Lost Planet 02 - The Stolen Moon (23 page)

For a split second, there was nothing but air and the tangled limbs of the Werikosa. Chase reached out instinctively, catching the edge of a brown rock, and he grabbed it. Hotha plummeted past him.

Before Parker's white face appeared at the edge of the canyon, Lilli was already there, crouched on the very rock he was holding on to. Her face was fierce, but tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Here!” she shouted, extending her hand toward him. “Take my hand!”

If he hadn't been so close to falling to his imminent demise, Chase would have laughed. “You can't lift me,” he gasped. “Thanks for the offer though.”

He could feel his hands slipping through the rocks, burning as his body tried to phase away from the sharp edges.
Stop it, stop it!
He focused every bit of energy into keeping himself solid so that he wouldn't tumble down the steep shaft after Maurus and the others.

If he could just angle the jump right, he might land on the tiny ledge nearby. But if he missed …

Parker's head appeared over the top of the canyon, followed by a length of cable. “Grab this!” But it was impossible—even with Parker stretching down as far as he dared, the end of the cable was still a good arm's length away from Chase.

His arms burned with the effort of holding on. Chase glanced around, looking to see if there was something else he could safely drop onto. The giant drill was possibly within reach, but what would he do if he landed on the curved surface of the drill bit? Shoot down it like a curly slide?

“Don't do it!” yelled Parker, reading his movements. “I'll get another rope!”

But there was no time left—Chase's stamina was giving out. He used his feet to push off from the stony wall, barely catching the edge of the drill bit with his hands and swinging his body to land on the curved surface below. Immediately he started to slide, picking up speed as he whipped around the bit. The metal was smooth from wearing against hard moon rock, too smooth to leave anywhere to grab onto.

A bright light flashed in his eyes as he scrabbled and slid down, again and again as he whipped around the curves. Was something floating in the mine beside him, or was he hallucinating? He tried to turn himself sideways, to wedge his body into the curves, but all he managed to do was turn himself around so that he was sliding backward. Any second he was going to shoot out into the mine shaft like a greased egg.

This had been a terrible idea.

The end of the drill bit came without warning, and for a moment Chase was weightless, flailing through the air before the inevitable plummet down toward his doom. But instead, three walls appeared around him, swallowing him up as he hit a hard metal floor. The canyon still swam before his eyes in a dizzying swirl, and it wasn't until he started to roll across the floor that he realized he'd landed in the back cargo area of some kind of small cruiser, the entire back hatch of which was wide open. He turned to see who was piloting, but the back of the cargo hold was just a blank wall with a door.

With a gut-wrenching turn, the cruiser whipped around to show the surface above the canyon, and standing right outside the hatch was Parker. Seeing Chase, Parker leapt into the cargo area beside him with a relieved grin.

“Who's piloting this?” Chase yelled. He looked around for any clues as to whose cruiser this was, but the inside of the cargo hold was blank and sterile.

“Who cares?” Parker grabbed hold of the wall as the vehicle shot across the mine, coming level to where Lilli was on the other side of the mine shaft. Chase reached out to help her aboard, and as soon as they were all inside, the rear hatch of the cargo hold closed, encasing them in the cruiser.

Chase dashed to the window on the back hatch, looking down as the canyon shrunk away below them. “No, we have to get Maurus!” he shouted, pounding on the window. “Go back!”

Parker was trying unsuccessfully to open the door into the rest of the vehicle. “Hey!” he shouted. “Whoever you are, let us out of here! We need to go back for someone!”

Without warning, the room simultaneously shrank and expanded, with the accompanying brain-compressing feeling that Chase recognized as a fold. The back window went immediately dark—whoever had picked them up had leapt right off the surface of Rhima into deep space.

“No!” he screamed, beating against the blackened windows. They'd left Maurus and Vidal there, stranded at the bottom of the canyon. And Derrick …

Lilli sat hunched on the floor, her cheeks still stained with tears.

“Hang on,” Chase said to Parker, gearing up to jump through the locked door and rush the pilot's deck.

