But from the outside, all he could see was what appeared to be an empty room.
“If he opens the door, the jig is up,” Benny said through their comms. “He’ll walk straight through the hologram.”
“We can’t let him sound any alarm,” Trevone said.
“He will not,” Tooro grunted.
The man stood there, looking inside for what felt like eons before he tilted his head, seemed to shrug, and then disappeared.
“Did . . . that actually work?” Hot Dog asked.
“Benny, the hologram king!” Drue said.
Benny let out a long sigh. “Thanks, Elijah,” he said, tapping the bracelet and returning the nanoprojectors. He was counting in his head, as he was sure the rest of them were. Each second that passed was another footstep the man would be taking down the hallway, until he’d rounded the corner and was out of sight. Finally, when it seemed like the coast should be clear, he looked to Trevone. They nodded to each other.
“Let’s go,” Benny said.
Now that the room was repressurized, the door slid open with the touch of a button, and they found themselves in a short hallway the same gunmetal gray as the outside of the ship, if a little shinier. Long light strips overhead reflected on the glossy floor. Trevone led the way, Benny behind him. The Maraudi soldiers brought up the rear. As they walked—as quietly as possible—they turned off their force field helmets so they could hear their surroundings better, but the only thing Benny could make out was the rubber of their boots as they padded softly but quickly toward their goal.
There were fifty soldiers on the Orion from what they could tell from the logs retrieved from the Taj servers, with an additional twenty or so crew members to maintain the ship. Benny and his friends were fortunate in many ways. The vessel could have held hundreds more people, but few on Earth had been trained in space combat. And, though there was certainly a form of artificial intelligence helping to run the ship, it could not compare in the slightest to the complexity and self-awareness of Pinky. It wasn’t watching them as they rounded a corner and ducked into an access stairwell, beginning their climb up to the floor the bridge was located on.
They paused at the door that would lead them into the main hallway.
“This is where things get tricky,” Trevone reminded them. “The main hallway. We’re going to run into people before we get to the bridge. I would bet as soon as we step outside. It’s basically assured.”
“We’re ready,” Benny said, curling both of his gloved hands into fists. He looked back at the Alpha Maraudi. Their tentacles swung and flexed as though they were itching for the chance to fight.
“The bridge is located at the far end of this hallway,” Jasmine said. “Once inside, I should be able to figure out how to seal the entrances pretty quickly.”
“We’ll get into the hall and sprint,” Trevone said. “Don’t fight unless we have to.” He turned back to the door. “On my mark. Ready . . . go!”
He hit a button on the wall and the door slid open, the eight of them rushing into the wide, open hall at light speed, ready to run, ready to face whatever dangers might await them.
What they found was an empty hallway, not a soul to be seen. At one end was a set of huge sliding double doors.
The bridge.
“Oh,” Drue said. “This is nice.”
Hot Dog shot him a glance.
“Maybe we don’t run?” Trevone said.
Benny nodded. “Stealth mode.”
They started quickly but quietly toward their destination, inching ever closer, their boots making the slightest noises as they hurried through the corridor.
They were a third of the way there when the ship erupted with alarms.
“We’re caught!” Drue shout-whispered.
“Shhh!” Hot Dog warned.
Half the light strips overhead turned red. A blaring, caustic sound began to reverberate off the metal walls every few seconds. Benny heard noise behind them, and the whole group turned to see a flood of soldiers spilling out of a room at the other end of the hall, men and women pulling on gloves and manually deploying force field helmets as they ran.
“The mess hall,” Jasmine whispered.
Only, they weren’t headed toward Benny and the rest of the infiltration team but in the opposite direction. The schematics of the ship were flashing through Benny’s brain. If the soldiers were running that way, they were likely going to . . .
“The hangar,” Benny said. “The mother ship’s been seen!”
“Ramona?” Drue asked.
“Bingo,” she said through the comms. “Vala’s battery’s low. We’re visible. But we’re launching our antivirus ships now.”
