Chapter 10
Ghosts of the Past
Ben stood back as Kara said her final, teary goodbye to her father. A few minutes later, the ship he was on departed, and Ben and Kara made their way back to the living quarters of the ship, where Rangi was standing with his back to them. He seemed to be a little anxious.
“Is everything alright, Rangi?” Ben asked him politely.
Rangi turned around quickly and, with deft speed, came up on him and said, “I’m perfect, Ben, how are you doing? Still shaken up from the ambush?” That was odd.
“Um…fine. Sure you’re okay?” Ben replied with a slow draw while pulling his head back a little.
“Yeah, yeah! Is there anything I can get for you…either of you? I mean, before the mission?”
“No, I think we’re good. I really just want some sleep to be honest with you,” Ben replied through a yawn.
“Me too,” Kara agreed. “What time are we meet’n? Have you heard?”
“Whenever you want. How long do you need? Six hours? Eight hours?”
“Six is plenty for me,” Ben said. “I don’t really sleep a lot, you know. Just enough to get by.”
“Well, I’d prefer eight, but six is fine with me. It’s your mission this time,” Kara said as she dug an elbow into his ribs.
“Ahh,” Ben retorted playfully.
“I’ll go tell the captain that we’ll meet in six hours, then,” Rangi told them. “I don’t know if he’s planning on taking us home or not.”
“Well, if we’re going back, then we can just wait to go to bed.”
“No, no! If we go back, it will only be to get some supplies. We won’t be very long at all. You two get some sleep. I’ll be out here if you need me.”
Ben and Kara looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. Now Rangi was acting odd. But whatever…
“All right, Rangi, sounds good to us. See you in six.”
They went to their respective rooms to lie down. Ben’s room seemed that much smaller to him now that he had a huge black box in it. He thought about taking off his clothes and throwing them on it, for all of two seconds, before deciding that he was too tired to do it, so he left them on and plopped face down on his bunk after it came out from the wall.
A few seconds later, he heard a beeping sound indicating that someone was at the door. With his face still planted in his pillow, he reached up without looking and tapped a screen pad on the wall next to his bed, which opened the door.
He expected to hear someone’s voice announcing who they were, but no one did. Instead, he heard the soft, feminine steps of a young woman approaching him, and he instinctively knew that it was Kara. He started to turn his head so as not to be rude, but it was for naught. She put a knee on his small bed and climbed over the top of him so that she was between him and the wall. It proved to be a rather tight fit.
Ben rolled off of his stomach to face her. Her eyes and cheeks were still red and puffy from crying, but to Ben, she was as beautiful as ever.
“I’m glad you’re coming with me, Kara,” he said quietly. “Especially after you just got your father back.”
“I already miss him,” she said as another tear began to form in her eye. “But I know this is more important.”
Ben shook his head. “I’m not more important than he is. I can’t be. I don’t even know who I am.”
“You’re the boy who helped me find my dad.”
“You know that’s not true. I’m the alien kid without a home.”
“It is true! We both thought it was true when we started the mission. You, the expendable orphan…you were willing to give up your life for a man you’d never met. For adventure, for a greater cause, it doesn’t matter what the reasons were; you still did it.”
“I would do it again, Kara. Only I wouldn’t do it for adventure or a greater cause. I would do it for you.” Ben couldn’t help himself – he raised his hand and moved a fallen strand of hair from off of her wet cheek.
She gently flicked his own cheek with her finger in return, and in her Irish accent, she softly said, “Don’t ya start getting romantic on me now.” Ben grinned back at her broadly. “It’s bad enough that you let a girl come crawl’n into yer bed without you even saying anything about it.”
“You really can turn it on and off that quickly, can’t you?” Ben teased her.
“It’s how I grew up. You have to learn how to turn your emotions on and off when your mom’s a druggy, and your dad’s a galactic spy always on the move.”
“Yeah, well, most people who turn them on and off have learned how to fake them. Your emotions are genuine. You don’t fake them.”
“Actually, I normally do. It’s just that you’re different. I’m comfortable around you. More so than with any other kid our age. I can’t explain it. But it’s why my emotions are genuine.”
“Yet you’re still able to turn them on and off that quickly?”
“I didn’t turn them off,” Kara said through a yawn. “They just changed is all. I miss my dad, which makes me sad. If I was alone right now, I’d dwell on it. But I’m here with you, and that makes me happy. Now go to sleep, cause I’m tired.” She yawned again and closed her eyes. She was asleep in less than a minute.
