Suddenly, a bolt of gold light shot forth, briefly illuminating the dark corners of the crater and striking the side of the alien craft. The ship exploded in a flash of fire, quickly snuffed out by the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere. The few remaining pieces of the ship then fell toward the surface in a rain of smoking metal and minerals. Benny hit the ground and covered his head as the wreckage battered the rocky crater floor around him.
When he was sure that it was over he got to his knees, looking around, breathless. The alien ship had practically disintegrated, and the pilot inside . . .
The others were still shouting through the speakers in his collar, telling him that the two remaining ships were retreating after the explosion. He scanned the direction the gold bolt had come from.
And then he saw it. In the shadows near the crater wall there was some kind of vehicle that was too big to be a normal Space Runner. He watched as a long, cannon-like tube folded back into the hood of the craft as it lifted off the ground. It hovered in the air for a few seconds before jetting toward Benny.
Sweating and shaking, he held his breath and clenched his fists as the craft landed near him. The pilot-side door opened. A figure wearing a space suit that was patched in several places stepped out. Whoever it was also wore a force field helmet that was completely black, as though they had an inky egg for a head.
Benny had just enough time to breathe a sigh of relief that the figure looked human before the person was upon him, with one giant gloved hand around his neck, lifting him off the ground, fingers pressing against his collar.
“Stop!” Benny shouted, beating his fists against the figure’s broad chest.
Then there was a beep inside his helmet and the hand let go. Benny drifted back down to the ground as a man’s voice, low and gravelly, came out of his collar speaker.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Benny Love,” he replied in a wheeze as he scrambled to his feet. His hands immediately went up to his throat—the man had been manually connecting their radios, not attacking him. Or at least, he didn’t think he’d attacked him. Behind him, his friends’ three Space Runners landed.
The man tilted his head and pressed something on the back of his neck. His helmet slowly became transparent until Benny could see who was standing in front of him. The man’s hair was matted and oily, gray but for a streak of jet-black across the front, contrasting the ghostly pallor of his skin. A thick, dark beard pushed up against the inside of his force field helmet. He stared at Benny through thick goggles.
Benny gaped at the man. “Um . . .” he started. “Dr. Austin Bale?”
The man raised one bushy eyebrow and nodded.
“Are you okay?” Hot Dog shouted as his friends rushed to his side.
Jasmine stopped in her tracks when she saw Dr. Bale. “It’s you.”
“Well, that was easier than I thought it would be,” Drue said. Then he frowned. “Except for the aliens, I guess.”
Dr. Bale looked them over one by one, stopping on Hot Dog. “You, I recognize. The girl in the crashed SR.”
Hot Dog just nodded.
“It was a matter of good fortune for you,” Dr. Bale continued. “I’d gone to see if the Taj was still standing after our radar picked up on that approaching storm.” He looked to Benny. “You’re welcome for saving your life just now.”
“Yeah,” Benny said. “I mean, you’re right. Thanks! Sorry, I just . . . guess I didn’t expect to find you so fast.”
“You came looking for me?” he asked.
Benny nodded as his mind spun, hardly believing their luck. This man—the elusive scientist they’d been searching for—had utterly annihilated one of the alien ships with some sort of weapon unlike anything Benny had ever seen.
He had so many questions.
Dr. Bale’s nose twitched, his overgrown beard and mustache scratching against the inside of his helmet.
“There’s nothing for you here,” he said, turning back to his big Space Runner. “Go back to your fancy hotel. Tell Elijah to keep a leash on his children. This is my side of the Moon.”
“Wait,” Benny said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re here. Elijah’s not at the Taj anymore.”
Dr. Bale stopped, turning back to them slowly, staring at Benny. “What do you mean he’s not there?”
“It’s . . . kind of a long story,” Benny said.
Dr. Bale narrowed his eyes before glancing at the sky. “It’s not safe to be out here. You may have damaged the other four crafts, but they’ll be back.”
“How did you . . . ? I mean, that level of . . . Where? Up here?” Jasmine asked, the questions spilling out of her mouth.
