Game of Flames

by Robin Wasserman

  “There is no guy,” Anna reminded him. “There’s just Chris and a bunch of robots.”

  “Still, look at him, just sitting there, taking it. What kind of wimp doesn’t fight back?”

  “The kind who’d rather not blast his own crew with a face full of molten lava?” Siena suggested. The three Omegas exchanged a knowing glance. Colin had restrained himself from blasting their side of the river until they’d made it to shelter in the Clipper—but then he hadn’t waited ten seconds before unleashing his cannon fire. Piloting the Clipper through a hail of fire had been no picnic. One of the fireballs had come within inches of searing off their aft thrusters. Not that Colin had apologized. Colin never apologized.

  At least he had opened up a narrow flight corridor for them through the firestorm. He assured them that as long as they stuck to his instructions, they would avoid getting blown out of the sky. It had worked—just barely.

  “Let’s just get back to the ship,” Anna said.

  “Do you think—” Niko stopped himself.

  “What?” Anna asked.

  “You’re not going to like it,” he warned her.

  Anna was getting pretty used to not liking things. “Spit it out.”

  “Do you think we should stick around here for a bit before heading into orbit?” Niko asked. “Just to make sure the Alphas make it back safe?”

  “They’re not our responsibility,” Anna pointed out.

  “Yeah, but they are the only ones who know where the next element is,” Niko argued. “If the Alphas don’t make it to the next planet, then neither do we.”

  “He has a point,” Siena said.

  Anna hated to agree…but she had to. The Omegas had a ship of their own and an alien of their own, but they didn’t have a route of their own. They had no choice but to follow the Cloud Leopard from one planet to the next. Which meant if Dash Conroy screwed things up for the Alpha team, he screwed things up for everyone.

  “Fine,” Anna grumbled. “We wait.”

  The Clipper carved lazy circles through the clouds, high above the battle raging below. Anna programmed the scanners to latch on to the Cloud Cat’s energy signature. When the shuttle took off—if the shuttle took off—they’d know it.

  “I still can’t believe Chris would send them down to that planet without warning them what they were going to find,” Siena said. There was nothing worse than going into a situation without the right set of facts. What kind of person would put his crewmates in that position? “Do you think Colin’s right? That Chris just let them believe Lord Cain and Lord Garquin were real? That this ‘war’ was anything but a game?”

  “He must have,” Niko said. “What else was he going to say, ‘I built the whole thing myself back before you were born, but don’t ask me any questions about how I managed to do that or why I still look fifteen, because I’m not allowed to tell you. But I swear, there’s a totally good explanation and it has nothing to do with me being an alien’? I think Dash would have seen through that one.”

  “It doesn’t seem right,” Siena said.

  “Face it, Chris is a liar,” Anna said in a hard voice. “Just like Shawn Phillips.” Commander Phillips had pretended to be a nice, friendly guy, but she’d never trusted him. There was too much he refused to tell them. All that talk about classified information, top secret, need-to-know—to Anna, it had sounded a lot like an excuse. A lot like the kind of thing grown-ups said when they didn’t want you asking the wrong questions. They wanted you to keep quiet and follow orders. Anna’s father wasn’t like that. He’d raised her to always ask questions. He expected Anna to do as she was told, but he always explained why. He wasn’t a “because I said so” kind of guy.

  It turned out Shawn Phillips’s dad wasn’t either.

  When a team of commandos had kidnapped Anna and the others on their way back home, Anna hadn’t known what to think. But then Ike Phillips had introduced himself and explained the need for the ambush. It was all Shawn’s fault, he said. Just like everything else.

  “I would have happily approached you more forthrightly,” Ike Phillips told them. “I would have worked with Shawn to make you the offer of a lifetime. But my son is greedy. He wanted you all to himself—and once he had no more use for you, he didn’t like the idea of anyone else stepping in to give you what you want.”

  “And what is it you think we want?” Anna had asked, boldly speaking for the group.

