Page 8 of Accidentally Fearless

The list made sense. It made so much sense that my stomach did a slow roll, because either I was right, and a paintball manager had just diagnosed a three-year war in a single evening, or I was wrong, and I was going to embarrass myself in front of an entire alien civilization.

Both options terrified me for completely different reasons.

I put down the stylus, pulled my knees up, and pressed my forehead against them. The borrowed clothes smelled like something clean and mineral—not unpleasant, just foreign. Everything was foreign. The gravity was fractionally lighter than Earth, enough to make my steps feel slightly wrong. The air had a metallic taste that sat at the back of my throat. The silence was different here. No traffic, no neighbors, no refrigerator hum. Just the faint pulse of the building itself, a low vibration I could feel through the bed frame.

I was twenty-nine years old, sitting on an alien bed in borrowed alien clothes on an alien planet, and the most terrifying thing about this entire situation was that for the first time in years, I wanted to try.

Not just show up and manage. Not just keep things from falling apart. Actually try. Put myself out there, risk being wrong, risk failing spectacularly in front of people who already thought I was a joke.

The last time I'd wanted something like that, I'd been standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon with a self-timer and a belief that the world was big enough for me.

"Okay," I said to the empty room. "Okay. Let's do this."

I found Vrex in the war room. My body insisted it was way too early, but his clock claimed it was mid-morning. He was standing exactly where I'd left him three hours ago, which either meant he hadn't slept or the man had a standing relationship with his tactical display that bordered on the romantic.

"I want to observe the next battle," I said.

His amber eyes tracked from the display to me. I was wearing the clothes they'd provided—fitted dark fabric and sturdy boots, with a jacket that had more pockets than I could count. It all fit like it had been made for me, which was suspicious.

But I had bigger problems.

"The next engagement is in three days."

"Good. That gives me time to read your honor code."

Behind Vrex, the officer I'd silently named Gargoyle One made a sound like gravel in a blender. Gargoyle Two—who I'd later learn was Zenir, his second-in-command, just looked at me with an expression that, translated across species, clearly said and what exactly do you think you'll accomplish?

"The honor code is nine hundred pages of formalized military law," Vrex said.

"Great. I read fast." I held up my tablet. "And I have questions. Like, section twelve, subsection four. I skimmed the table of contents on the way here—is there actually a clause about 'unconventional tactical approaches,' or is that a translation issue?"

Vrex's scales flickered. Just for a second, bronze-gold along his jaw. Not frustration. I was learning his palette. Surprise.

"There is such a clause. It is rarely invoked."

"Why?"

"Because it is considered—" He paused, selecting his words carefully. "Ungentlemanly."

I smiled. It was not a nice smile. It was my Brandon's-Mom-is-coming-and-I-have-a-plan smile, which had never once failed me.

"Commander Vrex. I'm going to tell you something about me that I think is going to be very relevant to your war." I set my tablet on his display table, right next to three years of mapped failure. "I have never once in my life been a gentleman."

Vrex looked at me. I looked at him. His officers glowered behind him—one skeptical, one already annoyed, neither interested in anything a human paintball manager had to say.

But Vrex kept looking. Not past me. Not through me. At me. Like he was recalculating something he'd thought was fixed.

"I'll observe the battle," I said. "And then I'll tell you what I see."

His amber eyes held mine for a long moment. "Very well," he said.

His officers shifted behind him. But Vrex just kept looking at me, like he was trying to solve a problem he hadn't expected to encounter.

Yeah. That made two of us.

4

VREX