Girls! Ben thought to himself. If this is how they all are, I’m in real trouble! He lay there and watched her closely. Her eyes were moving under her eyelids, and her cheek lightly twitched. She was perfectly comfortable lying there next to him in that tight space.
No matter how hard he tried to fight it, he had to admit a certain truth to himself. He was in love with her.
*****************
Ben woke up a few hours later for no particular reason. Kara was still sound asleep in the same position. He carefully slid out of his bed and walked through the sliding door to get himself a drink from the kitchen so as not to disturb her. As the door slid open, he saw Rangi sitting on a hover stool near the opposing wall facing his door. He was doing something on a mid-sized Simpad.
“Eh, hi Rangi,” Ben said to him curiously. He paused for a second and then walked towards the dispenser. “You weren’t kidding when you said you’d be out here. Is everything okay?”
“Absolutely, it is. I’m just playing a game,” Rangi said as he stood up and followed Ben.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were guarding my door.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Rangi said while waving a dismissive hand. “Ask anyone. That’s one of my favorite spots to sit. It’s close to my room, you know.”
Ben considered it for a second as he took a sip of water. He decided that it made sense. “Are we at Rona?”
“Yeah, we’ve already finished stocking up our supplies. We’re just waiting on you now. Well, we’re waiting on your mission brief.”
“Has it been six hours yet?” Ben asked curiously, hoping that he hadn’t busted the time.
“No, no, it’s only been about four. You can go back to sleep if you want.”
“Eh, I’m not really tired anymore. I guess I could wake up Kara and see if she wants to get this show on the road.”
“Kara does,” she said as she walked into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. “Only after she takes a long, hot shower.”
“I hear you there,” Ben said, intending to agree with her, but she threw him a sideways glance, meaning she didn’t.
“You don’t smell like roses either, you know,” she protested.
Ben smiled at her and shook his head. “Always one to be offended,” he quipped. “I meant that I’d like to take one as well.”
“Oh…” Kara blushed. “Yeah, well, I’ll see you in about thirty. Can we get started, then, Rangi?”
“You bet,” he confirmed. “I’ll have everyone convene in the EOC.”
“Sounds good,” Ben said, and then he walked by Kara, who was heading towards the dispenser. As she passed him, she ran her hand down his arm, sending a chill up his spine.
Thirty minutes and a change of fresh clothes later, they were all gathered in the Zephyr’s EOC around a familiar table. Noticeably absent again was Cadence.
“I guess we can get started,” Gedeon said.
“What about Cadence?” Ben inquired.
“She’s busy again. I’ll back-brief her,” the captain replied. He held up a stopping hand as Jedrek began to speak, shutting his comments down before they even began. “Everything’s ready for our departure. We discussed dropping you in another pod, but in the interest of safety, primarily because of how close the moon is to Earth, we’ve decided to land the ship in the mare. Based on the imagery that Kynan provided for us, I’m confident we can land her within walking distance of your objective. Less than fifty meters.”
“Hold on a second, captain,” Jedrek said, “I mean this with all due respect, but Kynan made it very clear that we’re not to go down there with them. That’s breaking trust.”
Gedeon took a noticeable breath and blinked his eyes rapidly several times before looking at Jedrek. “Let’s not get caught up in semantics, Jedrek,” he said calmly. “I can interpret ‘down there’ to mean in the lava tube. That this mission is on Earth’s moon, it’s enough for me to warrant extreme caution.” Jedrek didn’t reply.
“If it means anything to you,” Ben said, looking over at Jedrek and then to Gedeon, “I’d feel more comfortable if you guys were on the ground and not floating around in space. We obviously can’t have you go with us, but I’d rather not trust the pods again.”
“Good answer!” Rangi blurted. “I didn’t think it would be a problem. You two are smart kids.”
“Anyway,” the captain continued, “before we land, we’ll send out a few probes to monitor the space around us. Rangi and Jedrek will serve as your QRF. They’ll take up a position in the Rover, which will be stationed in the ship’s bay near the cargo ramp. If anything at all happens, they’ll meet you at the entrance of the cave in the Rover.
