Space Hostages (9 page)

I was intrigued enough to follow her instructions. I came out into a less glamorous deck than I'd seen on Helen before, with plain hard floors and no lily-of-the-valley perfume. The third door on the right unlocked itself with a
click
and slid open as I came near. Behind it was a storage cupboard full of cleaning supplies. I sat down amid rolls of toilet paper and buried my head in my arms as the door gently closed.

“Sorry you've got so many people yelling on board,” I sniffed.

“That's all right,” the
Helen
soothed me.

“Do you ever get upset, Helen?” I asked.

“No,” the
Helen
replied, almost before I had finished asking.

“That must be nice.”

“At least,” said the
Helen
, sounding confused, “I don't think I do. How do you tell?” I wasn't sure how to answer. “I am always happy because my Captain exists,” she decided.

“And you two never argue, or anything?” I asked.

Of course, the response to that was inevitable: “I could never
argue
with him. I
love
him.”

“Yes, I know.” I sighed.

There was another pause.

“I think . . . sometimes I am . . . slightly less happy,” said the
Helen
.

“Well, you're a really nice spaceship, Helen. You deserve to be happy,” I said, swabbing at my face with the toilet paper.

“I think you should come out of the cleaning cupboard now and go talk to an adult,” said the
Helen
.

“Because I shouldn't run away from my problems?” I scoffed.

“No,” said the
Helen
calmly. “Because I have been hit by an energy cannon and am now being held in the tractor beam of a much larger ship.”

“What?”
I said.

“Ow,” added the
Helen
, as an afterthought.

“What do you
mean
?” I demanded.

“I'm being attacked by aliens,” explained the
Helen
.

“A
re you
sure
?” I said stupidly.

“It's not the kind of thing you make a mistake about,” said Helen. “Ow,” she added again.

“Can you feel pain? Why did Mr. Trommler make it so that you can feel pain?” I said.

It did occur to me that if we were being attacked by aliens, there was a fairly strong case to be made for hiding in the supply cupboard indefinitely. But then I thought about the others and how I was still an EDF cadet and Stephanie Dare's daughter and not somebody who should be hiding from aliens in a cupboard.

Besides, there's always the issue of how you'll eventually need the toilet.

“Are you armed? Are you firing back?” I asked the
Helen
, striding out of the storage cupboard.

“Yes,” said the
Helen
. “But the other ship is
much
bigger than me. Ow.”

I raced back to the main passenger deck. In the lobby I found Th
saaa
, Noel, and Ormerod, who was cradled in Noel's arms and going purple and green.

Helen was now gently flashing various lights and saying in the most soothing and friendly possible way, “This is an emergency,” over and over.

“Who's attacking us?” I said.

“How should I know?” asked Th
saaa
, all defensive colors.

My mind was racing. The only kinds of aliens I knew were Morrors and Vshomu. And Vshomu are only Space Locusts; they're animals. They don't have ships or energy cannons or anything like that.

I knew so many people back home who were quietly scared the war wasn't really over. What if they were right? Dad and Gran had never quite come out and said that they thought the Morrors' motives for inviting me to Aushalawa-Mo
raaa
might be suspect and something terrible might happen when I got there, but of course I'd known they
did
think that. What if it
was a
trap? What if the Council of Lonthaa-Ra-Mo
raaa
wanted
something they weren't getting—more of Earth, or a colder climate—and thought they could use the Plucky Kids of Mars to get it?

“I am afraid the other ship is hijacking my communi—” began Helen, and then broke off. A loud, unfamiliar voice rang out of the walls, and it was speaking the long, sighing syllables of Thly
waaa
-lay, Th
saaa
's language:

“Wathaaalal-vel-raya ath-shal vel athmalath.”

There was a second of silence.

“Don't look at me like that!” cried Th
saaa
.

“I'm not looking at you like anything,” I said.

“You are! I can see it! You would be
violet-gray-yellow
if you could!”

“I know it's nothing to do with
you
,” I said
.

“Those are
not
Morrors!” Th
saaa
insisted
.
“Morrors would
not
do this!”

“They wouldn't,” said Noel, his eyes enormous. “It can't be them, Alice, not after everything.”

I felt the knot of suspicion loosen in my chest, but there was plenty of new tension waiting to take its place. “No,” I said. “They wouldn't. If they wanted to capture us, they'd just wait for us to land on Aushalawa-Mo
raaa
. There'd be no need for this.”

But then, if it wasn't the Morrors . . .

“What did they say?” I asked Th
saaa
, though
I was pretty sure I'd understood the words
prepare
and
prisoners
.

