He's alive.

Maggie stared at her laptop a moment, then shook herself as she realized that it was running out of battery. She grabbed her charger and hooked it up, then hurried to the bathroom mirror to check her appearance. Wasn't planning on being seen today... A few moments with a brush and a quick face wipe were enough to be presentable.

It turned out that she needn't have rushed. Several minutes passed. Why hasn't he called back yet? Is this a scam after all?

Maggie texted Vanessa. < Ness, did you get an email claiming to be from Nick just now? >

A couple more minutes passed, and the text was still unread. Maggie thought about who else Nick might have contacted. Steve's a good choice, but he's a busy man these days, and I'm not in the mood to get a disbelieving pat on the head right now. Brian, of course.

She hadn't heard from Brian in a while. His entire field was still buzzing over the alien stuff from last year. Last she heard, he was trying to do a Ph.D. dissertation on the physics of the alien technology, which was difficult when so little was known, but it wasn't as if he was lacking for funding. The whole world was pouring money into R&D, now that they knew they were so far behind.

Her laptop finally rang with an incoming call. It was a bare profile, which made her suspicious all over again. But a scammer wouldn't know about prom night...would they? She hesitated for a moment longer, then accepted the link. There was a weird sort of static for a moment, and then...her breath caught.

It was Nick.

He looked different. He had always been clean-shaven as far back as she could remember, but now he bore a slightly unruly beard. He seemed a lot thinner, and he was wearing some sort of cyborg headgear that was mostly flat against his scalp. Most of all, his emotions flickered over his face, while he used to be more reserved. He'd always radiated an affect of being a little slow, because he was the first to say he wasn't smart, and his face didn't express much. Right now, though, he looked...like a shipwrecked person seeing rescue on the way. Wariness mixed with wild hope.

"Hey, Maggie."

"Nick?"

"I'm...home." His voice sounded close to breaking, and he cleared his throat noisily.

"Nick, what the hell happened?"

"It's a long story." Nick's attention shifted to something out of view of the camera. "What? No, that's a soap opera...Fiction. It's fiction. Yeah. Okay." His gaze refocused on the camera. "Sorry, just helping with translation stuff while we wait for...there we go."

Another image popped up, and Brian joined the conversation. Maggie noticed that Steve and Vanessa had been invited as well. "You're calling the Apocalypse Team," she observed.

"Yup. Hey, Brian."

"Nick? Is that really you?"

"In the flesh—well, no. Video, anyway. I guess I can start explaining; I haven't heard from Steve or Ness yet, but I don't think I'll be able to avoid telling this story a thousand times, regardless."

"We looked for you," Maggie blurted. She felt a sudden wave of guilt. "We tried. Steven even hired a private detective. Some of the witnesses said that a man with your description got thrown through one of the portals, but we couldn't get police to take it seriously."

"Oh, man. Sorry to worry you. I've been kind of focused on survival for so long, and this is my first chance to get in touch. I had to ask for months before they were willing to commit to the trip to Earth. If I could have let you know, I would have."

Maggie blinked and realized that Nick was feeling the same kind of nonsense guilt that she was. She took a breath. "Forgiveness swap?"

Nick grinned. "Forgiveness swap. We're good."

Brian cleared his throat. "Nick, spill. What happened?"

Her childhood friend back from the dead heaved a sigh. "All right. Bare bones first. I fell through a portal onto Ooafa. For months I was all alone on a dying world, struggling to survive."

"You could eat the food?" Brian asked incredulously.

Nick's image gave a shrug. "Apparently life all over the galaxy has a lot of the same DNA. It was...unpleasant, but half a car came through the portal with me, and it had groceries in the back, so I had templates for a few things like tuna..."

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Templates? Maggie wondered what that was about.

Apparently, an alien had given him what amounted to a 3D photocopier, so that he could replicate the groceries. Nick told a story that sounded grueling to live through, but he was clearly skipping over a lot. Maggie got the strong impression that it was a lot worse than he made it out to be. Brian looked like he wanted to tear his hair out while Nick described his attempts at First Contact, but didn't interrupt. Nick said that he had had some kind of 'disagreement' with the Ooafans and went off to live by himself for a few months.

"So, then the Goldaskians attacked."

"Who are they?"

"You guys got visited by a ship last year, right?"

"Yeah. Was that them?"

"Yup. This is even the same ship."

"What?"

"Yeah, we took it over, and marooned most of the crew on the planet. Gave them my old apartment and enough to survive for a while. A few of them were willing to work with us, which is how we were able to get it running again. It was the Kalash-Quovo, but we renamed it New Hope."

"Dude, was that your idea?"

Nick just grinned. "Anyway, the Goldaskians were chasing the criminals who escaped through the portals, and came to Ooafa looking for them. They didn't ask very politely. We ended up taking over the ship."

"How?" Brian demanded. "I thought you said the Ooafans didn't have much technology?"

