“Alright, let’s go there,” said Parker.
Maurus pondered the screen for a few more moments. “No. There’s an emergency signal being broadcast. They’re telling all survivors from Trucon to go to Qesaris. The Federation is setting up refugee camps there in the capital.”
“Do we have enough power to make it that far?” Parker asked.
“I can squeeze it out of her.”
“No.” Parker stood up straighter and crossed his arms. “This is my cruiser, and that means you’re under my command. Go to Senica first and replenish the core.”
Maurus made one last entry on the console and turned in his seat, regarding Parker with a cool stare. “Your command, is that right?” Behind him, all the screens went black. “I’m not flying into any planetary zone until I know how two Earthan boys ended up piloting a vehicle unattended, with a blitzed android in the cabin. Did you hijack it?”
“No. It’s my cruiser,” began Parker.
Maurus arched his eyebrows. “I don’t believe you. What are your names?” He turned around to face Chase.
“He’s Parker and I’m—”
“That’s my little brother, Corbin,” interrupted Parker loudly. “Parker and Corbin Mason.” Chase tried not to look surprised and plastered a fake smile on his face.
Maurus seemed not to have noticed, as he had turned his attention to Mina, who was still slumped against the back wall. “You’re runaways then, aren’t you?” he said. “You blasted your nanny and took off for a joyride in the family cruiser.”
“We didn’t blast her,” said Parker. “But she’s ours.”
“And covered with blast marks? Who was shooting at you?”
Parker narrowed his eyes. “How did you end up stranded in mid-space beside a wrecked Khatra?”
For a moment the cabin fell silent as Maurus and Parker stared each other down. In a low, deliberate tone, Maurus said, “I’m not stopping on Senica. I can get us to Qesaris. Refugee camps are easier to slip through unnoticed, which apparently would be best for us all.”
“Are you sure we can make it?” asked Chase.
“I’m sure.”
Parker’s face twitched. “Alright. Thank you for presenting our options.” He spoke stiffly, like he was still in control. “I agree with your suggestion. You can plot a course to Qesaris.”
Maurus gave him a dangerous look before turning back to the console. “Keep that up and see where it gets you.”
Motioning for Chase to follow him, Parker led the way into the bunkroom and allowed the door to slide closed behind them. “Start looking for rope or anything we can use to tie with.”
“Why?” Chase watched as Parker pulled a bundle of cable from a cabinet and tied a practice knot with it, testing the strength. “What are you going to do with that?”
“This guy could be anything—smuggler, slave trader, assassin. If he tries something, we have to be ready to defend ourselves.”
“Defend ourselves? With what? A piece of cable and your amazing wit?”
Parker gave him a dirty look. “With this.” From his pocket, he withdrew the knife he’d bought from the junk merchant, still in its green sheath.
“Are you crazy? You don’t have a chance against him. Put it away!”
“You won’t be saying that when he puts you in shackles and tries to sell you into the slave trade.”
“Or maybe he’ll just take us to Qesaris like he said, and we’ll be that much closer to getting Mina fixed.”
Parker shook his head. “Maybe he will. But if he tries anything on us, even if he just tries to steal our cruiser once we land”—he made a slashing motion with the sheathed knife—“he’ll have this to deal with first.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
With a bad feeling growing in his gut, Chase watched Parker stash the knife up his sleeve and place the cable on the floor just inside the doorway. He rose to his feet. “Ready? Play it cool for now.”
Chase tried one last time to stop him. “Think about it. If you try to use that blade against Maurus, you’ll end up with it jammed against your own throat. And if he really is a criminal, he won’t think twice about using it on you. Don’t be stupid.” Maurus wasn’t exactly muscle-bound, but he looked tough and definitely strong enough to overpower a pale houseplant like Parker.
“Just let me handle everything, you wimp.” Parker touched the entry pad, and the door slid open.
Maurus sat facing them, his arms crossed.
Quickly Parker tucked his arm behind his back. “What?”
