Starbounders Page 11

  Zachary and Kaylee sat across from each other at a balcony table dining on greebock steak, the finest cut of space cattle in the outerverse. Ryic had wandered off to get a refill on his drink, but it was taking him an awfully long time to return. As Zachary and Kaylee chewed, they watched a com-bot do battle with a reprogrammed auxbot in the giant ring. Zachary remembered a completely harmless aux-bot from Indigo 8 that changed the illumination tubes on his SQ’s ceiling on his very first day. But this one had its wrench hands replaced with pulverizing hammers and hacksaws.

  “And I thought MMA cage matches were brutal,” Kaylee said. “This is way cooler.”

  “You’re a little scary sometimes, you know that?” Zachary said.

  The com-bot charged, trying to pierce the aux-bot’s external rubber shielding with its electrified claws.

  “My mother would never approve of this,” Kaylee said. “She’s a pacifist. We’ve always been a little different in that regard. She’d drop me off for ballet class, and I’d sneak into the jujitsu dojo next door.”

  The aux-bot deflected the com-bot’s attack, slamming it to the ground. Kaylee jumped up and cheered.

  “Finish him!” she shouted.

  “Clearly her galactic view hasn’t rubbed off on you,” Zachary said.

  Kaylee sat back down with a smile.

  “And your dad?” Zachary asked. “What about him?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Most of my life he’s been off planet. We haven’t exactly been close.”

  Kaylee put her fork down. It looked like she had lost her appetite.

  “He’s a soulless corporate shill who adds nothing to the outerverse but reinforced steel to space stations. And he’s managed to miss all my gymnastics meets while doing it.”

  “I can see how that might be hard,” Zachary said.

  Ryic returned to the table without a drink in hand but looking pleased.

  “I just met the nicest people,” he said. “They were willing to let me into their very exclusive card game even though I didn’t know any of the rules. And they said they will keep teaching me until I learn.”

  “Ryic, was there money involved in this game?” Zachary asked.

  “Oh, yes, lots,” Ryic said. “And I lost quite a bit of it.”

  Down below, Zachary spotted two IPDL officers walking the floor. Merchants and outerverse lowlifes watched them suspiciously.

  “I think that’s our rescue team,” Zachary said, pointing.

  Kaylee jumped up from the table. “Come on, let’s go,” she said.

  Zachary led the way, descending a spiral staircase back to the main floor. They pushed through the crowd and caught up with the two officers.

  “Excuse me,” Zachary called out. “I think you’re looking for us.”

  The two officers turned to see the young Starbounders. One was clearly an alien, nine feet tall with braids of hair growing from the back of his neck. The other was an Earthling with a thin mustache. He was slight in stature, especially standing beside his partner.

  “I’m Hartwell,” the Earthling said. “This is Grino. You must be Zachary.”

  Zachary nodded. “And this is Ryic and Kaylee.”

  “We have a buckler waiting in the hangar,” Hartwell continued. “Let’s get you home.”

  Hartwell started toward the docking-terminal doors. They hadn’t made it past the battle ring when a group of ogre-sized aliens cut them off. They were nearly as tall as Grino but looked much, much meaner.

  “The Klenarogian stays with us,” one of the ogres said, putting a hand on Ryic’s shoulder.

  “I’m afraid not,” Grino said. “This is official IPDL business. You’re going to have to step aside.”

  None of the ogres budged.

  “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear,” the ogre said. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  His meaty hand tightened its grip on Ryic. Zachary fingered the warp glove in his pocket and eyed the surrounding area for anything he might use as a weapon. But his quick scan came up empty.

  Hartwell gave a subtle nod to Grino, who took the ogre’s arm in one lightning-fast move and snapped it to the side, dropping him to his knees.

  Quickly all the attention on the floor turned to the confrontation. The ogre’s cohorts came to his defense, attacking Grino, but the giant IPDL officer kicked the pair of beasts backward. Many aliens hurried into the fray, and still others started to throw down serendibite, as if betting on the outcome of who would win this fight.

