They’d done it. The giant battery was complete and already loaded into the firing chamber.
All they had to do now was shoot it into an alien sun and hope for the best.
An hour later, Pinky alerted them that they were close to Calam, and that they’d be falling out of hyperspeed in order to make the final leg of their trek toward the trio of suns. Benny and the others gathered at the front of the bridge, all eager to get a glimpse of the planet they’d heard so much about. The hyperdrives slowed down, and they were brought back to a normal speed, the front window suddenly awash with a galaxy no human had ever laid eyes on.
Benny wasn’t prepared for what he saw.
Calam was a sphere of color that seemed to sparkle below them, as though someone had waxed its entire surface into a glossy sheen. Landmasses of purples and yellows dotted the planet, floating amid oceans of metallic green. Pale blue clouds drifted through the atmosphere, hovering around the golden peaks of mountains that seemed to pierce space itself. Dotting the area immediately around the planet were countless mother ships of varying sizes and shapes, orbiting satellites in a rainbow of hues.
It was absolutely stunning. Benny’s mind boggled, and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to explore those strange lands, to skim a Space Runner or dune buggy over the trails no other person from Earth had ever set foot on—to show this absurd beauty to his family and the rest of the caravan.
“This is . . .” Drue said, and for once he seemed to be at a loss for words.
“A dream,” Hot Dog whispered.
“It’s not bad,” Ramona said behind them.
Trevone just gaped in silence.
“Don’t worry,” Pinky said. “I’m recording everything.”
“Like I could ever forget any of this,” Jasmine said.
Zee’s face pressed against the glass, his tentacles twisting together on the back of his head. “Home,” he said quietly. “I haven’t seen it since way before any of you were born.”
Benny glanced at the alien kid. He’d almost forgotten that despite seeming so young, Zee was actually older than all of them—though exactly how old, he couldn’t say.
Pito sighed deeply. “There is nothing like her,” he said solemnly. “Trust me. I’ve seen wonders throughout this universe in my day. But no world can quite compare to Calam.” His tentacle poked the glass. “There, do you see that spire? An entire city lives within it. That’s where I come from.”
Benny saw what he was talking about—a deep red tower jutting up from the far side of the planet, impossibly high. He swallowed, his brain feeling as though it was going into overload. And without him realizing it, another thought entered his mind:
This is what they would turn Earth into? This is what they could do? He had always understood why the Alpha Maraudi needed his planet, but he’d not really given any thought to how they must have viewed it, how they must have abhorred seeing the toxic air and polluted waters and the Drylands. No wonder they thought that Earth would have been better in their hands.
He felt guilty for a second, as if any of it had been his fault. And he clung to the fact that Vala had told him that she would make sure the Alpha Maraudi helped his planet when Calam was safe.
As if he needed another reason for their mission to be a success.
“Excuse me,” Pito said, producing a gold oval from his tunic pocket similar to the one that displayed holograms Benny had found back on Vala’s ship. “I must call the elders. By now they know what we are doing. I will make sure they do not interfere.”
The view of splendid Calam was short-lived. They were still flying at incredible speeds, and almost as soon as the planet had come into view, it was gone again. Instead, the ship changed angles and the bow pointed toward the three burning balls of light in the distance—a triangular trio of stars blazing a golden orange directly in front of them. The bridge’s windows automatically tinted, allowing Benny to look ahead without blinding himself.
After so long away from their own sun, there was something comforting about seeing another one.
“The middle star is definitely bigger,” Benny said to no one in particular.
“True,” Jasmine said. “But nowhere near the size of ours. They don’t burn as hot, either. Calam thrives because of how close it is to them.”
“I’m not saying it’s better to have three suns,” Zee said, “but it’s completely better to have three suns. You should see them go down at night.”
“Man, I bet that’s so cool looking!” Drue said, seeming genuinely excited about something Zee had to say for maybe the first time since they’d met.
“Save our planet and I’ll show you,” Zee said. “You’ll never want to go back to Earth again.”
Drue laughed. “Try me, little guy.”
Zee grunted.
“How long until we’re in position, Pinky?” Benny asked.
“Give me fifteen minutes,” the AI said, smiling to herself.
“Fifteen minutes until we know if we’ve actually pulled this off,” Hot Dog said quietly. “No big deal.”
Pito joined them again, his mouth drawn down in a wide frown.
“What’s wrong?” Jasmine asked. “What’s that look?”
“It’s nothing,” the alien said. “It’s just that the elders have a severe lack of faith in our ability to stabilize the star, despite my assurances and the data we’ve sent them. Things are beginning to get quite grim on the planet as the evacuation preparations reach their peak. You can imagine that this has been hard on everyone.”
Zee’s tentacles slumped. “I bet they’re scared.”
“This may be a stupid question,” Benny said, “but how do we know if the battery works?”
“Um, not dumb,” Hot Dog said. “Good, smart question.”
“That, at least, is simple,” Pito said, a bit of relief settling on his face. “We’ve installed dozens of scanners, meters, and other measuring systems around the middle sun over the past generation. We’re monitoring every possible measurement. The slightest fluctuations are recorded.”
