“Calm down, two eyes,” Zee said. “It wasn’t that much of an insult.”
“You should consider yourself lucky,” Drue said, rubbing the back of his head as he yawned on the stone nearby. “He used his tentacles to pick me up and slam me back down on this stupid slab.”
“Where are we?” Benny asked.
“In the mother ship, you dumb— Oooh, I know what you mean.” Zee grinned. “We’re coming up on Mars. We haven’t slowed down yet, but it’s not too far off. You should probably head to the bridge. I woke up the smart people first. They’re there already.”
“Some of the smart people,” Drue muttered. Then he jumped out of the makeshift bed and started to rummage through the pile of leftover supplies in the corner, eventually holding up two pouches. “What are you feeling, Benny? Tofu jerky with mango slices or a dehydrated breakfast burrito?”
A few minutes later, they found the rest of their friends on the bridge going over the schematics of the Orion once again. The entire group was quiet, almost solemn—even Zee, who stood off to the side watching them plan. Benny was thankful that they had Trevone with them. He wasn’t sure how much longer the Pit Crew member had been up after they’d gone to their handful of rooms, but Trevone definitely had the best understanding of the ship among them.
“How was Elijah?” Benny asked eventually. “And Ricardo.”
Trevone frowned. “About like you’d expect, though I think Elijah is coming around to the idea of us getting this done. He’s just worried, is all. Ricardo said he locked himself in his quarters for an hour after he got back.” He shrugged. “Ricardo’s fine. He was hobbling all over the Taj until Dr. Parsi ran into him in the hallway and threatened to have him confined to a medical capsule. Since then, he’s been making a list of possible resources we can use once we’re back in contact with Earth.”
“Which will hopefully be soon,” Jasmine said. “It’s too bad Ramona isn’t there.”
“Speaking of which,” Trevone continued, “Elijah did get in contact with the American government. Apparently, all the way up to the president. They’ve got troops on standby, but since they aren’t sure where Tull might attack from, they’re staying on Earth for now. Most of the soldiers and weaponized Space Runners they have lying around are stationed in the United States, so the president and everyone seemed to want to keep them there. As if a couple of big asteroids couldn’t trigger an extinction event no matter where they landed on the planet.”
“Could we not use the term extinction event ever again?” Hot Dog asked.
“I agree with Hot Dog on this one,” Drue said.
Trevone shrugged. “Sure. For now, Elijah’s working to update the range of Dr. Bale’s radar to help spot Tull before he gets too close to Earth. I think he’s trying to keep himself busy.”
Ramona made a noise from her workstation that was half a laugh, half a sigh. “E-West should have no probs. That’s level-one upgrade skills.”
“Anyway,” Trevone continued, “he’s on call the second we need anything. We should be able to reach him as long as we’re close to Mars. Afterward . . .”
“Let’s worry about that when we’ve taken the Orion,” Benny said.
Before long, Vala walked over to the hologram and pulled on one of the ribbons of light above it. The image changed to a star map, a blinking dot representing the mother ship traveling closer and closer to the great red planet, and, more important, the two moons that orbited it.
“We’ll begin to slow soon,” she said. “Griida will take control. I’ll need all my concentration to keep the ship unseen until we are beside the Orion. I’ve informed three of my best soldiers of your plans. They’ll serve you well.”
“And I’ll interpret,” Zee said. Then he whispered, “They’re not as good with words as I am.”
Before Benny could protest, Vala pointed to the doorway that led to her quarters. “You’ll find a new breathing mask inside. Quickly, Zee.”
The young alien’s eyes lit up, and he sprinted across the bridge, disappearing out of sight.
Vala flicked a tentacle, and the wall closed behind him.
She made a strange noise after that, like ten people all sighing at once. “He would find a way to go with you. Or he would take one of our ships out while I could not stop him. He is untrained. He does not have the judgment that you all have shown time and again.” Vala raised her gold mask, looking deep into Benny’s eyes. “Benny Love. If my task renders me unconscious again, know that it is my wish that you take Zee with you aboard the Orion when you fly to Calam. He should see his home planet again. Even if it is from far away.”
