Starbounders Page 4

  “Go!” Zachary’s teammate called. “I can’t keep up.”

  “We’re almost there,” Zachary shouted back.

  But it didn’t matter. A stun ball struck the trainee squarely in the back, tightening every muscle in his body and turning him into a breathing statue. Zachary’s nostrils were invaded by a familiar scent: the smell of burning ozone after a lightning strike.

  Zachary would surely be next. He braced himself even as he ran along the muddy ground, still wet from the storm. Then an arm stretched down from the treetops and grabbed him, pulling him fifteen feet upward. There was only one person at Indigo 8 capable of such a feat.

  “Ryic,” Zachary said, coming face-to-face with his bunkmate.

  Ryic was perched in the tree alongside Kaylee. Both were wearing green jerseys over their shirts. Kaylee immediately launched a trio of stun balls down at Zachary’s pursuers. As each of the balls made contact with its intended target, the three trainees in yellow were immobilized.

  “Thanks,” Zachary said.

  “Don’t thank us,” Kaylee said. “We were using you as lizard bait. We’ve been trying to wipe out the yellow team’s assassins for the last twenty minutes.”

  “You really know how to make a guy feel special, don’t you?” Zachary replied.

  Just then, a loud horn blared, signaling the end of the game. Cerebella’s voice rang out over Indigo 8’s PA system.

  “Today’s Chameleon game has been suspended. This evening’s bonfire will be taking place early. Please remove your jerseys and proceed down to the lake.”

  Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee all exchanged looks.

  “How disappointing,” Ryic said. “We do not get to enjoy competitive sport on Klenarog. We view it as a waste of time to do something whose outcome is so meaningless. But now I see that my people are missing out.”

  Ryic lowered the others to the ground, then swung himself down as well. A pair of trainees wearing purple jerseys ran past them, heading back in the direction of the sleeping quarters.

  “Hey, either of you know what happened?” Kaylee called.

  “Stun ball malfunction,” one of the trainees replied. “Set one of the green team’s jerseys on fire.”

  “But apparently nobody got too badly hurt,” the other added.

  They continued on. Zachary, Kaylee, and Ryic walked through the woods toward the grassy slope between the lake and the Ulam.

  “Well, consider yourself lucky,” Kaylee said to Zachary. “My next stun ball had your name on it.”

  “How do you know I wasn’t going to get you first?” Zachary shot back.

  “I’ve seen your aim on the starchery range. I wasn’t worried.”

  “Can those frail little arms of yours even pull the string on a photon bow?” Zachary asked.

  “I guess there’s only one way to settle this,” Kaylee said. “Another bet. We’ll see whose aim is really better. Besides, I’ve gotten used to the way you fold my shirts.”

  “Oh, it’s on,” Zachary said.

  The two took a turn away from the grassy slope and began heading uphill through the dense forest toward the starchery range.

  “Um, guys,” Ryic said. “That is not the way to the lake.”

  “Come on,” Kaylee said. “We need an official scorekeeper.”

  “Wait. You’re going to sneak onto the starchery range now? Without supervision? That’s a clear violation of campus rules.”

  “If we cut through the woods, no one will even see us,” Kaylee said.

  “You’re welcome to head to the bonfire without us,” Zachary said. “We shouldn’t be too long.”

  Ryic appeared conflicted.

  “Well, I can’t very well let you go without a lookout.” Ryic shook his head. “What is this apparent mind control you’re able to enact on me? Making me do things I normally wouldn’t do?”

  “It’s called peer pressure,” Kaylee said.

  “Well, I don’t like it,” Ryic said.

  After a short walk through the woods, they reached the empty starchery range, which sprawled out in the shadow of the Ulam. Ryic was twisting his head practically in circles to make sure nobody was around to see what they were doing. Zachary and Kaylee approached a long rack and each chose a photon bow—which looked like a regular bow, except the string was glowing. There was no need to put arrows in these bows. Merely pull and release and a beam of superheated light called a photon bolt would shoot forth.

  “First person to tag three targets wins,” Kaylee said matter-of-factly.

  Zachary nodded.

  They each lifted their weapon and prepared to fire. As Zachary’s thumb and forefinger pulled back on the tightened string, he felt it warm up, a flicker of light forming at his fingertips.

