by Ryan Kinzy
A handful of the Gr-awl-toltz monsters broke rank, surging forward to the star gate. They got bigger and bigger as they approached the gate, forming a single-file line, ready to jump through.
The first one in line reached a massive tentacle through the gate, then as quickly as the black void appeared, it shrunk back to nothing and the electric sparks stopped. As the sparks receded, the enormous tentacle that had breeched the gate was severed from the Gr-awl-toltz’s body. It had momentum and floated by the control ship, flailing like a lizard tail that had just gotten pulled off.
Blood-like liquid coagulated into balls behind the tentacle. As it floated by, one of the blood balls splattered the window with a big thud. As it did, every Zeb in the hall jumped up with their hands in the air, cheering.
Moment later, they could see the other end of the tentacle whipping around, heading straight for the station. The massive limb struck the station with an enormous force strong enough to knock the girls off their feet.
They looked up. The tentacle had smashed a hole in the window they were looking out of. There were narrow walkways around the perimeter of the room where a couple of Zebs were working on repairs. The two next to the smashed window floated up and out into space.
The girls could feel the air getting thinner as it got sucked out of the room. Then a purple haze of electricity formed around the hole and the whishing sound stopped. The girls stood, holding each other, staring at the gaping hole
Chapter 20
Space Ship Pilots
“Come on!” Lauren tugged at Julia’s arm. “We need to find Ankit and Raja. And we need call Mom and Dad. I’m sure they’re worried about us!”
Julia nodded.
The two didn’t know where to start, so they just started wandering around the halls, asking if anyone knew were Ankit and Raja were. Most of the Zebs had heard about the girls, but they were still taken aback by seeing the two in person.
“Have you seen Ankit or Raja?” Lauren asked one of the Zebs walking by.
The Zeb stopped, startled. “Yes, they’re on the upper deck with the General.”
“Thanks!” she shouted to his back as he kept walking.
“Where’s the upper deck?” Julia asked her sister.
“How should I know?”
“Well, let’s ask someone,” Julia said.
Lauren shook her head, feigning frustration, and stopped the next Zeb walking by.
“How do we get to the upper deck?” she asked.
He pointed over to some double doors, “There, that’s the elevator. Get on and say Upper Deck. It will take you there.”
The girls did as he said, boarding the elevator. “Upper Deck.”
Nothing happened.
“Upper Deck,” Lauren said again.
Again, nothing happened.
A Zeb boarded the elevator and said, “Upper Deck,” eyeing the girls.
The elevator closed the doors and went up.
“That’s weird, why didn’t it work for us,” Julia asked.
“Because you’re not speaking Zeb,” the Zeb said.
“What do you mean? We said ‘Upper Deck’,” Lauren said.
“Yes, but you said it in your native language. The nanobots translate language for your ears, so you hear us speaking your language, but we’re actually speaking our language,” he said with a smile.
A half a minute later, the doors opened, revealing a scene of Zebs running in all directions. At the center of the fray, Ankit stood next to an older Zeb who was giving orders to a group. The group disbanded.
Lauren and Julia walked toward him.
Ankit looked up. “What are you two doing up here?”
“We came to help!” Julia said, snapping to attention.
“And we need to call our parents,” Lauren added.
“Yes, I’m sure they’re concerned,” Ankit said.
“Let’s call Dad first. If we try to explain it to him, he can calm Mom down,” Julia said.
“Here, let’s go over to this room.” Ankit led the way to a room in the corner.
In the room, there was a screen on the table.
Ankit waved his hand in front of the screen and it turned on. “It’s tied in to all the systems in the Cielo complex.”
Raja came in, looking around. “Everything OK?”
“Yes, they just wanted to call their parents,” Ankit responded.
“Call Dad,” Lauren said into the screen.
A message flashed on the screen, “Locating …” Then the picture flashed on to their dad.
“Where are you two?” their dad said, looking at them through the phone.
“Well, that’s kind of hard to explain, Dad,” Lauren muttered.
“Hard to explain, huh?” He frowned at her. “Well, you two were right. I’ve seen them.”
“Seen what?” Lauren asked.
“Seen those creatures. The ones that are kind of like us.”
“You mean the Zebs?”
“Yes, they’re all over out here. I thought we just had a bunch of short workers, but many of them are Zebs,” he said.
“You mean they’re out there mining the asteroids?” Julia asked.
“Yes! I tried contacting you two earlier, but I couldn’t get through. Which is strange because I could talk to your mother. I haven’t talked to her since last night. She said you were spending the night at Alyssa’s,” he said.
“Where are you now?” Lauren asked.
“We’re on a little ship coming back to the station. No Zebs are on here. I checked,” he responded. “Where are you?”
“Well, we’re kind of out near Jupiter,” Lauren said, rolling her eyes, looking up at the ceiling, and smiling.
Julia jumped in, bumping her sister out of the way. “Yeah, Dad, we’re out here close to Jupiter. You have NO idea what’s gone on out here, but don’t worry, it will all be fine now.”
“JUPITER! What! How! That’s impossible. How did you get out there? Does your mom know where you are?” he shouted.
