Lost Planet 02 - The Stolen Moon (2 page)

But after nearly three months no good data had come from the chip, and seeing Parker's face pinched with worry as he tweaked his tracer program over and over, Chase had lost hope in that avenue. Not that there was much he could do to help.

Parker looked over at Chase. “The encryption on the chip seems to be getting more complicated the longer it's been out of my head. Asa might have programmed it to secure itself once it's no longer sensing living human tissue. The answer's there, I just have to find the right way to get to it.”

Chase gave a half-smile. “Of course you will.” It wasn't that he doubted Parker's genius with electronics—heck, Chase would have as much luck eating the tracking chip to absorb the answers by osmosis as trying to decode it himself—but Asa Kaplan, criminal mastermind, had clearly put all his resources toward making sure he was untraceable. How much progress could a kid hacker really expect to make against him?

“I'll do it,” Parker repeated forcefully. “It just takes time.” He had a good reason for wanting to find Asa Kaplan—although the man had been his guardian, he'd left Parker tucked away in an isolated compound to be raised by an android, and Parker knew nothing about his parents or why Asa was the one entrusted to care for their son.

But for Chase, the need to know what connected him to Asa was almost unbearable. After Chase's body was vaporized, his molecules had found their way back together in Parker's yard, apparently drawn there by the pull of the matching tracking chip under his own scalp. But after escaping from the Fleet, Chase's parents had lived in hiding on a planet the captain wouldn't even name for Chase—so how had he ended up with Asa Kaplan's tracking chip under his skin?

“Do you think he can tell you're trying to look for him?” Chase asked.

Parker didn't answer—all his attention was back on the computer. He likely hadn't even heard Chase, who began to turn away.

“Ha,” said Parker loudly, with one final keystroke. “There. I've hacked into the mainframe so I can use the ship's computing power to analyze the chip's encryption.”

All Chase heard was
blah blah blah hacked into the mainframe
. “That easily?”

Parker made a face. “Well, it wasn't
easy
. I've been working on it for a few days. But I've gotta say, I'm kinda surprised at how archaic the technology on this ship is.” Seeing Chase's frown, he added, “It's solid, don't worry, but it's not even close to what I had at my house on Trucon.”

“Solid?”

“Yeah, it's strong enough, especially the external defenses. Nobody could hack into the ship from the outside—it's locked down tight. But once you're inside, on the local network? I mean, you'd have to be a really good hacker, but the infrastructure is pretty vulnerable.”

A prickle of anxiety danced down Chase's spine. Why wouldn't the Fleet fix security holes in its own ship? “Do you think the Fleet did it on purpose? To keep the
Kuyddestor
—”

“No,” scoffed Parker. “I doubt the
Kuyddestor
is the only one like this. There are only, I think, eight other Titan-class starships—these are the biggest ships the Fleet has—and they're spread pretty thin. To strip and update one would take at least a year, and the Fleet probably can't afford to lose one of its ships for that long. I'm sure this was top-of-the-line for internal network security when they built it back in the day.”

Parker leaned over the desk to peer at the circuit board where he'd affixed the chip and frowned. “I'm going down to the engine room to ask Chief Kobes if he has any extra processing boards lying around. Come with me.”

“I've got my appointment in a little bit,” Chase muttered. He knew he didn't need to feel embarrassed about his visits with Dr. Bishallany, especially not around Parker, but talking about them made him feel defective. Parker wasn't the one who had to see a doctor once a week to study his own freak body.

Parker pulled him off the bunk and pushed him toward the door. “You've got time. Come on. You can ask around to see if anyone's spotted a skinny little blond girl lurking in any dark corners.”

Chase stepped out into the hallway, his mind already back to the immediate problem of getting Lilli under control. “Hey, you think we could spot her now that you've hacked into the camera system?”

Parker tilted his head in thought as he followed Chase into the hall. “Hmm. Not right now. I've only got access to the bridge and the engine room cameras, and there aren't really that many cameras in the hallways.”