  The squat, fur-covered creature with eight-fingered hands—well, seven fingers on one hand because of the accident Ryic had caused—lunged at Grino with the spinning corkscrew. Grino thrust out his arm, taking the hit and allowing the whirling blade to jam into his flesh. Grino then ripped the weapon out of his arm and flung it back, impaling the alien’s already injured hand.

  Outerverse thugs were coming at the group from both sides, and there appeared to be no clear path through them. Even Hartwell seemed at a loss for what to do.

  “This way,” Zachary called.

  He took a turn and leaped over the fence surrounding the battle ring, jumping inside, where the modified aux-bot and com-bot continued to pummel each other. The rest of the group followed, until all five of them were racing across the steel floor of the ring, stepping around the fallen scraps from previous fights. The two bots must have been programmed to attack anything inside the ring, because they were both whizzing toward Zachary. And this was no basement training exercise. One bot’s pulverizing hammer was swinging rapidly at his heels. The other’s electrified claw was sending arcing bolts from its tip. Just before getting struck, Zachary made a running leap for the fence. His fingers slammed against the metal wire but held fast. He pulled himself ten feet in the air, not feeling the aching in his knuckles until he reached the top. Fortunately the bots couldn’t climb. Zachary helped pull Kaylee and Ryic up over the fence, his muscles quivering under their weight. Hartwell and Grino managed on their own.

  Once they hit the floor on the other side, they all sprinted for the hangar door. As Hartwell had promised, a buckler waited for them. The ship was about a quarter the size of a dreadnought and shaped like a shield, with three particle guns affixed to the roof. The boarding ramp had already descended, and the five ran into the main cabin, which was filled with all the tools of an outerverse IPDL police craft: shockles, stun balls, and combat sticks.

  Zachary, Kaylee, and Ryic were instructed to move quickly to the mechanical webbing and harness themselves in. Hartwell and Grino took their seats in the flight deck and activated the cartograph.

  “What if they don’t let us out of here?” Zachary called.

  “Then I guess we’ll find out how effective this ship’s particle guns are against hangar shields,” Hartwell said.

  Grino spoke into the lang-link: “Requesting immediate departure, by order of the Inter-Planetary Defense League.”

  There was no reply, and the hangar remained sealed shut.

  Hartwell swiped his hands across the flight-deck window. Now the display read CHARGING PARTICLE GUNS. Just as the indicator bar reached full, the outer hangar doors began to open.

  “Thank you for visiting the Fringg Galaxy Void Market,” the robotic voice that had welcomed them echoed. “We hope your stay was pleasant and enjoyable and that you’ll come again soon.”

  The ship took off, exiting through the hangar doors.

  “How did you end up in a place like that, anyway?” Hartwell called back into the main cabin.

  “Long story,” Zachary said.

  “We got time,” Hartwell replied.

  The ship headed into a galactic fold, making its first jump. Once again, Zachary felt his body jostled in every direction, but while it was still an unpleasant sensation, he didn’t mind it anymore. Finally, they were going home.

  “Might as well get comfortable,” Hartwell said. “We won’t hit the next fold for a few hours.”

  Hartwell and Grino stood up from their flight-deck sea
ts and left the ship’s guidance to the internal navigation system. They floated back to the cabin and joined Zachary, Kaylee, and Ryic.

  “You three must be starved,” Grino said.

  “Actually we just ate,” Kaylee replied.

  “Well, more for me then.”

  Grino drifted down and cracked open the ship’s refrigeration unit. Hartwell hovered right behind him. He pulled out a sonic crossbow and blasted his partner in the back. The force sent Grino face-first to the floor.

  Zachary didn’t have time to feel shock or horror. He was too busy struggling to free himself from the tethers. So were Ryic and Kaylee. But Hartwell had already turned his weapon on them.

  “Nothing personal,” Hartwell said. “Somebody wants you dead, and they’re willing to pay handsomely for your heads.”

  Zachary’s arms were no longer harnessed, but it didn’t matter. Hartwell’s crossbow was aimed at his chest. The rogue agent was about to pull the trigger when something flew across Zachary’s line of vision. It was Sputnik. Kaylee had pulled the vreek from her pocket and chucked him at Hartwell’s face. The space slug dug its teeth into Hartwell’s eyes, and Zachary acted fast, activating his warp glove and disarming the traitorous IPDL officer. Kaylee slid out from the tethers and used a set of the ship’s shockles to bind Hartwell’s ankles to the grating in the floor.

