Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(112)

Zhang He spoke up. “Back from death for two seconds and she’s already arguing.”

“Thank you for saving me, Monkey,” said Dabeet.

“Felt like I was back with my family, on a real ship,” said Monkey.

And then silence. They were all breathing heavily. Coming down from an adrenaline high.

Finally somebody moved. Bartolomeo Ja. He walked toward Dabeet, held out his hand. Dabeet took it, not sure what was happening. “Thank you, sir,” said Ja. “For saving us all.”

“We saw the raiders’ ship blow up,” said Timeon. “If it had still been attached to the station when it blew…”

“Maybe two minutes at the most after you blew the airlock,” said Ja.

“Did you know how much time we had left?” asked Ignazio.

Dabeet shook his head. “I don’t think it was on a timer. I think it was detonated from Earth the moment they saw that the ship was detached from the station. The only thing that gave us the time we had was that the ship was moving mostly away from Earth so it took a minute before anybody on Earth could see that it had detached. Plus time to realize and push the button, plus the time lag for the electronic signal to reach the ship—”

“Shut up,” said Monkey. “We can all do the math.”

“I’m not telling you,” said Dabeet, “I’m just realizing it.”

“What took you so long to get out of the ship?” asked Ragnar.

“I tripped,” said Dabeet. “And then it took a few seconds to get through the door and stand on the surface and find where the station was, so I could jump toward it.”

“You call that jumping ‘toward’ the station?” asked Ragnar.

“Best I could—”

They laughed. Ragnar slapped him lightly upside the head.

“Joking,” said Ragnar.

“Take a joke, dollback,” said Ignazio.

“Sorry,” said Dabeet. “Give me a few minutes, I’ll see how funny it is.”

“No you won’t,” said Zhang He, “because it isn’t. We’re just relieved. And yes, zhopa-brain, you saved us all. We know you didn’t choose for these marubos to come up here and you sure didn’t choose for them to try to blow us out of the sky, but you lissed into their ship and you sussed it all and you got us with you and—”

“I’m really glad you came. I didn’t know if you would.”

“What if we hadn’t?” asked Ja.

“I don’t know,” said Dabeet. “Maybe I would have thought of blowing the airlock to get the ship away. But I sure hadn’t thought of it up till you guys started saying it was the obvious thing to do.”

“You’re going to be a lousy bureaucrat,” said Zhang. “You don’t even know how to modestly take all the credit.”

“If you had thought of it,” said Ragnar. “By yourself. Alone. What then?”

Dabeet shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wouldn’t have known where to look for the airlock release button.”

“You would have found it,” said Ja. “Because of the sign all over the inside of the inner door that says, ‘Airlock Release Button.’”

Ragnar scoffed. “But would you have—”

“He would have pressed it,” said Zhang He. “You know he would. Because he’s taking this whole thing onto himself. He thinks it’s his fault. He would have done it.”

Dabeet had no idea if Zhang He was right, but with everybody else nodding and murmuring, “é, certo, claro, right,” he didn’t see any reason to raise an argument.

But he had to say something. “I’m glad you guys showed up. I’m glad Monkey knew how to pull somebody out of space like that. I’m glad you knew how to run the tether. I’m glad it took them long enough to detonate that we could get away from the ship. Thank you.” Then he burst into tears. He didn’t know why. They just erupted from his eyes, his body convulsed in sobs.

Only for a couple of seconds. Maybe five. Or ten. Monkey was hugging him, a couple of others had their hands on him, gripping his shoulders, his upper arms. “Good job,” said Ja. “Proud to know you,” said Zhang He.

And then the crying stopped, as quickly and involuntarily as it had started.

“We’ve still got a bunch of bunducks on this station,” said Dabeet.

“If the plans worked,” said Ja, “they’re all in the four battlerooms by now, along with all the older students. Teachers in the embarcation hub with the younger kids. You know, the ones our age.”

“And a year older,” added Ignazio, snickering.

“They can still do a lot of damage,” said Monkey.

“Could you feel the explosion here? Inside the station?” asked Dabeet.

“Whole thing shuddered,” said Ragnar.

“Earthquake,” said Ja. “Felt like a major quake.”

“So they know something happened,” said Dabeet. “If we put the right spin on this, maybe we can talk them into surrendering.”

“Surrendering to kids?”

“Surrendering to whatever IF forces come racing here after they detected the explosion,” said Dabeet.