Epilogue I

(English)

Nai was a brutal teacher.

Crystal pillars lanced toward Maddie from three angles. This was ridiculous! How was—she ducked under one—anyone supposed to—a second pole glanced her shoulder—deal with this!?

‘You’re being hemmed in.’

The stupid psionic flowchart wasn’t helping. She’d help make the damn thing, and it just squawked at her. Even if she knew she was being herded, how was she supposed to react to that?

‘Reclaim space.’

Right. Don’t be sarcastic with the stuff in your own head. There was no point. It would respond to what she thought she needed in real time. That was half the point.

Instead of slamming her with the growing end of a pillar, Nai created one sideways for Madeline to clothesline herself on.

she huffed. She hadn’t managed to stay on her feet for more than thirty seconds before Nai had been able to lay her out just by growing and dissolving crystal.

“At least you didn’t waste the breath to say that out loud,” Nai said in Starspeak. Despite being the one in control of all the growing spikes, Nai could easily be mistaken for one of the several observers on the sidelines.

Yeah, because you’ve already beat the habit out of me!

Commentary was distracting enough when it was in English. Being knocked over was not respite though. Madeline could tell Nai paused her follow-up by the slightest margin. Maddie scrambled back to her feet just in time to avoid a lattice of crystal growing to pin her to the ground.

It wasn’t the first time she’d escaped by the skin of her teeth, and it was how she knew Nai was carefully delaying her follow-through. If the alien wanted, she could have completely immobilized Madeline in seconds.

How was she supposed to ‘reclaim space?’ Nai’s encroachment was so quick and careful, Madeline was beginning to lose her sense of danger when the stalagmites rushed toward her. Rather than impacting with the weight of several hundred pounds of crystal like they should, Nai was pulling her punches so that each impact merely felt like a boxer’s gloved punch.

she screamed.

“Are you actually asking?” Jordan asked. Johnny and Aarti were watching too. They’d been here a few days, so not everyone watched now when Nai built them a little training arena off to the side in the hangar. But her fellow Puppies watched every minute intently.

Desperate to learn.

“Fuck—” Madeline rasped, another pillar thrusting into the padded armor over her belly. She doubled over, almost vomiting.

“Seriously, are you asking?” Jordan repeated.

“Yes!” Madeline said, not quite ducking fast enough.

“You’re trying to survive the drill the way I do, dodging and moving,” Caleb chimed in, joining the observers. “Don’t. You have different strengths and weaknesses. If you need space, don’t find some, make some.”

“Destructively,” Jordan clarified. “If you have to.”

And just like that, the information clicked in her flowchart.

Fight mass with mass.

Just like she’d practiced ten thousand times before, gears, pistons, hinges, and plates warped into existence around her fist and forearm, stretching outward into a metal gauntlet-arm as big as she was.

She swept the armored appendage through the crystal before Nai could grow it towards her.

That shattering stalagmite was the first taste of success she’d had in far too long.

Nai responded by reforming more crystal pillars behind her, but Maddie was ready with a second mechanical gauntlet. She slammed it down from above, pulverizing the pillars before they could grow toward her.

Two more crystal spikes grew, lighting fast this time, both skewering through Madeline’s mechanized limbs.

The nice thing about having huge, disproportionately large robot hands though, was they were as disposable as they were deadly. Madeline yanked both her arms free, already forming a new weapon.

One final bunch of spikes—proper spikes this time, not blunt pillars—lanced toward her, but Madeline spun, swinging a disproportionate sword through all of them, slicing off the tips at add angles.

When it was clear Nai wasn’t going to attack further, Madeline dematerialized her metal, and sank to the ground.

“I did…not realize…that was…an option,” she panted.

But…she should have. Nai might have been brutal teacher, but she was not unfair.

"Who can say what she did right?" Jordan asked. "Because she's the first one to get it so far."

"She asked for help,” Johnny realized. “You asked twice. You were making sure.”

"You're the first one to get frustrated enough to give up winning on your own," Jordan nodded approvingly.

“Everybody’ll learn it,” Caleb said. “When you find yourself coming up short; ask for help. If you don't you or someone else might die."

Nothing in his tone was joking or exaggerating

Madeline nodded, but frustration was still burning her up, even if she could tell the advice was good. She'd never thought of herself as a disciplined person.

But the sight of Jordan's bloody torso kept haunting her every time she felt tempted to slack off. She needed to keep improving. She had to.