“We’ve been told to disable your cameras and that you’ll be going radio silent. I don’t like that, but I won’t fight against it. You can use the datapad on your exosuits to transmit text messages to us, and we’ll do the same. Just like on Planet Hell, you’ll see the message scroll across your visor. If anything happens, and I mean anything at all, don’t hesitate to send us a message.” Gedeon looked at both of them seriously in order to emphasize his point. They both nodded smartly back at him.
“About how long do you think you’ll be?” he asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” Ben said, shaking his head. “I guess it all depends on what we find.”
“You don’t know what you’re looking for?”
“Well, not exactly. The message from Colonel Stoddard was pretty cryptic.”
“Shocker…” Rangi and Jedrek said in chorus.
“We think we’re looking for a key to that box. But we could be looking for more than that. It’s hard to explain, and I don’t really think I’m supposed to, anyway.”
“No, that’s fine,” Gedeon said reassuringly with a passive raise of his right hand. “I’m not trying to trick you into revealing anything. That wouldn’t be professional or honest on my part. I’m just working on time management, that’s all.”
“Well, I wouldn’t think that we’d be more than an hour or two,” Ben replied while looking over at Kara, who shrugged her shoulders and faintly nodded her head.
“Okay,” the captain said. “We’ll do status checks via text every fifteen minutes. Are there any other questions or concerns?”
“Sir,” Warrina spoke up, “if something happens to their suits and they start to decompress, I’m not going to be able to help being so far away from them.”
“I know,” the captain replied. “Give them both a patch pack and a decompression kit. It’s the best we can do right now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are we ready?” the captain asked everyone. They all nodded their heads in the affirmative. “Very well. I’ll go tell Cadence to take us to the moon.”
Thirty minutes later, they were hovering above the Mare Ingenii. As planned, Gedeon fired off several probes before Cadence landed the Zephyr on the moon with all of its exterior lights on to help combat the darkness. Twenty minutes after that, Ben and Kara found themselves bounding their way to the lava tube on the nearly weightless moon.
Gedeon stood on the bridge next to Cadence as they watched the live video feed from Ben and Kara’s helmet cams on a split Visi screen on the console in front of them – clearly breaking the rules. There wasn’t much to see right now except for tunneled light from the kids’ helmets and grey moon dust.
“It’s the moment of truth, darling,” Gedeon said to her as he squeezed her hand. She looked back at her husband, but she didn’t say anything. And she didn’t need to. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her nose was red. She looked as though she’d spent the better part of the last several hours crying.
“Rangi, Jedrek, is your feed working?” the captain asked them over the net.
“Yes, sir,” Rangi replied. They were both watching the video feed on a monitor in the Rover’s dashboard.
“How about you, Warrina?”
“My feed is good, sir,” Warrina replied as she watched it from inside her medical room. She wasn’t happy about breaking the rules, but she reported to Captain Baas, not Colonel Stoddard. She had the place prepped in case she needed to use it quickly.
Gedeon typed out a message to Ben and Kara as they made their way into the 20-foot-diameter lava tube entrance. It simply read, “Godspeed.”
“Godspeed?” Ben asked through his intercom to Kara. She looked back at him through her visor and shrugged her shoulders. “Is it just me, or do they seem to be acting kind of strange lately?”
“They’re just being protective, Ben. It’s what happens to adults when they’re around kids.”
“Yeah, but we’re not exactly kids.”
“We’re not exactly adults either. They’re all more than twice our age. We’ve been with them long enough that their parental instincts have probably kicked in. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s probably hard for you to understand, given the environment you grew up in.”
“Point taken. Hey, look over there near the side of that wall, just near the end of your helmet light,” Ben said while pointing to a large, stretched-out mound of dirt that ran along the side of the lava tube wall about twenty meters in front of them. “That’s been dug out from somewhere. Probably the opposite side around that curve in the tube.”
“How do you know?” Kara asked.
“I’m a miner, remember?”
“Oh, right. It’s strange how different this place looks in person than it did in the hologram video feed.”
“That’s because we’re moving slower.”
They surveyed the opposing wall as they moved forward, and then, almost as if oddity was the theme of the day, they noticed a tall tubular metal structure that resembled a rounded sliding door.
“This is it,” Ben said. “Just like in the video.”
“So, if we walk towards it head-on, it should…open up,” she said as she did exactly that. The door slid open, and they both walked into the cylindrical tube. A light inside the tube turned on as the door behind them closed, and then they could feel themselves going down. “It really is an elevator.”
