Space Runners #4 Read online

  “Assuming he’s chasing us at a Space Runner’s top velocity, we have about ten minutes before he catches up to us.”

  Trevone was still staring at the spot where Elijah’s face had been. “That won’t be a problem. He won’t chase us. Like you said, Benny. He’s the smartest man in the galaxy. He’s run every scenario in his head already, and in every one we end up flying away from the Moon and leaving him behind.”

  “It is difficult for a commander to realize that their crew knows better than they do,” Vala said. “But I believe that, in time, it builds a bond, a mutual respect. At least, that is how I like to think I would react.” She turned away from them and strode up the few stairs nearby, heading toward the throne that looked out through the clear, gemlike wall. “My crew has already retrieved Dr. Bale’s weapon. This will be quick.”

  She pointed a long finger toward the wall as Benny and the others hurried up to her side. Below them, the Moon was a blur until they began to slow down and the vast, pocked expanse of gray came into more focus, the deepest craters like pools of spilled ink. In the distance, Benny could make out the only hint of color for hundreds of miles—the green lake of alien stone, roiling with waves of light, as though the Milky Way had been trapped inside it somehow. As they got closer, he could make out the blips of purple alien ships—half a dozen of them circled around a huge chunk of rock that was separated from the rest of the alien mineral, a cylinder as long as four of the Alpha Maraudi crafts parked end to end. Maybe bigger.

  Dr. Bale’s superweapon. The electromagnetic missile.

  “The stone it’s encased in is just to transport it,” Pito said. “Not what we will imbue with energy.”

  “Right,” Jasmine said. “And we’ll need to reconfigure the weapon itself before we can do that. It will be very delicate work. I don’t think we should start until we have it on the Orion. Otherwise we risk damaging the components. Or worse.”

  Across the room, Ramona made an explosion noise.

  “How long will it take to get it ready?” Benny asked, ignoring her.

  “How much time will it take to get to Calam?” Jasmine countered.

  “A day, I believe,” Pito said. “Perhaps less, depending on what the Orion’s speeds top out at.”

  “We’ll need to go over the schematics for Dr. Bale’s ship very carefully,” Trevone said. “All of us. If we’re going to take it, we need to know that ship inside and out. Every possible entrance, exit, and dead end. There’s a depressurization chamber I believe we can break into from the outside. Ramona and I are looking at how it works and what sensors are connected to it. That’s likely our best point of entry.”

  “I will keep my ship secret from Dr. Bale as we approach,” Vala said. “But I do not know how much longer I will be able to hold it in such a state after you have boarded.”

  “Those giant hyperdrives have to rev up,” Trevone said. “It can’t just jump into hyperspeed immediately.”

  “I can send some of my crew with you, but others I’ll need to reserve,” Vala continued. “They will likely come at us with their weaponized vehicles until they can make the jump. And they have a functioning cannon as well. We’ll need to hold them off as best we can.”

  “But . . . that’s asking a lot of your crew. We’ve seen how powerful those plasma weapons are. And we’re not fighting over the Moon now. If they’re shot down, they’d be spiraling out into open space.”

  “My soldiers have left many they love behind on Calam,” Vala said. “It is for them that they fight, not for me. They would do this without my command. I know it.”

  “It’d be a good distraction, too,” Jasmine continued, raising a hand to her chin. “Honestly, it’d be great if they did attack the mother ship once we were on board. At least that way the ranks inside would thin out.”

  “Too bad we can’t just park in front of it to keep it from speeding off,” Hot Dog said with a grimace.

  “Wait!” Benny said, perking up. “Yes! That’s perfect.”

  Jasmine shook her head. “Spaceships move in every direction,” she said. “They’re not cars back on Earth. We can’t just block the Orion in like that.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “I’m more concerned about getting to the outside hull,” Trevone said. “We can make the mother ship invisible, but we still have to figure out a way to get from here to the hatch. They’ll spot us the minute we send a car out.”

