Before Benny could respond, Jasmine’s voice rang through the garage. “Yes! Here!”
Benny raised a finger to Drue. “One sec.”
Drue huffed but stayed seated as Benny made his way to the huddle. “Tell me you’ve got some good news,” he said.
“Jasmine thinks she’s figured out where this Bale guy might be hiding out,” Hot Dog said. “So much for Elijah being the smart one.”
“Well, maybe,” Jasmine said. “And I’m sure Elijah could have found him if he’d actually tried to. From everything Pinky and Trevone mentioned, it sounds like a reunion with Dr. Bale wasn’t a big priority to him.”
“True,” Pinky said. “I think he’d rather have forgotten the man ever existed.”
“Anyway, I looked at places where it seemed like he’d been camping based on evidence the Pit Crew or Elijah came across while exploring. Which, honestly, is mainly just a few footprints and Space Runner landing marks. Dr. Bale and his team did a great job of cleaning up after themselves.”
She pulled on one chrome corner of her HoloTek to extend it and then held it up to Benny, showing him a map of the far side of the Moon with several yellow dots on it.
“I think he was hiding in the Daedalus crater for a while, but given when the footprints were discovered and factoring in the amount of time it would have taken to get to Hot Dog and leave her supplies after she went down, this might be his movement pattern.” She tapped on the screen and blinking lines connected the dots. “Fortunately, he’s heading closer to us.”
“Yeah,” Hot Dog said, pointing to the dot on the left side of the HoloTek. “Turns out there was some kind of energy ping around here right after I got shot down.”
“It was just before our satellites were destroyed,” Pinky said. “The energy signature was comparable to that of a hyperdrive engine.”
“I’d suggest we search this group of mares,” Jasmine continued, gesturing to a spot on the map. “It’s actually not far from the alien base, relatively speaking, which means it’s possible that’s where he’s headed. Maybe for shelter. He might have seen the storm coming.”
“Uh.” Hot Dog groaned. “Didn’t we kind of leave a big hole leading into the underground tunnels back there? Maybe we should get that fixed.”
Ash McGuyver snapped her gum. “Bo and I will take care of it, no problem.”
“Perfect!” Drue said, springing into the middle of their group. “So, what, we’ll just head out and search the crater? Easy.”
“It’s not that simple.” Jasmine waved two fingers across the map, zooming in. “These mares—if he’s even there—can be almost a hundred kilometers in diameter.”
“Uh, can you talk to me in miles, Jazz?” Benny asked. “Or, better yet, how many Tajs is that?”
“The search area is the size of two or three cities. Big ones.” She shook her head. “Honestly, how has everyone not picked up the metric system yet?”
“Don’t lump me into your science shaming,” Drue said. “My tutors taught me both. This should still be pretty easy, though. It’s a whole lot of nothing out there, right? Plus, don’t we have sensors and stuff like that?”
“Heat sensors, energy sensors, you name it,” Ash said. “But if Bale has a way of messing with those, you kids are on your own.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Drue asked.
“One last thing,” Pinky said, furrowing her eyebrows a bit. “Remember that Dr. Bale and Elijah don’t have the greatest history together. And in a way . . . you are sort of intruding on his territory.”
“Yeah,” Benny said. He looked at Drue. “We’ll be careful.”
Even as Benny spoke, though, Drue was racing toward the Space Runners. “I call whatever goes fastest.”
“You’ll take the laser-armed SRs or you’ll stay here,” Ash yelled after him. She wiped her hands on her coveralls. “That boy’ll be the death of me.”
“Jazz, you’ll navigate us, yeah?” Benny asked as they made their way to the vehicles.
“Sure,” she said, but her cheeks flushed a little. “Just, uh, don’t mind me if I get a little behind. I haven’t had much actual experience flying these things.”
Hot Dog winked at her. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.”
They slid into four of the Space Runners with Mustang-red stripes painted across them. A holographic map appeared on Benny’s windshield, a blinking line cutting across the projected lunar surface.
