“I can’t believe someone fit all that in,” I said.

  “I’m a whiz with a decorating pen,” Bill said.

  “You wrote it?”

  “With a little help from your sister. She baked the cake, I put the icing on it.” His big laugh made everyone join in.

  “Well, I think the cake should be for all of you,” I said. “We couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

  “True,” Nick said, putting his good arm over Sheri’s shoulders. Of course they had made up. “But we can have cake anytime. Do they have cake in the Spiral?”

  “Of course we have cake,” Keep said.

  “I didn’t see cake programmed into the assembler,” I said.

  “Well, maybe you should do something about that?” Keep replied. “If you bring a piece along, you can have it break down and store the chemical structure so you can assemble it any time.”

  I stared at him. “Wait. What?”

  “Didn’t you read the manual?” Keep asked.

  “There’s a manual?” I replied. “I’ve been updating the source code directly to make changes to the system.”

  “Why use a scalpel when you’ve got a hammer?” He rolled his eyes. “The manual is on the portable access device.”

  I looked at Marie. “Do you mind if I take everything in your fridge? And your pantry?”

  She laughed. “Are you serious?”

  “Some french fries at least, if you’ve got them,” Keep said. “Potato chips.”

  “Burgers, condiments, cookies,” I added.

  “Asshole doesn’t have any of that?” Sheri asked.

  “It has my best representation,” I replied. “But it’s not the same.”

  “I’ll go raid the pantry,” Marie said. “Kyrie, Sally, can you help me out?”

  “Okay,” they replied.

  “We’ll be right back. Have some cake while you wait.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “From the bottom of my heart and stomach.”

  Marie and the two girls headed back to the house, while Bill started cutting slices of cake. I noticed the shelf under the cake had a wrapped gift box on it, but I didn’t say anything about it.

  “Who’s the present for?” Keep asked, not nearly as subtle.

  “It’s for Ben,” George said. “Just a little something to remember us by.”

  “You’re seriously all being way too nice,” I said again.

  “Probably,” Gloria agreed. “But we already did it, so you might as well take advantage.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Here you go, Ben,” Bill said, holding out a paper plate with a square of cake on it. Vanilla with vanilla icing and strawberries in the center. Sheet cake wasn’t my favorite. Was it anybody’s? But it was better than no cake at all. And the thoughtfulness of it meant the world to me.

  “Thank you,” I said, taking a bite while Bill continued passing squares out. Everyone was busy eating when Marie and the girls returned to the barn, each carrying a shopping bag full of junk food for me to program into the assembler.

  “I put some fruit snacks in there for you,” Sally said. “They’re my favorite.”

  “Great. I love fruit snacks,” I replied.

  “Will you come back some time and take us to space?” Kyrie asked.

  “You never know.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  I laughed. “Okay.”

  “I’m going to load these into the car,” Keep said, picking up the grocery bags. “Then we need to skedaddle.”

  “Who’s the mom here?” Mom said.

  “He’s more like the great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa,” Nick quipped.

  “I think you missed a few greats,” George confirmed.

  “And yet, I don’t look a day over fifty,” Keep replied. “Badabing badaboom.”

  He had still hadn’t told me how he was still alive after nearly a thousand years, and after asking a dozen times I decided I didn’t care that much. If he could take me to someone who could extend my life, that would be more than good enough.

  Then again, I wasn’t totally convinced I still needed it. While Mom had refilled my prescriptions and had managed to secure nearly a year’s supply of pills, my episodes of dizziness had all but stopped. I attributed the alleviation of my symptoms to fueling the sigiltech, despite Keep’s insistence that it was impossible. Even so, I wanted his contact’s second opinion, and if he could do anything to rid me of the threat of cancer for good, even better.

  We finished our cake. Marie retrieved the gift from the cart and handed it to me. “This is from all of us, but especially Nick and George,” she said.

  “Thank you. Thank all of you.” Looking down at the tag, I saw they had written FOR YOUR EYES ONLY on it. “I assume I shouldn’t open it here?”

  “It isn’t recommended,” George said.

  I nodded, smiling. Keep coughed beside me, still in a rush. “Yeah, well, I guess we should be going.” I walked over to Bill and put out my hand. “Thank you, Chief.”

  He took it and shook before pulling me into a big bear hug. “You’re family now, Ben, like it or not. So be safe out there. And no dying young.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I wheezed back under the pressure.

  He let me go, laughing loudly. Marie gave me a much gentler hug. “Good luck, Ben.”

  “Thank you.”

  Gloria gave me a similar hug, as did Kyrie and Sally, though I had to crouch to receive theirs. Nick put his good hand out, and we shook firmly.

  “Take care of yourself, man,” Nick said.

