Lost Planet 02 - The Stolen Moon

by Searles, Rachel

  Parker put a hand on his shoulder. “Hold on. It’s not like Captain Lennard is going to kick us off the ship. Yeah, we’ll get yelled at. Won’t be the first time, either.”

  “He could send us to military school.”

  Parker rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. He’s going to send us to the Fleet academy for misbehaving orphans.”

  Chase flinched at the word orphan. But Parker was right, trouble or no, the captain wouldn’t kick them off the ship, especially not to send them into the hands of the Fleet. But he would be angry. “What about you?” he asked Analora.

  She bit her lip and shook her head a few times in thought before she answered. “I want to do it. Dany said it was worth every second. Worst case, my dad will just send me back to live with my mom. He’s not like Chief Kobes—he won’t send me off to the academy.”

  It was tempting, but Chase imagined Captain Lennard’s reaction once he heard that Chase had stolen an escape pod to go off on his own. The captain thought of him as family, and had put himself and his crew in great danger to make sure Chase was safe. How could he betray him by doing something so reckless?

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t. I’ll wait for Maurus and the other expeds to come back and hear what they have to say.” He kept his tone firm, but it was hard to watch the disappointed reactions on Parker’s and Analora’s faces.

  “I’ll go,” said a scratchy voice on the other side of the hall.

  Parker and Analora turned around, and behind them stood Lilli, a pale little apparition who’d materialized out of nowhere, as serious and unsmiling as ever. “I’ll go down to Storros with you,” she repeated. “Since Chase doesn’t want to look for the person who contacted him.”

  “Hey, Lil,” said Parker, glancing nervously at Analora. “You snuck up on us!”

  “Where have you been?” asked Chase. “How long were you spying on us?”

  Analora looked at Chase with a confused frown. “Is this…?”

  “She’s my sister,” he explained. “My nosy sister.”

  “I have as much right to go along with them as you do,” Lilli flared, nodding her head at Parker and Analora. “You wouldn’t have even given me the option.”

  “That’s because I would have had to find you first,” Chase snapped back. “You’re a ghost.”

  Lilli raised an eyebrow. “I’m the ghost?”

  “Hey, hey,” Parker interrupted. “Save the sniping for the battlefield. Lilli, you want to take a jump pod down to Storros with us?”

  “Yes,” she said immediately.

  All three of them looked at Chase, and for a brief second, he despised them. It would have been hard enough to watch Parker and Analora go, if they’d gone ahead without him, but there was no way he could refuse to join if Lilli was going.

  “Great,” he snarled.

  Parker put an arm around his shoulders. “I knew you couldn’t resist. Just had to get you out of your goody two shoes.” He turned to Analora. “Look up the coordinates for Lumos, if you can. My computer’s, um, on the fritz.”

  Analora high-fived him, grinning. “Let’s meet at the starboard end of my hall in ten minutes. And dress warm.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “What’s with the pretty scarf?” Parker asked Chase as they headed back to their room, flicking at the gray material around his neck.

  Too furious to respond, Chase stalked beside him, eyes locked on the floor. As anxious as he was to find the writer of the letter, he felt sick about what they were about to do. He glared at Lilli, who trotted alongside him. “You’re coming for real, not sending a copy with us. If we get in trouble, we’re all getting in trouble. No disappearing.”

  Lilli gave an annoyed sigh. “Don’t worry, I couldn’t project that far even if I wanted to.”

  “So is this really you?”

  “I’ll go get myself,” she said sarcastically, and vanished.

  Chase looked around quickly to make sure there was no one else in the hall to have seen that. Back in their room, he grabbed a thin gray jacket—Fleet-issue with the symbols removed, just like the rest of the clothing the captain had provided for him and Parker.

  Parker dug around in his drawer, pulling out something small. “I snagged an old translink from the engine room a while back, but I’ve only got the one.” He tossed it once in his hand and held it out. “You can have it.”

  Chase shook his head, not looking up. “They gave me one already. You use it.”

