After a quick shower, I teased a whole glob of mousse into my curls and sprayed a few spurts of strawberry-scented mist. You never knew who you’d bump into. Not that I’d get any chance to speak with Asteran anytime soon. That goopy metal serum would keep me busy all day. It wouldn’t keep me from thinking up ways to sneak back into his room.
A small voice inside me wondered if Crophaven had rigged the computers to give me a task that would take me away from Asteran. Had Tauren complained? That would explain why little old me, a menial fieldwork assistant, had one of the most important jobs in the biology lab.
I grabbed a soywafer and sneaked from my room. Leo’s portal was solidified, meaning he slept until the last possible second before school, and my parents’ room was empty. They’d both gone to work. After we landed, everyone took on double duties, trying to set up the colony before the ship fell apart. That meant architectural planning for Mom and construction work for Dad.
Their absence was music to my earphones. The last thing I needed was parental units worrying about my job, or worse, contemplating my advantageous pairing with Tauren. I grabbed an orange twice the size of my fist and left Leo to get his last few minutes of sleep.
Three construction workers wearing bright red helmets passed me on my way to Paradise 21’s crystal shores. Now that I’d experienced the world off the ship, the corridors stifled me. How could I have possibly lived all seventeen years of my life imprisoned onboard with deep space all around? The world was a much bigger place, and I felt like a chicken crawling back into the egg from which it hatched every time I crawled inside my sleep pod.
Knowing Asteran lay locked in the med bay kept me from sneaking outdoors. I wanted to stay close to him.
I summoned the nearest elevator and pressed the floor for the science bay, where Commander Crophaven had imprisoned the arachnid survivors. The starburst on my chest burned, and I shivered, picturing their hairy legs and pulsing brain sacks. Boy did this mission force me to confront my fears. Stupid computer.
The portal dematerialized and I stepped off the elevator. This corridor was as silent as deep space. Only scientists with code nine clearance could enter the bay. Lucky me.
I walked past glass walls with people in white lab coats standing in front of microscopes, dissecting blossoms from Paradise 21, and typing on wallscreens. Why they wanted me for this, I had no idea.
Here goes nothing. Maybe if I failed epically, they’d give me an easier job, and I could return to Asteran. I held my arm up to the portal panel and the locator on my wrist accessed the mainframe. The particles dematerialized.
A senior scientist stared at me through her thick-rimmed glasses like I’d shown up in the wrong place. “Your duty here?” Her tight bun of gray hair must have squeezed all of her smiles out for the day. Her name tag read “Susan Catcher”, the most unimaginative name in the whole colony. The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.
“Lyra Bryan reporting, ma’am.”
“Lyra Bryan?” She checked the wallscreen beside her, scrolling down a list of names and tasks with her finger. “Extraction procedures?”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Yup. I mean, yes, that is correct.”
She raised a wiry, black eyebrow and gazed at my chest. “You’re the girl who was hit. The other scientists thought you may have developed a tolerance to their venom, making you the ideal candidate for extraction purposes.”
That was the dumbest idea I’d ever heard. “The arachnids are secured, aren’t they?”
“Yes, yes. But their movements are unpredictable. They’ve managed to slip from the restraints and attack two senior biologists twice in the past week.”
And they were sending me in there with them? Hadn’t I had enough dangerous missions for the rest of my life? “Alone?”
“Yes. The cells are small, and large numbers of people set them off.” Dr. Catcher looked me up and down. “You’re small enough to sneak by without much ado. Come on, I’ll fit you with some body armor.”
Body armor? This day just got better and better. I walked into one of the labs and placed my orange on a lab table, uneaten. Thoughts of arachnids attacking scientists stole my appetite.
Dr. Catcher slipped a heavy vest made from some type of hard nanofiber over my chest. “This will protect you from their spires.”
I wished they’d thought of that before they sent us into the ship for a reconnaissance mission.