Tricking Madeline with half a fake corpse was a low blow, but a sobering one. Looking back it was hard to say she hadn't deserved it.

She and the Ronin— Puppies, she corrected herself—had nearly dragged the whole of humanity into a disaster.

The entire. Human. Race.

The stakes were so obvious with even a tiny bit thought. The fact that they'd been collectively misled so easily jarred her more than the rest.

But even if the others seemed less perturbed, everyone was adjusting their attitude. Johnny and Donnie were taking Nai's Adept tutelage even more seriously than Madeleine. Since their rescue, Ben hadn't gone twelve hours without talking to Shinshay about technology. Aarti was chomping at the bit to learn more about non-combat Adeptry.

Maddie was keen to follow her friend's example. It had been so easy to think of Adept powers as a combat ability that coincidentally could be used for other minor conveniences.

They were Adept 'powers'.

But the way the aliens used the word differently. 'Adeptry'.

It wasn't just about the power. It was a practice, a methodology, a way of thinking about virtually any problem.

She'd thought of Adeptry only as a weapon.

When your only tool is a hammer…

And the abductees had many more problems than just nails.

Her cheeks burned thinking about how much better she could have spent the past year of her life. Trapped on a spaceship, in Kemon's camp…it would have been so easy to correct. At any point she could have thought about it for even a minute or two.

"You need to learn how to be nice to yourself," Caleb said.

Madeline was mildly surprised he'd picked her out.

He sat down beside her on the bench she'd claimed. She'd picked it for being out of the way, so people wouldn't notice her sulking and wiping all the sweat off.

"What makes you think I'm not?" she asked.

"Psionics and context," he shrugged.

"You can read my mind?"

"Nah. More like I can smell the runoff of your emotions? It's not even that precise though. I can't tell what you're feeling, just when folks' emotions change and vaguely how much," he said. "You're sitting here out of the way, and your feelings are mostly the same as when Nai was thrashing you: frustrated."

Madeline had to nod.

"Alright, yes. I'm being harsh on myself. Are you going to tell me it's not earned?"

"Yep," Caleb said. "You're overcorrecting. The Ronin weren't self-critical enough, but just flipping the dial to the other extreme is going to lead to a lot of the same problems."

"Then it feels like I can't do anything right—" Madeline started. "...Which is still just being harsh to myself. Fuck."

"Takes practice," Caleb said. "Ask Nai about it sometime."

"Having to 'practice being nice to myself' sounds like some real droll self-help," Madeline said.

“I know for a fact you’re not above droll,” Caleb smirked. “I know you came up with your mech Adeptry from a cartoon.”

“What? No, I…fuck, how’d you know?”

“You’re not the only person to try adapting things from comics and movies into Adeptry,” Caleb said. “Ben made a Mr. Freeze gun.”

“Nai did say she taught you a way to stick to walls—and I’m quoting here—‘like Spider-Man’,” Maddie said.

“I’ve tried doing the web-shooters too,” Caleb said, materializing a hair-thin cable between his fingers. “Point is, you clearly had fun making your Adeptry; you know what you like. So what do you like about yourself?”

“Flatter myself? You serious?”

“Sixty percent-ish,” Caleb said. “Have fun with it.”

Madeline rolled her eyes.

"Okay, I'll try…"

He flicked her forehead.

"Do, or do not," he said in his best 'Yoda' voice, "there is no try."

"Star Trek’s better," she retorted. She stuck her tongue out to further mock his pedantry.

But Caleb looked a bit stunned.

"...Come on already," he said. "Flattery. Go."

"Fine. Fine…I'm…uhh…I'm smart. Most of the time. Okay, sometimes—"

He flicked her forehead again.

"No bonus points for moderation right now."

"Well I can't just lie about myself!" she huffed. "Surely positivity doesn't work if I don't believe what I'm saying is true."

"Then say something really true," he suggested. "Something it takes virtually no self esteem to agree with."

"I-I…" she stammered.

Something good you didn't need self esteem to agree with?

What the hell? Reaching for something to say still had her drawing blank. How could she be this pathetic? She knew she had more self-esteem than this!

He flicked her forehead again.

"How about I go first?" he said. "You try to be smart. Always. Unfailingly."

The words felt like cold water on a hot day.

"You might fail, but you'll always try to be wise," he said. "I think you hold yourself to too strict of a standard to do anything less. Am I wrong about any of that?"

"...No," she admitted. "But that isn't really special to me."