“The star is constantly growing in infinitesimal amounts,” Jasmine said. “And the Alpha Maraudi are able to measure the star’s expansion at an incredibly precise rate. It’s, quite frankly, ridiculous.”
“So, we just want a number to go down, right?” Drue said.
“We would happily continue to live on Calam if the sun’s expansion simply stopped where it is at this point,” Pito said. “Before the heat rises to a degree that would be cataclysmic. We’ll just need to figure out a way to tap into the satellites reporting the data and—”
“Already on it, P-Man,” Ramona said. “Even porting it to figs we can read. Now this is a good challenge.”
Benny glanced up and saw green ribbons of light—the alien language—floating above one of her HoloTeks. She prodded at the strand with one hand and typed with another.
“You sure you don’t need some actual Maraudi help?” Zee asked.
Ramona growled some sort of word at him.
“Hey!” Zee shouted. “You take that back!”
A series of calculations and measurements appeared on the glass in front of them, some of the numbers steadily counting down while others increased. A few bounced back and forth between two extremes.
“What’s important here, guys?” Benny asked. “This is way too close to math for me.”
“There,” Pito said, raising his tentacle to a number that continued for dozens of places after a decimal, the numerals at the far right side steadily increasing.
“Four, two, six, point . . . a lot,” Hot Dog said. “Okay. What’s that measure?”
“The size of the sun.”
“Oh. Of course.”
There was something odd to Benny about the fact that all of their work so far—all the fights and flights and space they’d traveled—all came down to a single number on the windshield of the Orion. A whole planet’s fate decided by a handful of numerals.
“What
do we do now?” he asked.
“We wait,” Jasmine said. “There’s nothing more we can do.”
“Doesn’t seem like enough,” Hot Dog said.
“Yeah,” Drue said. “I know what you mean.”
“I think we did the best we could,” Benny said. “I hope we did, at least.”
“Thanks,” Zee said.
“Just keep your tentacles crossed, squid boy,” Drue said.
Zee didn’t even respond as his tentacles zigzagged across his back.
They were quiet for what felt like several minutes, until Pinky cleared her throat.
“We’re ready to fire to the coordinates Pito and Ramona provided,” she said. “On your signal.”
Benny glanced up at Trevone and Ramona, still at the main terminals. Trevone nodded to him.
“The AI is right,” Ramona said. “Let’s explode that sun.”
“That’s not what we’re . . .” Trevone started, but he didn’t finish.
“You call it, Benny,” Hot Dog said.
Benny looked around at them. He started to tell Zee that it should be him instead, but Zee’s eyes were all closed and his lips were moving rapidly in some sort of silent chant, like a prayer. So instead, Benny turned to face the troubled star that had caused them so many problems—that continued to hold the fate of two worlds in its inferno depths.
Who was he, a human from a distant galaxy, to stand against it?
But then, if not him and his friends, who else was there?
“Do it, Pinky,” he said.
20.
The battery fired without so much as a sound on the bridge. For some reason, Benny had expected the racket of an old-school space shuttle launching, or the screech of a firework. But there was only silence as a black cylinder shot from the Orion, a hyperdrive on its back blasting it toward the middle sun.
“And just about now . . .” Jasmine said.
“Ah.” Pito nodded. “There.”
The battery shed part of its exterior hull, exposing the Alpha Maraudi rock underneath for only a few seconds before it was too small for Benny to make out anymore. Then he just stood there, staring at the sun, suddenly feeling like there was something more they should do.
Instead, he and the rest of the Orion’s new ragtag crew stared at the number they’d been told to watch. It continued to rise, slowly but steadily—each increase a minuscule creep toward destruction.
“How long do we wait?” Drue eventually asked.
“It should have entered the sun’s core by now,” Jasmine said. “There’s a counter hyperdrive on the other end that will slow it to a halt before burning up.”
“And then?” Hot Dog asked.
Jasmine just shook her head. “If you’ve got any other stars you like to wish on, now would be the time to do that.”
The digits kept increasing.
Years were passing by with each breath Benny took. Every fiber of his being and thought in his mind was yelling at the number continuing to grow larger and larger. He knew that Calam was right behind them—that if the ship swung around, he’d see this vibrant, doomed planet—but all his mind could think about with each unyielding increase was Earth. The Drylands. His caravan. His family. And, even though he hated that this was where his thoughts were going, he wondered how long they could survive on the Orion before their stores ran dry. He thought about how, if they were fast enough and smart enough, they could make it back to Earth and save everyone he knew. Even if they didn’t have anywhere to go. They’d find a way. They had to.
“The numbers aren’t going down,” Zee said. And then he was shouting it. “The numbers aren’t going down! Why not?!”
“Young Zee,” Pito said, wrapping his tentacle around Zee’s shoulder.
But Zee pulled away, and the noise that came out of his mouth was a harmonic howl that felt as though it might cause Benny’s eardrums to burst.
“That can’t be it,” Hot Dog whispered. “We did everything we were supposed to.”
“Maybe we weren’t good enough,” Drue said.
