Infinity Riders

by Kekla Magoon

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by PC Studios Inc.

  Full-color interior art, puzzles, and codes copyright © Animal Repair Shop Voyagers digital and gaming experience by Animal Repair Shop

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhousekids.​com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.​com

  VoyagersHQ.​com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-385-38667-8 (trade)—ISBN 978-0-385-38669-2 (lib. bdg.)

  ISBN 978-0-385-38668-5 (ebook)

  eBook ISBN 9780385386685

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Voyagers

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Insert

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Excerpt from Voyagers: Escape the Vortex

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  FOR T.T.

  “Prepare to exit Gamma Speed,” chirped a bright voice on the flight deck of the Cloud Leopard.

  STEAM 6000, a three-foot-tall, oval-headed robot, punched a series of buttons on the spaceship’s console. “All life-forms, prepare for rapid deceleration lest you be hurtled into oblivion.”

  Dash Conroy glanced up from the comic book he was reading and smiled. “Thanks, STEAM,” he said. “I’ll let everyone know.”

  “That’s what you said ten minutes ago,” STEAM chided. “Now it is really the time, yes sir.”

  Dash flipped ahead in the comic, scanning for a good stopping point. “How long until we get there?”

  “Entering orbit around planet Infinity in…countdown: ten minutes…,” the robot verified. “Nine minutes fifty-nine seconds…nine fifty-eight…nine fifty-seven…”

  “Whoa,” said Dash. He laid the comic over the arm of his chair to hold his place. Only nine minutes to get everyone rounded up and secure?

  He slid out of the captain’s chair, his heart already thumping with anticipation. The Cloud Leopard crew was about to arrive at the fourth stop on their six-planet tour of the universe. Each new planet so far had brought a unique blend of mystery and danger. It was time to get ready…for anything.

  Dash hurried toward a panel on the wall. He studied the map of the tunnel system the crew used for traveling around the ship.

  “No time for games.” STEAM waddled over to Dash. “Prepare to exit Gamma Speed, in nine minutes twenty-six seconds, yes sir,” the robot said. “Nine twenty-five…get a move on, sir; you better shake your bacon.”

  The robot’s quirky chiding nudged Dash out of his strategizing. “Sure. Thanks, pal.”

  “That is what friends are for, yes sir.” STEAM went back to work. A crew of ZRKs buzzed alongside him, busily helping out. The golf ball–sized robot assistants darted and hovered, extending their mechanical arms here and there to tinker with things.

  Dash traced his finger over the map in the longest path he could think of. Oops, force of habit. He shrugged. Sure, he had to hurry, but taking a few extra seconds to try for the record wouldn’t hurt anything. The panel opened, and he plunged himself feetfirst into the tunnel. Moments later, after a whooshing, winding ride, Dash shot out of the tunnel and landed in the crew’s recreation room. He smoothed down the sleeves of his flight suit and checked his distance—good, but not good enough to overtake the record.

  Dang.

  A smiling black-haired girl sat cross-legged in the middle of the carpet, speaking Japanese to a two-foot-tall, squarish robot.

  “Hey, Carly! Hi, TULIP,” Dash said. “We’re almost to the next planet.”

  “Hiya, Dash,” Carly Diamond said.

  TULIP beeped and squawked in greeting. The small robot’s belly glowed, a side effect of the gallon of molten metal she carried. She radiated warmth.

  Carly glanced past Dash, toward the tube system. “Ha,” she said. “I’m still in the lead.” Ever since they first boarded the Cloud Leopard nearly nine months ago, the crew had been competing to find the longest tunnel path between two points on the spaceship.

  TULIP beeped, as if to cheer. Carly and TULIP had been spending a lot of time together lately. The small robot didn’t speak any human language, but talking to TULIP in her own first language made Carly feel at home.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Dash grinned at the pair of them. “We’re about to arrive at Infinity,” he told Carly. “Report to the flight deck, pronto.”

  TULIP whistled softly, perhaps in response to Dash’s unusually urgent tone. Carly smiled at the slogger. Then to Dash she said, “I’ll head right up.”

  A soft, vibrating alarm began sounding from the Mobile Tech Band attached to Dash’s arm like a sleeve. He quickly silenced it.

  “What was that?” Carly asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Dash lied. He wished she hadn’t noticed the alarm. He had it set to vibrate for a reason. Only Chris and Piper knew about his need for daily shots, and he wanted to keep it that way. The reminder alarm usually took precedence over anything, but right now, STEAM’s countdown echoed in Dash’s head. The ship’s course was predetermined. It would stop whether the crew was strapped in or not. Being hurtled into oblivion would not be a great outcome.

  “Let’s get ready to stop,” he said.

  “Right,” Carly agreed, getting to her feet.

  “I’ll get Chris,” Dash told her. “Have you seen Piper or Gabriel?”

  “Piper was in our room a little while ago. I’ll see if she’s still there,” Carly said, and zoomed off through the tunnels.

  Dash reset the alarm on his MTB for the following day. He felt guilty about keeping this secret from his friends. Every day, he considered telling them the truth: the shots were saving his life. But he also didn’t want to worry them unnecessarily.

