Starbounders Read online

  The metal door had looked identical to any other, but Zachary was surprised by the room they found inside. The walls had been covered with wood paneling that made it look like the captain’s quarters of an old-fashioned pirate ship. Sitting behind a large oak desk was an older black man with a curly gray goatee. He wore a fleece vest over a white T-shirt and a baseball cap with the Indigo 8 insignia—an infinity symbol with two ringed planets orbiting around it—on the front. A black Labrador lay on the floor beside him.

  “Please,” Director Madsen said, gesturing to the chairs opposite his desk. “Let’s talk about what happened last night. We’re lucky no one was severely hurt. Even Derek escaped just needing a few artificial fingers.”

  Zachary, Kaylee, and Ryic sat down. Zachary had the same queasy feeling he got the time he was called to the principal’s office after a hallway scuffle with a bully.

  “I know you were on the starchery range around the same time those vreeks got loose. Did you see anything suspicious? We know those creatures escaped from the Ulam. Notice anyone in the vicinity of the building?”

  Zachary leaned forward in the hard wooden seat. His fingers nervously played with the deactivated warp glove in his pocket. He cleared his throat before speaking up.

  “No. I felt something on the back of my leg and when I looked down, it was a vreek.”

  “We tried to warn Kwan at the bonfire, but it was too late,” Kaylee added.

  “For that, I applaud you,” Madsen said.

  Zachary exchanged looks with Ryic and Kaylee. Suddenly all that tension that had built up in his shoulders released. His worry was gone.

  “But you broke the rules by trespassing on the starchery range,” Madsen said, eyeing each of them in turn. “Your actions need to be punished. For your misconduct, you all just got yourself custodial duty. You’ll be serving under Captain Wilcox on one of the freight ships heading out today.”

  “Today?” Zachary asked, now feeling angry. “But we leave for our galactic safari in an hour.”

  “Unfortunately you won’t be going on that trip,” Madsen said. “You’ll still get your first spaceflight. Only instead of stargazing and celestial sightseeing, you’ll be mopping up lunar mold.”

  Zachary’s body was twisting inside. He remembered his parents and brother telling him how their first galactic safaris were the most magical experience of their lives. He wanted to snap back with another argument, but he knew it would only make things worse.

  “Look on the bright side. I could have set your punishment on Saturday during the Octocentennial celebration.”

  All of Indigo 8 had been buzzing about this. On Friday, every IPDL officer within 500 million light years would be gathered at Indigo 8 for the feast and ceremony. Except for the Elite Corps Starbounders, like Jacob, whose covert mission would never allow them to leave their posts.

  “Please,” Zachary said. “This isn’t fair. I’ll miss the Octocentennial. I’ll do chores around campus for the rest of the year. Anything to go on that trip.”

  “I’m sorry, son,” Madsen said. “My decision is final. Mr. DiSalvo will take you all down to the freighter. That will be all.”

  The man with the eyebrows stood waiting by the door as Zachary got up from his chair and started to leave. Ryic and Kaylee followed, equally disappointed. Then Zachary stopped and turned back to Madsen.

  “Look, this was my idea,” he said. “Don’t make Ryic and Kaylee lose out, too.”

  “You’re all accountable for your actions,” Madsen said. “So you’ll all be punished equally.”

  Zachary walked out the door with Ryic and Kaylee behind him.

  Instead of taking them back to the briefing room, DiSalvo led them down a side tunnel.

  “Zachary, thanks for trying to cover for us,” Kaylee said.

  “This sucks,” he replied.

  DiSalvo ushered the trio onto a large open platform that shot down hundreds of feet into the bowels of the Ulam. Zachary could feel wind blowing up through his hair and see flashes of each descending floor as they sped down. They passed the infirmary on one, flight simulators hanging from the ceilings on another, and a room the size of a hockey rink filled with nothing but computer mainframes and circuit boards.

  “That’s as close as you’ll ever get to Cerebella,” DiSalvo said, referring to the maze of processors and hard drives.

  Zachary knew that Cerebella pretty much ran Indigo 8, controlling everything from the voice-activated pathways to the gravity modulator in the Qube to the launch portals in the starship hangar. But it hadn’t occurred to him that she was operating from somewhere inside the grounds. She just seemed to exist.

  The platform passed a few more floors before coming to a soft stop. DiSalvo and the three trainees walked through an archway that marked the entrance to an enormous underground space hangar. Whatever anger and frustration Zachary felt after leaving Madsen’s office disappeared when he got his first up-close look at all of the starships docked underground. He didn’t know where to turn first.

  “Check those out,” Kaylee said. “Pitchforks.”

  She was pointing at a row of silver fighter ships shaped like tridents, the ancient three-pronged spears that Poseidon famously wielded. Each ship had a cockpit on top and an upside-down cockpit on the bottom. Zachary blinked twice, and his lensicon began scrolling text, but he was too busy staring at the ships to read about them.

