing the mission pants and shirt, my muscles straining, not moving as my body desperately fought the urge to leap up.

"How long?" I said as I stood.

"You've been asleep three hours and thirty minutes," Lobo said.

My body was fine; the nanomachines had done their work and healed me. Physically, despite the tightness and the tension, I was ready to go. Mentally, though, I was exhausted. I didn't remember dreaming, didn't recall anything from that short rest, but I felt like my mind had been racing the entire time. I walked out of my quarters. "Have all of Lim's ships arrived?"

"I don't know," Lobo said. "Several have, but I've heard nothing from her as to whether she's expecting more. You were sleeping, and no hostiles showed up, so I had no reason to contact her. Do you want me to do so now?"

"No need. What's going on out there?"

In response, a display appeared on the wall in front of me. Lim was standing on top of a small, one-story, flat-roofed building that faced a large open square in the middle of the compound. A crowd of boys paced and stood in front of her. More streamed from all angles into the group. In size, some of them appeared to be on the very cusp of manhood, while others didn't look much more than eight or nine years old. Their bodies rippled with lean, corded muscle and showed no fat. Most had passed thin and were verging on malnourished; many already had distended stomachs and shrunken, hollow faces. Their expressions showed the aging the fighting had wrought on them. None smiled. All scanned their surroundings constantly, their eyes flicking across the rifle-bearing guards who lounged against nearby buildings, trying hard to look nonchalant but not fooling anybody. The boys spoke in whispers and nods and gestures. Some stopped as if to check shoes almost none of them wore and instead palmed small stones. They thought they were clever. They thought they were fooling the guards. They weren't.

We all knew what they were doing. They were readying themselves to fight.

I could understand that. It's what they knew, what they did, all they'd done since the rebels had pressed them into service. They almost certainly thought they were fighting for the right side. Most soldiers do, regardless of their ages. I had, at their age, during my time on Dump. I'm still sure I was on the right side of that one. Not that it made any difference, not really, not in the damage that it did to me or that I did to others.

"I'm going outside to listen," I said.

"Why?" Lobo said. "I can contact Lim and find out if she still needs us. If she does, I can handle it, and you can sleep; you clearly need more. If she doesn't, we're done, as you told them, and we can leave." Even if I could have answered him completely honestly, even if I'd been willing to tell him about my past—and I wasn't, not yet, maybe not ever—I couldn't have explained the urge I felt. Staring at those lost boys, understanding them, having been one like them, feeling at times as if I were still one of them, I wanted to know what it was that Lim or Schmidt or Gustafson or anyone could ever say that would help, that would make one damn bit of difference to the dark dreams that would, if my experience was any guide, plague them forever. Maybe I also wanted to see that someone really was going to try to help them, because no one had even tried with me.

"I don't know," I finally said. "I just want to go. I'll be back."

"Of course," Lobo said. He opened a side hatch. "Where else would you go?" I smiled and stepped outside. From anyone else, the same comment might have infuriated me with its smugness, but that's not how Lobo meant it. I knew him well enough to be sure of that. He understood. We had each other and little else, maybe nothing else. That was okay. It was more than I'd had for many decades of my life.

Even though it was only mid-morning, the air was already thick and warm and clingy. As Lobo sealed himself behind me, I set out for the square. Boys were still coming from barracks behind the pad where Lobo rested. They swerved around me, watchful eyes on me, unconsciously and automatically staying more than an arm's length away. I was an enemy who had attacked in the night, and now they were heading to hear the terms of their occupation. They were acting sensibly; I'd have done the same. I reached the square and stayed on its edge, in the back with the guards. Lim, appearing tired but relaxed, surveyed the young mob.

I searched the perimeter until I found Schmidt, who was standing almost exactly opposite Lim. A group of four boys joined the larger group. Thirty seconds passed. No more appeared. Schmidt nodded.

"I'd thank you for coming," Lim said, her voice booming from speakers I couldn't see, "but we're going to try very hard not to lie to you, and thanking you for something we forced you to do is too close to a lie for my taste."

A few boys chuckled briefly but stopped at the angry looks from those near them. Lim had gotten their attention, though; the square was quiet save for the soft breeze, the construction sounds of the repairs at the corners of the complex, and the occasional short bird cry.

"You know you're prisoners," she said, "because we have armed guards, and we won't let you leave." At this, many of them began talking, mumbling, and shifting in place. Maybe they'd harbored other hopes, or perhaps the directness of Lim's approach wasn't working as well now as it had a moment before.

"What are you going to do with us?" a voice from the middle called.

"Help you," Lim said. "We're going to help you learn to deal with what's happened to you and live like normal kids again. When you're ready, we'll take you back to your families—or find new families for you, if yours are no longer—" she paused, as if she didn't want to finish her sentence "—alive."

"We don't want your help!" several boys simultaneously said.

"I understand," Lim said. "I believe that many of you, maybe even most of you, feel that way. You don't get a choice, though. I'm sorry, but you don't. Even if you don't believe it, you do need help."

"You killed our families!" a boy a few yards in front of me yelled in a voice I thought I recognized. Others all around the square began screaming, so many words coming at once that I couldn't make out most of them.

I shifted left a few steps so I could get a better view of the first speaker. He was the boy from the shower, the one who had attacked our team. For a few seconds, I couldn't recall his name—it hadn't seemed important at the time—and then it came to me: Bony. He'd called himself Bony. Lim crossed her arms and stood silently.

A few rocks smacked into the air in front of her and bounced off.

I moved a bit to my left and caught the profile of the thin, transparent shield in front of her. Smart. The boys quickly figured it out, too, because the rocks stopped flying.

"No fair," a voice somewhere near the center said.

At that, boys all over the square laughed, and the rest of the yelling died down.

"No," Lim said, "it's not fair, not at all. Since when was any of this fair? Did the men who trained you tell you that fighting was fair?" She looked slowly over the crowd of boys, as if daring each one to say she was wrong. "I thought not, because they were not stupid."

She had their full attention again. I was impressed. When I'd last seen her, she couldn't manage a meeting without losing control of her anger. Now, she was manipulating hundreds of boys—and keeping herself in check.

"No," she said again, this time shaking her head, "they were not stupid. Far from it. They were smart. They knew that if they worked you and addicted you and trained you and didn't feed you enough and didn't let you sleep that they could turn you from children into soldiers, soldiers they could command. And they did." This time, she nodded. "They did. They made you all soldiers."

"Damn right!" several voices said. Murmurs of agreement and even a few cheers swept through the boys. Lim held up her hands, and as if the assembled children were now under her command, they quickly feel silent. "That's all over now. You're not soldiers anymore."

"What?"

"No!"

"What do you mean?"

"Who are you to tell us what we are?"

"Wait until our brothers return!"

I couldn't keep track of who was saying what as a chorus of responses showered Lim. She remained silent until the cries faded away, the whole time appearing to be listening closely. When she spoke, her voice was firm but held no trace of anger. "The sooner you let me finish, the sooner you can return to your barracks. You can drown me out, but you can't out-wait me." She surveyed the crowd slowly, not challenging them, not angry, just stating a fact. When no one spoke, she nodded once and continued. "Thank you. Let me try to answer all those questions. What I mean is simple: Your days as soldiers are over. The rebels should never have—" she paused as a few shouts came from the boys and continued when they were quiet "—they should never have made you soldiers. You're children, and children should never be soldiers."

At this, the boys began yelling again.

In response, Lim fell quiet.

They went at it for almost fifteen minutes, different groups taking turns screaming, questions and insults and sexual suggestions coming in almost equal measures.

Lim stood silently. As far as I knew, she'd been up all night, and her temper was legendary, but she never wavered from her calm, flat affect.

When the area fell quiet once again, she continued as if they'd never interrupted her. "Your captors—and the rebels were always your captors, never really your brothers, for what big brother makes his little brother carry a weapon and fight in a war?—are not coming back. We have captured all of the ones who were stationed here. Government forces are in the jungle protecting this complex. It is ours."

"So you are the government?" a boy yelled.

"No," she said, "we are not. We are an independent group here to help you. Some of you asked who we were to tell you what you are and what you're going to do. All we are is a group of concerned adults who want to help you become kids again and have families again."

"You called our brothers our captors, but you have captured us!" the small boy, Bony, yelled at her.

"You're right," she said, nodding. "We are. We captured this complex and you because we could not think of any other way to free you. We're going to hold you here until you're ready to return to normal life and we have families ready to take you."

"This is my family!" Bony yelled. Others joined him, cheering for themselves, for each other.

"No," Lim said when they finally stopped. "You and the adults who commanded you are the only people you believe understand what you've been through, and so you all feel like you've become a family, but those adults were never your family. They used you, and when one of you failed or fell, they killed him and left him behind." She stopped and slowly scanned the crowd. "You know I'm telling the truth."

"They did what they had to do!" a boy yelled.

Lim shook her head. "No, no they didn't. They used you. What we are going to do is help each of you become ready for a real family, your old one or, if need be, a new one. All of us who are going to work with you have been in wars before, so we understand fighting and what it does to you. We can help you, and we will."

More jeers and taunts followed.

Again, Lim stayed silent until they stopped.

"For now, you may do whatever you want," she said, "with only two limitations: If we find you with a weapon, any weapon, we will take it away, and from this moment on, you will not have any more root."

"What?" The crowd hurled cries of frustration and disbelief at her.

"Your captors made you addicts," Lim said when they were all quiet, "so you have to eat root to feel right. When you don't eat it, you feel sick. We will give you drugs to help clean it out of your systems, so you can start to be yourselves again—and so you can sleep."

"Real warriors don't need to sleep!" one of the boys across the square from me yelled.

"That's right!"

"We fight while the weak sleep!"

"Root makes us strong! You're just afraid of us!"

"You want to poison us with your drugs!"

More rocks bounced off the shield in front of Lim.

She ignored them and stayed perfectly still, her arms at her sides, her gaze on the crowd. When the yelling finally stopped, she continued. "We've already destroyed all the root in the compound. You're done with it. Even with the medicine we'll give you, this will be hard. None of this is your fault, but the only way out of it is going to be rough. I'm sorry for that. I really am." She turned to go.

"Running away?" Bony yelled. "Afraid of us?"

Lim turned back to face them. She smiled slightly. "No, I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying here until we're done. You're stuck with me."

"Come down here and say that to my face," Bony yelled, puffing up his chest. Lim had a good third of a meter and many kilos on him, but the kid wasn't just posturing; he was ready to fight. I smiled despite my tension and fatigue. I had to admire his determination. I certainly understood his attitude.

Lim shook her head. "No," she said, "I won't. I won't fight you. None of this is your fault, and I won't punish you for it."

She turned and walked away, across the roof and down something I could not see. The boys stayed where they were for a few seconds before drifting away in packs of twos and threes and fours.

I watched them go and shook my head. I wondered if Lim and her counselors had any idea what they were facing. They'd all been in combat, but how many of them had been there as children? It was different, I knew it was, but I couldn't explain it to them without revealing more of my past than I would let anyone know.

A hand touched my left shoulder. I grabbed it, pulled forward and spun behind the body of the person who'd touched me. I relaxed when I realized it was a guard, a blond man with skin light brown from tan. He stood a hands-width shorter than I was and carried a gun in his left hand. He wore coveralls, not a proper uniform, with an activefiber tag over his heart that read "Chris Long." Long held up his right hand and kept his weapon where it was. "Sorry for surprising you," he said. "Lim told me not to do that. I should have listened more carefully."

Still tense from his approach, I nodded and said, "Yes."

He glared at me for a second, unhappy with my response and tensing as if he were about to throw a punch. He stretched his head from side to side and said, "Sorry. We're both fighters, but that's not what we're here to do. We have to teach these kids how not to be soldiers, how to fit into the world like normal people. We're not doing our jobs if we fight among ourselves."

"Your jobs," I said, "not mine. I'm done with this."

"That's what she told me," Long said. "Lim asked me to let you know that all our ships are here and you're free to go. She said she'd thank you herself, but she has more work to do and needs to grab some cot time." He stuck out his hand. "I was on Blue team. Your ship's surveillance helped us a lot. Thanks, and good luck."

I shook his hand, nodded once, and headed back to Lobo.

"Maggie's vessel is in-bound," Lobo said to me privately over the machine frequency. "Are you sure you want to leave before it gets here?"

CHAPTER 28

Dump Island, planet Pinkelponker - 139 years earlier

I ran along the beach as if the guards from the shuttle were chasing me.

No one was.

As Benny had taught me, I imagined them trying to catch me so they could beat me, tie me up, and kill me in front of the others. The more I focused on the images, the faster my heart beat, until the anger rose inside me and my breathing turned uneven and I couldn't get enough air. Sweat ran down my chest and my arms and my forehead, stinging my eyes. The heat, which hadn't bothered me a few seconds ago, now weighed on me. The sand, which I'd barely noticed moments earlier, pulled at my feet like hands trying to drag me down into the earth.

