“It’s true that nobody has ever captured the team flag,” Randall said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
Lucas had to agree with Rahul: the opening in the sphere was small enough that even a single person could guard it easily. Why was the game set up like that? It seemed odd.
“First-year kids, stay near our flag,” Tali said. “The rest of you are on offense. Keep together and don’t let them isolate you.”
Randall verified that both teams were ready and headed over to the marked-off neutral area on one side of the sphere. “Three. Two. One. Go!”
The next fifteen minutes were complete chaos. The score racked up quickly as kids from each side tackled one another and wrestled away their opponent’s flag. Tali, Oliver, and the other fourth-year kids played offense, and each scored a half-dozen points. But it soon became clear that their second- and third-year groups were outmatched by their rivals on the other team. Repeated attacks took out the alpha and beta kids’ midfield guard, forcing Tali and the others to fall back to help.
The only bright side of the match, as far as Lucas could tell, was that their plan of focusing on the delta-section first-years worked beautifully. Most of this was due to Elena and Lucas, who racked up multiple points each on Willem, Aaron, and Katya. Rahul only managed to score one point, but it was a satisfying one: he ambushed Willem from behind a fuel tank, tackling him hard and ripping the flag off his waist with exaggerated delight. But it wasn’t enough, and with five minutes left, Lucas’s team was down by eleven points.
“They’re playing conservative,” Tali said as alpha section regrouped near the flag. She leaned her head against a fuel tank, breathing hard. “They know there’s no way we can catch up if they just defend.”
“Cowards!” Oliver shouted over the general channel.
“Just playing smart,” Maria called back, floating near the center of the sphere.
In response, Oliver banged his hand against the inner surface of the sphere. The force caused him to drift away gently toward the center of the playing area.
It was another demonstration of equal and opposite reaction. Just like Randall had said: in zero gravity, any force pushed both sides away from each other. Which meant that even though it was far more massive, the sphere would have just moved a tiny amount in the opposite direction. Something about that idea tugged at Lucas. He was sure it was important, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.
Suddenly it clicked in his mind, and he had answers to all the questions that had been nagging him. Why was this game designed to be so difficult to win? Why were the flags kept outside the sphere? And why had Randall chosen today to demonstrate the effect of decompression on the Orpheus?
“I know how to beat them,” Lucas said, grabbing Tali’s arm.
Tali squinted dubiously at him. “What are you talking about?”
“The sphere isn’t attached to anything, right?” Lucas said. “It’s just floating. Which means we can move it.”
“Okay, maybe,” Britta said. “But how would that help us?”
Lucas pointed to the other team’s flag, floating just outside the other side of the sphere. “Because the flags aren’t attached to the sphere. Which means that they’ll stay right where they are.”
“You’re not talking about moving the sphere,” Tali said. “You’re talking about rotating it.”
“I’ve got no idea whether that will actually work,” Oliver said, looking thoughtful. “But we’re not going to win this game any other way.”
Tali nodded. “First- and second-years, stay here and help Lucas. That’ll attract the least amount of attention. The rest of us go wild in the center and try to keep them distracted. We can’t let them figure out what we’re doing.”
Tali led the older alpha-section kids toward the other team’s base, waving their arms aggressively. The other team froze for a moment and then fanned out, still playing defensively.
“Now’s our chance,” Lucas said. “Find a good spot. Something secure.”
He and the other cadets positioned themselves against some of the stronger-looking tanks that were welded to the inside of the sphere. Britta found a spot next to Lucas and gave him a little nod. “One, two, three!” Lucas said.
Each of them flicked on their thruster packs, ratcheting the throttles up slowly. “Ow,” Rahul said, shifting his weight. “I’m being smushed.”
Lucas had to agree: it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. As far as he could tell, all he was doing was crushing himself against the fuel tank in front of him. “Keep going,” he gasped. “Make sure the thrust is aimed at a right angle.”
