“Wait,” Tyler said. “You forgot something.”

  “I wasn’t finished,” Matt countered.

  “Okay, but you’ll still forget it.”

  “We’ll see.” Matt paused to regather his thoughts. “The napkin. It contains a list of potential coordinates for the hidden station where the Wardenship is docked. Since it’s a list, we’re pretty confident none of these coordinates are accurate, but rather some kind of cipher to prevent Zariv from finding the place. Nyree didn’t know if she would escape alive, but she had some level of confidence we would.”

  “Why do you think that is?” Lantz asked.

  “What do you mean?” Matt replied.

  “Why did she have so much confidence in you? I mean, the job was risky as anything from the start. What made her think you could pull it off?”

  “I think it was because we found Levain’s secret server room,” I answered. “And she probably heard over the shuttle’s comms that we survived the fight in the garage.”

  “How do you know she didn’t set you up?” He pointed at Ally. “At least one of you doesn’t trust her.”

  “I’m not saying I fully trust her, either. But we need to follow up on this for the same reason we needed to hire you.”

  “Why is that again?”

  “Because you and Tarvik were the only options. We don’t have another lead.”

  “That’s not completely true,” Meg said. “We have the Gemmen and the Gothori.”

  “Princess Goloran doesn’t know as much as she wants us to think she does,” Ben said. “Or she might not have been so eager to throw so much money into freeing Nyree. Whatever secrets the Wardenship holds, she doesn’t know any of them, either.”

  “And for all we know, the Gemmen will give us more legend than actionable data,” Leo said.

  “I want to go home,” Ally commented. “Whatever gets us there faster has my vote.”

  “Makes sense,” Lantz said. “I just wanted to throw it out there. I’m just a passenger on this robot head.”

  “As am I,” Hzzt said. “And I would like to disembark before you go forward with this quest of yours. I need to report back to my superiors and explain to them why I had to leave Cacitrum without completing my duties.”

  “You’re going to tell them about us?” Tyler asked.

  “Of course not. I’ll make something up.”

  “Goloran is supposed to provide coordinates to a location where we can pick up equipment to broadcast the interior of the Wardenship to her,” Matt said. “I imagine she’ll choose the outpost based on which direction we end up headed in. We’ll drop you off there.”

  “Very good,” Hzzt said. “And I assume you will compensate me appropriately for my added troubles?”

  “What?” Tyler complained. “We saved your life.”

  “Which was only at risk because of you,” he answered. “I deserve restitution.”

  “How about we throw you out of an airlock?” Tyler growled, starting to rise from his seat.

  “Tee, settle down,” Ben said, putting out his hand. Tyler glared at Hzzt but returned to the chair while Ben looked to the big-eyed alien. “I’m sure we can come to an agreement later. Let’s not get too far off-track right now.”

  “Of course,” Hzzt agreed, satisfied.

  “Where were we?” Matt asked.

  “Napkin,” Shaq buzzed. “And coordinate cipher.”

  “Right. Thanks, Shaq. We believe the coordinates on the napkin are a cipher for the real location. Our next order of business will be to solve that cipher.”

  “I’m great at number puzzles,” Lantz said. “I can help out.”

  “You’re welcome to it,” Matt replied. “I’ll just finish my list first. Fifth, we know that Jaffie was playing double-agent for both Levain and Zariv, and probably making a killing doing it. Levain sent him to Earth by means unknown for reasons unknown. What we do know is that Zariv also gave him a mission there, to retrieve a sigiltech bracelet.”

  “And you left without the bracelet,” Ben pointed out.

  “We didn’t have time to grab it. The point is, somehow Zariv knew about sigiltech and its connection to chaos energy. And somehow, he knew he could find what he was looking for on a planet billions of light years away. The question is, how could he know about that. Ben and I have tried to find all of the sigiltech that made it to Earth, without any luck. We took our failure as a sign that there wasn’t any more.”

  “The question is, who cares,” Tyler said. “That answer won’t get us home.”

