Space Runners #2

by Jeramey Kraatz

  Dedication

  For the stargazers

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Attention 2085 EW-SCAB Winners:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  About the Author

  Books by Jeramey Kraatz

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Attention 2085 EW-SCAB Winners:

  * * *

  While the threat of the alien asteroid storm headed for Earth has been overcome thanks to the bravery of the newly minted Moon Platoon, the Pit Crew, and Elijah West, I know you are all still filled with questions and concerns. As such, I’d like to update you regarding our current situation and how it impacts your stay at the Lunar Taj.

  All group activities are temporarily suspended until further notice. Due to the high level of alert we’re under, it is requested that all guests at the Lunar Taj stay within the confines of the Grand Dome and the underground bunker. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do! The “video game room,” as many of you call it, is open and equipped with a catalog of immersive gaming experiences for you to enjoy at your leisure. And don’t forget that your HoloTeks are also packed with custom programs that allow you to design your own Space Runners, holographic racetracks, and space suits. Also, please continue to meet in the common rooms on your floor! The best thing we can do in this time of stress is support one another. Remember, whether you flew out into space this morning or sought shelter underground, you are a united force—you are all part of the Moon Platoon.

  Meals will continue to be served three times a day both above and below ground, with selected snacks available in the kitchen at all times. Thanks to the Taj’s state-of-the-art gardening and food-storage systems, I promise no one here is going to go hungry. If anyone is interested in seeing how my computerized kitchen functions and manages to feed countless guests, I’d be happy to give you a personal demonstration (bonus dessert!) at any time.

  Your safety is my highest priority here at the Lunar Taj. Despite recent events, please rest assured that this resort remains perhaps the safest place in our solar system. With that in mind, please understand that your trip back to Earth will be delayed until we can ensure the voyage is 100 percent safe. I know many of you wish to be in contact with your loved ones at this time. Reestablishing communications with our home planet is a top priority.

  For everyone who has asked about Elijah West, please let me clear a few things up. Yes, Elijah was taken aboard the alien mother ship that we encountered this morning. Yes, there was an explosion. But—and I say this as the person who perhaps knows Elijah West better than anyone in the universe—I have faith that he will be back at the Lunar Taj as soon as possible.

  And, as always, I am available to address any questions or concerns you may have. Just say my name, and I’ll be there.

  On a personal note, I want to say how very proud I am of you—yes, all of you. The Elijah West Scholarship for Courage, Ambition, and Brains has always attracted the best and brightest Earth has to offer, and the 2085 winners have proven to be exceptional in ways that Elijah could never have dreamed. You truly are the future of humanity.

  Pinky Weyve

  Lunar Taj intelligence and executive assistant to Mr. West

  1.

  Benny Love stared at Earth through a floor-to-ceiling window inside the Lunar Taj. He’d seen plenty of pictures of the planet taken from space, but he’d had no idea how large it would loom above him from the surface of the Moon until he’d gotten there. It took up so much of the sky, a rotating ball of sand and water and rock and life that seemed so close, like he could be back there in no time if he just walked out onto the lunar landscape and jumped hard enough. Somewhere—likely in the golden swath of the Drylands in the western United States—his caravan was on the move or setting up camp. His grandmother and two younger brothers were probably in the ramshackle RV they called home.

  He didn’t know exactly where they were at the moment, but that didn’t matter. The important thing—the reason Benny couldn’t take his eyes off the planet, could hardly even blink as he looked at it—was that Earth was still there. Humanity still existed, still endured.

  For now, at least.

  He and his friends may have stopped the asteroid storm, but that didn’t keep him from imagining what Earth would have looked like from the Moon if they hadn’t flown into deep space that morning. Would there have been fire? A wall of water so huge that it destroyed cities and mountains? Would he have seen it all the way across the expanse of space?

  A voice cut through the hallway Benny stood in, interrupting his thoughts. Drue.

  “Uh, so, you haven’t moved since I checked on you, like, five minutes ago,” he said as he came up to Benny’s side. He crossed his arms over the chest of his sleek gray space suit. All the other scholarship winners at the Taj wore the dark blue coveralls with gold stitching that had been waiting for them at the resort, but Drue had brought what seemed like a closet full of expensive clothes with him from Earth. It had been one of the first things Benny had noticed about him.

  “It’s kind of creepy,” Drue continued when Benny didn’t respond. Then he pursed his lips a bit and jabbed Benny in the shoulder with an index finger.

  “Ow,” Benny said, finally turning to him. “Why would you do that?”

  “Oh, so you are real. I kinda thought you were using that bracelet Elijah gave you again and this was some glitched-out, frozen hologram.” Drue put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “You’ve got to lighten up, man. We saved the world this morning. You should be exploding with excitement about that.”

  “Exploding is kind of the last word I want to hear,” Benny said. He couldn’t help but remember the image of Elijah’s car being sucked inside the alien mother ship—how the creator of the Space Runners and the Lunar Taj had overheated his hyperdrive and sacrificed himself to save them, or at least buy Earth some more time. To buy Benny’s family more time.