A trio of boisterous engine room ensigns with their identifying green badges came around the corner of the hall. “Hey, Parker,” called out one with a cheerful grin. “You still joining us for a game of Questlords tonight?”

“I dunno, Cutty—I'll send you a message later today,” Parker called over his shoulder. A flicker of jealousy passed through Chase. It hadn't taken Parker long after arriving on the ship to make some new friends and establish an easy familiarity with the crew. Not that Chase wanted to play some nerd game with a bunch of dorky ensigns. Parker turned back to him. “Have you mentioned to Maurus or anybody what Lilli's been doing? It'd be easier to find her if more of the crew is helping you look.”

“No,” said Chase quickly. “I don't want her to get in trouble. I won't tell the captain unless I have to.”

“Guess it wouldn't make you any more popular with her either.”

Chase snorted. “I don't know if there's anything that can do that.”

The next step he took was into sudden and complete blackness.

 

CHAPTER TWO

Surrounded by the dark, Chase froze, not knowing if the lights had gone out or he'd gone blind or something worse. “Parker?”

“Right beside you.” Parker's disembodied voice sounded oddly muted by the darkness. A moment later his fingers squeezed Chase's shoulder.

Chase's heart raced so loudly in his chest, he was sure Parker could hear it. “What just happened?”

“I'm not sure. Power trouble? There should be emergency backup lights along the floor. I don't know why they're not coming on.”

“Do you think it's out in the whole ship?”

Parker didn't answer for a moment. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“The sound of nothing. There's no airflow coming through the vents. The whole ship's mainframe must have gone down for the life support systems to crash.”

“You mean there's no more air?” Chase asked in a panicky voice.

“There'll be a couple of hours' worth of oxygen in the system. I'm sure this won't last that long.”

They stood there for a minute, listening to their own breathing and waiting to see if the lights would come back. “Let's try to get to the canteen,” said Chase finally. He took a step, sliding his foot out first to make sure he wasn't going to run into something. As they inched their way down the hall, his other senses sharpened, and he could hear distant sounds of shouting, the whoosh and crash of a door slamming.

Suddenly he noticed something much closer, a sound that didn't quite fit: three sets of footsteps, not two. Adrenaline surged through him and he stopped, heart pounding. Parker's grip on his shoulder tightened.

“Who's there?” asked Chase, sounding bolder than he felt. No one answered, but whoever it was had snuck up on them without a sound. “Lilli, is that you?”

Brief silence. “Yes,” came her scratchy voice from the right.

Parker groaned. “Good grief, Lil. Thanks for the heart attack.”

Chase reached out in the direction of her voice, but his hand found nothing. “Are you okay? Come with us to the canteen. I'm sure the captain's going to make an announcement any second now to let us know what's happened.”

“Um, not with the power out he won't,” said Parker.

“They'll fix it.” He hoped Lilli couldn't hear how nervous he was. What if this was the retaliation he'd feared all these months? Was this the precursor to an attack? “I'm sure the engine room's already figuring it out.”

“I'll go check,” came Lilli's voice.

Chase started shaking his head before he realized she wouldn't see it. “No, wait—”

She didn't make a sound, but Chase could feel her absence and knew that she'd disappeared again. He cursed under his breath.

“Lords, I almost wet my pants when she showed up like that,” whispered Parker.

“Yeah, it's a great party trick,” said Chase sourly.

Another minute ticked by as they waited, and then the sound of Lilli's breathing filled the air beside them again. “All the power systems shut down,” she announced. “The mainframe's rebooting.”

“What?” asked Parker. “They just shut down? Impossible. There are backups, and backups for the backups. On top of it the mainframe has its own local power unit.”

But what if someone was messing with the mainframe?
Chase didn't share the thought. Parker's hack job couldn't have caused a blackout on the whole ship … could it?

“Well, Chief Kobes didn't say that exactly. Something about an upgrade and a glitch—”

“There's no ‘glitch' big enough to take out the entire power system on a starship, including the emergency lights,” Parker interrupted. “It's impossible, there are too many redundancy measures.”