  “It is beyond my power to control rock once it leaves my ship,” Vala said. “And there are none among my crew strong or skilled enough to hide smaller ships in this way.”

  “We’ve got one of Dr. Bale’s stealth drives on the Galaxicle,” Drue suggested.

  “It’s his own tech,” Jasmine said. “He’ll likely be looking for that.”

  Benny scrolled through his memories, thinking of the other times they’d infiltrated ships. But all of those had been Alpha Maraudi. They’d blasted through the hangar to get into Tull’s and they’d used the magnetic disks of the Comet Catcher to latch onto the side of Vala’s before his golden glove opened a hole for them. But that glove was useless now that they were up against a man-made vessel.

  That glove . . .

  A thought sparked in his mind. He stared down at his hands. They couldn’t use the Comet Catcher or the alien tech to get inside, but . . .

  “We don’t need a Space Runner or Maraudi ship to get to the Orion at all,” he said, holding up his electromagnetic glove—the same kind the rest of them were wearing—that they’d used against the Alpha Maraudi.

  “I like that look on your face, Benny,” Drue said. “But what the heck are you talking about?”

  Jasmine seemed to already be catching on, though. “Interesting . . . ,” she said.

  “If we open up a space on the side of Vala’s ship, we can use these to pull ourselves to the Orion,” Benny continued, his voice getting more and more excited as he spoke. “I did something like that back on the Moon when Hot Dog swooped in and rescued me from the courtyard during the battle for the Taj. Double-tapping the button pulls you toward your target. That’s how I basically flew across the courtyard and latched on to the trunk of her car.” He turned to Drue. “You did the same thing in the secret storeroom beneath the fountain, remember?”

  Trevone started to nod. “They wouldn’t be looking for humans on their radars. Or Alpha Maraudi either, for that matter. We’d barely be blips.”

  “You’d have to fly extremely close to the Orion,” Jasmine said to Vala. “Otherwise it would never work. The range on them isn’t infinite. And even then, it’ll be dangerous.”

  The commander’s tentacles tightened around the red ball. “That won’t be a problem.”

  “Okay,” Drue said. “So, imagine we get in there. What do we do then? How do we take control?”

  “Actually,” Trevone said, a bit of a smile finally appearing on his face, “Ramona and I have some ideas about that.”

  In no time, the weapon was loaded onto the mother ship and they were en route to the fourth planet from Earth’s sun. As they flew, Trevone walked them through the schematics of the Orion with painstaking detail, noting the airlock that served as their best way in, one located not too far from the bridge, but, more important, on a maintenance floor where there wouldn’t be many people. He showed them the path they’d take to the bridge and what they would need to do once they got there in order to take control of the ship. Benny tried to cement every word into his brain, to commit the ship’s schematics to his memory with such detail that there would be no surprises once they were inside, though he knew he couldn’t expect that to be true. There were too many variables—the soldiers on the ship, how they would be armed, and what kind of fight they’d put up once they realized they were being infiltrated. Their only real advantage was the element of surprise, which was worth something, at least.

  They didn’t have so much of a plan as a hope that they’d be able to somehow pull this off, but it was technically better than nothin
g.

  “Wait,” Hot Dog said as they stood around the holographic projection. She turned to Vala. “Doesn’t this ship have a tractor beam or something? Because Benny and I definitely got stuck in one of those when we went up against Tull’s asteroid storm.”

  “That’s right,” Benny said. “Could we use that to keep the Orion in place if they try to run away? After they’ve seen the mother ship?”

  Vala tilted her head, the lips that spread halfway around her head twisting in confusion. “Ah,” she said. “I know what you are speaking of. Yes, we have something like that, but if the Orion’s hyperdrives are as powerful as you say, I doubt it will be of any use to us.” She paused. “We could use it to take some of their fighters out of the battle if it comes to that.”

  “Every little bit helps,” Trevone said.

  “And we’ve got, what,” Hot Dog asked, “a coupla minutes before the hyperdrives are powered up enough for them to bolt?”

  “By my calculations, yes.”

