Lost Planet 02 - The Stolen Moon

by Searles, Rachel

  Half of the patch came loose, and a shaft of dim light shone into the crawl space. “Yes!” came Parker’s voice. “Hold on a second.” Slim fingers appeared around the edge of the metal, and a second later Mina tore the plate clean off. Through the hole Chase could see Analora’s astonished face.

  “Chase, did you—?” she began.

  “I’ll explain it later,” he said quickly, and he turned and started down the crawl space. After all his effort to keep it a secret, he’d shown her what he was. At least, he told himself, she’d seen him succeeding at something and not falling from a tree or getting overrun by forest monsters.

  “Analora says to push the next panel out and go to the hall,” said Parker from behind. It popped out easily, and they crawled back out into the red light–bathed hall. There was no sign of Asa or any of the others.

  Parker looked both ways down the hall. “Oh, we’re really close.” Quietly he led the way toward the engine room. The double doors were wide open, but over the sound of the alarm in the hall it was impossible to tell if there was anyone inside. Chase jogged past Parker to stick his head in first, just in case there were armed Werikosa. It was completely empty, and all the consoles were dark.

  “How are you going to log into the mainframe if the crew’s all been blocked from logging on?” asked Chase.

  “The crew has to use their badges to log on, and their badges are DNA-coded, right?” said Parker, as he powered up the nearest console. “Whoever’s locked the crew out just disabled all the DNA coding. But I had to figure out how to get past that when I hacked the mainframe earlier, so I already have a bypass set up. Now I just have to figure out where the trojan was installed.”

  As Parker worked, Chase paced through the empty engine room. Mina looked over Parker’s shoulder, watching the code scrolling on the screen, while Analora and Lilli stood watch by the door.

  “Shouldn’t the others be here by now?” asked Analora.

  Parker slapped the console. “The file was installed in the engine computer,” he said in a thunderstruck voice. “Right here in front of the dummies.”

  “Can you stop it?” asked Chase.

  “I can’t disable it. The whole computer would have to be wiped clean and reinstalled.” He turned to Chase. “All I can do is shut down and disconnect the engine computer.”

  “Does that mean the engines won’t work?” Chase asked.

  Parker nodded. “We’ll be stranded.”

  “Is there anything else we can do?”

  “Nope.” Parker turned to Mina. “I’ll start shutting it down. Once I’m done, you can unplug the connectors.”

  Chase started pacing around the room again. As long as Parker was fixing the problem and Mina was here to protect him, there was nothing for him to do in the engine room. “Where do you think everyone else is? Mina, do you have a way to contact Asa?”

  She looked up for a moment. “He’s not responding to my calls. But I can hear him fighting somewhere.”

  Chase headed for the doors. “I’m going to go look for him.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Analora.

  “No way. Stay here. Mina, watch her and make sure she doesn’t get hurt.”

  Analora glanced over at the android and gave Chase an offended look. “I can take care of my—”

  “I’ll come with you,” interrupted Lilli, following him toward the doorway.

  “No!” He wouldn’t be able to do anything if he was worrying about Lilli the whole time. “Please, I don’t need anyone’s help, just let me do this on my own. Nobody else leaves the engine room.”

  “Even if the Werikosa break through?” asked Lilli sarcastically.

  Chase gave an exasperated sigh. “If you need to do something … send a copy up to the flight deck and tell the crew we’re onboard. Tell them we’re going to end this.” Before she could say another word, he gave her what he hoped was a stern look and jogged out the door.

  A focused calm filled him as soon as he was back in the hallway. The red lights were flashing, the siren droned overhead, but he no longer needed to worry about making sure that the others were safe. He felt fast and strong and invincible. At the stairwell, he started running up the stairs, racing past the civilian and soldiers’ levels.

  He paused at the flight deck level, wondering if he should go help the crew, but Maurus and Vidal had been tasked with that. Part of him wanted to stick his head out in the hall, to see if they were okay, if he could hear any sounds of a fight, but he pushed onward. If anything was going to save the Kuyddestor, it was stopping the Werikosa who were attacking the bridge. And if Asa hadn’t made it there yet, it was all up to him.