After a few seconds, the elevator stopped, and a door on the opposite side slid open. They walked through it into a small, bright white room that was absurdly plain, except for a sliding door and a digital hand pad next to it.
“Did you feel that?” Kara asked him. “The air pressure changed. I wonder…” she began as she looked down at the datapad on her forearm and started to type on it. “That’s what I thought. The air pressure’s normal, and so are the oxygen levels.”
“Oh good,” Ben replied. “Guess that means we can take these helmets off then, right?”
“We could, but Captain Baas said he wanted to do status checks with us every fifteen minutes. We’ll miss it if we take ‘em off. However, what this also means is that you can take your glove off so that you can put your hand on that hand pad right there.”
Ben looked at her hesitantly. “I guess this is it, eh? Time to find out if your father and Colonel Stoddard are right about me.”
“Don’t be nervous, Ben. It is what it is, right?”
“It is what it is,” he echoed. “What’s the temperature?”
“It’s sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit. I don’t know how, don’t ask.”
“Hmm…Catch me if I fall,” Ben told her as he unfastened the outer glove that was connected to his exosuit, and then he removed the white inner glove, exposing his hand. He looked at it and flexed it several times, as if to make sure it was okay, before he moved forward and placed it on the pad. The pad lit up in a reddish-orange hue, and then the color began to pulse.
“It feels really weird,” Ben said. “It’s like…getting hot. I don’t mean like unbearable hot, but really warm.”
“Maybe it has something to do with how it scans your DNA,” Kara replied.
“Maybe,” Ben said. The pad pulsed a dark red twice, and then the door slid open. Ben looked back at Kara with a look of wondrous surprise on his face as a cold chill ran up his spine.
“Looks like they were right,” Kara told him warmly. “Let’s go in.”
The lights in the next room blinked on as they walked past the threshold. The room was easily three times the size of the small room they’d just come from. Spanning the far wall was a large console, and above it, running the length and height of the wall was a large screen. Two fallen hover chairs were in front of the console. In the center of the room was a triangular table with two standard chairs on two sides and a baby’s swing on the other.
“There’s no dust or frost or anything,” Kara observed immediately.
“Makes sense, right?” Ben replied. “There’s nothing in the environment here that would cause dust, and if the temperatures been sixty-five degrees the whole time, there wouldn’t be any frost.”
Ben walked over to the swing and looked down at it. He could feel a frog starting to form in his throat. “I was here,” he said more to himself than to Kara. Then, without thinking about it, he unfastened his helmet and took it off, placing it on the table.
“Ben, that’s not a…” Kara started, but then she realized that Ben wouldn’t be able to hear her with his helmet off, so she took hers off as well. “Ben, you really should leave your helmet on.”
Ben, whose back was facing her, started to turn towards her as he said, “I can’t wipe away my tears if that thing is on my head.”
Kara’s heart sank as she saw the tears streaming down his face. The emotional complexities that were overwhelming him filled the room and penetrated Kara’s soul. Her lips quivered. Her eyes began to water. She shook her head and walked over to him, putting her helmet down next to his, and then she threw her arms around his neck. Ben accepted her embrace by wrapping his arms tightly around her waist, burying his head into her.
Kara ran her fingers through the hair on the back of Ben’s head, and then she kissed his cheek several times. “It’s okay, Ben,” she told him gently. “You’re okay.”
“It’s not fair!” Ben’s muffled, froggy voice said. “Why did my life have to be taken away from me?!”
“That’s just it, Ben. It’s life. It’s not meant to be fair. But I promise you that your life will be better now. You’re learning the truth. We’re learning it together. And I promise you I’ll never leave you.”
Ben gave her a final squeeze, then leaned back and looked at her. She’d been crying, too. “I’m glad you’re with me, Kara. There isn’t another person in this universe I’d want here with me right now.” Kara smiled back at him. “No, don’t turn off your emotions,” Ben pleaded. Kara shook her head as another wave of tears rolled down her cheeks. Ben wiped them away with his bare hand.
“There’s another room over there,” Kara said as they let each other go. “It looks like a kitchenette.”
They both walked into the narrow kitchenette, which was no wider than a large hallway, and quite barren. The kitchenette was also connected to a third room. “It’s a bedroom,” Ben said as they entered the third moderately sized room. There was a queen-sized bed in the middle of the room, and next to a wall on their left was a crib. To their right was a sliding door. “The bathroom, maybe?”
