I feel self-conscious using my name as part of the response. The other Dolphins have convinced me it’s necessary. They figure that if I’m really so valuable, my presence on board might keep anyone—friends or enemies—from torpedoing us with alt-tech death weapons.

“Unless we’re talking to an automated relay,” Virgil muses. “If it’s looking for a specific code word, and we don’t send it—”

“Then we’ve come a long way just to get killed,” Halimah says.

“There’s that can-do Dolphin spirit I love,” I say.

It’s a long-running joke among us. Combined, we’re fluent in, like, two dozen languages, but we have no word for optimism.

Nobody smiles. The stakes are too high.

I turn to Nelinha. “Are we good to transmit?”

“As far as I can tell.” She sounds cheerful. She’s chosen a festive tangerine shade of lip gloss and eyeshadow to go with her green skirt and orange hoodie. I swear her go bag must be an extra-dimensional space to accommodate all her outfits. “Of course, the transmitter might not work. Or we might give away our position to the Aronnax. But we have to try new things, right?”

Gem coughs. He’s wearing his usual commando black, standing next to Nelinha, so together the two of them look like a printer-ink test page. “Twenty minutes until the reply deadline,” he says.

“Permission to send?” Lee-Ann asks.

I hesitate. “Not yet. Gather the crew. They deserve to know what’s happening.”

The afternoon sun beats down on the main deck. I tell the assembled crew about the challenge, the response we’ve prepared, and the 273 things that could possibly go wrong.

“When we send this signal,” I say, “we’ll be revealing our location. We have to gamble that this isn’t a trap, and that we’ve evaded our enemies.” It still feels strange referring to Land Institute as our enemies, but there’s nothing else to call them. We’re way past toilet-papering each other’s school buses now. “Also, if we send the message and it’s not correct, we could be under attack in fifteen minutes.”

“Eleven,” Gem says.

“Thank you, Prefect Twain,” I say dryly.

Some of our classmates crack a smile. I guess nervous humor is good.

“If, however,” I continue, “we are communicating with an HP base, then we could be among friends by this evening.”

An anxious murmur goes through the group. After three days at sea, our old lives seem far away. It’s starting to feel unbelievable that anyone who’s not on this boat could exist, much less be a “friend.” Nevertheless, no one protests. No one asks questions. At this point, in the middle of the ocean with almost no supplies left, what choice do we have?

“Prefect Romero,” I say.

“Captain.”