Hot Dog landed her Star Runner beside them, and, seconds later, Trevone’s car parked on the other side. Ash’s oversized SR hovered over them.
Benny got out of the car and assessed the damage. There were several dents from the falling rock and debris all over the vehicle’s exteriors, and the tires were caked in dirt mixed with melted rubber.
“You poor baby,” Ash said through the comms as she engaged the towing tractor beam. “Don’t worry. Momma will fix you right up.”
“Sorry,” Benny murmured.
Hot Dog opened her door and jumped out. She looked like her entire body was coursing with electricity.
“That was such a rush,” she said.
Benny turned to Trevone’s car. “Jazz, what’s going on?”
“I have good news and bad news,” Jazz said as she got out, Trevone following her. “Good news is, most everyone is well away from here, on their way back to Ganymede.”
“Most?” Benny asked.
“That’s the bad news. Tull is still fighting the Earth forces. And since his ship is so close . . .” She trailed off.
It took a second for Benny to understand what she was getting at. And then his heart seized. “No.”
“I tried to talk Ricardo out of it,” Trevone said. “But he knows Elijah’s there.” He shook his head. “To be honest, if it weren’t for us needing Jasmine out here, I’d have flown my car up there, too.”
“Don’t tell me they’re going to try to break into Tull’s ship.” Benny shook his head. “How would they even get in? They don’t have a key or anything.”
“No,” Jasmine said. “But they’re driving one of the Earth Space Runners equipped with Dr. Bale’s plasma cannons. They can likely shoot their way inside.”
“Zee!” Vala said, stumbling out of the Chevelle. “Where is he?”
“Oh, no,” Benny murmured. “With Ricardo and Drue.”
“Then we must go after them,” Vala said.
Benny turned to the commander. “You’re injured. Plus, someone’s got to man your ship. What if the Earth forces go after you? What if Tull does?”
“The child is my responsibility,” the commander said.
“Yeah. I get that. And in some ways, all those kids on their way back to your ship are mine.” He paused. “We’ll go after Zee and the others.”
“I would actually feel kind of bad if Drue ended up in Tull’s human zoo,” Hot Dog said. She raised her silver electromagnetic glove in the air. “And this time, we’re prepared at least.”
“We need you on your ship,” Benny said to Vala. “Someone’s got to send word to your homeland about what happened here. The truth.”
Vala was silent for a moment. “Bring him back to me.”
Benny nodded. “I promise.”
“Uh, we should probably hurry if we’re doing this?” Hot Dog said.
“I’ll help us stay out of trouble as best I can,” Jasmine said, holding up Dr. Bale’s alien radar.
The back door of Trevone’s car popped open, and Ramona stumbled out, her complexion green.
“Hate . . . flying . . .” she muttered.
Ash landed her SR on the ground. “Anybody who’s comin’ to the mother ship, hop on in,” she said. “This Chevelle’s ready to go.”
Ramona started for Ash’s car. “Barf . . . bag . . .” she croaked.
“There’s room for one more in here,” Hot Dog said, starting for her Star Runner.
Benny turned to Vala. “We’ll be right back,” he said.
Vala took a long look at him and then nodded.
Jasmine and Trevone got into their Space Runner. Benny bounded over to Hot Dog’s shiny gold vehicle and slid into the passenger seat.
“Buckle up,” she said with a grin, and she pressed holographic buttons on the dash.
In seconds, they were shooting through space, straight toward Commander Tull’s giant ship.
15.
Tull’s ship floated between the immensity of Jupiter and its fire-and-ice moon, Io. Above the orbiting satellite’s surface, Earth forces continued to fight against the commander’s troops. It was impossible for Benny to tell who was winning as Hot Dog’s Star Runner closed in on the asteroid-like mother ship.
“Nice driving back there,” Hot Dog said.
“Nice flying back there,” Benny countered.
“I gotta admit, I was kinda nervous about that whole lava thing.”
Benny sat back in his seat and let out a long breath. “You and me both.”