  “You aren’t wrong,” Ben agreed. “But the answer may hold the key to unlocking the puzzle that is the Warden.”

  “Again, who cares? We find our way home, we can forget about the Warden and all of this other insanity. Are you done with your list?”

  “Not quite,” Matt said. “Six is purely conjecture, but it sure looks as though the Warden did set us up to confront Zariv. If we assume there are no coincidences, then in less than two days, he eliminated everyone who knew how to get to Earth and where to find his captured ship.”

  “I don’t get why he wants to keep us here so badly,” Alyssa said. “We can’t be that exciting.”

  “I don’t know, I think we’ve been pretty entertaining so far,” Tyler countered.

  “That’s not a good thing, Tee.”

  “It might be, depending on the alternative.”

  “He hasn’t eliminated everyone who knew where to find his ship,” I said, holding up the napkin. “We can still figure this out. I know it.”

  “Can I take a look?” Lantz asked.

  “Sure,” I replied, passing the napkin to Leo to hand to Lantz. Leo held it a moment while he and Meg looked over the coordinates.

  “Nothing’s jumping out at us, me at least.” Meg said. Shaking his head in the negative, Leo completed the circuit, passing the napkin on to Lantz. He stared at it for a few seconds before shrugging.

  “I’m with these two,” he agreed. “And I want to add, if you’re right about the Warden, then he expected Zariv’s bots and/or mercenaries to kill you before you could get away from Cacitrum. If this was all part of his plan, it didn’t work.”

  “If that’s the case, I’m surprised we haven’t heard from him by now,” Ben said. “He should congratulate us for defeating his best efforts.”

  “The Warden does things in his own time and place,” Hzzt said.

  “Let’s worry about the Warden later, too,” Ben added. “The numbers on that napkin are our priority right now.”

  “Hold up,” Tyler said, looking at Matt. “I told you that you would forget.”

  “What is it, Tee?” Matt asked.

  “You forgot what we learned about Archie.” He paused, glancing at me. “Where is the little booger, anyway?”

  “Back in our quarters, sleeping off his meal of orc mercenary,” I replied. “What did we learn about Archie?”

  “That he can make body parts of the things he eats,” Tyler said. “Jaffie’s eyeball, and then his hand. Gross, but useful.”

  “We already knew Aleal could change their shape,” Matt said.

  “But did you know they could reproduce only specific body parts and not the whole entity?”

  Matt smiled. “Fine, you got me there, Tee.”

  “See? Make that lucky number seven.”

  “If it makes you happy.”

  “It does.”

  “Can we get down to business now?” Ben asked, growing impatient. “Shaq, can you grab the RFD for me?”

  “Mmmhmm,” Shaq replied, hopping off Ben’s shoulder and vanishing under the sofa. He dragged the RFD out with his teeth before picking it up in his tiny hands and walking it as awkwardly and adorably as possible to Ben.

  “Aww, so cute,” Ally said, drawing a stern glare from the Jagger.

  “Thanks,” Ben said, accepting the device. “Lantz, the napkin?”

  “Sure,” Lantz said, passing it to him while Shaq hopped back up to Ben’s shoulder.

  “I’m going to get a pic of the napkin with the RFD,” he explained, positioning the napkin on his lap and holding the device over it to record an image. “Levi, do you have the image?”

  “Aye, Captain,” Levi replied.

  “Meg, did Tyler leave the remote for the television under the sofa cushions again?”

  “I don’t—“ Tyler started arguing before Meg effortlessly reached behind the cushions and retrieved the remote. “That wasn’t me.”

  “Uh-huh,” Meg said, using the remote to turn the television on to static.

  “Levi, put the image up on the tube,” Ben said. The napkin pic replaced the static. "Obviously we need to determine how the coordinates are encrypted. Are there patterns we can extrapolate? Let’s brainstorm. There are no bad ideas.”

  "My first thought is a basic substitution cipher,” I said. “Like the Hemid equivalent of ASCII.”