“How’s it going back there?” Tali called from the sixty-second waiting area. “We’re getting killed.”
Lucas glanced over his shoulder at the opening they’d come through. Their flag had already disappeared, and the stars outside were gently drifting past. But it was going to take a while to rotate the entire sphere one hundred and eighty degrees. Would they have enough time?
Sensing an advantage, the other team stopped playing defensively and started pushing back into alpha and beta’s territory. Britta led Elena and some of the other cadets to where Oliver was waging a defensive battle against Hanako and a group of delta kids, leaving Rahul and Lucas as the only ones still pushing back at their base. Lucas turned and focused on applying as much force to the sphere as he could. He had to trust that his teammates could give him enough time.
Elena and Britta were soon taken down by a trio of delta cadets, though they managed to grab two of their flags in the process. One by one, their teammates were captured and sent to the waiting area, until only Tali was left. She danced around, delaying the inevitable for as long as she could, but finally lost to a concerted rush by Maria and another cadet.
“Looks like this is my chance,” Rahul said. He switched his radio to the general channel and let out a bloodthirsty scream as he leaped toward Willem, Katya, and Aaron. He somehow managed to tackle all three at once, losing his flag in the process but knocking them all back away from the edge of the sphere.
“Heroic of them, I guess,” Maria said, approaching Lucas.
“I guess,” Lucas agreed. He shut off his thrust and slid over toward the opening in the sphere. All he needed was a few more seconds.
“But now we’re going to capture all of you and get your team flag,” Maria said. “First time ever.”
“Maybe,” Lucas said, looking through the hatchway. Almost there . . .
He lunged forward and stretched out his arm through the opening. Startled, Maria grabbed his leg and pulled him back inside.
“Got you!” she shouted, grabbing his flag and holding it triumphantly above her head.
“Maybe,” Lucas agreed. He opened his clenched fist, revealing the gamma-and-delta team flag.
“But we won.”
8
“I’M JUST GOING to say it one more time,” Rahul crowed as the three of them climbed into their sleep sacks that night. “That was brilliant.”
“Yes, it was,” Elena said tiredly. “But regular classes start again tomorrow, so—”
“Rotating the entire sphere!” Rahul went on, twisting his fist to demonstrate. “Genius! And the looks on their faces when they found out they’d lost were priceless.”
The subject of the “stolen” victory had led to a dozen heated arguments over dinner. Despite Randall’s assurances that Lucas’s strategy broke no rules, half of the cadets on the ship were clearly convinced that he’d cheated. Even an official announcement from Captain Sanchez that alpha and beta sections were the winners of the match didn’t clear up the controversy. At least four times, a cadet from delta or gamma section angrily told Lucas that tricks like that weren’t going to work the next time they faced off.
But as Lucas lay in his sleep sack, his mind wasn’t on any of that. He wasn’t reveling in his victory or worried about what the other cadets thought. Instead, all he could think about was his sister.
He despera
tely wanted there to be some reasonable explanation for why she’d been outside on the hull of the Orpheus. If there was a problem with her suit, then what had she been doing near the sensor array? Why had her transponder been turned off? And could it possibly be a coincidence that this had happened during the one time when all the cadets would be off the ship?
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t come up with answers to any of these questions. Or at least, not any good answers.
An hour after lights-out, still wide awake, he decided that he had two options. The first was to ask his sister outright what she had been doing out on the hull. He could imagine how that would go: denial, anger, dismissiveness. After going through all that trouble to hide her actions, Tali wasn’t going to suddenly admit to what she’d been doing—not even to him. Maybe especially not to him.
Which left him with the second option.
Quietly he slipped out of his bunk and got dressed in his uniform. He reached for the control to open the door, but in the darkness his fingers accidentally brushed against the touchpad for the lights instead. The light bars in the ceiling flashed on to full brightness, momentarily blinding him. He turned them off again quickly, but it was too late.