"Einstein wasn't the only smart physicist," Calrb said. "Other people having the same good attitude doesn't make yours any less good."

"Nai has been saying we should compare ourselves to ourselves, not each other," Madeline conceded.

"Her advice is good.She's seen a lot and come out the other side," Caleb nodded. "But she didn't survive all on her own. Rely on the people around you."

"...I thought I left all that back on Earth, but I guess…I still feel like I have a lot to be ashamed of."

Caleb did not look surprised.

"Birds of a feather flock together," he said quietly.

Madeline almost snorted. He was Caleb Hane! Badass extraordinaire, alien expert, boogeyman to the Vorak!

What could he be ashamed about?

But Madeline had felt like a fraud too many times trying to lead her ship's worth of abductees for almost a year, and later being called 'Ronin'.

So she didn't scoff or snort, giving the due deference.

"...I killed a human," he admitted. "On my A-ship, only two of us survive the trip. And I killed the other survivor. There's mitigating circumstances, a case for self-defense, even hallucinations and involuntary altered states…but I was still the one to kill him. Everyone tells me it wasn't my fault—everyone, even the guy I killed. I think they're even right. But it's still something I'm not proud of. His death is my responsibility, fair or not…so I've thought everything you have and more."

"And you still try to be positive," Madeline said. Not a question. "...Even if you fail, you keep trying to hold onto your self esteem. How?"

"Practice," he said, almost bitterly. "And help. It's hard. Brutally hard. But even the guy I killed helped me. So have Nai, Tasser, and everyone else. People want me to be okay, so I can't let them down and give up."

"I can't lie, it doesn't feel like most of my shit measures up to killing someone," Maddie admitted. "Is it weird that's kind of…encouraging? It doesn't seem so hard after hearing yours."

"Nah. Not weird at all."

"It's still frustrating though," Madeline said. "Because all this isn't just reminding me of my failures out here, but back home too."

"Oh?"

"I've been charitably described as a hopeless slacker," Madeline admitted. "I ditched school every Friday I could get away with. I caught rides into the mountains so I could bike on trails. After my friends drove home I'd bike to hotels near trails and pay for the room with cash I saved up."

"You were avoiding something," Caleb correctly guessed.

"I love mountain biking," Maddie said, "but I have no doubt that's at least in part because of what I was getting away from. My family is a mess, and there was a whole vicious cycle. My parents were awful, so I ditched out every chance I got, so my grades dipped so my parents treated us worse, so I ditched out even more. Rinse. Repeat."

"Us," Caleb repeated. Of course he'd noticed the important word. She'd been talking about why she was ashamed.

"I have five siblings," Maddie admitted. "Four of them are younger than me, and my relationship with them is barely better than with my parents. And I'm not sure I would have listened if anyone except Jordan had called me out. Drew and I were on the same ship, and she talked a lot about how tight she was with her sister. I didn't realize then…but I should have; I've been a crappy sister, a crappy teammate, and a crappy friend. It's hard for me to 'be nice' to myself; I keep realizing more and more ways I've been crappy."

"I know the feeling," Caleb nodded. "You already made the mistake, and you've been making the mistake continuously. So even if you stop making the mistake, you know you're going to keep running into the fallout and consequences long after you've learned your lesson."

"Back home, I actually thought of myself as a pretty cognizant and generally 'aware' person. So this all stings a third time too," Madeline said. "The more you learn, the more you realize you don't know."

"Well I think, even considering your very egregious mistakes, you're doing a lot better than you think," he said. "The last two weeks have been eventful. You'll keep doing better and better."

You only say that because I didn't tell you everything.

But his own words nagged at her.

'I killed a human.'

Maddie didn't want to tell the thing she was most ashamed of. Unlike all her baggage from Earth, this was something against her fellow abductee.

But Caleb had killed one of their own…and Madeline didn't doubt that he'd done everything he could to avoid a bad outcome.

“...I love this,” Madeline admitted. Her voice had been a whisper, too faint for Caleb to even hear.

Had her lips even moved? Or was this just her mind trying to trick her into feeling like she’d confessed.

"I love that I got abducted,” Madeline said, forcing herself to be audible.

Caleb just glanced at her, soaking in the words. Every tiny twitch in his face spelled doom in her mind. She could see him digesting everything wrong with what she’d just divulged.

She shut her eyes. Having to see the disgust appear on his face was unbearable.

Instead, he just said three magic words.

“Tell me more.”

Words spilled out.

