Starbounders #2

by Adam Jay Epstein

  His eyes wandered around the chamber, the seconds ticking by as if time had been frozen, too. In the corner, between canisters of oxygen and nitrogen, was a small metal table on wheels. A diamond-shaped creature with spindly legs was pinned down atop it. Zachary had never seen anything quite like it before. He moved a little closer to see that the creature’s outer surface wasn’t just sparkling because of the frost coating it. The entire organism seemed to be composed of a crystalline glass. Suddenly its long appendages sprang to life, clawing at Zachary. Zachary jumped back, and fortunately the straps binding the creature prevented it from leaping off the table.

  Zachary was curious enough to take another step forward. But before he could, the door to the cryo freezer swung open and Kaylee reached in to grab his arm. She pulled him back into the galley.

  “We thought you were dead,” Kaylee said. “We’ve been knocking on that door for the last thirty seconds.”

  Ryic came over with Zachary’s clothes and he quickly put them back on.

  “I must have lost track of the time,” he said, not letting on how frigid he felt.

  “Was there a party in there?” Kaylee asked.

  “No, but there is something else,” Zachary replied. “I don’t know what the Black Atom Society was using this sledge for, but they were keeping a souvenir on ice.”

  Just then, the sledge’s automated communications system called out over the ship’s intercom. “Lang-link request is being made by a nearby moon.” The four of them departed the galley and returned to the flight deck. “Should I initiate connection?”

  “Yeah, put it through,” Zachary said.

  The cockpit radio hummed to life, and this time a different computerized voice, one coming from off the sledge, spoke.

  “Please state the reason you are trespassing in this orbit. You have entered private outerverse property. Without authorization, your ship will be terminated.”

  The complete lack of emotion in the voice only made the threat more ominous.

  “This is Zachary Night of the earthbound IPDL training academy Indigo 8. I am looking for Skold Ota Stella. If his whereabouts are known on these Ionary moons, we request permission to land.”

  “Vocal patterns confirm identity, and tone and modulation indicates truthfulness. Permission granted.”

  Immediately the landing coordinates appeared on the sledge’s starbox. Zachary and Kaylee took the pilot seats, while Ryic and Quee buckled in behind them. Once the young Starbounders had taken manual control of the sledge, they began to follow the newly displayed route toward a small moon that appeared to be showing only the earliest signs of life. Fields of light-green grass covered its surface, but there were no trees, forests, or jungles to speak of.

  “Now we know what Skold needed that atmospheric adapter for,” Ryic said. “He’s creating a living, breathing planet on a dead moon.”

  As the sledge continued its descent, Zachary could see what looked like an enormous vacation resort come into view, with swimming pools and waterfalls, even a roller coaster track with hanging cars zipping along its rails.

  “He built his very own amusement park,” Kaylee added.

  It appeared there was more under construction, too.

  “Is that a ski mountain?” Zachary asked.

  As they got closer, they could see a fresh coat of artificial snow getting poured on.

  “He always said he wanted his own moon,” Kaylee said. “Looks like he got it.”

  The sledge touched down on a freshly built concrete tarmac. The four exited the ship to find that the air was thin but breathable. They could hear what sounded like squeals of delight. Zachary glanced up at the roller coaster and spied a pair of orange-and-black amphibious humanoids raising their arms above their heads and screaming as the car they were in made a sudden dive down a steep drop. Zachary remembered them from his visit to Cratonis. They were Skold’s kids.

  Zachary, Kaylee, Ryic, and Quee headed for the palatial estate towering above the center of the grounds.

  “Just how much did Skold get paid for that perpetual energy generator, anyway?” Ryic asked.

  “Obviously a lot,” Quee replied.

  They hadn’t even reached the front steps when the muscular, shaved-headed figure they had come to know as Skold exited through the door. Of course, this wasn’t how the infamous alien fugitive actually appeared. The real Skold looked just like the one-foot-tall, web-footed creatures riding the roller coaster. This was just the robotic outer shell that allowed him to pass as human, and other than the grayish skin and unblinking eyes, it was entirely convincing.

