The garage was silent for a few long seconds, until the wrenching sound from outside filled the room again. Then Dr. Bale was moving, aiming his weapon, pointing it at Benny, or his friend—Benny wasn’t sure who.
That’s when a thunderous boom filled the air. Benny’s ears popped, and then his helmet automatically powered on as the Grand Dome shattered outside.
21.
As the force field around the Lunar Taj broke it sent shock waves through the resort, causing Benny and everyone else inside the garage to fall. Fortunately, the change in the atmosphere meant that the artificial gravity had been affected, and Benny found himself floating slowly to the cement floor. He was halfway to the ground when the comms in his collar kicked in and shouts filled his helmet.
“Is everyone okay?” he asked as he twisted in the air, struggling to get to his feet.
“I think so,” Drue said, already up on one knee.
“The dome,” Hot Dog said. “Oh, crap, are we gonna die?”
“Impossible.” Dr. Bale’s voice came through the speakers in Benny’s collar, barely above a whisper. Benny looked over to see the man sprawled out on the floor, the weapon he’d been holding on the ground a few feet away from him. Benny started forward, but Ricardo was faster, jogging through the low gravity, eyes focused on the plasma rifle.
“Jazz? Trevone? Pinky?” Benny yelled. “Anyone?”
“I’m here,” Pinky said. “We’re slowly regaining control of the Taj’s systems, but I’m still powerless in the garage. It looks like the force field in the auxiliary tunnel is still holding, but the emergency environmental stabilizers won’t kick in until the building is sealed.”
Benny turned to the door leading out to the courtyard—it was wide open. That’s when he remembered.
“Todd and Mae!” he shouted.
He looked to Ricardo, who was wrestling over the weapon with Dr. Bale, all four of their hands on it. “Go!” the Pit Crew member shouted. “I’ll handle this.”
Benny took a deep breath, put his trust in Ricardo, and started for the door.
When he finally made it into the courtyard, he froze. The mass covering the dome had destroyed the invisible force field and the clear glass-like polymer underneath it. The rock itself had crumbled, too. Now, a haze of debris drifted toward the ground—a miniature asteroid field studded with crystalline shards glinting in the emergency lights of the Taj. And there, past it all, was the hulking crag of a ship, looming in the distance, dozens of smaller crafts swarming around it.
Todd and Mae were bounding toward Benny. Todd kept looking over his shoulder at the ship overhead, and Benny watched in horror as Todd ran straight into one of the stray polymer fragments, its broken edge like a knife. It sliced through the arm of his space suit. Not deeply—just enough to send little drops of blood floating out around him—but with his suit compromised, the oxygen was sucked from his helmet. Todd screamed and Mae turned around, covering the hole in his suit with one hand and pulling him through the entrance to the garage. Benny grabbed the sliding door, putting all his weight into it, until it finally gave and slammed shut.
As he made his way back to the others, the emergency environmental systems kicked in, returning Earthlike gravity and atmosphere to the room. It was jarring, and he stumbled forward, almost careening into Todd and Mae, who’d parked themselves on the ground near one of the McGuyvers’ toolboxes. Farther back, Dr. Bale was on the floor. Ricardo stood over him. The weapon lay on the other side of the garage, well out of reach of any of them.
“Lock down the Taj,” Ricardo shouted at Pinky through the comms. “Everything you can.”
“It’s only a matter of time before they get through the auxiliary tunnel,” Drue said. He looked around frantically. “I mean, if they can break through the dome, they can get through that, right?”
Dr. Bale’s laughter filtered through Benny’s helmet. “Let them come,” he said, getting up to one knee. “We can hold them off.”
“Yeah,” Hot Dog said. “And the dome won’t break, right?”
Dr. Bale ignored her as he started for one of the trailers, motioning to his assistants. “Todd. Mae. You know what to do. We’re going into full defensive mode now. Ignore these children. Shoot anything that doesn’t look human.”
Todd and Mae nodded, rushing to the tables. Todd’s arm was wrapped in silver tape Mae must have found in one of the McGuyvers’ toolboxes.
