Jack rubbed his eyes and tossed the summary sheet on the ‘read’ pile. Jack 431 had led a courageous charge against the Eroden Command Ship. The Command Ship had been destroyed, and so Jack 431 had gone out in a blaze of glory, as nearly every other Jack before him. But, the destruction of the Command Ship didn’t even slow the Eroden down, they advanced into Aeden space and the light of civilization was forever snuffed out of the Universe. The chair screeched unpleasantly against the floor as Jack stood to stretch cramped muscles. He ran his fingers across the dark wood of the long table in the center of the private library room. It must have been a beautiful and expensive table at one time, but was now ruined beyond any hope of repair. The entire room with its dark wood paneling, and what was left of the ornate lamps and furniture were a disaster. The room didn’t appear to have been cleaned once in the last 46 years as all the alternate Jack’s had lived here one by one, usually for about a week each. Stacks of books, discarded notes, trays of food in various stages of decay, and tattered maps that clung to the walls like so many cobwebs filled the room with a feeling of hope that had disintegrated into desperation. The last several hundred Jack’s had felt it the most, this room had become their prison cell as they waited for the executioner to come get them. This room represented death incarnate. Mara stood in a corner with a single paw raised and a disgusted expression on her face. “You okay?” asked Jack. “The floor is sticky, I don’t like it,” replied Mara. “There’s a bed in the other room, you can go lay on it.” “There’s bugs crawling on it.” “I got an idea.” Jack swept his arm across the table and dumped plates, files, and books onto the floor. “Jump up here, from the scratch marks on this table, you won’t be the first Mara to use this table for a bed.” Mara jumped up on the table and laid down facing Jack. “I’m sorry, Jon tricked me.” Jack sat down and picked up the next summary sheet. “It’s not your fault, and I don’t think it’s completely Mr. Black’s fault either. I don’t like him, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to go around tricking innocent tigers. I saw genuine affection on his face when he hugged you. I think he’s used to working alone and does a good job keeping things in order, but then this mess happened and it ended up being more than even he could handle, so he had to call in the big guns. It’s those winged people, they make me feel that I need to watch my back all the time. Did you notice how many scars they have? They’re no Guardians of the Tree of Life, they’re some kind of elite squad of soldiers that get called in for the dirty jobs.” “I like Jasai,” said Mara. “I think she’s the Commander, and Sern is her lieutenant. Did you notice where they were sitting on the train? One was at each door, to make sure I couldn’t escape. I’ll bet there’s more of them hiding out of sight. They don’t want me to know how many of them there are.” “What are we going to do?” asked Mara. “I’m going to finish reading a few more of these.” Jack held up the summary page for Jack 432. “We already knew we might have to fight the Eroden, and it is a good idea to have a solid battle plan. I think this is a good way to prepare, but we won’t be staying in this room.” Jack continued reading. Jack 432 had been a little more creative than just charging the Command ship as most of the other alternate Jack’s had done. Jack 432 fought a fifteen-day guerrilla warfare style battle to give Sala’je and Dr. Lanthu time to find the anti-matter device on Planet 2. They had found it, and then launched the device at the Command ship, and though it did destroy a quarter of the Eroden Fleet, it still hadn’t stopped them. Jack 432 had fought his last stand at the World-Bridge. It hadn’t been a bad idea, but it had no affect against the Erodens’ advance into Aeden space. Jack continued reading, and each was the same as the last; attack and destroy the Command ship in order to kill the Eroden Queen, but it never slowed the Eroden down. He was thinking about taking a break when he read the summary report for Jack 641. He read the report three times before setting it aside. Jack 641 hadn’t attacked the Command ship, nor any of the Eroden warships. Jack 641 had completely ignored the main Eroden Fleet and gone all the way around their fleet to attack their supply train, but the supply train was at least a hundred thousand of their ships, and Jack 641 only had 22 nukes left. He’d taken out a few dozen ships, but it hadn’t slowed the Eroden down. It was a crazy idea, but at least Jack 641 had tried something new. Something furry with a long tail scurried across the floor. Jack lifted his feet to let the creature pass. Whatever was living in this filthy room wasn’t his problem, and anyway, time didn’t pass inside the library, so for all he knew, the thing could have been here since the dawn of time. It was probably best not to tempt fate and squash the universe’s first rat. Jack forego his planned break and continued reading. Jack 642 had done the same thing by going around the Eroden Fleet to attack the supply train. Jack flipped to the next page. Jack 643 had done the same, and so had Jack 644, and also Jack 645. Jack 646 had gone back to attacking the Command ship. Jack laid the five summary sheets side-by-side on the table and stared at them. Why had five alternate Jack’s in a row done something so radical? “This is odd,” mumbled Jack. “What’s red attack?” asked Mara. “Huh?” Jack glanced up at the tiger. “I’ve been reading, it’s not that hard to read upside down.” “Oh, umm… it’s just the name of the battle plan, there’s always a name for an attack.” “Why not ‘daisy attack’ or ‘snowflake attack’, why colors?” Jack shrugged. “We pick random names, it’s just so others know which part of the plan is next.” Mara wiggled her ears. “Five Jack’s in a row picking a separate color isn’t random, it’s a pattern.” Mara had a good point, what were the odds they would all pick colors, and not repeat the color? Maybe Mara was on to something. But why colors? They had all done the same weird attack that no Jack should have ever done, it wasn’t like Jack to run all the way around a fight to attack barely