  He wondered what they were doing in the RV. Maybe still sleeping or waking up to sustenance squares for breakfast or trying to find some shade to park in to get a break from the dust and heat. Maybe they were even thinking of him, wondering what he was doing. Counting down the days until he was supposed to come home.

  Drue rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. We beat some alien butt!”

  “Yeah,” Benny said. “But it’s not over. We don’t know what they’re going to do next.”

  Drue let out an exaggerated sigh. “You sound like Jazz. You two are really killing my Moon buzz.” He turned away and started down the hall. “Pinky wrote a message like we talked about and sent it to all the HoloTeks. Jazz and everyone are waiting for you in the meeting room. Now’s your chance to explain all the work we have to do next, which I can’t wait to hear about.” He looked back over his shoulder. “There’d better be more lasers involved is all I’m saying.”

  Benny’s pulse thrumm
ed as he considered all the things he’d learned in the past few days, trying to figure out which of the many problems they needed to address first. So much of it had seemed impossible. Just hours before he’d stood inside an Alpha Maraudi ship shaped like a giant asteroid. He’d actually talked to an alien, Commander Tull, who was still out there somewhere. Still after Earth.

  They’d saved the planet, but they had no way of knowing when the aliens would be back—and they’d lost Elijah.

  He took a few deep breaths as he tried to remind himself that the first part was what was really important. All he wanted was to stay in the hallway, staring at his home planet, reassuring himself that it was still there, but his friends were waiting for him. So he swallowed hard, trying to push all the concern out of his mind. Everyone at the Taj was worried, even if that was somewhat hidden by the morning’s success right now. The least he could do to help was try to look like he wasn’t scared.

  He found his friends in the meeting room that Elijah West had locked them inside of just a few days before when they’d discovered that he had given up on Earth and planned to allow the aliens to destroy it, leaving the EW-SCABers as the last remnants of humanity. Hot Dog Wilkinson peered out a window overlooking the Sea of Tranquility, twirling a strand of curly blond hair between two fingers. Drue had plopped down in one of the floating chairs surrounding the holodesk in the center of the room. Trevone, the only member of Elijah’s Pit Crew to help them out during their preparations over the last few days, sat a few seats over, swiping through holographic maps floating in the air in front of him. Jasmine Wu stood a few feet behind the older boy, mumbling to herself, her eyes scanning the charts as they passed by.

  “Hey,” Benny said as he walked in, coming to a stop at one end of the circular desk. “Sorry. I got a little distracted.”

  Hot Dog turned from the window and let out a breath. “There you are. I was starting to think our fearless leader was abandoning us.”

  Benny shoved his hands into his space suit pockets. “I’m not the leader here. We all helped—”

  “I know, I know.” Hot Dog walked over to the holodesk. “You keep telling us that, but you really should learn to take some credit.” She frowned. “I hate to say this, but Drue might be right. Maybe you do need to chill out a little.”

  Benny looked at Drue and raised his arms out to his sides, but his friend just shrugged and spun in his chair.

  Pinky, the artificial intelligence in charge of running the Taj, appeared as a hologram in one of the empty seats. Benny had gotten so used to her popping up out of nowhere that he barely gave the incredible nanotech projectors that brought her to life a second’s thought anymore.

  “Shall we begin?” Pinky asked, adjusting her black-rimmed glasses. “Or should I send for my favorite scholarship winner, Ramona? She’s currently in one of the basement labs, staying far away from my programming, for once.”

  “Let’s not interrupt her,” Jasmine said. She looked to Benny. “Ramona’s working on turning a few Space Runners into makeshift satellites so we can reestablish contact with Earth. Once we find a safe flight path, we can launch them. The problem is that there are still alien asteroids positioned between us and the planet. We’ve sent several unmanned Space Runners to run scans, looking for a way past them, but so far we haven’t had any luck.”

  “And we can’t just . . . go around those asteroids?” Benny asked.

  “Obviously the entirety of space isn’t blocked off. There has to be a way to avoid them, but it’s a slow scanning process. We’ve already lost two SRs. These asteroids seem to be—for lack of a better word—programmed to hit anything that gets too close. They’re basically space mines. The Maraudi knew what they were doing when they set them up.”

  “Speaking of being blocked off,” Drue said, “how am I still banned from the garage? I’m a space hero now!”

  “Because as soon as you got back from the asteroid field you tried and failed to hot-wire one of Elijah’s prototype muscle cars,” Trevone said.

  Hot Dog glanced at Benny. “He obviously didn’t take notes whenever you stole that Chevelle.”

  “Borrowed,” Benny said.

  “Besides,” Trevone continued, “the McGuyvers have enough on their plates trying to repair the SRs that were damaged in the attack. They’re the best mechanics in the galaxy, but they’re only two people. The last thing they need is you causing problems.”

  “I was trying to help!” Drue leaned over the holodesk. “We should know what we have to work with if we’re going to war with some aliens.” He shrugged. “Plus, it turns out that prototype didn’t even have an engine in it, so it’s totally not my fault I couldn’t get it started.”