“Second Lieutenant, Expeditionary Squad.” Maurus’s voice was calm, but his eyes glittered fiercely.
“Huh? I don’t know what you’re—” Parker began.
“I wasn’t planning to give you any information beyond my name. But before you go trying to start a mutiny, I thought I’d better tell you that you’ll be attacking an officer from the Intergalactic Federal Fleet.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” mumbled Parker.
“There’s an intercom,” said Maurus. “To the bunkroom. I heard everything you said.”
Chase wanted to sink into the floor and vanish. An intercom? How could Parker be so dense?
“You’re Lyolian. You can’t be in the Fleet,” said Parker, his cheeks blooming scarlet.
Maurus opened his jacket and pulled off an elliptical silver badge, holding it out like a shield. “It’s real. You want to check?”
Parker glanced at the badge and returned his gaze to the floor. “What ship do you serve on?”
“The IFF Kuyddestor.”
“And … who’s your commanding officer?”
“Captain Lionel Lennard.” Maurus’s dark, severe eyes bored into them. “What, is that it for the interrogation? Come forward.” Both boys stepped through the doorway, and the door slid shut behind them. “There, I’ve locked it. We’re all going to stay up here in the pilot’s cabin for now. Hand over the knife. Handle first.”
Parker shook the weapon from his sleeve, avoiding Maurus’s eyes, and passed it over. Glowering, he sank into one of the seats on the back wall.
“Corbin, come take a seat up here.” Maurus made a few entries on the console and then turned to Chase, studying his face for a minute. “Is this your cruiser?”
From the corner of his vision, Chase could see Parker’s gray eyes blazing in his direction. He bit his lip.
Maurus waited a moment and shrugged. “You’re lucky. I’d turn you in myself, but because of the situation with Trucon, I’ll need to report for duty right away.”
“Do you know what happened back there?” asked Chase. “Was it an attack?”
“Nothing’s certain yet. The whole galaxy’s in an uproar.” He turned back to the console. “We’ve got a few hours ahead of us until we get to Qesaris. I’ll monitor the emergency band for more information.”
If Maurus really was from the Fleet, he didn’t seem to recognize Chase, so that was a good sign. Maybe it was just because Parker had given a fake name for him. Chase closed his eyes briefly in gratitude for Parker’s one good move and turned to give him a nod of encouragement, but Parker kept his eyes glued to the floor and wouldn’t look up.
Chase gazed back out the front window of the cruiser, barely aware of the movement as they hurtled onward through space. He wasn’t able to say whether the past few hours were some of the worst of his life so far, but they were certainly some of the hardest he had spent in the short time he could remember. The seat was too uncomfortable to sleep in, and in his exhaustion he stared off into space, his weary brain returning to the same questions. Who am I? What happened to me?
Why had Dr. Silvestri’s lab been raided? And why had those soldiers tried to shoot them on Mircona? Was someone trying to have him killed? His hands clenched on the armrests. No, maybe someone important was trying to find him. All sorts of possibilities bloomed in his mind, and he imagined several different fantastic scenarios before his thoughts crashed back down again with the recollection tha
t nothing was the same as it had been before Trucon burned.
His thoughts cycled back and forth like this for the next few hours, until the stress twisted his stomach into a grizzled knot. He looked over at Maurus for the first time since they had stopped talking, and gasped.
Maurus looked like he’d gone berserk. He stared at the console with wild eyes, his cheeks flushed. His lips moved as if he were in the middle of a heated debate.
“What’s wrong?” Chase’s first thought was that it must have been about him. Maybe the Fleet had reached Maurus with news about his young passengers. Panicking, Chase leaned toward the console. What he saw there was a line of streaming words, and an ID photo of someone with dark eyes and sharp cheekbones.
Maurus slapped the console, and the image vanished. A coordinate map filled the screen. “What? Everything’s fine.” His eyes were still wide and glazed over.
Chase blinked, still processing the flash of an image he’d seen. “Was that photo of you?”