Ricardo let out a howl of anger, and then started for the door that led directly into the Taj. “Come on,” he yelled. “We’re done here.”
The others followed him. But Benny lingered.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he said. “You can go underground. We can figure out another way.”
Dr. Bale looked at him and tossed a drone into the air, where it floated. “My boy,” he said, “I’m going to let you walk out of here just so you can experience for yourself how wrong you are. When they’ve taken you and your friends, you’ll see what a fool you’ve been.”
“You’re the one who was just pointing a gun at us,” Benny said.
“Benny!” Hot Dog shouted.
He took one last look at Dr. Bale and ran to join the others.
They darted through the hallways toward the center of the Taj, their eyes glued to the windows, looking for any sign of the Alpha Maraudi. And as they sprinted into the lobby, they saw the aliens. Small ships like the ones they’d fought in the asteroid storm landed in the courtyard, along with larger, rectangular hunks of rock that were shaped like the trailers Dr. Bale had brought into the garage.
“Trevone, what’s your status?” Ricardo asked.
“We’re almost done,” the Pit Crew member said.
“You do know there are aliens landing outside, right?” Drue asked.
“It would be kind of hard to miss them,” Jasmine said.
“Evil Pinky is a replicating virus,” Ramona said. “Total malware. Needs to be deleted completely.” Benny could hear her slug from a soda can. “Few more minutes.”
There was a banging on the front entrance of the Taj, the sound reverberating through the four-story lobby, and Benny and the others all turned to look at the big chrome doors. Another bang. According to what Pinky had told them earlier, there would now be a thin environmental force field around the Taj, offering them a little protection and allowing the artificial atmosphere to remain intact. But how long would the emergency barrier last?
“We can’t just stand around waiting for them,” Ricardo said. He grunted, shaking his head. “We’re defenseless. I should have brought that plasma rifle with me. Not that I even know how to use it.”
“Let’s meet up with the others,” Benny said. “At least that way we’ll all be together.”
And then they were running up the stairwell that led to Elijah’s private quarters. Along the way, Ricardo checked in with the Miyamuras and Sahar, who appeared to be suffering from only a few bruises.
“No, stay down there,” he said when all three of them immediately said they were on their way up to the Taj. “I need you to look after the EW-SCABers.” He paused. “Have the McGuyvers prep the vehicles they’ve stashed down there, just in case we need to make a run for it.”
Reluctantly, the rest of the Pit Crew agreed.
When they finally burst through the doors of Elijah’s private quarters, Jasmine and Trevone both jumped. Ramona did not. She stayed hunched over her old HoloTek that she’d plugged into a boxy server covered in lights and embedded in a wall where a portrait of Elijah and his father had once hung. The picture was now leaning against Elijah’s desk, where Jasmine and Trevone were looking at charts of the Taj.
“Where are we at?” Benny asked.
“Ramona?” Trevone asked.
“Transfer almost complete,” Ramona said.
Drue stopped in the middle of the room, staring at her setup and the cords connecting her HoloTek to the server.
“I didn’t think they made HoloTeks with wired connections since,
like, before I was born,” he said.
“Custom rig,” Ramona said without looking up. “Unexpected analog assault. Genius.”
In a flash, Benny was at the big window behind Elijah’s desk, looking out over the courtyard. What he saw seemed impossible. He could still remember the palpable thrill that had coursed through him when he’d first driven into the Grand Dome, like his body had been completely filled with electric exclamation marks. But that courtyard—that excitement—was gone now. It was like the window was looking out on to another place completely.
Six small ships were parked beside the fountain in the courtyard. Two of the larger hunks of rock sat nearby, and the Alpha Maraudi were spilling out of them. Dozens of aliens. And even though Benny had seen them before—their too-long arms and legs; the bluish sheen of their skin; the quick, lithe bodies—the sight of them still took his breath away. Just as he’d noticed on the mother ship, the aliens all had different combinations and types of tentacles coming out from the backs of their heads. Blades tipped the ends of some of them, glinting in the courtyard lights, while others held devices he didn’t recognize. Each of the ET soldiers he saw marching through the debris-filled courtyard wore a full mask, complementing the gemlike armor on their bodies.