Dr. Bale took a moment to look at each of them again, and then back at the three Space Runners parked a few yards away. Finally, he nodded toward his own vehicle. “Why don’t I show you? My campsite isn’t far.” He glanced back at Benny. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”
5.
There was something oddly familiar about the inside of Dr. Bale’s vehicle. A coating of dust covered the consoles—touch surfaces that were scratched and practically obsolete compared to those inside the Space Runners Benny had been in. In fact, everything seemed dated, from the switches where there could have been holographic buttons right down to the strumming acoustic guitar that was pumping out of the speakers. The whole thing felt like a vehicle better suited for the caravan than the Moon, though it must have had a solid environmental system in it since Benny’s helmet had disappeared after they’d taken off.
He glanced in the side mirror to make sure his friends were still following close behind, three chrome brush-strokes against the black sky. They’d been hesitant to let him ride alone with Dr. Bale when the man had suggested he do so, but Benny had figured if they were going to ask him for help, they should at least try to be friendly. And Dr. Bale had just saved his life.
Benny turned his attention to a stick shift between him and Dr. Bale. He’d seen them on Earth on the rare occasions that the caravan stumbled across ancient cars with primitive transmissions, but he couldn’t imagine what one was doing here.
Dr. Bale must have noticed his staring, though he didn’t look over at Benny when he spoke, his voice deep. “It controls the cannon. Not the most delicate instrument, but it gets the job done. As you saw.”
Benny swallowed hard, thinking of the alien ship: there one moment, gone the next.
“So . . .” he began, unsure exactly what to say. “You have a . . . I don’t know. It looks like a space truck?”
“We call this the Tank. It’s my own design.”
“That makes sense.” Benny paused. “Powered by one of Elijah’s hyperdrives?”
Dr. Bale grunted, which Benny took as a yes. He continued.
“And you built it to take down the Maraudi ships?”
At the mention of the alien species by name, Dr. Bale raised an eyebrow. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said. “I saved you back there, so you owe me a little explanation as to why four kids are wandering around out here alone. I assume you’re some of Elijah’s scholarship winners.”
“You know about the EW-SCAB?”
“Just because I’ve been living on the dark side for a while doesn’t mean that I’m not aware of what’s going on in our solar system. I’ve been back and forth to Earth regularly over the years.” He tried to smooth his beard down—finally free from the helmet, it was still curling up at the end. “Besides, Elijah’s not the only one who can launch a satellite.”
“So you’re in contact with Earth?” Benny jerked forward. “Could you—”
“Don’t get excited. That asteroid storm last week killed our communications. I take it the same can be said for the Taj’s. From what I can tell it destroyed almost every usable satellite for hundreds of thousands of miles.”
Benny hunched back in his seat. “Oh.”
There was a brief silence between them before Dr. Bale spoke again. “Did he send you?”
“Did who send us?”
“Elijah,” he said, his voice dropping even deeper at the last syllable. “Of course he did. Summoning me to that gaudy metal palace of his after the Maraudi finally made a move. I suppose he’s seen reason at last and is ready to enact countermeasures. No doubt he’s lobbying on Earth, trying to play the role of the white knight. I just can’t believe he sent a bunch of children out to find me. He could have had the decency to come himself.” He glanced at Benny. “Tell me he at least had military forces piloting the fleet that went out this morning.”
“You don’t know,” Benny said. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d have to explain everything that had happened in the last few days to Dr. Bale. “Uh, where do I start? Okay, so you know about the aliens, but did you know that Elijah was using the EW-SCAB to recruit kids to basically sort of be the last of humanity once the Alpha Maraudi came for Earth?”
Benny went on, catching the man up to speed as best he could. By the time he was finished, Dr. Bale’s face was contorted in disgust, his lips twisted and teeth half bared.
“The idiot, he . . .” Dr. Bale said, his eyes flashing wide for a second. Then he took a breath and adjusted his goggles as he shook his head. “Of all the preposterous ideas he had, I don’t know why the plans behind the scholarship should surprise me. I always assumed the Taj would become a stronghold for the elite. I suppose I have to give him at least a sliver of credit.”