  “I think you want to go into space,” Ike Phillips said. “I think you want to save the planet, and get rich and famous doing it. And if you agree, I’m the man who can make that happen for you.”

  Then Anna had known exactly what to think: YES.

  Just like the Alpha crew, they’d gotten a ship full of wonders and six months of training. Unlike the Alpha crew, they’d been told the truth about their ship and their mission.

  “My son, Shawn, believes in coddling people,” Ike had told them, just before takeoff. “Especially kids. Not me. I don’t believe in treating people differently just because they’re young. I always held my son to the same standards as anyone else. Childhood is no excuse for immaturity. I believed that then, and I believe it now. You four, you claim you’re smart enough and tough enough to pilot my ship across the universe—does that mean I can trust you to be mature? To handle the truth, no matter what it is?”

  Anna, Siena, Niko, and Ravi had nodded. Of course, they would have agreed to anything that would get them on that ship.

  “My son is going to lie to his crew. The Alpha team, ‘best and brightest of the world’s youth.’ ” At that, Ike had laughed cruelly. The crew of the Light Blade liked the sound of that. They laughed too. “But you four? I’m going to tell you the truth.”

  Ike had told them the whole story. How an alien had crash-landed on Earth many decades before. How Ike had saved his life, nursed him back to health, and this alien, Chris, had betrayed him. “Turning my own son against me!” Ike exclaimed, shaking his head in wonder and despair. “Conspiring to force me out of my own program? To force me into exile? After everything I did for him?”

  Shawn simply wasn’t qualified to put together such an important mission, Ike had said. “He’s my son, and of course I love him, but the fate of the planet is at stake. He and Chris are simply incapable of leading Project Alpha. Look at the four crucial mistakes he’s already made!” He pointed in turn to the four Alpha rejects. Each of them shone under his gaze. Each of them thought, Yes, Shawn Phillips made a huge mistake not picking me.

  Ike Phillips had given them a chance. Ike Phillips had given them the Light Blade. He’d given them his trust, by telling the truth about the Light Blade’s alien technology. And he’d given them Colin.

  Sometimes, Anna wished she could give that particular gift back.

  Carly strummed her guitar, picking out the melody of an old Beatles song that made her think of home. It felt a little strange to be playing here, on the navigation deck. But there was no one to hear her but Rocket. STEAM was off puttering around in the galley, directing the ZRKs on a big welcome-home meal for the crew. “Of course they’re coming home!” the robot had told Carly. “You gotta have faith, yes sir, you do!”

  Carly was glad at least one of them had it. Maybe STEAM could have enough for the both of them.

  She didn’t ask STEAM if he’d known Chris was an alien. After all, Chris was the one who’d designed the robot. Which meant either they could both be trusted—or neither of them could.

  After Dash cut off communication with the ship, Chris had locked himself away in his quarters. Carly didn’t know what he was doing in there. She tried not to worry about it.

  She let herself sink into the music, and the memories it played through her mind. Her father, adjusting her fingers on the frets and showing her how to hold the pick. Her little sisters, begging her to play some J-pop or Taylor Swift so they could sing along. Her mother, rubbing lotion onto Carly’s hands, fussing over the calluses that her father said were the sign of a true m
usician. He’d been a musician himself once, and he’d put a guitar in Carly’s hands before she was old enough to walk. He liked to say that her first words were the lyrics to “Hey Jude,” and she could never be sure he was joking.

  Carly hadn’t spoken to her family since she’d said good-bye to them, back on Base Ten. They sent videos sometimes, but seeing her mother grinning and waving, seeing her father cook her favorite meals, seeing her sisters playing laser-pointer tag with the cat…it was almost worse than not seeing them at all.

  The guitar usually calmed her, but now it was no use. The familiar melody only reminded her of how alone she was in the stars, alone on this ship.

  Alone except for Chris.

  There was a knock on the wall behind her. Carly set down the guitar and turned. Chris stood before the tube portal. “May I join you?” he said.

  “You can do whatever you want,” Carly said, and they both knew it was true.

