Starbounders #2

by Adam Jay Epstein

  Zachary pulled open the door and the group headed into the Ulam’s large foyer. The satellite projections of the other Indigo bases that were typically displayed on the wall had been turned off for the night. The only illumination came from the stars shining through the clear glass ceiling and the footlights glowing beneath the Outerverse Memorial of Lost Planets, a series of planet sculptures inscribed with the date and circumstance of each planet’s destruction.

  Zachary, Kaylee, Ryic, and Quee walked briskly onto the open platform waiting on the ground floor. Zachary said, “B-thirty-seven,” and the platform immediately began descending.

  Zachary watched as the basement levels of the Ulam passed them by. Quick flashes revealed familiar destinations, like the flight simulation training arena, and places Zachary had never visited, like the subterranean gardens that grew all of Indigo 8’s fruits and vegetables. Hundreds of feet later, the platform came to a stop.

  The group exited onto one of the many restricted floors. It was nondescript, with cold steel walls and long xenon tubes flickering on the ceiling. Dozens of padlocked doors lined the hall, each one labeled with either a name or a general description of the contents held within. Zachary and his companions scanned the labels until they found the one with EXCELSIUS OLARI written on it.

  “I’d stand back if I were you,” Kaylee warned the others.

  They stepped away, giving Kaylee room to charge her ion frost cannon. She aimed the tip of the nozzle at the door and gave the regulator a squeeze. A hissing blast of subzero air shot out, encasing the steel lock in a wintery cloud. Kaylee reharnessed the hose and Quee came forward, pulling a vibration hammer out of the aux-bot repair kit. She lifted it and took a forceful swing at the chilled padlock. Upon contact, the crystalized steel shattered, falling to the ground in countless pieces.

  Zachary gave a push and the door opened inward, revealing Olari’s darkened storage unit.

  “Activate infrared on your lensicons,” Zachary said.

  “We have that?” Ryic asked, surprised. “So that’s how everyone else in the SQ gets to the bathroom without a night-light.”

  Zachary blinked in sequence and his view instantly changed. Suddenly the storage unit was bathed in a bright-green glow. It was only then that they realized it was empty.

  “Where’s all his stuff?” Ryic asked.

  “I don’t know,” Zachary replied. “Maybe we’re in the wrong unit.”

  “No, this is definitely it,” Kaylee said. “We’re just too late. Somebody must have gotten here first.”

  Zachary searched the room for anything that might have been left behind as a clue. Finally he noticed a dusty imprint on the outside of the door. He leaned in for a closer look. Even with his infrared, he was just barely able to make out three letters: B.A.S.

  “I found something,” Zachary said. “It looks like whoever pushed open this door before us had some sort of initials embossed on their sleeve. B.A.S.”

  “I can cross-reference the Indigo 8 roster and see if there’s a match,” Quee said.

  “Our ten minutes are almost up,” Ryic said. “We should really get back to our SQs.”

  Zachary scanned the room one last time, even though he knew he wouldn’t find anything else. Their only lead was a set of all-too-common initials.

  Kaylee had already returned to the hallway to sweep up the padlock shards with her hand. She deposited them in the aux-bot tool kit, so that the only evidence of their break-in was the missing lock on the door.

  The group hurried back to the landing at B-37, where the open platform waited. They got on board and Zachary stated, “Main level,” sending the inclinator rising rapidly.

  “Who would be interested in Professor Olari’s stuff besides someone who knew about his secrets?” Kaylee asked.

  “I don’t know, but whoever it was had the key for that storage unit,” Zachary said.

  The platform came to a halt at the foyer level of the Ulam and the four young Starbounders got off, rushing for the exit. Before they reached the doors, a soft buzzing sounded from Quee’s wristwatch.

  “Those aux-bots are going to be back on patrol,” she said.

  They raced out the door on high alert, sprinting across the open field toward the woods leading to the equipment shed. Their plan was to dump the ion frost cannon and the rest of the tools they’d borrowed, then split up and take separate routes back to their SQs.