Benny understood what she was saying, even though he wished he did not. If their battery failed, this could be Zee’s last chance to see home.
He nodded. “Of course.”
“Space knights,” Ramona shouted. “Troll located.”
She tapped on her old datapad, and the hologram in the center of the bridge zoomed in on Phobos and Deimos. The Orion floated between the two moons, perfectly still in the shadow of the red planet looming in the distance. Benny clenched his fists at the sight. The last time he’d seen the giant ship, he’d been on his knees atop the newly formed alien rock on the dark side, staring up at it and making one last-ditch effort to get Dr. Bale to leave them alone, half certain that the man would fire his plasma cannon at any moment and obliterate him, Vala, and Elijah. It was almost laughable to think they’d now flown across the solar system in order to find the ship again.
Benny’s eyes moved to the blinking light that represented them. They were coming up on the moons fast. It wouldn’t be long now.
Vala apparently thought the same thing.
“I must begin soon,” she said, taking one last glance at the doorway she’d closed at the edge of the bridge. She whispered something to herself in the alien language, and then walked toward the solid wall that led to the garden. “Come,” she said. “We must hurry.”
Ramona bounced over to Benny, handing him what looked like a tiny HoloTek. “Don’t drop it,” she said. “Or else we’re fragged.”
Benny stared at the small device, no more than an inch square. It looked so insignificant—but this was how they would take full command of the Orion, something that would open a back door to the ship’s operating systems and allow Ramona, the expert programmer that she was, to slip in and take the reins. He shoved it in his pocket.
“Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”
“Meh, give me a real challenge next time, Benzo,” she said, starting back toward her station. She paused before she sat down, and without looking back at him, shrugged. “And you’re welcome.”
Benny looked to Jasmine. “We’re good?”
She nodded, datapad in hand. “I’ve got the schematics loaded up on my HoloTek and will be tracking all of us using our collars,” she said. “So, you know. In the horrible event that we get split up, keep your space suit on.”
“Good advice in general,” Hot Dog said.
Drue flexed his silver-gloved fingers. “We’re burning daylight here.”
Trevone shook his head. “Terrible choice of words.”
With a wave of a tentacle, the rock wall at the end of the bridge melted, and the infiltration team followed Vala into the giant, humid chamber that housed plants from Calam. It was the same route Benny’s group had taken when they’d snuck on to her ship—the fastest path to the vessel’s edge.
Drue cringed as he inspected the black-spotted leaves of a yellow plant topped with flowers that looked almost like dragonflies, iridescent petals fluttering in the air. “We’re not going to pass the sleeping plant, are we?”
“The somu is located in the far corner, away from any trails,” Vala said as she stepped onto the purple gravel. “You have nothing to fear here.”
She took them out into a hallway that Benny had been through only a few times, leading them to a small room that had been completely emptied. Inside, a dozen flat pieces of rock stuck out from the walls like han
dles, and three Alpha Maraudi soldiers stood at attention, all bulkier than Vala, though not as massive as Tull. Benny recognized the one standing in front, the biggest of the trio—it was the alien with the long single tentacle as thick as Benny’s leg who he’d faced in the underground city.
“This is Tooro,” Vala said, gesturing to him. “He speaks the most English, when he speaks at all. He is the captain of my forces. I have the utmost faith in him.”
Tooro took a heavy step forward, and Benny swallowed hard. Unlike the tunics the other two Alpha Maraudi wore, Tooro’s body was spotted with copper-colored plates not that different from Vala’s gemlike armor. Somehow, the mask over his eyes seemed to look angrier than the blank-faced ones that Benny was used to, the contours deeper, more aggressive.
The alien bent, and Benny almost jumped backward until he realized that this was some kind of bow.