“Here’s our path,” Jasmine’s voice came through the comms, filling the cabin of Benny’s vehicle. “I suggest a diamond flight pattern so we can keep an eye on the surface and each other.”
“Agreed,” Hot Dog said. “Benny, you take the front, Drue and I will take the sides, and Jasmine can bring up the rear.”
Benny waited for Drue to protest that he should take the lead, but he didn’t say anything.
“All right,” Benny said. “Pinky, open up the auxiliary pressurization tunnel. Uh, please.”
And then they were off, shooting one by one out of the Grand Dome and into the stillness of the Moon’s imperceptible atmosphere.
“Race you guys to the mare,” Drue said over the comms. His Space Runner shot forward. “Last one there has to tell Ricardo we left.”
“Formation, Drue,” Hot Dog said. “We went over this.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He took his spot at Benny’s right again.
“We’re a good half hour away from this search zone,” Jasmine said, “but we should keep an eye out for anything odd, just in case.”
Benny laughed a little to himself, thinking what a strange thing this was to hear, considering the fact that they were setting out to hunt for a mysterious doctor hiding on the dark side of the Moon to possibly recruit him in their effort to save Earth from aliens. All of it was odd. Even the fact that Benny was sitting in a Space Runner. Despite the car having been in battle earlier that day, the inside was still sleek and clean, the surfaces all polished and the artificial-leather seats buffed. He caught his reflection in the rearview mirror and realized that he was pretty clean, too. At least compared to what he usually looked like in the Drylands, where it was impossible to scrub off all the dust even when they did have enough water to bathe, and his black hair was usually stiff with dried sweat, sprouting out in all directions. When he’d first gotten to the Taj, he’d felt so out of place. Even in the Space Runner on the way up to the Moon, he’d managed to get dirt everywhere because it had spilled out of his bag.
But now he’d changed. And for some reason that made him miss home even more.
Eventually, they were flying across the far side of the Moon. Benny pressed his face against the window, looking at the pocked landscape below him.
“I thought it’d be darker,” he said. “I mean, it seemed darker when we were by that alien base.”
“Probably because we were in a crater,” Jasmine said. “The dark side of the Moon isn’t really dark. It’s just the side we can’t see from Earth.”
“Hey, remember when Iyabo was telling us that story about skeletons roaming the dark side?” Drue asked.
Benny did. How could he forget? The girl from Cameroon had painted such a clear picture of long-forgotten scientists pounding on the Grand Dome, desperate to get back inside the artificial environment. He’d tried to remember every detail to tell his brothers when he got back home—the perfect scary bedtime story.
“Well,” Drue continued, “what if it wasn’t an urban legend? What if that’s what this doctor and his friends are? Moon zombies.”
“Drue, are you getting enough oxygen in your Space Runner?” Benny asked.
“I’m just saying. They’ve got to get out of their space suits and wash them sometimes. Maybe all the radiation out here messed them up. Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie? This is a classic zombie setup.”
“That’s actually kind of true,” Hot Dog said.
“Not you, too,” Benny said.
“What? After everything that’s happened to
us today, you want to draw the line of impossibility at Moon zombies? I head-butted a space medusa earlier.”
“Okay. Good point.”
Benny looked down at the craggy surface, imagining a dozen decomposing figures clawing their way out of the dust, mouths gaping as they reached toward the sky, toward them. He couldn’t help but think of the skeletal faces of the flying robots they’d blasted in the video game room, which seemed like forever ago. Surely Elijah hadn’t modeled them after Dr. Bale and his assistants . . . right?
“I’m not even going to begin to poke holes in this idea,” Jasmine said. Then, after a pause, she continued. “But if I were going to, I’d start by—”
“Hey, guys,” Hot Dog said, cutting into the comm feed. “I think I see something.”
“Strange,” Jasmine replied. “The scanners aren’t picking anything up, and we’re not very close to the mare.”
“Not on the ground.” Her voice was wavering now. “Above us.”
