Starbounders Read online

  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.

  «FIVE»

  “You 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.

&
nbsp; 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:

  * * *

  OBJECT:

  HUMAN CARAPACE

  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.

  “You did it!” Ryic said. “We aren’t going to crash.”

  “Not into that planet,” Skold said. “But I can’t make any guarantees about that one.” He pointed to a dusty, yellow-tinged planet with storm clouds moving across its surface.

  Apparently, the electric surge had rebooted the starbox.

  The flight-deck window became functional again, showing a warning that read, MIE WITH SIROCCO IMMINENT. MIE COUNTDOWN, 00:01:05.

  “Everybody, brace for impact,” Skold shouted.

  The dreadnought rocketed into the highest band of Sirocco’s atmosphere, juddering the interior like a wooden roller coaster.

  “Come close,” Ryic said to Zachary and Kaylee.

  They gathered beside him and he stretched out his arms and torso to create a protective barrier around them. The last thing Zachary could see before Ryic covered his view completely was the ship plunging into a golden cloud. Zachary’s teeth were shaking so violently that he feared they’d rattle right out of his head. His face was just inches away from Kaylee’s. He could hear her heavy breath in his ear and then felt her fingers wrap around his, clutching them tightly.

  “Don’t worry,” Zachary tried to reassure her. “We’re going to be okay.”

  Suddenly the turbulence went away and the sensation of gravity returned. Everything was quiet for a moment, as if maybe they had made it out unscathed. And then came the impact.

  Zachary and Kaylee, still within Ryic’s protective shell, were thrown forward, slamming hard into something. The force of the collision broke Ryic’s hold. Zachary’s arm was stabbed by the sharpened edge of a broken object as he tumbled to the ground. Opening his eyes to get his bearings, he saw a crimson stain soaking through the sleeve of his jumpsuit. The sight of his own blood immediately sent a flush of pain shooting through his arm.

  The entire flight-deck window was buried in the sand. Ryic and Kaylee were on the floor nearby, seemingly unhurt. Kur’tuo was clinging to the wall, having dug his arm blades into the metal surface.

  Skold was lying on the ground, with a piece of the metal equipment panel piercing his side like a spear. Zachary rose to his knees and was about to stand when Kur’tuo dropped from the wall and stepped between Zachary and Skold. He gave Zachary a look as if to remind him how easy he would be to kill if he decided to get bold.

  Skold pulled the shard of debris from his body, leaving a large hole that went straight into his center. Still kneeling, Zachary could see plastic and metal beyond the layer of phony flesh. And beyond that, inside a glass case, was something living. All Zachary could make out was a webbed foot and a tail. The crosshairs of his lensicon zeroed in on the creature, but before he could blink twice, Skold grabbed the jacket off Wilcox’s chair and slipped it on, covering the hole.

  “You three,” he said to Zachary, Kaylee, and Ryic. “Up.”

  They slowly got to their feet. Zachary immediately felt off-balance. He realized that the ship was nearly vertical. The only way to get out of the flight deck was to climb up into the main cabin. Skold reached into the equipment panel he had pried open and removed an object that was roughly the size of a box of playing cards. It was solid indigo and had an infinity symbol on it. He pocketed the device and led the way, with Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee behind him. Kur’tuo brought up the rear.

  The dreadnought’s main cabin was a grim scene. Those who hadn’t been injured in the space battle had clearly suffered in the crash. The only beings still conscious were Jahir and his twin.

  “This one’s still breathing.” Jahir pointed to an IPDL guard lying on the ground.

  Suddenly the ship jolted downward. It was sinking into the sand. Skold punched a button to activate the departure ramp. But nothing happened.

  “What good is an emergency exit door if it doesn’t open during emergencies?” Skold demanded of no one in particular.

  He picked up one of the discarded photon cannons and fired at the exit door. The blasts made slow progress, and it felt like the dreadnought was submerging faster.

  “Jahir, Lalique, arm yourselves,” Skold ordered. “We need more firepower.”

  The two emaciated wolven beasts took up sonic crossbows and started firing at the same spot that Skold was blasting. Zachary bent down and reached for a weapon of his own. As his hand gripped one of the crossbows, Kur’tuo moved an arm blade inches away from his throat.

  Zachary tried his best not to flinch, to keep his voice steady in the face of having his windpipe sliced open. “He said we needed more firepower.”

  Kur’tuo looked to Skold, who nodded to let Zachary join the attack. Finally, their combined firepower punctured a hole in the steel door, but the ship had already sunk so deep that sand started pouring inside. Quickly.

  Kur’tuo scurried over and used his arms to saw away at the opening. The alien mantis started to turn the small hole into a larger one. Then, with a couple swift slashes of his blades, the gap became big enough to squeeze through.

  “Go, go,” Skold commanded.

  Weapons still in hand, Kur’tuo, Jahir, and Lalique climbed for the planet’s surface as sand flooded past them. Skold pushed Kaylee out through the hole, using his strength to propel her forward despite the tidal wave of sand crashing in. Ryic was next, and there was no time to waste. The ship’s flight deck was filling up like the bottom of an hourglass.

  Zachary turned back to the unconscious guard, whose body was halfway submerged in sand.

  “What about him?” he asked.

  “Remember what I told you about trying to be the hero,” Skold replied.

  “We can still get him out of here,” Zachary said.

  Zachary dropped the sonic crossbow and moved to the guard’s side. He tried to shake him awake, but the IPDL officer felt cold and lifeless. Zachary put two fingers on his throat and couldn’t find a pulse. Still not ready to give up, Zachary tried to lift the guard from the sand, but Skold grabbed Zachary by the back of his shirt, heaving him up over his shoulder.

  “I need you alive,” he said.

  The al
ien hijacker scooped up a supply canister and vaulted himself out through the hole with Zachary in tow. As Skold swam against the current of sand, the fine particles washed over Zachary, invading his ears, his nose, and his tightly shut eyes. It felt like a thousand tiny daggers were scratching at Zachary’s corneas. He had to squeeze his lips tightly to keep his mouth from filling up, too. Even so, stray grains slipped through, grinding between his teeth. Then Skold pulled himself to the surface. He put Zachary down, and they both hurried to solid footing.

  Kur’tuo, Jahir, and Lalique stood together, watching with perverse delight as the dreadnought disappeared into the ground. More precisely, only the front half of it disappeared. Zachary hadn’t realized that the back end of the space freighter had broken off during the crash and was a quarter of a mile away. Between the back end and the now-sunken nose of the ship were the remnants of the cargo hold. Rubberized crates and the subzero freezer littered the sandy landscape.

  “Where are we?” Jahir asked.

  “In the Desultar Nebula,” Skold replied. “On the planet Sirocco.”

  He reached down and picked up a handful of sand, letting the grains run through his fingers.

  “Carbon flecks and sodium powder,” Skold continued. “It’s a salt planet. Finding water will be impossible. If we’re still stuck here come morning, we’re going be mighty thirsty.”

  “How did you get on our dreadnought?” Ryic asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Skold answered. “We were taken from the Ulam’s detention facility and loaded into an armored transport cube. We were meant to be delivered to an asteroid prison. But lucky for us—or maybe not so lucky—it seems we were mistakenly put on the wrong ship.”

  “Don’t believe anything that comes out of his mouth,” Kaylee said. “There’s a reason he’s in shockles. Or was in them, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry,” Skold said. “I didn’t realize we’d met.”

  “You stole from my father.”

  “You’re going to have to be more specific. I steal from a lot of people.”