  The baby vreek released his grip but kept his teeth bared in case he needed to attack again. “Good job, Sputnik,” Kaylee said, stroking her little pet’s back.

  Zachary pointed the sonic crossbow at Hartwell’s forehead, his hands trembling with adrenaline.

  “I really dislike these harnesses!” cried Ryic, who continued to try to wrestle himself free. “Couldn’t they just put in seat belts?”

  Hartwell refused to talk. He’d been sitting on the floor with his back against one of the ship’s walls for twenty minutes, unable to move. Zachary and Ryic had each taken a turn asking Hartwell who’d hired him. Zachary had used the calm, steely tone he’d seen cops use in action movies. But Hartwell merely smirked in response to every inquiry. Ryic had no better luck.

  Now it was Kaylee’s turn. She took her questioning in a decidedly more “bad cop” direction, leaning in close to Hartwell’s nose, pressing a combat stick against his neck.

  “Who put you up to this?” she yelled. “Was it Henry Madsen? Someone at Indigo 8?”

  For the first time, Hartwell spoke.

  “You’re wasting your breath. I never meet the people who hire me. As long as the money transfer clears, I don’t ask questions.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling us,” she said.

  “What are you going to do?” Hartwell asked. “Beat it out of me?”

  “She’s done worse,” Ryic said.

  Kaylee moved over to Zachary and Ryic and whispered out of Hartwell’s earshot.

  “This isn’t working,” she said.

  “What options do we have?” Zachary asked. “We can’t contact Indigo 8 again. We’ve already seen how that worked out.” He glanced down at Grino’s body. Their attempts to revive him had been unsuccessful. “Skold was obviously telling us the truth.”

  “Why would Director Madsen attempt to have us killed?” Ryic asked.

  “I don’t know, but don’t you find it a little suspicious that we called for help and the next thing you know, someone’s here trying to off us?” Kaylee tapped the combat stick against her hand impatiently.

  “Hartwell’s the only person with information that can lead us to the truth,” Zachary said. “We have to find out for certain if it was Madsen or one of his staff members.”

  “Maybe we can bribe him,” Ryic said.

  “No,” Kaylee said. “We need to be sure that he’s not lying.”

  “How can we guarantee that?” Zachary asked.

  “An extractor,” Kaylee said.

  “That position was outlawed by the IPDL a century ago,” Ryic said.

  “Well, it didn’t stop everyone,” Kaylee said. “There are still those who practice the forbidden techniques.”

  “How do you know?” Zachary asked.

  “My father was brought up on charges for doing business with one. Even selling building equipment to an extractor is punishable with ten years in an asteroid prison. But he was exonerated due to a lack of evidence. Still, the name of the extractor he was allegedly involved with always stuck with me. Doveling.”

  “Where can we find this Doveling?” Zachary asked.

  “She was last located on Kibarat, a farming planetoid. We can check the Kepler cartograph to see how to get there.”

  Zachary and Ryic nodded in agreement. They turned around to see Hartwell sitting as before.

  “So, what do you plan on doing with me?” he asked.

  “Well, for starters, this,” Zachary said.

  He grabbed a stun ball off the wall, set it for maximum effect, and threw it at Hartwell’s chest. Upon contact, Hartwell was instantly paralyzed. Even his mousy upper lip was frozen in place.

  Zachary and Ryic followed Kaylee to the flight deck, where she began setting waypoints to their destination. Zachary had watched carefully as Skold and Wilcox had flown the other ships and, while it was hardly adequate preparation, he thought that together with the week of flight simulation he had experienced on Indigo 8, he could probably figure out his way around the controls.

  With their captive immobile in the cabin, they buckled themselves into the flight-deck chairs, and Zachary guided the ship toward the next fold.

  «TEN»

  “Wow,” Zachary said.

  The sight of Kibarat soaring beside them was breathtaking. The front end of the planetoid had a giant glass dome built over it, with bright green and yellow fields of grass and small farmhouses inside. The back half of the planetoid was uninhabited gray rock, shedding dust particles millions of miles back into the cosmos.