It took Benny a moment to see what she was talking about, but then there it was. A dark spot, blotting out a few stars. A smudge of deep purple against the black sky.
And then there were more, four—no, five jagged shapes.
“Oh, crap,” Benny muttered as the shard-like alien ships shot toward them.
4.
“Evasive maneuvers!” Hot Dog shouted as the ships sped closer.
Benny paused for only a second before twisting his flight yoke to the left, remembering some of the basic skills Hot Dog had taught him and the rest of the Moon Platoon in her piloting crash course. His Space Runner veered, dropping toward the dark crater below.
Moments later, the five alien ships were upon them, the same type that had come out of the mother ship during the asteroid storm. Their hulls were shaped like jagged arrowheads shooting through space, made out of some deep purple mineral. The backs of the crafts were capped with gleaming silver devices, as though some kind of metallic claw had latched on to the ships.
“They must have some sort of cloaks up,” Jasmine said. “They’re not on my radar. I can’t get a target lock.”
Benny glanced at his instrument panel, but only their four Space Runners showed as blips on the holographic screens.
“If they attack,” Hot Dog said, “keep weaving. Just make sure we don’t hit each—”
She stopped as ice-blue bolts of energy rained down around them.
Benny swerved, narrowly avoiding one of the blasts. He’d been hit by one of these before, and the result had been a total loss of control over his vehicle. All Space Runners were equipped with moderately strong antigravity shields, but from what he could tell they didn’t offer all that much protection from whatever advanced weaponry the aliens had.
“I’m monitoring the situation!” Pinky’s voice filled his car. “I’m calling more of the Moon Platoon to the garage for backup, but their ETA is twenty minutes at least.”
“There’s no time,” Benny said. “Keep everyone else safe at the Taj. Be on high alert. We don’t know how many of these things are out here.”
“Benny . . .” She paused. “Please be careful.”
He pushed his flight yoke forward and dove toward the Moon’s surface, two ships in pursuit. “Yeah. Sure thing.”
“All those foster families were right,” Jasmine squeaked through the comms. “I should have played flight sims and video games instead of studying so much!”
Above Benny, his friends were fighting. Hot Dog and Drue were by far the most adept at maneuvering, their Space Runners spinning and darting around the alien vessels as they shot the lasers mounted to the fronts of their cars. But Jasmine was holding her own, too. She’d flown well away from the others and was sniping from a distance with precise shots. One of them hit the rear of a ship, causing the metal on the back to explode in an eruption of sparks.
“Oh my gosh,” she said, her voice full of astonishment. “I hit one!”
“Woo-hoo!” Drue shouted. “Nice shot, Jazz!”
“Looks like the backs of their ships are their weak spots,” Hot Dog added. “We know where to aim. Take ’em down!”
“I hope I didn’t injure the thing inside,” Jasmine said.
“Uhhh,” Drue groaned into the comms. “Not exactly what I’d be worried about right now.”
“Our goal isn’t to hurt them,” Benny said.
“Sure, but I don’t think these dudes are trying to be very careful when it comes to my own safety.”
Benny watched the damaged alien ship fly up into outer space—hopefully retreating. That was one down. At least they weren’t technically outnumbered now—even if two ships were still gaining on him.
He clenched his jaw as his Space Runner jetted toward the ground, the dark surface of the Moon filling his windshield. Alarms began to go off throughout the cabin as he got closer. When he was within just a few yards of smashing into the lunar crust, he pulled back on the flight yoke and leveled out. He shot across the crater floor, pushing his car’s hyperdrive as hard as he could as he twisted the flight yoke back and forth, avoiding enemy fire. For a split second he wished he were in something with wheels—he wasn’t doing badly in the flying car, but he definitely would have felt more at home on the ground, in a buggy or something he was more familiar with. In the rearview and side mirrors, he watched the alien ships loop around each other, trading shots at him, before finally one of the crafts took position above the other, the two of them lining up directly behind him.
