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  Molly looked at Joel, who had gone a little red with embarrassment.

  Brock was still talking. “Ancestors can rest my soul.” He laughed, finishing what he was doing and making his way up the ramp ahead of them.

  Molly grinned. She was becoming very fond of Brock.

  Chuckling, they followed Brock onto the ship.

  Crash was standing at the top of the ramp, staring at something on his holo. He was wearing one of his blank expressions, the one that meant “not happy.”

  “Everything ok?” Molly asked.

  Crash looked up at her. “Yeah. I just got another ticket.”

  Molly racked her brains trying to think of what could have gone wrong. “What for this time?”

  Crash sighed, a little frustrated. “Not waiting for a signal when the airfield was goddamn empty!”

  Joel clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry, buddy.”

  Crash bobbed his head. “Yeah. Sucks.”

  Molly frowned, confused. “Crash, you do know all the rules of the Spaceport, right?”

  Crash nodded. “Yeah, inside and out. They’re just superfluous eighty percent of the time.”

  Molly shook her head and went to get settled in.

  She had no words.

  On board the Phoenix Reign, (somewhere between Gaitune and Estaria)

  Several hours into the flight, Sean stood up and leaned over the seat in front of him, where Molly was sitting. “You still mad at me?” he asked.

  She didn’t turn or look at him. “A little,” she answered.

  Sean sat back down. “Ok,” he said quietly.

  Paige, who was sitting several rows back, noticed and poked Pieter, who was across the aisle from her. “What do you make of him?” she whispered.

  Pieter glanced at where Paige was looking. “Sean? Seems ok. But you heard about the stunt he pulled, right?”

  Paige nodded. “With the second toxin? Yeah.”

  Pieter turned his head toward her. “I think that’s why Mollz is having trouble trusting him,” he confided.

  Paige looked confused. “But he said he’s sorry.”

  Pieter shook his head a tiny bit, and leaned a little closer so he could speak more quietly. “Yeah, it’s not about that, though. It’s about trust,” he explained. “She trusted him, and he took advantage of that.”

  Paige pursed her lips, a little anxiously. “But he had instructions.”

  Pieter’s head bobbed as he expanded on his point. “Yeah, I’m sure she appreciates that, but it just goes to show that for whatever reason, she’ll never be able to fully trust him. That’s why she’s keeping him at arm’s length,” he finished.

  Paige looked at him. “You seem to have a lot of thoughts on this.”

  Pieter leaned back in his seat. “Well, I’ve had a bit of experience when it comes to losing people’s trust. It’s probably the most precious thing you can give a person, and when it’s violated, it takes a lot of time and effort to win it back.”

  Paige thought about what he had just said, trying to figure out exactly what might have happened in Pieter’s past. From her position, she couldn’t see Sean’s sad expression as he sat back in his seat after trying to talk to Molly.

  Gaitune-67, Secret Basement Base, Ops Room

  Having made it back to the base, the entire team was exhausted. Joel had shown Sean to his sleeping quarters with a promise to show him round the base in the morning.

  Sean had seemed satisfied by the compromise, and didn’t even attempt to pester Molly to show him around.

  Perhaps he knew what might have happened if he had pressed his luck, thought Joel as Molly closed the door to her quarters. Sean, watching her, reluctantly did the same.

  The next morning, Joel and Sean had already started their tour when Molly showed up, mocha in hand, possibly still in her sleeping clothes, as they were coming back from the weapons store.

  Sean saw her coming first. “You just got up?” he asked, looking her up and down and noticing she didn’t have anything on her feet.

  She grunted, and took another sip of mocha. “What gave it away?”

  Sean waved at her hair. “Erm…bed-head.”

  Over her mocha cup, Molly mumbled back at him, “That was what I was going for.”

  Joel was standing behind Sean. He smirked slightly. Molly tilted her head to talk to Joel around Sean. “Do I need to be here?”

  Joel shook his head. “Nah. We got this.”