  “Brilliant,” Drue said. “The only thing that makes this mission better is knowing we have a clock ticking over our heads.”

  “We could still take the ship even if they do run,” Benny said. “We’ll be inside already.”

  “It’s not an optimal ending,” Jasmine said. “We’d likely lose contact with Vala’s ship if the Orion went into hyperspeed. And we definitely don’t want to end up Dr. Bale’s hostages somewhere out in deep space.”

  “We?” Drue asked. “Jazz, are you planning to put on your adventure boots and take this ship with us?”

  She scrunched her nose. “Well, the last time I went on a mission like this, I don’t think I was super helpful.” She grimaced. “And Zee tried to pretend I was a fake prisoner. But otherwise I’d just be sitting around here hoping you guys succeeded. I can’t do anything with the battery until it’s on the ship. I feel like I wouldn’t be doing my part.”

  “You’re always helpful, Jasmine,” Hot Dog said. “Also, you came up with a way to save a planet, so you totally get a pass if you want one. Take a nap. Treat yourself.”

  “That being said,” Jasmine continued, “I have been looking over the controls for the Orion on my breaks in the lab, and I think I have a pretty good idea of how to run the bridge.”

  “Who are you?” Drue asked. “Like, really. Are you an android?”

  Benny thought about this. “That would be helpful.”

  Trevone turned to Vala. “If something goes wrong, you have to take the weapon and head to Calam yourself. Even if we fail, that sun still needs saving.”

  He didn’t mention that by the time it was saved without the Orion, Earth could possibly be wiped out by Tull’s asteroids and partially re-formed by the Alpha Maraudi already, but Benny figured leaving that out was probably for the best.

  Vala nodded. “Agreed. But we will leave only in the most egregious circumstance.”

  Jasmine let out a long sigh. “Pito can finish the battery without me if you take the long way.” Then she nodded once. “I’ll go with you. With a HoloTek and a radar. I can help call our shots.”

  “We’ll need Ramona running comms and technical interference,” Trevone said. “That will likely be easiest from Vala’s bridge.”

  Benny expected to hear a “woot” or the sound of a can opening from Ramona’s workstation. When neither of those things came, he turned to see her passed out in Griida’s chair, head tilted back and mouth wide open.

  “Ohmigosh,” Hot Dog said. “She does sleep.”

  “I feel like I should take a picture,” Drue said. “Let me grab my datapad.”

  “Ugh. Don’t be a creep.”

  “So, that’s me, Hot Dog, Drue, Jazz, and Trevone on the infiltration team?” Benny asked.

  “Plus three of my finest soldiers,” Vala said. “You’ll likely need them. They’re loyal and strong. They’ll help protect you.”

  Trevone nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me. We’ll be able to move faster and more inconspicuously with a small team.”

  “How long until we’re approaching Mars?” Benny asked.

  Vala tapped the hologram, and a star map appeared. “There are likely six Earth hours before we begin to slow and attempt to detect the Orion,” she said.

  “Perfect. Let’s plan on going over all of this again before we get to that point.”

  An alien voice rang through the bridge as Zee ran into the room. Then he switched to English. “There,” he said. “I’m done. I have definitely paid my hues for sneaking onto Io in the trunk of that human’s car.” He pointed an accusing tentacle at Drue.

  “Dues,” Drue said. “And why are you making it sound like this is my fault?”

  The young Maraudi ignored him. “What’d I miss?”

  “I tasked Zee with preparing rooms for you,” Vala said. “Now that my crew is back and there are so few humans aboard, I figured you might like a little more privacy than the group sleeping tubes. You’ll find supplies and food there as well.”

  “Thanks,” Hot Dog said. “And speaking of which, I didn’t want to admit I could use a break, but if Ramona’s asleep . . .”

  “I should spend a few hours at rest myself,” Vala said. “The stealth approach will take all of my power and concentration.”

  “You’ll be okay, though, right?” Benny asked.

  Vala smiled a little. “Do not fret for me, Benny Love of Earth. I look forward to setting foot on my home world again. Do you remember where Elijah’s room was?”