  “Ryic, first targets,” Kaylee said.

  Ryic pressed a button on a metal pedestal, and a hundred yards away a robotic arm sent two jet-propelled crystal cubes airborne. They began spiraling randomly through the sky.

  Kaylee released her fingers from the string, and a beam of light shot out, sailing in a perfectly straight line for one of the targets. It looked as if it was going to score a direct hit, but the cube zigged at the last second, avoiding it.

  The heat between Zachary’s fingertips was almost too blistering to withstand. He took a moment longer before he let his photon bolt fly. His beam cruised toward the other target and, unlike Kaylee’s, it made contact with the cube, blasting it into tiny electrified shards.

  “That’s one for me,” Zachary said.

  Ryic pressed the button again, and another pair of crystal cubes were launched into the sky. This time Zachary and Kaylee both successfully tagged their aerial targets, destroying them.

  As the third round commenced, Zachary felt something slimy wiggle up his pants leg. It was cold, wet, and quickly tightening its grip on his skin. He swatted at the lump beneath his pants and a cool, fleshy mass slipped out and hit the ground. Zachary recognized it as one of the sluglike creatures from the Ulam hallway’s wintery terrarium. Before he could hit at it again, it was slithering off.

  “I didn’t know vreeks existed on Earth,” said Ryic. “I thought they were only native to the tundra planets.”

  “They are,” Kaylee said.

  Ryic’s eyes went wide. “We need to stop it!”

  As the creature made a beeline toward the lake, Zachary turned his photon bow and pulled the string.

  “Not like that!” shouted Ryic.

  But it was too late. The beam of light shot out and hit the vreek directly on its back. Instead of killing the creature, the shot split it in half and made two of them, each one growing larger than the first.

  “Vreeks thrive on heat,” Ryic explained. “Extreme temperatures actually multiply them.”

  They watched as the two creatures slimed their way out of sight.

  “Where did it come from?” Kaylee asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ryic said. “But if they make it to the bonfire, there are going to be a lot more of them.”

  Zachary and Kaylee dropped their bows, and the three sprinted back through the woods for the grassy hill that led down to the lake. Even with a killer space slug on the loose, Zachary couldn’t shake the giddy feeling bubbling inside him. The camaraderie, the adventure, even the danger. It was everything he’d hoped Indigo 8 would be.

  The bonfire had already begun when they arrived. Piles of wood and thin copper strips had been stacked at the center of a ring of rocks, and the fire’s otherworldly green color gave everyone around it an emerald glow.

  Most of the Starbounders-in-training were already sitting on stone benches, paper plates loaded with cookout food balanced on their knees. A trail of meat-scented smoke drifted from a row of industrial-sized gas grills. There was also a make-your-own-sundae table with an ice-cream freezer behind it.

  Zachary, Kaylee, and Ryic had reached the outer circle of the bonfire. They looked around frantically but saw no sign of the vreeks anywhere. Zachary spotted Kwan sitting wi
th the Lightwing boys.

  “Kwan,” he called as he hurried toward him.

  “Hey, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

  “I was up at the starchery range,” Zachary said between breaths. “Somehow one of those vreeks from the Ulam terrarium got—”

  “Starchery range?” Kwan asked, cutting him off. “You know you’re not allowed to be there without a trainer.”

  “Listen. There are vreeks coming this way. You have to do something.”

  Just then a trainee with the Indigo 8 infinity sign shaved into the hair on the side of his head pointed down at the ground.

  “Loose vreek!” he yelled as he dived to try and grab it.

  The creature easily slipped through his hands and propelled itself toward the bonfire. The other vreek was squirming its way past a group of third-year girls from the Cometeers SQ.

  “Don’t let them get to the fire,” Ryic shouted.

  Resident advisors and trainees tried to stop them, but the vreeks had already disappeared into the heart of the flames. A moment later, more than a dozen creatures emerged from the fire. The original vreek had been no bigger than a fist, but its mutated siblings each had grown to the size of an enormous crocodile. And there were no burns on their slimy bodies or any other signs of harm from the fire. Quite the opposite: the heat had turned the two slugs into a pack of vicious alien life-forms, stronger, faster, and much more aggressive than before.

