The cells were filled with the groans of the injured. Sam turned to the alien sitting in the shadows of Wilder's cell:
"Hey, Doc, maybe you can help him? You're an alien of science, a real thinker surely you know how to fix these aches so the alien doesn't suffer."
"I am a Doctor of Cosmology!" Brans replied coldly.
Wilder, in shock, turned his gaze toward Dr. Brans. He hadn't misheard:
"I am currently in a state of profound information deficit," Wilder said. "Can someone return reality to a state of predictability? Please, brief me on the situation."
It turned out that the high-speed vessel that had passed Main CP-01 was nothing other than a franchise from Mr. Smith INC. As it happened, Abraham, seeing Wilder and Smith run for the restaurant, had immediately rushed to Dr. Brans. After some quick thinking, Brans had reached a dark conclusion: his investment would go to Wilder, and the patent would go to Smith. The entire point of the venture was disappearing. Wilder had a super-slow ship and an inexperienced crew, nothing but negative points. So, Brans used his remaining funds to buy a weapons-transport franchise from Smith through "Mr. Yo". Due to the stock market crash and loan refusals, Smith had simply decided to sell the rights to use the patent. Do you see the irony? Now Brans was personally flying to the wormhole, even though he could have done so without the contest and with a huge sum in his pocket. But he had been afraid of being caught—which is exactly what happened now. You can't outrun fate; or, as the classic saying goes: "He who asks to be pissed on and not beaten—will be pissed on and beaten."
"Yo, Wilder! You could be captaining a ship right now, maybe even a whole company," Abraham groaned bitterly.
"I have a mental understanding of your sadness, but the exact causes are not clear to me," Wilder replied flatly. "You see, according to historical statistics, weaponry logistics rarely brings profits that justify the level of related risk. At this moment, we are in cell together. This means the statistics do not lie, and we would have ended up at this point regardless."
"Yo, not exactly!" Abraham countered. "Right now, I should be flying back home, yo."
"Did Dr. Brans fail you?"
"Yo, that's the whole point! You think it was Dr. Brans who decided to become a spacetrucker? You're an idiot..."
Abraham didn't get to finish.
"Exactly, an idiot!" Brans snarled from his corner, cutting in against Wilder. "You took a contract that wasn't meant for you! You had no experience in the dark searching..."
"Yo, he taken over my ship and steered it toward the wormhole!" Abraham yelled back. "Now they're charging us with high treason, not just a border violation! We didn't even dump the cargo; we just bolted in that direction!"
"Wait, colleague, I thought we were going to dress down the boy. You even called him an idiot," Dr. Brans said, surprised.
"What, yo? Are you sick, yo? Are you crazy, yo? We're going to get hit with high treason because of you!"
"Everything would have worked out if you hadn't interfered!" Brans snapped.
"Yo stupid! Now they will be deported, while I face hard labor. At best. Still worrying about yourself, yo? Ugh, I shouldn't have agreed to take you on the crew. Just take a cash and nothing! Like a fool, I actually believed you wanted to be a spacetrucker."
"Mr Smith, listen me, We referring to my team and Abraham, have concluded that the most effective strategy would have been immediate honesty regarding your true intentions..." Wilder began.
"True intentionth, Wildy? True intentionth?!" Gabriel broke into a scream, his lisp thick with emotion. "The harlot in the churth athked everyone to be good! That'th what you thound like!" Gabriel suddenly went quiet as a guard approached. "Forgive me... ow!"
After receiving a couple of early strikes, Gabriel went silent, merely winking at Cheddar. The atmosphere grew electric, to 'defuse the tension' or more accurately, to get off his back Mr. Smith decided to charge everyone unlimited with hatred and pit them against each other for fight:
"You're all just weirdos! This one lisps, you're constantly dropping that 'Yo' for no reason, and you..." Smith pointed a finger at Wilder. "You talk like a goddamn robot! And you want to blame me? In the old days, your 'quirks' were considered diseases!" He looked at Gabriel. "You've got a speech impediment! Th! Th! It's 'S—suck me,' not 'thuck me'—that sounds like 'thank me'!" Then he pointed at Abrakham, Wilder, and Sam. "You've got Tourette's, and you—you're autistic! You're just trash alien, where is your sweet home?"