  “You too,” I said. “And my sister.”

  “Copy that.”

  I moved to George. We shook and embraced. “It was an honor to serve with you, Gunny,” I said. “And an even bigger honor to meet you and your family, and to become friends.”

  “The privilege is mine,” George replied. “I’d take a bullet for you any day. Or an energy blast. Or a magic fireball. Or whatever.” We both laughed.

  “I hope you like your new house once it’s built. I know you can’t replace the things that were in the old one, but—”

  “They were just things,” George interrupted. “I have everything that matters most to me. And I’ve gained a lot more in the last month than I lost. Guaranteed.”

  “Me too,” I said. I turned back to Sheri. “Sher, I—”

  She threw her arms around me, and we held one another tight. We had already said goodbye a couple of times, but after spending the last month on the Ackermann’s farm and helping Mom and her move in, we had grown closer than I ever thought we would. Not that she had changed that much.

  But I had.

  “I don’t expect this to be forever,” she said. “If you can come back to visit, then you better come back to visit. I want to see the inside of your ship. Especially Deck Three. And I want to meet Alter. She sounds great.”

  “If I can without causing an interstellar incident, I will,” I said. We separated, and Mom took her place, tears in her eyes again. “It’ll be okay,” I said to her.

  “Yeah, I know,” she replied. “I’m just sad to see you go. But I’m happy for you. And for me. I love it here. I love working for the Ackermanns. I’m going to be fine, so don’t you ever worry about me, Ben.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “Try not to worry too much about me, either. I’ll be surrounded by friends, just like I am right now.”

  Mom looked at Keep. “If you can’t cure him, you come back and tell me when he’s gone. Bring him back for a proper burial if you can. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Keep replied. “But I don’t expect that'll be necessary.”

  We embraced for longer than I had with Sheri, but Mom knew she had to let me go. Stepping back, she put on a brave face. “You should go.”

  I nodded and looked at Keep. “Are you ready?”

  “I was ready an hour ago,” he replied. “It was good to meet all of you. Maybe we’ll see each other again, maybe we won’t. But you’re all top-notch in my book. Bill, thanks for the car.”

  “Thank you,” Bill said. “You paid enough for me to buy two more, and left me with a Humvee.”

  “Yeah well, it made the catalyst much easier to integrate, so it worked out for all sides. Come on, Bennie.”

  “Thank you again for the gift,” I said, holding up the box. I followed Keep to the Mustang. “I’m driving.”

  “You gain ten percent more control over your output and now you think you can transit us across the universe?”

  “No, you can do that. But I’m going to drive. It’ll be just like Back to the Future.”

  “You’re too young to have seen Back to the Future.”

  He let me take the driver’s side anyway. I put the gift on the back seat, put on my seat belt and started the engine. The car purred smoothly as I eased it toward the open barn door, rolling down the window so I could wave to Team Hondo one last time. They waved back, Sheri and Mom hugging one another as I rolled the window back up and pulled the Mustang out to the driveway.

  “Will there be a road on the other side of the transit?” I asked.

  Keep smirked. “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

  I couldn’t help smiling as I turned on the radio and twisted the volume, pumping in the AC/DC playing on the cassette tape already in the deck. Keep flipped open a switch he had added to the center console, exposing the catalyst needle. He drew blood with it while I hit the gas. We took off down the driveway as the others came out of the barn to watch us go.

  I couldn’t hear Keep utter his focus words over the music, but the car started glowing, and a sudden tear in spacetime ahead of us revealed the empty void. I pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor, hitting eighty-eight and stealing one last look back at Mom, Sheri, and the others, committing the image to memory.

  Then we were gone.

  Thank you so much for reading Keep Away! For more information on the next book in the series, please visit mrforbes.com/starshipforsale4.

  OTHER BOOKS BY M.R FORBES

  Want more M.R. Forbes? Of course you do!

  View my complete catalog here

  mrforbes.com/books

  Or on Amazon:

  mrforbes.com/amazon

  Forgotten (The Forgotten)

  mrforbes.com/theforgotten

  Complete series box set:

  mrforbes.com/theforgottentrilogy

  Some things are better off FORGOTTEN.

  Sheriff Hayden Duke was born on the Pilgrim, and he expects to die on the Pilgrim, like his father, and his father before him.

  That's the way things are on a generation starship centuries from home. He's never questioned it. Never thought about it. And why bother? Access points to the ship's controls are sealed, the systems that guide her automated and out of reach. It isn't perfect, but he has all he needs to be content.

  Until a malfunction forces his wife to the edge of the habitable zone to inspect the damage.

  Until she contacts him, breathless and terrified, to tell him she found a body, and it doesn't belong to anyone on board.

  Until he arrives at the scene and discovers both his wife and the body are gone.

