"Whoa!" Leatherwood whispered. "How the hell do you do all this?"

  "We have to stay informed." The same Dunono started adjusting the controls. "What would you like to know?"

  "Trace the warships' origin. Find out where they came from."

  "They came from a base in the mountains on the other side of this continent. That's strange. Our previous scans should have picked up the base before now."

  "Can you expand the readings on the base? See how many more warships they have."

  "The readings indicate twenty."

  "That's perfect. Now we need a vehicle to take us there."

  "We can't go now, Captain," Niur pointed out. "None of the other vehicle traffic is operating while the warships are here. We'll have to wait until civilian traffic starts up again."

  Richmond had been so thrilled about the warships that he didn't notice this until Niur pointed it out. Everyone in Nesara hid under cover from the warships. Not even any people walked along the streets. Every vehicle sat on the ground, as they always did at night. The whole town had fallen dead still and quiet.

  Richmond wilted. He wanted to get started on this right away, but Niur was right.

  The rest of the friends retreated to their couches. Richmond lingered, but he couldn't keep standing there after the Dunono shut the door to the control room.

  Richmond dragged his heels back to the couch, sat down, and ate the food the Dunonos gave him.

  Their conversation restarted. The guy from the control room was named Dovo. The Krion who'd just asked Richmond if he was out of his mind was Yagni.

  They were in the middle of talking about some sporting event Richmond had never heard of when Zuna came back. None of the injured rebels came with her.

  "They're all going to bed." She sat down next to Richmond and helped herself to the food on his tray. "We should probably all do the same thing."

  "Did any of you know about the warships before today?" he asked.

  The others all shook their heads. "That's the strangest thing about it," Dovo replied. "The base is on the surface, and it isn't even that well concealed. I don't understand how any of us missed it."

  Richmond didn't reply. Who exactly would have been looking for the warship base?

  Everyone here belonged to the Thalek faction. Madoc had controlled the faction until his death. Did he tamper with the command center's readings, or with the whole faction's ability to detect this base?

  Madoc had agreed with Richmond that he hadn't been doing his job because he didn't keep track of the Lilri force to know they had so many fighter craft.

  Those words sounded so different, now that Richmond knew who Madoc had really been working for. He'd used his position to conceal the fighter craft. Why wouldn't he use his position to conceal the warships? It only made sense.

  The friends wandered in and out, talked about this and that, and left the mood generally light. Eventually, everyone got too tired to stay up. Richmond dragged himself off to the bunk rooms and crashed with the others.

  No one got up in any hurry the next morning. Richmond leaned over Dovo's shoulder when he finally got around to checking the scanners.

  "The warships are still there, but they're spreading out to stand guard over the city," Dovo pointed out. "The civilian traffic is restarting. We can get a vehicle and leave town."

  "Won't the warships be able to track our life signs?" Richmond asked. "They'll see us leaving town and come after us."

  "Well, we can't stay here forever--unless you want to."

  Richmond grimaced. He wasn't ready for that.

  He had to completely discard his idea of leaving the planet in any fighter craft. That included a stolen Lilri fighter or the speedster the Valzor mechanics had given him.

  None of them was powerful enough to defend itself against the warships. He needed another warship--or more than one.

  The Chronon Vanguard would see an incoming warship as an even bigger threat than seven fighters, but he would just have to take his chances.

  He still wanted to blow the explosives under the palace. For that, he would have to stop by the Thalek compound.

  Every surviving member of the Thalek faction belonged to his party. They were all here in this safe house with him right now.

  He studied the charts for a long time--long after Dovo left to go get his breakfast.

  Richmond would probably have still been sitting there, but Hayes came over and shoved a tray into his hands. "Eat up, sir. Don't make me give you demerits."

  Richmond had to laugh. "You can dock my pay too, while you're at it."

  Hayes smirked at him and left to rejoin the others. Richmond didn't resent them for relaxing and shooting the bull with each other while they had the chance.

  He didn't see from here how he would capture any warships and blow the explosives at the same time. He'd just have to figure it out one way or the other.

  The patients from yesterday dragged themselves into the room a few hours later. Some of them weren't ready to walk anywhere, much less go into any kind of combat or danger.

  Dovo and Yagni held a long and detailed debate about how to get a vehicle to take the wounded back to the Thalek compound.

  "They'll be as safe there as they are here," Yagni pointed out. "And they don't have to leave. They can stay there and give themselves additional medical treatment if they need it."

  "Going to the base will give us away to the warships," Dovo pointed out. "The wounded will be better off staying here."

  "I need to go back to the base anyway at some point," Richmond interjected. "I need to get another trigger mechanism for the explosives."

  "Why not just trigger the detonation from the base?" Yagni asked. "Why leave?"

  "Because we don't have a way off the planet," Richmond replied. "You could all just stay at the base, but we'd be trapped on Narillia. Besides, we need to take some more weapons, so we'll be ready to capture a few warships when the time comes."

  "A few?!" Dovo gasped. "You're insane!"

  "Better to aim high and come up short than to aim low and come up with nothing."