And hearing that, Benny had to close his eyes and pretend, even if it was only for a moment, that all of this had just been a nightmare. That he would wake up any second now and be in bed back in the RV. Or in his suite at the Taj. Or a sleeping tube on Vala’s ship.
Or, even better, in the passenger seat of a dune buggy, his dad at the wheel. Anywhere but standing on the bridge of the Orion facing the horrible truth.
Everything had rested on their shoulders. And they’d failed.
That’s when Jasmine made a noise that sounded like she was about to choke.
But she wasn’t choking. It took a moment for Benny to understand, but the genius who had led them through so much was actually . . . laughing?
Benny looked at her, then followed her gaze back up to the number. At first his brain didn’t register what he was seeing—as though it was too much to hope for.
The measurement had frozen. Stalled. And after a few seconds during which he was certain that no one on the bridge took a breath, it started to decrease.
“You guys see this, too, right?” Drue asked.
“It worked,” Jasmine said. Then she was repeating it. “It worked. It worked!”
“Jazz,” Hot Dog said. “Jazz! You did it!”
A chorus came from Pito’s mouth as he clutched a nearby chair, half falling into it.
“Really?” Zee asked. And then he was shouting in the Maraudi tongue, the music of their language filling the bridge.
Benny and his friends looked at one another for a beat before they were all talking at once, shouting at each other with impossible joy. Benny kept looking back at the number, worried that at any moment it might reverse.
But it didn’t.
He didn’t say anything—couldn’t. Off to one side, Pinky had tears of light on her cheeks. She’d shifted the Orion back around, and now they could see Calam again, an entire world of Alpha Maraudi and plants and animals and Bazers and families and gold and minerals full of light and whatever Triagas and Donzers were and . . . it was all too much. So instead of talking, he found himself laughing, too, just like Jasmine had, almost hysterically. Once the sound started coming out of his mouth, he couldn’t stop it. His chest hurt as he continued, the noise turning into a shout.
And then they were all laughing, all yelling, and Benny’s head felt so light and full of electricity—like his blood had turned into one of Ramona’s energy drinks—that he thought he might actually fall down.
He didn’t, though. Partially because, before he knew it, they were all hugging each other.
As soon as Pito regained what composure he had lost, he immediately got in touch with Calam, Zee by his side and cutting into the conversation every few seconds. The elders of the planet had been watching the same measurements, and Benny could hear the orchestral roar of their astonishment even though Pito was on the other side of the bridge.
When the adrenaline of what they had done was finally starting to fade, all Benny wanted to do was start back toward Earth where he could tell Vala and Elijah the good news. And more important, he could make sure that Tull had heard what had happened.
Somehow, they’d actually done it.
“Jazz, you are a genius,” Benny said. “I know I’ve said that before, but this time I triple mean it.”
“Pito helped so much,” she said. “And Trevone, too.”
“Barely,” the Pit Crew member called down from the raised platform.
“But you helped us find the Orion,” Hot Dog said.
“Give most of that credit to Ramona.”
Ramona finished the rest of a soda and burped.
“I’m gonna be real honest with you guys,” Drue said. “I’m obviously happy things turned out this way. But that was kind of . . . anticlimactic, right?”
“Drue, what are you talking about?” Jasmine asked.
“Seriously.” Hot Dog said. “I’m going to hit you.”
Drue flung his
arms out to his sides. “What? There’s a bomb in there, I expected an explosion or the sun to suddenly shrink!”
“You’ll have to settle for knowing that we saved an alien planet and all the people on it,” Hot Dog said, rolling her eyes.
Zee ran up to them, his tentacles whipping back and forth. “Come to Calam!” he said.
“Huh?” Benny asked, completely caught off guard.
“The elders have invited you,” Pito explained as he made his way across the bridge. “They want to honor you for what you’ve done.” He paused a moment. “They’ve also sent word to every mother ship in our fleet. Calam is safe for the foreseeable future. There is no reason to take Earth.”
“Which means . . .” Hot Dog said.
“Tull’s assault has officially been called off,” Pito said. “He’s been ordered to return his ship to this system.”
A wave of relief washed over Benny, but it was curtailed by the fact that Tull was in another galaxy right now, far away from them.
“It’ll still take a day for him to get that news,” Jasmine said, obviously thinking the same thing as he was.
“Maybe more,” Benny added.
Pito’s lips curled up in what must have been a smile. “For the message to go from Calam to his mother ship, yes. But in these extraordinary circumstances, the elders have employed a seldom-used method. The message is being relayed by mother ships across the universe in a chain. The information should reach him in hours, if not sooner.”
Benny took a deep breath. That was better than a day, certainly, but he still longed to be in contact with Elijah and Earth—to know everything was okay.
“So, uh . . .” Drue said. “About this whole ‘honor the humans’ thing . . .”
“What do y’all think?” Hot Dog asked.
“We can always vote,” Benny said. “Though I’ll tell you right now I’m a no. I would love to see Calam, definitely. But I’m ready to go home.”
“I’m with you,” Trevone said.
Ramona just shrugged.
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