I slowed, but my imagination showed the guards overtaking me, knocking me face-first into the sand, climbing on top of me and holding me down until they could tie my hands and feet. Anger you control can provide energy and power, Benny had said. Anger that runs unchecked, though, is the fastest path to burnout, to running out of breath and slowing, perhaps fatally. I forced myself to resume my previous pace. After a few meters, I ran a little faster, pushing my legs to carry me more quickly along the beach. At the same time, I focused on my breaths, making each inhalation both bigger and as slow as I could manage. I exhaled equally slowly, letting the air leak out through my nose. I concentrated on the rhythm: Breathe in as much as I could as slowly as I could manage. Exhale gently through my nose. Repeat. As my heart slowed and my breathing came under control, I maintained the pace. I had to take a few gulps of air to refill my lungs, but after a short time I was able to return to breathing only through my nose.

My legs hurt, and I wasn't sure how long I could sustain this pace, but I had taken myself into the anger and recovered. I needed to improve my self-control, to try to stop my rage from ever becoming my master. By learning to back down from the anger without stopping or even slowing, Benny said I could feed off its energy and still remain focused on the task at hand, on the enemy in front of me. I rounded a bend and saw Bennie ahead in the distance, stretched on his cart on a flat spot in the path, a tree next to him providing cooling shade. The mountainside tumbled closer to the water here than anywhere else, and the tide was high, so the sand narrowed to a dozen meters wide. I stuck to the narrow stretch of dry sand, not willing to change my path for anything. When Benny had first made us run, I'd been furious each time he came into view and for several minutes afterward; I'd hated working while he relaxed. Now, though, I didn't care. He couldn't make me run. No one could. I did it to myself. He wasn't the enemy. I was—the weakness in my body that stopped it from doing everything it should, and the weakness in my mind that tempted me to run slower or to stop, to do less than I was capable of doing. I couldn't allow those weaknesses to affect me. I had to be stronger, stronger than anyone else here, stronger than the guards, always stronger.

I stared at Benny, the rage filling me again. I wouldn't show him or any of them any weakness, not ever again. I forced myself to run faster, parting my lips slightly so I could take in a little more air, not willing to let him spot me breathing through my mouth and so not opening it visibly. Right before he smacked into me, I saw Alex launch himself from behind a boulder I had just passed. I accelerated to avoid him, but I couldn't speed up enough.

He hit me.

I stumbled to the side and started to fall, Alex holding onto me with his one arm. Once, not that many months ago, I would have fought against the force and tried to stand. Now, I did as Benny had explained and let the momentum carry me sideways into the wet, harder sand and toward the water. I relaxed into the fall and rolled in the direction we were going. I ended up on top of Alex and raised my body so I could force him to yield.

Something in the ocean moved in the edge of my vision.

I fell onto Alex and rolled once more. I ended with Alex lying on my chest. I caught the look of fear in his eyes and barely had time to tense my stomach muscles before Han landed on top of both of us. Air rushed out of Alex. I smelled traces of the fish he'd eaten earlier. Water dripped off Han's body as he stared at me in surprise. For a second we all froze, no one prepared for this position. Before they could regroup, I punched Han in the neck with my right hand as hard as I could manage with the limited range of motion available to me. I knew the blow wouldn't damage him badly, but it shocked him and hurt him. He clutched his throat and rolled off Alex to my left, away from the hand that had hit him. Before Alex could recover, I pushed him on top of Han and climbed onto both of them, my left hand on Alex's throat.

"Enough," he croaked.

Han nodded in agreement.

For a moment, they were not the guys I knew, not my training partners, not two more kids doing what Benny had told them. They were my enemies. I had beaten them. It was time to finish them. My breath came rough and hard. The pounding of my own blood filled my head. I tightened my grip on Alex's throat and raised my clenched right hand.

They must have seen the anger in me, because fear filled their eyes.

I took in their expressions, recognized them for what they were. When I'd seen those looks before, when parents on Pinecone had come rushing to rescue their small children from their new friend because I was too big and therefore not a safe playmate, they had hurt me. I hadn't wanted anyone to be afraid of me. No one had needed to fear me. I would never have hurt those kids. They were my friends. Now, though, the fear served only to confirm my victory. We all knew what we were doing and why we went through these drills. If the result was that my friends were a little afraid of me, so be it; they had learned something useful. Maybe they'd try harder next time.

I nodded at them, pushed off, and stood.

I reached out to Alex.

After a brief hesitation, he grabbed my hand.

I lifted him off Han and helped him stand. I did the same with Han. "Good try," I said. They both nodded in acknowledgment. After a few seconds, Han said, his voice still not quite right, "We didn't have a chance."

I nodded again and turned to look up the beach, where Benny had been resting. He had rolled down the path and was almost at the sand. Bob stood beside him.

"Good job, Jon," Benny said. "That's enough for today."

I shook my head and started running again. As I passed him, I forced my voice to sound as normal as possible as I said, "No. I owe another two laps."

I didn't look back as I ran away from them. My lungs hurt from trying to get enough air while I'd been fighting. A sour taste filled my mouth, and I wished I could rinse it and get a drink. My whole body trembled, and, as the rush of violence wore off, part of me regretted scaring Alex and Han. I wanted desperately to stop, to rest, to be done with this.

I didn't.

I wouldn't let those feelings win. I wouldn't let Han and Alex win. I wouldn't let Benny win. I wouldn't let the weaknesses in my body or my mind win.

I wouldn't let anything or anyone beat me.

I wouldn't.

I ran on.

Chapter 29

In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

"How long before Maggie's ship lands?" I asked Lobo.

"Maybe five minutes," he said. "She contacted me and asked to meet you. She said you could pick the location. I mean no offense to her, but for your safety, I suggest you tell her to come inside me." Part of me wanted to leave Tumani immediately, but another part was glad Maggie had asked to see me. At the same time, past experience had taught me that she would lie to me and use me if she thought doing so would serve her cause.

Of course, I'd done the same to her in the course of saving the boy who now lived with her and the other Children of Pinkelponker.

"I agree," I said. "Tell her."

She wouldn't touch down for a few more minutes, so rather than head straight to Lobo and wait there, I let my feet carry me to the corner of the complex where we'd entered less than twelve hours ago. Half a dozen people and a couple of low-end building machines were replacing the damaged section of the wall with a mixture of wood from the fallen trees and reinforced permacrete. Others carted debris and carefully removed the sections of the trunks closest to the complex; we didn't want anyone else attacking us the same way. Two men guarded the entrance. They were trying and failing to appear nonchalant while keeping their hands on their weapons.

No boys walked near them. None appeared to be watching them, but everyone understood what was going on. I'd seen it before, prisoners and guards, and no matter how nice the prison, no one in either group is ever confused about what role he or she is playing.

The guards watched me without moving their heads, knowing from the uniform I was still wearing whose side I was on but wondering why I was there. I nodded and mumbled, "Just curious." They nodded in return, no more trusting now that I'd spoken to them than they'd been before I opened my mouth. The temperature and humidity continued to rise. My clothing couldn't wick fast enough; I stayed constantly soaked in my own sweat. The dust from the permacrete hung in the air and made my eyes itch. I turned and headed back into the complex, toward the first barracks we'd entered. The short boy, Bony, leaned against the wall facing me. He was whispering to a thin kid with skin the color of wet brown sand. This boy was probably not much older than Bony, but he stood a full head taller. They quit talking as I approached and watched me.

"There's a big man," Bony said, "as long as he has others to do his work." I stopped and stared at them. If they were adults, I'd move on and avoid trouble. If they wouldn't let me, I'd stop them before they could start anything serious. These two were children, though, boys that Lim and Gustafson and Schmidt and all the others wanted to reintegrate into society. I didn't know what to do with them.

"Afraid of us, he is," Bony said. "Two on one too much for him, eh, Nagy?"

"Too much," the other boy said.

"No worries, you," Bony said. "We heard them say you were leaving, so killing you isn't worth our time." He cocked his head toward the other boy. "Not that me and Nagy couldn't do it if we wanted."

"Sure could, Bony," Nagy said, "sure could."

"Like a lot of others," Bony said, pride filling his voice and making it stronger. Nagy only nodded and tracked me with his eyes.

"Show 'im," Bony said.

Nagy turned his right shoulder toward me and pointed at it. A stack of at least a dozen thin scabs ran from the top of his arm down for several centimeters. "These are my solo kills," he said, his voice clear and loud. "I don't count shares." He pointed at the top one. "Started high so there's plenty of room." He faced me again.

Bony clapped him on the other shoulder and smiled.

Nagy never looked away from me.

When all you have is each other and the fight, you grow tight, or you die. They understood that fact. I'd learned it. I could try to explain to them what the lesson would cost them, but to what end? They couldn't unlearn it.

Maybe that was part of what Lim and her team would try to help.

"Maggie's here," Lobo said over the comm.

I raised both hands and said to the boys the only thing that seemed sure and true to me at that moment.

"I'm sorry."

Before they could respond, I headed back to Lobo.

Maggie leaned against Lobo and watched me approach. I couldn't read her expression. I also couldn't shake the sick, sad feeling that my encounter with Bony and Nagy had brought to my stomach. I hated that I couldn't do anything for them.

Lobo opened a side hatch when I was within a meter of his hull. I stepped inside and headed up front. Maggie followed me, and Lobo sealed himself behind her.

I walked to the far corner of the pilot area and wished I could keep walking. My body vibrated with energy. I finally turned to face her. "What?" I said. I hadn't even realized I was angry until I heard my own voice.

"I wanted to thank you," Maggie said. I could read her look well enough now: hurt, sad, maybe pitying.

"Why are you always so mad?"

The still air inside Lobo clung to me like dirt to a buried corpse. I wanted out, away from here, but I couldn't leave, not with her standing right in front of me, not with the question she'd asked hanging between us. Before I could consider my answer, without meaning to say anything, I found myself speaking. "I know you came here to pick up one boy, but by any chance have you looked around? Have you paid any attention at all?"

"Yes," she said. "It's terrible, but why does the situation make you mad at me?"

"I'm not." As soon as the words came out, I knew my tone said otherwise. I took two deep breaths and stared into her eyes. "I'm really not. I know it sounds like I am, but I'm not angry at you. I'm just frustrated and furious at . . . I don't know, at this place, at what those people did to these kids, at everything."

"I can't blame you this time," she said, "but you are so often full of rage, and I don't understand why. I'm sorry you are, I really am, and I want to know. I do. Why are you always so angry?" I shrugged. How could I explain it to her? If she could truly comprehend the answer, if somehow the barrier that stopped her from being able to read me were to crumble in an instant and she could hold me and utterly and completely know my mind, would I even want her to understand? Would the value of that knowledge be worth the damage it would do to her?

"It's a long story," I finally said. I shrugged again. "Don't worry about it." She looked at me for several seconds before nodding. "Okay." After a few more seconds, she added, "If that's what you want, okay."

I couldn't decide if I was grateful or sad that she'd stopped pushing. Why did I end up so twisted inside whenever I spent time with her? Why were my feelings so complicated around her?

None of that mattered. She was going to leave, so the best thing I could do for both of us was to simplify everything by helping her on her way.

I shoved aside the useless feelings and forced a smile. "Did you find the boy you wanted?" She smiled in return, but I didn't believe hers was any more genuine than mine. "Yes," she said with a nod, "we did. He's safely on board my ship, and we're about to leave Tumani."

"Good," I said. "I'm glad you did." I pictured Bony and Nagy again. "He's going to need a lot of help. You know that, right?"

She nodded again. "Yes, we do, and we'll work with him for as long as it takes. He'll be safe now, and he'll have a family of people like him."

"It won't be his family," I said. "His family is gone. And you won't be like him. You'll all have special abilities, but he'll be the only one of you who understands what he's become." I couldn't figure out an easy way to explain further what it felt like to be the one person in a crowd who'd killed before, the only man in a room full of people who couldn't help but consider killing as an option, an alien of human birth trying to pass as human. "Remember that."

"We will, Jon. We will. Our group we won't be his family, not at first, but in time it will feel like his own." She paused and stared into space, as if looking at a place very far away. "I know how it works." She shook her head and focused on me again. "In any case, it's the best we can do. We won't give up." It was my turn to nod. I didn't know what more to say.

Maggie stepped close enough to put her hand on my face, her palm cool against my cheek. I flushed and had trouble breathing. "Thank you, Jon," she looked upward, "and thank you, Lobo. I don't know if they would have succeeded without you."

"You're welcome, Maggie," Lobo said, his voice coming from all around us. She smiled and focused again on me, her hand still on my cheek. I was afraid to move, sure that no matter what direction I might go, no matter what I might do, it would be wrong.

"One of the things I love about you, Jon, is how much you want to protect children. I hope you succeed with these kids. I've thought about what you said, and though we have to take away our boy, if to help the others you ever need anything we can give—anything I can give—contact me, and I'll do my best to make it happen." She stepped back and looked up again. "Lobo, what I'm about to send you will transmit only once, and then it'll overwrite itself. Are you ready to receive?"

"Of course," Lobo said. "I record every transmission of any type that occurs within me."