  Benny nodded.

  “Good,” the commander continued. “You’ll find several more in the same hallway waiting for you. Take your pick.”

  “What’s happening?” Zee asked. “What’s the plan? What am I flying?”

  A tentacle swooped down from Vala’s head and rubbed the alien’s back. “You’ll come with me now, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Zee grunted a little, but eventually followed her. He paused only once, halfway across the bridge, when he turned and surveyed the five humans standing there. He pointed a stubby tentacle at Hot Dog.

  “If I’m not flying myself, I’m riding with that one,” he said, and then he followed Vala to the commander’s private quarters, located off the far side of the bridge.

  “I’m flattered,” Hot Dog said. “I think.”

  Drue laughed beside her, which turned into a yawn. “I guess I could use a little shut-eye. I don’t know how long I’ve been up.”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Jasmine said. “Plus, I think my stomach is going to eat itself.”

  “Good idea,” Benny said. “We need to be at our best tomorrow.”

  “Right behind you,” Trevone said. “I want to call the Taj. Update Elijah and Ricardo. Let them know what’s going down.”

  “You’re okay doing that alone?”

  The older boy nodded. “I prefer it, actually.”

  “All right, then,” Benny said, starting for the hallway that led off the bridge in the opposite direction of Vala’s room. “Let’s nap before we break into a heavily guarded spaceship captained by a crazy guy who has definitely thought about killing us before.”

  “Ugh,” Hot Dog groaned. “Could you not put it that way?”

  Drue sighed as he followed them. “You know what the worst part about this is?” he asked. “I didn’t even get a chance to sleep in a Taj bed when while we were back.”

  15.

  Drue didn’t seem to have any problem falling asleep.

  Or, if he did, he was faking it really well. Benny, on the other hand, lay awake on one of the two stone slabs covered in thickly woven blankets and pillows that Zee had set out for them in a room nestled off the main hallway. The stalactites on the ceiling radiated a warm light throughout the space, which was bare except for some supplies that had been left behind by the EW-SCABers and were now collected and shoved into one corner—packets of food, pouches of water, a few clean space suits.

  Benny lay on the slab, staring at the dim lights above, hal
f wondering if he should use this time to practice with his golden glove and try to turn them off. But then he figured if he ended up melting the rock somehow and coating Drue with it, he’d never live the story down. Instead, he stretched for what felt like the hundredth time. His body was undeniably wiped and sore from running around the Taj and evading Bazers, but his mind wouldn’t rest. When he tried not thinking about everything they had to do when they got to the Orion, he found himself thinking about home instead, worried about what his grandmother and little brothers were doing. If they were safe. If they knew what was going on. If they were racked with concern about him—at least his grandmother would be.

  What would his father have said about him making her worry so much? Or would he understand that Benny had far more pressing weights on his shoulders and be proud of him for the work he’d been doing? Benny wished he knew for sure, wished he could walk to the next room and find him there with answers to all his questions.

  When he tried not to think of them, he remembered the look on Pinky’s face right before he’d had her rebooted. Or the pain in Elijah’s eyes as he stared back at them through the hologram feed. Then his thoughts shot to the Maraudi still on Calam, and its exploding star, and then back to the Orion again. Round and round he went for what seemed like hours, until his mind, finally exhausted, gave way to sleep so suddenly that he didn’t even realize it was happening.

  Benny dreamed of rolling gold hills lit by a sun that rose and set every day, the heat warming his skin. Sand slid between his toes, and the air smelled like cinnamon and hand-me-down car parts.

  He was so lost in the calm simplicity of the dream that it took him a while to realize that someone was actually shaking him, trying to pull him out of the desert and back into the cold reality of the stone room.

  “You humans,” Zee said as he yanked on Benny’s arm. “It’s like trying to wake a Donzer.”

  Benny’s mind suddenly sharpened, understanding where he was. He felt as though he’d been struck by lightning as he shot up, breath short, looking around and trying to shake off the last whispers of sleep.