“We will succeed,” Tooro said. His voice was deep and rumbled in Benny’s ears. It was so harmonic that he almost couldn’t understand him, as though he had a Maraudi accent that didn’t translate into Earth languages.
“For Calam,” Benny said as Tooro stood straight again.
The alien nodded.
“The three of them have been told how this will work,” Vala said. “They will follow your instructions.” She reached into a pocket in the tunic under her shining armor. She held her closed fist out to Benny, who offered the palm of his golden glove.
Six alien stones dropped into his hand.
“Do not forget that you wield the power of the Alpha Maraudi yourself now,” the commander said. “We carry these with us, as you have likely noticed. We never know when they will be useful.”
Benny nodded.
“Now, I must get to work myself.” She took one last look at them. “I will see you again soon,” she said. And then she was gone, the doorway closing up with a thick layer of rock behind her.
Tooro and the other two aliens put on the bottom halves of their masks, each with communicators fixed to them. Benny and the others powered on their force field helmets.
All that was left to do was wait. Once they were floating beside the Orion, Ramona would contact them and tell them it was time to move. Until then . . .
“So, uh, do the others have names?” Benny asked.
Tooro pointed first at a soldier whose four tentacles each held thick hammer-like objects and made a noise that could have been a name or could have been a grunt. He pointed to the second—a lithe, tall Alpha Maraudi whose dozens of slender tentacles were tipped in gold blades or held pieces of alien stone. Benny didn’t catch that name, either.
“Great,” he said, and he introduced the members of his crew.
Trevone shifted his weight back and forth on his feet.
“Nervous?” Drue asked.
“Obviously,” Trevone said. “How are you not?”
“Oh, I’m totally freaking out. But I’ve got what some people call the Lincoln cool. We don’t sweat.”
“Nobody calls it that, I guarantee you,” Hot Dog said.
“Can we not talk about being nervous?” Jasmine asked.
“Yeah. I’m trying to focus on not barfing in my helmet.”
Drue made a gagging noise. “Please don’t—”
He stopped as the wall that would lead them out of the ship began to change. The veins of gold light within the sickly green stone flashed and then faded completely until they were rivers of darkness coursing across the rock. Slowly, those rivers overflowed, bleeding into the rest of the wall, seeping across it until there were only islands of the normal stone left. Those, too, were overtaken by the flood, and Benny found himself staring at something impossibly dark, there and not there at the same time. He blinked a few times out of instinct, but it did nothing to help his eyes make sense of what they were seeing.
“How is this possible?” Jasmine asked. “I have so many questions.”
“That is such a cool trick,” Drue whispered.
On the bridge, Vala would be on her throne, using every ounce of strength and focus to keep this up, Griida piloting them into exactly the right position. In the small room where Benny and the others waited, no one moved or said anything. It was all Benny could do to keep breathing normally. His thoughts raced again, as they had when he’d tried to sleep, going back over and over to the Drylands and his family, Calam, and the entire species that was preparing to evacuate.
Benny wasn’t sure how much time passed between when the hull changed and when Ramona finally chirped in his ear.
“We’re there. G-man is deleting the enviro systems in your cell. Get ready to float.”
“Do it,” Benny said.
“Heh,” Ramona snickered. “Wasn’t waiting for a command, Ben-Ben.”
A feeling of weightlessness quickly fell over Benny, and he suddenly realized what the handles in the wall were for. He grabbed on to one, as did the others.
“Here comes the back door,” Ramona said.
In a heartbeat, Vala caused the wall in front of them to melt away. And that’s when Benny saw it, so close that three of them stretched end to end could have touched its hull.
The Orion.
16.
“You’re up,” Benny said, looking to Trevone.
The Pit Crew member nodded, and Benny watched the chest of his space suit rise with a long, deep breath before Trevone held out his left arm, aiming his electromagnetic glove at the side of the Orion. He double-tapped the trigger, and in an instant he was flying out of Vala’s ship, across the cold expanse of space. His fist planted against the side of Dr. Bale’s ship, sticking him there as long as he held his finger on the glove’s side button.