  He got out on the bridge level, jogging past the elevator and the captain’s quarters. When he came to the bridge, he leapt at the door without slowing down, tensed to jump right back out if need be, but what he saw when he got there stopped him cold.

  The room was completely empty, all the tiers and chairs unoccupied. He frowned, panting as he looked around. Where was everyone? The only place on the ship to fire the ship’s external missiles was here, so who was firing at Storros?

  After a few seconds, he noticed a different kind of movement: the screens. On all the different screens were radar maps, moving targets, images of space and explosions, and the decimated Storrian Fleet. Thin white words appeared on one of the screens: ACQUIRING TARGET. Someone was using the ship’s weapons, just not from the bridge. He had to get back to Parker and tell him what he’d seen.

  Chase jumped back into the hallway. He was halfway to the stairs when Ksenia walked out of a conference room with Petrod at her side. The leader of the hijackers looked oddly meek in her presence.

  Chase spoke before she’d even noticed him. “What is going on? Who’s launching the attack on Storros?”

  Ksenia turned to face him, and a smile stretched across her face.

  “I’d like to know that myself,” whined Petrod at her side. “We had no intention of actually attacking Storros!”

  Ksenia laughed. “Well, I’m sorry, Petrod, the Fleet made that decision for you.” Before he could react, she casually lifted a handblaster at her side and blasted him in the chest. He flew back against the wall and collapsed.

  “The Fleet is trying to destroy Storros?” Chase asked in astonishment. It was Trucon all over again—the Fleet annihilating an entire world for no reason that made any sense.

  Ksenia looked surprised. “Destroy? Never.”

  Just then Asa came walking around the corner. “Never, Ms. Oriolo? No—just hurt it enough that the Storrians will need Federation funding and infrastructure to get back on their feet, isn’t that right? With just enough oversight that the Federation can worm its way into their rhenium trade.”

  Chase dropped his jaw, flabbergasted. “This was all for a metal?”

  “A very rare and essential one, Chase,” said Ksenia. “It’s dangerous to allow one planet to have control over ninety percent of the known deposits of such an important resource. If they ever decide to withhold supply, they could hurt billions of people.”

  “Although they’ve never given any indication that they would,” said Asa, moving a step closer to her. “But you’re willing to stage a hijacking to prevent this possibility.”

  “It won’t look that way from the outside.” Ksenia tightened her grip on her blaster. “And soon all the people who know the truth will be dead.”

  “I won’t be,” said Chase. “I’ll tell.”

  “Tell who?” She gave him a slick smile. “You’ll be coming with me. There are people waiting for you.”

  This made no sense. “What?”

  “The people who’ve been looking for you aren’t dumb, Chase. They knew it was likely that you were on the Kuyddestor. I was told to keep an eye out for you.”

  “They won’t lay a finger on him,” said Asa fiercely. “And you’re not going anywhere.”

  Ksenia pointed her blaster at him, but suddenly her right knee went out and she stumb
led to the floor, revealing the copy of Lilli who had kicked the back of her knee. It was just enough time for Asa to leap forward and deliver a heavy blow that knocked her to the floor. He crouched over her body and seized her head violently.

  Chase gasped. Pausing, Asa looked up and saw both him and Lilli watching. Without a word he let Ksenia’s head drop to the floor and stood. “Let’s get back to the engine room.” Lilli vanished, and Chase turned for the stairs, but the sound of distant running bootsteps made him look back. Asa was already starting toward the sound. “More Werikosa,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll handle them. Get back to the engine room, and I’ll meet you there.”

  Mina was waiting for Chase at the bottom of the stairs. “We have a problem.”

  In the engine room, Parker leaned over the console, fingers flying. Analora hovered over his shoulder, and Lilli sat in a chair beside him like she hadn’t just been on the bridge level. “We got the engine computer offline, and the commands started coming from navigation. Separate infection.”