  Dovo blinked at him. "Did you just make that up right now?"

  "We'd need extra weapons to take even one warship. We have to stop by the base."

  "You can take weapons from here," Zuna pointed out.

  "But I can't get the trigger sequence from here, can I?"

  She shrugged. "No, you're right."

  "Triggering the detonation will be the best way to distract the Lilri while we make a break for orbit, regardless of what we make a break for orbit in. Even if we went back to the Valzor shop and got another ship from right here in Nesara, it wouldn't be fast enough, strong enough, or well-armed enough to get past the warships. We have to take a warship, and for that, we need weapons. We have to go to the base. That's all there is to it. We might as well drop off our wounded at the compound while we're at it."

  No one could argue with this, so Dovo and Yagni went into another debate about how to get the vehicle; only this time, they agreed on most of the crucial points.

  The two friends took all the laser rifles from everyone and left together. Richmond didn't ask for the specifics on how they planned to get said vehicle.

  He tried to relax with the others, but he found himself obsessing over the scanner readings again. He couldn't keep his hands off them. He tried to keep track of Dovo's and Yagni's movements, but he lost them in the crowds after only a few minutes.

  The warships stationed themselves over different parts of the city and never moved again.

  The Zoth didn't show themselves--ever. A visitor from another planet would never know the Zoth existed.

  The Lilri fighter craft didn't launch from their airfield anymore. They didn't have to, now that the warships were here.

  Richmond turned his attention to the only other object of interest--the warship base in the mountains.

  The twenty warships stationed there stayed powered down. They showed no sign of readiness to do anything. He also didn't see any personnel doing anything with them.

  Two long, low buildings covered one side of the base. A high fence surrounded the base on all sides.

  Guard posts surrounded the fence perimeter, with two more on either side of two entrance gates--one on the north side of the base and one on the south. Six Lilri manned each entrance gate.

  A road passed into the base from both directions, but Richmond didn't see any traffic coming to the base or leaving it. He didn't see a single vehicle on the base anywhere--not even an internal cargo hauler or personnel carrier.

  All the rest of the base's two hundred Lilri personnel stayed inside the buildings. Richmond couldn't understand why. They didn't patrol the fence.

  Maybe they studied the surroundings on scanners, the same way he was studying the base now. The Lilri would be able to see anyone coming. That would make it more challenging to steal the base's warships, but not impossible.

  He'd just have to come up with some clever way to get himself and his friends on board one of the warships without the Lilri stopping him--or killing everyone he cared about.

  He tried to leave the scanners and pay attention to spending time with those people while he had this moment of reprieve.

  Instead he barely left the scanners, and sat down on the couch with Aemon and Fadek when Dovo and Yagni came back.

  "We got the vehicle," Dovo announced. "Let's go."

  The others grumbled and complained that they were just getting comfortable here. The wounded left the safe house first. They didn't want to stay.

  Richmond went upstairs and found another cargo hauler waiting to carry the group back to the Thalek base.

  He half expected to find the vehicle torched by gunfire, but it wasn't. It was perfectly intact.

  He resisted the urge to ask if Dovo and Yagni had stolen this vehicle. Richmond and his friends were way past that by now.

  Everyone boarded up. Yagni shut them into the back so no one could see out. He and Dovo took the controls, lifted off, and floored it out of town.

  The vehicle vibrated at a deafening pitch. Some of the wounded had to sit down on the floor. The others made room for them, and then one of the Gulepe wounded had to lie down. He didn't look good.

  The pilots set down in the Thalek cavern where the friends had started. The missing fighters left enough space for the vehicle to land.

  All these excess fighters looked redundant to Richmond now. He couldn't use them.

  The Lilri and the Vasyke would be watching like hawks for him and his friends to try to leave in any vessel. The Lilri would pounce if they saw the friends trying to use a vessel that was too small or too undergunned.

  CHAPTER 16

  Aemon scooped up the wounded Gulepe in his arms and carried the man straight to the Thalek compound medical recovery room. He didn't come back for a while.

  Richmond took Zuna to the command center. "Can you program the scanner screen to trigger the detonation sequence remotely? I want to take it with me so I can detonate it from anywhere."

  "I could program it for that, but I think it would be better if you leave the wounded here to do it for you."

  He frowned at her. "Why would that be better? I don't understand what you mean."

  "The same thing could happen again that happened during that last battle against the warships. The screen could get damaged or lost. You could get separated from it or incapacitated. You might fall over and accidentally trigger the sequence when you didn't mean to."

  "So what are you suggesting I do instead?"

  "We're already leaving the wounded here indefinitely. We can tell them to monitor the command center communications equipment. When you're ready to set off the detonation, you can contact them and tell them to trigger it remotely."

  "That could be in the middle of a battle. I wouldn't be able to contact them. What would I do then?"

  "You could get recaptured by the Lilri and hauled up in front of the Vasyke. They could take the screen and use it to locate not just the explosives but the tunnel system itself. No one would be able to use the tunnels to escape ever again--including you."

  Richmond raised both hands. "All right. You made your point."