armed supply ships. But they would never meet each other, so… they would have to use some kind of code to pass the plan to the next Jack. Jack jumped up. “Color coding! They had a map they were passing to each other!” He went to the first map hung on the walls, then followed around the room, checking each map for the five colors used. There were lines drawn in black ink, and one with a bunch of red circles that didn’t make any sense, and even one that had cartoons drawn on it, but none that had the five colors. He checked the other smaller study room that had been pressed into service as a bedroom. He stopped and looked at the bed, Mara was right, there were bugs crawling around on it. The search yielded no results. There were only two rooms, the big main room, and the small study room. Jack’s eyes fell on a door. He had opened the door when he’d first checked the place out, and shut it immediately. He went to the door and put a hand on the doorknob. “For what I’m about to do, I am surely the bravest Jack of all. I will earn a place among the Sky Gods for this.” Jack glanced back at Mara – she had both paws over her nose. He turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. The smell was so over-powering, his eyes instantly started watering and it took all his will not to vomit. The small bathroom was the single most disgusting place in the entire cosmos, not even the rats would go into this room. He stepped inside and checked the walls – no map. He was about to leave when he noticed the shower curtain was pulled shut. Whatever the design had been on the piece of plastic, it was now obscured by mold. Aya spoke in his head: "Jack, the air in this room has black mold spores, you should leave immediately." Jack pulled the shower curtain aside. Hanging on the wall was a map with the five colors used to mark paths of attack around the Eroden Fleet. He pulled the map from the wall, and a small metal disk that had been behind the map fell onto the floor. He bent down and retrieved the disk. A small red light in the center of the disk started flashing. Jack backed out of the bathroom and pulled the door shut behind him. “And some people call me an animal,” said Mara, her paws still over her nose. “I can’t argue with you,” said Jack. “Either the winged people are cruel beyond measure, or they never thought, or cared enough, to come in here and check on the state of this room. We’re almost done here; we’ll find another place to stay. I’m not without my own funds.” Jack laid the map out on the table. There were five colored lines drawn from Planet 3, around the Eroden Fleet marked with black dots, and out to the Eroden supply ships. At the end of each line was an ‘X’ to mark the place of attack. “Mara, they coordinated their attacks to ensure they didn’t hit the same supply ships twice,” said Jack. “They were searching for something.” Aya spoke: "Jack, I’ve finished analyzing that metal disk, the technology is very advanced, but I think it’s a locator beacon." "Thanks, Aya. I think the other Jack’s were trying to hide the map from someone. Maybe they were hiding the locator beacon too, let’s be safe though and set my proximity alarm to maximum, with the level of technology these people have, I need as much time as possible to react." “Who’s CC?” asked Mara. “What?” “All of those papers say ‘Report prepared by JB’ at the bottom, but those five say ‘Report prepared by CC’.” Jack flipped through the stack of summery sheets. “Wow, I’m blind, I didn’t even notice the ‘Report prepared by’ thing. You’re a good detective. Well, JB would be Jon Black, but we haven’t met anyone with the initials CC.” “Maybe it’s not important,” said Mara. “No, I think it is. When Mr. Black was doing the reports, the tactics were to attack the Command ship, but then this CC person came in for five of the Jack’s and the tactics completely changed. I think we need to talk to CC and find out what was going on. Okay, come on, let’s get out here.” Jack packed the summary sheets back in its folder, folded the map up and added it, then looked around the room. “There’s nothing else in here I need, we’re done.” Mara jumped off the table and went to the door. Jack cringed a little when she grabbed the doorknob and opened the door. The front toe/thumb was a little creepy, but he understood why the researchers had modified the tiger’s front paw bone structure. The tigers couldn’t manipulate tools without it, but the researchers must have changed their minds because the Aeden Sherata’s didn’t have that modification to their paws – probably because the first experiment with the tigers proved to have made them too independent. Mr. Black and the lizard man were kneeling on the ground playing a game with dice. What was the lizard man’s name, Zip or something? Jack didn’t remember, the lizard man freaked Jack out even more than the toe/thumb on Mara. “Do you need something?” asked Mr. Black. “Yeah, an incendiary grenade, just toss it in that room and walk away.” “Is there a problem with the room?” asked Mr. Black. Jack screwed his face into an expression of disgust. “Have you ever been in there?” Mr. Black shook his head. “Nope, the first Jack insisted that he was a minor and it was inappropriate for an adult to enter the room, so we respected his wishes.” “Seriously? Are you stupid? He obviously said that to get rid of you because we don’t like you. Well, I hope you don’t think you’re getting your deposit back, because that room isn’t fit for a Grothorian grub worm to live in, and don’t go in the bathroom, my A.I. says the air in there has dangerous levels of toxic black mold. You do realize I’m only sixteen, right? I might be a Commander in training, but I still need a good Chief to make sure I’m doing the right thing. You people should never ever be in charge of kids. Is there a cop around here?” Jack whipped his head back and forth as if he were really looking for one. “I’m going to report you to child services. They must have an office around here somewhere.” Mr. Black and the lizard man got up and went into the room as Jack waved and walked away. A moment later Jack heard Mr. Black shouting curses at the top of his lungs. Jack grinned as he looked back and called out, “Does your mother know you use that kind of language?”