I filed into the adjacent changing rooms, then found an empty stall and got undressed. After I finished stuffing my civilian clothes into my backpack, I put my EDA uniform on. Everything was just my size.

  I avoided looking in the mirror until I was finished, then turned to face my reflection. I hadn’t worn a uniform since Cub Scouts, and I was concerned that this one might look equally unflattering on me. But when I checked my profile in the mirror, I thought I actually looked pretty sharp, like an intrepid young space hero about to embark on an epic adventure. Then I realized—that was more or less my new job description.

  I stared at my face in the mirror, taking in the strange mix of fear and anticipation battling each other for supremacy there.

  Then I straightened my uniform one last time, picked up my backpack, and exited the dressing room, feeling several inches taller now than when I’d first stepped inside. The map on my QComm directed me back through the base, again highlighting a circuitous route that took me around the areas damaged during the enemy’s sneak attack.

  When I reached the shuttle bay, I was surprised to see that aside from some rocky debris scattering the runway, it seemed to have escaped the attack—and my monumental screwup—unscathed.

  Several EDA shuttles were parked on numbered landing pads around the perimeter of the hangar’s oval-shaped runway, and I walked down the line until I spotted the one specified in my orders. Its cabin doors were open, and through them I could see that several people were already sitting on board, waiting for departure.

  “Look at you,” I heard a female voice say behind me. “An officer and a gentleman!”

  I turned to see Lex, standing at rigid attention in her new EDA uniform, which looked as if it had been tailored to accentuate her frame.

  “Well?” she said. “What do you think?”

  I think you might be the girl of my dreams and I’ll probably never see you again. That was what I was thinking. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud, so instead I took a step, straightened my spine, and snapped her a sharp salute.

  “Lieutenant Zack Lightman,” I said. “Reporting for duty, ma’am!”

  “Lieutenant Alexis Larkin,” she replied, returning the salute. “Ready to save the world!”

  I dropped my hand and took a step back. “You look outstanding, Lieutenant.”

  “Why, thank you, Lieutenant,” she said. “You don’t look too shabby yourself.” She studied the rank on my uniform. “So I take it the admiral decided not to court-martial your insubordinate ass?”

  I shook my head. “He let me off with a warning.”

  She shook her head. “See what I mean?” she said. “You’re clearly getting special treatment.” She gave me a shove. “Is your old man a senator or a mob boss or something?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I didn’t. “Where are they sending you?” I asked.

  “Sapphire Station,” she said. “That’s the code name for another base like this one, located just outside Billings, Montana. How about you?”

  I handed her the printout of my orders that Vance had given to me. When she finally located my destination, her eyes went wide and she looked back up at me.

  “Moon Base Alpha?” she said. “It’s real?”

  “Apparently.”

  She shoved the sheet of paper back at me in disgust. “What a bunch of horseshit!” she said. “I get stationed in Montana, and you get to go to the fucking moon. That’s real fair.” She gave me another playful shove. “Maybe I need to start being insubordinate, like you.”

  I knew she was joking, so I didn’t respond. An awkward silence descended.

  Lex unsnapped her QComm from the strap on her forearm. “Hold your arm out for a second.”

  I did as she asked. She touched her QComm to mine and both devices beeped.

  “Now I’ve got your number, and you’ve got mine,” she said. “We can stay in touch.” She pointed to the countdown clock on her QComm and smiled. “We’ll probably only be able to stay in touch for another six hours and forty-three minutes, so it’s no big deal.”

  “Thank you,” I said, staring down at her name on my own QComm’s display, and then at the countdown timer next to it.

  “Wow, you’re a popular guy,” Lex said, staring down at her QComm screen. She tapped it a few times, then tilted it toward me again, and I saw the three names listed on my own contact list mirrored there: Arjang Dagh, Alexis Larkin, and Ray Habashaw. Then she tapped the music icon, and I saw that she had somehow pulled all of the music off of my device, too.

