Starbounders (8 page)

“Those walls aren't going to clean themselves,” Wilcox snapped. Zachary turned from the display. “What, you've never seen a Kepler cartograph before?”

Zachary shook his head.

“You can't just bound anywhere you want, anytime you want. You have to use the folds in space that are already there. Without the cartograph we'd be lost in the outerverse.”

Zachary knew from his flight-simulation activity at Indigo 8 and his training at home that every spacecraft had an internal navigation system called a starbox, containing maps and an autopilot. It was the heart and brain of any ship. Of course, he had never seen one in action before.

Zachary resumed scrubbing the underbins and caught a glimpse through the open flight-deck door of Kaylee and Ryic using the mops to clean up the cabin's floors and ceiling. The stringy mopheads were magnetically clinging to whatever surface they made contact with, soaking up all the mold they touched. Zachary finished wiping down two of the underbins before Wilcox ordered him to his harness.

Zachary pushed off, floating back to where Ryic and Kaylee were already strapping themselves in. It wasn't long before Zachary could see sharp prongs emerge from the front of the dreadnought. They began to pulse, and suddenly another interdimensional fold opened. The dreadnought shot through the hole, Zachary once again felt as if he was spinning like a top.

When the ship emerged, the sun that he knew was gone and the celestial atmosphere had a blue-green glow that reminded him of the bonfire where the vreeks had multiplied back at Indigo 8.

“We just arrived at the outer ring of the Milky Way,” Wilcox announced. “Approximately ninety thousand light years from Earth. The next bound will take us to the edge of the Stringer Nebula. Sit tight. It won't be long.”

He wasn't kidding. Barely a minute passed before the dreadnought was jumping through another fold. This time the ship exited into a solar system that had two suns and hundreds of planets orbiting them.

“Just one more leap to the tundra planet,” Wilcox said. “Crew, grab your spaste pouches and eat up. Mop monkeys, you'll dine when this ship is sparkling like an auxbot's rear end.”

Once again the webbing released, and Zachary and Kaylee were free. And once again, Ryic remained stuck in the harness.

“Clearly these were not built for Klenarogians,” he said philosophically.

Zachary and Kaylee floated over to help, but before they could pull Ryic loose, a loud crash sounded from the cargo hold. One of the crew members gave an exasperated sigh.

“The vreeks are getting restless,” he said. “I'll go lower the freezer's temperature. See if a little more cold won't calm them down.”

He soared through the cabin to the cargo hold entrance and disappeared inside.

“Get a move on, ragboy,” Wilcox shouted at Zachary.

“I think he likes you,” Kaylee said.

Just then, a blast echoed from the back of the dreadnought. The crew member who'd gone to check on the vreeks spiraled out of the cargo hold with a hole seared straight through his Indigo 8 jumpsuit. He hit the wall and reached out, grabbing Zachary's leg.

“The ship is being hijacked,” he said with his last breath.

“Y
ou three! Up here!” Wilcox commanded Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee.

The remaining crew members were grabbing sonic crossbows from the underbins, and Zachary and Kaylee were tugging at the webbing still holding Ryic captive.

“Come on, Ryic,” Kaylee said.

“I'm trying!” he cried, struggling to pull himself free.

Zachary wasn't sure what was about to come out from the rear hold, but he certainly didn't want to wait to find out.

“Lock down the cargo area!” Wilcox shouted back to the cabin.

A crew member raced over to try to close the door, but a lightning ball struck him in the chest and sent him tumbling backward through the air.

Six alien figures emerged from the open cargo hold. But these weren't the vreeks. They were a grizzly-looking crew of off-planet thugs, armed with voltage slingshots and sonic crossbows. Zachary noticed that they all had shockles on their wrists and ankles, but the chains of pure electricity that connected them had been deactivated.

“Go without me!” Ryic shouted to Zachary and Kaylee. “I'm still stuck.”

Zachary hurried to one of the cabin's underbins and unstrapped a pocketknife from the row of maintenance tools. He raced back to slash through the webbing still binding Ryic. Two of the nearby hijackers—emaciated creatures of fur and bone—snarled like wolves. They charged at the crew member closest to the cargo hold, tackling him to the ceiling.

“Mayday, Mayday!” Zachary could hear Wilcox calling urgently from the flight deck. “This is
Dreadnought Epsilon
. We have hostiles on the ship. Current location is two hundred and forty thousand miles outside Space Fold DES-762. Coordinates X-120, Y-26, Z-201. Immediate assistance requested.”

The dreadnought's crew members sent concentrated beams of sound flying from their sonic crossbows. An all-out battle for control of the ship was under way. Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee pushed themselves off and headed for the relative safety of the flight deck. Zachary looked over his shoulder as a beam of sound hit one of the hijackers, which had more in common with an amoeba than any mammal or human. The creature burst like a popped tomato.

“Let's move!” Wilcox shouted. “Three Lightwings dying on my watch is not my idea of how to get a promotion.”

They made one final lunge, gliding safely inside the flight deck. Wilcox punched a button on the wall, and the cockpit door sealed shut.

The sounds of the battle continued in the cabin. The door did little to mute the explosions and screams on the other side.

“How long until Indigo 8 sends help?” Zachary asked.

“Indigo 8?” Wilcox repeated. “That signal won't reach Earth. Best we can hope for is somebody from the nearby prospecting station hearing it and coming this way.”