"Why did I even ask?" she said with a genuine smile. "Of course you do." She pulled a small metal square from her right front pants pocket and held it between her thumb and forefinger. "Jon, I've given Lobo multiple drop-box addresses for every world within three jumps of here. You can use any one of them once. It'll ask you for some verification information, data you'll have from our past time together. Once it authenticates you, it will start a process that will ultimately reach me. It will then turn itself off and transmit shut-off instructions to the other comm threads. It won't work fast—too many worlds to contact—but if you give it a week, it should reach me."

"That's very nice," I said, and I meant it, I tried to keep all the sarcasm out of my voice, "but what could I need that you could give?" I realized how that sounded but not before her expression betrayed the hurt. "I mean, I'm leaving here right after you do."

She shook her head. "I don't need to be able to read your thoughts to understand you better than that." She stared at me for a long time, long enough that I was sure I was supposed to be doing something, though I had no idea what. She leaned forward and kissed me on the left cheek. "Goodbye, Jon." She turned and left.

I watched her walk away, the second time I'd done that, but this time it took only a few steps for her to reach the edge of Lobo, turn down the hall, and disappear. I heard the side hatch open and her voice saying, "Goodbye, Lobo." A couple of seconds later, the hatch closed. I closed my eyes and stood in silence. First, Bony and Nagy, then Maggie—both encounters I was unprepared to handle. The two boys had left me sick with the knowledge of what they would always be fighting even if they managed to find new homes and survive to adulthood. Maggie had left me with an ability to contact her that I knew I would never use because there was no way we could ever be together. I stood there, frozen in place, useless, unable to help those boys or join Maggie, and the seconds passed until Lobo interrupted my thoughts.

"Jon," he said, "isn't it time to leave?"

CHAPTER 30

Dump Island, planet Pinkelponker - 139 years earlier

The cool night air tasted of the salty, tossing ocean. The patch of grass where I'd stretched out felt as soft as any bed I'd had while growing up. Everyone else slept in the cave, spread around the large room's perimeter, their bodies casting constantly shifting shadows from the small fire burning inside and to the right of the entrance. When I'd first arrived on Dump, I'd stayed with them, but lately I'd found it more comfortable to sleep under the stars. Staring into the heavens and listening to the ocean took me out of myself and pulled my mind upward, to whatever was out there, way past the only two islands I'd ever seen, beyond even the entire planet of Pinkelponker. I'd never know, but after Jennie had told me that spaceships existed and that one had carried people from a place called Earth all the way to here, I had always stared upward in awe and dreamed of other worlds.

Benny couldn't sneak up on anyone; the sound of his cart's wheels always preceded him. I turned my head enough to make sure no one was with him and he had no weapons. I'd learned the hard way that his drills could come at any time.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" he said when he drew even with me.

"Yes." I whispered, not wanting to disturb the night.

The wind off the ocean picked up speed and rustled all the grass we were not covering. The waves beat louder upon the shore, their steady rhythm the heartbeat of a sleeping world. I tried to slow my heart to the same gentle pace, but I couldn't do it. When I felt closest to the world, I thought of Jennie, because she had taught me to see the beauty around us, always available if we will but let ourselves experience it. My pulse quickened as the memory of losing her flooded into me. I couldn't think of her without feeling that pain. I knew she'd be disappointed in me, would want me to focus on all the good years we'd shared, but I couldn't do it.

When I'd come to Dump, these memories had left me in tears. Now, my face remained stony, cold. Though at times I thought my heart might explode, I didn't show it.

"Jon."

I didn't want to talk, but ignoring Benny was never an option; he wouldn't give up.

"Yeah."

"Jon."

His tone told me what his few words didn't: He wouldn't stop until I faced him. I rolled onto my side, propped my head on my elbow, and stared at him, our faces now level.

When I didn't speak, he continued. "It's important that you understand something." He stared at me, clearly wanting a response, but I didn't know why. He'd finish talking eventually; he didn't need me to say anything. Finally, he said, "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

He waved his left flipper to take in the sky and the grass and the night. "For everything. For the hard sessions, the sneak attacks, the yelling and the fighting, all of it. For what I've made you become."

"I agreed to do it."

His dark brown eyes, almost black in the night, reflected the starlight like small puddles, their wet surfaces pooling over and running down his cheek. "Maybe, but you should never have been put in this position." He wiped his cheeks. " I should never have put you in it."

"But you did." My voice emerged cooler than the deepening night. I barely recognized its sound.

"Are you that far gone already?" he said. He stared intently at me. "Or that angry? Surely you can find more than that inside you."

I sat. "No," I said. I shook my head, a kind of panic rising inside me, pounding like the onrushing waves.

"No." I wanted to stop talking, but I couldn't. The words wouldn't stop. I didn't know what they would be until I heard them. "You can't have this. Not this. I'll get us off Dump. I'll become as strong and as tough and as skilled as it takes. I'll save us all or die trying, and you'll train me until I can. That's our deal. That's what we do every day. That's what we'll keep doing. But now you want me to open up to you, to talk about my feelings, to pretend I'm still that kid you met here." I stood. "No. No!" I spread my arms and threw back my head. "No!" I stared at him again and shook with anger. "The next time the ship lands and the guards get out to unload some new poor prisoner, I will lead our fight against them, and we will beat them. I will get us off this island."

I closed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them again, my voice was once more cold and calm and level. "That's what you trained me to do. That's what you want me to do. That's what all of you need me to do."

I turned and walked away. " That's what you get," I said.

I neither knew nor cared whether the wind carried my words to him or away into the night.

Chapter 31

In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

"Jon," Lobo said, "did you not hear me earlier? Isn't it time to leave?" It was. We'd done everything we'd come to do. Lim and Gustafson and Schmidt and the rest of their team were settling in to help the boys. Maggie was gone. It was time to go.

"Yeah," I said, "it is."

I didn't move. I didn't open my eyes. If I did nothing, I couldn't do the wrong thing.

"So I should take off," Lobo said, "except that if that was what you wanted, you would have said so." After a pause of several seconds, an interval so great I could probably never understand all that he had done in that time with his vast computational resources, he said, "Which means we're not leaving."

"I don't know," I said. I shook my head slowly. "I really don't know."

"Yes," he said, "you do. We're staying. For some reason I don't understand, every now and again, with decisions that are particularly emotional for you, you waste a great deal of time denying conclusions you've already reached."

I opened my mouth to argue with him, but I couldn't. He was right. Some choices were so hard that even after I'd made them I had trouble accepting them. I hated it, despised that inefficiency and weakness in myself, but he was right that it existed.

"You're correct," I finally said, "and I'm sorry. I suppose some part of me needs time to process difficult decisions."

"You're not alone in that behavior," Lobo said. "I've noticed it in other humans. It does seem terribly inefficient."

I opened my eyes and smiled. "It is. I suppose you never act that way."

"Never," Lobo said, but with no trace of smugness. "Some conclusions require a great deal of thought to reach, but once I arrive at them, I act—unless, of course, you persuade me to do otherwise."

"Aren't you glad when I do?"

"If by 'glad' you mean do I sometimes believe you made a better choice? Yes. Sometimes—but not all the time."

"But without me you would have acted on your original decision?"

"Yes, of course, as I just said."

"Even if the actions you've decided to take hurt, damage you or someone else, bring you to emotional places you don't want to visit."

"Yes," he said, "even then. Such decisions always come at a cost, no matter when or how you make them. Sometimes we have to make choices that will hurt us. The good news is that pain is just pain; you know that."

I nodded. "I do, but that doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Since when does liking matter when the stakes are high?"

"Never," I said. Benny had taught me that, many years ago on Dump, and I'd learned the lesson over and over again since then.

"So what are we going to do?" Lobo said.

"I'm not exactly sure," I said, "except that it involves something we never do at the end of a mission: staying." My shoulders and neck were tight with tension. I stretched them as I said, "I need to talk with Lim."

"I'll get her on the comm," Lobo said.

"No." I headed for the side hatch. "I need to do this in person."

"What do you mean, I can't see her?" I tried to keep my voice level, but the strain was evident.

"She's in a link with one of the teams that hasn't arrived yet," the man, Long, said.

"First, you're her messenger, and now you're her bodyguard. What exactly is it that you do?"

"Whatever she wants," he said. He gave me a hard look. He was as wound up as I was. He took a deep breath, stayed where he was, and spoke again. "She's the CO here. You know that. You've served. You understand how it works. Why are you pushing me?"

I stepped back and held up my hands. "You're right. I'm sorry. I thought I was heading out. It was time, and I was ready to go, but I couldn't. I don't want to leave now. I want to stay and help." The door behind him opened. Lim stepped into view.

"Thanks, Chris. I'll talk to him. Let him in."

"Yes, Sir," he said.

"We're done with that, Chris. We're a civilian organization now, here to help the boys. The sooner we behave that way, the better models we'll be for them."

"I'll try," he said.

Lim went back into the small building without waiting for me.

Long stepped out of the doorway. "Good luck," he said. "We can use all the help we can get."

"Thanks." I entered the room.

Lim sat behind a small desk about three meters in front of me. "Close it," she said. When I had, she continued. "So you want to stay. That's nice, but we're done with the fighting."

"I know, but I'd still like to help."

"Why?"

No breeze made it through the two barely open tiny windows. The air inside here was still and stifling, and I couldn't seem to fill my longs.

It didn't seem to bother Lim.

"I'm not entirely sure," I said. "I guess some of the boys got to me." Lim knew nothing of my past beyond our years together in the Saw and the one other mission on which she'd helped me. I preferred to keep it that way, but I also wanted to make her understand that this was important to me. "I have some sense of what they're going through."

She leaned back and spread her hands. "We all do, every single one of us who's served. That's not enough, though, not by a long shot. Reintegration is hard, very hard, and part of the job is modeling the behaviors we want the children to learn. To help, you need training and a great deal of self-control. You don't have the training, and from what I've seen, you could do with some work on the control front." If you only knew, I thought but did not say. I've never fully lost my temper. I don't even know the limits of the damage my nanomachines could do if I surrendered to rage and ordered them to decompose everything they encountered. From what Benny did to the Aggro station, though, I suspected the planet I was on would vanish before they were finished.

I couldn't explain that to her, though.

"Incoming ship," Lobo said over the comm. "It's government, and it's coming fast. Should I defend?"

"You have visitors," I said, "a government ship. Should we let it land?" She nodded, sighed, and stood. "I knew they'd want to meet. I hoped they'd give us a day. I should have known better. Bureaucrats."

"Leave it alone," I whispered to Lobo.

Lim headed for the door. "We'll have to continue this when I'm back." As she stepped outside, she said,

"On second thought, before you become too committed to the notion of staying, would you like to see part of what we're up against?"

"Sure," I said. If Lim viewed any people in the government as potential opponents, I wanted to know them. Knowledge of your enemies can save your life.

"Okay," she said. I thought I spotted the beginnings of smile before she added, "Come with me."

They insisted we meet in their ship. Typical: Bureaucrats love to play power games. As I approached it, I said over the machine frequency to Lobo, "Can you scan it and monitor me?"

"Yes," he said. "It's old enough that I could take control of it without it even knowing. If you'd like it cooler in there, just let me know."

I chuckled. Lim gave me an odd look; I shrugged in return. I turned slightly away from her as I said, "I don't expect to be there long. Just keep an eye on me. Out."

A woman in dress uniform barred the doorway. Anyone who made their guard detail put on formal wear in weather like this was stupid, insecure, showing off, or all three.

"Let them in," a male voice said from inside.

The guard stepped aside, and we entered.

"Sorry he made you wear that," I whispered as I drew even with her. She didn't respond, probably couldn't risk saying anything, but she also didn't hit me. Given how much I'd pissed off Long and annoyed Lim, I decided to count that as a personal communication win. No doubt the man inside played well to the Tumani population, but he would never have gotten respect from his fashion-hip counterparts in either the EC or the FC. A little taller than Lim, almost as broad as I am, and very heavily muscled, he sported scars that stood out all over his almost night-black skin like lines of insects. Because it was Tumani, I could easily believe he had come by the damage honestly, but no serious executive, government or corporate, in any more developed world would have kept the scars. The power style these days was sleek and clean and smooth.

"Ms. Lim," he said, motioning her to a chair.

"Senator Wylak," she said. She nodded her head low enough that she might have been bowing. She sat.

"And your friend is?" he said.

She waved her hand dismissively. "One of my staff."

He hadn't offered me a seat, and her comment told me the role I was now playing, so I stayed standing.

"Are you sure?" he said. "We normally—"

"But of course, Senator," she said. "I apologize for the change in protocol. Had I not been awake for a day and a half straight, I would be here alone. But I have been without sleep for all of that time. I fear that until I rest I might forget some vital instruction of yours, so because we cannot record our discussions, I—" she finished by pointing to me.

"Very well," he said. He pointed to another chair, one a bit behind hers, but otherwise didn't acknowledge my presence.

I sat.

"Something to drink?" he said.

"You're very kind," she said, "but I only now finished an early lunch."

"To the matters at hand then," he said, "so that you may get your rest." He leaned back in his chair.

"You've done very well. We are all quite impressed."

"Thank you. It would not have been possible without your support." He nodded ever so slightly, the fact so obviously true that it scarcely required an acknowledgment. "We are also moving two units into the surrounding jungle, as we discussed. They will remain there for your protection."