Kara walked over to it, and the door slid open, revealing a small bathroom with a narrow shower inside. “This place is self-contained,” Kara said. “The waste must be disposed of in space somehow.”
“That would mean there’s piping to the surface.”
“It could also mean that there’s a generator and life support systems up there. Who knows what kind of technology they have?”
“Do you notice anything missing in here?” Ben asked.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no drawers. Not even a footlocker.”
“I guess Colonel Stoddard was right. They didn’t live here.”
“It certainly doesn’t look like it. I mean, there’s still linen on the bed, but that’s about it. Did you see any towels in the bathroom?”
“Nope.”
“You’d think if they got out of here in a hurry, they’d have left some stuff behind. I mean, aside from the linen. Makeup, papers, clothes, suitcases, something.”
“Yeah, but Colonel Stoddard said that he found their wreckage not too far from the moon,” Kara recalled.
“That’s kind of my point. They sent him a distress signal, and then their ship got blown up. Obviously, they were in a hurry because they were being chased, right?”
“That’s the implication.”
“If they didn’t leave anything behind, how are we supposed to find that key, or whatever it is?”
Kara realized where he was heading with this. The place was empty. Something as important as the key wouldn’t just be lying around. “I’m getting a sneaky suspicion that Colonel Stoddard overlooked the possibility that your parents had the key with them when they left here. Why have the box but not the key?”
“Exactly,” Ben agreed.
“Then again, if the box is that important, it’s possible that they had a duplicate somewhere.”
“That would be the smart thing. Guess I shouldn’t sell my parents short.”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
“Okay, so where is it?”
“I don’t know. Let’s go back to that control room,” Kara told him as she turned and started walking back towards it. Aside from the table and chairs, it was also barren.
“I better check in,” Kara said while putting her helmet back on. “We don’t want those guys freaking out on us.”
Ben walked up to the long console and looked at it. There were older buttons on it, a built-in keyboard, and a couple of joysticks. But next to one of the joysticks was a hand pad. “Why not?” he said to himself. He put his hand on the pad, and it started to glow a reddish-orange, just like the other one had. After a few seconds, it pulsed red, and then part of the large screen in front of him lit up. An image started to slowly materialize, and before he knew it, a young man and woman were staring back at him. They both appeared to be in their late twenties or early thirties. He had short brown hair and green eyes. She had blond hair that was pulled back, probably in a ponytail, and blue eyes. They both looked as though they were trying hard to stay calm during a stressful situation.
“Benjamin, I pray it’s you,” the woman’s image said with a strain in her voice and a peculiar accent. She looked strangely familiar. “I’m Azaria. I’m your mother. This is Boaz, your father. If you’re seeing this message, then your father and I are most likely dead. We know we are being followed, and we’re not sure if anyone can protect us. We can’t go home, and we can’t stay here. For your protection, we sent you to a Catholic orphanage on the planet Naroon, far away from Earth. We’ve already moved everything out of this observatory point that could compromise us. The only thing that will be left is this recording. If we survive, we’ll have picked you up, and you’ll never know this recording exists. If we don’t, well, obviously you’re seeing it now, so you know.”
As soon as Azaria stopped speaking, Boaz began. “My son,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice and similar accent, “we love you more than we love our own lives. But please understand that we are patriots, and we have a mission that must be accomplished. Ours is a peaceful people, but our leaders are often misguided.
“Right now, our public officials are beleaguered with political strife, corruption, and malfeasance. We were on a mission for the wrong side, but we didn’t figure that out until it was too late. Our mission has uncovered proof that will change the minds of our people, and that doesn’t sit well with our superiors. They are a very powerful political class, and we believe that they will do anything to keep us quiet.”
“Captain Stoddard and Lieutenants Roper and Whelan of the American Federation of Planets are good people,” Azaria said after her husband finished. “Not only can they help you, but they can help our people. We don’t really know who to trust, but we know we can trust them. Follow their…” A loud alarm stopped her in mid-sentence, startling her.
Boaz could be seen looking away from the screen, and then, in controlled panic, he said, “Oh no, they’re almost topside! We need to go now!” He moved completely off-screen, but his voice could be heard saying, “Send a duress signal to Captain Stoddard! I’m going to remote start the ship.”