“What’s going on?” Rahul asked blearily.
Elena sat up in her sleep sack. “Lucas is going somewhere.”
Fortunately Lucas had thought ahead. He remembered how Tali had always told him that the best lies were as close to the truth as possible. “I’m going outside.”
“Like, outside the ship?” she asked. “In the middle of the night?”
“Back on my dad’s ship, if I had trouble sleeping, I’d go out and look at the stars,” Lucas explained, doing his best to sound matter-of-fact. “It’s beautiful. Very relaxing.”
“So it’s like some kind of Belter cure for insomnia?” Rahul asked.
Lucas shrugged. “Something like that.”
“You’re going out by yourself?” Elena asked doubtfully. “That really doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
“He’s not,” Rahul said, swinging out of his bunk. “Because I’m coming too.”
Lucas’s mouth fell open. This was something he definitely hadn’t expected. “Seriously? What about your vertigo?”
“That’s exactly why I’m coming,” Rahul said. “You heard Randall. I need more time out there.”
Lucas tried to think of an argument for why Rahul shouldn’t come, but he was trapped by his own lie. Maybe he shouldn’t have made it sound so appealing? Of course, who could have predicted that a kid with astral vertigo would want to come along?
“What about you?” Rahul asked Elena. “You’re not really going to stay behind, are you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Elena said, rolling over in her sleep sack.
“Oh, come on,” Rahul said, pulling on his uniform. “It’ll be fun. Didn’t you ever sneak out back home? To tip over cows, or whatever?”
From his spot near the door, Lucas saw a flash of raw emotion on her face. Was it anger? Pain? He couldn’t tell, but it was clear that Rahul’s words stung her.
“No,” she growled. “I never snuck out to tip over cows, or whatever.”
Rahul grinned as he zipped up his uniform jacket, clearly oblivious to how upset Elena was getting. “Wow. Talk about a missed opportunity.”
“It’s okay,” Lucas put in. “If she doesn’t want to come—”
“Fine!” Elena snapped, sitting up suddenly. “I’ll go out on your stupid little mission. Are you happy?”
“The Three Musketeers!” Rahul crowed, and then put his hand over his mouth. “Sorry. Forgot how late it was.”
Lucas sighed. This was getting worse and worse. How was he going to search the spot on the hull where he’d seen Tali if Rahul and Elena were with him? He might as well bring along Captain Sanchez herself.
“Everyone ready?” Rahul said cheerfully when they all had their uniforms on.
“Ready,” Lucas and Elena mumbled in unison.
They floated quietly out into the hallway and looked around. It was 0320 ship’s time, and with any luck, nobody would be awake except for the night crew on the bridge. Lucas led them down the Broadway ladder, barely touching the rungs, and then headed down a corridor on deck nine until he reached the main airlock and prep room.
Rahul peered through the window of the airlock. “Looks quiet out there, at least.”
“It’s space,” Elena said. “It’s always quiet.”
They put on suits and helmets and found backpacks that had full charges of oxygen and propellant. Lucas was about to open the airlock when Rahul grabbed his arm. “Whoa, are you crazy?”
“What?”
“If you open that door, an alert is going to go off on the bridge,” Rahul whispered. “The duty officer will be down here before you can say ‘court-martial.’”
This was something Lucas hadn’t considered. The Belter ships he’d been on weren’t exactly security conscious. “If you knew we can’t go outside, why did you let us come down here and get suited up?”
“I didn’t say we can’t go outside,” Rahul countered. “I just said you can’t go opening doors like Alice in Wonderland.”
He pulled out a handheld screen and turned it over. The back cover had been removed, exposing a dense web of circuitry. Rahul knelt down and opened up a panel next to the airlock door.
“Green goes to green, red goes to black,” he said in a singsong voice, though from what Lucas could tell, none of the connections he was making had any relation to the colors he was reciting.