"And to kill any rebels foolish enough to return to this very valuable base."

"And that," he said. "The best missions accomplish multiple objectives." He cleared his throat. "This support is, of course, expensive, and it diverts resources from the main fronts."

"Which makes us doubly grateful for your help," she said. She straightened and leaned slightly toward him.

"We all appreciate your gratitude," he said. "Some of my more short-sighted colleagues, however, have already begun to push for a fixed departure date for our resources—and for the date at which these boys will be safe to return to their homes or to place with foster families." Anger flitted across Lim's face, but she composed herself. "As we've discussed from the beginning, until we've spent a few weeks with the boys, we cannot even begin to grasp the extent of the programming we'll be fighting. I've always warned that this process was likely to require many months."

"And your—" he paused as if searching for something he could not recall "—private sponsors are willing to fund such a long effort?"

"Completely," she said. "They are as dedicated to this important work as the government of Tumani." He allowed himself a smile at that tactic. "Excellent. That is very good to hear, and I will certainly relay that commitment to my colleagues." He leaned forward. "Some of them may, I fear, still push for as rapid a conclusion as possible. We are, after all, a poor planet and one fighting an unfortunate civil war. Tradeoffs and costs must always be weighed." This time, Lim sat so far forward she was barely on her chair. When she spoke, her battle for self-control was evident in the shakiness of her voice. "These are children," she said, "your children, Tumani children, not factors to be computed by some economic equation."

He smiled again, but there was no warmth in the expression. "No world loves its children more than Tumani," he said, "but few worlds must struggle so hard to survive and grow. When we act, we must be sure we are acting in the best interest of all. We remain committed to saving these children. I came here today simply to do you the courtesy of exposing you to the full range of discussions some of my colleagues are holding."

Lim looked at the floor and rubbed her face with her hands. When she faced Wylak again, her fatigue was obvious for the first time since we'd entered the ship. She'd exhibited such control earlier that I couldn't tell whether she was showing how tired she really felt or simply acting the part because doing so might advance her cause. "I must apologize, sir. As I mentioned at the outset, I have gone a very long time without sleep. I greatly appreciate your effort in coming here and your willingness to share with me. I know no one could care more about these children than you. I can assure you that we will do everything in our power to accelerate the reintegration process."

He nodded and stood. "We all appreciate your efforts."

Lim took the cue and also got up, so I followed suit.

"I look forward to seeing you again soon," he said. "And now, with your permission . . . ." Without waiting even a second, he turned and headed toward a door along the rear wall. Lim led me out and walked so quickly away that I had no time to say anything else to the guard, whose face was now soaked with sweat. Lim didn't speak again until we were halfway back to her command building and the ship was taking off behind us.

"Did you hear that?" she said. "What an officious, back-stabbing jerk."

"I take it he screwed you on time."

"Oh, yeah," she said. "He promised me support for as long as we needed it. I never counted on that, of course, but I did expect at least a few months before the pressure began." She signed. "I was being naïve. I'm going to have to spend more energy managing that relationship."

"Do you really think that will be enough?"

She stopped and faced me. "It'll have to be." She waved her hand slowly to take in the entire complex. "In case you haven't noticed it, we have over five hundred boys to reintegrate into the world. We can't just walk away."

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment. Lim had been right; in the face of any aggression at all, my self-control definitely needed work. Finally, I looked at her, held up my hands, and backed up a step. When I spoke, I did my best to keep my tone level and neutral. "Yes, I have noticed, which is why I came to you to volunteer to help. I wasn't proposing you—we—walk away. I was only suggesting that managing Wylak and his cronies might not work and that we should consider getting a backup plan in place."

"A backup plan?" she said. "You think I haven't considered that? The problem is, the government won't let us take five hundred of its citizens, children or not, off Tumani, and there's nowhere else on this world for them to go. Even if we could fly them off-planet, we'd need time and money to set up a suitable facility to receive them." She shook her head. "No, Jon, this is it. This is what we have. We must make these kids ready for normal lives, and now we almost certainly must do so faster than we'd planned." Of course she'd considered her options; I hadn't meant to imply she had not. I was suggesting only that it might be time to do so again, but there was clearly no point in pursuing this topic further with her. I needed to focus on the reason I'd come to her in the first place: staying. "You can use any help you can get, including mine."

She sighed. "I told you, Jon: You don't have the training for this. I'm sorry. I really am. I have to get back to work." She turned to go.

"Put me to work doing anything," I said. "Let me learn by observing. In the meantime, I'll take guard duty or cook or clean or do whatever you need. I've spent plenty of time as a Private; I have lots of experience with crappy details."

She faced me again. "You're serious."

I nodded. "Absolutely."

"Why?"

Because I've been one of these kids. Because I understand them better than you do. Because no one's ever shown me how to live in this world. I considered all of those answers, but I finally went with the only one I was sure was both correct and something I was willing for her to hear. "I don't know," I said.

"Something about these boys gets to me, so I want to help them."

She studied me for several seconds before she said, "If I do this, I'll assign you to Schmidt. You'll do what she says, when she says it, and how she says it. You won't interfere in any aspect of the reintegration, and you'll stick to the scut work we give you."

"Okay," I said, "until you say otherwise."

After a few more seconds, she nodded her head. "All right. You can stay. The team leads are meeting later this afternoon in my command building. After sunset, they'll gather with their groups. You'll join Schmidt's staff. Location will be on your comm."

She turned and walked away. As she was going, over her shoulder, she added, "Get some sleep. It's going to be a long night."

Chapter 32

In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

Lobo waited until I was inside him and he'd shut the hatch before he let me have it.

"So we're definitely staying?"

"You're always chiding me for asking questions I know the answers to. Why are you doing it now? You heard everything I said."

"Of course I did. I simply wasn't sure whether to believe my audio sensors. Perhaps you were running some con you hadn't chosen to explain to me. It could happen. It has happened."

"There's no con," I said. "I simply want to help."

"By cleaning barracks? Walking a guard's route? If you want to do some good in the universe, I can think of many more useful jobs than those."

I stretched out on the cot in my quarters. "Maybe, but those boys are here, and they can use my help."

"You won't be helping them," he said. "You'll be doing scut work for Schmidt. Alissa made it very clear: You don't get to work with the boys."

"Then I'll help Schmidt and hope that helps the children!" I sat and rubbed my head in frustration. "Maybe I'm fooling myself. Maybe I'll never get to do more here than clean up floors. Maybe I'll be ready to leave within a week. I don't know. I don't know much about any of this, but I am sure that preparing these boys for civilian life—for being kids again—will be incredibly hard. If I can help with that effort, I will." I stood and paced back and forth in the small room. "We train them to fight, and when the fighting is over, we either send them somewhere else to fight again or abandon them to find their own way. They don't have the first idea about how to live normal lives. They don't even remember what normal was." Lobo stayed silent for several seconds.

I kept pacing.

"This is clearly very important to you," he finally said.

"Yes."

"Can you say why?" Before I could answer, he continued. "I mean that question literally: Do you know your motivation and could you explain it, or is it a compulsion you don't understand?" I stopped moving and considered his question. "A little of both. I understand part of what's driving me, but another part is pure emotional impulse."

"Would you explain to me the bits you understand?"

I stared into the air, not for the first time wishing Lobo, who so often felt human, had a face I could see. He'd trusted me with the secrets of his creation, but I'd never repaid that trust. He might well be my only real friend, and he certainly had never betrayed me. I had no rational basis for not telling him about this part of my past.

Despite all that, I couldn't do it. Maybe one day, but not now.

"No," I said. "If I were ever to tell anyone, it would be you, but I can't, at least not now." After another few long seconds, Lobo spoke again, his voice tinged with sadness. "I'm sure the irony isn't lost on either of us that I, the machine, find trust easier to grant than you, the human. I've been broken, and I've hated myself for being what I am—in large part I still do—so I can only imagine what it's like inside your mind."

I shook my head. No.

"Maybe not," he said, reminding me that although I could not see him gesture, he was always watching me, "but I can say, without any ironic intent, that I am sorry you cannot—will not—trust me with that information."

Leave it to Lobo to turn nice when I least expect it and in the process to strip me of all protective rage so I ended up feeling . . . guilty. I had to admit it: I felt guilty for not trusting him.

"I'm sorry, too," I said. "Maybe someday."

I stood in silence for a minute. Neither of us spoke. I didn't know what else to say. Apparently, for a rare change, neither did Lobo—or perhaps he was simply continuing to be nice.

"I'm going to sleep," I said. "Wake me at sunset."

"Why of course, my fleshy master," he said. "I live to be your alarm clock." I chuckled. Normal, even if it included sarcasm, was exactly what I needed.

I stretched out on the cot and fell asleep still smiling.

"You're to report to the first barracks you cleared," Lobo said as soon as I was upright. I stood and stretched. "When?"

"In a little over an hour. They've set up four eating groups; you have time to dine with yours if you want." I was hungry, but the meeting with Wylak was still bothering me. "How closely were you able to monitor my conversation in that government ship?"

"More closely than you were," Lobo said. "I have audio and visual recordings from the ship's sensors, as well as a complete copy of the vital sign data it was gathering on all three of you."

"You weren't joking about what you could do to that old bucket of bolts."

"Of course I wasn't. One glance at it should have told you how easy it would be for me to penetrate."

"Maybe, but most people who look at you have no way to know the extent of your capabilities. I try not to make too many assumptions about ships."

"Fair enough," he said, "but I was, of course, correct about that thing's vulnerabilities."

"What do you think of Wylak's claims of support?"

"Because he's a politician, I assume he's lying almost every time he opens his mouth. His vitals, however, show almost no tension or variation, so either he's very good or at some level he believes what he's saying."

I'd hoped for proof that the man wasn't telling the truth, but regardless of what those sensors showed, I was still convinced he had yet to tell the worst news to Lim. He also almost certainly wasn't alone; politicians always seem to be linked in webs of obligations and alliances to other politicians. Linked.

"His ship is connected to some Tumani government control systems, right?"

"Of course," Lobo said. "We may be on a backwater planet, but it is still a human-colonized world. The first thing any settlement does is get its networks working."

"How far past the ship into those systems could you go?"

"You want me to break into the secure systems of a planet's government?" I shrugged. "If you can't do it, just say so. I understand. Some security is simply too tough even for a machine of your intelligence."

"There's no need to be insulting," Lobo said. "I asked to make sure I understood you correctly. If I do this and make any errors, there's a decent chance their defensive systems will track the infiltration back to me. If they do, we'll both be at high risk."

"So don't make any mistakes, and cover your tracks."

"Thank you for that sage advice, oh Master Hacker," he said. "Why didn't I think of those tactics? Now, the task is so much clearer and simpler."

"Sorry," I said.

"What exactly do you want me to find or do?"

"Search for warning signs of trouble," I said. "If Wylak is planning to undermine Lim's efforts, he'll recruit support, arrange one or more additional trips, and so on. If we know that he's making a move and, even better, what that move is, we'll have a better chance of either countering it or at least being better prepared to cope with it."

"Why didn't you say that was all you wanted? I can get that information from sensor feeds and various communication records. On most worlds, those records are highly secure and hard-encrypted, but on a place like this everything is at least a few computing generations old. The only problem with those sources is that they produce vast quantities of data, but that's nothing I can't handle with near-real-time processing."

"How soon can you be monitoring his communications?"

"I will have to proceed very carefully," Lobo said, "and I'll have to recruit and deploy low-intensity, multi-source, highly redirected probes initially, so even my first penetration attempts could take as long as a couple of days."

"Do it. If he's planning to change the deal on Lim, I want to know as soon as possible."

"I'm on it," Lobo said, "but I have to ask, what are you going to do if he is?"

"I don't have any idea," I said, "but I will be giving the matter some thought."

"Between scrubbing floors and patrolling the grounds," Lobo said.

"Yeah," I said, "then. Thanks for the words of encouragement." As I headed out to eat, he added, "It's what I live for. That and being your alarm clock."

Chapter 33

Dump Island, planet Pinkelponker - 139 years earlier

"We have to move out of the cave," Alex said.

Han and I both nodded our agreement. We'd been training on our own, running on the beach. Han had the idea to race from the shuttle landing area to the group's cave. I'd reached it well ahead of them both, and it had taken me about six minutes to get there. Too long, we all felt, too long. Benny stared up first at Alex's face and then at each of ours. "Why?"

"When the shuttle comes," Han said, "we have to be ready for it. If it flies in fast—and you know most of them do—we won't have enough time to get all of us there and in position for our attack. We need to be set the moment the doors open."

"He's right," Alex said. "You've told us many times that we won't get a second chance to do this. We have to win the first time, or they'll add security and trap us here forever. Or worse." Benny nodded and focused on me. "What do you think?"

"I'm with them," I said. "We ran the path. It took us a long time."

"Jon beat us by at least a minute," Han said. "By the time we could get there from the cave, the ship could already have dropped off someone and be closing up. Jon's fast, but even he might not be able to reach the shuttle on time. Worse, if he managed somehow to make it, he'd have to fight the guards alone. That won't work."

"You know he's right," Han said.

"He is," I said.

