his head back against the wall, but did as she asked.
“What do you hear?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Don’t be daft. You hear the machinery outside, the apparatus crashing and thudding?”
“Well yes, obviously. But—”
“And the people on the street, clamoring home after shift change?”
“I guess.”
“And your heartbeat? Do you hear that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try.”
He sighed, but did as instructed, trying to listen. He could hear it thumping inside him, but probably only because he’d let himself get worked up.
“Stanislav wasn’t a hero because he disobeyed orders,” Gran-Gran said. “He was a hero because he knew when to disobey orders. I learned that from my mother, who brought us here—one of her last acts. I think she felt something here. Something we needed.”
“Then I shouldn’t be looking toward the stars,” Jorgen said, still frustrated. “We should be looking at the planet beneath us.”
“I always wanted to return to the stars,” Gran-Gran said.
“I like flying,” Jorgen said, his eyes still closed. “Don’t mistake my meaning. At the same time, this is my home. I don’t want to escape it, I want to protect it. And sometimes when I’m lying quietly in bed in the deep caverns, I swear that I . . .”
“You what?” Gran-Gran asked.
Jorgen snapped his eyes open. “I do hear something. But it’s not up above us. It’s down below.”
30
I yanked open my backpack, letting a dione soldier inspect the contents.
The inside didn’t look suspicious at all. Just the large, clear plastic food container that I normally brought my lunches in. It looked perfectly innocent. For all the fact that it was a drone in disguise.
The guard shined a small flashlight in at the contents. Would they see how worried I was? Was I sweating too much? Would one of the nearby security drones sense my racing pulse?
No. No, I could do this. I was a warrior, and sometimes that required craftiness and stealth. I stood there an excruciatingly long moment. Then, bless the stars, the guard waved me forward.
I zipped up the pack and shouldered it, hurrying across the shuttle bay of the Weights and Measures. I tried to exude both confidence and lack of concern.
“Alanik?” Morriumur asked, stepping up beside me as we entered the hallway. “Are you well? Your skin tone looks uncommonly flush.”
“I . . . um, didn’t sleep well,” I said.
We neared the first intersection. M-Bot suspected that this segment of hallway had a secondary scanner installed to detect illicit materials—but he was confident that the scrambler we’d given the drone would obscure it. Indeed, no alarms went off as we went through the intersection, though a passing dione crew member did nearly collide with Hesho’s small hoverplatform. Kauri cried out, barely steering the platform around the dione’s head.
The crew member apologized and quickly moved on. Kauri flew the platform back, and Hesho’s tail twitched in annoyance as he looked over his shoulder at the offending dione. “Even when we fly, we are underfoot. Serene until marred, a centimeter deep but reflecting eternity, I am a sea to many, but a puddle to one.”
“You’d think that the Superiority would be accustomed to dealing with people of all sizes,” I said.
“There aren’t many of us,” Hesho said. “I know of only one other species our size, unless you count the varvax inside their exoskeletons. Perhaps we will need to build huge suits ourselves. It is difficult for ordinary people in a universe of giants.” His tail twitched again. “But this is the price we must pay to have allies against the humans. They are near to breaking free, you know. Did you see the news reports?”
He eyed Brade, who as usual strode on ahead of us and barely paid any attention to our conversation.
“The humans are contained, Hesho,” Morriumur said. “This little blip is nothing to be worried about. I’m sure it will be dealt with soon.”
“My duty, and my burden, is to worry about the worst possibilities.”
As we reached the now-familiar intersection with the usual guard and the pathway to Engineering, I split off from the others, waving them onward. “Gotta hit the head,” I told them, then stepped up to the guard.
The Krell twitched her fingers in a sign of annoyance, but called for a guide drone to accompany me to the restroom. I thought through my plan once again—I’d spent all night practicing it with M-Bot. I wasn’t worried about being tired from lack of sleep. My nervous energy probably could have powered half of Starsight.
The guide drone led me to the restroom, then again waited