What May Come

Please see chapter 1 for author's notes.

Chapter 4: Obligations

Goddard looked down at his crewmembers, sitting back against the wall and picking at the two pizzas. It had been hours since Jacie and Aslinn had left them there…hours that they'd sat trapped with no good ideas about how to get free. Radu had boosted him up to one of the emitters and he'd found that Harlan had been right about not being able to shake them loose—he'd tried and been blasted back into the wall even harder than the first time. Radu had tried to brace himself against the wall and push through the bars… that hadn't worked either. Trying to short the bars might have worked…if any of them had a strip of metal on them. They could—carefully—reach through the bars, but there was nothing within reach to grab. He turned and paced back the other direction. What the hell had he been thinking? This was practically a textbook enemy-territory drill, and he'd broken just about every rule possible. He'd taken information from an unknown source—Kyldarian—and then followed it without even making an attempt to verify the man's credentials. He'd gone directly to the person named—Jacie—without doing any research on him, either. He'd then gone back to Jacie's quarters—his quarters!—instead of remaining in neutral territory. And not only had he left no escape route, he'd taken his entire crew along. That meant there was no one who could alert the authorities that something had happened—not that that had done any good so far—and no one who could come help them himself. He was a trained StarDog, and he'd gotten so wrapped up with worry about where half his crew was that he'd completely disregarded the safety of the rest. What kind of commander did that make him?

"Commander…shouldn't you sit down and rest or something?" Harlan asked, interrupting his thoughts. "I mean…whatever they're going to do, even if it's just throwing us out of the airlock, they'll have to let us out of this cage to do it. We can fight them when they try."

"If it's Aslinn, maybe," Goddard agreed, "but—" he glanced at Radu, hoping the boy wouldn't take offence at what he was about to say. "I fought Andromedans during the war. Neither of us stands a chance against Jacie in hand-to-hand combat…even a glancing blow would be crippling, even possibly fatal. I saw the results of an entire squadron who'd run out of rounds for their weapons against a patrol of four once…there were three survivors on each side. You can do the math."

"I've fought Radu a couple times sparring—I'm still all right," the boy protested, glancing over at the Andromedan.

"I hold back a lot, Harlan," Radu admitted. "A-as much as I can. And you sometimes still get bruises. But…if I can get behind him, I might be able to stop him."

"I don't think pinning him would be such a good idea," Goddard warned. Radu wasn't the most coordinated of his students, and trying to hold someone just as strong as he was for a long period of time would be dangerous for all of them.

"No…we—Andromedans—have a n-nerve center below our third vertebrae. If I hit that, I can knock him out."

"That could work. Harlan and I would have to distract him, but we should both be able to stay clear of his fists." Of course, that assumed Jacie's reaction time was no better than Radu's, but that was a chance they would have to take. Harlan was faster than he was… if he was wrong, it would be him and not the teenager who paid the price.

Radu nodded. "If…if you have to, aim for his ears."

"What, like burst his eardrums?"

Goddard nodded at Harlan's question. "It's a disabling move on a human—I'm guessing the effects would be even worse for an Andromedan." He caught Radu's nod of agreement. "Don't suppose you have any other ideas that might help us even the odds against him?"

Radu shrugged. "We have bone plating over our nerve centers…that's why it will have to be me who hits him. I don't think you could hit hard enough to do any damage…maybe if you had a piece of metal or something, though. You could yell …" he shrugged. "Loud noises bother me, anyway."

"If he lives here, I don't think that's going to bother him," Harlan pointed out. He grinned suddenly. "I wish Bova had been with us—he'd have been pointing out all of the bad things that could happen to us all along."

"I don't think even Bova would have predicted an electric cell hidden in their ceiling."

"Maybe not, Mr. Radu, but it's time we started taking more time to consider worst-case scenarios. I've done just about everything wrong, everything a StarDog should know not to do, since we got that information from Kyldarian. When we get out of here—" always say when and not if when trying to encourage crewmembers—"we are going to start considering options more carefully before we act."

"But Commander, if we don't take chances we might never find the others!"

"The same is true if we take the wrong chances, Mr. Band. Such as those that leave us stranded in a cell in someone's quarters with no way of summoning help."

"I guess."

Radu straightened suddenly. "Someone's coming down the corridor."

The door opened, and Aslinn entered. "Still here?"

Harlan rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, we like the room."