  “But that would still be numbers to text,” Ben countered. “Not numbers to numbers.”

  “True, but do we know the decryption won’t result in text?”

  “Good point.”

  “Or it could be the Nihilist cipher,” Ally said. “That uses numbers, too.”

  “I didn’t know you were into ciphers,” I said.

  She shrugged. “I’m not, really. I just know that one.”

  “We have a number of numeric to alphabetic ciphers,” Lantz said. “We only have a few numeric to numeric. Zariv’s team would break that in seconds. Please, explain assie to me. If Nyree knew Levain had visited Earth, it’s possible she used an Earth cipher to frustrate Zariv even more.”

  Ben nodded approvingly. "That seems plausible. Let's try a few techniques and see if any patterns emerge."

  For the next hour, we analyzed and debated potential codes and broke them down with different ciphers. A few resulted in a textual output of numbers in the Hemid alphabet, as did deconstructing the numbers in Unicode, which we took as a sign the encryption was multi-tiered. But the further we dove in, the murkier things became. Rather than winnowing possibilities, we generated additional ones until we had come up with nearly a hundred valid combinations. But which one was right? If any? We had nothing else to guide us.

  “This isn’t working,” Tyler groaned in frustration. “It was supposed to give us one number.”

  “There must be a solution,” Lantz said. “Judging by the complexity, Nyree clearly prepared this ahead of time. She knew she might need to share the coordinates in secret one day, and she was ready for it.”

  “Yeah, but how do we find the solution?” Tyler griped. “Geez, we have two completely unrelated alphabets representing here.”

  “It’s only been an hour,” Alyssa said. “Hardly time enough to give up.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s obvious this approach isn’t working.”

  “Agreed,” Leo said.

  I stared at the full screen of alternative text and numbers Levi had generated in response to our work. Tyler had it right. It wasn’t working. There had to be an additional clue, something we were overlooking in her message.

  Suddenly, it dawned on me.

  “We need a key!” I shouted, jolting everyone out of their respective thoughts.

  “What kind of key?” Matt asked.

  “A cryptographic key,” Ben answered. “I thought about getting into cryptocurrency before I became the proud co-owner of a starship, so I know a little about this. It would have to be a symmetric key, which is used by both the sender and receiver to keep messages secret. It’s not nearly as secure as public key and has to be exchanged separately from the message its encrypting in a secure way, but⁠—“

  “The messages!” I cried excitedly. “Hand-written and passed from Levain to Nyree and then to whoever runs the station. I bet the key is somewhere in there.”

  “Levi, run an analysis of the documents,” Meg said. “Separate all numeric references and convert them to digits, then combine them into a single numerical key. Use that key against all our coordinates using all known symmetric key patterns.” She looked at Lantz. “Do you know of any Hemid patterns to include?”

  “Let’s see what we get first,” Lantz replied.

  “Processing,” Levi announced. “Estimated time to completion is one hour, fifty-three minutes.”

  “Perfect!” Tyler shouted, drawing everyone’s attention. “That’s just enough time to watch The Fifth Element. I’ll put it on and grab the popcorn. I’ve seen it like a hundred times, so I won’t miss anything. Hzzt, Lantz, you guys are gonna love it!”

  CHAPTER 32

  The crew was still gathered in the lounge after the movie ended. Popcorn buckets, empty glasses, and crumpled napkins littered the area. As the end credits rolled, I grabbed a handful of leftover popcorn from the bucket resting in my lap, crunching lazily on the kernels while watching names scroll past. My eyes drifted to Ally sitting across from me. The haunted, troubled look that had shadowed her delicate features since being forced to kill Zariv had finally begun fading, at least a little. I wasn't naive enough to think a silly action flick could erase the psychological trauma of taking a life, but it seemed to help take her mind off things, at least temporarily.

  As the screen faded to black, the laughter and casual banter tapering off, I worried the darkness creeping back into her expression signaled the return of those demons. I wished I could think of something encouraging to say, some small gesture to help alleviate her pain, but words failed me.