"So what if we are?" Sam cut in. "So, lemme get this here straight—you're lookin' for us to kick up a ruckus? Well, tell you what... I can rig up somethin' else entirely for ya. Bucks, my friend, my neighbor!"
"Yeah, Samuel?" a voice echoed from the end of the corridor.
"Get over here! Our billionaire friend here just insulted your honor!"
"On my way!"
"No, wait! I'll be good! I'll behave!" Brans turned pale.
"Bucks, hold on, don't be a fool! He's quieted down now...!" Sam tried to stop the guard.
But Bucks was already seeing red. He worked over the former billionaire with such force that the crunching of bones could be heard in the next block. None of the crew moved to stop the beast.
"When else am I gonna get the chance to beat a billionaire?"
Bucks wiped his hands, smiled, and stepped out. The crew sank back into a gloomy silence. No one discussed the mission's failure or the fate of Anna, suffering in solitary. All their energy went toward helping Cheddar. Gabriel, despite the veteran's protests, proved surprisingly good at splinting his lover's broken leg, doing his best to ignore the alien's biting remarks.
The silence was cut by Wilder's voice. It was cold, sharp, and clinical.
"Mr. Brans, what served as the reason for your decision to take matters into your own hands? Why such temporal compression? Perhaps more time should have been spent searching for other... specific candidates?"
Brans remained silent, his face turned toward the wall. Then Wilder, without hesitation, pressed his finger hard into the fresh wound on the doctor's shoulder.
"Does it hurt, Mr. Brans?"
"Yes, damn it, it hurts!" Brans shrieked, trying to shove Wilder's hand away.
"That would be... acceptable. It would be ideal if the state of our skin were no longer damaged by new scars!" Wilder pointed again at the damaged patch of flesh. "Let us reach an agreement: let the pain be localized exclusively in this area. Do you agree?"
Mr. Abraham watched the scene in total horror, his eyes darting between Wilder's cold efficiency and Brans' painful defeat.
"Yo, boy! I thought you were a pushover, but you've got him by the throat! Alien, that's gotta hurt... ouch, yo!"
"Fine! I get it! Enough!" Brans wheezed, finally breaking.
"I was wrong... there is no 'clog.' There's a star system on the other side. But here's the catch... the exit of the wormhole is dangerously close to a planet. The problem is that when a ship emerges, it instantly falls into the planet's gravity well and slams into the surface at relativistic speeds. You have to brake—hard!"
"I see. But what is the primary cause for such extreme haste?"
"Because the systems are rotating, Wilder!" Brans spoke faster now, the pain momentarily hidden by the urgency of the physics. "Imagine two moving platforms of different sizes. Both are fenced in, but there are gaps in the fences. These 'doors' are the wormholes. They align very rarely. If we don't pass through now, we'll have to wait years, decades or centuries for the next synchronization window. I don't know. But now, yeah."
Wilder and Brans completely detached from reality. In that dusty cell, among the groans and the stench of sweat, they discussed the greatest mystery of their lives, tuned out from the world around them. They didn't notice Cheddar's condition worsening—a violent fever shook his body, and Mr. Abraham was unsuccessfully trying to soothe the veteran's suffering, pressing scraps of wet cloth to his forehead. They didn't see Gabriel, who had forgotten all caution, whispering words of love into Cheddar's semi-conscious face through the chitinous bars. In the center of this chaos, Sam watched, mesmerized, as Wilder and Brans traced diagrams on the floor, feverishly calculating entry vectors. The silence, once filled with mathematical whispers, was suddenly pierced by Phoebe's hoarse, lifeless voice. She stared through the walls as if her consciousness had already drifted beyond the Admiralty Flotilla.
"There, beyond the veil..." she rustled. "There is a planet... we live there..."
Sam, catching the strange rhythm, began to chant softly, swaying from side to side. "There, beyond the veil... waterfalls and cascades!"