“Be careful,” warned Parker. “You don't—”

But before he could finish, the cargo door zipped open, and Chase stumbled backward, stunned into silence. Because the person who walked through the door was someone Chase hadn't seen in months, someone he hadn't expected to see ever again.

Mina fixed him with her piercing blue eyes and smiled. “Hello there. It's nice to see you again.”

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

When Chase saw Mina in the cargo hold of that transport vehicle, the first feeling that flooded through him was relief. Dependable, reliable Mina—he'd never been so happy to see her placid face, and for the first few seconds, it didn't matter how she'd found them, or what kind of conclusions that led to about Ksenia. He just wanted to hug her.

He gestured out the window, although the green sphere of the moon wasn't visible. “We have to go back. Maurus is still down there with two others.”

Dependable, reliable Mina's brown hair swung around her heart-shaped face as she shook her head. “I'm sorry. Maurus is on his own now.”

It took a moment to register her answer. Was she really refusing to help? This wasn't some random stranger who'd picked them up—this was Mina, their friend. As soon as the thought entered his mind, Parker's judgment echoed behind it:
She's not your friend. She's an android. She doesn't have friends.
But she
knew
Maurus. They had all traveled across the galaxy together, as a team. Why wouldn't she want to help him? “Are you kidding? We can't leave him stranded. One of his crewmembers is hurt really bad—maybe dead.”

Her tone was unyielding. “We're not taking him with us.”

“This is Asa's order, isn't it?” said Parker in an acid voice. “Where is he? Let me talk to him.”

“Soon. We're heading back to his ship right now.”

“You're taking us to Asa?” A jolt of surprise ran through Chase like an electric shock. Of course that was where Mina would take them, he knew that, but still … After all these months of waiting, after the dramatic events of the past twenty-four hours, he was finally going to see Asa very soon.

Parker gave an angry laugh. “Of course. He didn't send her to save us. He sent her to capture us.” He crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes at Mina. “Did Ksenia really contact Asa? Or did you hear my SOS? How did you know it was me?”

Mina ignored Parker and looked at Lilli huddled against the wall. “Are you alright?”

Chase shook off his shock, his frustration with Mina returning. “She's going to be, because you got her off that moon. Maurus and Vidal and Derrick are not, because you—”

“That's not going to work, Chase,” said Parker. “She doesn't care. They're on their own now.”

But Chase couldn't forget the last image he'd seen of Derrick, lying broken and still on the hard moon rock. Maybe he'd been a complete jerk to Maurus on the ship, but at the mine shaft he'd fought alongside them, and he'd always been good to Lilli. And if he hadn't survived, would Maurus and Vidal be able to climb out of the mine shaft anyway? Even if they could, more vicious Werikosa—Hotha, if he was still alive, or others like him—would find them, and they no longer had any weapons to defend themselves with.

Chase placed himself in front of Mina. If her orders from Asa were not to take any Fleet soldiers onboard, she wouldn't break them. But there had to be a way around her android logic. “Please, do
something
. Tell the Fleet they're there. Or if you don't want to talk with the Fleet, tell a news reporter. Or anyone. Just, please. They're trapped and hurt.”

Mina arched a perfect eyebrow, analyzing him for a minute. “I can do that. I'll put the word out.” Chase tipped his head back with a loud sigh of relief. At least it was something. Mina turned to head back into the front of the shuttle.

“I'm coming with you,” Parker told her.

“Not right now. Stay back here with the others. I'll let you out once we're docked on the ship.” The door closed behind her before he could protest.

Parker slammed a hand on the wall and leaned forward. “That's it,” he said, shaking his head. “We're done. Asa's not going to let us go back for Maurus, and he's definitely not going to help the
Kuyddestor
, much less let us go back ourselves. Ever.”

Lilli looked up at Chase, panicked. “We have to go back,” she said. “We have to help them. There's not much time left.”