  Zachary leaped over roots and fallen branches. He heard a thud behind him and turned to see that Quee had taken a tumble. Kaylee was already by her side, helping her up and pulling her along. But the sudden burst of noise had drawn the attention of a nearby aux-bot, which was searching with the spotlight on its forehead and zipping through the trees.

  There would be no way to outrun it, especially for Quee, who was now limping on a bad ankle. So Zachary reached down to the belt he had swiped from the shed and pulled off one of the stun balls. The aux-bot was coming at them with frightening speed. Zachary whipped the ball at its metal exterior and the electrically charged projectile made contact, frying the aux-bot’s circuits with a hiss and a flash of light.

  “We’re going to be under siege within minutes,” Quee said. “They send signals to one another every thirty seconds. As soon as the rest of the patrol realizes one of the bots is down, they’ll come to its last known location.”

  But Zachary had no intention of waiting. He took off running again and the others followed behind him. Kaylee helped pull Quee along, and soon they reached the equipment shed, tossing the “borrowed” goods inside without even stopping to make sure they were back in the right place.

  “Be careful,” Kaylee said to the boys.

  She gave Zachary’s hand a quick squeeze, then ran off with Quee’s arm around her shoulder.

  Zachary stood, watching them go for as long as he dared. His hand was tingling. There was something different about the way she had touched him.

  “Come on,” Ryic urged.

  Zachary took off in a sprint, but it felt like he was flying.

  Zachary and Ryic stood at one of the breakfast serving stations in the dining hall. Zachary was piling eggs and bacon on his plate, still feeling the high from the previous night’s covert mission. There was something especially gratifying about outsmarting Cerebella and doing it alongside his best friends. Ryic stayed in line only to keep him company, content with the heaping portion of what looked like regurgitated spinach already filling his bowl.

  “They’re late,” Ryic said, eyeing the door. “I’m starting to worry.”

  “Kaylee probably just overslept,” Zachary replied.

  “What if they got caught? Madsen could be interrogating them right now.” Ryic was getting more nervous by the second. “They’ll come for us next. I won’t be able to lie. I’ll cave like a Sentropian mine.”

  “Morning,” Kaylee said, coming up behind Ryic.

  He jumped. “You’re here.”

  “Sorry,” Quee said. “Accessing all of Indigo 8’s personnel files took longer than we expected. Cerebella initiated some new data scramblers. Don’t know if it has to do with what we did last night, but finding one of their aux-bot’s circuits stir-fried probably raised a few red flags.”

  “So, what did you find?” Zachary asked.

  “Only one match,” Quee replied. “A Cometeer girl named Becky Alice Samuels.”

  Quee pointed one of her three bony, reptilian fingers toward an older blond girl sitting with some friends across the hall.

  “We could talk to her,” Zachary said. “See what she knows.”

  “What if B.A.S. are the initials not of a person,” Ryic asked, “but of a place or a thing?”

  Zachary and Kaylee looked at him impatiently.

  “Someone had to leave that mark on the door,” Zachary said.

  “Exactly,” Ryic said. “But it’s much more likely that a uniform’s sleeve would have the initials of an organization on it than the initials of a person.”

  Quee was
already typing furiously on her tablet.

  “I can set up an algorithm to see if anything in the outerverse database has those initials.” She continued tapping away. “On second thought, I’ll limit the results to the Indigo Sector so we’re not waiting literally forever.” She waited as the tablet processed the search. “Three hits. The Ba’al Asteroid System. The Bendavid Archer Space Station. And . . .” Quee paused.

  “What is it?” Zachary asked.

  “The Black Atom Society,” she replied.

  Immediately, Zachary remembered the questions he had been asked upon his return to Indigo 8 after his close call on Callisto. One of the inquisitors in particular, a mysterious masked figure, wanted to know if Zachary had any connection to the Black Atom Society, a shadow organization of scientists.

  Kaylee and Ryic had been grilled about the very same thing.