A loud blast struck the flight-deck door, causing it to bend in.

“Put your warp gloves on,” Wilcox ordered Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee.

Zachary had almost forgotten about the metal orb sitting in his pocket. He reached in and removed the sphere, holding it in the palm of his hand. He squeezed his thumb and pinkie together, and with a whir the gauntlet extended down his arm.

Ryic and Kaylee gloved up as well.

Warning lights began to flash on the cockpit window.

“Something's wrong! The starbox must have shorted,” Wilcox said.

A thundering boom rocked the flight-deck door, this time blowing it open. One of the six hijackers, a muscular, olive-skinned beast, stood there with photon cannons under two of his four arms. These shotgun-sized weapons could fire double blasts of superheated light that could turn steel into Swiss cheese. The creature gave a slobbering laugh, drool dripping down its thorny chin.

To Zachary's astonishment, Wilcox said, “We surrender. The ship is yours.”

He lifted his hands above his head. But not to surrender. In one fluid motion, he grabbed a voltage slingshot from a hidden compartment on the ceiling and fired at the hijacker. The electrically charged ammunition struck the creature square in the chest, shocking it with such force that the beast went spiraling backward.

The surviving crew members in the cabin were doing their best to keep the remaining hijackers from reaching the flight deck. Wilcox turned to the holographic display on the front window. The emergency backup lights were blinking, including a prompt that read,
MIE WITH PELE 9 IMMINENT
.

“What's an MIE?” Ryic asked.

“Major impact event,” Wilcox answered. “We're going to crash into that planet if we can't adjust course.”

In the distance, Zachary saw a red-tinted planet. It was getting bigger by the second. Wilcox's fingers were moving furiously in the air.

“The starbox isn't responding at all,” he said. “If I'm not able to override it—”

But he didn't get to finish. A photon bolt hit him in the back of the neck, knocking him out cold. Zachary spun around and looked into the cabin. Only two IPDL guards were still conscious, and the pair of emaciated wolflike creatures stood menacingly over them.

“Try not to eat them, Jahir,” said a hijacker that looked human, even though his skin was a little grayer and his biceps were bigger than any Zachary had ever seen. “We might need them as hostages later.”

Jahir gnashed his teeth. “But Skold, I'm hungry.”

Skold ignored him and headed toward the flight deck. Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee hadn't budged since Wilcox had been struck down. As Skold approached, Zachary noticed that his eyes moved strangely, shifting unnaturally and rarely blinking.

“We've got three kids in the flight deck,” Skold called back to his fellow hijackers. “Kur'tuo, get up here and watch them.”

Skold didn't even look at the young Starbounders-in-training. He clearly didn't consider them a threat. His attention was on the blaring warnings on the window.

Zachary still held the pocketknife in his ungloved hand. He knew that if he was going to defend himself and his friends, he'd have to do it now. He thrust the blade right for Skold's rib cage, but in the same instant, the alien grabbed Zachary's wrist and twisted, causing the knife to drop from his hand. Skold whipped his head around and glared at Zachary.

“Don't try to be the hero,” he said. “It never ends well.”

Kur'tuo, a creature that looked like a ten-foot-tall praying mantis, squeezed through the open flight-deck door. He stopped between Skold and Zachary, lifting his powerful arm up against Zachary's throat. Zachary could feel the serrated blades along the underside of the creature's arm cut into his chin.

Skold began waving his hands across the flight-deck window, trying to reactivate the starbox.

“It's not responding,” he said.

Kur'tuo began making clicking noises with his mandibles.

“Don't you think I tried that?” Skold snapped back.

The warning on the window now read,
MIE COUNTDOWN, 00:04:00
.

There were less than four minutes until impact, and the seconds kept ticking away. Zachary could now see the red-tinted surface of the planet clearly.

“Is that lava?” he asked.

“Lava is the expulsion from a volcano,” Ryic replied. “When an entire planet is composed of the molten rock, it is called magma.”

“Either way, we get melted like a stick of butter,” Skold said.

Zachary couldn't help but think that, for an alien, Skold acted awfully human. The way he looked. The way he talked. Zachary watched as Skold jabbed his pocketknife into the metal equipment panel and pried it open. In all the chaos, Zachary hadn't thought to use his lensicon. Until now. He centered the crosshairs on Skold and blinked twice, expecting to read
LIFE-FORM
, but instead he read:

THIS ROBOTIC OUTER SHELL IS INHABITED BY AN ALIEN TO BLEND IN AS AN EARTHLING WHILE SERVING AS A TRANSLATOR, DIPLOMAT, OR SPY.

PRESENT INTERIOR LIFE-FORM: UNKNOWN.

Skold was some kind of robot with an alien living inside him?

Zachary turned back to the warning and saw that the MIE countdown had reached two minutes. The planet was way too close to the window. And Skold was head deep in the machinery of the ship.

“The IPDL is making it harder to hot-wire these things,” he said. “All it used to take was a pair of pliers.”

Skold reached for the voltage slingshot resting in Wilcox's limp hand and aimed it at the inside of the dreadnought's equipment panel.

“Are you crazy?” Kaylee asked. “You're going to kill us all!”

“We're already dead,” Skold replied.

He fired off a blast, frying the panel. The cartograph disappeared, along with all the other readings on the flight-deck window. But Skold's plan worked, because the ship shifted directions, its engines pushing it out of the gravitational pull of Pele 9.