Infinity Riders

by Kekla Magoon

  “If we stand here, we definitely die,” Carly reminded him. “That Saw isn’t stopping for pleasantries.”

  “Neither is that one,” Chris said, pointing in the opposite direction. A second Saw!

  They were cornered.

  “Not again,” Gabriel cried. The desperate sinking feeling of impending death washed over him, for the third time today.

  Three strikes, you’re out, he thought. He couldn’t stop his mind from screaming it.

  He’d gotten lucky that his Simu Suit plan hadn’t sunk—literally.

  They’d gotten lucky in the dead-end tunnel earlier too. But he couldn’t imagine a secret crevice big enough for three people, plus three Weavers and a messed-up Simu Suit.

  Carly pulled on Thunder’s reins, turning him about. “What now?”

  Chris reached down to his saddle sideboard. He drew the long sword. “Now we fight.”

  Dash stood between STEAM and Rocket on the flight deck, staring at the empty sky through the view screen. None of them had moved in quite a while.

  Dash’s mind raced, contemplating possible rescue scenarios. The war was raging on two fronts now—Piper trapped on the Light Blade, and Carly and Gabriel still underground. At least they had Chris down there with them.

  Piper was completely alone.

  But Dash had no way to get to her. Even STEAM’s robot brain had been unable to come up with any mechanism that would allow him to fly across the chasm of space without the Cloud Cat or an air chair.

  Every inch of his body burned to do something. But there was nothing he could do.

  Dash turned to Rocket. “What about you, boy?” he asked. “You got any ideas?”

  Rocket barked twice and sat, curling his tail around his feet. He gazed up at Dash with sad eyes.

  “Okay, fine,” Dash said, struggling to tamp down the fire in his gut. “We wait.”

  —

  The two Saws closed in on the Alpha crew members from opposite directions.

  “What happens when they meet?” Carly asked. This twisted scenario hadn’t exactly come up in the mission brief.

  “We can’t let that happen,” Chris said, drawing his sword.

  “Surely they don’t eat each other,” Gabriel said.

  “They’ll battle for supremacy, then one of them will turn,” Chris said. “Or else the fight will cause this tunnel to collapse.”

  Gabriel didn’t even want to think about that option. He swallowed hard. “One will turn…and make a new tunnel?”

  Chris nodded. “We don’t want to be in the middle of that.”

  Carly felt a tugging sensation behind her ear.

  The mossflower!

  Perhaps, once again, the strange plant was trying to help. The stem tendrils curled around her hair drew themselves upward in three swift jerks. Then three more.

  Carly looked up. Her gaze scanned the surface of the stone. There was nothing but ceiling. No strange cubby or chimney to tuck into. Nothing miraculous.

  “What?” she whispered, hoping the flower could hear.

  The tendrils tugged upward again. The petals flapped against her ear, like wings.

  Wings…Could it be?

  Carly nudged Thunder forward. The Saw behind them filled almost the entire tunnel, but the oncoming Saw was smaller. The tunnel ahead was high, and growing higher.

  “This tunnel might be tall enough,” Carly suggested. “We can fly over him!”

  “I am not sure…,” Chris began. His sword was drawn and ready to fight.

  But Carly felt more and more certain. This was what they had to do.

  “Thunder, can we do it, boy?”

  The Weaver whinnied and stirred his wings. He soared toward the ceiling. He stretched his back legs back and his front legs forward, as if he was landing a competition fence jump.

  Carly bent close over his neck. The Saw’s chewing crunch grew loud and close. Carly closed her eyes, leaving the work to the Weaver. His firm muscles under her gave her confidence. He could make it work. Maybe he’d done it hundreds of times before.

  Gabriel and Chris swooped through the narrow gap after her.

  “Tight squeeze!” Gabriel commented once they were clear.

  “Not as tight as getting gnawed,” Chris said, sounding matter-of-fact.

  “Like threading a needle,” Carly added. “Equine style.” She patted Thunder’s neck.

  They rode on, Gabriel marking the tunnel walls as they went. Soon a snarling sound echoed behind them. The Saw fight!