“The bridge,” Trevone said. “Go!”
The seven of them turned and found themselves staring at a dozen soldiers. There was a single beat of silence before any of them moved.
“Squad Two,” one of New Apollo soldiers shouted as she reached for the plasma rifle strapped to her back. “Secure the bridge!”
“Move!” Benny shouted.
And they did.
Half the soldiers split from the group, sprinting for the bridge. The Alpha Maraudi, with their long, muscular legs, outpaced Benny and his friends almost immediately, flying down the hallway with astounding agility. The five humans on the infiltration team held out their silver fists and fired as the aliens took point, the magnetic shots disarming several of the New Apollo forces that remained, all trying to arm themselves, not having expected a fight to suddenly appear on their own turf. Drue mashed his finger down on the trigger and raised his arm in the air. The soldier he’d targeted held on tightly to his rifle and flew up with it, almost hitting the high ceiling.
“Not the time to play,” Benny said.
“Who’s playing?” Drue asked. He swung his fist to one side, knocking the man into another soldier that was shaking in the air, mirroring Jasmine’s wobbling arm.
The Alpha Maraudi descended on the group in a swarm of tentacles, knocking the remaining soldiers left and right. Hammers swung into stomachs. Rocks grew around feet. Tooro picked up a soldier with his tentacle and tossed him down the hallway with such force that he ended up sailing over Benny’s group. They were fierce and terrifying and careful—despite who they faced, Vala had charged them not to hurt any of the humans on board. At least, not too much.
Dr. Bale being the exception, if it came to that.
Benny and the others rushed past the brawl, feet carrying them as quickly as possible toward the end of the hallway where the bridge was waiting. Once there, Trevone tapped on a control panel, then looked at the doors expectantly.
Only, nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” Benny asked.
Trevone shook his head as he tried the panel again. “This should work,” he said. “This is the override code.”
“It must be a system lockdown,” Jasmine said.
“Smart upgrade,” Ramona said through their comms. “Old security was max fail.”
“Can you do something?” Hot Dog asked.
“Working on it,” she replied, sounding annoyed.
“Trevone and I will try down here,” Jasmine said, already attempting to pry the cover off one of the terminals.
“Don’t interfere with my work,” Ramona said. “My skillz—”
She was interrupted by some kind of explosion that crackled through their speakers.
“Ramona!” Hot Dog shouted.
“Uh, still computing,” she replied. “But, oy . . . that felt close.”
“We can’t just stand here,” Benny said, turning to Hot Dog. “We have to get this door open.”
“How?” Drue asked. “All we’ve got are our hands, and there’s nothing to grab on to.”
“We have gloves,” Hot Dog said.
She aimed at one of the doors and held down the trigger button. Then she started pulling back, the veins in her neck straining as she tried to force the doors to separate.
“Um, guy
s,” she said through gritted teeth. “A little help here?”
And then all five of them were locked on to the two sliding slabs of metal in a desperate attempt to get them to part.
After a few seconds, something shifted, and a small crack appeared; an inch-wide strip of the bridge came into view.
“That’s it,” Trevone said as he replanted his feet. “Keep pulling.”
“We’re not”—Drue strained—“strong enough!”
It was true. It seemed to Benny like they’d made all the progress they could.
“We don’t have to be,” Jasmine shouted. “Tooro! We need your help!”
Benny looked down the hall. The alien was crouched over a soldier, roaring in his face. He looked back at them.
“She’s right,” Hot Dog said. “We need muscle.”
The Alpha Maraudi warrior was at their side in a handful of bounds. In seconds his massive hands were in the crack they’d opened, muscles flexing against his armor as he pulled the metal apart.
It was the help they needed. The doors gave, and slid open, and the six of them practically exploded onto the bridge.
Benny saw the gold bolt of energy for only a split second as it sailed toward him, shooting over his head.