  “Hey, Earth to Zachary,” Kaylee said. “I asked you a question.”

  “I’m sorry. What was that?”

  “Would you rather lick the floor of a New York City subway car or the armpit of an unshowered stranger?”

  They had been passing the time until they reached Kibarat by playing the kinds of games that Zachary remembered from family road trips. Would you rather? was always Danielle’s favorite.

  “Eww. Gross. Neither,” he said.

  “Not an option,” Ryic said. “You have to pick one.”

  “And say why,” Kaylee added.

  “Oh, man, I don’t know,” Zachary said. “I guess I’d say a stranger’s armpit. It’s just one person’s germs, not thousands’.”

  “Have you factored in armpit hair and BO?” Kaylee asked.

  “I hadn’t,” Zachary said. “But I am now.”

  Out the window, they watched as the ship neared an arrival tube on the domed side of the planetoid. Zachary looked over his shoulder to make sure that Hartwell was still incapacitated. He could see by the rigid expression on his face that he was.

  The buckler flew into the long clear tube and came out inside the dome. Immediately Zachary realized why Kibarat’s fields remained fertile even in the darkest reaches of space. The entire enclosed space radiated heat and light, as brightly as a summer day.

  The ship landed in a field of berry shrubs. The engines came to a quiet stop, and after the doors opened, the departure ramp extended to the ground. Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee armed themselves with sonic crossbows, then exited, leaving Hartwell behind, still stunned and shockled.

  “We’ll come back for him as soon as we find Doveling,” Kaylee said. They reached the bottom of the ramp and Zachary stepped onto the soft grass. He breathed in the air, and the smell of wheat and berries tickled his nostrils. It reminded Zachary very much of home, and that was a comforting feeling. If it weren’t for the glass dome high above him, he would have forgotten that they were hurtling through space on a ball of rock.

  “Do you know where to find her?” Zachary asked Kaylee.

 
“No, but these communes are close-knit groups. Someone should be able to tell us where she is.”

  There was a farmhouse about a mile away. It seemed like as good a place as any to start.

  They walked through a field of tall plants that resembled corn, but their crimson tint exposed them as something not of Earth. Ryic pulled a leaf off one of the stalks and began chewing on it.

  “Not as tasty as when the barracks’ cook stews them,” Ryic said. The leaf was already dyeing his teeth red.

  A rustling came from beyond the husks, and a bison-sized beast emerged just a few feet away. Zachary, Kaylee, and Ryic all drew their weapons.

  The beast tilted back its huge horned head and let out a trumpeting roar. Zachary put a finger to his ear to try to mute the deafening sound. But there was nothing he could do to avoid getting sprayed by the creature’s warm, moist breath.

  “We better hope it can’t smell what you ate back at Fringg,” Ryic said.

  “Don’t worry, the greebock won’t bother you,” a friendly voice called out. It belonged to a muscular, olive-skinned alien with four arms who was riding up on a horse with an unusually long body and eight legs. “I saw you fly in. What brings you to Kibarat?”

  “Actually, we’re looking for someone,” Kaylee said. “Goes by the name Doveling. You don’t happen to know where we can find her, do you?”

  “Of course,” the alien replied. “She teaches all of the commune’s neophytes out of her stables. If you’d like, I can take you there.”

  He pointed to the multiple saddles on the horse’s back and helped the young Starbounders mount. Zachary had to stretch his legs out extra wide to remain steady atop the rough-furred steed. The alien waited until the three had all settled before giving his horse a swift kick.

  “Have you come to study with Doveling?” the alien asked. “Her teachings are wise and inspiring. I can hardly remember what my life was like before my first encounter with her.”

  A teacher who inspired people? Based on what Kaylee had said, these weren’t the characteristics of any extractor Zachary was expecting.

  They galloped across the fields, past herds of greebocks and several farmhouses. Zachary had gone horseback riding before, but this was much smoother and faster. He looked down and saw a blur of hooves. The clip-clopping was so fast it sounded like a train rattling over wooden tracks.