  She nodded, and without having bothered to make eye contact with Sean again, padded out, presumably to continue her morning caffeination ritual.

  Sean turned to Joel. “Is she going to break my balls forever?” he asked, a hint of disbelief in his tone.

  Joel shrugged. “Possibly. She let you in. You let her down. The best you can hope for is that over time you’ll give her enough data points to counteract the distrust she has for you now. You’re going to have to earn it though, dude. You screwed her over royally.”

  Sean sighed, shaking his head. Just then Joel’s holo beeped, and Oz spoke in his ear. Joel opened the holo.

  Joel, we have a situation. Framan is asking us to respond to a hostage scenario, but it’s urgent and we’re obviously more than a day’s travel away.

  Molly padded back into the room.

  Joel looked up at her.

  Joel held her eye while talking with Oz. “Ok. So we can’t do it unless we have a quicker way of getting there.”

  Yes. That may be possible, though. I’ve noticed that there are a number of Pods—transport devices—that I’m able to interface with on the base network. Looks like they can travel at nearly the speed of light.

  How the hell?

  Let’s do the physics lesson later, but for now, we can take this job, if we can use the Pods.

  Joel spoke out loud. “But the General has forbidden us to mess with any of the goodies until we pass the test.”

  Molly continued his thought process. “And we can’t pass the test unless we can save those hostages.”

  Joel looked at the case file Oz displayed on his holo. “Nice bounty on this one. One hundred thousand credits for the job, five hundred fifty thousand bonus if we save all the hostages.”

  Sean had been watching the conversation fragments going back and forth between Molly and Joel. Hypothesis One: they had linked themselves together in some kind of hive mind. Hypothesis Two: they had someone like ADAM in their ear. Hypothesis Three: they had a secret language that only they shared.

  He was going with Hypothesis Two. Hypothesis Three he just didn’t like. “Ok, guys,” he interrupted, “you going to cut me in on what’s going on? And who else are you communicating with?” he added.

  Molly looked at him blankly. “We have a chance to rescue hostages, but without using the super-fast Pods we’re not going to get there in time.”

  Sean grinned. “Pods? You need to know how to use the Pods?” He paused, holding steady eye contact with Molly. “I can show you that.” He grinned, expecting to get the knight-in-shining-armor treatment.

  Molly wasn’t smiling. “That’s only part of it, asshole. We need to have the General approve it because of this little challenge he has us on.”

  Sean thought for a moment. “Can I give ADAM a quick call?”

  Molly gestured for him to go ahead.

  Sean wandered off through the consoles straight to the primaries near the front of the room.

  Joel watched, intrigued.

  Sean stepped onto one of the console platforms and pressed a few buttons. He looked like he was chatting with someone. A moment later he came back.

  Sean was grinning from ear to ear now. “ADAM has approved the use of the Pods for the purpose of getting to Estaria quickly enough to save lives.”

  Molly thought all he needed to add to his statement was #knightinshiningarmor. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

  Oz, can you confirm with ADAM that we have authorization?

  Sure. One second.

  There wa
s a pause.

  Yes, authorization is confirmed. And Sean will instruct us on how to use them.

  Ok. Rally the troops and give them the 411 on what’s happening. We meet in the base hangar in forty minutes.

  Molly turned to Sean. “Sean, thank you. I’d appreciate your help on this.”

  Sean grinned, thankful for an opportunity to be of use and perhaps redeem himself. Somewhat.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me,” Molly continued, “I need to slip into something more… functional.” She looked down at her baggy t-shirt and shorts. Sean couldn’t be sure, because he was trying not to look, but he suspected she might not have been wearing a bra under that t-shirt.

  She padded out of the ops room again, leaving the boys watching her exit.

  After a moment, in tandem, they each took a deep breath and shook their heads, then continued talking about the finer details of the weapons store they’d just toured.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Gaitune-67, Secret Basement Base, Hanger Deck

  Oz, all set?