Goddard's estimation of their chances of escape had risen sharply with the entrance of only the human boy. He had years of StarDog training, Harlan was an accomplished martial artist, and Radu had his strength—between the three of them it should be fairly easy to subdue him. "Look, we're being as cooperative as we can here. Can you possibly let us out for a few moments? Just to use the facilities?"

Aslinn looked at him like he'd suddenly sprouted a second head. "What, so you can jump me? No thanks. Jacie should be back soon enough…you can try and fight him if you like."

"Pretty confident," Harlan challenged.

"He's Ashrach."

"He's m-missing?"

Aslinn turned to Radu. "Missing? No, he went down to the concor…you really don't know, do you?"

"Know what?"

He stepped closer. "Lemme see your ears."

Radu glanced at Goddard, who shrugged in return. "What can it hurt?"

Brown eyes widened at the spirals. "I'll be damned. You're Andromedan." He turned to the door. "Jacie, if you can hear me, get back here!"

"Um, your friend is Andromedan," Harlan pointed out.

"No, he's not. He's Ashrach. Um, there were some eggs the Spung pulled out of the hatchery during the war. When they lost so suddenly at the end, they had about 200 eggs hidden. Well, that's how many that have been identified so far."

"No one noticed they were gone?"

Radu glanced over at Harlan and shrugged. "Al-almost a quarter of the eggs in the hatchery were g-gone when it was rescued." He shivered. "They found r-records later…some of them had been…experimented on. Others were smashed as examples. And some were still unaccounted f-for." He nodded to Aslinn. "Ashrach…missing."

"Exactly. The Spung passed them out to their nobility, trained them as bodyguards since the day they hatched. Some of them—the lucky ones like Jacie—managed to get away."

"Wait." Goddard frowned. "That would mean Jacie is only twelve years old."

"Yeah." Aslinn looked confused, and nodded to Radu. "So's he."

"No way! You can't be twelve," Harlan protested. "You look as old as I do!"

Goddard tried to remember what the StarAcademy records had said about Radu, but he hadn't been paying much attention to personal statistics. But the idea that Radu was actually the youngest of the crew…

"How old are you?" Radu asked, looked at Harlan curiously.

"Nineteen!"

"Really?"

"Humans and Andromedans age at different rates," Aslinn said with a grin. "They hatch about as mature as a human five or six year old and grow at about the same rate for a cycle or so. A cycle…maybe four years, Earth standard? Something close to that. Jacie was four when we met up, but he looked like he was about ten—I was thirteen. Then they sort of pause for another cycle…he had a serious growth spurt when I was seventeen and went from ten to fifteen or so in the space of less than a year. Should have seen the looks we got at work. It's been pretty constant since then, but neither of us knows any adult Andromedans so who knows."

"Where's the fire?" Jacie asked, ducking in the door.

"He's Andromedan."

"Excuse me?" Jacie moved to stand in front of the bars. "You can't be…not out here."

"We're from the StarAcademy," Radu answered. "We came through a white hole."

Aslinn glanced at Jacie, who nodded. "Kyldarian needs to keep his mouth shut, but he really did give them our names. Apparently they were trying to get themselves killed on the main concourse."

"And Ch'cov left escorting an unidentified type of craft yesterday…I did what I could with the computers and couldn't find anything connecting them to the Spung or the Triiad. Doesn't mean there's nothing, but it'll be the first time I couldn't locate at least some mention of an operative. Or three. Did you…?"

"Yeah…nothing immediate, but it'll be a few days before I hear from everyone."

Harlan threw up his hands. "We don't have a few days! If you aren't going to help us, just let us go and we won't mention you to anyone."

Jacie moved to the security panel and entered a command to shut down the cell. "Not that simple, actually. If what you say is true, I have an…obligation…to help you."

"Why?" Goddard asked. He couldn't understand why someone who had escaped Spung slavery would choose to remain this close to their space at a station where no one would care if someone disappeared, and the fact that he seemed willing to go up against the Spung seemed even more impossible.

"Aslinn told you what I am. I can't…" he shrugged. "It's still possible we were set up and they're waiting to kill us all, but I can't just look the other way if the Spung are taking up kidnapping around here. Ships I could care less about, but no one should have to go through—" He broke off, staring blankly for a moment, and then shook himself and turned to stare evenly at them. "If I can, I will help you, but right now your word that if I release the bars you will do us no harm."

Goddard nodded, glancing at his students. Harlan still looked a little shell-shocked but not angry enough to attack someone, and Radu was standing quietly. "You have our word, provided you are actually planning to release us."

"That's fair." Jacie hit the last button and the bars dissolved.

"What now?" Radu asked.