Starbounders #2 Read online

  “Did I do something wrong?” Zachary asked.

  “Yeah,” a voice replied. The engineer pulled Zachary behind a crate. Then the tinted visor slid open, revealing Kaylee inside. “You haven’t suited up fast enough.” She tugged Quee and Ryic back toward the same hiding spot. Both of them looked as surprised as Zachary did.

  “Where did you get that?” Zachary asked.

  “I used my warp glove to swipe it off the far wall by the decontamination showers. I suggest you do the same.”

  She pointed across the hangar to where there were a number of suits on hooks. Zachary, Ryic, and Quee activated their warp gloves as inconspicuously as they could and aimed, turning their wrists forty-five degrees. A black disc appeared before each of the young Starbounders and corresponding ones materialized near the bodysuits. Zachary reached his glove through the pair of holes he’d formed and retrieved an outfit. He swiftly put his on and felt a rush of cool air blow from an internal temperature regulator. Ryic had done the same thing. Quee, however, was still struggling with the trajectory of her warp glove, so Zachary used his own glove to grab one of the suits for her. Now the four were indistinguishable from the hundreds of workers filling the floor.

  The last of the Lightwings followed Arg-Nik-Vo into the neighboring room, none the wiser to the missing trainees.

  “There’s an exit back there, by the strictors,” Zachary said.

  The four of them walked across the floor without attracting so much as a second glance. They never hesitated, heading straight out the door onto another shadow path, one that stretched about thirty yards before coming to an end.

  The city laid out before them was a metropolis of sandstone buildings, constructed to withstand the intense midday heat of Adranus’s three suns. There were no roads, only covered pedestrian walkways.

  “Where are all the vehicles?” Kaylee asked.

  “Too hot for them,” Ryic replied. “They’d melt like butter. You saw what the suns did to that metal inside.”

  The group stepped out from the shadow path and into the sunlight. Zachary immediately felt the cooling jets inside his bodysuit pump faster to counteract the swelter. He and his friends headed for one of the other covered walkways, but before they reached it, Zachary watched as an untucked hoodie string, sticking out from the crack between Ryic’s helmet and bodysuit, ignited. Like the fuse on a stick of dynamite, the string was incinerated, the flames moving swiftly toward Ryic’s helmet.

  With no time to speak, Zachary tackled his friend to the ground and squeezed the burning nylon in his fist, extinguishing it. Ryic looked stunned and confused until Zachary showed him the charred remains of his pull string.

  “Everybody needs to be extra careful,” Zachary said. “This isn’t going to work if one of us comes back looking like a grilled cheese sandwich.”

  Zachary and Ryic got back to their feet and the four continued ahead. They took a covered walkway through a maze of buildings, passing Adranusians standing in line before vendors who were cooking slabs of unrecognizable food on the pavement just beyond the edge of the shadow paths. Even through his helmet, Zachary could smell the smoky aroma wafting up from the ground.

  The walkway led to a roundabout that moved counterclockwise and could be exited from any of a dozen offshoots. Zachary and his cohorts stepped onto the rotating platform. Looking up, Zachary tried to judge which path would take them on the most direct route to the shimmering dome.

  “Turn up ahead,” Zachary said.

  “No, wait,” Quee interjected. “According to the maps we downloaded, there’s a shortcut through the Hydration Bazaar.”

  Quee departed the roundabout at the next offshoot. The others were right behind her as they moved into a covered marketplace where liquids of every color were dispensed from freezer tanks into prefrosted mugs. Customers had to drink the fluids quickly before they evaporated in the near-boiling conditions. The group hurried through the crowded bazaar, arriving at the other side.

  Quee was right. The shortcut through the bazaar had dumped them directly in front of the dome. A sign out front read EXO-SHELL.

  “This is it,” Zachary said. “This is the place.”

  The door slid open easily and the four walked into a dimly lit space. Once they noticed that all the skylights were closed, Zachary, Ryic, Kaylee, and Quee removed their helmets. Carapaces, robotic exoskeletons used to house alien life-forms, stood on display. Some were designed to look like real human bodies, while others were three stories tall, mechs apparently used for industrial lifting or combat. Several were open, showcasing the operational maintenance systems inside.

