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“Yeah, you look exactly like how everyone looks when they get good news.” Garrett snorted.
“I said it’s maybe something good.” Leon shot him an unamused scowl. “The Klah’Eel are on their way.”
Garrett stopped. “That’s not good.”
Leon kept walking a few more steps before turning back around to face him. “With prisoners.”
“Our prisoners?” Garrett’s mouth slackened in shock, and tingling nerves came to life under his skin. His mind raced through everyone he knew who had been taken by the Klah’Eel and shipped away from Tava to rot and die in Klah’Eel penal colonies far out of the Resistance’s reach. He licked his lips and swallowed and tried not to let the hope in his chest bloom too early. “They’re bringing our people back?”
Leon finally wore his own hope and anxiety openly and nodded. “It looks like it.”
“All of them?” Garrett forced his feet to keep carrying him forward.
“I’m not sure.” Leon shook his head and didn’t resume walking to the sky port until Garrett reached his side again. “A lot of them.”
“What’s the catch?” Garrett started turning the idea over in his head, trying to find the trap he knew must be there.
“I don’t know.”
Garrett gritted his teeth and started scanning the sky as they approached the sky port. “There must be a catch.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Garrett looked back down at Leon with a hard frown.
“I don’t know that there’s a catch, Garrett.” Leon pulled his shoulders back and gave Garrett that stern look that somehow always made him feel taller than Garrett, even though he most certainly wasn’t. “We’re not at war with the Klah’Eel anymore, and they’ve pulled back their forces. They might really be just returning our people to us.”
Garrett’s upper lip curled with the absurdity of it. “You can’t believe that.”
“I might.”
“I don’t.”
“I know.” Leon clapped a hand down on Garrett’s shoulder and dug his fingers into the skin just a little painfully. “But try not to start a fight when they get here.”
Garrett refused to promise that, and Leon didn’t stick around to make him. He strode forward to meet the group of people gathered on the tarmac, and Garrett followed him at a slower pace, still trying to find the trap in the good news.
The attendees of this late-night gathering were exactly who Garrett would have expected. Joan tapped away at a data tablet—probably keeping Martha abreast of every development seeing as the older woman was now embedded with the official Southern Tava government as the Resistance’s liaison. Captain Mal’ik and Oliver Turner stood off to the side. Garrett hadn’t decided yet if he trusted either of them, but Mal’ik’s apparent devotion to Tava and Turner’s devotion to Mal’ik were both admittedly moving. Sebastian and Maxwell chatted not far from them, and while Garrett hated to see the torvar, his shoulders relaxed to see the doctor.
He stepped into place at Maxwell’s side just as Sebastian left it to go to Leon’s.
“Hey.” Maxwell shot him a sweet little smile and rearranged the satchel bursting with bandages over his slim shoulder.
Garrett chuckled as he tucked a bandage that hung precariously near the edge back into the bag. “Do you expect them all to be bleeding out as they come down the gangway?”
“I like to be prepared.” Maxwell lifted his narrow chin, and the moonlight glinted off his glasses. “And when I’m called out in the dead of night because the Klah’Eel are coming, I’m used to needing a lot of bandages.”
Garrett winced at the brief flashes of intensely unpleasant memories and placed his hand on Maxwell’s lower back as he turned to the landing strip. “Yeah, and I’m used to needing a gun.”
“That must be them.” Maxwell tilted his chin up at the sky, and Garrett followed his gaze to the bright flare of a ship entering the atmosphere.
Garrett watched the bright flare grow larger and larger, and all he could think was that he didn’t have a gun. Leon hadn’t given him a chance to pick one up, and now he stood exposed on the tarmac with the small handful of people in the entire galaxy that he cared about as the great enemy of his life barreled toward them and he didn’t even have a gun.
“It’ll be alright.”
Garrett jumped at Maxwell’s soft voice at his elbow, and he glanced away from the three imposing Klah’Eel ships soaring toward them to look down at him. He snorted. “You don’t even look like you believe that.”
Maxwell gripped the strap of his bag so tight Garrett could see the white of his knuckles in the dim light. Looking closely, Garrett could see that his hand was even shaking.
