Gee, what a sweetheart. “Don’t worry, Mr. Nasty, I’ve no intentions of socializing with you either.”
“Then we’re in agreement. Excellent.” He returns his attention to his sketch.
I glance away. My pulse taps out a fast beat—so much for my nap.
After a few minutes, I’m bored. I insert my tangs and turn on the game terminal. When Mutant Zombies from Planet Nine fills the screen, I smile, thinking of Cyril—he never could beat Jarren no matter how much he practiced. My heart kicks me hard, reminding me to not think about my friends. Once I confirm the babysitter’s attention is elsewhere, I worm into the game controls and override a few restrictions. I hope outsmarting zombies will make the time go faster as I start the game.
Sometime…later, the babysitter’s voice breaks my concentration and my avatar falls into a tar pit. I swallow a curse.
“You’re not allowed to play alone,” she says.
“I’m not.” I gesture to the left corner of the screen. “There’s Niall’s player right there. See?”
She peers at it, then at Niall whose attention is focused on his sketch. Good thing his hair covers his ears so she can’t see he’s not wearing entanglers.
“He’s waiting for the next wave of zombies,” I say. “The tar slows things down.”
“Oh. All right.” She returns to the others.
Too easy. I switch my focus to “Niall’s” avatar and continue to play by myself. When the tone sounds to end soch-time, I stand and stretch. Niall is already gone.
* * *
Niall and I have no difficulties ignoring each other. Plus I’m determined not to initiate a conversation with him. Ever. So I spend my soch-time fooling around with the game system. Of course tricking the system becomes boring and by the fourth day, I test how deep into the Q-net the game terminal will allow me to go.
My biggest problem is the screen. During soch-time, the screen must show what’s going on—game, video, music—it’s all visible, including worming. I need to squish my worming activities into a tiny section of the screen which would be still showing attacking zombies. I study the babysitter, noting the places she frequents. Then I take a stroll around the rec center, marking angles. Eventually, I figure out if she sits at her desk, she can’t see the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
It takes me a couple soch-time sessions to manage to have both and as soon as the babysitter is at her desk, I worm into the ship’s schematics. I just need a few minutes to find a terminal that’s been forgotten.
When I glance over my shoulder to check on the babysitter, I catch Niall staring at me.
I. Can’t. Resist.
“Are you done?” I ask.
He scowls at me.
“Staring. Are you done?” I ask again, but this time I’m more smug.
“Passengers are not allowed to access that information,” he says.
I quickly exit the data cluster and the game fills the entire screen. “What information?”
He stands up. He’s tall and lean, but his shoulders are tense. Is he planning on ratting me out to the babysitter?
“There’s a reason passengers are barred from those areas. You could endanger the ship and kill us all, you idiot.”
Seriously? An idiot? “Look, Mr. Drama King, I’ve barely scratched the surface and can’t get deep enough to affect the operation of the ship. You should know that.” I cock my head to the side. “Or do you need me to teach you about the Q-net? The Q stands for quantum.”
His fingers curl into fists. “Worming is illegal and if you’re caught you’ll be tossed into the brig for the rest of the trip. That’s B for brig.”
“Oh you can spell, your mother must be so proud.”
Niall takes a step toward me and unease rolls up my spine. Did I hit a nerve?
But he stops. “I should report you, but you’d just deny it.”
Plus he wouldn’t have any proof. Although I believe he wouldn’t hesitate to rat me out to the babysitter if he catches me again.
When I don’t respond, he says, “Consider this a warning. Don’t do it again.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” I just couldn’t resist the sarcasm— who does this guy think he is? I’m rewarded with a nasty glare before he resumes pretending I don’t exist. I don’t press my luck and return to just tricking the games during soch-time, but that doesn’t mean I plan to stop worming.
* * *
After soch-time, I find the forgotten terminal. According to Jarren, the research bases and colonies always have a couple that are installed in areas the designers think people will use, but end up being forgotten. I’d figured it was the same with an Interstellar Class ship, and I was right. It’s in a quiet out-of-the-way part of the ship not used by the crew or passengers—a perfect place to worm deeper into the Q-net.
The terminal is similar to the one in my room with a seat and screen, except this one doesn’t have as many restrictions, and, as long as I don’t broadcast my identity, I should be able to access deeper data clusters. Inserting my tangs, I keep the screen blank as I worm past the initial inquiry as to who I am.
Since my parents dodged my questions regarding my new home planet—which I suspect must be bad, otherwise why not tell me?—my first foray is to pull up the classified file on Planet Yulin. When the explorers in their Explorer Class space ships find a potential exoplanet in the Goldilocks Zone, their primary objective is to do a preliminary assessment and search for any sentient beings. If there are none (although everyone is ever hopeful), then the next step is to hunt for alien artifacts and Warriors.
After that, it’s up to the scientists to locate and catalog the native species and determine if a planet is a good candidate for colonization. The Warrior planets are not open for colonies. At least, not yet. Once all the Warriors are uncovered and inventoried, the data is sent to DES. Then the planet is closed and protected from looters until DES decides what to do with it.
Thinking about it, almost all the information from a new planet is stored within DES’s secure database. Everything and everyone who’s not on Earth is governed by DES. It’s funded and run by all the countries of Earth. Once the Q-net was invented, there was one thing the entire world could finally agree on—when we’re off planet, we are not Mexican, Russian, Egyptian, or any “ian”, we are Earthlings.
After the explorers leave a new discovery, first responders are sent to construct the base and prep it for the scientists’ arrival. They’ve done this for…at least a hundred planets so far.
Good thing for me, Jarren taught me how to worm into the cluster where DES keeps the survey information. I asked him because I hate not being in the loop. I scan the stats for Yulin. It’s the fourth exoplanet orbiting around a G1V star. It’s size is about one and a half times the mass of Earth. However, the planet is sixty-eight percent desert. And guess where the Warriors were discovered? Yup. Right in the middle of freaking nowhere…or thirty-four percent from anywhere the least bit interesting. No wonder my parents kept changing the subject.
Small consolation that the air is breathable and the climate is warmer than Xinji. All the Warrior planets have been found in what’s called the Goldilocks Zone. Just the right distance from their suns so they aren’t too hot or too cold for life. The experts figure that the aliens who transported the Warriors are probably biologically close to humans since it appears their ideal zone matches ours. And yes, the theory is that they are aliens. Unless the dinosaurs developed a way to cross the Galaxy, there’s no evidence early man had the ability to ship millions of Warriors hundreds of light years away from Earth.