  Analora was bouncing on her heels as she waited for them at the starboard end of her hall next to a nondescript door marked EGRESS. She was dressed like an explorer in pants with built-in kneepads and a canvas jacket with lots of pockets. Her long hair was tied back in a thick braid and a white tube scarf lay slouched around her neck.

  “Wow, you don’t mess around,” said Parker.

  She made a face. “This is what I wear when I’m helping my mom in the field. It’s practical.” Turning to Chase, she asked, “Where’s your sister?”

  “I don’t know. She’ll probably bail. We should just go.” Suddenly Chase wanted to go as quickly as possible, to leave before Lilli could join. It was a terrible, horrible idea to let her come along.

  Analora looked at Parker, who shrugged, and hit a red entry key on the door beside her. It slid open on a narrow hallway that was so dark and long that Chase couldn’t see where it ended. Slim, evenly spaced doors, each one with a dark round porthole window, marked the escape pods that lined both sides of the hallway. Analora closed the main door again, and they hurried down the hall single file, past dozens of pods. Analora stopped in front of one. Her voice had grown nervous. “We’ll just all cram in together, okay?”

  Parker grabbed the door and opened, and the booth inside it lit up. “Let’s do it.”

  The pod contained a very snug, bullet-shaped compartment. Analora stepped in first, pulling a screwdriver from her pocket that she used to pry open a tiny panel under the display, revealing a primitive little control console. “Hmm. Dany told me how to bypass the emergency protocol.…”

  Parker leaned over her shoulder, giving directions. “Not that one. The other. Did you bring the coordinates? Here, just let me do it. I’ll deactivate the comm system too, so no one can track us. It wouldn’t do us much good if someone just teleported down to where we land and brought us right back.”

  “Oh, good idea,” said Analora.

  Chase closed the door behind them and watched over their shoulders, his back to the windows and vertical bars that lined the tiny capsule. His eyes kept going to how snugly they stood together, their shoulders just touching.

  Analora took a deep, shaky breath. “Okay, I think that’s everything. Now we just have to—”

  A furious pounding on the outside door interrupted her. Lilli’s livid face just barely topped the door window.

  “She’s too late, let’s go,” said Chase quickly. Analora gave him a strange look and leaned past him to hit the unlock tab.

  Lilli squeezed into the capsule, glaring at everyone. She had put on a gray Fleet turtleneck sweater that was way too big and hung down almost to her knees. Parker opened his mouth like he was going to say something, and then thought better of it and just smiled at her.

  “You made it,” said Chase grimly. His pulse began to pick up as Lilli closed the capsule door. This had to be the stupidest idea anyone had ever had. What if the jump pod malfunctioned, and they ended up lost in space? What if they got stuck somewhere? Or blew up? He opened his mouth, about to suggest they call the whole thing off.

  Parker pounded his fist against the capsule wall. “Let’s do this.”

  “Okay,” said Analora in a shaky voice. “Here we go.” She reached over to the console and pressed a final key. For a second, nothing happened other than a few clicks around the inside of the escape capsule.

  “Are you sure—” started Chase.

  Before he could finish, the breath got sucked out of his lungs as the pod blasted upward, taking off like
a rocket. They hurtled through the launch tube with a roar, and it was all Chase could do to stay on his feet, gripping the bars inside the capsule with a terrified expression frozen on his face, unable to see anyone else’s faces clearly because everything was vibrating so hard. A second later, the capsule went suddenly dark as they burst out of the Kuyddestor and into space.

  “Crazy!” cried Parker. They were still tearing along at a dizzying speed, but the ride smoothed out and the vibrating lessened. Three portholes gave a glimpse of the dark, empty space outside the pod, and in one the sliver of a greenish orb.

  “That’s Rhima,” shouted Analora, twisting around to look. “The moon.” After a few minutes the moon was already gone from view, and beyond the thin wall of the capsule lay endless black parsecs of space. Chase looked over at his sister, who stared out the window, gripping the bars beside her so hard her knuckles were white.

  “How does this thing land?” Chase asked over the roar of the capsule’s thrusters.