  Gabriel looked over his shoulder. “I wonder which one will win.”

  “The larger one, naturally,” Chris said. It seemed quite obvious who had the advantage.

  “My money’s on the little guy. He seemed scrappy,” Carly said.

  “At least that was the worst that can happen,” Chris said.

  Gabriel cringed. “Never say things like that, man!”

  Chris shrugged. “It’s logic. The scenario we just encountered was of the worst type we could encounter.”

  Gabriel groaned again. “Stop it now. You’ll jinx us.”

  Chris, of course, did not subscribe to human superstition. “I made no claim that we won’t find ourselves between two Saws again.”

  “Yeah, well. That’s what hope is for.”

  They came to another crossroads. “Which way now?” Carly asked.

  “Right,” Gabriel said.

  “You always choose right, and we always end up in trouble,” Carly commented.

  “I always choose right, and we’re still alive,” Gabriel amended.

  Carly couldn’t argue with that.

  They turned right.

  “It feels like we are going deeper,” Carly called after a while. “Do you think that’s best?”

  Gabriel slowed Barrel. The Weavers landed and circled up so their riders could speak.

  “Let’s look for an alternate exit,” Chris suggested. “There may be something closer. And we would do well to avoid a return to the Jackal compound.”

  “Why?” Gabriel asked.

  “We can avoid a difficult negotiation,” Chris said.

  “No,” Carly demanded. “We need to know what is going on.”

  Gabriel agreed. “We’re not moving until we know the truth.”

  A dozen yards down the corridor, a horrible crunching sound rose. A Saw burst through the wall, moving perpendicular to the existing tunnel. It slithered across the opening, gnawing at air, then continued. A helpful reminder: they couldn’t linger long.

  “Tell us,” Gabriel insisted.

  Chris sighed. “The Jackals are scientists, as well as…collectors.”

  “Collectors?” Carly echoed “Of what?”

  “Specimens. Species. Anything they can get their hands on to study.”

  Gabriel nodded. “So…this is why he thought we were a gift. He wants to add us to his collection?”

  “For scientific study?” Carly was aghast.

  “Probably not Colonel Ramos,” Chris reassured them. “Not anymore. We got lucky that he’s the only one left.”

  Gabriel was steamed. “How could you not tell us? You let us walk straight into a trap!”

  “A seeming trap,” Chris acknowledged. “I’ve outsmarted them once. I could’ve done it again. Much faster.”

  “Why not the colonel?” Carly asked.

  “He saved my life back then,” Chris said. “He considers us friends.”

  Gabriel snorted. “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”

  Chris shot him a cold look. “With Colonel Ramos’s help, I evaded the Jackal clutches once. But it took more time than you can fathom.”

  “How exactly did you escape?”

  Knight shuffled his feet and whinnied. Chris held his reins fast. “That might be a story best told when we are safely back on the Cloud Leopard.”

  “Let’s find the way out,” Gabriel agreed.

  Less than a minute later, the dark tunnels ahead lit with the pinprick glow of oncoming li
ghts.

  “Wild Weavers?” Gabriel wondered. But the lights were too small to be Weaver headlights.

  “Not wild, and not Weavers,” Chris said. “It’s the competition.”

  He saw the others before Gabriel and Carly did. But they only had a moment to be puzzled before they understood.

  Ravi, Siena, and Niko came racing out of the darkness, carrying flashlights.

  “Saw behind us!” Ravi shouted. “Get out of the way!”

  The Saw was coming up fast and furious. Faster than any they’d seen yet. The Omegas were running full-speed to stay ahead of it.

  “Ride with us,” Carly offered. She landed Thunder, and Siena leapt on board behind her.

  “Thanks!” Siena shouted. “Ew, why is it all wet?” She glanced over her shoulder at the sodden mound of Simu Suit strapped to Thunder’s haunches.

  “Don’t have to ride if you don’t want to,” Carly muttered. Siena stayed put.

  Ravi joined Gabriel on Barrel. Niko hopped on behind Chris as the Saw came chomping closer with each passing heartbeat.