Dr. Catcher tightened the straps and secured the back. “We developed armor after assessing the damages to your former crew. Your mission gave us everything we need to devise a suitable defense. Now we seek to further our technology with theirs, and the answer lies in their serum, the same substance they used to build their ship.”
She handed me a needle the size of my arm. “No one has gotten close enough to extract the serum. It only flows while they’re active, so the specimen must be awake, alive, and moving.
“Of course. Putting them to sleep would make it all too easy, right?”
Dr. Catcher turned me toward the portal in the back of the room, ignoring my sarcasm. “Be careful. Their legs are as sharp as blades.”
An image of poor Alcor’s face came to mind, and I blinked it away. His scars were made by babies, not the full-grown beasts they’d captured. One of those had stabbed him through the leg before it had taken him away. Thank the Guide, Nova and Sirius had rescued us before they drained our blood and feasted on our flesh.
I must have looked scared out of my mind, because Dr. Catcher’s face softened. “I’d go in there if I hadn’t sprained my wrist while collecting samples.” She held up her right arm. “I’m not allowed to use it for two weeks. Besides, you’ve been around them before and survived. The computer chose you for a reason, Ms. Bryan. Good luck.”
I only survived because of Nova. But telling Dr. Catcher that would only make me into a whining coward. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She scanned her ID tag, and the portal opened, revealing a wall half a meter thick. I slipped in, remembering how only yesterday I’d slipped into Asteran’s cell. That was totally different. I’d wanted to be there.
The portal sealed behind me and my eyes slowly adjusted to the shadows. Bright light seared their brain sacks, which was why their ship had been so dark and scary, breeding nightmares in my head.
The shadows coalesced into light and dark patches. A silhouette of a long, skinny, hairy leg stuck out from a black mass in the room’s center. Clicks made by its pincer fangs echoed from the back. It knew I visited.
I stepped away and pressed my back to the cold wall. The straps of my protection vest dug into my skin. I gripped the needle like it was a sword.
The leg jerked, but it didn’t move far. Cords wrapped around it, restraining it to the wall. The scientists had tied down each one of the multiple appendages the same way.
Ha! How does it feel to have some of your own medicine, eh?
I stepped forward. The leg extended two meters from the body where four eyes, blacker than the shadows around them, soaked me up like I was some tiny parasite it could crush with one move. It could have if it hadn’t been restrained.
The senior scientist’s words came back to me: they’ve managed to slip from the restraints and attack two senior biologists twice in the past week. Yeah, thanks for the heads up, lady.
A mass of jelly-like innards contained under a thin, veiny membrane pulsed behind the flab of skin where the eyes poked out. Not so pretty, people.
My heart sped out of control and my throat tightened, making it hard to breathe. The starburst on my chest burned like fire, as if my damaged skin could sense their presence and screamed in alarm.
I moved to the right, and the leg shifted along with me. It drew back and shot a stream of metal at my face. I ducked, and the liquid silver hit the wall, hardening into a net. The substance was unlike any metal I’d ever seen, able to shift from a liquid state to a hard shell, net, or pillar in the blink of an eye. Every scientist on the New Dawn must have
wanted to know its secrets.
Which was why I stood there like a lamb lead to slaughter.
Think. The sooner I can extract the metal, the sooner I can get back to Asteran.
A belly of oily dark liquid glistened underneath the fangs, where two halves of the hard carapace joined. I could see why the biologists couldn’t get close enough. The only way to stick the needle in was to go from the bottom up.
Anger rose, obliterating the fear. These callous beasts had taken Asteran from his home and would have taken me and the rest of my team from Paradise 21 as well. I would have never seen my family, and especially Leo, ever again. They had to be stopped, their existence here on Paradise 21 put to an end, before they escaped. They might be cold-hearted, but they weren’t dumb. They’d figure out a way to outsmart the scientists in time. And then, who knew the havoc they could unleash, or how many eggs they could lay in the ship’s ventilation shafts.
If exterminating them meant understanding their metallic serum first, then so be it.