  “You’re like a bad case of spacefluenza,” Skold said. “I just can’t seem to get rid of you.”

  “This is quite a place you’ve got here,” Zachary said. “You must have sold a lot of used freighters to afford it.”

  “What exactly are you implying?” Skold asked innocently.

  “We know you stole the perpetual energy generator,” Kaylee said. “We watched you fly off with it. All of Callisto shut down. You nearly killed us.”

  “But you’re here now, so I guess it worked out for everybody.”

  “What did you do with it?” Zachary asked. “Who did you sell it to?”

  “I’m afraid the buyer insisted that I sign a confidentiality agreement.”

  “We think someone has attached it to a kinetic force sink and is using it to destroy suns,” Zachary said.

  “As in wiping entire planets from the outerverse,” Kaylee added.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Skold said, the cold face of his carapace giving away nothing.

  “We’re not suggesting you do,” Zachary said. “In fact, I’m naive enough to think even you would put the survival of billions of life-forms ahead of getting rich.”

  “Clearly you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

  “All it would take is one call to Indigo 8, and a hundred pitchforks would be surrounding this place within hours,” Zachary said.

  “So I’m a wanted man?” Skold asked.

  “Yep. Full-on level-three bounty search,” Zachary replied. “Madsen’s got a file a hundred terabytes big on you. And don’t think I wouldn’t turn you in.”

  “That’s a dangerous threat to be making when you’re standing here unarmed on my moon.”

  “What did you let us land for if you weren’t planning on helping us?” Kaylee asked.

  “I was hoping to get some information on my criminal status. And you just gave it to me. Now that I know I’m a level three, I’ll be sure not to set foot across the Indigo Divide.”

  Suddenly a voice called out from the doorway behind Skold in a series of squeaks and clicks. Zachary could see a long tail slithering across the floor, and by the way she seemed to be yelling at him, he figured this must be Skold’s wife.

  “Please, just let me handle this, dear,” Skold said.

  More clicks and squeaks.

  Skold stopped speaking English and continued the heated argument in his native alien tongue. Back and forth they went, until Skold seemed browbeaten and defeated.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll help you.”

  “Great,” Zachary replied, wondering what exactly Skold’s wife had said to convince him. “Do you want to give us a name or address? Or show us the way yourself?”

  “Well, we can’t do anything until sunrise,” Skold said. “The galactic fold I used to bound to the location of the handoff opens only once a day. So I guess that means you’re spending the night.”

  It was, without a doubt, one of the strangest dinners Zachary had ever experienced. And it wasn’t just the food, although the homemade mealworm lotus cups were practically crawling right off the plate. It was also the way Skold’s wife chewed up the food and then spit the partially digested bits directly into her kids’ mouths.

  The experience was made stranger still by the fact that, while the estate was large enough to house a royal court, the furniture was doll-sized to accommodate the
small stature of Skold’s family. This forced Zachary and his companions to sit cross-legged on the floor, appearing as if they were giants in comparison.

  On the bright side, conversation was aided by a sphere placed on the table, which served to translate the squeaks and clicks into English and the English into squeaks and clicks.

  “What’s it like being a Starbounder?” the older of the two young amphibious creatures asked, leaning forward on the edge of her seat.

  “Take the thrill you were feeling on that roller coaster outside, and multiply it by a thousand,” Kaylee said.

  The girl’s eyes went wide. “Do you think they’d accept someone like me?”

  “It depends,” Quee replied. “What can you do?”

  The newtlike creature thought about it for a second, then shot her tongue across the table and around Quee’s neck, tightening it like a noose.

  “Yeah, you’d probably fit right in,” Quee coughed out. “As long as you’ve got something unique to offer, it seems everybody’s welcome. Heck, they took me. Now I feel like I actually belong somewhere.”