  Zachary watched as one of the new vreeks flung itself onto the back of a fleeing Lightwing girl. The force knocked her face-first into the dirt. The vreek was about to bite into the back of her neck when Monica kicked the supersized outerverse beast clear off her.

  Resident advisors—including Kwan and Derek—were now wielding their warp gloves, using them to push slow-moving Starbounders-in-training out of the way of the onslaught of space slugs. Instructor Avendale and a few other trainers dashed out of a nearby equipment shed armed with what looked like high-tech fire extinguishers—metal hoses attached to handheld, frost-encrusted tanks. They sprayed blasts of freezing vapor at a pair of vreeks that were attacking the kitchen staff. Enveloped in the icy mists, the creatures let out high-pitched squeals and quickly slowed to a crawl. After another blast they were frozen solid.

  Zachary turned to see a mucus-oozing vreek barrel past two of the trainers, knocking aside one of the stone benches as if it were made of balsa wood. Its gelatinous feelers seemed to be sampling the air, in hungry pursuit of human flesh. After a prolonged, deliberate sniff, the vreek honed in on Zachary. He wasn’t sure if the creature was still angry from being shot with his photon bow, but it was heading straight for him and Kaylee with what definitely looked like vengeance on its primitive mind.

  “I didn’t shoot you,” Kaylee said, pointing at Zachary. “He did!”

  Ryic stretched his malleable arms to double their length. At first, Zachary thought Ryic was coming to their aid, but then he covered his own head and curled into a ball. His skin suddenly hardened into a rock-solid exoskeleton.

  “Zachary, Kaylee, follow my lead,” Ryic called out.

  “Do I look like an armadillo?” Zachary asked.

  Zachary made a running dive over the cookout table and slid up beside the ice-cream freezer. Kaylee followed behind him, taking cover nearby. Zachary could hear the still-charging vreek coming closer and he could feel his own heart beating faster. He took a breath and reminded himself that he was a Night and he was going to be okay.

  Zachary pulled the cooling hose out from the back of the white tub and pointed its nozzle at the vreek. He sent a blast of freezing air at the monstrous slug, immobilizing it instantly.

  More vreeks remained on the loose, and seeing their mutant siblings incapacitated only made them angrier. One was about to take out its rage on a group of Lightwing boys huddled together, when a hand encased in a warp glove emerged from a black hole in space and grabbed the creature by its tail. With a tug, the slug was pulled into the void, and Zachary watched as the vreek appeared thirty feet away in Derek’s grasp. He attempted to wrestle the thrashing beast to the ground, but the vreek managed to get its mouth around Derek’s other hand and bite down hard. Derek let out a scream, and with good reason. Zachary could see that three of his fingers had been swallowed up in the slug’s maw. But before the vreek could eat more, an older female trainee armed with one of the extinguishers sent a blast of cold at the creature, freezing it in place.

  The last of the vreeks were surrounded by a circle of trainees and resident advisors. Zachary couldn’t see what was happening from where he stood beside the ice-cream freezer, but he let out a deep breath when the shrieking sounds echoing through the air finally stopped. The creatures had been subdued.

  “We only have a few minutes before they thaw,” Instructor Avendale said. “Let’s hurry and get them down to the cargo dock. We’ll load them into the subzero freezer. Whoever’s responsible for this is going to be taking a one-way trip to an asteroid prison.”

  Zachary could see that she was glaring at Professor Olari.

  “You should try some,” Kaylee said.

  Zachary turned to see that she was holding a bowl of ice cream topped with chocolate sauce and whipped cream.

  “Really?” he asked. “During all of that, you decided to make a hot fudge sundae?”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to let perfectly good ice cream go to waste.”

  «FOUR»

  Instructor Taylor, Indigo 8’s galactic-safari guide, was standing at the front of the Ulam’s briefing room. Her audience: thirty Lightwing boys and girls. They were being given one final lesson before departing on their first adventure into the outerverse. Zachary could hardly sleep the night before, and it wasn’t because of all the excitement at the bonfire. He, like every other kid in his SQ, had huge hopes and expectations about this trip.