  “Their last known base of operations was in one of the six unnamed galaxies beyond the Tundra planets, on a moon called Luwidix.” Quee looked up from her tablet. “According to Indigo 8’s most recent manifest, a dreadnought made a delivery there just a few days after Olari’s death. It was signed for by someone named Bedekken.”

  “Then Luwidix is where we need to go,” Zachary said. “Any more ships scheduled to make the trip?”

  “Not officially,” Quee replied.

  “We just need to get to a space station,” Zachary said. “It doesn’t matter which one. Once we’ve bounded into the outerverse, we can always find a skipjack to get us the rest of the way.”

  “But our next field trip isn’t for weeks,” Ryic said.

  “We’re not waiting for our next field trip,” Zachary said.

  It was free hour before lights-out, when all of Indigo 8’s Starbounders-in-training typically met up in the Skyterium. But Zachary, Kaylee, Ryic, and Quee were down on the field just outside the Ulam.

  Zachary felt his bones shake as a mechanical tendril struck the side of the luggage porter he had commandeered. Ryic, who was sitting beside him in the glass belly of the hovering, jellyfishlike robot, nearly got jolted into his lap. Kaylee and Quee were controlling the porter that had smacked them; the two giant makeshift mechs were engaged in a no-holds-barred grudge match, giving new meaning to breaking the rules.

  “Tendril number seven, strike,” Zachary directed the porter.

  His vehicle responded on command, lashing out and hitting the transparent bubble below where Kaylee and Quee were seated.

  The first trainees were beginning to leave the Skyterium and gather on the steps of the Ulam, watching the highly reckless exhibition unfolding before them. And they were loving every minute of it, cheering on each subsequent blow. Soon the crowd had grown so big that it spilled over into the parking lot.

  A tendril from Kaylee’s porter grabbed ahold of Zachary’s ride and gave it a tug, spinning it like a top. A dizzy Ryic clutched his stomach, but Zachary was smiling. He had spotted a line of furious RAs and Indigo administrators rushing outside to put an end to their defiant display.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” shouted Mr. DiSalvo, Director Madsen’s right-hand man. “Get out of there right now.”

  Kaylee got in one last swing, then both porters shut down, slowly lowering to the ground. The four young Starbounders climbed out and were swiftly met by DiSalvo, whose dark eyebrows furrowed angrily.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  DiSalvo led them back toward the Ulam, pushing through the throngs of onlookers. But before the group reached the steps, Madsen was already approaching them.

  “This behavior is totally unacceptable,” he said, angrily. “Ever since the four of you returned from your mission, you’ve been acting like a bunch of arrogant hotshots. And I’ll tell you right now, that is not what being a Starbounder is all about.”

  “We were just having some fun,” Zachary said.

  “Well, I hope it was worth it,” Madsen replied. “You just got yourselves freighter duty.”

  Zachary made an effort to look extra disappointed. He didn’t want Madsen to know that this was exactly the punishment he wanted.

  Zachary, Kaylee, Ryic, and Quee followed DiSalvo through Indigo 8’s enormous underground space hangar, which was even busier than usual with takeoffs and landings. Accompanied by flight instructors, older trainees were taking pitchforks out for practice runs. While his fellow Lightwings would be spending the morning between their warp glove–wielding class and the starchery range, Zachary and his friends would be mopping up lunar mold off the floors and ceilings of a starjunk.

  As DiSalvo led the four young Starbounders up to the vessel, Zachary got a closer look at the massive barge, equipped with retractable solar sails and large shipping containers.

  “You’ll be reporting to Captain Aggoman,” DiSalvo said. “And don’t worry, we made sure to check the cargo hold for any alien fugitives this time.”

  DiSalvo pointed them toward a ladder leading up to a porthole. They ascended the rungs and climbed aboard. Once inside, they were greeted by a tough-looking woman with scars covering her face and what looked like a square speaker surgically implanted into her windpipe.

  “They tell me you’ve already done this once before,” her synthesized voice said. “Well, just so you know, I’d prefer it if you didn’t crash this ship. I’m Captain Aggoman.”

  She extended her hand and greeted each of them in turn.