  Levi's soothing voice carried through the lounge speakers before the oppressive weight of silence could fully resettle over us.

  "Captain, analysis of encrypted data is complete. Cross-referencing details from Levain's recovered correspondence has yielded a single set of coordinates."

  I bolted upright, nearly upending my popcorn. Around me, the others reacted with similar surprise. I could scarcely believe it. This one glimmer of hope left me almost giddy. After endless dead ends and setbacks, fortune finally granted us the smallest break. Maybe now we truly stood a chance of finding Levain's hidden space station and the crippled Wardenship.

  "Well how about that? Your idea paid off!" Matt grinned fiercely at me.

  “I really hope so,” I countered, not ready to claim success. The numbers could still be another false trail. But some previously untouched optimism insisted maybe not. Just maybe Nyree had come through after all.

  "Levi, enter those coordinates in the navigation system please," Ben said, getting to his feet. “I want them on our map of Warexia by the time we reach the flight deck.”

  “Confirmed,” Levi replied.

  “Matt, Noah,” he continued, “let's rendezvous on the flight deck. I want to confirm our heading before bringing Head Case back into normal space and reaching out to Princess Goloran.”

  The three of us hurried up to the flight deck. I had nearly dropped into the copilot's seat when a hard cough from Matt stopped me in my tracks. “Not that one, Noah,” he said. I looked back, he had his good arm up, finger extended toward the pilot station. “This is yours for now.”

  I couldn’t hold back my grin as I circled to my new position and sat down. Although the seats were identical, this one felt different for some reason. More important. More comfortable, like I belonged there.

  “Noah, take us out of hyperspace,” Ben said from the command station. “Levi, bring up the starmap.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” I replied as Warexia’s star map projection appeared between my station and the forward transparency. I didn’t look at it immediately, instead flipping the switch to shut down the hyperdrive. The compression field immediately began falling apart, and I held the stick, ready for anything despite the long odds that trouble would find us in the middle of nowhere.

  It had before.

  Fortunately, not this time. We settled into open space, surrounded by the light of distant stars. I looked up at the star map, finding our current position before following Levi's line between us and the coordinates we had pulled out of Nyree’s message. My heart sank when I looked up the estimated travel time at my station. Nearly four full weeks to go from here to there. Four more weeks Alyssa and Tyler would be away from families that were no doubt sick with worry over what might have happened to them. At this point, whoever Ben and Matt had back in the Spiral was probably worried about them, too.

  Jealousy tangled with frustration. At the moment, I would have given anything to have someone to worry about me.

  “I never expected the station to be close to anything,” Matt said. “But damn, that’s really out there.”

  “There’s no way Nyree could have shuttled that many messages back and forth with a two month roundtrip,” Ben said.

  “Unless they exchanged multiple messages during each trip.”

  “I guess that’s possible.” He leaned forward in the command chair, features set with determination. "Time to make contact. Matt, open a comms channel to Goloran."

  “Wait,” I said. “We have FTL comms now?”

  “Not unless Princess Goloran has a Collator,” Ben replied. “But check the map again.”

  I returned my attention to the star map. I’d been so busy tracing the path from point A to point B that I’d missed the fact that despite spending seven hours in hyperspace, we’d only traveled half a light year from Cacitrum.

  “How—“ I started to ask.

  “David wrote a macro called Infinite Nowhere,” Ben said. “We basically shuttled forward and backward in hyperspace multiple times.”

  “How do you reverse in hyperspace?” I asked.

  “You don’t. The system releases the compression field just long enough to return to regular space before deploying again. It burns a lot more power, but we have energy to spare.”

  “That’s so cool.”

  “Isn’t it? We should be within range of Goloran’s ship, assuming she stuck around near Cacitrum waiting to hear from us.”

  “If we aren’t that far from the planet, isn’t there a chance their ships will find us?”

  “We’ll need to get out of here as soon as we’re done with our conversation,” Ben agreed. “You should get the nav computer working on the calculations now.”