Bob and several of the others had heard us talking and come out of the cave. They all stared at Benny. He looked around at all of us.

More people emerged from the cave.

"I've explained before," Benny said. "We have to live where they can't watch us from above. We don't want them to know what we're doing. If they see us all sleeping near the landing area, they'll become suspicious."

" If they're bothering to watch us," I said, "and if they can really see what we're doing, they'll have seen us training. That's bound to bother them."

"It could look like you were exercising," Benny said.

"With knives?" I said. "With fighting?"

"They already think we're all stupid and useless," Benny said. "For us to end up attacking each other wouldn't surprise them. If we all move, though, it's sure to attract their attention. They might send more guards on each shuttle, which would lower our chances of success." He shook his head. "No, moving is a bad idea."

"So is staying," I said. "The time it takes to get to the landing area proves that."

"We have to split up," Bob said. "Those of who'll go after the guards need to find sheltered areas much closer to the landing spot. Maybe we can even create some places to hide."

"Everything will be so much harder if we do that," Benny said. "We'll have to get food and water to both locations, spend time relaying information between them—everyday life will require so much more work." He stared at me and shook his head slightly, his eyes almost begging me to help him. I didn't agree with him, but I'd never seen him ask for assistance, and his expression troubled me.

"I don't know about everyone else," I said, "but I'm tired from that run. I'm thirsty and hungry, too. We can talk about this more later. Why don't we rest and eat?"

Alex and Han looked at me for a few seconds and nodded their heads.

"I could use a break," Alex said.

"And some water," Han said.

They headed into the cave. The rest of the folks followed them.

I hung back for a few seconds.

Benny did, too.

"Thank you," he whispered.

"You're going to explain this," I said.

He nodded. "Tonight, after most of them are asleep, out where you like to stare at the night."

"Tonight," I said.

Stars beamed through a cloudless sky and painted the ocean in rippling shades of gray. A gentle wind cooled the night and carried whispered odors of the life below the water's surface. Even up on the rock, I couldn't help but feel the push and pull of the tides. When I was younger—before Jennie fixed me, I reminded myself, for it hadn't been that long ago—I would often doze and dream of floating around Pinecone, Jennie beside me, the water a friend that would never hurt me. I knew better now, understood that the ocean's flow would not take me around our island and that it was a massive, animate force that would as soon kill me as support me, but back then it had been my friend. I rarely missed that simpler me anymore, but sometimes, watching the water, I ached for that happier self.

The sound of Benny's cart pierced my thoughts and cleared my head quickly. I sat and waited for him. I could have saved him a lot of work by meeting him partway, but he'd picked this spot, so I let him come to it.

"Thank you," he said as soon as he rolled into view, "both for supporting me earlier and for meeting me now."

"You said you'd explain." I hadn't meant to be so abrupt. I considered apologizing, but Benny spoke, and the moment passed.

"Of course," he said. "Of course. You're right that if the government is monitoring us, we'll have aroused their suspicions. What I'm about to discuss with you, I don't say to the others, and I'd rather you not repeat it." He paused and stared at me for several seconds. "In fact, I'd prefer this entire conversation stay between us." He went silent again.

I said nothing. He wanted me to promise not to share potentially important information with guys who were going into battle with me. I wouldn't do that without first understanding what was going on. I might not be willing to do it even then.

After a bit, he shook his head and continued. "You're not going to make this easy, are you? Fine. You decide what to tell them." He took a deep breath and stared at the ocean before again focusing on me. "I don't believe they're monitoring us. I never have. I use that justification to keep everyone in the cave, quite a distance from the landing area. When the day comes that we try to hijack a shuttle, I want everyone who's not involved in the attack to be safely distant. That way—" I interrupted him. "—if we fail, the government might decide the others weren't involved."

"Exactly. If we lose, those in the cave might survive."

"So let us split up."

"The best of us are on the attack team," he said. "Without all of you, the people in the cave will have a very rough time of it."

"But by keeping us there, you risk the entire plan failing."

"I know," he said, "I know, but I don't want to make their lives any worse than they already are." I walked over to him and sat on the ground, right next to him, our faces so close that I could smell his stale breath. "You're willing to risk all of us dying, but you don't want to inconvenience the others."

"No, no, it's not like that," he said, shaking his head. "I want everything to work out for everyone. I thought the best way to make that happen was to keep us together."

"Staying in the cave won't work," I said. "We explained that to you. To maximize our odds of success, we have to do every little thing right. You've explained that to us over and over during training. Arriving too late, not being in position the moment those doors open—those failures would jeopardize all that we've been training to do."

Benny looked into my eyes and for the first time I saw the young boy inside the leader. I remembered seeing eyes like those in my own reflection in the still ponds and the rain barrels.

"You're right," he finally said. "Despite what I've sometimes said during your training sessions, I thought I could find a way to make it all work out well for everyone, to make you guys so good at fighting that you would all survive, that everything would be okay. I thought that if my planning was good enough and the training was extensive enough, we'd all end up okay and no one would be hurt."

"No one hurt!" I said. I stood and backed away, afraid of the energy coursing through me. "No one hurt?

You don't think we've been hurt already? You don't think being attacked over and over, learning to kill, fighting each other to prepare for taking on bigger, stronger, better-armed men—you don't think all of that hurts? This plan has already hurt us, and it's going to keep hurting us."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I really am."

"Don't be! I'm not. I used to be, but now I'm not. I understand now. If we don't attack the shuttle, we'll rot and die here. If we're going to fight, we need to be as ready as we can possibly be, because otherwise we'll fail, and the guards will kill us." I sat again and leaned close to him. "Understand this: You did what you thought was right. I've come to agree with you. We're going to do this. Some people—maybe some of us, maybe, I hope, the guards, maybe both—are going to get hurt, and some are probably going to die. That's the way it is. We've all signed up for it. You get the credit for the plan and the credit for the training. What you don't get is to pretend that no one will be hurt."

He nodded. "No, I don't. You're right. I'm still sorry, though, so very sorry." I stared at him for a long time, wondering how he could be so smart and yet so dumb, how he could train us to fight and to kill and not understand what he was really doing. In the end, I decided it didn't matter. I agreed with his decision, but I would not let him pretend there was no cost. I couldn't do that. I stood. The air was colder now, the breeze blowing stronger, and goose bumps appeared on my bare arms. "Tomorrow, we'll tell the others that we talked, that we couldn't find a better answer than to split up, that there was no way around it. We'll build more camo cover and look for safe places where the attack team can live very close to the landing spot. We'll do everything we can to explain why the change is necessary, but even if not everyone is happy, we'll do it."

"Tomorrow," he said, nodding his head again.

"And when we're settled there and one day the shuttle lands," I said, "we—

"—fight the guards and do what we have to do to take that ship," he said. "Maybe we have to kill the guards. Maybe some of us die. We do what we must to get off this island, and as soon as we can, we come back to rescue the others. Until we do, they'll have to cope without us." His voice was clear now, strong and far colder than the night. "Thank you for making me understand clearly what this will mean. If I'm to lead you, I have to accept that reality. I have to."

I stared at him for a long time. As I did, the anger flowed out of me like the sea receding from the shore.

"I wish—" I said.

"Don't," he said. "Don't. You were right." He pushed off the ground and turned his cart. "Let's go back to the cave and get some sleep. We have a lot to do tomorrow."

I let him lead the way, fell in behind him even though I could easily have walked around him and gotten there quicker, stayed with him until we passed out of the starlight and into the cave that already felt like a place where I no longer belonged.

Chapter 34

In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

My comm directed me to a location right next to the first barracks my team had captured, but I didn't head there right away. Instead, I invested some time walking the entire perimeter of the complex and getting a sense of what was going on. Four large active-surface domes stood in the corners of the enclosed fortress; Lim's people must have erected them while I'd been sleeping. Only dying slivers of sunlight remained to fight the evening's oncoming darkness, so the structures had shifted to near transparency. Multiple arches offered easy access to the large tables of food stretching down the middle of each one. No part of any dome was closer than ten meters to the complex's outer wall; Lim wasn't providing anyone with a convenient springboard for climbing out of there.

Guards lounged near the entrances to the eating areas. If they were carrying weapons, I didn't spot them, and they dressed casually; no one wore a uniform, though each had a name patch over his or her heart. Even without the names on their chests, the guards would have stood out from the boys by their size, the quality of their clothing, and how well fed and healthy they looked. If I'd been one of the kids, I would have found these captors more annoying for their apparent wealth than my previous rebel masters, who at least looked more like them than Lim's team. This was going to be an uphill battle all the way. I wandered into the last dome, the one nearest my destination. One of the guards followed me. I turned before he could reach me. It was Long again. "How many jobs do you have," I said, "and don't you ever sleep?"

He smiled and shrugged. "Too many, and every now and again. I do whatever Lim needs; it's a great cause, and she's a remarkable woman."

"She is that," I said. "So, what'd I do wrong this time?"

"Nothing," he said, "because none of us briefed you. We hadn't expected you to stay."

"So, what didn't you tell me?"

From five meters away, a handful of boys watched us and whispered to one another. A few pointed at Chris; others pointed at me. More streamed toward them from other parts of the dome. Chris also noticed them and faced the growing crowd. "We're just talking. There's not going to be any fighting."

"The big one looks like he could beat you," a young voice said. "Are you afraid of him?" Chris smiled at them, shrugged again—a combination he'd obviously developed to disarm people—and said, "We're friends. Why would I be afraid of him?"

"So you have fought with him?" another voice said. I couldn't spot the speaker.

"No," he said. "Like I told you: We're not here to fight."

"If you haven't been in battle together, you cannot know if he is truly your friend." Bony, the kid who'd tried earlier to get his buddy, Nagy, to fight me, stepped from behind two taller boys as he continued talking. "Only then do you find out who he really is." He turned, pulled Nagy forward, and patted the taller boy on the shoulder. "I know Nagy for my true brother, because we have killed together." A bunch of the boys cheered.

"I don't need to fight to learn that," Chris said, "because he is my friend. You, too, can learn other ways to identify your friends."

"Your friend is a coward," Bony said. "As big as he is, and he would not fight us." He spit on the ground.

"A coward is no one's friend."

More boys yelled and whistled their approval.

Chris glanced at me, clearly annoyed, though I had no idea why. He focused again on Bony. "Choosing not to fight is not a sign of cowardice. Choosing not to fight is what most people do most of the time. They find other ways, better ways, to solve their problems."

"So they are weak," Bony said. "We learned that only the weak do not fight back." More boys cheered. Emboldened by that support, Bony stepped closer to us. "If they were strong, they would fight."

"No," Chris said, shaking his head. "Not all those who choose not to fight are weak. There are many ways to be strong. We will teach you—but not now. Now, my friend and I must go." As he turned to leave, he stared briefly at me, his eyes hard and clear.

I followed him.

"Cowards!" Bony yelled.

"Cowards!" others screamed.

The word became a chant.

Chris maintained an even pace, so I did the same, though I hated having my back to that many angry people. They were boys, but they had also until yesterday been killers.

Chris led me past the barracks where I was to report soon, around the corner of another building, and finally a few steps past Lim's small HQ. When he'd verified that no boys were in sight, he stopped and faced me.

"You're supposed to report all confrontation attempts," he said, his voice hard and tense.

"No one told me," I said.

He shook his head, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, the anger was no longer visible. "I'm sorry," he said. "Their behavior is nothing unusual, and we've trained on multiple techniques for dealing with it, but I haven't slept in a very long time. They got to me a little."

"It's only natural," I said.

"Natural isn't good enough. We have to rise above our worst natures if we're going to show these boys how to become different people—how to be kids again." He rubbed his eyes. "What someone should have explained to you is that we're trying to identify leaders and troublemakers so we can help them first. Turn one leader around, and many others may follow. In any case, I'm sorry for putting you through that little show. With some of these kids, violence is all they've experienced for a long time."

"What Bony said isn't entirely wrong," I said, "and you know it. You learn a lot from fighting beside someone."

"No argument, but that doesn't matter. We're here to help them move past all the fighting and all the training that turned them into soldiers."

"As if that's possible," I said. "Have you ever been able to shake your training?" He shook his head, no. "Fair point. Let me put it differently: We're here to teach them how to handle their pasts and live in the world of normal people."

"If that's the job, why didn't we stay with them and talk to them? Why are you and I out here?"

"Because they're not ready for that conversation," Chris said, "and I had to get you out of the tent before you ate. For the first couple of days, we have to stick to our own food and let them eat theirs."

"Why?"

"Their food contains drugs targeted at their dependence on the root. The drug won't do you any serious damage, but it could cause you to spend a lot of time alone with stomach cramps." I didn't want to tell him that it probably wouldn't bother me because my nanomachines would react to and ultimately remove the drug from my system, so all I did was nod. "Thanks for the warning. Isn't it a bad idea to start off lying to them? I don't know the first thing about reintegration, but I have to assume that building trust must be an important part of the process."