  He rode the tunnels to the ship’s lower level, emerging in the corridor outside the engine room. It still wasn’t the longest path through the tunnels, but Dash was sure he was getting closer.

  Dash hurried toward Chris’s quarters. As he passed the training room, Dash heard the sounds of an argument coming from inside. He punched the door release and rushed into the room.

  “Traitor!” Piper Williams said.

  “You’re the traitor,” Gabriel’s voice responded angrily. “My revenge will be sweet.”

  Gabriel Parker stood at one end of the room. On the other side, Piper hovered in her air chair, the space-friendly gadget that took the place of the wheelchair she used back on Earth. Both were armed with very long swords. They were so focused on each other that they didn’t notice Dash enter.
>
  “Guys—” Dash started, but his voice was drowned out.

  “Prepare to die!” Piper yelled. She zoomed toward Gabriel at top speed, her blond hair whipping behind her. Gabriel ran forward to meet her. Dash dove backward, pressing himself against the wall to get out of the way. His heart raced strangely fast. Was it nerves? Adrenaline? He breathed deeply to steady himself.

  The swords clashed in a sickening crunch. Then both fighters pulled back for a second shot. They swung swords toward each other again, but at the last second, Piper twisted her chair sharply to the side. Gabriel’s blade strike caught the metal arm of her chair. With a victorious whoop, Piper reached down and drove the tip of her sword into his stomach.

  Gabriel buckled and groaned loudly, crashing to the floor. Well, bouncing to the floor was more like it. The room was padded with gymnastic mats, and both he and Piper were dressed in comically-thick foam sparring suits. They looked like miniature sumo wrestlers. Piper had just barely been able to stuff herself into her air chair, which now looked like an overfull laundry basket floating in midair. An overfull laundry basket with a face.

  Dash started laughing. “Nice shot, Piper,” he said. “Nice, err…tumble, Gabe.”

  Gabriel flopped over onto his back and flailed his arms and legs, unable to roll over and get up. “Falling well is a skill, and don’t you forget it,” he said, raising a finger. It seemed to be the only part of his body he could effectively move.

  “I think you have it mastered,” Dash said.

  Gabriel shot him a good-natured dirty look. Then he glared at Piper. “No fair—that chair is like armor,” he protested. “I call foul.”

  “It’ll be with me in real combat,” Piper argued cheerfully. “That makes it fair game.” She sheathed her blunt-tipped sword alongside the air chair and swooped down beside Gabriel. She offered him her hand and helped him stand up.

  Dash grinned. “I’m with Piper. All’s fair in war…and the Simulation Suit.”

  Gabriel staggered to his feet. “The best part about using these Simu Suits is taking them off after.” He started to unzip, revealing his Voyagers uniform underneath. He tucked in the arms and legs of the Simu Suit and then kept folding it in half. As he pressed on each fold, the two-inch-thick foam suit grew thinner and thinner. It folded up remarkably small for something so thick. Gabriel carefully stuffed the suit into a flat black pouch that was barely bigger than a pencil case.

  “What are you guys doing, anyway?” Dash asked. He picked up Gabriel’s discarded sword. “What’s with these new swords? How come you’re not using the regular fencing gear?”

  The Simu Suits had typically been used for wrestling and other mobility training. If you could learn to move and fight wearing one of those suckers, you could move way faster when you only had your own body to worry about.

  “Chris gave them to us,” Piper said. “He said we might need them soon.”

  Dash felt a surge of frustration. “That’s weird,” he told them. “He never said anything about this to me.” Dash studied the sword. It was long, like a fencing foil, but not as thin or flexible. It was flat and wide at the hilt and tapered to a wicked point. Luckily, it had been blunted with a ball of metal for sparring purposes.

  “Were you looking for us?” Piper said.

  Dash nodded. “We’re nearly to Infinity.”

  “Meet you on the flight deck?” Gabriel asked.

  “Yup. And go direct,” Dash ordered as he spun toward the door. “No time for winding through the tunnels.” The contest was good-natured fun between the crew members, but Dash still wanted to win. And Chris, the crew’s alien chaperone, had hinted that there would be some kind of reward or prize for the person who discovered the longest path.

  “Yeah right,” Gabriel called after him. “Like I’m going to fall for that one.”

  Dash grinned. He rushed into the hall, heading toward Chris’s quarters.

  He knocked on the door.

  It was opened almost immediately by a blond teenage boy. At least, that’s how it appeared. Chris was actually much older than he looked, and he came from a distant planet known as Flora.

  “Here for your injection?” Chris said.

  “After the Gamma jump,” Dash said. “It’s time.”

  Chris frowned and went to the cabinet where he kept his stash of the age serum. “The injection timing is very important,” he reminded Dash.

  “So is not being pounded to smithereens by the brakes on this thing,” Dash commented. But Chris seemed to be taking his time anyway. “We only have a couple of minutes,” Dash informed him. Fewer than five, by his inner counting. Which could be off base. It could be even less.