“Yeah, well, things obviously didn’t turn out like he planned,” Benny continued. “We found out about the aliens and confronted him. I guess the important part is that a bunch of us weren’t going to let Earth get destroyed, so we flew to the oncoming asteroid storm and tried to blow it up.”
“How? I thought Elijah didn’t have any weapons at the— Ah, wait. The lasers I saw you shooting. Let me guess, they were for excavating?”
“Yeah,” Benny said.
Dr. Bale nodded. “Hmmm. Very clever.”
“They worked pretty well until the aliens attacked. We did our best, but in the end it was Elijah who showed up and saved us. He got sucked into this big asteroid—a mother ship—by a tractor beam and overheated his Space Runner’s hyperdrive.”
“Causing it to explode.” Dr. Bale pursed his lips for a moment. “Yes, I see. And the mother ship?”
“Retreated. I was inside it for a while. It was like the whole thing was made of rock. But I could breathe in there. My helmet didn’t come on.”
Dr. Bale twisted the end of his beard while staring out at the landscape in front of them. He nodded a few times but didn’t say anything. The silence was just starting to get uncomfortable to Benny when the man finally spoke again. “Color me impressed. The lasers were a good idea, but they’re primitive at best. You’re lucky you didn’t all get yourselves killed. You never should have had to go after the Alpha Maraudi yourself—for that, I must apologize on behalf of all the adults who failed you. Fortunately, I’ve been working on means of combating these invaders since we first encountered them all those years ago.”
Benny glanced at the hood of the car where the cannon had disappeared. The word invaders lingered in his ear. “Yeah, I can see that. But, actually, the Alpha Maraudi aren’t what you and Elijah—”
“Who’s running the Taj now that he’s gone?” Dr. Bale asked, cutting him off. “Not that simpering fool Max, I hope.”
“Uh, that’s kind of a good question. Pinky’s sort of in charge.”
“Pinky Weyve?” He let out a single grim laugh. “Elijah’s personal-assistant-turned-girlfriend-turned-computer is in charge of the most sophisticated artificial environment humanity ever created?”
“Well, yeah,” Benny said. “She and one of Elijah’s Pit Crew thought you might be able to help us figure out what to do next.”
Dr. Bale made a noise, but his lips never parted and Benny wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or a groan. “So the Taj has lost contact with Earth and is being run by a bunch of kids and an AI.”
“Basically,” Benny said, and for some reason he got the feeling in his gut that maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to say to the man with a grudge against Elijah West. He tried to change the subject. “Plus, you know . . . We figured we should warn you. If there were aliens on this side of the Moon. We’d tracked some headed this way at the battle this morning.”
“As you saw, I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.”
“Right.” Benny looked at the stick shift again. “And, uh . . . where are we going?”
Dr. Bale nodded at the giant, shallow crater they were shooting toward. “Home sweet home.”
Benny looked through the windshield, but there was nothing but empty space and rock ahead of them. “I don’t see any—”
There was a slight shimmer as they passed through some sort of hologram field, and then suddenly everything outside the Tank changed.
“Holy whoa,” Benny murmured as he tried to make sense of his surroundings, his eyes darting around.
“Holographic environmental mimicry equipped with sensor cloaks,” Dr. Bale said. “The site’s invisible from the outside, obviously.”
Half a dozen boxy, dull metal sheds lined the right side of the camp, thick-looking canvas hanging over the doorways. Nearby, two older-model Space Runners were parked beside a row of trailers and what looked to Benny like some sort of missile launcher. The center of the site was filled with tables and benches, most of which were piled high with gadgets and tools that looked like they’d be at home in the Taj’s research labs. To the left, three tents made of shining silver fabric had been pitched.
All around the perimeter, Benny could make out a sheen of distortion in the air that must have signaled the boundaries of the hologram.
“This is the reason I don’t show up on radar,” Dr. Bale continued. “We’re not seen unless we want to be seen. Our vehicles have it, too.” He pointed to a black box on the dashboard and touched a button in the center. The box glowed red as a glimmer of light spread over the outside of the car, and then suddenly all Benny saw when he looked out at the hood was the surface of the Moon.