"Yes," he said, "it is. We'd planned to explain how we would help them cope without the root, make this drug and other medications available, and gradually wean all of the boys from their dependence, but late this afternoon Lim told all the counselors that we were doing it this way. She said we needed to accelerate wherever we could, and this was a way to save a lot of time. Plus, given how unreceptive they'd been when she'd mentioned root in her speech, a less direct approach seemed more likely to succeed." Though I didn't like it that Lim had to lie, it was probably the right move given everything she was facing. I was particularly glad that she was taking Wylak seriously, because the more I thought about him, the less I trusted him.

"It's her decision to make," I said. "She's in charge."

I smiled at him and added, "So, where do I get some food?"

Chapter 35

In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

Light like amplified moon-glow bathed the inside of the dome and washed everyone under it in cool white tones. Schmidt and four other adults stood in front of twenty of the boys, all apparently residents of the barracks my team had first captured. I'd thought we would meet in that building, but Schmidt wanted to avoid trespassing on their turf as much as was reasonably possible under the circumstances. I sat in a chair a good five meters off to the side from the other grown-ups; Schmidt had requested a clear separation between the counselors and me. Bony and Nagy, as they had in the other meal dome, hung behind the front row of their fellows—reasonable positioning, not the first to get shot in a fight, but close enough to return fire easily should the initial rounds take out their comrades. The boys ignored the grown-ups and talked to each other, but they were obviously curious about what was to come, because none of them left.

"My name is Portia Schmidt," she said. She spoke in a normal tone of voice and at a normal volume. They ignored her.

"When you want to know what's going on, be quiet, and I'll tell you." She turned her back on the boys and spoke to a few of the other adults.

"Shut up," one of the boys said. The words came from somewhere in the middle of the group. In a loud voice, he continued, "We must all remember what we learned: Know your enemy."

"We don't need to know these people to beat them." Bony, talking from his safe position. I recognized his voice.

Murmurs and a few cheers of approval rippled through the group.

"Still, if they're dumb enough to give us information," he continued, "we might as well listen." He stepped in front of the other boys. Nagy followed him and stood to his right. "Go ahead, Schmidt," he said, almost spitting her name. He crossed his arms. "Say what you have to say." A few more boys cheered, but after some half-hearted jeers, they all fell silent.

"Thank you for listening," she said, "and welcome to your new school."

"School?" many voices yelled. "This is no school! This is a prison!" A few of them edged closer to the four counselors.

I stood, ready to help if the boys attacked, but Schmidt and two men on her team looked at me and ever so slightly shook their heads.

I sat. If they thought they could take twenty boys without my help, I'd let them try. I could always get involved later.

Schmidt returned her attention to the kids, her face impassive, neutral, not frowning, not smiling, not tense—just waiting.

The boys stopped moving and quieted.

"You're right," she said. "This is a prison, because we won't let you go—at least, not yet." After an unintelligible murmur swept through the boys, Bony said, "When will you let us out?"

"When you're ready," Schmidt said. "Ready to live like normal people. Ready to stop being soldiers. Ready to go back to being boys."

"Being weaklings, you mean!" one boy from the back yelled. "Why would we want to do that?"

"We're strong, not weak!" another screamed.

"Yeah! Yeah!" Many of the boys chanted their agreement.

Schmidt waited again, her face once more neutral.

I was amazed at her ability to stand in front of so much emotion without reacting. The boys were ignoring me, directing none of their anger in my direction, and yet my body was responding, my pulse picking up, all of me preparing to fight. Lim was right; even if I had a great deal to teach these boys, if being a counselor meant showing the kind of self-control Schmidt had, I wasn't ready. When the other boys had wound down, Bony said, "You called this place a school. What do you plan to teach us—other than how to be weak?"

More chants followed his question.

He crossed his arms, smiled slightly, and sidled forward and to the right half a step.

"We will teach you how to live normal lives," Schmidt said when the boys were silent again. "We'll show you how to get along with others. We'll help you learn how to resolve conflicts without fighting. We'll prepare you to go home—or to new homes, if your home is gone." A low wave of murmurs swept the boys, but this time Schmidt didn't wait for them to be quiet. She spoke over them, for the first time raising her voice slightly, not yelling, simply talking a bit louder. "Wouldn't you like to go home? If you have no home, wouldn't you like a new one?"

" This is our home," Bony said, his voice shaking, though whether with anger or sadness I could not tell.

"We are family now, brothers, warriors together."

"You are," Schmidt said, her voice sad for the first time. "I understand."

"No!" Bony said.

"No!" many of the boys said.

"You can't!" a voice from the back said.

"I can," Schmidt said, "and I do. I've been a soldier for more than ten years. My unit, like yours, is a kind of family, and we have all fought together many times. But we are adults, and we chose as adults to live this life. None of you did that, and all of you are still children."

"Fight us," Nagy said, his voice flat, "and then see if you want to call us children." He spit as far as he could and hit the ground half a meter in front of her. "If you are still alive and able to speak." Schmidt shook her head. "No. We won't fight you."

"Then you are less than our enemies," Nagy said. "You are nothing." He glanced at Bony.

"Nothing," Bony said. He turned and walked out of the dome.

Nagy followed, less than half a step behind him.

Another boy took off. Two more followed. In less than a minute, they had all left. Only the five counselors and I remained.

"You let them walk out?" I said.

Schmidt walked over to me. "What would you have me do?" She leaned over me. I stayed seated. "Make them stay until you're done," I said. "Can you imagine a sergeant letting any of his squad walk out in the middle of a lecture?"

"I'm not their sergeant," she said, "and this isn't the military."

"Even a school has to maintain discipline," I said.

She nodded her agreement. "And we will, but initially only when absolutely necessary, when they do something that will endanger their own safety, the safety of other boys, or ours." I shook my head. "If you're not going to make them learn, what are you going to do?"

"Feed them," she said, frustration finally evident in her voice. "Get them off the root. Treat them like boys, not soldiers. Play with them. Encourage them to play with each other. Teach them every now and again, when they let us. Help them learn to resolve problems without fighting. Make it as easy as we can for them to act like boys again. Care about them, really care."

"That's it?" I said. "That's the plan?"

She looked down for a few seconds and pinched the bridge of her nose. When she stared at me again, fatigue and sadness and frustration had replaced the calm of moments ago. "There are a lot of therapeutic techniques we'll use," she said, "and quite a few different tactics, but yeah, that's the plan." Before she could continue, I stood and put my hand on her shoulder. "Okay," I said. "I'm sorry for pushing you. You guys are the experts. Tell me how I can help."

Chapter 36

In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

As Lim had warned, Schmidt told me that what I could do to help was provide both janitorial and guard services. I spent the next few mornings cleaning the barracks while the boys sat on steps or squatted on the ground near the buildings, kicked around some of the many small leather-covered balls that appeared with the sun on our second day there, talked in small groups, and searched for ways out of the complex. Cleaning included both literal cleaning and locating and removing anything that looked at all like a weapon. Soap, sticks, dinner utensils, pieces of plates, hard chunks of roofing material—if you could shape it and sharpen it, the boys were busy turning it into a weapon. Each day at lunch, all of us on the clean-up crew—mostly counselors who'd drawn the job that day, but also a few other support staffers who were there only for the type of work I was doing—pooled our discoveries in a locked room in the back of the best guarded of the half dozen supply sheds.

No counselor reprimanded any boy for these weapons. Every now and then, a boy would be bold enough to ask one of his counselors to return the weapon someone had stolen from him. The counselor would always respond calmly that weapons weren't acceptable because the goal was to learn how to live and resolve conflicts without fighting.

In the afternoons, I had what passed for guard duty: I walked a section of the interior perimeter of the wall around the complex, quietly reported over my comm any boy I spotted within five meters of me, and in as nice a voice as I could manage encouraged those boys to go elsewhere. The clear area outside the walls was still infested with mines, so Lim wanted to make sure that no one escaped and accidentally killed himself. A few boys made early runs at the wall, of course, but the rebels had blasted its surface smooth and slick enough that none of them made it very far before one of the guards spotted him and made sure he came down safely. Most of the boys had yet to accept that the rebels had also wanted to make sure none of them left the complex.

I was on patrol about a hundred meters from the corner where I'd first entered the place when I heard shouting.

"Kill him!"

"You can take him!"

I sprinted ahead and to the left, toward the voices. As I rounded the end of the second barracks up from ours, I saw one of the larger boys attacking one of the adults. The boy was swinging wildly at the man, who was sidestepping and blocking blows but not hitting back. I ran to help the man, but before I could reach him, he spotted me and said, "No!" It was Long, who was also working in this quadrant of the complex.

I'd distracted him enough that the boy managed to clip his chin.

Long stepped back, shook his head, and focused again on the boy.

"There's no root here," a voice from the crowd yelled, "but none of us are sick or shaking. They're poisoning us."

Long looked in the direction of the voice and said, "No, we're not. All we did is give you something to help you get better, so you won't need the root anymore. We—"

The kid facing Long was almost as tall as the man. He straightened from his fighting crouch as if done and threw a slow, lazy fake, clearly hoping Long would either not see it coming or step back to avoid it and lose balance for a second. Long didn't do either one, so when the boy followed by lowering his shoulder and charging, Long was ready. He stepped to the side, spun the boy, and grabbed the kid around the waist. They might have been nearly the same height, but Long was well fed and strong and much heavier, so he easily held onto the boy and kept his head close enough to the boy's back that the boy couldn't do any real damage to him.

The other boys continued to cheer and to call for blood.

"Stop!" Long said. "I'm not going to fight you."

"You people killed my family!" the boy screamed. "Our brothers told us. You killed my mother and my father and my sister, and now I'm going to kill you." He twisted and tried to escape, but Long held onto him.

"No," Long said, "we didn't. The government didn't kill them. We didn't kill them; most of us aren't even from this planet and had never been here before a few days ago. The rebels weren't your brothers, and they weren't telling the truth. They killed your families, and they made you fight for them."

"You're lying!" the boy said.

"No," Long said, "I'm not. I'm sorry for what those soldiers did to you, but all I can do now is help you learn how to live normally. I won't fight you. I won't."

"They're all dead," the boy said, tears streaking his face, "and now you're saying our brothers killed them."

"They did," Long said. "I'm sorry."

"Liar!" several of the boys yelled. "They were our comrades. They fought with us. They never held us as prisoners."

"I'm not lying," Long said. "I'm telling the truth. Look around: These walls were here before we came. When those men brought you to this place, didn't they tell you not to leave? Do you think they would have let you go?" He shook his head. "No. No, they wouldn't."

"They were protecting us from the government demons," one boy said. "Demons like you."

"No," Long said. "That was another of their lies. They were hiding you so a group of inspectors wouldn't find you."

"Why would they hide us?" the same boy said. "We were brave fighters, and they were proud of us."

"Because it is wrong to use children as soldiers," Long said. "They knew that if they were caught doing it, they would be punished."

"Our brothers would not have killed our families," the boy Long was holding said. Sobs blurred his words. "They would not have lied to us. They wouldn't have done that."

"I'm sorry," Long said, "I really am, but they did. They manipulated you—tricked you—and they used you."

"And now you are using us," the same boy said.

Long released the boy and took two steps backward. "No," he said, "we're not. We are holding you here, but only until we can teach you how to live normally."

The boy balled his fists and faced Long. "Why won't you fight me?"

"Because you're done being soldiers. It's time for you to be boys again." The boy spit on his face. "Coward!"

Long wiped the spittle from his cheek but otherwise did not react.

After a few seconds, the boy said, "I knew it." He faced the small group of watchers. "They are cowards!" He returned to his friends.

A couple of them patted him on the back. Others walked away as he drew closer, clearly isolating him, punishing him for failing to force Long to fight.

Long watched them but did not move.

When they had all left, I said to Long, "Isn't that hard? If someone attacks me, I hit back."

"So do I," he said, still staring straight ahead and not looking at me, "under normal circumstances, but these aren't normal circumstances. And, to answer your question, yes, that was difficult. A big part of me wanted to pound that jerk into pulp, but that would have accomplished nothing. More importantly, these kids have suffered enough. Learning to master those impulses and ultimately to feel them less often—

those are big parts of what we trained to do." He rolled his neck and stretched his back. "Right now, I'm really glad we had that training." He finally turned to face me. "What's most important is to remember that these are children, not soldiers."

They can be both, I thought, but I saw no point in saying those words. Long, like the other counselors here, would tell me that he already understood my point. Maybe he did, but not from experience, not the way I did, not the way these boys did.

"They are children," I said, trying to explain it to him but unwilling to tell him why I was so certain, "but they've spent enough time as soldiers that childhood may be only a distant memory, if they remember it at all. I don't even know if they can recall it."

He stared at me for a few seconds. "I see how you might feel that way, but I have to hope you're wrong. Even if you're right, all we can do is hope that with time and help they'll all find their way back to being kids."

"I don't know if they can," I said, my voice barely a whisper. Too late I wondered why I was still speaking, whether I was really talking to Long or to myself, about them or about myself.

"Neither do I," Long said, "neither do I, but we have to try. Let's get back to it."