  "How do you plan to steal these warships?" Zuna asked.

  "I have no idea. You're the brains here, not me."

  She laughed. "Hardly, Joel. I don't have your ingenuity or resourcefulness."

  "Now I know you're just trying to flatter me. Seriously. If you think of anything, I'm all ears."

  She switched the controls to a chart of the warship base. "Whatever we do, we'll have to prevent the other warships from launching."

  Now it was his turn to laugh. "Obviously."

  "Which means that whatever method we use to get onto the base will have to be something the Lilri will find non-threatening."

  "Or not threatening enough to launch the warships," he corrected.

  "Any ideas?" she asked.

  "None at all. My ingenuity and resourcefulness must be offline at the moment."

  She giggled and turned away. "Tell me when it comes back online. We should round up the others. I'll tell the wounded about our plan."

  The friends separated and met back up in the cavern outside their hauler. Aemon wrinkled his nose at it. "Are we really taking this to the base?"

  "If we show up in Lilri fighter craft, the warships will launch and shoot us down," Zuna explained. "That's what we want to avoid."

  "We want the warships on the ground and completely powered down," Richmond finished. "That's the only way we're going to board them."

  "Then what?" Niur asked.

  "Then we blow the explosives, break orbit, and never see this dusty rock of a planet again."

  "Amen," Hayes muttered.

  That got everyone moving. They loaded up in the hauler. Richmond entered first and stood right behind the pilots' seats. Dovo and Yagni powered up, flew out of the cavern, and took off across the countryside.

  The trip to the warship base took a lot longer than the trip between the Thalek compound and Nesara. At least the friends weren't carrying any wounded this time.

  Richmond's legs started to go numb from the vibration again, but he had to pay attention to the navigation system.

  "Set us down in the mountains a few miles away," he told Yagni.

  "A few?!" Dovo countered. "We'll have to walk all that way!"

  "It's better than the guys at the base seeing us and expecting us." Richmond pointed to a lonely hilltop on the charts. "Park in the gulley behind that peak."

  The two pilots set down. Richmond, Zuna, Aemon, and Yagni climbed the mountain and flattened themselves on their stomachs behind the peak. The friends could look right down on top of the base from here. The warships glowed in the reddish light.

  "There they are," Zuna murmured. "Now what do we do?"

  "We need to get everyone off the base," Richmond decided. "Either that, or we have to come up with a way to stop them from deploying."

  "We could destroy those buildings with rockets," Yagni suggested.

  "We don't have any rockets, and the Lilri would definitely consider that threatening," Zuna told him. "What's your next brilliant idea?"

  "It would be better if we found a way to scare them." Richmond flipped over to look down at the cargo hauler.

  Zuna studied him. "What are you thinking, Joel?"

  "I have an idea, but I'll need all of you to help me. Come on."

  He hiked back down to the crawler, rummaged in the back, and found some spare tubing and other things used for repairing the vehicle. He cut up the tubing and used sticky grease from the axle and propellor drive to glue the pieces onto his face and different parts of his body.

  "What in God's name are you doing, sir?" Leatherwood snarled.

  "I'm making myself look sick. I'll make them think I'm carrying a disease."

  The others laughed. "You aren't even Narillian," Dovo pointed out. "They'll see right away that you belong to another species."

  "I'll tell them the disease mutated me. I'm sure none of the Lilri on this base have ever seen a human before."

  "What are you talking about?!" Yagni countered. "Everyone on this base has seen you on the broadcasts. You're the most recognizable person on the planet."

  Richmond moved over to the vehicle's front windshield and studied his reflection in the smooth surface. He used the reflection to adjust some of the blobs and smears on his face and body.

  He finally turned around to face his friends. "How's that? I bet none of you could recognize me now."

  They stood off to one side, studying him with their heads tilted at different angles. No one said anything for a minute.

  "You're right, Joel," Zuna finally replied. "I wouldn't recognize you if I hadn't seen you stick that stuff all over you."

  "Do you think it will work?"

  "I'm sure it will," Yagni replied. "You don't look anything like a human. You look like a disgusting, deformed Narillian of some species I can't identify."

  The others laughed.

  "I'll scare the Lilri, and we'll take it from there. They won't consider me a threat to their warships. This will stop them from realizing someone is trying to the ships."

  "I suppose we have nothing to lose by trying," Dovo remarked.

  Richmond made some other changes to his clothes, ripped them in sections, and swapped them with some of his friends' already ripped garments. He turned himself into the closest approximation of a leper that he could muster under the circumstances. It wasn't perfect, but with luck, the Lilri wouldn't know what a leper was.

  He handed over his rifle and left his friends to guard the vehicle. They had nothing to do but sit around and shoot the bull until something interesting happened.

  He didn't hike back up and over the mountain. He walked a long way around the hilltop and eventually came to the road leading to the base.

  He had to walk a few more miles before he got close enough to see it. He hunched one shoulder, crooked one arm against his ribs, let the other one hang, and dragged one leg while he shuffle-stepped with the other.

 

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