  “So turn off the navigation systems,” said Chase.

  Eyes still locked on the screen, Parker made a face. “I could, but it’ll take a while and I don’t know how many backup trojan access points this person installed.”

  “I went to the bridge and it was empty,” Chase said. “The screens are flashing a bunch of commands and stuff, but nobody’s there running it.”

  “What?” asked Parker. Chase quickly explained what he’d seen, and the interaction he’d had with Ksenia, learning that the Fleet was behind the entire attack on Storros.

  Parker chewed his lip, thinking. “Wow. So the Werikosa were set up as a cover, and somebody’s using the trojan to operate all the bridge controls from somewhere else. I’d say we look for the computer where the commands are originating from, but it might not even be on this ship. For all we know, somebody could be doing this from back at Fleet High Command.” He looked back at the console and began typing furiously. “If we can just find out who installed it … I can trace it back to whoever badged in when the first trojan was added, and use that to figure out how many places it was installed.” Parker stopped, frowning. “Whoa.”

  “What is it?” asked Chase. “Do you know who it was?”

  “First instance badged in under Corporal Liadan Lahey,” said Parker. “The teleport operator.”

  “What?” said Analora. “How could she even have done that? She’s only been on the ship for a year.”

  Mina was already on a communicator, speaking to Maurus and Vidal. “When you get through, keep an eye out for a Corporal Liadan Lahey. Parker says she’s the hacker.”

  So the thin-lipped, sour-faced teleport operator was the culprit. “I always thought she seemed like a jerk,” said Chase.

  “Parker, three minutes until the Destrier arrives,” said Mina. “Jericho is prepared to fold back to the thruster access hatch and suggests that we leave immediately.”

  “Give me one more minute,” said Parker. “I just need to … ugh, no. This won’t work. Not in three minutes.”

  Chase thought about this. “We don’t need to know who’s running the Kuyddestor right now, do we? The ship is only in danger as long as it’s still attacking Storros. So we just have to stop the attack. Can you get around the trojan and turn off the missile systems?”

  Parker looked up at him. “No,” he said slowly. “But…” He turned back to the screens and frowned.

  “What?”

  “But I could override the safe detonation distance and set off one of missiles right inside the launch tube. That should destroy the tube enough so that the ship won’t be able to fire any more missiles.”

  Chase shook his head. It sounded like Parker wanted to blow up the Kuyddestor. “Won’t that destroy the whole ship?”

  “No,” cut in Analora. “This is a battle starship after all. One single missile shouldn’t be enough to destroy the entire ship. Let’s hope all it does is destroy the ship’s weapon launching capabilities without setting off all the other missiles.”

  Chase turned back to Parker, his heart racing. “You really think that’s the only way?”

  Parker nodded. “We’ll stop the attack on Storros … and hopefully we won’t blow ourselves up in the process.”

  The three of them looked at one another. There really wasn’t any choice.

  Parker started entering something on the console while everyone watched. Mina stood behind them, looking at something on a communicator. “One minute left, Parker. We need to leave.”

  “Hang on. I’m almost finished.” Finally Parker hit the last keystroke and leaned back, tapping his fingers against the edge of his seat. They stared at the screens, waiting.

  A shudder shook the ship like a distant earthquake, a low, long vibration that came through the walls and the floor. Parker looked back at the screen. “Done. Launch tube has been destroyed.”

  Chase sat down in one of the crew seats, placing his head in his hands. They’d done it. They’d saved the ship. Now they would just need to—

  BOOM!

  The explosion shook the room hard, sending Chase flying out of the chair to his knees. His first thought was that Analora had been wrong, and they’d just set off the rest of the missiles and secured their own death sentence. “What was that?” he yelled. “More missiles?”

  Parker stared at the screen, eyes wild. “No. Oh lords. No. It was the Destrier. It’s here. They’re firing on us.”