Chase didn't know if he wanted to explode from the pressure or just sit down and cry at how hopelessly things were turning out. It was too much, all of it. As often as he had dreamed of the day he would confront Asa with all his questions, this wasn't the way he'd imagined it would play out. Their last interaction replayed itself in his memory on a nauseating loop. Asa had been furious with Chase for trying to save Maurus's life, and coldly indifferent when the warlord Rezer Bennin had threatened them. Sure, he'd leapt in front of blaster fire to protect Parker at the end, but otherwise he'd been completely detached. If Chase was going to meet Asa again, he would have preferred to meet on his own terms, not as a captive. And not with the fate of the
Kuyddestor
and everyone they knew hanging over their heads.

Parker looked around the cargo hold, his face tight with suspicious anger, reminding Chase that he wasn't the only one with a million questions saved up for Asa. Beside him Lilli seemed to draw further inside herself. Chase peered closer at her, but he couldn't tell if she was traveling or not. “Hey? You there?”

She looked up at him, blinking as if she'd just awoken.

“Did you travel to the
Kuyddestor
?” he asked. She nodded. “What's going on?”

“I found Analora. She's hiding in the walls. She's really upset because her dad's with everyone else on the flight deck.”

Chase frowned. “He'll be fine as long as—”

“No.” She shook her head violently. “He won't be fine. They've told everyone that if the
Kuyddestor
comes under attack, they're going to vent the flight deck. Everyone will get sucked out into space.”

Chase tried to keep the horror from his face as he kneeled beside her. “We'll tell Asa. We can still ask him to help.”

Parker scoffed behind him. “Yeah, he's got a great track record of helping others out of the good of his heart. And he loves the Fleet.” He slid down the wall to a squat. “No, he's going to stick us all in some remote prison compound again, where no one will ever find us. Not that anyone will look for us, because everyone we know will be dead by then.”

“Way to think like a winner,” Chase snapped over his shoulder.

“You think I'm not as upset as you? I've never had the feeling like I was
home
before we started living on the
Kuyddestor
. But he's got us. We're trapped.”

Chase realized he'd never gotten past his annoyance at how easily Parker had settled on the ship to understand what it actually meant to Parker to have a home with friends and freedom, with no android monitoring his every move. “He can't keep us. I can get away.”

“Of course
you
can escape.” Parker tipped his head at Lilli. “She'll figure out something too, because she's special like you, but I'll be stuck, just like I was before.”

Chase turned around fully and locked eyes with Parker. “We'd never leave you behind. I promise. And anyway, he's not going to lock us up in some remote compound. We'll convince him he has to help us.”

Parker shook his head. “It'll never happen. Did you really think we were going to get back on the
Kuyddestor
anyway? Even Maurus knew it was impossible. We can't go back.”

“We can,” said Lilli, with a sudden finality that made them both look at her. She lowered her head and said nothing else.

Parker looked around suddenly and headed over to the window. “We're slowing down.”

“Do you see a ship?” asked Chase.

Parker craned his neck as far as he could both ways. “Nope. We must be approaching head-on.”

Chase joined him at the window to look out as the frame of a spaceway came together around them and the stars receded, and the shuttle came to a smooth stop in a docking bay. A pair of massive outer doors slid shut at the end of the spaceway, enclosing them in the larger ship.

Chase's heart slammed in his chest as they waited in the cargo hold. An impatient part of him wanted to phase out into the docking bay to start getting a look at where they were, but fear of losing track of Lilli and Parker made him stay. Finally the rear hatch opened onto the bay. Mina stood just outside the cargo hold, joined by a slender man with receding blond hair.

“Hello,” he said, bowing slightly at the waist. He looked somewhat familiar to Chase, but he couldn't place where from.

“This is Jericho,” said Mina. She motioned for them to exit the shuttle. “Come along.”

Chase put his hand on Lilli's shoulder to reassure her as they stepped into the ship. The walls of the docking bay were pristine white, but more strangely, the massive chamber was empty and dead silent.

“Where is everyone?” asked Chase, who had grown accustomed to the daily churn of activity aboard the
Kuyddestor
. He didn't spend a lot of time on the flight deck, but when he did there were always at least a dozen people hard at work.