  The creature released her tongue and it flew back into her mouth.

  “I’m not sure what you said to Skold earlier to change his mind, but thank you,” Zachary said to Skold’s wife.

  “I told him we’re thieves, not murderers,” she replied. “If there was a way to help prevent harm to our fellow brothers and sisters around the galaxy, it was our duty to do so.” Then her friendly smile turned cold. “And once he’s done helping you, you’re going to get him immunity for his latest crime.”

  Zachary had been curious what this seemingly genteel creature saw in Skold, but now he realized that they weren’t so different after all.

  Meanwhile, Skold’s youngest was throwing mealworms at Ryic, using his pale head as target practice. Ryic was trying to restrain himself, but he lost his patience and slammed his fist down on the table.

  “Enough!” he hollered.

  The child let out a loud wail and began sobbing uncontrollably. Zachary and Kaylee immediately turned their gaze on Ryic.

  “What? Why are you looking at me like I’m the bad guy?” Ryic asked.

  Skold’s wife brought out dessert—a special family recipe for glazed crickets—and served the guests first. Skold glanced over at Zachary and Kaylee, who looked none too eager to indulge.

  “Don’t worry, they taste just like chocolate,” he said.

  Zachary took a bite. He wasn’t sure what Skold was talking about, but this certainly didn’t taste like any chocolate he had ever had.

  The meal ended soon after, and Skold’s wife led the four Starbounders to the guest quarters, where they were each shown to their own bedroom, furnished with beds far too small for them to sleep on. She provided them with blankets and pillows instead, but it didn’t really matter, because once Zachary curled up on the floor, he was sleeping within minutes.

  Hours later, Zachary woke to find the sun streaming in through the blinds and Skold standing over him.

  “Rise and shine,” he said. “Time to get a move on. Unless you want to stay for breakfast.”

  Zachary was on his feet instantly, gathering up his friends and following Skold out the door. They headed back for the sledge, passing under the spiraling roller coaster and across some snowdrifts that blew in from the nearby mountain. Once they arrived at the ship, they quickly climbed on board and hurried to the flight deck.

  “So, where are we going?” Kaylee asked, bringing up the Kepler cartograph.

  “Where we’re headed doesn’t have a name,” Skold said. “I do most of my business in those kinds of places. Places you can’t find on a map. That’s why I’m coming with you.”

  He made himself at home in the pilot seat and began moving his hands swiftly, lifting the sledge up from the tarmac for takeoff. Skold’s ability to control a starship was inspiring, but knowing how many of them he had stolen, Zachary was hardly surprised he was so good at it. It wasn’t long before the Ionary moons became distant dots and they were bounding through a galactic fold that didn’t appear on the cartograph.

  They came out straight into the middle of a geomagnetic tornado. Warning lights flashed and blared loudly. And although Zachary couldn’t actually feel it, he could see out through the window that the sledge was being pulled in rapid circles.

  “What are you trying to do, kill us?” Zachary asked.

  “I already told you, when you make deals as illicit as the ones I do, you want to be sure it’s in a place where nobody uninvited is going to crash the party.”

  “Well, the only ones who look like they’re going to be crashing here are us,” Kaylee said.

  Billions of particles were slamming against the sledge’s outer hull, like hail hitting a tin roof. The ship continued to spin, only faster now, as it was tugged sideways toward a black hole.

  Suddenly Zachary noticed a small but perceptible change in everything around him. His companions and the sledge itself were starting to stretch, as if they were inside a funhouse mirror. This must have been what Ryic felt like on a daily basis. But rather than putting the engines in reverse and trying to pull the ship away from the monstrous vacuum, Skold waited for the centrifugal force to build and then slingshotted them away from the danger. The sledge emerged from the geomagnetic twister and glided through a calm expanse of space.

  Zachary, sweat dripping from his brow and armpits wet, looked like he had just run at full speed on a treadmill. His friends appeared equally rattled.

  “What’s everyone so bent out of shape about?” Skold asked. “I do this all the time.”