  Yes, I’m hooked into the Pods so I can control all of them from your holo. Well, holo plus additional circuits.

  You mean my brain.

  Yes.

  Let’s not forget that. The organic part of your processing unit.

  Noted.

  Good.

  The team had assembled on the hangar deck surrounding what Sean had identified as the Pods. They were egg-shaped with slick exteriors and no obvious access to the interior. Paige wondered how many people you could really fit in one.

  Joel, Sean and Molly stood in front of what must have been a dozen of them and faced the team, their backs to the Pods.

  Joel started the briefing. “Ok, people, in a few moments Sean is going to show us how these babies work.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the Pods. “These are going to get us down to the surface fast. But in the meantime, let me tell you about our mission.”

  He projected his voice so that it didn’t disappear into the vastness of the hangar deck. “We have a situation just outside of Spire. A research facility has been taken over by a group whose motives and allegiances are unknown. We’ll call them the unsubs. Unknown Subjects.”

  He paused, slowing himself down and giving the group the chance to take it all in. “This group has taken eighty-four hostages. No one has died yet, and we want to keep it that way. Our job is to go in and extract the hostages. The unsubs are expendable, and we have authorization from the police and the AG of Spire to take them out without repercussions. Framan, our boss, has asked us to leave some of them alive so they will be able to find out who these fuckwits are.”

  He concluded his briefing. “We’ll know more when we get to the surface, but for now, that’s what we know.”

  Joel looked at Sean, and took a step back.

  Sean glanced at the earnest and excited faces. “As I understand it, Oz has hooked into these Pods and will be controlling them for you. You can interface with Oz simply by speaking inside the Pod, but from outside you need to type to Oz in your holo, because he would need a microphone to capture your speech.”

  He looked around the team. “Everyone got the digits to connect with Oz from their holo?”

  They all nodded.

  “Good,” he continued. “Ok, this is how you open the doors.” He demonstrated, pressing on the outer shell of the nearest Pod. “Then you simply hop in,” he explained. He held one finger in the air, then pointed down at the lower part of the doorway, warning them. “Careful about this lip here,” he pointed down at the ledge on the Pod. “I’ve seen more than a few cadets trip trying to get their Bambi asses into these things. Oh, and be aware of your balance. For the most part the Pod is designed to adapt, but don’t go throwing yourself around in there. Oz has enough to coordinate with the processing capability he has access to.”

  Pieter glanced at Molly. He had guessed that Oz was using her brain to pull extra processing capacity. He watched to see if she was going to react to Sean referring to her “limited capabilities.” She didn’t bat an eyelid.

  Figures, Pieter thought to himself.

  Sean continued. “Max three people per Pod. I’d go two for the lads.” He looked at Crash and Joel. “Once you’re in the Pod, Oz will close the doors and control movement. Since we don’t have an exact location yet, we’re going to have to pull into orbit, hover out of sight but within holo range, and wait for Joel’s contact to send the coordinates. Once we have those we can drop to the exact address.”

  Sean walked backwards, opening three of the Pods as he went. “Now, this is alien tech,” he continued.

  Brock leaned over to Crash with his hand over his mouth. “No shit, Sherlock.” Crash nodded his head once discretely to acknowledge the comment.

  Sean was still talking. “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves or get shot down. So what we’re going to do is drop in, get out of the Pods quickly, and then let Oz take them back into orbit beyond the reach of Estarian satellites. Got it?”

  Everyone nodded again.

  Sean came back to the center of the group.

  “That’s always the protocol with these things. Remember that. Once we’re on the ground, you’re back under Joel’s command.” He indicated Joel, then clapped his hands to rally the troops. “Right, let’s go save some hostages!” he declared.

  The team whooped and whistled.

  Molly stood observing them, pleased at how the team was coming together without her constant input.

  They climbed into their Pods. Paige and Pieter went together, then Crash and Brock, Molly and Joel, and Sean boarded his own Pod.