I only had one shot.
Testing the needle, I backed to the wall to get a running head start. My clammy toes curled in my boots. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
Before I could think about it long enough to convince myself otherwise, I ran straight at the hairy beast. Legs jerked toward me, and I ducked out of the way as the blade cut a curl from my head. I hit the floor and slid on my back underneath the brain bug.
The leggy mass writhed over me. The membrane felt slick and squishy under my hands, making my skin squirm. I gagged as I stuck the needle up through the serum pouch. I pulled the plunger handle, extracting the fluid. Silver liquid filled the tube.
Legs slashed at my limbs, but the restraints held them from reaching directly underneath its belly. The cords rattled against the hooks in the wall, and the smell of burnt rubber filled my nose.
Come on, come on. The needle was only half full. How much did they require?
The arachnid lowered itself on top of me, and I kicked at the underside to keep it from smothering my face. The metal hairs underneath its belly cut into the fabric of my uniform. One of the restraints popped, and a back leg curled inward and stabbed. I moved to the right as it slashed my uniform just under my knee. Sticky, wet blood ran down my leg.
“Son of a black hole.” I gritted my teeth against the pain.
I hadn’t sworn out loud like my dad in a long time, but this was warranted. Besides, arachnids didn’t understand English and the scientists listening in had heard worse, I was sure.
The plunger stopped as the tube filled. I pulled the needle out and the liquid metal squirted from the hole onto the front of my armored vest, hardening almost instantly. I stuck the syringe under my belt. Using both arms, I pulled myself from underneath the hideous belly. Hairy legs stabbed at my face, and I rolled quickly to the front of the cell. The portal popped open and medics rushed in. Careful not to get too close to the arachnid, they grabbed my arms and dragged me into the brightness of the lab.
A chubby male medic ripped open the fabric over my leg and examined the cut, stanching the flow of blood. “It’s a superficial wound. Hand me the skin regenerator.”
Dr. Catcher’s incorrigible face hovered over me. “What do you think you were you doing in there?”
Pride rushed through me. Even though I’d wanted to fail, success felt much more satisfying. I pulled out the syringe full of silver liquid and held it to her face. “Filling this.”
Chapter Six
Convenience
I thought extracting the fluid would get me the rest of the day off. Boy, was I wrong.
As the senior scientists hovered over the syringe, dispersing drops onto microscopic slides, good-old Dr. Catcher pushed me into the nearest lab. “Stay here. We’ll have samples for your studies in just a moment.”
“Great.” I plopped onto a plastic lab seat. Might as well make myself comfortable. If they wanted me to figure out how to replicate the substance with a synthetic substitute, I’d be here all day, and the next day, and the day after that. Science wasn’t my strongest subject. You’d think they’d at least give me a lab partner.
“They didn’t tell me you were the one chosen to extract the liquid metal.”
I whirled around. Alcor sat at the table in the back, surrounded by microscopes of all shapes and sizes. The crisscrossing scars on his face glowed pale white under the fluorescent light. He’d grown his scraggly blond bangs out so they veiled half his face in shadow.
“Yeah, I won the grand prize.”
“Only because the psychologists said I was mentally incapable of confronting them again.” His gaze traveled to my bandaged leg. “Looks like they got you, too.”
“It’s not bad.” I cringed. Not as bad as what happened to him. “I’ll live.”
He held his head up so his long bangs fell from his face, exposing the full aftermath of the attack. “We’ll both live, but the scars will stay with us forever.”
Alcor slumped back in his seat, allowing the hair to cover his face once again. He reminded me of the lost chick in the ventilation pipes. He needed saving, too.
I walked across the room and took the seat beside him. “Hey, listen. You should be proud of your scars. They prove you went up against the arachnids and lived. You helped save the colony.”
Alcor waved his skinny arm. “I didn’t do anything. It was all Sirius and Nova.”
I froze like he held up a mirror, and I didn’t like what I saw. He sounded like me.