Nick grimaced. "That's...complicated. I'll tell you about it later. There's a lot more to cover."

He resumed his tale. Then Steve joined the call, and Nick had to back up and go over the early parts again. He took the opportunity to move from what he said was the ship's bridge to his cabin. They got a glimpse of a few aliens, which made Brian half-scream in frustration, an erratic view of passageways and compartments, and then a door slid shut.

Steve didn't have much patience at first. "All right, bare bones, fine, but...what is your current situation? Who is with you? Are you in danger? What are your options? Is there anything time critical?"

"Ah. Right. Okay. So, I'm on board a conquered Goldaskian warship, a cruiser, crew of around 200. We've got an Ooafan crew, and me, and a handful of Goldaskians who work for us, including the ship's doctor, a pilot, and two of the engineers, and about a dozen more. We also have ambassadors from Arrurra, Ooafa and the Goldaskians, who might be willing to stay and set up shop on Earth depending on how things go.

"The other ship has a crew of twelve, from a couple of other planets..." Nick seemed to squint a moment as if he were reading, "Captain Telnak is a Fazzab, that's right...half his crew are Fazzabs and five are Coogna, with one Vzzbyz. Those are species, not worlds."

"So, six alien races?" Nick nodded. Steven demanded, "Are they friendly or hostile?"

Nick sighed. "I've tried to be careful, but most of these guys seem on the up-and-up to me. There are like a dozen that we still keep an eye on, but nobody's done anything dangerous since we took over the ship."

"Who's in control?" Nick seemed to waffle for a few moments. Maggie tried to figure out why. Meanwhile, Steve frowned and prodded, "Nick...?"

"The Ooafans, basically. Captain Geh!aoa is in charge of the ship and the council is mostly Ooafans. I'm on it, Sana Vickall—the ship's doctor—is on it, and we often have Grrmyip and Yiyirayi sit in for the Arrurrans. Technically Geh!kin is running the show for what's left of the Ooafan civilization, all six thousand survivors or so."

"What's the deadline?"

"Well, Earth is probably freaking out about the starships in orbit, right?"

"Yes. And?"

"Well, I'm sure the Captain wants to speak for the Ooafans and for everyone else with the humans pretty soon. She's letting me take point because it's my planet."

"What kind of firepower do they have up there?"

"Lots. They shook a mountain with one warning shot when they invaded Ooafa."

"Are they going to attack Earth?"

"No! The only reason they're here is because I wanted to go home."

"So are they going to drop you off and leave again?"

"Eventually, yeah, but we've been traveling for over a month, so they figure they might as well stay and talk a bit. Besides, they're my friends. They're curious about where I come from—the Ooafans especially, because we're closer in tech to them than the others and they find us a little less...intimidating, I guess? Anyway, the smaller ship works for me for a few more months, and I was going to have them fly around, find our neighbors, drop off space probes, stuff like that."

"How did you come up with the space money to hire a starship?" Steve demanded.

"For a little while, I was able to manufacture something precious. The most important thing about that is that I'm going to lose my leverage and 'space money' real soon now, and I want to get the best deal for Earth I can."

"How much leverage are we talking here?"

"Not enough to keep the warship, enough to rent a freighter for six months, some of which was used up on the trip here. I've collected as many freebies as possible in knowledge, and might be able to get a chunk more from the Arrurrans and maybe the Goldaskians, but pretty soon, this ship is leaving, taking my leverage with it, and nobody is going to have a reason to visit Earth once the freighter's contract runs out."

"Are any aliens going to come conquer us?"

Nick shook his head. "Too expensive. There aren't a lot of empires out there, and we're a long, long way from the homeworlds of all the main actors aboard. Really, I used up a chunk of my leverage just getting them to bring me home. The way Sana put it, almost anything you can get from another star system is easier to make at home."

"Who's Sana?" Maggie asked.

"That's the ship's doctor, right?" Brian checked. Nick nodded, and Maggie saw Brian get a shocked look on his face. "Wait, you called her Sana. Nick, did you do the deed with her? Did you boldly go where no man has gone before?"

Nick was unable to hide his smirk. Men, Maggie thought. She asked, "So, what is she, an alien bunny girl? Cat girl?"

"Red skin and horns," Nick admitted.

"Dude, a succubus?" Brian exclaimed, and Nick rolled his eyes.

"She doesn't have wings or a tail, dude, and she doesn't have magic mind control powers. Goldaskians do look a lot like demons, though, so I am not about to take them on a tour of the heartland any time soon."

"Yeah, that would be contraindicated," Brian agreed. "So, how...compatible are humans and Goldaskians?"

"Guys," Maggie broke in, "do you think we could postpone the space pornography discussion until after the life-and-death stuff is dealt with, please?"

"Definitely," Steve agreed. "So, Nick, you said you got goodies. What do you need from us?"

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