  “Looks a little strange, doesn’t it?” DiSalvo asked. “But in space there is no top or bottom. And you can be attacked from all sides.”

  Just the thought of twirling in space sent a new rush of endorphins pumping through Zachary. As they moved deeper into the hangar, Zachary spied Instructor Taylor, Professor Olari, Dr. Rodrijo, and all the Lightwing boys and girls boarding a spectacular ship shaped like a corkscrew with dozens of clear glass pods, one for each passenger, affixed to the outside.

  “That’s a clairvoyant,” DiSalvo said, pointing to the ship. “It rotates on its axis as it travels through space, making sure its passengers never miss a thing from inside their viewing pods.”

  Seeing the ship was like rubbing salt in the wound for Zachary. What would his family say when they found out he’d gotten freighter duty after just one week at Indigo 8? Jacob would never let him hear the end of it.

  DiSalvo directed them toward the far side of the cavernous room, where a pair of lighted underground runways stretched for what seemed like miles into the darkness. They passed a row of golden ships that were shaped like enormous double-headed battle-axes. These were the pride of the fleet—the top of the line for combat. Workers were busy using rotating diamond wheels to sharpen the blades protruding from the ships’ sides.

  Up ahead, Zachary spotted long robotic arms lifting a massive subzero freezer toward the back of a rectangular space freighter. Its name, Dreadnought Epsilon, was hard to read under the grime and dings from asteroid hits. Crew members were directing aux-bots to badly damaged spots on the ship’s hull for quick repairs before takeoff.

  DiSalvo came to a stop. “This is the dreadnought you’ll be serving your disciplinary duties on,” he said.

  “I’ve seen garbage trucks that look like they could fly better than that,” Kaylee said.

  A ramp descended from the side of the spacecraft, and a man who looked about Zachary’s dad’s age walked up to them. He had tattoos on the backs of his hands and neck. They’d been inked on with neon dyes that gave his skin a colorful glow. His jacket seemed to be made from the leathery skin of some alien beast.

  “So, are these my mop monkeys?” he asked.

  “Star-bound and ready, Captain Wilcox,” DiSalvo replied.

  “Good, ’cause we had a sewage valve burst during our last jump. Whole cabin is covered in lunar mold. There are buckets and mag mops waiting inside.”

  The robotic arms were creaking above them as they tried to get the large subzero freezer into the cargo hold. But instead of making a clean entry, the freezer slammed into the ship’s outer
wall. Zachary could hear the muffled wailing of the captive vreeks inside the freezer.

  “Easy there,” Wilcox shouted to the crew member who was manipulating the arms from a nearby control panel. “Let’s try to keep that freezer secure. I don’t need those vreeks breaking out midflight.”

  Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee continued to stand there.

  “What are you waiting for?” Wilcox snapped. “I’m not rolling out a red carpet.”

  DiSalvo stayed behind on the hangar floor as they boarded the dreadnought. A crew member handed them custodial jumpsuits to put over their cargo pants and Indigo 8 T-shirts. Zachary had been expecting some kind of special spacesuit, but apparently this was all he was going to get.

  Zachary and his friends were standing in a cabin about the size of a three-car garage. There were thin window slits along the sides and a flight deck up front. The massive cargo hold where the vreeks were stored was in the back by the engines. Two additional crew members were already on board making final preparations for departure. One was securing all the open compartments, while the other strapped maintenance tools inside the underbins.

  The crew member who had handed them their jumpsuits pointed them over to three metal buckets, each with what looked like an old-fashioned string mop propped up inside. They were just wondering what exactly to do with them when Wilcox thundered back into the cabin.

  “You’ll have to save the cleaning for later,” he bellowed. “The galactic fold outside Saturn is shifting. We’ve got to leave now or we’ll never make it to the tundra planet on schedule.”

  Wilcox started for the cockpit. Five other crew members—the ones who had been directing the aux-bots and controlling the robotic arms—boarded the dreadnought, joining the others already inside.

  “Everybody harness up,” Wilcox called, strapping himself into the pilot’s seat in the flight deck.

  Zachary looked around and saw the crew members insert themselves into the mechanical webbing on the walls, slipping their arms and legs through the mesh before it automatically tightened, securing them in place. Kaylee harnessed herself in easily, but Ryic was struggling. To Zachary, it felt a lot like getting tangled up in a hammock. As the mesh tightened, Zachary had to wonder how safe he’d really be in an emergency.

  Through the open flight-deck door he could see Wilcox slip off his jacket, flex his fingers, and begin to activate the ship’s holographic display. The dreadnought’s entryway closed like the shutter of a digital camera.

  It’s really happening, Zachary thought as the faint hum of an engine and the dimming rows of interior lights signaled that they were getting closer to takeoff. Through his window slit Zachary could see that the ground engineers outside were wincing from the noise despite their large protective headgear.