“Not good, not good, not good,” he muttered to himself as sweat began to bead on his forehead. Suddenly, a barrage of red lights flashed on the windshield. He was about to hit the crater wall.
“Ahhh!” he shouted as he wrenched the yoke to the left just in time, until he was flying sideways, following the curve of the wall and dodging sharp outcroppings of rock. The two alien ships followed suit, firing their energy blasts. The cavern wall below him exploded with each missed attack, spraying debris and dust up all around Benny’s Space Runner.
He tightened his grip on the flight yoke as he struggled to make out the terrain in front of him, and for a flash, he remembered a day he hadn’t thought of in a long time. A few years before, his caravan had raced across the Drylands trying to outrun an approaching sandstorm. Benny’s grandmother and brothers were in the RV, but his father was driving a truck full of gear at the time and had let Benny ride with him, buckling him into the passenger seat and covering his mouth with a bandana in an attempt to spare him from getting a mouth full of sand. It had seemed to Benny like they’d flown across the dunes at light speed, the two of them bringing up the rear of the group as they tried to reach an abandoned farm with a working well they’d planned on camping at for a while. They’d almost gotten there, too—Benny could see the huge, rusty barns just a few miles away—but in the last stretch the wind picked up, blowing sand across their path until Benny couldn’t make out the other vehicles and trailers that had been in front of them. His father hit the brakes, and in seconds they were stopped.
“Standard procedure,” his dad had said. “Nothing good’d come from driving in something like this.”
The sound of the storm was so loud around them that Benny could hardly hear him.
“But we’re so close,” Benny had said.
His dad had just shaken his head and pulled off his own bandana now that he was sure the sand engulfing the truck wasn’t going to get in too bad.
“What if we went over a cliff? What if we ran into someone from the caravan?” he’d asked as he slid his seat back and put his boots up on the dashboard. “Nah, we’ll wait it out. There’s no GPS or stars to help us through something like this, and it’s too easy to get lost when you can’t see where you’re going. Only a fool would try.”
Benny couldn’t say that he’d always been able to see exactly where he was going the last few days, but the memory did give him an idea.
He aimed his Space Runner’s laser as low as it could go and began blasting the crater wall ben
eath him, gouging a deep trench into the rock and sending clouds of debris floating into the paths of the ships behind him. He had just a few seconds of invisibility to work with and he tried to make the most of it. Pulling up on the flight yoke, he flew in a loop, hoping to take the ships by surprise.
And he did. Or one of them, at least. His laser hit its crystalline wing, causing it to ram into the crater wall and fall behind. The other ship, however, dodged him and corrected itself so quickly that Benny didn’t have a chance of avoiding its counterattack. A bolt of energy slammed into the pilot’s side of his Space Runner with such force that Benny was sure the whole car was going to break apart as he banged his head against the side window, straining against his seat belt. Lights all over the dashboard started blinking as he struggled to both catch his breath and regain control of the vehicle. But it was too late. He was too close to the ground, and before he could pull up on the yoke the car slammed into the bottom of the crater, spinning over the craggy ground, throwing Benny around until finally it skidded for twenty yards and came to a stop upside down.
Smoke began to fill the cabin of Benny’s Space Runner. Coughing, he hurled himself against the door a few times. On the third try, it gave, and he rolled out onto the surface of the Moon, the force field helmet of his space suit automatically appearing around his head and filling with oxygen. He half crawled for a few seconds before managing to get to his feet just in time to see the alien ship returning, circling around and heading straight for him.
He tapped on his collar, trying to connect to his friends’ comm systems. “Guys? Anyone? I’m kind of defenseless down here!”
Suddenly they were all shouting in his helmet, on their way to rescue him. But even as they raced toward the crater, he realized they’d never make it in time. The ship coming after him was too fast, and in the low gravity, there was no way he’d be able to avoid its blasts for long. It was homing in on him now, already within range to attack. Benny could see a surge of blue light on the back of the ship. This was it.
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