  Asa came flying around the corner into the engine room just as another explosion hit. He lost his footing and fell, smashing his face on the corner of a console and splitting his lip. “It’s time to go, now!” he shouted, wiping the blood away with his sleeve.

  Parker drew up a comm screen on the console, hailing the Destrier even as Asa tried to draw him away from the screens. “Enough, Parker. The crew is coming out of the flight deck—let them handle this.”

  “They won’t do this in time,” snapped Parker, pulling away his arm. “Destrier, this is the IFF Kuyddestor. We have regained control of the ship, please hold your fire.”

  Another explosion hit, shaking them so violently Chase was certain the ship had been split in two. “But we’re not firing on Storros anymore!” cried Parker. “Destrier, hold your fire!” He looked back at the others, his face frozen in terror. “I made the connection—why aren’t they answering me?”

  “Because they don’t care, Parker!” shouted Asa. “They’re just here to destroy the ship! We have to leave!”

  This was it. This was the trap Chase had feared. Maybe it hadn’t been set for them, not originally, but someone in the Fleet had seen the opportunity and placed the Kuyddestor in a position where it could not escape defeat. The Destrier’s attack had nothing to do with saving Storros.

  This was about destroying the Kuyddestor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Another explosion hit the ship, and a sound of groaning metal followed, ringing through the framework from somewhere above them. Parker opened another screen on the communication console, but Asa yanked him away from it. “We’re leaving now!”

  “Just let me try once more on a public distress band!” shouted Parker, struggling against him. “If the Fleet won’t listen, someone else will hear us. We have to try!”

  But Asa kept a solid grip on Parker’s arm, and Mina had both girls waiting by the doorframe already. With his other hand, Asa took Chase’s arm and pulled them toward the hall.

  Parker turned to Chase, his expression frantic. “Please.”

  With a nod, Chase yanked his arm free and dashed back to the console, hitting the send button the way he’d seen Parker do. “This is an SOS, is anyone out there? This is the IFF Kuyddestor and we’ve regained control of the ship, but we’re under attack by the Destrier. Please, somebody help!”

  Asa came charging back, brutally yanking Parker along with him. “The ship is lost, Chase,” he snarled. “Stop this idiocy and come with us now before it’s too late! Do you want to watc
h your sister die here?”

  Lilli stood in the doorframe looking frightened out of her wits, her wrist locked in Mina’s hand. Analora was there too, tears running down her face.

  Asa was right; they had to leave. Chase rose and walked out of the engine room, apologizing in his head to all the crew of the Kuyddestor who were being left behind to their deaths as he walked down the hall. The captain, Forquera, Dr. Bishallany, even Maurus … He stopped and covered his face with his hands, feeling dizzy and sick at the thought.

  A voice crackled incoherently back in the engine room, echoing off the walls to reach them. Chase looked up, locked eyes with Parker, and knew he was thinking the same thing. No more explosions …

  With a roar, Parker wrenched free of Asa and ran back to the engine room, Chase right beside him. A trim, hammer-jawed man with silver hair had appeared on the comm screen. “Hello, is anyone there? Kuyddestor, please respond.”

  Parker hit the send button. “Who is this?”

  “This is Admiral Peter Shaw of the IFF Atreus. What in blazes is going on over there?”

  Admiral Shaw! Chase immediately recognized the name—this was the man Captain Lennard had called his mentor. “Who are you kids?” Shaw continued. “Where’s Lennard?”

  “The captain’s locked up on the flight deck with the rest of the crew,” said Parker breathlessly. “Well, he was—he might have gotten out by now. The ship’s pretty messed up though. We stopped the hijackers from attacking Storros. I tried to tell the Destrier, but I couldn’t get through to them.”

  Shaw squinted like he was trying to see further into the screen. “You kids stopped the Werikosa? By yourselves?”

  Chase glanced over his shoulder where Asa glowered in the doorway, Mina and the girls peeking in behind him, and turned back to the screen. “We had a little help. But Parker here gets most of the credit. How did you hear us? Did we reach you on the public band?”