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Authors: Matt Myklusch

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BOOK: Jack Blank and the End of Infinity
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“Jazen?” Jack called out, still firing away at the enemy.

“Yeah?” Jazen called back over the ship’s radio.

“How long have I been gone?”

“How long have you—?” Jazen stopped himself. “You
mean you don’t know?”

“How long, Jazen?”

Jazen’s only answer was silence. After a few moments, Allegra
answered for him. “It’s been a year, Jack. They had you for a
year.”

Allegra’s words hung in the air like germs. Jack felt like he was
sinking into his chair. His lungs contracted. His chest felt heavy and tight.

“Listen to me, Jack,” Jazen said. “It’s all right.
We’re going to move forward from
here
. Right now,
let’s just focus on getting back home.”

Jack frowned. That was easier said than done. A whole year of his life had
been lost. Khalix was stronger. His parasite was deciding what he could and
couldn’t use his powers on now!
What did the Rüstov do to
me?
Jack gritted his teeth as he fired plasma blasts into Shardwing
fighters.

“Jack?” Allegra asked. “How do you feel? I mean . . .
Are you okay? Is everything okay?”

Jack didn’t know how to answer that. A Rüstov blast pounded the
Harbinger,
rocking it from side to side. “A few more
hits like that and none of us are gonna be okay!” Roka shouted as he struggled to
right the ship. “Let’s focus, people!”

“Allegra. We’ll talk about it
later,” Jazen said.

Jack grunted in agreement and focused on keeping Khalix quiet and shooting
down more Shardwings. It took some concentration, but he did it. He was grateful that he
was still able to hit the mute button on the Rüstov prince if he really put his
mind to it. The last thing he wanted to hear right now was his
“roommate’s” smug voice in his head. Jack’s shots continued to
hit their marks, but no matter how many enemy fighters he, Jazen, or Allegra took out,
it wasn’t getting any easier. The Shardwings darted through space with incredible
dexterity and force, and they just kept coming. “There’s too many of
them,” Allegra said. “What are we still doing here? Can’t we just jump
to hyperspace already?”

“Don’t look at me,” Roka said. “Talk to the warp
drives. We need to phase first.”

“We need to what?” Jack asked.

“Traveling at light speed means flying too fast to steer,”
Roka explained. “We’d crash into meteor showers, stars . . . even planets if
we tried it without phasing.”

Still confused, Jack did what Roka suggested and reached out to the
ship’s engine to get some clarity. He
learned that the
Harbinger
’s Ghost Box needed to render the ship intangible
before they could safely engage the hyperdrives. The box needed to scan the ship and
everything on it so that it could throw everyone’s molecules into flux for the
jump to light speed, and then properly realign them afterward.

“Shouldn’t we be ready to punch it by now?” Jazen asked.
“What’s the hold up?”

“I am,” Jack said. “The scan’s taking longer
because the ship is having a hard time mapping my body.”

“Because of your infection?” Allegra asked. “Just talk
to the ship’s computer and tell it what the Rüstov did to you.”

“I can’t,” Jack said, scratching his chest
uncomfortably. “I don’t even know that myself.” His chest felt heavy
underneath his space suit. Jack would have chalked it up to anxiety, but it hurt when he
coughed. He could tell that his infection was advancing.

The
Harbinger
took a direct hit, and the ship
was thrown onto its side, heading into a flat spin. Powerful centrifugal forces pinned
Jack forward against his gun’s firing controls as Roka fought to regain control of
the
ship. The
Harbinger
leveled off, and
Jack felt the pressure ease, but the damage had already been done.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Roka announced once
he’d gotten the ship back under control. “Which one do you want to hear
first?”

“Give me the bad news,” Jazen said.

“We just lost the Ghost Box.”

“What?”
Allegra asked.

“It’s gone,” Roka said. “That last shot fried it.
No Ghost Box, no light speed.”

“What’s the good news?” Jazen asked.

Roka shrugged. “Sorry, I lied about the good news. Anybody got any
ideas?”

Silence fell over the cabin as the realization sank in that the ship was
trapped in enemy territory. They were hopelessly outnumbered and there was no chance of
outrunning the Rüstov Armada without light speed.

“Anyone?” Roka asked again. No one said anything.

“Don’t tell me that’s it,” Jack said.
“We’re done?”

Roka shrugged. “Unless one of you can fly this bird at light speed
manually, we’re not going anywhere.”