“How long is this going to take?” Elena asked, looking over her shoulder at the corridor behind them.
“Patience,” Rahul said. “Nothing worth doing is easy. Though to be honest, this is script-kiddie stuff. I don’t think whoever designed this was super worried about people going out.”
He stood up, bowed dramatically, and pushed a button on his handheld screen. There was a brief pause, and the airlock doors slid open.
“You’re the best,” Lucas said as they crowded into the airlock. “How hard is that to learn?”
“Nothing to it,” Rahul said, preening. “At least, not if you’re a founding member of the Mumbai Chaos Computing Club.”
Lucas cycled the airlock, wincing at the sound of the air pumps. Hopefully there were no light-sleeping officers on nearby decks. The outer door slid open, revealing the brightly glowing disk of the sun. Lucas squinted and looked around, trying to find the spot where he’d seen Tali.
“This is something I probably should have checked on before,” Rahul said. “But does anyone know the penalty for sneaking outside like this? I mean, is it a ‘Go to your room without dinner’ kind of thing, or more of a ‘Hey, thanks, you’re expelled’?”
“I don’t know,” Elena said. “And no point worrying about it now.”
Lucas craned his neck and made out the top of the big antenna dish a little ways around the other side of the hull. “Let’s head that way,” he suggested, as if he’d just thought of it. “It’ll be nicer once we’re out of the sun.”
Getting there turned out to be a bit harder than he’d anticipated. Not only did they have to avoid all windows to make sure they weren’t noticed by any officers who happened to be awake at this hour, they also had to make sure they didn’t bang against the hull and wake anyone up. Sound wouldn’t carry out here in the vacuum of space, but Lucas knew from experience on the Josey Wales that it would be easily heard inside the ship.
Finally he stopped next to the cluster of sensors where he’d seen Tali earlier that day. He stretched his arms and looked around, trying not to look too curious. From up close, this area was much larger than it had seemed when he was flying past at high speed. How many different antennas did a ship like this need? In addition to the big high-gain antenna, there were two smaller dishes and one that looked like a folded-up umbrella.
What was he expecting to find, exactly? Some kind of intentional sabotage? Now t
hat he was out here, it seemed crazy. Maybe Tali had a good reason to be out on the hull when everyone was away from the ship. Lucas, Rahul, and Elena would sure look suspicious to anyone who happened to notice them.
“You’re right,” Rahul said, yawning. “It is pretty relaxing being out here. I could totally find myself dozing off.”
“I was dozing off,” Elena said. “Back in my bunk, before the two of you dragged me out here.”
Lucas made his way around to the other side of the big antenna. As the sun disappeared behind the curve of the big dish, something caught his eye. A panel next to one of the antennas had scratches on it, and a thin wire led out to a tiny box. He bent down and looked more closely. Something about the box didn’t look like it belonged. He pulled at it experimentally and it came off in his hand. Turning it over, he found a small magnet on the other side, but there were no markings or indications of any kind. He peered inside the small hole and saw what looked like hand-assembled circuits.
Lucas was suddenly sure of two things. First, whatever this device was, it wasn’t Navy-made. And second, Tali had put it here. He jerked the wire out through the gap in the panel and shoved the little box in his pocket.
“Everything okay?” Elena asked, coming around the back of the high-gain antenna.
“Sure,” Lucas said defensively. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You tell me,” she said. “You’ve been acting weird ever since we got back to the ship.”
“Well, Lucas is always a little weird,” Rahul said. “And just to be clear, I consider that a compliment.”
“Okay,” she said. “Tense, then.”
Lucas shrugged. “I’m ready to get back to regular classes, I guess.”
He regretted the words immediately. Get back to regular classes? Whatever happened to lies that were somewhere close to the truth? Clearly he wasn’t any good in the deception department.
Elena raised her eyebrows skeptically. “If you say so. Does that mean we can go back to bed now?”
The Orpheus Plot Page 9