“I’ve been in touch with Ricardo,” Trevone said over the comms. “He’s landed in the hangar. Kira, Drue, and Zee are with him. It took some convincing, but he’s agreed to wait for us to get there before he goes any farther. As long as we arrive in the next few minutes.”
“Not a problem,” Hot Dog said, pushing a few buttons on the dashboard and speeding them up.
“Jazz,” Benny said. “What’s that alien radar telling you?”
“Quite a few Alpha Maraudi on board,” she said. “Dozens. It looks like they learned from us sneaking on to Vala’s ship and didn’t send all their soldiers out at once. Still, I think they probably lost a lot of people the first time we faced them.”
“Right. We have to be on our guard.” Benny glanced at Hot Dog. “I can’t believe we’re going back to this ship voluntarily.”
“Meh.” She smirked. “You know, it’s probably not the weirdest thing we’ve done.”
As they got closer to Tull’s ship, the damage wreaked by Elijah West’s exploding hyperdrive became more apparent. A chunk of one side was missing, the stone scorched and blackened. Near the center of the blast zone was a hole that looked like it opened up into some sort of chamber.
“That must be where Ricardo shot through,” Benny said.
Hot Dog nodded. “Follow me, Trevone. We’re going in.”
They slowed only slightly as they approached, then squeezed through the gap barely big enough for their car. Inside, they found themselves in a hangar, though it looked smaller than the one they’d been sucked into by a tractor beam last time.
“Must be the lower deck,” Hot Dog said.
“Yeah,” Benny agreed. “But it still feels a little too familiar.”
They parked beside Kira’s Star Runner, Trevone following suit. Ricardo and Kira stood off to one side, looking at the back wall of the room. Drue inspected the New Apollo crest on the front of his father’s stolen Space Runner. Meanwhile, Zee paced back and forth on the other end of the hangar, tentacles flitting about around his head, the red mask still covering most of his face.
“Thanks for waiting,” Benny said as he got out of the Star Runner and approached the others.
Ricardo pointed to Benny’s gold glove. “It seemed smarter for you to get us in than for us to try to shoot our way through this entire ship with the senator’s car.”
“Did you see what happened to him down there?” Drue asked. “There was so much dust . . .” He trailed off.
Benny shook his head. “No. Sorry.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Hot Dog suggested. “He seems like a survivor.”
Drue nodded. “Totally. No way he’d let an alien ambush get the best of him.” He shrugged slowly. “He’s probably on his way back to the Taj now.” And then he grinned, but the space between his eyebrows remained wrinkled with concern.
Zee stepped forward, gesticulating wildly with both his hands and his tentacles. Benny had forgotten that without a collar, there was no way for the alien to talk to them in the depressurized hangar.
“We need to find him a comm or get the environmental systems going,” Jasmine said.
Benny walked over to the hangar wall, trying to clear his mind and think of everything Vala had told him about how the keys worked. On instinct. With determination and decisiveness. He’d done this exact thing before—he just had to do it again.
And so, he didn’t think too hard about it. He walked up to the hole, certain of what he had to do, and placed his glo
ve against the stone wall. He envisioned the gap closing, and slid his palm across the rock in one smooth, defiant motion.
The hole closed up.
Whoa.
“Nice one,” Drue said. “You’ve been practicing.”
Benny held the glove up, staring at it. “Not really . . .”
The environmental systems must have kicked in, because one by one, their force field helmets began to disappear.
Zee pulled off his mask, letting it hang around his neck, and then breathed an accordion sigh. “Finally. This thing is annoying. And nobody could hear me talk.”
“We’re taking you back,” Benny said. “If you got hurt, Vala would never forgive us.”
“I’ll be fine,” Zee said. “This is the first adventure I’ve ever gotten to go on! Vala always makes me stay behind. Plus, I know where the prisoner cells are probably locomotioned!”
“You mean located,” Drue said.
Hot Dog shook her head and groaned.