"There, beyond the thhroud..." Gabriel joined in, his voice—usually bright—now trembling with a sickly excitement, "girlth age danthing in the blue..."
Breakfast in bed. Wilder remembered a time when he had sprained his ankle and couldn't get up for a week. He'd lied to everyone, saying he'd been helping a classmate carry heavy boxes, but in reality, he'd been running so wildly from Bucks' gang that his legs simply gave out under the pace. His mother had brought food to his room all week, and he had spent those days happily diving into mediacontent and games. It had been a wonderful time. And now, in his sleep, he was being served breakfast again. That same mysterious youth who had invited him to his planet left something fragrant on the table... the scent was as inviting and edible as the sponges themselves.
"Get up!" a guard barked, ripping him from the darkness. "Food's here."
As it turned out, breakfast in bed was happening in real life, too only the "bed" was a slab of cold, hard bunk.
"Ugh, what a hotel!" the guard grumbled, rattling the trays. "I keep telling them, the best conditions on this fleet are for everyone except us! Wake up, do your training, lick the boots of the FIRE soldats... And why bother catching you anyway? So what if you escape across the border? The space troopes have different orders: to let no one near!"
"So... maybe you could just let us go?" Dr. Brans asked with a glimmer of hope, leaning forward.
"With pleasure!" the guard grinned. "Another guard is coming soon. Just tell him 'Sir Bucks' let you go. I'm the only Bucks around here, if you catch my drift. Just pass that on to the officer. Got it?"
"Yes, sir!" Brans barked happily, already tasting freedom.
"Yes, Mr. Bucks!" the guard corrected him, clearly enjoying the game.
"Yes, Mr. Bucks!" Brans repeated like he was told.
"That is not Bucks. I know him. And this is not him."
Wilder sat up, squinting against the dim light, and looked the alien in uniform in the eye. Wilder hadn't stepped in out of stupidity—he didn't want to set Bucks up. He understood with one hundred percent certainty that within this unit, the real Bucks was a victim of bullying from his own squad. It took him only a second to realize it. And just yesterday, it was probably the first time bully in the past had actually protected him. In all that commotion, he hadn't fully grasped the weight of the moment, but it was... noble, arousing but only in a good way, not some wild urge to shove arousing down his throat. Guard said ok and disappeared with evil look.
Nobility turned against Wilder: the guard whispered to the real Bucks that "those aliens" in Wilder's cell were trying to frame him. A localized storm of rage, Bucks stormed into the block, ready to tear through anything in his path. Wilder feverishly tried to block the blows of the baton, steering them away from the badly hurt Cheddar. Everyone caught the heat. While Bucks worked over the healthy prisoners in Wilder's block to the cheers of his fellow soldiers, Mr. Yo tried to slip away.
"Look, Bucks! This freak was the one complaining about you—his 'Commander'—the most!" one of the soldiers pointed at Abraham.
"Hold it right there, you piece of trash! I'll teach you to complain!"
Bucks left Wilder alone and, breathing heavily, moved toward Abraham. Shaking with terror, Abraham tried to scramble behind the broken Cheddar. The soldiers broke out into an enthusiastic bark of laughter. One of them, baring his teeth, fished out a camera and moved in close, hunting for the perfect angle for "educational content." Wilder saw it all in slow motion: Cheddar, pale and helpless, would be turned into a bloody pulp under Bucks' blows. He wouldn't survive. Without a thought for the consequences, Wilder put every ounce of his remaining strength into one desperate, dirty kick to Bucks' backside.
The world turned blood-red, boiling with rage. Bucks hadn't just lost his temper—he had turned into a beast. He spun with lightning speed, his right hand locking onto Wilder's throat in a death grip. He lifted him up and slammed him against the wall. The triumphant roar of the soldiers vanished instantly, replaced by a hollow, vacuum-like silence. Or perhaps something inside Wilder had simply snapped, and his ears were filled with an unbearable, high-pitched ringing.