  He took a seat beside her at the controls. “Any word?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  She didn’t know how she was supposed to act. Carly knew all about aliens—at least, the fictional kind. It’s not like you took a class on aliens in school, shoved in there between algebra and gym. Carly knew about Thor and E.T. and all the weird creatures in Star Wars. She knew about alien parasites that devoured you from the inside out; she knew about alien invaders, whether they were two-headed or elephant-shaped or carnivorous plants. She knew some aliens came to Earth eager for conquest, while others were stranded voyagers from the stars, hoping for a way home. But those were pretend aliens, safely inside a screen or a comic book. Chris was real—and he was right here.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt your playing,” Chris said. “It was lovely.”

  Carly blushed. “Thanks, I guess.”

  “You’re missing home,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Do you ever miss it?”

  “Earth?” Chris said. He shrugged, then gave her a small smile. Carly saw it now, the way his gestures seemed studied, almost artificial. As if he were playing a role. Like he had to think to himself, This is when a human would shrug. This is when a human would smile. “I’m used to long journeys,” he said. “I focus on what comes next, not what I left behind.”

  “No, not Earth,” Carly said. “Home. Your home. Do you miss that?”

  Chris bowed his head. “Oh. My home.”

  The way he said the word home…it was like a long, mournful chord. He didn’t have to say anything else.

  “What’s it like there?” Carly asked.

  “It is a world of water, much like your own,” Chris said, “but our seas are rich green, and their sparkling channels circle the globe. We live on land that curls like a snake through the emerald waters. I wish you could see it, Carly.”

  “Are there people waiting for you?” Carly asked. “Like, do you have parents? Or friends? Or, I don’t know, somebody?”

  Chris nodded. “There are many somebodies,” he said quietly.

  “Do you think they’re worried?”

  “On my world, we come and go. Long passages of time pass between meetings. They would have no reason to expect my speedy return, and yet…”

  There was a long pause.

  “What?” Carly said.

  “I think sometimes, perhaps they miss me,” Chris said. “Perhaps they wonder about me, and worry for my safety. But—” He shook his head, as if trying to shake away the thought. “It’s best not to dwell on those left behind. The friends of yesterday are no more important than the friends of today.”

  “Friends don’t lie to each other,” Carly pointed out. “Especially not about things that really matter.”

  “You’ve never lied to a friend?”

  “No!” Carly said hotly. Then, without even knowing why, she continued, “Well, actually…can I tell you something?” She wasn’t sure why she had the sudden impulse to confess to him. Maybe because he wouldn’t judge her for it. He couldn’t, not now. “I lied about why I wanted to stay on the ship. It was just because I was too chicken to go down to the planet.”

  Chris nodded. He didn’t look surprised. “If you were ‘chicken,’ you wouldn’t be on this mission,” he pointed out. “You’re risking your life just being here.”

  “Maybe, but that’s a risk I know all about,” Carly said. “Once I know everything that might happen, I’m not scared anymore. It’s the stuff I don’t know about….”

  “You thought you would be safer on the Cloud Leopard, where you knew what you were dealing with,” he guessed. “That nothing dangerous or unexpected could happen here.”

  “Yeah.”

  He smiled ruefully. “And how has that worked out for you, trapped on the ship alone with a dangerous extraterrestrial?”

  Carly laughed. She hadn’t thought about it that way. “Not so well, I guess.”

  “I left behind everything I ever knew, in search of new experiences,” Chris said. “Surprises aren’t always bad.”

  “You still think that? Really? Even after crash-landing on Earth and getting stuck millions of miles away from home?”

  Chris nodded. “I will never regret this journey, Carly. I never regret the things I’ve done. Only those I have not.”

  It made a weird kind of sense. As soon as the Cloud Cat dropped out of orbit, Carly had regretted not being on it. And her regret grew and grew every second the crew was out of contact. Afraid or not, she should have been down there with them. Next time, she promised herself, she would be.

  If there was a next time.