Benny stared at Zee for a second. “Vala thinks they might have been trying to kill her. That means they probably wouldn’t think twice about doing the same to you.”
“Or taking you as a hostage,” Jasmine suggested. “That would make more sense if Tull is aware that Vala cares for you.”
“I know,” Zee said, a little more quietly than he usually spoke. “I heard everything while I was in the car.” There was a flash of concern on his face, and then, just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone. “Which is why I’m going to help you guys out. I think you call it payback? It’s also why I should get a weapon.” Zee’s lips spread all the way to the back of his head in a smile. “Come on. You’re humans! Don’t you guys have laser pistols or something like that?”
Benny sighed and pulled the electromagnetic glove off his left hand. He held it out to the alien. “Here. It won’t fit your fingers right, but you should still be able to manage if you just hold it like this. There’s a button on the side—”
“I’ve got it,” the alien said, snatching the glove. “The overconfident one showed me earlier.”
Benny looked at Drue, who shrugged.
“What?” he asked. “We had time to kill waiting for you.”
“You gonna be okay without that?” Ricardo asked.
“As long as you guys have my back,” Benny said.
Ricardo nodded.
“I’m getting rough scans of the ship’s interior,” Jasmine said, tapping on her alien radar. “But I have no idea where Elijah might be.”
Zee came up beside her. “Here,” he said, pointing with one of his tentacles. “Our ships don’t normally have places to put prisoners, but we do have rooms where we lock away prescient cargo.”
“Precious,” Drue whispered to himself, smirking, his eyes on the ceiling.
“So,” Jasmine said, “you’re telling me Elijah’s probably in this room a floor down that looks like it’s being guarded by six Alpha Maraudi.”
The alien kid shrugged. “What else would they be guarding?”
Drue’s eyes went wide.
“What?” Benny asked. “You think it might be interstellar treasure instead?”
“No,” Drue said with a grin. “I’m just realizing how much Elijah’s going to owe us for busting him out of alien jail.”
“We’re wasting time,” Kira said. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Ummm,” Jasmine said, looking back and forth between the rear of the hangar and the radar. “Let me see where the hallway would be.”
Zee jogged up to one of the walls and leaned against it. “It’s right here.”
“How do you know?” Hot Dog asked.
“Can’t you see the difference in the stone? It’s a little darker.”
Benny squinted, but it all looked the same to him.
Zee just shook his head. “How do you people get around with only two eyes?”
“Benny,” Ricardo said, pointing to the stone. “You’re up again.”
In a few seconds, Benny had created a hole big enough for them to squeeze through. It wasn’t pretty by any means, but he was getting better at using the key at least. And since they were about to go exploring an alien ship full of enemies, that was more than Benny could have hoped for.
“See,” Zee said once they were all in a hallway made up of smooth, pale blue walls, “aren’t you glad I’m here?”
“Shhh,” Ricardo whispered.
“Oh. Right. We have to be sneakers.”
Benny and Hot Dog both looked at Drue, but he just shrugged.
“That one kinda works,” he said.
“This floor is clear,” Jasmine said. “They must be too focused on the fight outside to realize we snuck aboard.”
“This is probably a storage level,” Zee whispered as they continued. “So there wouldn’t be any soldiers here anyway.”
“Good.” Jasmine tapped on the radar and stepped to the front of the group. “Follow my lead.”
They did, as quietly as they could, all of them constantly checking their backs, peeking through open doorways, and looking cautiously around hallway corners. But Jasmine was right—they didn’t see a single Alpha Maraudi.
Eventually, she stopped them in front of a thick slab of glossy red stone that looked like some sort of doorway.
“There’s a huge chamber here,” Jasmine said. “If we cut through, we can save ourselves some time getting to the stairwell.
“Right,” Benny said, raising his hand to the wall.
Zee grabbed his wrist before he could touch it. “Don’t.” His voice was grave.
“Why not?” Kira asked, stepping closer to him and holding her head high, accentuating the solid foot she had on him.
There was a rumbling sound on the other side of the stone, followed by some sort of low bellow that Benny swore he could feel through the soles of his boots.