  “Um, I’m not sure!” Analora yelled back. “I never got to ask Dany about that.”

  There wasn’t a gravity generator in the capsule, and as the capsule began to arc sideways, Chase had the sensation that he was falling from a very tall height. The four of them were packed tightly enough into the capsule that nobody could fly around and bang into anything, but whoever ended up on the bottom of the pile was going to get squashed. Soon the capsule was completely upside down, racing nose-first toward something they couldn’t see yet, and Chase began to feel the blood rushing to his head.

  Staring out the window as the faint glow of atmosphere began to creep into the surroundings, Chase became aware of fast, high-pitched breathing beside him. He looked over at Lilli again and saw that she was practically hyperventilating.

  “Hey!” He nudged her with his elbow. “You okay?”

  She looked at him with a frantic expression, her mouth hanging open. They locked eyes for a moment, and then she closed hers and pressed her forehead against her hand, grimacing. Chase realized that this was the first time she’d really gone out on her own. While he’d spent a week tearing around the galaxy trying to find his identity, she’d spent the entire time sedated in the hands of the Fleet.

  “It’s going to be okay!” he shouted, putting an arm around her skinny shoulders.

  “You sure about that?” came Parker’s voice from beside him.

  Chase looked up and saw that the shuttle was racing over the surface of a planet, ripping through clouds as it screamed down toward what looked like a mountain range. This, presumably, was Storros. “Analora?” he asked with an unmistakable and embarrassing squeak of fear in his voice. She didn’t answer, and as they neared the surface of the planet, Chase stared in frozen terror, watching what could only be their certain impending death.

  When they got close enough that he could see individual trees and rocks, the capsule started to tilt again, swinging into a long arc that brought them parallel to the ground. The thrusters roared, and the capsule began to slow. Colors flashed by below, browns and reds and yellows, too quickly to tell what anything was. The capsule sank lower and lower toward the surface.

  They hit hard and fast, but at the moment of impact, there was a flash of white, and suddenly the inside of the capsule was filled with protective foam that held them all perfectly in place—all except for Chase. In his panic, he couldn’t stop his body’s automatic reflex to phase, and the foam was not only around but inside him, packing the loose space between each of his phasing molecules. He was one with the foam, and it burned like fire.

  “Parker,” he tried to say as the capsule skidded and slowed, but only a panicky garbled sound came out. He couldn’t let Analora see him like this.

  The shuttle rolled to a stop, and not a moment too soon the door shot off, allowing Chase to swiftly grab the edges of the doorframe and pull himself free of the foam. He tumbled to the ground and started jumping and rubbing his skin, trying to make the tingling pain stop. Behind the shuttle was a long, deep gash in the earth, the broken limbs of trees swinging in their wake. They’d landed in some sort of forest full of short, uniformly spaced trees with gigantic yellow leaves, and a musty sweetness filled the air.

  Lilli crawled out of the capsule, wide-eyed and silent with shock. Parker came next, digging himself free. “Holy suns of Taras, we’re alive,” he muttered, looking up at the bits of sky that peeked between the leaves.

  Chase went back to the capsule to help Analora out. By the time he reached her, the foam was already starting to disintegrate. She smiled up at him, brushing a chunk of it from her sleeve, and took his hand to help pull herself out of the capsule. “Well,” she said, blinking. “That was fun.”

  Lilli had sat down on a smooth brown rock. Her face was even paler than usual, and her dark eyes were locked on a point on the ground, deep in concentration. Parker and Analora were already talking and laughing, as though hurtling down to the middle of nowhere on a strange planet were no different than taking a jettaxi to a different part of a city. If Chase was feeling a little stunned, Lilli was probably in complete shock.

  Chase crouched down at her side. “Are you okay?

  “Just give me a minute,” she said in a stiff voice.

  Analora had plucked one of the yellow leaves from a tree. It was big enough to cover her entire face when she held it up. “I wonder what kind of trees these are,” she said, folding the leaf carefully and sticking it in one of her pockets.

  Parker took a deep breath of the sweet-smelling air and grinned. “We’re on Storros!”