  Oz’s synthetic voice piped over their speakers. “All aboard,” he told them, closing the doors.

  Molly suddenly had a thought. “Hang on, how are we going to get out of here? We’re in an underground hangar.”

  Joel swiveled in his seat, suddenly wondering too. There was no way of seeing out of the back of the Pod, and the front window only showed the deck where they had just been standing.

  Sean smiled to himself in his Pod, hearing her through the collective audio link.

  A moment later, Oz came on the speakers again. “Trust me.”

  The Pods lifted, and started moving quickly toward the doors in formation.

  Oz, are you sure you’ve got this?

  Have I ever let you down?

  Molly racked her brains for an example. Coming up empty, she decided to watch the back of the hangar wall, since it was fast approaching.

  Oz. Really? Good time to—

  The wall started opening as if it were a huge door, exposing the inside of the hangar to space.

  Molly was first to notice. “Hang on,” she said. “how come things aren’t flying out of the hangar into the vacuum?”

  Sean came over the audio. “We’ haven’t penetrated the forcefield yet.”

  Molly rolled her eyes and looked at Joel. “Sean, how long have you been able to hear us?”

  She heard him chuckle. “There’s a console when you tap the window. See? A heads-up display.”

  Molly tapped the window and saw the different options. Each of the Pods was selectable, presumably so she could communicate with the team. One was highlighted in red.

  That must be Sean. She tapped it, and it went dark. That’ll show him. She smiled to herself and sat back, not noticing that Joel was also smiling a little.

  The Pods swooped out into space and turned, giving them a view of Gaitune-67. Then, after hovering for a second, they sped off through space.

  Crash recognized the spacescape they were traveling through. “Shit, we’re going fast!” he exclaimed, seeing stars and space-marks pass out of view quickly.

  In a fraction of an hour they had made it to Estaria. The glowing red planet loomed below their feet.

  Oz made an announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, Estaria awaits below. Joel, now would be a good time to call for those coordinates.”

  Joel was already connecting
his holo to his Framan contact. A moment later he hung up. “Got them, Oz. They’ve just sent them.”

  Oz located them on his holo, and directed the Pods to their final destination.

  The descent was interesting. Fast, but controlled. As they passed through the lower atmosphere, Molly felt like she was going to lose her stomach a few times. The descent seemed to just keep going, even when they could see trees and road tracks.

  Finally they “landed,” which to Oz seemed to mean stopping ten feet above the ground.

  Molly noticed. “Hey Oz, you wanna put us down a little closer?”

  Oh? You don’t want to drop from here?

  No, Oz, we don’t want to drop from this height.

  Molly felt her brain tickle. Oz was laughing again.

  She tried to scratch her head, but it had no effect. And I do wish you wouldn’t do that!

  Oz lowered the Pods so they were hovering just above the ground, and tilted them slightly to make their exit easier. Once they were all out, the Pod doors closed quickly, then the Pods lifted rapidly and silently into the upper atmosphere.

  Molly and Joel looked at each other. Joel grinned. “Well, that beats a day-long schlep on a ship!” he commented.

  Molly looked around, making sure the whole team was together. She beckoned them over as Joel scouted the situation.

  The Pods had dropped them about twenty yards from a road, and beyond that was a building with a horde of police, SWAT and fire companies with their lights flashing.

  Joel called to Molly, “Looks like we’ve got our location.” He pointed at the building and activity.

  She turned to the group. “Ok, folks. Let’s get over there and find out who we need to talk to about access.”

  The group traipsed over to Joel and followed him across the road.

  Paige turned to Pieter. “Nervous?”

  He nodded. “You?”

  She smiled. “Hell, yes!”

  He grinned back at her.

  Arriving at the conglomeration of police vehicles and such, Joel took the lead. A sergeant pointed him over to the police primary.

  “Greetings,” said Joel, holding out his hand to the guy. “Framan sent us. We were told Detective Lato would get us inserted.”