It hit Tooro in the shoulder, sending the Alpha Maraudi soldier reeling back and falling to the floor in front of the doors, which were already closing again. Locking.
In front of them stood Dr. Austin Bale, a plasma rifle in his hands, his lips curled back in a sneer amid his thick beard.
“You,” he practically spat. “It’s time you were put down once and for all.”
17.
Benny shot his fist forward, smashing his finger down on the silver button.
But nothing happened.
“Oh, I figured that trick out when you disarmed me in the Taj’s garage,” Dr. Bale said. “Do you take me for an idiot who would fall for the same thing twice? We may not have had time to create polymer weapons for all of our soldiers, but I made sure I had one, just in case you insufferable kids showed up again.”
“Crap,” Drue muttered. “Stupid genius.”
Benny took quick stock of the situation. Six soldiers stood behind Dr. Bale. They could be disarmed, but not all at once, and doing so would likely cause the doctor to fire again. They had no way to disarm him, and no hope of all avoiding the blast. Past the soldiers, the bridge was a two-tiered room, the front of which was made up almost entirely of huge, thick windows surrounded by various terminals and floating hologram maps and radars. Outside, Benny saw New Apollo Space Runners and Alpha Maraudi ships firing on each other as they zipped by the Orion. A full-fledged space battle was taking place outside.
On a slightly raised platform opposite the windows, Dr. Bale’s assistants, Todd and Mae, were at the controls that steered the ship and plotted its course. Various other terminals were located throughout the room, but they were mostly unmanned—Benny guessed because the crew had fled through the doors leading to another hallway when they heard that Alpha Maraudi soldiers were storming the place. A ship like this ran virtually automatically anyway. They didn’t need to wait around and see the alien attackers in person.
Benny thought back to their plan and the tiny HoloTek device in his pocket. He needed to get to one of those main terminals, and fast. That’s how they would take control of the ship; its entire server would be under Ramona’s rule if he could just get the tech she’d created to a place where it could infiltrate the Orion’s servers. Then they would be in charge of the hyperdrives, the cannons—even the SRs fighting outside. The crew of the Orion and the New Apollo soldiers would be helpless, forced to bow to their demands. They would have to stand down.
At least, that was their theory.
But first, he’d have to get past the soldiers. And Dr. Bale.
“You don’t understand,” Benny said. “We have a way to save the alien home world. We just need the Orion to get there.” He was careful not to mention that the superweapon was on Vala’s ship. He didn’t want to think of the worst-case scenario—that they’d fail here and the electromagnetic missile would end up in Dr. Bale’s hands because they’d been reckless enough to bring it to him.
Dr. Bale let out a laugh, nodding at Tooro, who groaned on the floor, his shoulder badly burned. “You still want to save these barbarians? After everything you’ve seen, everything they’ve done? You’re more naive than I thought. Do you think they won’t take Earth anyway, even if you succeed in stopping their star? Why have one planet when they could have two?”
“That’s not their plan,” Trevone said.
“You’re idealistic fools. How would you know?”
“Um, we’ve kind of spent the last couple of days living with Vala and some of her crew,” Hot Dog said. “They didn’t even hurt us when we freed them from the underground prison you had them locked in. We talked to the Alpha Maraudi. All you did was shoot at them.”
“Because they want to kill us,” Dr. Bale shouted. “What part of this do you not understand? My science—my weapon—was the only way to stop them.”
“That’s not science,” Jasmine said. “That’s slaughter.”
Benny’s mind was racing, trying to come up with some way, any way to get them out of the jam they’d gotten themselves into. Tooro was down and the other Alpha Maraudi were trapped in the hallway. They couldn’t get the rifle away from Dr. Bale, true, but if they could just distract him somehow, Benny could use the electro glove to get up to the terminals fast.
But what did they have? Talking wasn’t going to do them any good. They’d tried that against Dr. Bale on more than one occasion, and he simply refused to listen to reason.