  They pushed on through the tunnels, back the way they had come. The Weavers made quick work of leaving the Saw in their dust.

  So much for the alternate exit. They found themselves following Gabriel’s paint trail again.

  “What happened to your Weavers?” Carly asked.

  “We lost them in the caves,” Siena said. “We had to park them to catch the Stingers, and then a Saw came. We couldn’t get back in time. They got spooked and flew off.”

  That was when Carly noticed that Siena held a writhing mesh bag in her hand. Full of Stingers!

  “Yikes,” Carly said. “Are those things secure?”

  “Sure,” Siena said. “Their tails can’t fit through the mesh.”

  “There’s another cavern ahead,” Gabriel shouted. He could see it on the map. “Go right!”

  They emerged into a vaulted atrium about half the size of the lake cavern.

  It instantly became clear that Chris had been wrong earlier. There was definitely something worse than being caught between two approaching Saws.

  Siena screamed.

  Carly screamed. She twisted Thunder’s reins in an effort to turn back, but the guys and their Weavers were right behind her. They’d been flying fast, one after the other. All she could do was dive down and to the left to avoid crashing into a jutting spire of rock.

  Siena yelped and dropped her bag of Stingers. She held tight to Carly as Thunder dipped and dodged through a sudden minefield of thick protruding rocks that stuck up from the ground and hung from the ceiling. Stalactites and stalagmites big enough to carve statues of horse and rider.

  Behind them, the guys also panicked. They flew whatever direction they could.

  “Yaaah!” Gabriel shrieked.

  Something that sounded like “You’ve gotta be kidding” choked its way out of Ravi.

  This cavern wasn’t full of open air. It was nothing but a mess of small tunnels and carved-out nestles in the rock. Tunnels too small for the Weavers to fly through, and most of which were already occupied anyway.

  Because this cavern also wasn’t even really a cavern. It was a den.

  They were stuck in a room with dozens of Saws. Saws in the walls, on the ground, in the doorways.

  Carly counted six full-grown Saws at first glance, plus a mess of smaller ones. Tiny tunnels wove in and out everywhere. The littlest Saws wriggled like worms around the cavern.

  Little might not have been the best word. They were small for Saws, but still huge compared to the humans in their midst. The smallest ones were four or five feet tall—about the same height as Carly.

  Saws slithering. Saws chewing. Saws drinking, from a small lake nested at one side of the cavern. They lay on the pebbles and slurped lazily while a small contingent of Stingers assaulted them from above. It looked like they were doing whatever the underground Saw equivalent of sunning themselves might be.

  The new generation of Saws had chewed out a small network of caves in the rock. Big enough for a human to enter, perhaps, but not a Weaver. The cavern that had looked spacious on the map was much more of an obstacle course in real life.

  “No!” Chris exclaimed. He jerked Knight’s reins upward. Niko wasn’t expecting the sudden movement. He lost his grip and slid right off the Weaver’s back, landing smack in the middle of a circle of small Saws.

  Niko shook off the pain of the fall and dragged himself to his feet. He found himself face to face with the young Saws. They were learning to work their jaws through trial and error. They gnashed them in no particular direction.

  He spun in a circle, looking for a way out. He was surrounded.

  The youngest Saws’ cries sounded like an infant rattle, like several dozen throats gargling stones they hadn’t yet learned how to swallow.

  He had nothing with which to fend them off.

  Chris swooped overhead on Knight. The circle of Saws was too small for the Weaver to land.

  Chris drew the sword from his sideboard and stabbed at a little Saw’s snapping jaw. It ground its teeth in agony and flailed closer to one of its brothers, allowing space in the circle. Niko darted through, headed for the smaller tunnels.

  “Stab them,” Chris called to the others. “They’ll be confused. But they’ll also regenerate. And fast!”

  “We have to help Niko!” Carly cried. She landed Thunder at the edge of the cavern and dismounted. She hesitated only a moment before she pulled the long sword from the saddle sheath. Siena grabbed hold of the opposite one.