  “You won’t tell the others, will you?” she said. “I need them to feel like they can count on me. I know I just gave you a hard time for lying to everyone, but this is different.” She stopped for a second, wondering if that was true. “I mean, it’s personal.”

  “You have my word.” He paused. “Is that worth anything to you anymore?”

  She didn’t answer. For a long time, neither of them spoke.

  “I’m worried about them,” she finally admitted.

  “I wish I could tell you not to. But I fear they may be walking straight into a trap. One of my own making.”

  “Then you have to warn them!” Carly insisted.

  “They don’t want to hear from me,” Chris said. “Dash made that very clear.”

  “You need to try harder. Convince him.” She hesitated. “Like you convinced me.”

  Chris’s smile outshone the Meta Prime sun. “Really?”

  Carly felt a weight drop off her shoulders—it felt good to follow her instincts, to let herself trust him. It felt good to not feel so alone. “Really. I know Dash cut the signal, but I’m guessing you have some way to override that. Don’t you?”

  “Well, now that you mention it…” Chris fingered a few buttons on the comm, then drew closer and spoke into the mike. “Come in, extraction team. This is Lord Garquin. I’d like another chance.”

  —

  “We’re wasting time,” Gabriel complained. “Let’s pick a route and get going!”

  “Give me a second,” Dash said. He had almost decided they should take the chute. He just wanted one more second to make absolutely sure. “I’m—”

  The radio buzzed. “Come in, extraction team. This is Lord Garquin. I’d like another chance.” It was Lord Garquin’s voice, not Chris’s. Dash guessed he shouldn’t be surprised that Chris had the technology to disguise his voice. Or to activate an MTB even when the extraction team had turned it off. He wondered if anything could surprise him anymore.

  He sighed. “Give it up, Chris,” he said into the radio. “I already told you, we don’t need your help.”

  “You don’t need Chris’s help—but you do need Lord Garquin’s help. This is my planet, and you need my guidance if you want to stay alive.”

  “No, we—”

  Piper nudged Dash. “It doesn’t hurt to ask,” she whispered.

  “I have the capacity to track all planeta
ry movement,” Chris said. “Through your remaining MTB, I can see exactly where you are in Cain’s complex, and I need to tell you: you’re about to walk into a trap.”

  “Oh yeah?” Gabriel scowled. “Prove it.”

  “You’re standing on a ledge midway down the wall of Cain’s complex,” Chris said. “Before you lies a long, steep stairwell and a steel chute that will take you to the ground level.”

  “So you can spy on us,” Dash said bitterly. “Is that supposed to make us feel better?”

  “The chute is the most direct route to the surface, the one the sloggers themselves take—”

  “Yes!” Gabriel pumped his fist. “Right again.”

  “—but it will drop you directly into the lava river,” Chris finished. “The sloggers have a hover capacity that allows them to skim across the surface, much like Piper’s air chair. Dash and Gabriel, on the other hand, would be taking quite an unpleasant swim. I strongly recommend you take the stairs.”

  “There’s no reason to think he’s telling us the truth,” Dash pointed out.

  “There’s no reason to think he’s lying,” Piper said.

  “I say this to you as Lord Garquin. You have done me a service, as we agreed, and I would like to honor my pledge to get you safely down to the surface and accomplish your mission as well.”

  It was ridiculous, but somehow thinking of the voice as “Lord Garquin” made it easier to trust. Even though they all knew there was no such person. He felt real—and he hadn’t steered them wrong yet.

  “Stairs?” Dash asked his team. They nodded—Gabriel looking unhappy, but resigned. “Stairs it is.”

  The stairs were steep and long. They seemed to stretch down and down forever. Piper’s air chair skimmed easily along their slope. So did TULIP, though she didn’t seem too happy about it. They tromped down one flight after another—then stopped abruptly.

  “What was that?” Piper asked.

  That was a low rumble, like distant thunder.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Dash said. Though he didn’t quite believe it himself. Had Chris sent them into a trap?

  Then the stairs started to quake beneath them.