The Defiant
Chapter Seven

“A month?!”

“A mining colony?!”

“A ball?!”

“A month?!”

“Woah! Calm down!” Two shouted over everyone.

“Shut up. I am not spending a whole month with you people just to collect some deranged psycho from some god-forsaken mining colony in the corner of the galaxy!” Three cried. “This entire situation is ridiculous. We are children, for god’s sake. If this mission is so important, why is it entrusted to a bunch of teens?”

“It doesn’t matter why they chose us. What does matter is that they did. We have no choice now but to go along with it. There’s no other way to get our memories back,” I retorted grumpily. I was rapidly getting tired of Three.

“Maybe there’s something we have to do on this mission that specifically has to be done by children,” Seven pointed out from where she lounged against the back wall.

“Then why wouldn’t she have told us about it in the video?” asked Five. He stood up and started pacing back and forth in front of the blank video screen. “Three’s right.” At this, Three smiled smugly, and I resisted the urge to smack her. “What aspect of the mission is so important that it requires endangering innocent children?”

“What makes you think we’re innocent?” Eight piped up, voice hard. “Maybe we’re all criminals, and they picked us because we’re expendable.”

“Maybe you all are, but I’m probably thirteen. Even if I’m a serial killer, there’s no way people would let anyone exploit a kid as young as me like this,” Four said, turning from the computer console.

“Unless nobody knew about it. Face it, these people are probably working outside the law. They took our memories, and they likely kidnapped us,” I said.

“But wouldn’t it have been better to get a group of qualified adults to do this mission? A crew of adults would invite fewer questions than one of minors, and surely an adult would have more training and knowledge than a kid,” Five said.

“Speak for yourself,” Four countered, crossing her arms.

“Whatever the reason, it hardly matters anymore. We’re stuck in this situation, and we have to make the best of it. Four, what other information do we have?” Seven asked hurriedly, trying to stop the fight between Four and Five that appeared imminent.

Four scowled, but turned back to the computer and started tapping away.

“Coordinates for Cebos, and some referential schematics of the ship and shuttle, coordinates and brief descriptions of some of the supply planets she mentioned. There are some encrypted files in here too—but it’ll take me a while to crack those. Nothing immediately useful,” she reported.

“But there are coordinates for our destination in there?” Eight asked.

“That’s what I said.”

“Well, if it’s going to take a month to get there, why don’t we start now?”

Everyone turned to look at her.

“What? We’re not going to learn anything here, and we may as well get going,” she explained nervously, eyeing Five’s stormy expression.

“Six agrees,” Three said. “I do not.”

“Me neither,” Five said.

“We really don’t know what we’re doing here. This passenger we’re transporting might be a criminal. We might get ourselves in trouble with the law if we go through with this. If we leave now, we’re committing,” Three said.

“Aren’t we?” Four challenged. “Don’t you want your memories back? I know I do. I think we should go.”

Two, Seven, and Eight quickly agreed with her.

“Two against five. Majority rules. What do you say, Captain?” Two asked.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Three stormed off the bridge. Five looked around awkwardly, then followed, but in a considerably less dramatic way.

Four scurried over to the pilot’s console.

“Course is set. The ship needs your voice command to start on a new heading,” she said to me, fingers poised over the commands.

“Uh—Computer, let’s go to Cebos!” I said, feeling rather stupid with the others staring at me.

Far below us, I heard the engines start up and felt the vibration in my bones. The view screen flickered on, but now showed empty space speckled with distant stars as we powered away from Earth.

We were off.

I pressed the button next to Three’s door, but got no response. I pressed it again. Either she wasn’t in there, or she was ignoring me.

Probably the latter.

“She went to the training room,” Five said, poking his head out of the door next to Three’s.

“Oh. Thanks,” I said. “And sorry about the whole disagreement on the bridge—”

“It’s fine. I didn’t even think there was ever a doubt that we would go on this mission. I mostly just backed Three up so she wouldn’t be alone.”

“That was good of you,” I said, tilting my head curiously at him. My first impression of him must have been wrong.

“Well, if she doesn’t trust me, she’ll never let me in her pants,” he said, and then disappeared back into his room.

Or not.

“Um—Goodbye,” I said half-heartedly, then set off to the training room.

“Hey, Three.”

“Go away.”

Three stood at the far end of the room, firing arrows at a target on the opposite wall with a sleek silver bow. I watched in amazement as she let fly one, two, three arrows, all sticking exactly in the center of the circle.

“Bow’s your weapon, then, huh?”

“What do you want?” she demanded, whirling on me with a scowl. I jumped back in alarm, nervously eyeing the sharp point of the arrow strung on her bow.

“I came to apologize for earlier.”

“Why? I had an opinion, you all disagreed with it. I’m not angry,” she said, pulling a set of throwing knives from the rack. She began flinging them at the target with brutal force. With these, she wasn’t as accurate, but the force was still damaging even if the aim wasn’t there.

“Hm. Based on the dent in the wall, it sure looks like you are.”

“Fine! I’m mad. Aren’t you at all concerned that we’re doing exactly what these people want us to do? What if the guy we’re supposed to transport is a mass murderer or something? There are potentially disastrous ramifications for completing this mission, and none of you seem to care!”

“We do care. But what other choice do we have?”

“I guess none. But I sure don’t have to like it.”

“None of us do.”

“Well, you could at least act like this bothers you,” she grumbled.

“What do you want me to say, Three?” I said wearily. “That you’re right? That going on this mission is most likely a bad idea? That the people who brought us here are probably criminals? All of that’s true. We just don’t have any other choice. I want to know who I am. Don’t you want your memories back?”

“Of course I do. I just think this is wrong, okay? And if it’s going to be harmful, maybe preventing these people from doing it is worth losing our memories.”

“Maybe it is. But for now, we just have to do the best we can.”

“Whatever,” Three said petulantly, striding to the far wall and yanking the knives out of the target.