“Dad, we’re fine. I promise! We have a LOT to tell you. I wish you would have believed us before …” Lauren said.
“Well, do you blame me? I couldn’t have believed you without seeing it myself. But I’d believe anything now,” he responded.
Overhead alarms sounded on their dad’s transport ship. He turned around to see what it was.
“What is that?” Lauren asked.
“Not sure. Hold on one sec.” He floated back out of the room, pulling on the door jamb with his hands. The small transport ships didn’t have gravity, as they were used just for moving people back and forth between stations. He was gone for a couple of minutes and came back. “Girls, I have to go. There’s some strange space ship coming right at us!”
“Wait, hold on! What does it look like?” Lauren asked. Her skin flashed hot, burning.
Her fears were confirmed when their dad responded, “It’s strange. I’ve never seen this type of ship before. Strange markings on the side of it.”
Raja was listening in the background said, “That sounds like one of our ships. They’re coming for your dad. The Gr-awl-toltz wants revenge!”
Lauren turned around, looking at Raja with wide eyes. “What?”
“Who said that?” their dad asked.
She whipped around to address her dad. “I’ll have to explain later, Dad.” Then she asked Raja again, “What are you talking about?”
Raja said, “It knows about you. They might be primitive, but they understand revenge. It’s going after your dad to get to you because it senses a connection.”
The blood drained out of Lauren’s face as she turned back to the phone.
Her dad asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Dad, I think they’re coming for you,” she said.
Just then, the girls heard a loud clunk from the phone.
“What was that?” Julia asked her dad.
“I’m not sure. It sounds like they are docking onto us,” he said wit
h his voice quivering slightly. “Girls, I will be OK.”
The phone picture went black.
“Dad!? Dad!?” Lauren screamed, shaking the phone.
Julia buried her head in her hands.
Ankit spoke. “Girls, the Zebs won’t kill him.”
When Ankit said “kill” Julia burst into tears. She sank back in her chair, the corners of her mouth turned down. Tears streamed from her eyes as she stared blankly at the ceiling.
Lauren’s mouth gaped wide open. A tremor shot through her. “No, no, no,” was all she could say, pounding her fists on the table.
“It’s my fault,” Julia said. “If I hadn’t ever discovered this treatment, we wouldn’t be in this mess and Dad would be safe.”
Ankit looked at her sternly. “Julia, had you never found the treatment, that brigade of monsters on the other side of the star gate would be streaming their way here by now. It’s because of the treatment that we can now help your father.”
Julia glanced up at him, brushing her tears away.
Lauren gained her composure again, remembering she was the older sister and patted her sibling on the back.
Lauren turned to Ankit, “How do we help him now?”
Ankit scrunched his eyes, staring off in the distance. “Well, we’ve tested the treatment … it looks like it could affect the Gr-awl-toltz, but we don’t know how long it would take. It could take minutes or it could be hours.”
Raja interrupted, “How do we get it inside the Gr-awl-toltz? We cannot go near it. It would know we were there.”
Ankit nodded, then sat down in the chair next to him.
Lauren stayed quiet for a moment longer, then sniffled and spoke in a quiet voice, “You can’t … but we can.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You can’t get close to it, but we can. It wants to punish us. We could go right up to it,” Lauren said.
“No, it’s too dangerous.” Ankit shook his head at her.
“She’s right. It’s the only way. It wants to terminate you up close. I can almost feel its rage,” Raja said, shifting his gaze to Ankit.
“Terminate?” Julia asked.
“Yes, Julia! Terminate. That thing wants to kill us! It wants us dead! And from the sound of it, it wants to torture us first!” Lauren shouted.
Julia shivered, burying her head in her knees, then looked up. “But we have to do it.”
“You said the Zebs won’t kill our dad. It won’t kill us either until it knows it has hurt us,” Lauren said.
“She’s right. It would want them right next to it, so it could break through the treatment barrier. Then it would tear their minds apart,” Raja said.
Julia shot a glance up to Raja. “That doesn’t sound very pleasant.”
“Well, that is, if the treatment doesn’t work on it … ,” Ankit said.
“We don’t have any of the treatment left,” Lauren said. “It would take another week to get enough.”
“Not necessarily,” Raja interrupted. “Here at the star gate, we have access to a lot of our technology. We have ways of accelerating the process. We could take the accelerators back to Cielo Prime.”
“Yes, of course,” Ankit said, turning to Raja. “Go get the General. We don’t have any time to lose.”
Raja ran out of the room faster than the girls had ever seen him run.
Moments later, the older Zeb Ankit had been standing next to out in the control room came to join them.
“General Santosh!” Ankit addressed the Zeb.
“Ankit, what can I do for you?” he asked.
“Biological accelerators—we need seven to take back to Cielo Prime,” Ankit said.
“What do you need them for?” the General asked.
“We can accelerate growth of the treatment with them, but the only samples we have are back on Cielo Prime.”
“Let me have them loaded onto your ship.” General Santosh excused himself from the room while he talked in to his wrist. Lauren thought it was strange, but then wondered if there was some communication device there.
“Get ready, girls. We need to go back to Cielo Prime … fast!” Ankit said to them.