  “You’ve done this before, right?” Zachary asked Ryic. “I mean, you had to get to Earth from Klenarog somehow.”

  “Oh, yes. I took a shuttle to the main IPDL hub near the Xero System. Then the other outerverse exchanges and I were brought to Indigo 8 on a freighter not much different from this one.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Delightful,” Ryic said. “Although I did regurgitate my second stomach during takeoff.”

  Zachary tried to move as far away from Ryic as possible, but with the webbing holding him fast, he could only shift a few inches.

  He peered back into the flight deck to watch Wilcox controlling the ship, guiding his hands through the air before him like Zachary’s old music teacher conducting the school orchestra.

  Zachary felt the ship lift off and he looked out his window. They were ten feet up above the ground. The dreadnought lumbered forward before it started picking up speed, passing runway lights that created a strobe effect, giving Zachary the feeling that he was moving in slow motion.

  “Cerebella, initiate the launch portal,” Wilcox said.

  Through the flight-deck window at the front of the ship, Zachary could see they were speeding for a steel wall, and at ever-increasing velocity. A head-on collision seemed imminent. Zachary wanted to call a warning to Wilcox, but it was all happening so fast he couldn’t get the words out. He was bracing himself for impact when a black disc formed, just like the ones Starbounders reached their warp gloves through, only much, much bigger. The dreadnought flew straight into it.

  For a second, it seemed to Zachary as if gravity was pulling him in every direction, like it wanted to tear him apart. He knew he was neither on Earth nor in space, but inside the galactic fold between them. He had been told that the laws of physics stopped taking effect in this place. His body felt like every molecule and atom was suddenly shifting. Unless his vision was playing tricks on him, the ship and his body were rippling like waves in the ocean. But as quickly as all these strange sensations had arrived, they disappeared. Suddenly, Zachary was weightless. They were in space.

  The protective webbing released, allowing him to work his way out of it and float freely through the cabin. Kaylee drifted up beside him. “Hey,” Ryic called. “I’m stuck.” He wriggled and squirmed to get loose, and Kaylee went to help him, but Zachary’s attention was caught by the outside view.

  The ship had emerged in the orbit of Jupiter. His lensicon informed him that they were between Io and Europa, Jupiter’s two largest moons.

  Zachary peered into the blackness. He could see dozens of other moons of Jupiter hanging in space like part of a mobile with no strings. Then in the shadow of Io he spied a massive gyroscopic space station, with two giant concentric rings each spinning on independent axes. The superstructure floated in space, surrounded by a squadron of pitchforks that seemed to protect it. Zachary focused his lensicon and blinked twice.

  * * *

  CELESTIAL OBJECT:

  CALLISTO SPACE STATION

  ALWAYS HIDDEN ON THE DARK SIDE OF JUPITER’S MOON IO, THIS IPDL RESEARCH FACILITY IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON INITIATIVES IN TIME TRAVEL, CLONING, AND SPACE-WIND TURBINES.

  POWERED BY ONE OF ONLY THREE KNOWN PERPETUAL ENERGY GENERATORS, IT SERVES AS A COMMUNICATIONS RELAY FOR IPDL TRANSMISSIONS AND HANDLES ALL DATA STORAGE AND PROCESSING FOR INDIGO 8’S MAINFRAME COMPUTER, CEREBELLA.

  ITS CONCENTRIC SPINNING RINGS SIMULATE EARTH’S GRAVITY TO PERFECT EFFECT, CREATING A NONHAZARDOUS WORK ENVIRONMENT INSIDE.

  * * *

  The Dreadnought Epsilon blasted past the station, dipping toward Saturn, where Wilcox had said the next fold was located. Hovering by the cabin door, Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee each stared silently out through the captain’s windows. It might not have been a galactic safari, but it was still space. And about a billion times more exciting than life in Kingston.

  “Okay, monkeys,” Captain Wilcox called from the flight deck. “You’re not here to be looky-loos. Time to get to work. And I need one of you up here.”

  Ryic and Kaylee both turned to Zachary, none too eager.

  “Go ahead,” Ryic said.

  “How generous of you,” Zachary replied.

  “Actually I was being selfish,” Ryic said. “I have no desire to spend time with Wilcox. In fact, I’m quite intimidated by him.”

  Zachary floated to the flight deck and maneuvered himself inside.

  “These mold spores have even found their way into the underbins,” Wilcox said. “There are rags in the box over there.”

  Zachary pulled open a drawer in the box and retrieved the cleaning supplies. He began wiping down the surface of the storage cases beneath the flight-deck chairs. As he worked, his eyes wandered to the endless expanse that sprawled out before him through the front window. Zachary’s attention moved to the ship’s holographic display, which was projecting an elaborate diagram on the glass. It appeared to be a detailed rendering of the outerverse with colored tubes connecting distant points, not unlike the subway maps he’d seen on a school field trip to DC. A ship icon was heading toward one of the tube entrances. Was it theirs?

  “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.”