  A happy golden retriever bounded off Chris’s bed and came to stand by Dash as he waited.

  “Hey there, Rocket.” Dash ruffled the dog’s fur. Rocket was Chris’s dog, but he had become something of a team mascot for the whole crew. “You’ll have to go in your crate for the Gamma jump, okay?”

  Rocket snuffled a protest against Dash’s leg.

  “Trust me, I feel your pain,” Dash assured him.

  “It’s for your own protection,” Chris commented. He could have been talking to Rocket, or he could have been talking about the syringe he was about to inject into Dash.

  The rest of the crew had no idea about the risk Dash had taken in agreeing to join the mission. Gabriel, Carly, and Piper had all been twelve years old when they left Earth. As long as the mission lasted a year or less, they’d return safely. But Dash was several months older—too old for safe travel at Gamma Speed. So Dash had to take injections filled with an age-slowing serum to fool his cells into thinking he wasn’t aging at all.

  Commander Shawn Phillips, the man back on Earth who had orchestrated the Voyagers mission, had taken a serious gamble by putting Dash in charge. But he had believed strongly in Dash’s leadership capability. The Voyagers mission had the best shot at success with Dash at the helm. It was worth the risk, they had agreed.

  After the last planet, Dash had broken down and told Piper about the serum. It had caused a bit of tension actually. As the ship’s medic, Piper wanted to control Dash’s injections, but Chris felt it was his responsibility. Dash had left the serum with Chris. He didn’t want Piper to have to sneak around. He hoped his choice hadn’t hurt her feelings too badly.

  Dash rolled up his sleeve. Chris held up the clean syringe. Dash reached for it, prepared to inject himself as usual, but Chris pulled it away. “You’re pretty bruised,” he said, studying Dash’s bare left bicep. The skin was mottled faintly purple and yellow. Chris kept the syringe. “Give that side a break. I’ll do it in the other arm.”

  Dash wiped a spot on his right arm with an alcohol swab, then turned his head away while Chris administered the injection. He felt like a little kid for doing it, but not looking really did make the shot a little less painful. His other arm did ache from the repetitive injections, but he would’ve died before admitting it.

  “There. That’ll keep you young for the next day or so,” Chris said. Dash rubbed the spot with the swab again, lifting away the bead of blood that had formed on the skin.

  “We have to get up to the flight deck,” Dash repeated. “We’ll arrive at Infinity any minute.”

  “Well, that’s good,” said Chris in a tone that suggested otherwise.

  Dash’s smile slipped a notch. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “It’s all taking somewhat longer than expected,” Chris said. “You hadn’t noticed?”

  Dash shrugged. “I’ve been kinda busy fighting Raptogons, solving Meta Prime, and negotiating with the AquaGens.”

  “Yes, I suppose,” Chris murmured. “It’s my job—and the ship’s job—to keep us on time.”

  “We’re doing great,” Dash said. But he wasn’t as confident as he sounded. They had a Raptogon tooth from J-16 and a slogger full of Magnus 7 from Meta Prime, but they hadn’t gotten the Pollen Slither they needed from Aqua Gen. Still, it wasn’t entirely out of rea
ch….

  “We’re doing really great,” Dash repeated, as if trying to convince himself. “Aren’t we?”

  Rocket nosed himself closer to Dash. Like most dogs, he had a sixth sense for when someone was about to need some comfort.

  Chris looked grim. “Look at your serum stock,” he said, waving his hand over the box where he kept the loaded syringes. “How much remains?”

  “I dunno….I guess I’ve used more than I have left,” Dash said slowly, realizing it as he spoke. Chris was in charge of Dash’s entire supply. Early in the trip, he’d moved the stash from the boys’ dorm so that Gabriel wouldn’t stumble upon it.

  “And yet, the mission is barely half over,” Chris said. His voice was heavy. “Only three planets done, and three still to go.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Dash said. “You can make more of it, can’t you?” Chris was the one who had designed the biologic injection in the first place.

  “I don’t think you understand,” Chris said. “You can’t take the age serum indefinitely. If this mission isn’t completed in the next eighty-four days, you’ll be dead.”

  Dash felt a whole new level of urgency as he and Chris raced to join the rest of the crew gathered on the flight deck. Eighty-four days until his supply of injections ran out. That was less than three months. They had already been traveling for nine.

  Would he ever make it back to Earth? The mission was supposed to last one year only. Commander Phillips had been clear about that from the beginning.

  Dash knew all along that he was taking a risk with the age serum, sure, but the timing was one thing Dash had never fully stopped to consider. He knew they’d fallen a bit behind schedule. Now he understood the delay could have life-or-death consequences.

  The Cloud Leopard main computer began a slow, high-pitched whine. Over the warning alarm, STEAM recited, “Exiting Gamma Speed in sixty seconds.”

  “All right, let’s buckle up,” Dash said. The crew members climbed into their flight seats and strapped in for the quick deceleration.

  “I hate this part,” Carly grumbled. The sudden jolt out of Gamma Speed was always a bit harsh.