“Prepare to be boarded,” said the walls suddenly, in loud, aggressive English. “You are now prisoners under the Grand Expanse Sovereignty Act, Clause Twelve, Year of the Forty-Third Golden Wave.”

And then they said the same thing again in Spanish.

“There,” said Th
saaa
. “They are . . . speaking the languages of Earth.”

“Come on,” I said, and we ran to the huge windows. And there was the ship, framed against the pale blue glow of the planet.

It definitely wasn't a Morror ship. For one thing, you could
see
it, and even if Morror ships weren't invisible, they wouldn't look like
that.

If there was a rhinoceros that was crossed with a wasp, this ship would have looked like its head: all armored plates and ridges and prongs, in shiny black and gold. There were huge golden banners, marked with great black suns, unfurled from its sides,
billowing
in plumes of gas that must have been generated just for the effect.

It was absolutely enormous.

“Weeela sssssplaflak!”
moaned Th
saaa.
I knew what it meant, because swear words are always a
fun part to learn of any language.

“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Splaflak.”

“Where's Carl?” whispered Noel.

“Hello,” said the
Helen
's voice, sounding faintly sheepish. “Sorry for the interruption. My Captain and his precious and beautiful daughter, Christa, are descending from their deck. Mr. Carl Dalisay, Ms. Jerome, Miss Jerome, and Dr. Muldoon are in the laboratory. I would suggest you head there immediately; I'm being—oh, goodness.”

The huge, terrible ship stayed where it was, but the planet behind it faded, and the stars began to change color.

“What's happening?” cried Noel as Ormerod bucked out of his arms and ran away.

“I'm being dragged into hyperspace,” said the
Helen
. “I do apologize. There appears to be nothing I can do about it.”

“Do you know where we're going?” I said, but of course she didn't. What difference would it have made if she had?

Noel was beginning to look pretty shaky and tearful now that he didn't have Ormerod to hold on to.

“It'll be all right,” I said to him.

Noel gazed up at me and demanded,
“How?”

“Oh . . . you know,” I said lamely, as the ship
shuddered and the ghostly light of hyperspace stretched out before us.

“Things just . . . usually work out.”

“A ship of that size and power could have destroyed us by now if they wished to,” said Th
saaa
, putting a friendly tentacle around Noel's shoulders.

“Well, yeah, you see,” I said brightly. “There's that.”

Noel sighed. “We'd better go.”

“I must go to my quarters first!” cried Th
saaa
, and hurried away without explaining why. So Noel and I went alone. The mood in the lab was, as you can imagine, not exactly serene.

“Hey, kids,” said the Goldfish sadly, hovering amid the branches of one of the fast-growing trees. “Well, this sure is a downer. We're going to need teamwork, and imagination, and heavy-duty weaponry to handle this!”

“Noel, are you okay?” said Carl, grabbing him.

“Get into space suits,” said Dr. Muldoon. “We can't be sure the air will be breathable for humans if they take us on board their ship.”

There were several pressure suits—neat piles of glossy green fabric on a hastily cleared workbench. Dr. Muldoon was already in hers, glossy green and
veined with cables like an ivy leaf.

Lena was still in her normal clothes. But there was Josephine already suited up, sitting on the edge of the workbench, as Lena helped strap her into her oxygen pack, her hands moving with swift efficiency. She dragged Josephine's hair back and Josephine uttered a meek “Ow” before her sister attached her helmet.

Josephine looked up once at me through the transparent ceramic and then looked down at her gloved hands.

Mr. Trommler somehow looked very weird when he burst into the lab in his immaculate business suit, not just because he was now almost the only person in ordinary clothes, but because he was so pale and disheveled. Christa was even worse off, clinging to her father and gasping as if she was having a panic attack.

“What are we going to do, Mr. Trommler?” Noel asked.

“God, how should I know?” Rasmus Trommler moaned. He looked accusingly at Dr. Muldoon. “
You're
supposed to be the expert on aliens.”

Christa whimpered something in Swedish, and Lena said, “No, the escape pods are no use. None of them have hyperspace capacity. At best we'd be
stranded billions of light-years from a habitable planet; at worst we'd be smeared across the universe as a fine paste.”

“Åh Gud,”
moaned Christa.

“I didn't know you spoke Swedish,” said Josephine, sounding faintly affronted.

Lena shrugged. “I had a slow weekend.”

“Mr. Trommler, where are the weapons?” I demanded.

“There are no weapons on board,” stammered Trommler. “Only the
Helen
's plasma guns.”

“I'm afraid they've been destroyed now,” said the
Helen
helpfully. “It hurt,” she added.

“We're being hijacked by aliens and you don't have weapons? What do you
mean
you don't have weapons?” I said, summoning my best glare.