“Well, I didn't investigate the problem myself!” snapped Lilli. “Take it up with the engineers if you're so sure of yourself.”

As much as Lilli fought with Chase, she was even quicker to butt heads with Parker—which was why Chase usually tried to keep them away from each other. “Calm down, you guys. Whatever happened, they'll figure—”

A door crashed open somewhere down the hall, followed by the rapid pounding of boots against metal. Someone was running toward them.

“Hey!” shouted Chase. “Slow down!”

Whoever it was didn't stop running, and Chase jumped to the side of the hallway as the runner blew past, heaving for air. The footsteps quickly faded out down the hall. Was there some kind of emergency? Chase rubbed his sweaty palms against his pants.

“Jeez, panic much?” growled Parker. “What an idiot. You guys okay? Still here, Lilli?”

Lilli muttered a wordless reply, and again Chase felt the impulse to reach out and squeeze her arm to reassure her that they would be okay. On some level, it made him happy that she'd sought him out in the blackout. But what if she pulled away or snapped at him? It almost felt as though he were reaching out to touch a spiky Goxar alien. “Let's keep going,” he said instead.

They were getting closer to the canteen when they heard the tap of footsteps coming up from behind them, walking swiftly but not running. A light swung around the corner of the hall, and a lilting voice called out.

“Chase? Parker? Is that you?” Maurus's face emerged from the darkness, illuminated by a glow of light. The Lyolian soldier held a short white rod that lit the immediate space a few feet around him. His expression was pinched. “Lilli too? Cursed suns of Hesta, what are you all doing out in the hall? You should stay in your quarters when something like that happens.”

“If I could tell my orifice from my elbow right now, maybe I'd be there already,” said Parker. “What happened to the power?”

Maurus ignored his question. “The captain sent me to find you and take you somewhere safe.”

“Why?” asked Chase. “What's going on?”

“We don't know yet. It's just a precaution.”

“In case of what?” asked Parker. The same question had popped up in Chase's mind. Was the captain still worried about someone on the ship discovering their secrets? Or had they already been found out?

Maurus turned and waved the glowing rod over a metal box affixed to the wall. “Do you know about these emergency stations? They should always be stocked with phoswhites.” He opened the box, where a stack of clear rods rested in a bin, and tossed one to each of them. “Just hit the round end hard against the wall, like this.” He demonstrated by whacking a stick against the wall. The echo rang down the hallway as more light filled the space around them. “They're good for about an hour.”

Lilli grabbed a rod from the bin and gave it a savage smack against the wall, her eyes glittering in the glow it created. They all took turns lighting phoswhites, until enough light surrounded them that they could see everything for several feet. Beyond that the view dropped off into dense blackness. They moved slowly down the hall, where Maurus led them past the empty canteen. Shouts were being exchanged somewhere in the distance. Chase strained to hear what was being said, but he couldn't make out a single word. When they came to one of the ship's three wide stairways, Maurus pulled the stairwell door open and waved for them to go inside.

“Where are we going?” asked Chase as he passed by.

“Head upstairs,” said Maurus. “We'll go to the armory.”

Parker looked back. “What? Why?”

“The captain told me to get you somewhere safe. The armory's our best bet.”

“But I want to go to the engine room,” said Parker.

“I want to go to the engine room,” mimicked Lilli in a mocking voice.

A door crashed open above them, and the sound of multiple footsteps echoed down the stairwell. Four grim-faced soldiers marched past and headed through the door Maurus still held open into the hallway, all with their blaster guns out and at the ready. Bringing up the rear was Colonel Forquera, the ship's second-in-command. A frown flashed across his lean, shadowy face when he saw the small group.

“What are they doing out of their rooms?” he asked Maurus in a low voice. Forquera was one of the few people aboard the ship who knew about Chase's and Lilli's unusual abilities and the true reason why they had been taken aboard the
Kuyddestor
.