  Skold activated the ship’s standard radiation scanners, which illuminated a faint glowing trail in the distance.

  “I handed off the generator not far from here,” he said. “Looks like it left some bread crumbs to the next galactic fold.”

  Skold followed the trail as far as it would take him, but the end point was not a galactic fold. It was a ship.

  “That’s strange,” Skold said, staring out at the lone dreadnought drifting slowly through space. “That’s the ship I made the transfer on.”

  “So what’s it still doing here?” Zachary asked.

  As the sledge slowly approached the eerily still dreadnought, Zachary could see warning lights flashing inside the other ship’s flight deck. Skold pulled up alongside the massive ship and slowed the sledge to a crawl.

  “Please unlock your atrium. We wish to board your vessel,” Skold said into the lang-link.

  Zachary, Quee, Kaylee, and Ryic stood by, waiting with Skold for a response. Only silence came in return.

  “If you don’t respond now, we will force our way in,” Skold insisted angrily.

  “Maybe they’re sleeping,” Ryic proposed. “I wouldn’t run for the lang-link if I were all snuggly in my sleeping pod.”

  “They would have their auto-reply activated if that were the case,” Kaylee said. “Either they’re not interested in visitors or something is very wrong.”

  “Let’s extend the O2 bridge and have a look around for ourselves,” Skold said as he floated out of the flight deck.

  Zachary and the others followed, heading down to the exit portal. Through the glass window, they watched as a clear tube stretched from the sledge toward the exterior of the dreadnought. The small arms at the end of the O2 bridge gripped the footholds of the docking portal and locked into place.

  “You might want to arm yourselves, just in case,” Skold said.

  Zachary and his fellow trainees activated their warp gloves.

  “I was thinking of something with a little more firepower.” A compartment in Skold’s leg slid open, revealing a cache of handheld weapons. He handed Zachary a voltage slingshot and gave Quee and Kaylee ionic daggers. He pulled a sonic crossbow from his waist and charged it.

  “What about me?” Ryic asked.

  “You’re more of a danger to yourself with a weapon,” Skold said.

  The five floated through the exit of t
he sledge and drifted toward the gray outer hull of the dreadnought to find its docking portal was still sealed tight.

  Quee inserted her trusty cryptocard, a thin rectangular slip of metal with numbers scrolling across the outside edge, into a narrow opening beside the door.

  “We’re not the first ones to tamper with this airlock,” Quee said.

  She punched a coding sequence into the extended portion of the cryptocard and waited. After a moment the door began to move, but it ground to a halt before opening fully. Quee had no trouble getting through, but it was a tighter squeeze for the rest, especially Skold.

  Once inside, Zachary had to adjust to the strobing red flashes of the warning light and the foul odor wafting through the desolate hallways.

  “I made the trade-off with my buyer in the passenger cabin,” Skold said. “He was a real nasty-looking Basqalich with more serendibite than you’d find on a void market Jai-Gar table. There were two more bruisers in the flight deck and another two in the cargo hold.”

  Skold guided the others toward the cabin, with his sonic crossbow leading the way. As he propelled himself through the corridors of the ship, Zachary noticed photon cannon holes riddling the walls. Many of the lights had been shot out, and the deeper the group got, the darker it became.

  Zachary blinked in sequence, activating his lensicon’s infrared, and his view instantly changed. Suddenly the shadowy halls were bathed in a bright-green glow.

  As the team crossed into the passenger cabin, Zachary could see everything more clearly, including a lifeless Basqalich floating limply in zero gravity. Zachary moved over for a closer view of the body and saw that its green-skinned chest had been shredded with sonic fire and one of its orange tusks had been blown clean off.

  “Maybe he was resisting arrest,” Kaylee said.

  “Those wounds didn’t come from any IPDL-issued firearm I’ve ever seen,” Skold said. “Looks like a decibel grater to me.”

  “Only Molking raiders use those,” Quee said.