  Zachary glanced around for an employee, but the only other life-forms appeared to be browsing customers. Until one of the carapaces began to move.

  An eight-legged mech the size of a small car stomped forward. It nearly trampled Zachary, stopping only a foot in front of him. The exposed bronze gears covering its outside clanked noisily and the shield covering the pod at the center of the mech retracted. An Adranusian looked out.

  “Apologies,” she said. “Still working out the kinks in the latest model.”

  “We’re looking for some information,” Zachary said, “about some symbols on a pair of hands taken from a carapace.”

  Quee unzipped her bodysuit and pulled the robotic hacking hands out from a pouch slung across her chest. The Adranusian pressed a button within the mech and its legs folded in on themselves, bringing her to ground level. She climbed out and approached Quee.

  “Let me see those.”

  Quee passed them over, and the Adranusian held them in her mirrored fingers. She took a long look at the grid of black-and-white squares on the knuckles.

  “These hands come from a mech model we discontinued after too many of its drivers died in the battle of Siarnaq. The symbols are encrypted instructions that can only be read with lexispecs.”

  “Lexispecs?” Zachary asked.

  “A precursor to the lensicons you wear today,” the Adranusian answered. “Goggles with grid-pattern recognition technology. They’re hard to come by now. They could only identify things that had already been coded for them. Not much use for them anymore.”

  “Do you know where I can find a pair?” Zachary asked.

  “There’s an antique collector a few blocks from here. In the underground at Cyan Circle. He’d be your best bet.”

  The Adranusian returned the hacking hands to Quee, and the four Starbounders-in-training put their protective helmets back on. This time Ryic made sure to tuck in his remaining hoodie string.

  “Thanks,” Zachary said.

  The group exited and made the short walk to a staircase leading down to the Cyan Circle metro stop. Upon reaching the underground platform, Zachary removed his helmet again, trying to get a better look at the row of kiosks and small shops set up along one wall. One in particular caught his attention: a cluttered storefront with knickknacks filling the window. This had to be the antique shop. He started toward it.

  Just then, a burlap bag was pulled over his head.

  Zachary began to kick and thrash, swinging at his unseen attacker. His arms were gripped tightly and pulled behind his back. He felt the circulation drain from his wrists as they were bound with cable tie.

  “Get off me!” Zachary heard Kaylee cry. Her voice was muffled, and from the ensuing sounds of struggle, he guessed that she, Ryic, and Quee had all been hooded and bound, too.

  A blow to the back of Zachary’s knees dropped him to the ground. His chest slammed into the tile floor of the underground as the muzzle of a weapon was pressed into his spine. Zachary’s assailant moved in close to his ear. Through the mesh of the bag, he could feel the warm, rancid breath of his captor, who whispered, “Who else have you told?”

  “I don’t know anything!”

  “That’s not the question I asked,” the baritone voice wheezed back. “The symbols on your arm. Who have you told?”

  “No one!”

  Zachary heard the unmistak
able hum of a sonic crossbow being charged.

  He only had a second to brace himself for the end. A blast was fired. But somehow, miraculously, Zachary was still alive.

  Three more shots followed in rapid succession. A moment later, the bag was ripped off Zachary’s head.

  Arg-Nik-Vo was standing over him with a sonic crossbow faintly glowing in his hand. He used a razor-sharp blade on his forearm to cut through the cable tie binding Zachary’s wrists. “Come with me now.” Something told Zachary that Arg-Nik-Vo was more than just your average engineer.

  As he stood up, Zachary looked over to see the creature that had attacked him lying lifeless on the metro platform. He was suited up, but his helmet’s visor had slid open, revealing a flat-faced humanoid with green skin and orange tusks.

  By the time Zachary had brushed himself off and processed how close he’d come to dying, Arg-Nik-Vo had freed Ryic, Kaylee, and Quee. Three other bodies littered the ground.

  “Basqalich bounty hunters.” Arg-Nik-Vo turned to Zachary. “Your parents asked me to keep an extra close eye on you, and I guess now I see why. Mind telling me what you were doing down here?”