  “Mag mops are in the hold,” Aggoman continued. “There’ll be plenty of time to swab the decks after our first bound. Why don’t you head down there and strap in?”

  “What happened to your throat?” Quee asked bluntly.

  Zachary winced, but Aggoman didn’t seem offended. In fact, just the opposite.

  “Molking raiders,” she said. “Three geigernades hit before I even knew we were being attacked. The shrapnel turned my face into Swiss cheese. And put a hole through my larynx. I’m lucky to be alive.”

  Zachary started for the steps leading down to the hold. The others followed.

  “By the way,” Aggoman said, “I heard about your little stunt with those porters. You’re either the stupidest Starbounders I’ve ever met . . . or you’ve been bitten by the zero-G bug and you’ll find any excuse to go three folds deep in space. So, which is it?”

  “I guess we’re just dumb,” Zachary said.

  Aggoman looked at him through narrowed eyes, sizing him up. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

  Zachary, Kaylee, Ryic, and Quee departed the atrium just beyond the porthole and moved deeper into the bowels of the starjunk. The ship was populated with about two dozen crew members, the majority of whom were busy strapping down an enormous sphere inside the cavernous interior cargo hold.

  “What’s that?” Ryic asked a passing deckhand.

  “A shield generator,” the man replied. “We’re delivering it to Indigo 5. Since Nibiru’s attack on Earth, the IPDL has decided to beef up security on all the Indigo training camps and bases.”

  It made sense. If the Callisto Space Station hadn’t been protecting Indigo 8, it was very likely that Zachary’s home planet would have been annihilated. He had never thought about how vulnerable some of the outerverse’s smaller bases must be. He was glad to see that the IPDL wanted to take every precaution, defending each of their allies with the most advanced technologies coming out of Indigo 8’s engineering level. That’s why the Starbounders existed, after all—to protect those in the outerverse who could not protect themselves.

  Aggoman’s voice echoed over the starjunk’s loudspeaker.

  “We’ve set our course for the day. We’ll be making two bounds to the Xero system, where we’ll stop to refuel. Then it’s two more to Indigo 5. The first fold should be opening momentarily, so please harness in for takeoff.”

  Crew members finished tightening the straps holding the shield generator in place before moving over to individual seats built into the walls. They pulled down overhead harnesses that looked like the kind on amusement park roller coasters. Zachary,
Kaylee, Ryic, and Quee found their own spots along the wall and locked themselves in. Unlike the previous ships they had traveled on, there were no windows in this hold for the crew to look out of. Beyond the rumbling Zachary felt as the starjunk’s motors initiated their ignition sequence, the only way he could confirm that they’d started moving was through the live-feed monitors attached to the armrests of each chair.

  Zachary watched as the freighter accelerated down one of the space hangar’s launch tubes. A crew member sitting nearby, his arms thick and his head shaved, looked over at the trainees.

  “Hey, I know you,” he said. “You’re those four kids.” He turned to his shipmates. “Check it out. Look who we got here.”

  A few of the other deckhands glanced over and nodded with looks of recognition. Zachary held his shoulders a little higher. Perhaps he didn’t get recognition at Indigo 8 for saving Earth, but at least his reputation preceded him in the outerverse.

  “You’re the ones who got that entire dreadnought crew killed,” the intimidating crew member continued. “I promise you this—something goes down here, I’m getting off this ship alive before any of you do.”

  Zachary shrugged. “Gee, what more do you have to do to get some respect around these parts?” he asked.

  The rest of the crew had already dismissed them, returning their attention to their view-screens.

  On the armchair monitor, Zachary could see an enormous black disc form, just like the ones created by their warp gloves only a thousand times bigger. This was the galactic fold that would send them hurtling into space. With a burst of speed, the starjunk bounded through.

  Over the past few weeks, Zachary had been getting as comfortable in zero gravity as he was on Earth. Each time he returned to space, it felt like he was home. It didn’t matter if it was a galactic field trip or mop duty on a starjunk; he was just happy to be in a place where friction boots were the only things holding him down.