“Did Vala tell you that our ship was going to bring some of our plants from home to Earth?” Zee asked. “Well, Tull’s was bringing animals. All sorts of them.”
“Space pets!” Hot Dog whispered excitedly, standing on her toes.
“Maybe somewhere on board,” Zee continued. “But a red door means whatever’s back here is something we don’t want to face.”
Hot Dog’s heels hit the floor again. “Oh.”
“Let’s go the long way,” Trevone said.
“Agreed,” Benny said, lowering his hand.
So they continued. Eventually, they came to a stairwell lined with a glowing banister, which they descended two by two.
“You aliens really love stairs, don’t you?” Drue asked.
“I forget how lazy you humans are,” Zee said.
“Elevators aren’t lazy. They’re efficient.”
“Is that why your dad’s car had massaging seats that got hot when you turned them on?” the alien asked. “Because they’re efficient?”
“You know,” Drue snapped, “you could really stand to learn a thing or two about luxury. You need a week at the Taj.”
“You mean the building with all the holes in it now?”
“Guys,” Ricardo snarled.
“This is the right floor,” Jasmine whispered as they came to the bottom of the stairs. She motioned for them to be quiet and tiptoed to a spot where another hallway connected to the one they stood in. “Just around the corner are six Alpha Maraudi.”
“Well,” Ricardo said, “we’ve got seven gloves between us.”
“Be careful,” Hot Dog said. “Maybe it was just because it was the first time I’d seen an alien, but I remember Tull’s guards and crew being a lot faster and more hard-core than Vala’s.”
“Yeah,” Benny said. “Same.”
“We should come up with a plan,” Trevone said.
“I’ve got an idea,” Zee said.
And before anyone could stop him, Zee grabbed Jasmine’s arm and dragged her out into the hallway. Jasmine yelped, staring back at the others before she was pulled out of sight.
Benny jumped forwa
rd, stopping just short of exposing himself to the guards. Then he peeked around the wall and watched, silently cursing the little alien.
Zee kept pulling Jasmine into a big room that appeared to be empty apart from six masked guards. When they spotted the unlikely pair, their tentacles flexed, bowing out at their sides. Two of them stepped forward, the muscles in their bodies tense. Zee called out to them in the alien language. One of them barked a response. They went back and forth like this for a few seconds before Zee finally groaned.
“Well, that didn’t work,” he said in English.
“What did you say?” Jasmine asked.
“I told them you were a prisoner.”
“And did they believe you?”
Benny watched as two of the guards crouched, their tentacles flashing with bladed tips, ready to pounce.
“No.” Zee said. “They did not.”
“Go!” Benny shouted.
He darted around the corner, the others in tow, all charging into the room. Jasmine and Zee caught the two front aliens with their electromagnetic gloves, but the rest immediately sprang into action. The air was filled with the whiplike sounds of flailing tentacles.
“So much for a plan,” Hot Dog muttered.
“We’re pretty good at winging it,” Drue said.
“Sure,” Benny agreed, raising his fist into the air as one of the Alpha Maraudi soldiers darted straight for him.
It was only then that he remembered he’d given Zee his glove.
“Oh, crap,” he murmured.
The alien guard leaped, two thick tentacles bulging from either side of his head, like lances tipped in shining silver. In seconds, they’d be slicing into Benny.
The guard suddenly shot backward, slamming against the rear wall. Benny looked over and saw Kira Miyamura glaring at the alien. She nodded to Benny, and then picked the guard up off the floor with her glove, holding him in the air.
“Thanks,” Benny said.
In a matter of seconds, all six guards were floating off the floor. After so many horrible encounters with the Alpha Maraudi back at the Taj and before on Tull’s ship, it was almost unthinkable to Benny that this had been so easy.
“What do we do with them?” Jasmine asked. Her face was a mixture of wonder and concern, and her arm began to shake slightly as the guard in her grasp tried to squirm, thin tendrils lashing about around his head.
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