  “Would you believe it if I told you we took a wrong turn?”

  The Skyterium was its usual hub of activity in the hour before lights-out. Starbounders from every SQ were scattered about, some looking up at the images displayed on the enormous telescopic lens that acted as the building’s rooftop, others snacking and socializing, less interested in the astronomical phenomena above them.

  Zachary, Kaylee, Ryic, and Quee were part of the latter group, noshing on buttered popcorn and soft pretzels as they huddled in a corner booth around their Indigo 8–issued tablets. Kaylee’s pet vreek, Sputnik, slurped unpopped kernels out of the palm of her hand.

  It had been less than twenty-four hours since the Lightwings had returned from their field trip to Adranus. Arg-Nik-Vo never said anything about Zachary and his friends’ little escapade, even when an Indigo 8 chaperone had asked point-blank where they’d been. And Zachary stuck to his story that they had been separated from the group and gotten lost. They never had a chance to check out the antique shop, either, but given the possibility that the Exo-Shell employee had set them up, the odds were good that the store never had lexispecs to begin with.

  “Professor Olari wanted me to be able to decipher the message on my arm,” Zachary said now. “He must have known that the only way to do that was with a pair of lexispecs. Maybe he left one behind.”

  “His office has been packed up and put into storage,” Quee said. “If he had a pair, that’s where we’d find them.”

  “Aren’t the storage units on a restricted level of the Ulam?” Ryic asked. The others all nodded, as if this was no big deal. “Please tell me you’re not thinking about breaking into Olari’s unit.”

  Quee inputted several touch commands on the surface of her tablet and suddenly all four of their handheld computers were synched to display the Ulam’s floor plan.

  “Have I ever mentioned how glad I am you’re on our side?” Zachary asked.

  “This’ll be easy if we go after lights-out,” Kaylee said after examining the floor plan. “RA patrol ends at midnight. Then it’s just the aux-bots.”

  “And they won’t be a problem,” Quee said. “They’re just machines. They’ll be putty in my hands. But the locks on the storage units aren’t computerized. They’re reinforced padlocks.”

  “Then we’ll have to get in the old-fashioned way,” Kaylee said.

  “What’s that?” Ryic asked.

  “Ion frost cannon,” Kaylee replied.

  “Just how the bank robbers from the 1930s did it,” Zachary said drily. Ryic gave him a blank stare.

  Zachary spied Director Madsen approaching.

  “Behind you,” Zachary muttered, clearing his throat.

  Quee tapped the display on her tablet and all four screens switched from the incriminating maps to their weekly itinerary. Even Sputnik tried to look casual.

  “Good evening, Lightwings,” Madsen said. “You all look rather serious tonight. Up to anything I should know about?”

  “No, sir,” Kaylee replied. “Just reviewing our schedules.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Madsen seemed less than convinced. “The four of you have become quite inseparable since your little adventure a few weeks ago. And now I hear you broke off from the field trip yesterday?”

  “Saving the outerverse is a pretty serious bonding experience,” Zachary said.

  “Well, don’t cut yourself off from the rest of your SQs,” Madsen said. “You might have experienced something they haven’t, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have plenty to offer.”

  Zachary wasn’t so sure about that.

  Madsen continued on, moving over to a trio of Darkspeeders who were playing a friendly game of hover dice.

  “Attention, all Starbounders,” Cerebella’s voice called over the PA system. “The Indigo Starbounder Games SQ captains have been chosen. You will lead your fellow Earth-based trainees against all the other Starbounder camps in the outerverse for a chance to claim the priceless Indigo Diamond trophy.”

  The far wall of the Skyterium lit up with a list of names. Everyone stopped what they were doing and hurried over to look—everyone but Zachary and his friends, that is. There was a whole lot of chatter, and then Apollo was marching past their booth.

  “I’ve made my first official decision as Lightwing boys’ captain,” he said, smirking like a proud peacock. “I know who the towel boy is going to be.”

  He gave Zachary a playful punch in the arm that was clearly meant to leave a bruise then strutted off. Zachary stepped out from behind the table and pulled his retracted warp glove out of his pocket, activating it. The green-and-silver metal instantly extended down to his elbow and he reached his hand through a hole in space, pushing Apollo to the floor.