  “Great, but we’re not exactly in a city,” said Chase. “How far are we from Lumos?”

  “No idea,” Parker said with a shrug. “Let’s find a high point and see what’s around us.”

  Shaking her head, Analora pulled a device from her jacket and flipped it open. After a moment, she pointed. “Lumos is that way.”

  Parker gave her an admiring smirk. “Of course, the great explorer Miss Bishallany would remember to bring a locator. What else have you got in there?”

  “A distress beacon, a couple phoswhites, a tube of steamgel, a utility knife, and a sandwich.”

  “A sandwich? Don’t you eat scrappies?”

  Analora gave a theatrical shudder. “Never. You know what those are made of, right?” Chatting like this, they walked off in the direction Analora had pointed, and Chase looked after them with a knot in his stomach. They were already making up their own inside jokes, and here he was stuck looking after his sister.

  “Can you walk?” he asked Lilli.

  She stared at him for a moment before answering in her solemn little voice. “Yes.” She made no move to rise.

  He stood and held out his hand. “Come on.” When she still didn’t take it, he sighed impatiently. “You can’t just sit here all day.”

  Lilli scowled at him. “I’m just orienting myself, calm down. That jump pod…”

  She was obviously still shaken. “I’ve never done anything like that before either,” Chase told her. “I thought I was going to throw up on myself.”

  She tipped her choppy blond head back and looked up at the sky. “How are we going to get back?”

  “Didn’t that problem occur to you before you agreed to come along?” Chase paused, making an effort to filter the irritation back out of his voice. “They’ll probably come looking for us before we have to hunt for a way back.”

  “They’re hosting the peace talks today. Is anyone even going to miss us?”

  “Dr. Bishallany will. Now get up, please.” He held his hand out again.

  She allowed him to pull her off the stone, letting go of his hand immediately after, and plodded along behind him. Ahead of them, he could hear Parker’s and Analora’s voices. They had gone ahead, but the trees grew extremely dense and Chase couldn’t see where they were.

  “Parker! Hey, Park! Slow down!” Chase hurried through the brush, irritated that the two of them had just wandered ahead together without waiting. Gl
ancing back to make sure Lilli was still behind him, he pushed onward, shouting Parker’s name again.

  A high-pitched scream echoed through the trees.

  “Analora!” Chase took off running through the forest, following the sound of her voice. He burst into a small clearing, where she and Parker stood huddled on top of a rock. Sitting on the ground before them was a small creature covered in shaggy violet-gray fur. Chase couldn’t see its face, but it had hunched shoulders and long, stringy arms.

  “Go! Get away!” Parker shouted at the creature, kicking at it. The creature snatched his foot with both arms, and Parker nearly fell backward off the rock, grabbing Analora’s shoulder for balance.

  Without thinking, Chase raced forward and yanked the furry animal back by the scruff. The first thought that crossed his mind when he touched it was that underneath the violet fluff, its body felt as hard as armor. The second thought, when it turned to face him, was less of a thought and more an incoherent blare of terror. Instead of the monkey head he half-expected, the creature had a withered, wrinkly face, with oily black eyes and a puckered hole for a mouth. It hissed when it saw him, a pair of rubbery black lips pulling back from a mouthful of needle-thin teeth.

  He’d successfully diverted the creature’s attention away from Parker and Analora—now it pivoted around, reaching for him with long arms that ended in a cluster of flat, wriggly feelers. He tried to bat the arms away, but in his fear he phased right through them. A sane voice in the back of his head tried to tell him that this thing couldn’t hurt him, but he couldn’t stop his adrenaline from spiking, making it impossible for him to stop phasing long enough to push the creature away.

  He turned to run, and in one corner of his eye saw his sister trying to scale the bendy limbs of a tree. At least a dozen more of the same creatures were emerging from the woods, pulling themselves on their long arms. He felt a tingling sensation at his ankles and realized the first creature was trying—and failing—to grab him by the legs. He glanced back to see if Analora was seeing this, but she had somehow gotten hold of a dead tree branch and was swinging it at the approaching creatures.