  “Hey, how did you do that?” I said, making a halfhearted grab for her QComm. She snatched it out of my reach.

  “I was pissed when they hacked into my old phone, so I decided to try hacking theirs. It was shockingly easy.” She smiled. “They may have used alien technology in these things,” she said. “But the software they installed to run it all was clearly created by humans—overworked, underpaid programmers like me who take all kinds of shortcuts. The security protocols on the file-sharing system are a total joke. It only took me about five minutes to jailbreak this thing.”

  She tossed her QComm behind her back with one hand, then caught it effortlessly with the other, keeping her eyes on me the whole time. Then she held it back up in front of me.

  “Access to the public phone network is still disabled, so I wasn’t able to call my grandma,” she said. “However, I did figure out how to enable admin privileges on the QComm network. Now I can pull private data stored on another QComm, just by calling it or touching it with mine. Contacts, text messages, emails, everything.”

  “But why would those features even be included in the software?”

  “Why do you think?” she said. “So Big Brother can keep on spying on each of us, right up to the bitter end.” She grabbed my phone. “Here, I’ll jailbreak yours, too.”

  I handed my QComm back to her, then watched as her thumbs danced across the keyboard on its display for a moment.

  “You’re kind of amazing,” I blurted out—because that was what I was thinking, and I’d recently been told the world was about to end. “Did you know that?”

  She blushed, but didn’t avert her gaze from my QComm display.

  “Yeah, well,” she said, playfully rolling her eyes. “That’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

  I laughed and moved a step closer to her. She didn’t move away.

  “Listen,” I said, as if she weren’t quite obviously already doing so, “I know we just met, but I just wanted to let you know that I wish we’d met each other a long time ago, under different circumstances.…”

  She smiled. “Don’t go getting all mushy on me now, Princess,” she said, stepping back. “So long.”

  She turned as if to walk away—then she abruptly turned again, spinning back around on her heel, grabbed me by my lapels, and then she kissed me—right on the lips, with tongue and everything. When we both finally came up for air, Lex wrapped her arms around me in a fierce hug. Then she stepped back and jerked a thumb over her shoulder, toward the lone shuttle on the opposite side of the bay.

  “That’s my ride over there,” I said. “I think they’re probably waiting on me.”

  “Yeah, we should both get going.”

  “Yes. We should.”

  Neither of us moved.

  “Good luck, Lex,” I said finally.

  “Give ’em hell, Zack,” she replied, grinning. “Call me from the far side of the moon. Let me know if you spot any Decepticons or secret Nazi bases hidden up there.”

  “Will do.”

  We saluted each other again; then she hoisted her new EDA backpack and ran over to her shuttle. I watched until she disappeared inside and its doors hissed closed. A few seconds later the shuttle lifted off and ascended through the narrow gap between the armored blast doors high above, which were now too warped and damaged to open all the way.

  Then Lex’s shuttle tilted skyward and rocketed away, out of sight.

  I took a deep breath, hoisted my own pack onto my shoulder, and turned to walk toward my own shuttle, wondering how long it would take to fly me to the moon.

  AS I APPROACHED the shuttle, I could hear several loud, overlapping voices coming through its open hatchway.

  “Why does everyone always automatically assume that RedJive is a man?” a woman asked in a thick, Fargo-esque accent. “That’s pretty damn sexist, if you ask me.”

  “Yeah,” a younger female voice chimed in. “The Red Baroness might be a better nickname—for her.”

  Female laughter followed. I paused a few yards from the shuttle and crouched, pretending to adjust the Velcro straps of my new EDA sneakers so that I could continue to eavesdrop.

  “People assume RedJive is a guy because Red Five was a guy,” a male voice replied. He had some sort of East Coast accent that sounded equally thick to my Pacific-Northwestern ears. “Hate to tell ya, but the Red Baron was a dude, too—just like Maverick, Goose, Iceman, and every other ace fighter pilot in history.”