“This is a civilian vessel—for diplomacy! And tourism!” moaned Trommler. “It isn't meant to be a warship.”

“Mr. Trommler, Helen's a
she
,” corrected Noel, who never thinks that war, disaster, or alien abduction is any excuse for being rude. He offered the wall a consoling pat.

“That's all right. I don't mind what he calls me,” said the
Helen
. “I don't mind very much at all.”

“Then what's the plan?” cried Carl. “Sit here and wait?”

“We do have weapons,” said Lena shortly. She pressed something on her keyboard and clapped her hands. The tiny robots on the floor poured together into a swarm, letting out little clicks as parts interlocked—and within thirty seconds, eight glittering golden guns had appeared on the workbench. Lena put one into my hands without a second look and tossed one at Mr. Trommler, who caught it but hastily put it down as if it was red hot.

“For heaven's sake, let's not antagonize them.”

“We can at least slow them down,” said Lena grimly, priming her own weapon.

“What will
that
achieve?”

“He does have a point,” said Dr. Muldoon.

“Helen,” said Lena. “Divert as much power as you can into scanning the alien ship. I want to know as much about them as possible.”

“We don't need to do that to see that we are
heavily
outgunned. Our only hope is to find out what they want and give it to them,” said Trommler.

“I'm sorry, Ms. Jerome, but if my Captain doesn't want me to . . . ,” the
Helen
began.

Trommler gestured impatiently and clutched at
his forehead. “Oh, well, carry on, for all the good it'll do.” He sat down abruptly on the floor and hugged his knees.

The ship shuddered and lurched so hard that we all stumbled and clutched at each other, and we scraped our way out of hyperspace. For a moment we saw an utterly unfamiliar spread of stars, a nebula smeared in green and pink across the sky like an oil spill. And below, a new planet; green and gold and dark purple-red.

“Is that their world?” whispered Noel, pressing against the windows.

But we only saw the planet for a moment, because the next minute the
Helen
was being sucked into the huge, wasplike ship. It swallowed us up, and there was no light from outside at all.

“Wathaaalal-vel-raya ath-lash vel theelmerath,”
said the walls in forbidding Thly
waaa
-lay, and in English: “Prepare to surrender.”

There was a low boom and some of the lights went out.

“There are fifteen additional . . . individuals on board me,” announced the
Helen
. “They're heading toward you.”

“Oh, god,” I said. Carl was hanging on to Noel, and Lena was steadily grasping Josephine's shoulder.
Even Christa and Mr. Trommler had each other. I gripped the edge of a workstation and tried not to think about anyone to hold on to.

A soft flow of warm air from an unseen vent played over my neck. “It's OK, I'm here, Alice,” said the
Helen
.

I took a deep breath. “Look, did we agree that we
are
shooting at them, or we're
not
shooting at them?” I asked.

“We're shooting at them,” said Lena firmly.

“Give me a gun,” said Christa suddenly, reaching for one. Her hands were shaking and her nose was a little snotty, but she looked back at us with a pretty good glare. “I'm an EDF cadet too,” she said.

“Look,” said Josephine, her voice a bit wobbly. “Maybe we should rethink this. We could . . . hide. Helen, how much room is there in the ventilation system?”

“And
then
what?” I said, forgetting we weren't really talking to each other. “Wait till they're not looking, sneak off the ship, and walk home?”

“Well, what do
you
think we should do?” snapped Josephine.

There was a rapid, clacking drumming of something very large and heavy, coming closer and closer outside.

“I think,” I said, “we might as well go and have a look at them.”

“And shoot them,” added Carl.

“Helen,” said Lena, “whatever happens, keep scanning as long as you can. Download everything to the devices specified, okay?”

Then she stalked out into the passage as if she wasn't frightened at all. The rest of us ventured after her, except Mr. Trommler, who remained cowering behind a workbench.

At first there were only the familiar carpets and walls of the
Helen
, the echo of the approaching footsteps, the rattle and creak of strange bodies coming close.

And then they rounded the corner.

The aliens were marching down the passage. They were so large, I couldn't make sense of what I was seeing at first; my eyes skittered off the moving mass of plating and feelers and joints, and all I saw were
gigantic monsters coming to kill me
.

They were about nine feet tall. They seemed more like crustaceans than anything else, with six limbs; marching—or
scuttling—
on four pointed feet and brandishing very nasty-looking weapons in their long, segmented arms. Their exoskeletons were a
reddish pink, but that didn't show much; they didn't wear clothes, but every armored plate of their bodies was decorated in some way: either painted with elaborate patterns, or crusted with diamonds, or covered in spikes.