“You said they needed our atmosphere,” Jasmine said a little shakily as she came up beside him. “The masks must be how they can breathe out there.”
“Holy squid monsters,” Drue said, as he joined them. “Those things are ugly.”
“They’re just standing there,” Hot Dog said.
“They likely have no idea what’s inside the Taj,” Jasmine said. “They’re being careful.”
Ricardo joined them at the window. He took a sharp breath through his nose as he looked out at the Maraudi gathered in the courtyard. “Elijah had shown us sketches of these creatures,” he said, “but he did not do them justice.”
“Bingo,” Ramona said, unplugging her HoloTek. “All done.”
Pinky materialized in the room, standing in front of Elijah’s desk.
“That feels so much better,” she said. And then she straightened her back, turning to the others. “What would you like me to do?”
Benny looked back out onto the courtyard, where the Alpha Maraudi were gathering around the cannon that Todd and Mae had set up earlier—only it had been spun around so that it was facing the front doors of the Taj.
“Oh, no,” Benny murmured.
There was a golden pulse of light, and then the entire Taj shook.
“The doors are breached,” Pinky shouted. “The lobby has been depressurized. I’m sealing it off. I can keep the gravity stable in there, but with a hole in the building I can’t keep the atmosphere intact.”
“Kill the elevators,” Benny shouted. “If they don’t know about the underground bunker, we don’t want them finding it.”
“Done,” Pinky said. “I’ve powered down the elevator hyperdrives and parked them at the bottom of the shaft. Even if they make it down the shafts, the cars are made of titanium alloy. They’ll be difficult to get through.”
“The stairwell,” Hot Dog said. “If they find it . . .”
Benny shook his head, trying to think of a solution. “There’s no good way to block it off.”
Drue’s eyes lit up. “Particle beams! The drone I took! Can’t we program it to, you know, shoot up the rock inside?”
“We could cause a cave-in!” Hot Dog said.
“We’d be keeping ourselves out,” Ricardo said. “Trapped up here with them.”
Benny nodded. “Yeah, but we’d be protecting the people below.”
He looked around at everyone in the room, his friends. Slowly but surely, they all nodded.
“Do it,” Hot Dog said.
Ricardo thought about this for a moment. “Okay, but we’ll wait until it’s necessary. Pinky, do you have access to Dr. Bale’s program files? Send them to Kira. Walk her through how to control it. Figure out a way. Tell her to put the drone in place and wait for my signal.”
“Done,” Pinky said.
Benny looked back out the window. Smoke hung around the front of the Taj as the first of the Alpha Maraudi made their way into the resort.
“They’re coming in,” he said. “The Taj is being invaded.”
22.
“How long will we be safe up here?” Hot Dog asked.
“I’m locking every door but . . .” Pinky paused.
“They can blow through them with that cannon,” Benny said.
Pinky nodded.
“They could bring the whole resort down,” Trevone said.
Ricardo cursed Dr. Bale under his breath as he walked away from the window.
“We need to decide what we’re doing right now,” Jasmine said. “If we’re going to try to bunker down here or head underground through the basement staircase. Every moment we waste gives them more time to infiltrate the Taj, cutting off our options.”
Drue walked to the bookcase that served as a barrier between Elijah West’s office and his sleeping area. “Doesn’t Elijah have an emergency Space Runner hidden up here somewhere?” He pulled on one of the shelves, causing part of the bookcase to swing open. “Maybe, like, a hyperdrive engine under his bed or something we could use to fly to the dark side and go in the back way?”
“You’re wasting your time,” Ricardo said. “It would be impossible to get away from all those ships right now. They’d capture us. Or worse.”
“And we don’t want to lead them to the tunnel,” Benny said. “They’d totally trap us. And everyone underground would be in danger.”