“No,” he said too quickly.
“Are we running out of energy?” Chase asked.
Maurus shook his head and touched something on the console. “No, we’re good. Almost there.” His face twitched.
Chase glanced over his shoulder at Parker, who slept in his seat, his face mashed up against the wall. “You looked like … I thought something bad had happened.”
“No, everything’s fine,” Maurus said brusquely. “We’ll be able to fold over to Qesaris shortly—we need to close in on this gas giant first.” Maurus gestured toward the window. “We’re starting to come up on it now.”
After a moment Chase spotted the tiny yellow-orange speck, far, far away. He realized how fast they were moving as it grew steadily in size, and within half an hour the details of the colossal globe began to come into view. A mesmerizing pattern of brown and white swirls and faint streaks of green decorated its orange surface. Soon the planet filled their entire window and it was all they could see. It was bigger than anything Chase thought could possibly exist, and it was beautiful.
“We’re going to use its gravitational pull to assist our fold, aren’t we?” asked Parker, who had awoken and leaned forward in his seat.
Maurus grunted. “Prepare for fold,” he said a minute later. He steered the cruiser to the right, so that a small sliver of black space appeared at the top of the window. Chase continued to watch the planet, transfixed. “And four, three, two…”
Again Chase experienced the strange full-body compression of the fold, and it was as though he’d blinked his eyes and the glorious gas giant vanished. In its place was a different planet, much smaller and visible only as an iridescent sliver as they came up on it from the darkened side. What they could see gave off a bluish-gray cast.
“Qesaris,” announced Maurus, hunching back over the console. “I’ll see where we should enter to reach the refugee stations.”
“Just get on the planet’s flight channels,” said Parker from the back of the cabin. When Maurus didn’t respond, he continued. “I’m sure it’s been marked as a local CFC coordinate, just enter it in and the cruiser will take care of the rest.” There was a pause. “Hello, are you listening?”
“The CFC is for housewives, autobuses, and children who don’t know a thing about piloting,” said Maurus, without looking up from the console.
There was silence from the back of the cabin, and Chase didn’t dare to turn around to see what kind of death stare Parker was delivering to the back of Maurus’s head. After a minute, Maurus took the yoke and began steering them toward the blue planet. Ships of all sizes dotted the space around the planet’s atmosphere.
“Plenty of Fleet ships up here,” said Parker. “You have to report for duty on one of these?”
“Yes.” Maurus veered around a giant cluster of vehicles, muttering to himself, and suddenly turned the cruiser and zoomed down through the crowded space, weaving easily between vehicles to approach the planet’s atmosphere.
He tapped a screen on the console. “Vector 217, refugee PSJ-E class requesting slot assignment.” There was a brief pause, and then a disembodied voice came crackling from the console.
“This is 217, you are assigned entry number 1498. Please maintain orbital trajectory until your number is broadcast.”
Maurus huffed and tapped the screen again. “217, PSJ-E class requesting immediate slot assignment.”
“Cruiser, there is a line going halfway around the planet,” snapped the voice. “Wait your turn like everyone else.”
Maurus rolled his eyes and drummed his fingers on the controls. “217, I have a medical emergency on board. Request immediate landing privileges in the capital.”
There was a long break, and finally the voice responded, sounding tight and irritated. “Entry assignment in transmission.”
Chase looked over at Maurus. “You could have just told them you needed to report for duty,” he said.
Maurus ignored him and veered the cruiser down toward the planet’s surface. It took Chase a moment to figure out what looked strange about Qesaris as they drew closer—the entire landscape was gray, covered in buildings and construction. There were slivers of blue water, but no green vegetation anywhere to be seen.
In the midst of all the structures, they flew over a monstrous hole in the ground, big enough to fit fifty cruisers end to end across the diameter. It was black and bottomless, rimmed in glowing blue lights. Before Chase had the chance to ask what it was, Maurus steered them straight down and plunged the ship toward the gaping tunnel. Chase leaned back in his seat, gripping the armrests. As they moved closer, he could see other vehicles flying in and out of the chasm.