Inside the tightness of that grip, everything gave way. The crunch: the voice box was the first to go. Wilder felt the soft bone groan and shatter under those chitin fingers. The blockage: arterial blood, cut off from its exit, began to swell his skull from within. It pooled in his temples, pressing against his eyes like a thick, burning mass. The nails: sharp as razors, they dug into his skin, sending thin trickles of warmth down his neck. One more ounce of effort from Bucks, and the spine would simply pop. The pressure in his head became extremely painful, reaching a dangerous limit. Oxygen wouldn't go in; carbon dioxide wouldn't come out.
Then, a dull thud. Soldiers stormed into the cell. On the down through a tearful blur and the ringing in his ears, Wilder saw someone being beaten nearby. He desperately tried to force air into his burnt-feeling lungs. A cough tore at his chest, but oxygen finally flowed. The crew crowded near the bars:
"Wildy, are you alive?! Pleathe, anthwer me!" Phoebe gripped the bars, trying to pry them apart with her bare hands.
"He's kickin', give 'im a second to catch his wind," Sam's voice trembled with both wonder and relief. "I can see it. He's pullin' air. Hard as a clogged filter, but he's breathin'!"
"Wildy... yough a hero..." Gabriel sobbed. "You dethided to thtand up fogh Cheddar..." Then he shook a fist furiously toward Brans and Abraham. "Ath fogh you thcum, I'll deal with you later!"
"What could I have done?" Brans began to plead, shrinking into the corner. "This is all your doing! I was actually going to say that Bucks gave us permission to leave..."
"Yeah! And then you both would've gone and caught it: Bucks and you!" Sam spat in his direction. "Traitor."
"Well, it happened the way it happened. What's there to do now?" Brans paced, filled with shame and fear.
"What... happened?.. cough-cough..." Wilder finally managed to squeeze out a word, clutching his sore neck.
Phoebe opened her mouth to explain, but she was rudely cut off. The Admiraless, choking on her own phlegm, began to state the rules of survival:
"Hock-ptooey!" She spat wetly onto the filthy floor. "An illegal act of violence has occurred! Beating you is allowed, of course. But only under the direction of superiors! Without an order, it's chaos, and I do not put up with chaos."
"What will happen to him? Ma'am... Madam Admiral!" Samuel asked, his voice was strong and pose so straight.
"As if it matters... We'll beat him on the parade ground in front of the formation. Hock-ptooey! To discourage others from breaking the chain of command."
Wilder, still holding his throat, saw the guards exchange grins and high-fives. For them, it was just a fun show that was simply moving from the cell to the square.
"Hock-ptooey! Former soldier?" The Admiraless fixed her gaze on Samuel.
"Yes, Ma'am!" Samuel snapped to attention instantly, his old military upbringing taking over.
"Hock-ptooey... Then why aren't the others following your example? HAH?!" she barked, the echo hitting their ears like a physical blow.
"THAT'S CORRECT, MA'AM!" the other prisoners chimed in roughly, realizing it was best not to stand out.
"Hock-ptooey! I like your attitude. It means we'll get the job done quickly."
The Admiraless smiled like a hunter and called over the soldier with the camera. Her gaze fell upon the groaning Cheddar.
"And what'th wrong with thith one? Hock-ptooey."
"Injured, Ma'am!" Samuel barked.
The Cameralien, twisting the lens settings on his camera, chimed in with a suggestion: "I recommend we film him in the hospital. We'll change his clothes there, patch him up..." He pointed toward Phoebe. "And let her go with him."
"Hock-ptooey! What for?" The Admiraless squinted suspiciously at her "director".'
"Well, you know... we'll say we don't separate families! Others would leave a hurt person in a cell or tear relatives apart. But we're the good guys. We don't do that. Alieanism Ma'am! Ratings will go up fast."
"Hock-ptooey! You hear him? Get everything ready for the shoot!"
"YES, MA'AM!" The soldiers immediately lifted Cheddar's stretcher.
Phoebe, glancing back at Wilder in a daze, followed under guard.
"Hock-ptooey! And why are you lot just standing there? We start filming here!"
"I suggest we shoot it meme-style!" The Cameralien was in a state of extreme joy over his own creativity. "The public loves funny clips."