Trevone swiped the holograms above Elijah’s desk until a 3D blueprint of the Taj was in front of him. “Pinky, your eyes are back, right? Can you populate this map with the locations of the aliens?” Red blips appeared on the first floor. “Okay, to get to the stairs leading underground, we’d have to make our way to the basement level. The fastest way would be down the stairwell we came up and through the lobby.”
“Or,” Jasmine said, stepping up beside him and pointing at the hologram. As she traced a finger across the image, a blue line showed up. “We could cut through the Mustangs’ floor, go through this staircase, and avoid the lobby altogether.”
There was a loud noise from somewhere in the Taj, and the room shook.
“They’ve entered the restaurant,” Pinky said as the red dots moved on the map.
“We’ll go Jasmine’s route,” Ricardo said. “Pinky, keep track of the Maraudi for us. We don’t want to run into them unless it’s unavoidable.”
“Of course,” she said.
Ramona held up the alien radar. “I’ll watch the skellie-cam, too.”
Benny pointed to the door. “Let’s go.”
They ran into the stairwell. Jasmine kept her HoloTek out, the blueprints of the Taj filling with more and more red dots. The Mustangs’ floor was just a short flight of stairs down, and soon they were sprinting toward the staircase that would lead them to the basement level. Along the way, the resort kept trembling as the Alpha Maraudi filtered into more rooms and corridors on the first floor.
“They’ve made it to the staircase leading to Elijah’s quarters,” Pinky said. “You got out in the nick of time.”
“Elijah would be furious,” Ricardo said.
“Elijah has more important things to worry about right now,” Benny said. That was assuming that the man was even still alive.
“More ships are landing in the courtyard,” Pinky continued. “I think they’re eyeing the garage. Bale and his assistants appear to be armed to the teeth, but I don’t know what kind of fight they can put up alone.”
“There are way too many aliens out there,” Hot Dog said. “At least we know his superweapon isn’t here.”
“Technically they could hide in the floor,” Jasmine said. “There are several storage levels under the garage.”
“Yeah, great, save the mad doctor,” Drue said. “I’m pretty sure that guy was going to take me hostage ea
rlier.”
“Tell him where he can hide, Pinky,” Benny said as they headed into the next stairwell. “We don’t want him blowing up the garage trying to stop them.”
“Good point,” the AI said. “I’m relaying the message now and— Wait, stop!”
They came to an abrupt halt on the stairs, almost trampling over one another. “What is it?” Ricardo asked.
“The aliens are trying to get into this stairwell. They’re setting up the cannon in the lobby.”
Benny looked down the steps in front of them. They still had several floors to go.
“The cannon is in position,” Pinky said.
Benny looked at Ricardo. “If we’re in front of that door when it shoots, we’re dead.”
Ricardo banged a fist against the wall, and then jumped down to the landing below them. He hit a button and opened the door that led to the Vipers’ level—the third floor of the Taj. “Come on,” he shouted.
Benny was the last one through. Just as the door closed behind him, he heard an explosion coming from the stairwell. His ears popped as the atmosphere shifted for a split second before stabilizing again once the hallway was sealed.
“The more rooms they take, the harder it is for us to move around,” Trevone said.
“Total Taj corruption,” Ramona said.
“Okay.” Hot Dog raised her hands out to her sides, looking around. “There’s got to be another way down, right? Don’t tell me we’re trapped on this floor now.”
“We could break a window!” Drue said. “Float to the first floor, then break another window and get in.”
“Those windows aren’t glass and you know it,” Jasmine said. “We’d need a cannon of our own to get through.”
“Aren’t there,” Hot Dog said, “I don’t know . . . ventilation shafts?”
“Wait,” Trevone said, his eyes lighting up. “That gives me an idea.” He started running down the hallway. “Follow me!”
Half a minute later, they rounded a corner and came to a maintenance room. “Pinky!” Trevone said, and the door slid open. He herded the rest of them inside, where the air was heavy with the scent of bleach and disinfectant.
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