"The 'getting abducted' part was traumatic, sure. Scariest thing I've ever been through. But it's sticking with everyone differently than it does me," Maddie said, forcing herself through every word. "It's the worst day of their lives, but for me…when I finally calmed down, I realized I didn't have to worry about any of my family, or school, or college. I feel awful because everyone else is desperate to get back home. And I want to get back too Earth too…but…"

"But you aren't that eager to get home," Caleb followed.

Madeline nodded.

"It's horrible to think this, but living on spaceships, seeing literal aliens, it's all one big adventure. It's…escape. I'm happy I was abducted, and that's a terrible thing to believe."

“Maybe not,” Caleb said. “Aarti’s chipper too. You’re close with her, right?”

“She’s probably…I was just about to say she’s the best friend I’ve had since our abductions, but I feel closer with her than anyone else since getting abducted. So really…she’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”

“Well take it from someone who’s had a lot of practice making new relationships: communicate,” Caleb said. “There’s no version of reality where Aarti won’t appreciate hearing how much you appreciate her friendship.”

“Seems like you pivoted away from ‘flatter yourself’ to ‘open up with your friends’,” Maddie said.

“People are moving targets,” he nodded. “Communication is how every type of relationship thrives.”

“Is that what you’re doing then? Opening up to me, and getting me to open up to other people?”

“Maybe a little bit,” he smiled. “Even if you guys were being stupid about things, I didn’t trust you guys to make the right decision even if I shared all my information.”

“We earned that reaction though,” Madeline pointed out. “People still wouldn’t have bought it. I wouldn’t have.”

“Everyone?” he said. “Kemon’s plan was completely ruined the second Jordan and I landed in camp. Not communicating what I knew is half of what let him get as far as he did.”

“It’s that simple? Talk to each other? And all our problems will be solved?”

“Not that simple,” Caleb admitted. “But it’s an unbeatable step one.”

“So you’re in charge now, big shot. We don’t have to worry about Kemon. We’ve got a whole mess of abductees on a Casti moon. What’s step two?”

·····

“Maddie, Caleb, and I are reserved with Shinshay,” Ben said. “We’re going to cut our teeth trying to make a better computer.”

“You’re sure? I’m going to be gone like…eight weeks,” Jordan said.

“Yes, I’m sure we can survive without you. Why are you even asking me? Caleb’s in charge,” Ben frowned.

“I already talked to Caleb,” Jordan said. “You’re the youngest Puppy and one of the youngest . The beansprouts talk to you more than they do any of us, just by virtue of being older.”

“They talk to Sid too,” Ben tried.

“Sid talks to them,” Jordan said. “They only come to him when a problem needs him. If something goes wrong with the youngsters, you’ll hear about it before anyone older than you.”

Ben grimaced. He was a rare combination of young and smart: enough that his Adeptry was the most technically advanced of any other abductee in the new Flotilla. The fact that he was younger than the other standout Adepts just made him stand out all the more.

Evidently by the look on his face, he didn’t like that.

“You’ll be fine,” Jordan said. “What’s the golden rule?”

“Don’t drown,” Ben said, reluctantly cracking a smile.

Worst comes to worst, he could kick it up the foodchain to Caleb or Serral.

“Cool,” Jordan said, fist bumping the kid. “If there’s nothing else…I’ve got to go find out how hard it is to command a spaceship.”

She ducked into the A-ship now emblazoned the Fred Rogers and found Fenno and Weith.

“All ready to go,” the pilot said, adding, “...Captain.”

“Temporary,” Jordan corrected. “Strictly a trial run. And not even for me.”

“We’ll be fine,” Fenno assured her. “There’s only six people aboard. This is a [milk run]. A long one, maybe. But still a simple trip. Practically a vacation.”

Time was short, so Jordan didn’t complain too much. Caleb and Serral had given them a whole laundry list of things to accomplish, and in the weeks since ousting Kemon, Jordan had been itching to find an opportunity to return to Cammo-Caddo.

There was a technophobic village somewhere on its surface that had saved her life, and last they’d known, she’d been dragged off by pirates again.

But even before that…they had Flotilla business to address first.

They’d managed to rescue a not-starving-yet Knox from Scozha’s surface, and he knew of another group of abductees deep in Vorak space. Jordan’s piece of the mission would be finding an abductee in charge and getting a superlocator’s pearl into their mind.

After that, it would be in Caleb’s capable hands.

That wasn’t all, but she could go over the rest of their objectives after they took off. Things were picking up steam again.