  “You’re going to get banned from the entire Taj,” Hot Dog said. “And we’re not going to war with the Alpha Maraudi. We’re . . .” She trailed off, biting her lower lip.

  Drue looked back and forth between Hot Dog and Benny. “Really? Because I bet the aliens are pretty mad that we schooled them this morning. Maybe we should go on the offensive. Though we’d probably need more than lasers if we wanted to take down that big mother ship.” His eyes lit up. “I bet Elijah has all kinds of prototypes for crazy stuff in his files that we could use. Pinky, what do you got for us? Show me the biggest, most ridiculous thing he was working on. Where are all the killer robots like the ones we fought in the video game room?”

  The AI clasped her hands together on the holodesk. “Let’s put a pin in that.”

  “We’re not going to attack anyone,” Benny said. “That would make us just as bad as they are. Besides, I told you guys, they’re kind of not what we expected. They’re . . . more like a space caravan.”

  Trying to wrap his head around the idea of extraterrestrial life coming for Earth was one thing, but the realization that the Alpha Maraudi weren’t really some evil alien race was another, more difficult notion to process. They were just trying to find a new home. Doing everything they could to survive. In a way, Benny understood where they were coming from, and he didn’t want to have to fight them.

  That was the real problem, the thing sitting like a heavy lug nut in the pit of Benny’s stomach: What were they supposed to do now? The day before, the stakes had been terrifying, sure, but their goals had been so simple: stop the asteroid storm, keep Earth safe, protect humanity. Now there were so many variables.

  And despite his insistence that he wasn’t the leader of the Moon Platoon, it felt like everyone kept looking to him for answers.

  “Benny’s right,” Hot Dog said, taking a seat. “I just wish they’d find another place to set up camp.”

  “This is like game theory,” Jasmine said, scrunching her eyebrows together. “Another species needs Earth to survive, but so do we. Normally I’d be into a logic problem like this, but it turns out this kind of thing isn’t nearly as fun in real life.”

  “So . . .” Drue said, “we’re taking ‘blowing up the aliens who tried to kill all humanity’ off the holodesk?”

  “Pinky, if he gets within ten feet of a laser, let me know,” Trevone said.

  “What about this guy on the dark side of the Moon?” Benny asked, turning his attention to the Pit Crew member. “Could he help? Any idea how we find him?”

  As if the shock of everything that had happened during their battle in space hadn’t been enough, Trevone and Pinky had unexpected news when Benny had arrived back at the resort: the residents of the Taj weren’t alone on the Moon.

  “Dr. Austin Bale,” Trevone said. He tapped on the desk in front of him and a hologram of a man appeared above it. He was maybe fifty years old in the image, with thick wire-rimmed glasses and a shock of black streaked across the front of his otherwise silver hair. “No clue. He’s spent years avoiding all Elijah’s sensors and expeditions. We have no idea what he’s been up to.”

  “How do we know he’s even alive out there, then?”

  “Well, for one thing, he was probably the person who left supplies for Hot Dog when she crashe
d her Space Runner.”

  “I didn’t crash,” Hot Dog said. “I was shot down. Big difference.” She leaned back in her seat and clicked her tongue. “I knew I wasn’t crazy to think someone left me stuff. I can’t believe Elijah tried to tell me I was confused.”

  “Remind me why we should care about this guy again?” Drue asked. “Let’s imagine that I wasn’t listening too carefully earlier. We had just gotten back from blowing up a bunch of asteroids.”

  “Dr. Bale was Elijah’s right-hand man when he began the construction of the Lunar Taj and in-depth exploration of the Moon,” Trevone said. “A renowned astrophysicist and engineer. He was with Elijah when he first discovered the base on the dark side of the Moon.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Elijah told us that part,” Drue said. “He wanted to warn Earth about the aliens, but Elijah didn’t want him to. So what’s he doing on the Moon? Why stay up here?”

  “Well, things are a bit more complicated than Elijah may have let on,” Trevone continued. “Dr. Bale did go back to Earth to warn people about everything he’d seen. He even took a bunch of artifacts from the Maraudi base with him.”

  “You mean, he stole them from the Taj,” Pinky corrected. She drummed her holographic fingers on the desk silently.

  “Right. But each time he tried to convince them that an extraterrestrial threat was out there some official would call Elijah, who assured them that nothing was out of the ordinary. He, uh . . .” Trevone paused for a moment. “He told everyone that being on the Moon had caused Dr. Bale to lose his mind.”

  “Yikes,” Hot Dog said.

  “The messages Dr. Bale sent to Elijah around this time were . . . intense,” Pinky said. “So much so that at my recommendation we beefed up security around the Taj. And you wouldn’t believe how much money Elijah spent keeping the man’s comments out of the media.” She shook her head. “I didn’t exist as an AI back then. I was just a human, and I trusted Elijah. I mean, Dr. Bale did sound crazy, and he was definitely angry.” She took a deep breath. “Neither of them acted like they should have. And while I don’t love the idea of reaching out to someone potentially unstable, it’s true: he could be helpful.”