  “You’re aware that those are all fictional characters, right?” the younger woman asked, talking over the man’s chuckling. “For your information, there have been female fighter pilots for over a hundred years now. I wrote a report about it for school. A woman named Marie Marvingt flew combat missions over France way back in World War I, and the Russians used female fighter pilots in World War II. And the US military has had women fighter pilots since the seventies.”

  After a pregnant pause, the male voice responded with an annoyed “Yeah, whatever.”

  This was followed by another round of high-pitched laughter and some scattered applause. I took it as my cue and stood up, then mounted the shuttle’s small retractable staircase.

  The laughter died out as soon as the cabin’s four occupants saw me appear in the open hatchway and turned to face me. I stood there for an awkward beat, letting them size me up, while I did the same to them.

  They were all dressed in newly pressed EDA flight officer uniforms like mine. To my immediate left sat a pretty middle-aged woman with tanned skin and dark hair, and the name LT. WINN stitched onto her uniform. There was an empty seat to her right while on her left sat a heavyset guy with an unruly beard who seemed to be eying me suspiciously. Seated across from him was a teenaged African-American girl who looked like she probably wasn’t old enough to drive yet. A young Asian man sat beside her. He looked like he was in his early twenties, and there was a small Chinese flag beneath the EDA emblem on his uniform, instead of the tiny embroidered version of Old Glory that adorned everyone else’s uniform, and instead of the words Earth Defense Alliance there was a string of characters in Chinese.

  After the five of us had stared at each other in silence for what I felt was a sufficient length of time, I stowed my pack in the overhead compartment and took the empty seat next to the older woman, because she was the only one who had smiled at me.

  “Hi,” I said, offering her my hand. “I’m Zack Lightman. From Portland, Oregon.” As dazed as I was, I still remembered to say I was from Portland instead of Beaverton, to avoid sounding like a hick—or having to endure any beaver-related attempts at humor.

  “Welcome aboard, Zack,” she said, squeezing my hand between both of her own. “I’m Debbie Winn.” Something about her demeanor and tone made me guess that she was a schoolteacher.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Debbie.”

  “It’s nice to meet you—even under such terrifying circumstances.” She laughed and gave me an anxious smile. I returned it with one of my own.

  “That’s Milo,” she said, gesturing to the bear-like man to her left, who was still staring at me with open hostility. The name patch on his uniform identified him as LT. DOBSON.

  “Hi there, Milo,” I said, reaching over to offer him my hand. “How goes it?”

  He just stared at my hand without replying, until I finally shrugged and lowered it.

  “Oh, ignore him—he’s from Philly,” Debbie said, as if that explained his rude behavior. Then she nodded at the young woman across from her. “Zack, that’s Lila. Lila, meet Zack.”

  “Nobody actually calls me that,” the girl said. “Everyone calls me by my nickname, Whoadie. That’s my Armada call sign, too.”

  We shook hands, and I was about to tell her that I recognized her call sign, but then the young man beside her cleared his throat. The name LT. CHÉN was stitched onto his uniform.

  “This is Jiang Chén—better known as CrazyJi,” Whoadie said. “He’s Chinese, and doesn’t speak much English.”

  Chén smiled and shook my hand. He had spiky red hair that obscured the right half of his face, but the look seemed to work for him. Chén glanced down at the QComm strapped to his right wrist, where a string of Mandarin characters was appearing on his display. It must’ve been translating what Whoadie had said, because after Chén read over them, he looked up and gave me an exhausted smile.

  “Hell-oh,” he said with a thick accent. “It goo to mee you.”

  “It’s good to meet you, too,” I replied slowly. “I know your call sign well, CrazyJi. Yours too, Whoadie. We’ve flown lots of missions together. It’s an honor to finally meet you in person.” I stood up and held out my hand. “I’m Zack—also known as IronBeagle.”