Alcor pointed a finger at my face. “Admit it. They controlled the whole mission. All we did was get abducted. Nova had to rescue us.”
He was right. That was why guilt plagued me during the medal ceremony. I didn’t believe I deserved the acclaim, either.
Yeah, but look what you just accomplished in the holding cell, space brain.
Resolve and determination hardened inside me as I thought of Asteran and how I’d promised to bring him home. “Maybe now’s the time to prove ourselves.”
As if on cue, Dr. Catcher came in with a tray full of slides and two vials of the silver liquid. She gave us a suspicious look, as if we’d been kissing in the back of the lab. “Here are the samples for your studies. Report back to me at the end of the day with your findings.” She turned on her unimaginative white sneakers and left, the particles of the portal solidifying behind her.
“All right, Lyra.” Alcor’s jaw clenched as he stared at the tray. “Game on.”
I took the samples to the microscopes as Alcor brought up a series of tests on the wallscreen.
I stared at the back of his blond head. “What are you doing here, anyway? You’re a medic, not a scientist.”
Lists of numbers and letters flashed on the wallscreen. Alcor pressed his fingertips to the pixels, and a message came on: ready to scan subject. He turned toward me. “My forte is biology. The arachnids produce this substance naturally, and it’s my job to find out how.”
That might help with my task. If Alcor could deduce how the arachnids made the serum, it would be easier to reproduce it synthetically. A sliver of hope shone through my otherwise dreary day. Maybe if we figured it out early, I’d have time to visit Asteran. “Let’s get this ship on trajectory.”
“Aye, Captain.” Alcor stuck a slide under the microscope. “Full throttle ahead.”
***
Minutes dragged into hours. I paced in front of the wallscreens, reciting the results of all our tests. “So, this substance is a soft, organic polymer with metallic properties.”
Alcor chewed on a soybean wafer. “That’s right. Not only that, but it’s a conductive polymer, much like polyacetylene or polyaniline, semi-conductors having electrical conductivities at room temperature. The conductivity decreases with temperature, much like a crystalline solid.”
Ouch. My brain hurt just thinking about it. “That’s very interesting, but what does it have to do with how they make it?”
“It’s the key to how they run their ship, Lyra. Th
e electrical currents travel through the metal. They must have engineered some sort of dampeners to control the resulting electromagnetic field.”
“Why would we need to run their ship anyway?”
“It just helps us understand their technology better.”
He might have been right, but I had a job I needed to finish. Good thing I’d paid attention in chemistry level three. “Okay, we know organic, metallic hybrid polymers are formed by the complexation of metal ions with organic liquids, right?”
“Right.”
“So, we need to identify the ions and the organic matter.”
“Which would be easy if these ions were classified in the chemistry books, but they’re not.”
“We’ll just have to categorize new ones.”
His chest heaved as if he had trouble breathing. “You talk like we’re figuring out the recipe for birthday cake.”
As much as I liked Alcor, his doom-and-gloom theatrics were starting to crawl under my skin. “A recipe is a recipe all the same. We break it down ion by ion. Simple as that.”
The portal dematerialized behind me and I froze, not wanting to turn around and face the music. Dr. Catcher’s come to check on us, and all we have to give her is more questions. She’d probably make us stay after hours, which would leave no time for me to visit Asteran.
A smile stretched across Alcor’s face. “Gavin McGraw. What high-tailed comets brought you here?”
I turned around in disbelief. Gavin? The universe must have answered my pleas!
His gaze traveled to me. “I’m here for Lyra.”
For me? What if something had happened to Asteran? My heart fell to the floor and splatted. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. Healthy and active, spouting loads and loads of nonsense. No one can talk to him like you did. In two minutes you learned his name. It’s been hours, and I don’t know anything more than when I started.”
He collapsed to his knees. “You have to help me, Lyra. I never studied like I was supposed to. There’s no freaking way I’m going to crack this case.”
I stared in shock. Miracles did happen.
Alliance Page 4