Azaria looked back at the screen, and it was obvious that she was scared as hell. “Son,” she said in a fit of fright, “remember we love you! Families are bound for eternity. Find Glaucus! Glaucus holds the truth!”
Just as Azaria finished, she turned her head to the sounds of her husband, who was shouting over the alarms, “We need to go now!”
Azaria stood, started to turn, then turned back, leaned into the screen, gave a kiss, and said, “I love you, Ben,” and then the screen went black.
Ben took a wobbly step backward, but Kara was there to steady him. She had been so mesmerized by the video that she forgot to take her helmet off while it played. “Hold on,” she said, but he didn’t hear her. She pulled up a chair and made him sit in it. Then she took off her helmet, placed it on the table, and pulled up a chair to sit beside him.
“They were so young,” Ben said softly.
“They were,” Kara agreed as she reached for Ben’s hand and clasped it in her own. “But…Ben, you got to see them! I know it wasn’t ideal, but really, they looked like amazing people. They have a story to tell, and you can tell it for them. We can tell it.”
Ben looked up at her and nodded his head. “Find Glaucus,” he said, repeating his mother’s words. “What does that mean? Is Glaucus a person?”
“I don’t know,” Kara replied, shaking her head. Then she paused for a second and tilted it. “I wonder…”
“What is it?”
“Glaucus is an owl. I mean, in Greek and Roman mythology. He’s the symbolic owl of Athena and Minerva. Athena was a Greek Goddess, and Minerva was a Roman Goddess who was equated to Athena. The owl symbolized their wisdom. Find Glaucus. Find wisdom. Glaucus is wisdom.” Kara looked at Ben’s eyes and shook her head.
“Maybe we need to go to the Parthenon in Greece to find the answers,” Ben suggested.
I don’t think so. The Parthenon has been excavated, X-rayed, and examined countless times over the centuries by archaeologists. I seriously doubt there’s anything there that could help us.
“Well, ‘find wisdom’ doesn’t sound like it’s going to help us either. I mean, where do we find wisdom? A library?”
Kara shook her head. “Maybe we’re thinking too hard.”
“Maybe. What do you say we get back to the ship? This place is starting to feel like a tomb to me.”
“What about the recording of your parents?”
“Well, I didn’t bring any databalls with me. And I can always come back. It’s like you said, they have a story to tell, and we can tell it. The best thing for me to do right now is to figure out what that story is so we can tell it.”
They both stood up, but before Ben turned to grab his helmet, Kara wrapped her arms around him again. “You’re an amazing person,” she told him as she buried the side of her head into his chest. She looked up at him and then kissed him on the cheek.
“You know, one of these days I’m going to turn my head,” Ben teased her.
“One of these days you won’t have to,” she countered. Ben’s face finally started to turn red. That’s what she wanted to see. That’s what let her know that he’d be okay.
A few minutes later, Ben and Kara emerged from the lava tube, bounding their way towards the Zephyr. The exterior lights were still ablaze. A message scrolled across their visors, telling them to enter through the door in the ship’s hull, then wait until the door was closed and the air pressure in the room was stabilized before opening the interior door.
After they reached the ship, they followed the instructions in the message. A red light in the room flashed as the exterior door closed behind them. The red light continued to flash as the air pressure changed, and then it turned green once the pressure returned to normal.
They both took off their helmets, followed by their gloves.
“I guess we should get a hold of Colonel Stoddard now, eh?” Ben asked as he put his gloves inside his helmet.
“Yeah. I don’t know what else we can do. Maybe he knows what Glaucus means.”
“Could be. I’ll tell Captain Baas to set up an uplink,” Ben said as he and Kara walked towards the interior door. It slid open, and to their surprise, the entire Jack crew was standing in a line just beyond it, facing them. Not one of them had a dry eye.
Cadence let out a muffled whimper and then ran forward, threw her arms around Ben’s neck, and started to cry uncontrollably. Ben was so caught off guard that he didn’t know what to do. He looked up at the crew only to see all of them, even the battle-hardened Rangi, wiping away tears. He tentatively put his arms around Cadence as he turned his head to look at a stunned Kara.
“Cadence, are you okay?” he asked her in the most caring voice he could possibly make.
She tried her best to catch her voice, and through stumbling words, she finally said, “Ben..jamin Keriell! My si..ster’s son! We thought you were dead!”
Ben’s face went blank, and his jaw dropped, and then the rest of the Jack crew swarmed him with open arms.