“Ow.” His voice rang through their comms.
“Yeah,” Benny said, remembering the feeling of his hand slamming against the back of Hot Dog’s Space Runner a few days earlier. “Maybe Elijah should’ve thought about knuckle pads or something.”
Trevone got to work immediately, his fingers finding slight indentions in the hull and pulling out sliding sections that eventually formed an X—the handlebar that would manually open a path into the airlock, the room that would be their entry point into the ship. Carefully, Trevone turned the bar, rotating it at least five times, before suddenly a hatch burst open, a wash of smokelike vapor sucked into space as the air from the small room escaped and the area depressurized. Trevone swung with the hatch, his glove mounted to the outside of it. He cried out, legs and free arm flailing for a moment before realizing that he wasn’t going to be flung into space.
“Now!” he shouted as he hung on the side of the door. “Go, go, go.”
Time was of the essence. Inside, a notification would be popping up somewhere, informing a crew member that the outer door had been opened. They would assume it was a sensor malfunction—what else would be the explanation this far from civilization, when no ships had appeared on their radar?—and send a crew member to check on it. The Orion was a new vessel, after all. It was bound to have bugs in its systems.
They had to act fast.
Hot Dog moved first, holding out her free hand to the slimmer Alpha Maraudi soldier. The alien grabbed it tightly, and in a second Hot Dog had let go of the handle on the wall, aimed her electro glove, and shot through the new entrance Trevone had made for them. Drue followed with the hammer soldier.
“Go on ahead,” Benny said to Jasmine. “Get your bearings.”
She nodded, and joined the others in the airlock, yelping as she crossed the space between the two ships.
Tooro’s thick fingers seemed to wrap around Benny’s wrist like tentacles themselves. He grunted.
“Hold on,” Benny said as he let go of the wall handle and held out his silver glove. He pushed the trigger twice, and then they were sailing across the short expanse and through the open airlock door—Tooro pulled through behind him weightlessly. Benny’s fist hit the metal wall at the back of the tiny room as the five others already there tried to cling to the sides, moving themselves out of
the way as best they could. When he looked back, Benny saw that Trevone was already crawling around the hatch and inside. When he was floating along with the others, he found something to hold on to and used his glove again, pushing the button only once this time before wrenching his arm back. The door shut behind them, latching automatically.
Benny took quick stock of the room. It was just as Trevone had shown them in the schematics—barely enough space to hold the eight of them, the kind of place that was only used in an emergency since the normal way of getting on and off the ship was through a hangar. The door to the outside hallway was thick, with a narrow window at the top. Any moment now, someone would swing by and peek through, wondering what was going on inside.
“Go, go, go,” Jasmine said as she tried to peer into the hallway through the small strip of glass in the door.
“Keep your helmets and masks powered up,” Trevone said as he maneuvered to the inner door and tapped on a few buttons at a control station that would start the repressurization process. “We don’t want to get blasted out of this thing without them on if we’re caught.”
Slowly, air began to fill the chamber again, and artificial gravity pulled them to the metal floor. Before Benny knew it, his feet were steady and his body had weight again.
“Your turn, Benny,” Trevone said. “Now!”
He nodded and tapped the silver bracelet on his wrist. It was a gift Elijah West had given him, a ring of nanoprojectors capable of displaying lifelike holograms in seconds. He’d used it before to distract the Pit Crew, to set loose a giant spider on the bridge of Tull’s ship, and even to fool the New Apollo envoy on Io into thinking Commander Vala was with them when she was really hiding in the relative safety of a Space Runner. Now, though, the hologram it projected wasn’t of a person or an animal but a thing: the airlock hatch they’d just come through.
The eight of them huddled behind it. Benny had just enough time to say a prayer to the stars that this worked when there was a face at the door. Benny could barely tell anything about the man who looked in other than that he had wide brown eyes and a crew cut. He searched the inside of the chamber, looking for any sign that something was wrong.
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