Jack thought about what Roka was suggesting. He left
his gun station and ran to the captain’s chair. “Give me the
stick.”

Roka looked at Jack like he was crazy. “Kid, I was being
sarcastic.”

“I know you were. I’m not. Let me fly this thing. I’ll
get us through at light speed.”

Roka squinted up at Jack. It took him a second to process that Jack was
serious. “I’m not just good with machines,” Jack said. “I can
talk to them. I can talk to the ship. I can do this.”

“No,” Roka said, pointing back at Jack’s empty
gyro-chair. “Get back to your gun. I need you shooting down Shardwings while I
figure this thing out.”

Jack planted his feet. “There’s nothing to figure out.
There’s no other way out of here. I’m the only chance we’ve
got.”

“That’s not a chance. That’s suicide.”

The
Harbinger
sustained another hit, and red
lights started flashing throughout the cockpit. “So’s staying here,”
Jazen shouted, talking over the sirens as the ship shook back and forth. “You want
to die out there, or you want to die here? We’re dead either way.”

Jack put a hand on the ship’s controls.
“There’s no time to argue. Please. You have to trust me.”

Roka scowled at Jack. “I just met you.”

“If Jack says he can do it, he can do it,” Allegra said.

“You said you wanted ideas,” Jazen reminded Roka.

“I meant
good
ideas,” Roka shot
back. “You can’t navigate light speed manually. No one can. You’re
talking about flying through a rainstorm without getting wet. It’s
impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” Jack said. “The only thing
faster than the speed of light is the speed of thought. I can save us if you’ll
just get out of the way and let me do it!”

Roka gave Jack a hurt look. “That is the most ungrateful way to talk
to someone who just busted you out of the Magus’s personal flagship.”

“Just do what he says already!” Allegra screamed.

“Roka!” Jazen shouted as a squadron of Rüstov fighters
closed in. More alarms started blaring. “They’ve got missile lock on us. Get
up and let Jack fly!”

Solomon Roka looked back and forth at Jazen and Allegra, then shook his
head and unbuckled his seat belt. “This is mutiny, is what this is,” he
said, getting out of
his chair. Roka stepped aside to let Jack sit
down in his place. He eyed Jack nervously as he looked over the ship’s controls.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever flown one of these before. . . .
That’s probably too much to hope for, isn’t it?”

“Don’t worry,” Jack said. “I learn
fast.”

CHAPTER

3

Jack’s Back

Jack found out two things rather quickly. The first was that space was an endless minefield of comets, meteors, planets, stars, satellites, spaceships, and more. The second was that the speed of thought did not necessarily exceed the speed of light. If anything, the two speeds were equal at best. Flying the
Harbinger
through hyperspace by himself was like running across a firing range and trying to dodge the bullets.

Luckily, Jack’s powers made dodging the bullets possible, letting him bypass the
Harbinger
’s controls and fly the ship
with his mind. His reaction times were amplified by a direct connection with the ship’s radar and navigation systems, allowing him to anticipate obstacles and chart a course that was light-years ahead of what he could see with his own eyes. Even so, it was by no means a smooth ride. Navigating light speed in real time took perfect concentration, and Jack was anything but perfect. He bobbed and weaved his way across the universe, narrowly missing head-on collisions by inches and grinding through enough minor scrapes to keep Roka screaming about his ship the entire ride home. By the time the
Harbinger
reached the Milky Way galaxy, the ship was so banged up it could barely stay together.

Jack pulled out of hyperspace as the ship limped into Earth’s atmosphere, held together mainly by the sheer force of his will. Landing was not even a consideration. He was just looking for a soft place to crash.

“Hold on tight!” Jack shouted as the
Harbinger
streaked across the sky like a shooting star. The heat of reentry burned away at the ship’s protective layers, and it struck the earth like a fireball. It hit the earth hard and kept right on going, charging ahead like a runaway train tearing down the track.

Roka shouted out the obvious command to the ship’s computer: “Eject! Eject! Eject!”