  As soon as they heard my call sign, the tension in the tiny cabin evaporated, and all four of my new companions visibly relaxed—especially Milo, who actually smiled in my direction for the first time since I’d stepped aboard.

  “The Beagle!” Whoadie repeated, smiling with recognition. “Good to finally meet you. You’re a fucking legend, man!”

  I saw Debbie wince when Whoadie dropped her F-bomb.

  “IronBeagle?” Chén repeated with raised eyebrows, in what sounded like perfect English.

  When I nodded, he lunged out of his seat to shake my hand, talking excitedly in Chinese. An English translation appeared on my QComm—a garbled string of compliments, for which I thanked him profusely. Once he finally calmed down and let go of me, we both retook our seats.

  “What’s your call sign, Debbie?” I asked, even though I already had a good guess, just due to the process of elimination.

  She laid a hand on her chest and bowed her head. “AtomicMom, at your service.” She smiled nervously. “You know, like ‘Atomic Bomb’?”

  “Yeah, lady, we get it,” Milo said, rolling his bloodshot eyes.

  “Let me guess,” I said, leveling a finger at him. “You’re Kushmaster5000, right?”

  He smiled, looking immensely pleased. “The one and only.”

  The Kushmaster, also known as “KM5K” to his many detractors, was a pilot known for his incessant (and often unintentionally hilarious) boasting and trash talk on the Chaos Terrain player forums, where he used a prismatic cannabis leaf for his avatar. He also loved to do a running voice commentary of the battles over the public comm channel, like Jack Burton broadcasting on his CB. I usually muted him, but I still recognized his Philly accent, and the cocky attitude that seemed to come along with it. I wasn’t sure I liked him, and he seemed to like it that way.

  But in a strange way, learning their call signs suddenly made me feel as though I was among old friends—or at least familiar allies. AtomicMom, Whoadie, CrazyJi, and Kushmaster5000 were all names that I’d been seeing daily for the past year, because they were four of the call signs always listed among the top ten Armada pilot rankings—at first above, and then eventually below, my own. When I’d checked the rankings last night, Whoadie’s call sign had been listed right after mine in seventh place, followed by CrazyJi in eighth, AtomicMom in ninth, and Kushmaster5000 in tenth.

  “Sorry if I acted like a prick before,” Milo said, solemnly offering me his fist to bump, which I did. “I thought you might be RedJive, or one of those other elitist dicks in the top five.”

  Chén read the translation, then whispered a response into his QComm in Chinese. The device instantly translated his words and repeated them in English.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” the computer said, in a synthesized male voice that sounded exactly like the one used by Stephen Hawking.

  I suddenly found myself wondering if Hawking had been a part of the EDA’s big cover-up, too. And what about Neil deGrasse Tyson? If Carl Sagan had been let in on the secret, it seemed possible that other prominent scientists had, too. I added this to the list of unanswered questions whirling around inside my head, which seemed to only be growing longer as this insane day progressed.

  “I am not liking RedJive also,” Chén’s translator went on to declare loudly in its uninflected monotone. “He is an asshole total!”

  Whoadie laughed and mimicked the translator’s voice while she made stiff robotic motions with her arms. “Yes!” she intoned. “The Baron is complete face-fuck!”

  The others laughed, but I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Luckily, my dad’s impromptu roast was interrupted a second later, when the hatchway leading to the cockpit slid open and an ATHID clanked through it on metal feet. The drone’s head split open and extended a small flatscreen telepresence monitor that displayed a live video image of the drone’s operator, a middle-aged EDA officer with an impressive Sam Elliott–gauge mustache.

  “Welcome aboard,” he said. “I’ll be your shuttle pilot today: Captain Meadows.”

  The second he finished introducing himself, he was bombarded with questions from all sides, in a variety of accents, and in at least two languages. I wanted to ask him a few thousand of my own, but he was already holding up one of his drone’s clawed hands, motioning for silence. It took a minute.