"Benny…" Tobit began.
"Don’t Benny me," Dade snapped. "The real reason you don’t want me is that I’m not… I don’t look like an Explorer. Isn’t that it? I’m just a normal guy, who never had the rough life you people did, because I don’t have a birthmark or a deformed arm or a…" He just waved in my direction. "Whatever. I’m sorry the navy fucked you folks over, but that’s not my fault. And it’s ancient history. I mean," he said, gesturing toward Festina, "here I am with the very woman who put an end to that crap, and you want to discriminate against me because I don’t have anything wrong with me. Listen, Admiral, you’re the reason I’m here. You’re the reason the navy has to let everyday people into Explorer Academy, and you’re the reason I volunteered for the corps. You managed to fix an old injustice, and I thought, ‘Hey, I could help.’ The sooner people like me get integrated into the corps, the sooner the navy stops thinking of Explorers as totally expendable freaks. But let me tell you, I’ve received nothing but grief ever since I signed up. The teachers at the Academy… the other students… all of you here… you treat me like some annoying embarrassment who might go away if you just marginalize me enough. Well, I’m not going away — I’m going to be an Explorer. I just wish you’d accept that and start treating me as one of the team!"
Silence. I don’t know what anyone else was doing because I’d glued my gaze to my feet. The air was filled with the hot smell of emotions, but everything was all mixed together: anger, guilt, indignation, embarrassment, coming from all directions.
Finally, Festina sighed. "Dade — once upon a time I would have said anyone who wanted to be an Explorer was too fucking insane to be allowed into the corps. But seeing as I am the woman who forced the navy to consider Explorers as more than ‘expendable freaks’… all I’ll say is that you worry me. You might have depths I can’t see, but you sure come across as a starry-eyed kid who’s too gung ho to realize the real world is dangerous. You’ve lived a damned pampered life, no matter what hardships you think you’ve faced, and all the Academy training in the galaxy hasn’t prepared you to take care of yourself.
"But," she went on, "you aren’t going to figure that out till you see for yourself. So congratulations; you can land with us on Troyen. I’m going to gamble that taking you down to a war-ravaged planet will open your eyes without getting the rest of us killed. The prospect of relying on you to watch my back scares the piss out of me, but I’m going to take the risk. Otherwise, I might start believing the Admiralty had the right idea all along, only picking Explorers from people who know the universe is a cruel and bitter place. People who were born knowing it."
Very pointedly, she tipped her head to give the boy a face-on view of her birthmark. "I grew up knowing something you didn’t, Dade. So did Tobit. So did Kaisho. So did York over there, even if he still doesn’t think he deserves an Explorer’s uniform. York never went to the Academy, but the uniform fits him just fine. As for you, Dade — I’m giving you a chance because in your whole damned life, I don’t think you’ve ever been put to the test. Maybe by some miracle, you’ll find a real Explorer in your heart. If you don’t… well, considering we’ll be landing in a war zone, your future career is the least of your worries."
She waited a moment, then did the most unexpected thing an Explorer could do: lifted her hand, gave Dade a salute, and said crisply, "Dismissed." It took the boy a moment to remember Festina was an admiral; then his face went stony, he returned her salute, and walked stiffly out of the room.
The rest of us stayed where we were a moment, then slowly let out our breaths. In a low voice, Festina asked, "What do you think, Kaish? Any mystic visions of the boy smartening up?"
Kaisho reached both hands up to the hair over her face and suddenly lifted it high… as if her cheeks were hot and in desperate need of air. I caught a glimpse of her handsome crinkled face, just a tiny bit damp with sweat; then she let the hair fall back into place.
"The boy does have hidden depths," she whispered. "But I don’t think you’ll like them."
30
CHECKING IN ON THE NEIGHBORS
Three full orbits of Troyen and we still hadn’t picked up any transmissions from people down on the ground.
"Um," I murmured to Festina. "What if the Explorers’ radios have been eaten by Fasskister nanites?"
Festina shook her head. "As soon as the navy heard about the Fasskisters’ Swarm, our researchers developed equipment that was immune to the little buggers. Otherwise, the whole fleet would be at the Fasskisters’ mercy."
"Yeah," Tobit put in, "everything we carry should be fine. Of course," he added, "the Fasskisters have probably invented a Swarm that’ll eat our new equipment. But we’ll cross our fingers there isn’t any of that on Troyen."
"There shouldn’t be," Festina said. "If Willow’s Explorers aren’t transmitting, they’re just being careful. In a war zone, it’s dangerous to broadcast continuously, even if your messages are encrypted to look like static. Sooner or later, some army will decide you’re an undercover agent sending intelligence to the enemy; next thing you know, you’re surrounded by a platoon of spycatchers."
Lucky for us, there was a fallback plan for making contact. Whenever an Explorer team is assigned to a ship, they’re given a "transmission second" — one second of the standard twenty-four-hour clock when they should try a burst transmission, if they’re ever on a planet where longer broadcasts are dangerous. It took a bit of calculating, converting Willow time to Jacaranda time and allowing for relativistic slippages in everybody’s clocks… but eventually, Festina and Tobit agreed that the folks down on Troyen would try a single blip of contact at 23:46:22, Jacaranda time. Since it was only ship’s morning, we had most of the day before we’d hear anything.
"So, a whole day to kill," Tobit said. "You folks play poker?"
"Enough to know I don’t want to play with you," Festina told him. "What do you say to a side trip?"
"Where?"
Instead of answering, she turned to me. "Edward, do you know exactly what Willow did its five days in this system? Were you watching the whole time?"
"I wasn’t watching at all. The base’s monitors just had a big display of what navy ships were close by. Willow showed up on the list, and stayed there till they picked me up to go home."
"So Willow might not have stayed near Troyen all the time. They could have gone somewhere else for a while."
"But there’s nowhere else to go in this system," Dade said. "Nowhere else inhabited, anyway."
"Wrong," Festina told him. "There’s an orbital around the sun. Occupied by Fasskisters who don’t want to leave the area, for fear of being killed by the League." She smiled grimly. "Now ask yourself: if anyone in the galaxy created specialized nano like the stuff on Willow that was stealing queen’s venom, who would it be?"
"Oh," Dade said. "Yeah."
Festina nodded. "Let’s assume Willow visited the orbital while they were in this system. And let’s assume the Fasskisters smuggled nano onto the Willow during that visit. Shouldn’t someone ask them why?"
Like most orbitals, it was a big cylinder floating in space, the surface skin covered with photocells that gathered energy from the sun. Unlike most orbitals, the photocells had been arranged into bands running lengthways with strips of white in between, so that the whole cylinder was covered with long black-and-white stripes.