Chapter 37

Dump Island, planet Pinkelponker - 139 years earlier

The path from the shuttle landing zone to our cave turned sharply right about six steps from the edge of the large, open flat area. A meter past the turn, it widened enough that four of us could stand side by side and still not touch each other or the rock walls. Shadows darkened the area for all but a few hours of each day, which Benny said meant that if they were watching us from the sky, they could see us only during that brief time. We'd cut long branches, wedged them between the rock walls, and covered them with shorter branches. The area underneath this simple cover never received direct sunlight, so it would, we hoped, shield us from overhead spying.

It was our new home.

Sitting beneath it next to Benny, the two of us briefly alone while Han and Bob and Alex fetched fruit and water, I realized something obvious that had escaped me to that point. "If they're monitoring us from above, they've almost certainly examined this path before."

Benny stared at me and nodded.

"Which means they're sure to notice the sudden appearance of these branches." He nodded again.

"And even if they've never looked at the path before, if they do spot tree branches connecting two rock walls, they're going to know this is something we built."

"Yes."

"Which means the shelter is useless."

"Not quite," he said. "As protection from the government, yes, it's probably not going to do any good at all. It does, however, make our people feel more secure, and that sense of safety calms them and makes the days pass more comfortably."

"But if it's a lie, shouldn't we tell them?"

"To what end?" Benny said. "They've already heard that the day we attack the guards, some of them are likely to get hurt, maybe even die. You and the others who can fight are training hard, and our plan is as good as we can make it. We might as well let our people have some hope that we can win."

"So the guards on the shuttle will know we're coming for them? We won't have the advantage of surprise that we've been counting on?"

"Maybe we won't," Benny said, "but I'm betting that we will. The reason is that a more accurate version of your statement is that we won't be able to surprise the guards if the government is bothering to monitor us. I don't think they are. The single biggest thing we have going for us is that they're arrogant and think we're helpless. They can't see us as anything other than a bunch of useless freaks that they keep alive because some government official told them there was a small chance one of us might develop a talent they could use." He shook his head. "No, I'm betting they don't bother to watch us now and they never have."

"If you believe that, then why did you even mention the possibility to all of us?" He sighed. "Because I made a mistake. When I first came here, I hadn't thought through the situation well. I was angry and hurt, because I knew what I could do for Pinkelponker, I knew my talents, and even though I tried to explain them to my parents and our island mayor and even to the men who dragged me onto the shuttle, no one would listen. When the guards threw me onto the sand here, everyone was so hopeless, so resigned to being on Dump forever, so useless, that I used that possibility to lash out at them." He paused for a few seconds. "I'm not proud of my behavior. I was wrong, but once I'd told everyone the government might be monitoring us, I learned that it made some of them angry. Being mad was a lot better than being hopeless. It also convinced the others that I knew things they didn't, so they paid attention to me. They listened to what I had to say." He rubbed his eyes with his upper arms. "Telling them the truth would have changed all that, so I never did. Instead, I resolved to lead them off Dump." I thought about what he'd said. I could go tell the others, but what would I gain by doing that? Hurting them by telling them the truth felt bad. Keeping his secret, though, was joining in the lie—and that felt bad, too. Something hit me. "So the reason you've pushed us so hard in training is that you feel bad about all this?"

"No!" he said. "I've told you why we have to work so hard: Because the guards will be well-trained and have better weapons."

I opened my mouth to speak but he started again before I could say a word. "You're probably right that my guilt was also a motivation. For that, I'm sorry—but nothing about the training would be any different if I'd never deceived anyone."

I considered his claim and nodded, but I wasn't done. Something else still bothered me.

"If your lie proves to be right, if they are monitoring us, then aren't I correct that they will see this shelter, know we've moved closer, and be prepared for our attack?"

"Probably," he said. "My guess, though, is that if they do know, they'll just land somewhere else. Why bother to fight when you can simply choose another landing site?"

"Because they don't think we can hurt them?" I said. "Because they don't see it as a fight worth worrying about?"

Benny shrugged. "Maybe, but it's still an easier choice to land elsewhere, and people tend to choose the easiest path available."

"And if they do? If the next person arrives somewhere else on the island?" He rubbed his eyes again. "What do you think, Jon? We figure out how to cover two locations, or we tear down the shelter and look for better hiding places." He stared at me. His voice rose as he talked. "Or we put a team on both locations. I don't know! We keep on trying, because it's either that or accept that we'll spend the rest of our lives on Dump and never do anything more with ourselves than what we're doing right now." He paused and took a few breaths. When he spoke again, his voice was low and sad. "I don't know about you, but I can't live with that. I can't."

I stared at him for a few seconds and nodded my head.

"I can't either," I said, "but we won't have to. We'll beat them. We'll get off this island. We will."

Chapter 38

In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

The two boys weren't very good at following me. Maybe they'd been better in the forest, or at night, but they were terrible at tracking me in the interior of the complex. I'd spotted them as soon as I'd turned the far northeast corner on my perimeter guard patrol, but I hadn't said anything because I figured they'd give up soon enough. Ten lazy, slow-walking minutes later, they were still trying to parallel me but stay behind the cover of the closest buildings.

"How long are you going to let those two run surveillance on you?" Lobo said over the comm. He had shot sensors into the trees before we launched the initial attack, and they were still operational. To be safe, I was having him monitor me—not that I could have stopped him.

I kept strolling as I quietly said, "I don't know. Watching them is the most exciting thing I've done in the last few days. They don't appear to have any weapons, so I don't think I'm in any danger."

"They don't," Lobo said, "and if those two can take you, I may have to trade you in for a new owner. Still, why take any risks at all?"

I stopped. He was right. "Okay," I said.

I leaned against the complex wall, where I had a clear view of the corner of the building behind which they were lurking. They'd have to cross a lot of open ground to get me if they chose to attack. I couldn't spot anyone else, so if they wanted to make a move, I was giving them as good an opportunity as they were likely to get.

"Enough," I said. "We're done playing. Bony, Nagy: Come tell me why you've been following me." I crossed my arms and forced a yawn. I'd learned that looking slightly bored was often the best way to interest the boys.

I waited.

Nothing happened.

I waited some more.

"Want me to drop a warning round near them?" Lobo said. "That would give them a reason to move." I shook my head and suppressed a laugh. I brought my hand to my mouth and whispered, "No. They're just boys, and besides, you know we're not supposed to fire weapons in the complex."

"Don't think of the round as a weapon," Lobo said. "Think of it as motivation in an excitable, metaljacketed, high-speed form."

"Are you that bored?" I said.

"What do you think?" he said. "You're bored, and you get to walk around." Bony stepped into view from behind the building and stared at me.

Nagy followed him a second later.

"Leave me alone," I subvocalized, "so I can see what they want."

"Out," Lobo said.

I coughed into my hand and raised my head. "You two asked for this meeting," I said. "What do you want?"

Bony tilted his head and stared at me. "We didn't ask for anything."

"You might as well have asked me," I said, "considering the poor job you did of following me."

"We were great trackers," Bony said, standing as straight as he could.

"Great," Nagy said. "Many kills."

Up to that moment, they'd behaved like boys. Now, I'd insulted them, and they were back to acting like fighters—stupid fighters, but fighters.

When was I going to learn what the counselors kept demonstrating? Provoking the kids was rarely useful.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I was joking. I meant no offense." Bony stared at me.

I looked away first.

"Okay," he said.

"So," I said, "what do you want?"

Bony headed my way, Nagy always one pace behind him. The two of them leaned against the complex wall two meters to my left—close enough for conversation in a normal voice but out of my immediate reach.

"You know our names," Bony said, "but we don't know yours. The others all tell us their names." Because they work with you, I thought, while I clean and walk patrol and waste time. I said none of that, though. Instead, I told them, "Jon."

Bony glanced at Nagy and nodded, apparently satisfied. "So, Jon," Bony said, "none of these guards—or counselors or whatever they want to call themselves—will fight us."

"No," I said, "they won't."

"They don't even want to fight," Nagy said.

I thought about how hard Chris had resisted the urge to beat up the boy who'd attacked him and about how he'd worked not to show his feelings to the kids. "No," I said, shaking my head, "they don't."

"But you do," Bony said. "I can see it. You don't do it, you walk away when we try to get you to fight, but you want it."

I didn't know what to say. I never thought of myself as wanting conflict, but I had to admit that when they pushed me—when anyone pushed me—anger surged in me, and I was indeed ready to fight. He laughed. "All those others, those 'counselors,' if we followed them, they would greet us like we were their best friends. Of course, before they reached us a few of their real friends would wander over like it was an accident that they happened to be there, not like they were reinforcements to hold us in case we attack. Not you, though: You let this wall get your back and wait to see what the story is. You're just like us."

I shrugged. "No," I finally said, "I'm not. I'm a grown-up, not a kid. That's a big difference. And, I really don't want to fight you. Sometimes my—" I paused, searching for a way to explain it, conscious that Lobo was listening and by reflex not wanting to give away anything about myself "—background makes me prepare for conflict even when I shouldn't do that, but I don't want it. That weakness in me is why I'm out here walking wall patrol and spending the rest of my time cleaning up after you guys. It's all the counselors can trust me to do."

"Whatever you need to say, Jon," Bony said, "you go ahead and say." He patted Nagy on the shoulder.

"Me and my brother, though, we know what we see."

"So you followed me out here to tell me your opinion of my behavior?" I said. "If so, I need to get back to work."

Bony stared at me for a few seconds, his face growing tense. Nagy stepped to the left, widening the arc they covered. "Why do you want to disrespect me? You think I'm stupid because I'm young?" I held up my hands and edged away from them. "Whoa! Where did that come from? I answered your questions. That's all."

"You think we're stupid enough to talk for no reason?"

I'd watched him talk a lot, but each time he'd been after something. "No," I said, "I don't. Let me put it differently: What do you want to know?"

Bony looked me in the eyes and nodded. He waved his hand behind him. "All those others, I can't trust them. They're doing what they're doing, and maybe it'll be good for us and maybe it won't, but we'll never know who they really are. I don't know who someone is, I don't trust them. You, though, no matter what you say, I see it: You're a warrior. Like my brother here." He tapped Nagy's chest. Nagy smiled in response. Bony thumped his own chest. "Like me."

I didn't know how to respond, so I said nothing.

The two boys nodded their heads as if I'd agreed with Bony.

"So what I want is to know is this, one soldier to another: What's really going on here?" His voice cracked for a second, and in that moment he was the boy, not the fighter. "What do they want?"

"Exactly what they told you," I said. "They want to help you learn how to live normally again."

"What normal?" Nagy said. His eyes were open, and he was looking at me, but he wasn't seeing me; he was somewhere else. "We had land. We had a river you could swim in, right near our house, on the edge of our property. My dad taught me and my sister to swim there." He shook his head, as if freeing himself from something. "They're all dead. I woke up next to them, covered in their blood." He stared at his hands and his chest. "I washed it all off in that river, the last time I went in it." He looked again at me, and this time, I think he was seeing me. "If that's what normal was, it's long gone, as dead as my family." His voice grew stronger as he continued. "Normal is being men who do what is necessary. Normal is tracking the government soldiers who killed our families. Normal is killing them."

"It was," I said, nodding my head, "and I'm sorry for that, but it is over. You have to learn how to go back to being boys. The counselors will help you do that."

Nagy spit at me but hit the ground in front of my boots. "So they want us to become weak again?" He shook his head. "No. No!" He turned and headed back toward the barracks. "I will never be weak again." I watched him go. I remembered a night on Dump when I'd said much the same thing to Benny. I'd needed that resolve and the anger beneath it; without them, I might not have survived. Nagy needed them, too. I had no idea what to say to him.

"Come, brother," Nagy said without turning. "He has nothing for us." Bony looked at me for a few seconds, and for a moment I thought he might talk to me. Finally, though, he shrugged, said, "Sorry," and ran after Nagy.

"So am I," I said, though I had little hope that he heard or believed me. "So am I."

Chapter 39

Dump Island, planet Pinkelponker - 139 years earlier

About four minutes to run from our new shelter to the cave. That's how long it took me now. I was pushing hard, moving far faster than any of the others could manage, but even for the slowest of them it wasn't a particularly long walk. Half a dozen of those who'd be staying in the cave had come with us when we'd carried some food in preparation for our first night here, but now that darkness was squeezing the last light out of the sky, they were all heading back. Benny and a couple of the others said they'd return tomorrow morning to visit.

So why did it feel like Bob and Han and Alex and I were so far away from them, so far away from what had over the last many weeks become my home?

We had a small fire going half a dozen steps down the path from our shelter. The night wasn't cold, and we had no reason for being awake, but when Benny had suggested that we might like a fire, no one had argued. We sat around it, doing nothing, saying nothing, not even looking directly at one another—just sitting.

I watched the stars through the streams of smoke that tendriled into the night and wondered if Jennie was watching the sky, too. Most of the time, I tried not to think about her, to focus instead on the training, but every now and then I couldn't help but recall some happy instant of the past that increasingly felt as if it belonged to someone else.

"It's weird, isn't it?" Alex said.

No one agreed, but no one argued with him, either.

"I mean, sleeping away from everyone else," he said, "leaving the cave, not hearing the ocean sounds as clearly as usual because we're in this trail—it doesn't seem right."

After a few seconds of silence, Bob said, "No, it doesn't, but that's not what's really wrong." We all stared at him and waited for him to explain.