  “Then I guess you won’t mind me wiping the floor with your face.”

  Apparently Apollo was better at dishing out insults than taking them. He charged at Zachary with his head lowered, tackling him. The two tussled, trading blows. Other Starbounders formed a circle around them, the show on the ground far more entertaining than the one playing across the glass roof.

  Ryic and a red-haired Lightwing named Chuck ran over and pulled Zachary and Apollo apart. As they cooled off, the mob of Starbounders dispersed, disappointed.

  “He’s not worth getting freighter duty over,” Ryic said to Zachary.

  “You need your Silly Putty buddy to protect you?” Apollo taunted. “This isn’t finished.” He pushed Chuck off and stormed away.

  “Maybe we can petition for a recall,” Quee said.

  “We’ve got bigger things to worry about,” Zachary replied, stroking the spot on his arm where the branded symbols were hidden beneath his sleeve. “Twelve thirty tonight. We meet at the equipment shed.”

  Zachary lay awake in his hyperbolic sleeping pod, eyeing the translucent digital wall clock. He’d been counting down the minutes since lights-out. Just a few more and it would be time. Only two Lightwing boys had attempted to sneak out of the sleeping quarters since the beginning of the year. Kiev Petrovich made it only a few steps before he got busted by the RA on patrol. Rodney Hirsch had fared slightly better, steering clear of Cerebella’s walkways and sticking strictly to the woods. The sole reason he got caught was that the Lightwing girl he was rendezvousing with had been followed by an aux-bot.

  The clock flicked to 12:25 a.m. and Zachary gave a soft whistle to signal Ryic. The two tiptoed down from their upper bunks and moved quietly across the gray padded floor. Kwan and Derek were asleep in the RA pods closest to the SQ’s six-sided door. Just as the door automatically opened, a voice whispered from behind.

  “Where are you going?” It was Chuck, sitting up in his bed, groggy and half-asleep.

  “You’re dreaming,” Zachary whispered. “We’re not even having this conversation.”

  “Whatever you say.” Chuck’s head hit th
e pillow and he was snoring within seconds.

  Zachary and Ryic continued on, careful to avoid Cerebella’s black glass sidewalk. They hunched low and hurried across the manicured lawns into the woods. The two stumbled through the trees, moving as fast as they could.

  “Zachary, it’s too dark,” Ryic whispered. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “We’re almost there.”

  But Zachary had spoken too soon. Just as they came out of the cluster of trees, they found themselves face-to-face with an aux-bot. Zachary froze, but Ryic wasn’t fast enough. He tripped right into its line of sight. This was it. Just like Kiev and Rodney before them, they’d be another cautionary tale to dissuade Starbounders from sneaking out.

  Then the aux-bot did something unexpected: it turned and kept going.

  “Quee!” Zachary exclaimed under his breath. “What would we do without her?”

  It was only a short distance to the equipment shed, where Zachary could already see Kaylee and Quee waiting in the shadows. Zachary and Ryic hustled over to meet them.

  “We’ve got ten minutes before those aux-bots reboot,” Quee said.

  The four ran over to the front door of the shed and found it unlocked. Kaylee turned the handle and they entered carefully. The inside looked more like a high-tech armory than a place used to store water skis. One wall had a row of photon bows hanging on a rack; another had belts with stun balls affixed to them. And a pair of ion frost cannons—metal hoses attached to handheld, ice-encrusted tanks—rested on the floor.

  Kaylee slipped one of the tanks over her shoulder like a backpack, taking the hose in her hand. Zachary grabbed a belt loaded down with stun balls. Ryic looked at him curiously.

  “Just in case,” Zachary said.

  Quee picked up an aux-bot repair kit, and the group exited as quietly as they’d entered. They traveled under the cover of the woods as far as it would take them before they were forced to make a break across a wide-open field. The Ulam was nearly within reach. They crossed the parking lot, ducked around the reflecting pool with the figure-eight fountain, and hustled up the steps leading to the building’s main doors.