Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(113)

“Oh, those guys,” said Ragnar.

“Got to talk to them before anybody gets hurt or killed in the battlerooms,” said Monkey.

“Controls in Urska Kaluza’s quarters, public-address system all over the station,” said Ignazio.

“If we can get in there,” said Timeon.

“Let’s go find out,” said Ja.

Two minutes to run the pass-through and get to the commandant’s quarters. Didn’t meet a single raider. The door was wide open. An old-fashioned microphone sat on the table. It took Ignazio a few seconds to bring up the commands from the control panel. “Should be wide now, they can hear it everywhere,” said Ignazio.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure I selected ‘All Speakers’ and ‘All Area’ and ‘Full Volume,’” said Ignazio.

Dabeet pushed the microphone toward Ja.

“N?o, bicho,” said Ja. “Not me.”

“You’re the commander,” said Zhang He.

“I’m team leader of a bunch of children,” said Ja. Then he pushed the microphone toward Dabeet.

“Me?” asked Dabeet. “Why?”

“No time to find a grownup,” said Monkey.

“Nobody here knows how to talk with authority,” said Zhang He. “So we’ll have to make do with insufferable arrogance.” Zhang He grinned. Almost sincerely.

Dabeet put his hand on the microphone and took a couple of breaths. Composing himself. He still had no idea what to say, but they were right. He had withered adults with his scorn back in the Charles G. Conn School for the Gifted. That was the closest they were going to come to a voice of command.

Monkey whispered, “No school slang.”

Dabeet nodded. “Greetings, all you soldiers who made this unprovoked attack against the children of Fleet School. Everybody stop whatever you’re doing and listen. Now!”

He made his voice like a whip. But he sure wished that he knew if anybody was listening.

“Whatever you thought your mission was, they lied to you. Your mission was really this: To bring a ship filled with Vacoplaz, attach it to Fleet School Station, and blow us all to hell. Including you. Every one of you. There was no escape plan, there was no evacuation plan, the only plan was to get you here and kill everybody on the station.”

He tried to imagine what they might be saying in the four battlerooms. Doubts? Challenges? Officers ordering the others to pay no attention? Time to prove what he was saying, as best he could.

“We got on board your unguarded ship and found the Vacoplaz. There was no way we could pull thousands of blasting caps out of the ’plaz. So we popped the airlock and blew your ship away from the station. Whoever was controlling the Vacoplaz back on Earth took long enough to realize what had happened and trigger it that the ship was far enough that the station wasn’t destroyed. But you felt the blast. Like an earthquake. You felt it. What do you think could cause a jolt like that? All the kids in Fleet School stomping their feet at the same moment? You know I’m telling you the truth.”

Dabeet looked at the others. The ones who weren’t grinning were nodding.

“Your ship is a bunch of dust and chunks heading toward Earth reentry, the Moon, and mostly outer space. There’s nobody coming to pick you up because they expected the whole station, including your bodies, to be dust and chunks by now. You’ve been betrayed. And any officers telling you not to listen to me, they’re still part of that betrayal. Shut them up so you can hear what I’m going to tell you now.”

Dabeet looked at Ja, who was smiling tightly and shaking his head. Dabeet shrugged, in effect asking him, If that was wrong, what should I say instead?

But Ja smiled more broadly and gestured to him to go on. Thumbs-up from Ragnar. Slap on the back from Timeon.

“A relieving force from the IF will be here soon. If they find you holding any child or teacher as a hostage, you can be sure that there’ll be a lot of dying here today. Maybe some of us, but most definitely all of you. The IF doesn’t take it kindly when somebody kidnaps their children. So forget any idea of hostage negotiation. We’re not your hostages anyway. You are now our prisoners. Do you understand that? If the IF comes here and finds that you are all in custody, having surrendered to the students of Fleet School, then there will be no killing. Except for whatever officers you had to kill just now to get them to shut up.”

Monkey rolled her eyes, but he got thumbs-up from Zhang He and Ragnar.

“Let go of your weapons and come out into open space. The students will gather up your weapons and take them out of the battlerooms. You invaders will remain in the battlerooms until the IF forces enter to formally accept your surrender and to interrogate you about whoever it was on Earth who sent you here. I suggest full cooperation. And don’t bother waiting till you have legal representation. It’s military law out here. Tell them everything. You don’t owe a thing to those lying bastards back on Earth.”

Dabeet stood there for a moment, trying to think if there was anything else he needed to say.

Just one thing. “If any of the invaders are not in a battleroom, then you will either get yourself into a battleroom, or you can head for the airlock where you left your ship, open the door, and jump on out.”

That was it. That was all. Dabeet looked at Ignazio and made a throat-cutting gesture. Ignazio punched a spot in the holospace and then grinned. “Mike’s off,” he said. “Toguro, man.”