The girls were still worrying about their father as they marched off to the ship with Ankit and Raja.
When they arrived at the dock, a number of Zebs were loading supplies into a compartment at the back of the ship. They were also outfitting the ship with what looked like missiles and other armaments.
“What’s all that stuff?” Julia asked.
“Just a few things we might need,” Raja said to her. “Now hop in. We need to get going.”
The girls boarded the ship first, then Ankit and Raja. The doors closed behind them. The Zebs finished loading the storage compartment with supplies, then backed up, giving Ankit a signal. Ankit waved back at them, firing the engines.
Ankit gently raised the ship, then did a 180-degree turn. The purple electric haze slid over the ship as it crossed the threshold to space.
“OK, you two, settle in for a little bit, then we have a surprise for you,” Ankit said to the two girls.
Lauren and Julia looked at each other. Julia asked, “What is it?”
“You’ll find out!” was all he said.
The anticipation interested the girls as they sped past Io. The beautiful moon showed off its yellowish, greenish color.
“Look at that!” Julia pointed to the moon.
“What? What is it?” Lauren asked, looking where Julia was pointing.
“That, it’s a lava flow. Can you see it?” Julia pulled her microscope out of her fanny pack. She held it up to the window and expanded the view.
“See! It’s really cool.” She held it so Lauren could see.
“Wow!” Lauren said, seeing the fast-moving lava on the surface.
Ankit wasn’t paying attention to the girls. He was focused on navigating around the moon instead. Once past, he spun around addressing them.
“OK, here’s your surprise,” he said, clasping his hands together. “You two are going to fly the ship. I think it’s something you need to know how to do.”
“What? Really?” Julia said raising her voice.
“Awesome!” Lauren said.
“OK, let’s switch places,” Ankit said. He had put the ship on cruise control. “Lauren, you and I will switch first, then Julia and Raja.”
Lauren and Ankit unbuckled, floating untethered in the ship. Lauren grabbed the seat in front of her, pulling herself out of Ankit’s way as he took her seat. She then pulled herself around and strapped herself in the pilot’s seat.
Julia did the same, switching with Raja, giggling the whole time, excited to fly a spaceship.
“Before we start, let me give you this.” Ankit handed both Lauren and Julia small, round wristbands.
“We got these on the control ship. They can alter your body signature to make the ship think you are one of us. Wear it at all times. It doesn’t just work on the ship, it works on the station too, getting you into the secret docks and other parts of the station.”
They both took the wristbands and cinched them around their wrists. They didn’t quite fit, but they were able to shove them up their arms to tighten them.
“Now, it’s pretty easy. All the controls are where you think they should be, and they do what you think they should.” He pointed to the joystick-like control on the dashboard.
“Move that around to go in the direction you want to go.” Then he pointed to the accelerator control on the right. “And that control speeds you up or down.”
Lauren took the controls, turning the joystick left with her hand. The ship rolled to the left.
“Whoa!” Lauren said as she moved the ship the other way. She eased the accelerator up and the ship sped faster, turning in a flat spin.
“Uh, I’m getting dizzy!” Julia said, holding her head.
Lauren laughed, trying to right the ship, then moved it around in all directions, making her passengers uncomfortab
le, but helping her master the controls.
“This is easy! It’s just like a video game!” she laughed again as she did a barrel roll.
“OK, OK, we get it!” Ankit said. “You know how to fly the ship now.”
She straightened the ship out again.
“Now, in open space like this, you can put it on autopilot, telling the ship where to go. For example, tap on that pad that looks like a map’”
Lauren scanned the dashboard. “This one?” she asked pointing to a button.
“Yes, that one.”
Lauren touched the button and a map of Jupiter displayed in a holographic image by the windshield.
“Now, tap the right corner to zoom out and the left corner to zoom in,” he said.
Lauren tapped the right corner of the pad.
The map zoomed out, showing Jupiter in one corner, the station complex in another corner, and asteroids in the middle.
“Good, see it’s very intuitive!” Ankit said to her. “Now I can tell it to go to Cielo Prime. Go to Cielo Prime.”
“Why can’t I?” Lauren asked.
“You’re not speaking our language,” he said.
“Oh, that’s right,” Lauren said. “Well that’s stupid! Why can’t this thing speak English?”
The ship corrected its course, and on the map it showed the trajectory going to Cielo Prime.
Raja spoke to Julia. “OK, now it’s your job to control the weapons.”
“Yessss,” Julia said, waggling her fingers, ready to grab the controls.
“Before firing the weapons, you have to engage them. You can do that by pressing that button.” He pointed to a button on the control panel in front of her.
Julia pressed the button and a target cross appeared on the windshield.
“Now, move the target around until you find what you’re trying to hit.”
Julia moved the controls around, zeroing in on an asteroid off in the distance.
“Now, you can track the target by tapping once with your thumb or holding it down.”
She tapped the button with her thumb and the target cross glowed yellow, following the targeted asteroid as the ship moved along.
“You can fire when ready with your index finger.”
Julia pulled the trigger. A buzz got louder and louder for a second, then a blast of energy shot from the ship at the floating rock. Moments later the asteroid blew to bits in a cloud of dust.