  “Let’s try to clear him a path from the tunnel to the door,” Carly said. “But…”

  “We’ll have to work together,” Siena agreed. The two girls met each other’s eyes. In a life-or-death situation, the competition between their ships shouldn’t matter.

  “Here goes nothing.” Carly held the sword tightly and ran back into the den.

  It was much too hard to fly around in the den. Too many rocky obstacles. Gabriel and Chris landed their Weavers too.

  Niko had run all the way back through the small tunnels toward the lake. He was running in the wrong direction, but who could blame him? He was preoccupied by goal number one: do not get eaten.

  It was up to the others to help him find his way out. And it was going to take a hefty dose of teamwork.

  Niko reached the edge of the cavern’s small lake before he realized he needed to turn around. Stingers flitted by, and he dove for safety in a drier part of the cavern.

  The others worked their way across the room, dodging and slicing through baby Saws to get to Niko. They all tried to help make a path out for him, but they got cornered by a massive Saw.

  Before long, the Voyagers stood back to back, fighting in a circle. They dodged and parried, moving wherever they could to stay alive. Chris ran bravely to and fro among the Saws swirling, slicing and then trying to roll them away.

  The large Saw was about to become the real problem. It slithered right toward the ailing smaller ones, looming over Chris. The Saw was fifteen feet tall, with a maw the size of an average living room. They could’ve all sat down to dinner in its mouth, Gabriel thought, and he laughed out loud at the sudden image. The crazy kind of laugh. The “we’re all about to die” kind of laugh.

  The Saw’s tail extended easily eighty feet, and it was partly coiled, to boot. It was thick and long, sealing off the exit with its bulk.

  None of their swords were long enough to even hope to strike its head. All they could do was jab and prick, and it only seemed to make the Saw grow angry. They teased it in tandem from all sides.

  Stab, dodge.

  Stab, dodge. Finally the rhythm started to move her away from the tunnel. The small ones wriggled away toward safety, as if responding to some warning.

  Now the Voyagers had the largest Saw surrounded.

  Suddenly, Ravi realized that he, Siena, and Niko were all on the tunnel side of the mother Saw.

  The Omegas could get out. Safely.
>
  —

  Ravi grabbed Siena’s arm and tugged her toward the tunnels. “Run!” he shouted to Niko. “We gotta get out of here.”

  Niko took in the situation. His head was spinning from the rapid pace of battle. He’d gotten a few good swipes in on that massive Saw’s tail, but Ravi was right. It was time to go.

  Niko stumbled dizzily toward the exit. His head was slightly pounding from all the exertion.

  “But—the Alpha team,” Siena cried as her crewmates urged her back into the tunnels. It was wrong to leave them behind in such peril.

  “Forget them,” Ravi said. “We’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

  The three Omega team members raced into the tunnels on foot. It was not ideal compared to riding the Weavers. And there were Weavers right there for the taking.

  “Come on,” Ravi said, grabbing Barrel’s reins. “Let’s use these.”

  “No way,” Siena said. “How will the Alphas get back? We have to wait for them.”

  “We were fine on foot and they will be too,” Niko said. He hopped onto Knight.

  Siena turned toward the third Weaver. It gazed patiently back at her.

  “Get on with me, if you want,” Niko said. “The faster we get out of here the better.”

  Siena turned back toward the mouth of the Saw den. Guilt stole over her. Carly and Gabriel were surrounded.

  “Hey.” Ravi held up two bags of Stingers—his and Siena’s. “I’ve got the goods, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He had seen her bag on the ground and picked them up during the Saw fight.

  “Come on, or we’ll have to leave you too,” Ravi urged.

  Moment of truth. Siena could run back into the Saw den and help the Alphas.

  And possibly die.

  Or, what if, in the end, they wouldn’t let her join them?

  Siena ran up alongside Niko’s mount, which was Knight. She vaulted herself into the saddle behind him. “No reason to leave them totally stranded,” she said. Guilt and shame strapped her heart. It was so, so wrong to leave their friends behind like this. Enemies, not friends, Siena tried to remind herself. But the idea wouldn’t quite sink in.