There was one chance, though—one other thing they’d brought with them.
“Lower that glove,” Dr. Bale said.
Benny did as he was told, not taking his eyes off the man. A plan was forming in his head, but he needed to wait for the perfect moment to move.
“You insolent children,” the doctor continued. “Do you have any idea the cost of what you’ve done? Do you realize how many people will die on Earth now that you’ve buried my weapon?”
“Do you know how many Alpha Maraudi would—” Hot Dog started.
“No,” Benny said, cutting her off. “Let him talk.”
Hot Dog looked at him, half confused and half appalled. But this is what they needed. He’d sat through enough of Dr. Bale’s monologues to know that the man seemed like he could sometimes talk forever. And when he did, he got distracted.
“And you should listen,” Dr. Bale continued. He shook his head. “The most impressive ship ever created, and look at us here, hiding—no, not hiding, waiting for a chance to reclaim what is rightfully ours. I should have taken the Taj years ago.” He began to pace, waving his rifle back and forth. “Should have shown up with New Apollo on Elijah’s doorstep and forced him over to the dark side. I wonder how he would have fared out there. And then I would have had the Taj to use. How many ways could I have prevented our planet’s destruction if I had only—”
Everything happened in just a few seconds. The moment Benny saw the barrel of Dr. Bale’s gun move away from them, he reached into his pocket with his golden-gloved hand. In an instant, he had as many of the alien stones as he could grab in his fingers, and he was pouring every ounce of hope and fear and energy he had into them, not knowing if this was going to work, but also not having time to doubt that it wouldn’t. The glove was suddenly hot and vibrating against his palm, like it might melt right off him as he tossed the rocks forward, his mind shouting a single word.
Grow.
And the rocks did. The alien minerals melded together and exploded in front of them, creating a thick wall three times as tall as Benny and wide enough that he couldn’t see the soldiers anymore.
“Get down,” he shouted to the others as he aimed his electro glove at part of the ceiling above the partition that now separated them from New Apollo. He double-tapped the trigger, and suddenly he
was flying, barely vaulting the top of the new wall as he sailed across the bridge. Beneath him, Dr. Bale fired, chipping away at the alien stone. His friends were on the ground, though—safe, but for only the time being.
He let go of the silver trigger and dropped, plummeting to the raised tier of the bridge. His arm caught Todd, Dr. Bale’s tall, lanky assistant, as he fell, taking them both to the floor. As Benny stood, he pulled the device Ramona had given him from his pocket and reached toward the input dock on the main terminal, the one that Trevone had shown him in the schematics over and over again.
“It’s done,” he said before falling to the floor as Mae, the other assistant, tackled him.
“What are you doing to the doctor’s ship?” she raged. “This is his life’s work!”
“Stop him, Mae!” Todd said, scrambling across the floor to help her. “For the sake of humanity!”
That’s when all the lights went out on the bridge.
For a moment, the only illumination besides the stars came from bursts of silver and gold light from the fighters outside as Benny used the confusion to wriggle free from Mae’s grip and then race down the nearby ramp, back toward his friends, who had scattered in the darkness, hiding behind terminals and shooting their electro gloves, disarming any soldier they could.
One of the soldiers fired a plasma rifle.
“Not in here, you idiots!” Dr. Bale yelled, his face temporarily illuminated by a flash of silver. “Do you want us all to be sucked into space?”
“But you—” the soldier started.
“I trust my aim,” Dr. Bale said, his head darting around the room, trying to spot Benny and his friends.
“Ramona?” Benny asked as he crouched behind a solid railing on the ramp. “What’s happening?”
“System reboot,” Ramona chirped. “Reloading. I’ll be admin soon. Oh, you might lose—”
Benny took a few more steps forward, making for the wall, when he suddenly felt himself leaving the floor, his feet flailing in the air. He was floating up, toward the high ceiling, several other dark silhouettes in the room flying up, too.
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