Free Early Byrd by Phil Geusz

Linda's
excellent biscuits. "They're boys . They need to go to school
and such."
    "School!" the American snorted, making the
word sound like a curse. Mom did that too. "I can't speak for up
here in the Great White North, but back home they're just
brainwashing factories meant to convince us the values we grew up
with are wrong. No one ever learns anything useful there anymore."
He scowled. "We should induct them directly into the army. That way
they can learn to scout and such right from the get-go." He sighed
and looked down. "This is going to be a long, long war. We're going
to be in greater need of scouts than scholars."
    Yukon took a bite of eggs and chewed it
thoughtfully. "We'll consider it. Times are hardly normal." Then he
turned to us. "How far have you two gotten, schoolwise?"
    "We just finished the sixth grade," I lied.
The truth was that we were old enough to just be finishing seventh,
but both of us were way ahead of that. In some subjects I was all
the way up to high school. This was why we'd had so much time to
hunt and stuff lately; Mom and Dad had agreed it was better we take
the time to enjoy being young while we could rather than keep
learning stuff maybe faster than we were mature enough to
absorb.
    "Though just barely," Tim added. He elbowed
me and grinned. "Dorkus here has trouble reading."
    I elbowed him back—the lie was much too far
from the truth to carry any sting. I'd been reading adult-type
thrillers and mysteries for over two years. "Says you!"
    "Now, now," Linda interjected. Then she
looked at me and smiled so wistfully that I wondered if maybe she
wished she could adopt us or something. "Some of us grow up a
little slower than others. It's nothing to be ashamed of."
    That left me blushing bright red with
absolutely nothing whatsoever to say, except that under the table I
stepped on Tim's foot, hard, for saying I was having reading
troubles. Then I changed the subject. "We're sure grateful that you
rescued us." I let my features harden—it wasn't an act. "A lot of
people got killed, I think."
    Yukon nodded, his own face growing somber.
"Yes, Robert. A lot of men and women did die freeing you. If
it makes you feel any better, and I hope it does, we've been
planning to snatch Rapput for months now." He looked at Linda.
"When we heard that you two would be with him, we decided that
adding a humanitarian element to the raid wouldn't hurt a thing.
The plan hardly needed to be changed at all. So I don't think
anyone extra died, if you get what I mean."
    "I see," I replied. And I did feel a
lot better, I admit. Then I looked down. "We have so many people to
thank."
    Yukon smiled, then reached out and tousled
my hair. "I'll see that everyone knows you said that. In the
meantime, it was our pleasure."
    I squirmed under the touch—it reminded me of
Rapput's hand on my head. Why was it that no one ever asked us If we wanted our heads touched or not?
    "Mom told us," Tim said carefully, "that we had to be hostages and do what we were told and everything
because otherwise the Artemu would throw rocks at Earth until we
humans were all dead."
    "Rocks from all the way beyond the moon," I
added.
    There was a long silence. Then, Sam spoke
up. "A lot of people have fallen for that. Even some of us at
first. But . . ." He cocked his head to one side, as if in deep
consideration. "If you think about it long enough, it soon becomes
obvious that it's just not so."
    "Why?" I asked, cocking my own head.
    "There's a hundred holes in the theory, on
close examination," Linda explained. "For example . . . if they
were to try that, we could blow up the rocks with nuclear missiles.
I mean, we'd have months to target them."
    "Plus," Sam continued, "there's no firm
evidence a rock would do all that much damage even if it wasn't
intercepted. We've never been able to study an actual meteor on
that scale, so everything else is mere speculation."
    "And even if it's true that it'd wipe us
out," Yukon finished for his partners,