  The only clue? A bloody handprint beneath a hatch that hasn't opened in hundreds of years.

  Until now.

  Earth Unknown (Forgotten Earth)

  mrforbes.com/earthunknown

  Centurion Space Force pilot Nathan Stacker didn't expect to return home to find his wife dead. He didn't expect the murderer to look just like him, and he definitely didn't expect to be the one to take the blame.

  But his wife had control of a powerful secret. A secret that stretches across the light years between two worlds and could lead to the end of both.

  Now that secret is in Nathan's hands, and he's about to make the most desperate evasive maneuver of his life -- stealing a starship and setting a course for Earth.

  He thinks he'll be safe there.

  He's wrong. Very wrong.

  Earth is nothing like what he expected. Not even close. What he doesn't know is not only likely to kill him, it's eager to kill him, and even if it doesn't?

  The Sheriff will.

  Deliverance (Forgotten Colony)

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  Complete series box set:

  The war is over. Earth is lost. Running is the only option.

  It may already be too late.

  Caleb is a former Marine Raider and commander of the Vultures, a search and rescue team that's spent the last two years pulling high-value targets out of alien-ravaged cities and shipping them off-world.

  When his new orders call for him to join forty-thousand survivors aboard the last starship out, he thinks his days of fighting are over. The Deliverance represents a fresh start and a chance to leave the war behind for good.

  Except the war won't be as easy to escape as he thought.

  And the colony will need a man like Caleb more than he ever imagined...

  Starship Eternal (War Eternal)

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  Complete series box set:

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  A lost starship...

  A dire warning from futures past...

  A desperate search for salvation…

  Captain Mitchell “Ares” Williams is a Space Marine and the hero of the Battle for Liberty, whose Shot Heard ‘Round the Universe saved the planet from a nearly unstoppable war machine. He’s handsome, charismatic, and the perfect poster boy to help the military drive enlistment. Pulled from the war and thrown into the spotlight, he’s as efficient at charming the media and bedding beautiful celebrities as he was at shooting down enemy starfighters.

  After an assassination attempt leaves Mitchell critically wounded, he begins to suffer from strange hallucinations that carry a chilling and oddly familiar warning:

  They are coming. Find the Goliath or humankind will be destroyed.

  Convinced that the visions are a side-effect of his injuries, he tries to ignore them, only to learn that he may not be as crazy as he thinks. The enemy is real and closer than he imagined, and they’ll do whatever it takes to prevent him from rediscovering the centuries lost starship.

  Narrowly escaping capture, out of time and out of air, Mitchell lands at the mercy of the Riggers - a ragtag crew of former commandos who patrol the lawless outer reaches of the galaxy. Guided by a captain with a reputation for cold-blooded murder, they’re dangerous, immoral, and possibly insane.

  They may also be humanity’s last hope for survival in a war that has raged beyond eternity.

  Man of War (Rebellion)

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  Complete series box set:

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  In the year 2280, an alien fleet attacked the Earth.

  Their weapons were unstoppable, their defenses unbreakable.

  Our technology was inferior, our militaries overwhelmed.

  Only one starship escaped before civilization fell.

  Earth was lost.

  It was never forgotten.

  Fifty-two years have passed.

  A message from home has been received.

  The time to fight for what is ours has come.

  Welcome to the rebellion.

  Hell’s Rejects (Chaos of the Covenant)

  mrforbes.com/hellsrejects

  The most powerful starships ever constructed are gone. Thousands are dead. A fleet is in ruins. The attackers are unknown. The orders are clear: Recover the ships. Bury the bastards who stole them.

  Lieutenant Abigail Cage never expected to find herself in Hell. As a Highly Specialized Operational Combatant, she was one of the most respected Marines in the military. Now she's doing hard labor on the most miserable planet in the universe.

  Not for long.

  The Earth Republic is looking for the most dangerous individuals it can control. The best of the worst, and Abbey happens to be one of them. The deal is simple: Bring back the starships, earn your freedom. Try to run, you die. It's a suicide mission, but she has nothing to lose.

  The only problem? There's a new threat in the galaxy. One with a power unlike anything anyone has ever seen. One that's been waiting for this moment for a very, very, long time. And they want Abbey, too.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  They say Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. They have no idea.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  M.R. Forbes is the mind behind a growing number of Amazon best-selling science fiction series. He currently resides with his family and friends on the west cost of the United States, including a cat who thinks she’s a dog and a dog who thinks she’s a cat.

  He maintains a true appreciation for his readers and is always happy to hear from them.

  To learn more about M.R. Forbes or just say hello:

  Visit my website:

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  M.R. Forbes, Keep Away (Starship for Sale Book 3)

 

 

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