He leaned his thin body forward. The firelight flickered on his cheeks and eyes. He glanced at each of us in turn before he said, "The problem is that this makes everything seem real, and until now none of it did."

"Moving away?" Han said.

"Not real?" I said. "All that training? All those times I had to fight you guys? All those drills? You didn't think it was real." I wanted to slap him but instead balled my fists and struggled to control myself. "I can't believe you."

"No," Bob said, shaking his head, "you don't understand what I mean. Of course all that stuff was real in many ways: We worked hard, we got hurt, we got mad, all of that. But it was all still practice, something we did for a while and then went back to the cave and got on with living." I stared at him and wondered how he and I could be the same kinds of creatures. Had none of this affected him? Was he that weak? Or, I wondered as a flash of insight cracked like lightning in my mind, was he that much better a person than I was? I checked the others; they were all paying close attention to Bob, so I said nothing.

"What's different now," he said, "is that there is no more home, at least not the home we had." I lost mine a long time ago. So did they. How could they not know that?

"All there is now is this place and our attack on the shuttle."

That's all there has been for weeks and weeks. How could they not know that, too?

I was too surprised to talk, and no one else said anything, so he continued. "Sure, we're sleeping away from the others, but if Benny had asked us to fish the other side of the island, we'd have spent the night over there and thought nothing of it. We've slept in other locations during our training. It's not fun to be out here on our own, but the problem isn't what we're leaving; it's what we're heading into." Bob fell silent.

The others nodded their heads in agreement.

No one spoke.

I backed slightly away from the fire as I realized for the first time that none of them truly understood what was happening, that for them this had all been to some degree a game, a drill of skills they'd never need to use. No wonder Benny believed it was up to me; it was.

"I can't believe . . . ." I stopped talking, my voice floating away with the smoke on the light evening breeze, because I didn't know what to say next.

They all stared at me, their expressions alarmed. Only when I saw their faces did I understand how angry I must have sounded.

The telltale squeak of the wheels on Benny's cart saved me from having to find the words to go with my feelings. Everyone turned away from me and watched the end of the trail as the sound drew closer and, finally, Benny appeared around the bend.

"Can't believe what, Jon?" he said, his tone jovial, friendly, reassuring. The others visibly relaxed, smiles easing onto their faces and their shoulders lowering. Benny was only a kid, a kid no older than I was, a kid with flippers for lower arms and feet, a kid younger than many of the others, and yet he really was their leader. He showed up, and they thought everything was better, even though nothing had changed.

Amazing.

He looked up at me as he continued talking. "That we're really here?" He propped himself on his elbows, smiled, and surveyed each of us in turn. "Well, we are, and you guys were right to insist we come to this place. It's hard, no doubt about that, but now we're where we should be. When the next shuttle comes, we'll take it, and we'll get off this rock!"

Bob and Alex cheered in agreement.

Han nodded his head.

I said nothing.

"I thought you were going to stay with the others," Bob said. "You left."

"I was," Benny said, "but I was being stupid. What if the shuttle lands while I'm back there? You guys overcome the guards, and then what? You have to wait on me to get here to fly the damn thing!" He shook his head. "No way. The minute that ship is ours, we're getting out of here!" This time, all three cheered.

I couldn't believe them. Nothing at all had changed, but now they were happy.

"Hey, Jon," he said.

"Yeah."

"I was carrying some more fruit on my cart, but I lost it a bit down the path. Would you help me gather it?"

I was glad for the excuse to get away from the rest of them. "Sure, but I can handle it on my own."

"Nah," he said, "I made the mess, so I should help clean it up." The smile never left his face, but his eyes and voice hardened enough that his intent was clear.

"Should we come?" Bob said.

I kept staring at Benny as I said, "No need. You guys take it easy. We'll be right back." Benny led me along the path for about two minutes of slow, squeaking rolling. He stopped and faced me.

"What do you think you're doing?" he said, his voice clear even though he was whispering.

"What do mean?" I whispered in return. He obviously hadn't wanted anyone else to hear our conversation, so at least for now I'd play along.

"What were you about to say to them?"

"Did you hear them?" I said, the anger surging into me again. "They don't understand. I only now realized that they've never understood. This is all a big game to them—maybe not a fun game, definitely a scary one, but still a game. Even though you've told them that some of them may die, they've never really gotten it."

"And you have?" he said.

"Yes."

"You've understood what it's like to beat someone with your fists until they're unconscious," he said, "or to stab him repeatedly with your knife until he falls, or to slice his throat and watch him die. You understand all that."

The rock walls on either side of the path closed in on me, the air stopped moving, and I wanted to punch Benny. Why had I bothered to come with him? What else had he been training us to do, if not those things? How were we not to understand it? He'd been more than clear. I ground my teeth and stayed completely still, because no matter how little the others had gleaned from his lessons, I had learned how much my own anger could rule me.

I held my ground, stared at the sky, and thought some more about what Benny had said. No matter what else I'd thought of him, I'd never figured he was stupid. If he was saying something that struck me as really dumb, I probably didn't understand him.

Then I did.

"You don't get it, either, do you?" I said. "You've never been in a fight. You've never hurt anyone." He shook his head but kept staring at me. "No, I haven't, so in the very real way I'm trying to describe, no, I don't get it. I can't. You can't, either, any more than you can understand what it's like to swim in the ocean until you've done it. You can think about it, people can tell you about it, you can read about it, watch videos of it—you can learn everything there is to know about it, but you can't understand this sort of thing until you've been through it."

"How do you know that?" I said. "Maybe some people can. Maybe I can. Maybe by seeing it over and over in your mind you can come to understand it."

"Maybe," he said, "but from everything I've read and what I've seen of all of us—including you—that's not how it works."

"So we're all going to fight those guards and not really be ready?"

"You'll be as ready as I can make you."

"But that's not truly ready, not as ready as we'll be after we do it."

"That's right."

"That's terrible," I said. "Some of us may well die and never even get a chance to know exactly what happened to us, what we did wrong, what we did right, any of it."

"Yes," he said, his voice even lower now.

"How can you live with that knowledge and still do what you do?" I said. "How can you train us all—

people who trust you, people who think of you as a friend—send us off to fight, and then sit back and watch, knowing what can happen, knowing we're not completely ready?"

"Jon," he said, "take another look at me. What else can I do? Fight with you? I'd cost you far more than I'd help you. Not train you? We'd be stuck here forever. Not come up with this plan? Again, we'd all be stuck here—and we've all decided we don't want that."

I didn't know what to say. He was right, but I hated it.

"Did you ever read, Jon?"

"No," I said, "I never learned how. They all said it was a waste of time for anyone to try to teach me, because my brain wouldn't ever be able to hold enough to make the result worth the effort. And, of course, there was always plenty of useful work I could do in the fields and around the village." I chuckled. "Now, I'm sure I could learn, but there's nothing to read."

"You'll get your chance," Benny said, "once we're off Dump. The reason I asked is that I read a lot before they threw me away, read every chance I had. A lot of what I read was history, what men and women before us did back on Earth. Reading taught me a lot about how the shuttles worked. It's also one of the ways I learned about this training, about fighting, and about how people like me have always been sending people like you out to fight for us."

"What do you mean?" I said. I pointed at his front flippers. "There can't have been a lot of people like you."

A slight grin crossed his face before he continued. "No, not like me in having this birth defect. Like me in being unable—or sometimes unwilling—to fight, but still ordering others to do it. As near as I can tell, for as long as there have been people, there have been other people, older or more powerful or richer or in some way above or exempt from the call to battle, who have ordered soldiers to go into combat and, sometimes, die."

"But you're just a kid," I said. "Who are you to do that?"

"The only leader we have," he said. He craned his neck upward, toward me, as far he could. "Unless you want the job."

I pictured Bob and Alex and Han around the fire, in training, trying to fight with me. As bad as it was to know how poor their chances were, it would be worse to watch them walk away from me and toward a battle with the guards and not be beside them, trying to save them. I would already be leading them during the shuttle attack; that was more than enough responsibility for me.

"No," I finally said, "I don't want that. I'd rather fight with them." He nodded. "Let's head back. Let's make them as happy as we can tonight, and train as hard as we can tomorrow. That's the job."

I picked up the still tied collection of fruit that he'd clearly pushed off his cart so he could reach us faster. He didn't wait for me; he knew I could catch up. He turned and headed back. "That's my job," he said. I'd never heard him sound more sad, but when we entered the clearing, he greeted the others with a smile and a joke about how much time I could waste simply picking up some fruit.

I laughed along with the others.

Chapter 40

In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani

The scream came from near the corner barracks. I stopped patrolling the perimeter and turned toward the sound that broke the quiet of the darkening day.

"Get him!"

"Kill him!"

I sprinted toward the noise. As I drew closer, I could make out other, less loud voices urging the people involved in the fight to stop.

I cut to the inside of the row of buildings in time to see Schmidt and Long tear around the corner and spot the large circle of boys.

Boys were also running toward the conflict, streaming into the circle and merging with it. As a few of them joined from the same angle on which I was approaching, the crowd parted enough that I could see for a second what was happening: Nagy was chasing Bony, swinging wildly and yelling, his mouth working but no words emerging.

Though I wanted to barrel through the boys, I was never supposed to get violent in any way with them, so I slowed as I reached the perimeter of the crowd and began gently working my way to its center. Nagy's voice was no clearer than before, because he was yelling wordlessly, animal sounds of anger and pain erupting from his throat as if his body could no longer contain them.

Bony's words were clear. "I didn't mean anything bad," he said. Gasps punctuated the words as he zigged and zagged to evade Nagy. "I was trying to make you feel better."

Nagy stopped running. He held his arms at his sides, craned his neck forward, and stared at Bony. The shorter boy stopped, too, and faced his friend.

"You're weak," Nagy said. He spit at Benny and hit the small boy's shirt. He pointed at Schmidt and Long, who were now on the inside of the circle but standing still, watching but not moving. "Like them. Like all of them."

Bony said nothing. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

"You made me weak," Nagy said, "you and your crying and your stupid words."

"You're my brother," Bony said as he began to sob.

"No!" Nagy said. "I had a family, a real family, and a brother, a real one, not some little coward who ran away as his family was killed."

"We couldn't have saved them," Bony said. "Not your family. Not mine."

"You could have tried!" Nagy said. "You could try now! At least I went down with them." His voice faltered and for a few seconds he hung his head. "I fought, and I fell, and I don't know why I lived. You—

you ran away."

"What could I have done?" Bony screamed. "There were so many men I couldn't count them all, and they were stabbing and—"

"You could have fought!" Nagy said. "Instead, you left your family, and now you're leaving me."

"No," Bony said, "I'm not. I'm right here, brother." He held out his right arm.

"We could have saved them!" Nagy screamed. He launched himself at Bony and knocked the other boy onto the ground.

Schmidt and Long darted into the circle. They each grabbed one of Nagy's arms and pulled him off Bony. The smaller boy stayed on the ground, curled in a ball and motionless. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," he said.

Long wrapped his arms around Nagy's torso as the tall boy kicked and screamed, his eyes seeing nothing, only memories visible to him.

Schmidt stood in front of him and spoke slowly and gently to him. "It's not your fault," she said. "It's not your fault." She glanced over her shoulder at Bony and at me before she focused again on Nagy. "It's not your fault."

"You can't keep me here!" Nagy screamed in reply. "You're all too weak. None of you can stop me!" I pushed past the last boys in front of me and bent over Bony. I couldn't tell if he even knew I was there. I picked him up. There was nothing to him, even after weeks of eating decently, just a sticklike frame of sinew and bone. His eyes were shut.

All the boys in front of us stared at me.

I walked toward them, and they parted to let us out.

My body vibrated with energy. My face burned. I had to blink to see clearly. I glanced at the boy in my arms, over my shoulder at Schmidt, Long, and Nagy, who were still locked in their positions, and back down at Bony.

"It's not your fault," I said, my voice hoarse and rough. "It's not your fault."

"You did a good job out there," Schmidt said.

"What?"

"You did a good job," she said again. "With Bony. With not diving into the conflict."

"With controlling yourself," Long added from his seat on the chair next to hers. The sky outside the small window over their heads was dark but somehow felt less dim than the inside of the tiny room Schmidt used as an office and meeting area.

"How was that good?" I said. I had to struggle to keep my voice under control. "Bony's best friend turned on him. All I did was carry him away and repeat what you were saying." I shook my head. "I don't even know why I said that stuff to him."

"Because it's true," Schmidt said, leaning forward in her chair, "and he needs to hear it, over and over again, until he learns it, until he believes it and knows it, deep in his heart." She sat back and took a deep breath. "It's vital to healing."

"Do you believe it?" I said. "Not about them. About yourself, about all the bad things you've done in combat?"

"That's different," she said. "I was an adult."

"Is it?" I said. "Is it really different?"

Long stepped between us.

"Do you ever think about when you were a kid?" he said.

All the time, I thought, but I sure wasn't going to say that to them. Instead, I forced myself to lean back in my chair. I shrugged. "Who doesn't?"

"Most people," he said, "have memories—"

"—sometimes suppressed," Schmidt said.