Maurus looked over at Chase’s rapt gaze and frowned. “It’s a portshaft,” he said. “Once we’re docked, get away from this cruiser as quickly as possible. I’m sure there’s plenty of police on hand and you don’t want to be linked to a stolen vehicle.”
“Not stolen,” muttered Parker in the back.
“Do you think we’ll be able to get Mina fixed in the refugee camp?” Chase asked.
“The android?” Maurus paused a moment. “I can help you get it repaired. I know a good electrostruct.”
Chase looked back at Parker, who rolled his eyes and shrugged. He was probably sulking over the fact that Chase was right and Maurus was actually helping them. “Sure, thanks.”
Maurus looked back at him again, but said nothing.
When they passed below the surface and entered into the wide chasm, Chase was at first captivated by what he saw around them—the interior of the giant shaft was lined with circular platforms that jutted out from the wall, and thousands of vehicles were docked in orderly rows on each level. Beside him, Maurus jumped from his seat and charged into the bunkroom with his discarded space suit. Chase yelped when he realized there was no one piloting the cruiser.
“Don’t worry, it’ll dock itself,” said Parker, getting up from his seat. “He’s finally doing what I told him to.” His face was calm and determined as he slid into the pilot’s seat. “I should lock him in the back and leave him there for the police to find,” he said as he touched the console.
“Don’t, Parker.” Chase grabbed his wrist. “He’s going to help us.”
“What are you doing there?” asked Maurus behind them. He had emerged from the bunkroom with a slim silver case in his hand.
“What’s that?” asked Parker. “Did you take that from my cruiser?”
“It’s nothing,” said Maurus, tucking the case into his jumpsuit. “It’s mine.”
The Starjumper was slowing its descent and began to swing backward onto one of the docking platforms. Once it settled on the firm surface, Maurus opened the exit door and swung out onto the platform. He reached inside to hoist Mina out of the vehicle, grunting with effort as he lifted her and turned away.
“Wait!” Chase scrambled out of the vehicle after him.
Maurus quickly crossed the platform toward the back wall of the shaft, where there was a serie
s of sliding metal doors. He carried Mina in both arms, her face pressed into his chest and her long brown hair trailing out over his arm.
“Where are you going?” Chase called after him.
“Hold up!” shouted Parker, climbing out of the cruiser.
Maurus turned back to Chase, freeing one hand to fish something from his pocket. “Here,” he said, holding out Parker’s knife in its green sheath. “You should carry this.”
Chase took it, confused, and slid it into his pocket. “But we’re coming with you.”
Maurus opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a small hovercraft that zipped onto the platform. A medic in white uniform leapt down from the controls and approached the group.
“Sir, I understand you have a medical emergency here,” said the medic.
“My wife,” said Maurus loudly, stepping toward the back of the platform as he spoke. “Prone to seizures. She’ll be fine. I can take her to the hospital myself. Would you please help my two young friends over there? We rescued them from a disabled ship. Both their parents have perished in the disaster and they’re very distraught.”
As the medic turned his attention on Parker and Chase, Maurus stepped through a set of metal doors at the back of the platform with Mina in his arms. The doors slid closed behind him and he was gone, leaving the two gaping boys behind.
CHAPTER NINE
“Wait, stop!” Chase stared at the metal doors that slid closed behind Maurus and Mina. What had just happened?
Parker bolted past and pounded the console beside the doors. He turned as Chase jogged up behind him. “Why did you let him go?”
“I let him go?”
“You stood there and watched him take her!”
“Then go after him!” Chase said, waving his hand at the doors.
“That’s an airshute, you idiot.” Parker rapped on the console again. “By the time these doors open, he’ll be long gone on the surface.”
The medic stood next to his hovercraft. “Hey, boys, come on,” he called. “I can take you from here.”
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