The cockpit shot backward and skidded out into marshlands as the rest of the
Harbinger
raced forward, carving a path through a swamp. The ejected capsule skimmed across a hundred yards of shallow, slimy water like an out-of-control airboat. Eventually, it spun out and settled into the muck, where it sank a few feet and hit bottom. Roka popped the hatch, and Jack and the others climbed out unscathed. The rest of the
Harbinger
was anything but. Roka’s ship didn’t stop until it crashed through a fence and into a small cinder-block shed, effectively demolishing the structure. The resulting explosion left Roka’s ship somewhat intact, but the front end was on fire and the hull was riddled with holes big and small. Roka put both hands on his head as he stared out at the flaming wreck of the
Harbinger
. He looked like his dog had just died.

“My ship . . .”

Jack walked up alongside Roka and took in the fiery view with him. “Sorry, Roka. I did the best I could.”

Roka stared in silence for a few moments, then finally
answered. “I thought you said you control machines. You couldn’t bring us in any softer than that?”

“I control
working
machines,” Jack said. “I can’t make them not be broken. Look on the bright side. We’re alive, aren’t we?”

Roka rubbed his thick, stubbly beard as he considered Jack’s logic. “You got us out kid, I’ll give you that. But still . . .” Roka lifted a hand toward the
Harbinger
and dropped it to his side with a heavy sigh.

“The important thing is we made it back in one piece,” Jazen said. “That’s all that matters.”

“Maybe to you,” Roka said. “Where am I going to get the credits to fix this? I’m not even getting paid for this job.”

“Where the heck are we, anyway?” Allegra asked.

Jazen looked around. “I don’t know. It looks familiar, though.”

Jack agreed, taking special note of the tall, fluttering reeds in the marsh that reminded him of his childhood. Sparks were shooting off the broken fence that the
Harbinger
ran through, and there was an oddly shaped building off in the distance surrounded by construction
vehicles. Jack’s powers picked up on the work they were doing. They were adding a new floor onto the building’s roof. He shook his head in disbelief. “No way. It can’t be.”

“What in the name of Dixon Ticonderoga is going on here?” a booming voice called out. The next thing Jack knew, his old school’s head disciplinarian, H. Ross Calhoun, came bounding across the swamp wearing knee-high mud boots over his suit pants. Jack couldn’t believe it. He was right back where he started: St. Barnaby’s Home for the Hopeless, Abandoned, Forgotten, and Lost.

When Calhoun saw the blazing starship that had just crashed into his orderly little world, he put his hands on his head, striking a pose much like the one Roka had taken up a moment earlier. “My generator . . . My beautiful new generator!” Calhoun hung his head, looking defeated by life. “This can’t be,” he said, tugging at his hair. “We haven’t had anything like this happen since—”

Calhoun stopped short as he looked up and laid eyes on Jack. “No,” he said, turning white. “No, no, no! Not
you
! What are you doing back here?”

“Hey, Mr. Calhoun,” Jack said. “Nice to see you, too.”

“Don’t get smart with me, boy,” Calhoun shot back,
sticking a finger in Jack’s face. A switch had been flipped. The distraught headmaster was gone, and the hardened tyrant masquerading as an educator was back. “You’re not supposed to be here. You were supposed to be gone . . . for good!” Calhoun curled his fingers, looking very much like he wished he were closing them around Jack’s throat. “You’re going to pay for this. You just ruined my brand-new power generator
and
my electric fence!”

“Really?” Jazen asked with a mischievous grin. “How do you like that? Déjà vu all over again, huh, Jack?”

“And you!” Calhoun said, spinning around to face Jazen. “What are you doing bringing this boy back here to cause trouble?”

Jazen patted Calhoun on the shoulder, leaving mud stains on his suit. “Sorry for the inconvenience, sir. Couldn’t be helped. Don’t worry. The bureau will take care of everything.”

“The bureau?”

“The Bureau of Bureaucratic Operations. Just send the bill to me. My office will cover all the damages.”

Calhoun puffed up his chest. “I should say you will! There wouldn’t even be any damages if you had done your
job in the first place.” He pointed an accusing finger at Jack. “That
child
is not supposed to be here! You said he was getting deported. You said if he was lucky, he’d never see me again!”

Jack shook his head. “You can call me a lot of things, but I don’t think ‘lucky’ is one of them.” He looked around at the orphanage of his childhood, barely able to comprehend all the ways his life had changed since he’d left this place.
Another lifetime,
Jack thought. He was a different person back when he’d lived at St. Barnaby’s. Back then he had no friends, and his biggest problem was a bully named Rex Staples. Today he had far worse things to worry about.

BOOK: Jack Blank and the End of Infinity
11.9Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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