Benny shook his head and blinked several times. “This is insane,” he said. “This is the coolest use of holograms.”
Dr. Bale grunted in approval and pulled the box off the dash. The Tank was visible again. He tapped the button on the box and its red glow disappeared. “Magnetically attached stealth drives. You should count yourself lucky that the aliens attacked. You never would have found me otherwise.”
Dr. Bale parked near the tents and opened the door to his craft. Benny expected his helmet to power on, but it didn’t. He took a few deep breaths—there seemed to be plenty of oxygen.
“That shield includes an environmental system,” Dr. Bale said. “Not unlike the Grand Dome around the Taj, only this one has a permeable shell. Think of it as a bubble, not a force field.”
“As long as it doesn’t pop,” Benny said to himself as he stepped out of the car, noting that the gravity felt like Earth’s.
Behind them, three Space Runners landed, the pilots jumping out as soon as they touched the ground.
“What the what?” Drue asked. “It looked like you guys had disappeared and then I almost crashed out of surprise when I went through . . . whatever that was.”
“Yeah, same,” Hot Dog said, looking around with wide blue eyes. “Did we just, like, teleport somewhere?”
“Not at all,” Jasmine said, her voice breathy. “This is a mobile research lab hidden by some sort of holographic field.”
“Precisely,” Dr. Bale said, crossing his arms. “Welcome to the most important location in the solar system as far as humanity’s future is concerned.”
Benny looked at his friends as Dr. Bale spread his arms wide, taking a few steps away from them. Hot Dog raised her eyebrows at him, while Jasmine squinted, trying to make out what was on the tables. Drue glanced around, curling up one side of his face like he’d just smelled something disgusting.
“He’s been
living in a place like this all these years?” he whispered.
The cloth draped over the door of one of the sheds was pulled aside, and two figures stepped out, both wearing patched space suits that looked like they were a size too big on each of them. They were both in their late twenties, Benny guessed. One was a pale man with perfectly square glasses and blond hair tied back in a small bun. The other was a woman with dark skin and her hair shaved short, almost to the scalp. They both paused just outside the shed entrance, staring silently at the new arrivals.
“We have . . . guests?” the man said.
“Children,” the woman pointed out.
“Ah, and these are my research assistants, Todd and Mae,” Dr. Bale said. “They’ve brought news from the Lunar Taj. Elijah West is gone.” He glanced back at Benny and the others.
Mae and Todd looked at each other, obviously stunned by this news.
“Then he must have been involved in the attack on the asteroid field,” Mae said.
“If he’s gone,” Todd started, “then who—”
“I know we all have questions,” Dr. Bale interrupted him. “But our guests have been through quite an ordeal. Why don’t you two dig up some refreshments.”
The two researchers nodded to him, stared at Benny and his friends for a beat, and then disappeared back inside.
“What are you doing out here?” Jasmine asked. “What is all this stuff? What was that explosion earlier?”
Dr. Bale started for one of the nearby sheds and Benny and the others followed. “Why don’t I show you?” he asked. “If Pinky sent you, am I right in assuming she gave you some background on my history with Elijah?”
“A little,” Benny said.
“Yeah,” Drue agreed. “Sounded kind of . . . rough.”
Hot Dog smacked his arm.
“‘Rough’ indeed,” Dr. Bale said. “Elijah and I . . . We were very different men. At one point in my life I considered myself a mentor to him. It took a long time for me to realize that in order for that to have been true, Elijah would’ve had to have viewed himself as a student. That was never the case, despite the difference in ages. He was always a visionary or a revolutionary. Never a student.” He stopped at the shed’s entrance and turned to them. “Though, when it came down to it, he was more than willing to take on the role of a god, wasn’t he? Allowing Earth to go out with a whimper while building his own civilization up here. Picking and choosing who would live and who would die. He gave up on humanity, but I didn’t. Even when they laughed at me.” His voice was turning into a soft growl now, and he was looking around the campsite, not at any of the kids in front of him. “Even when Elijah made me look like a fool, I found those who would listen, like Todd and Mae. I kept preparing.”
Space Runners #2 Page 4