  Instructor Taylor was showing them how to insert a lensicon, a contact lens with instant image recognition, allowing its user to identify whatever she or he was looking at.

  “Gently rest the lens on your fingertip before placing it in your eye,” she said with a slight Southern drawl.

  Instructor Taylor was joined by two others who’d accompany the Starbounders-in-training into space: Professor Olari, who would be identifying all the wondrous creatures that passed by outside the ship’s viewing pods; and Dr. Carlos Rodrijo, a renowned celestial physicist who would be explaining the principles of spaceflight and galactic folds.

  Zachary pried his lower eyelid open and slid his lensicon over his right eye. Immediately his vision became blurry and he thought maybe he had inserted it incorrectly. He was about to remove it when suddenly his vision cleared and a tiny set of crosshairs appeared in his sightline. Zachary reached out to touch it, but of course it wasn’t there; it was a projection created by the lensicon.

  “Each lens has been programmed with an encyclopedic database of every living and nonliving thing that has been discovered in the universe,” Instructor Taylor said. “To activate it, target an object within the crosshairs and blink twice.”

  Zachary’s eyes scanned the room, and the first object he focused on was a clear mouthpiece resting on a table behind Instructor Taylor. It looked similar to one that would be used for scuba diving, except it wasn’t connected to any tanks. He oriented the tiny crosshairs so they targeted the mouthpiece, and blinked twice. As soon as he did, words appeared to float in midair; a heads-up display of information scrolled beside the mouthpiece.

  * * *

  TERRESTRIAL OBJECT:

  OFF-PLANET BIO REGULATOR

  THIS DEVICE, CREATED FOR OXYGEN-BREATHING LIFE-FORMS, PRODUCES A SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT WHEN INSERTED INTO A SPECIES’ O2 INTAKE HOLE.

  IN ADDITION, IT GENERATES A THIN MAGNETIC REPULSIVE BARRIER AROUND THE USER’S BODY TO PROTECT IT FROM PARTICLE DEBRIS IN THE VACUUM OF SPACE.

  * * *

  A table of contents listing various subheadings followed, including HISTORY, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION, PERFOR
MANCE, and COMPLICATIONS. Zachary turned his head before reading any further. This time his eyes fell on Professor Olari. He blinked twice.

  * * *

  LIFE-FORM:

  CLIPSIAN

  THIS SPECIES HAILS FROM THE RINGED PLANETS OF TARTAROC.

  FUELED BY PHYSIOLOGICAL INTERNAL COMBUSTION, THEIR ENERGY COMES FROM A SUPERHEATED CORE THAT SUSTAINS THEM FOR APPROXIMATELY ONE HUNDRED YEARS WITH NO NEED FOR FOOD, LIGHT, OR CHEMICAL INTAKE. THUS THEY ARE CAPABLE OF SURVIVING IN THE HARSHEST OF CONDITIONS.

  WHILE MOST HAVE BECOME PHILOSOPHERS AND THINKERS, THE MORE AGGRESSIVE WAR TRIBES, UNDER THE COMMAND OF GENERAL NIBIRU, HAVE RAVAGED HUNDREDS OF DEFENSELESS POPULATED PLANETS.

  * * *

  Zachary was about to skip down to a menu subheading titled CONFLICT WITH THE IPDL when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see an imposing man with especially dark eyebrows standing behind him. Ryic and Kaylee were at his side.

  “Mr. Night, come with me,” the man said. He directed his gaze to Kylee and Ryic. “Director Madsen would like to have a word with the three of you.”

  Zachary’s chest tightened. He stood up and joined his friends, and the man ushered them from the briefing room. The other Lightwings were too preoccupied with their lensicons to even notice.

  Zachary, Kaylee, and Ryic kept silent on the walk to Director Madsen’s office. Zachary knew they’d broken the rules by sneaking onto the starchery range, and he feared that some punishment was now coming. He tried to look relaxed, but his shoulders still felt like they were rising up to his ears.

  The man with the eyebrows led them through a series of sloping corridors before arriving at a metal door. It opened, and a figure emerged, his face partially covered by a mask and his arms cloaked in long sleeves and gloves. It was impossible to tell if he was human or not. He passed the group without acknowledging them, and even the man with the eyebrows stepped out of his way.