Parker shook his head. “Yeah, but last time we were here, he thought you were a clone. Surviving that disperser was proof enough to everyone that you’re really Chase Garrety. That, and the microchip you had under your scalp.”
Chase touched the back of his head. The microchip, Dr. Silvestri … everything on Trucon seemed like it had happened ages ago. “Too bad the chip got destroyed.”
“But that wound you had there, you probably got that before you were dispersed. It left a bit of a scar, right? No clone would have that. It’s proof of who you are. As for how the captain knows you, that’s something you’ll have to find out from him.”
“What about Maurus? Last time, Lennard was pretending not to know anything about the Trucon attack and setting Maurus up to be executed. Did he change sides?”
Parker dragged a finger across the table, and a console illuminated in its shiny surface. He started flipping through screens, frowning as he spoke. “Lennard wasn’t pretending. He was never involved in the plot against Trucon. He was set up, just like Maurus was—he sent him out on a falsified report, and he believed everything that happened afterward was Maurus’s fault. After we escaped, I think he realized this. When Maurus called the mission bogus, he must have taken a second look and figured it out.”
“But he was working with Fersad. I saw it myself—he was going to pay him off.”
Parker grinned. “I bet he did. Apparently you weren’t watching the newsfeed in your transport. Check this out.” He scrolled through a few screens, and landed on a video feed of a blond reporter standing in an area that looked like the Shank.
“And it’s no surprise the Karsha Ven’s response to this news has been abject denial,” she said. “I’m Parri Dietz, here on Qesaris with a surprising turn of events in the story of the millennium, the attack on Trucon—if you’ve been watching, you’ll know that I was just speaking with Captain Lionel Lennard, commander of the IFF Kuyddestor, who has stepped forward to exonerate his officer Lieutenant E. Maurus, previously the prime suspect in the attack.”
The screen switched to a recording of Captain Lennard glaring at the camera, his eyebrows drawn in a fierce frown. “We had attempted to maintain cover in order not to ruin the months of undercover work that my soldier did posing as a Karsha Ven militant, but recent events have made it necessary for me to take this information public. I can vouch that Lieutenant Maurus was not involved in the Trucon attack—he had nothing to do with it, and was acting under my orders to investigate a Lyolian trafficking ring in the Ganthas colonies. It was simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve pulled him from the field, and he’s currently recuperating in an undisclosed location.”
The image flashed back to the reporter. “Supporting this statement is the taped confession we recently received from a Kekilly mercenary named Fersad who claims to have knowledge that the Karsha Ven was in fact behind this attack, and that he provided them the means to their advanced weaponry by linking them with a black-market weapons dealer named Jonah Masters.”
Chase looked up from the screen. “Asa?”
Parker touched the image to pause it and nodded. “When Lennard’s team caught Fersad leaving Bennin’s hideout, the captain must have bribed him to say that Asa was the one who helped the Karsha Ven get their hands on the thermodetonators—the ones that someone in the Fleet actually gave to their own soldiers.”
“But … Asa couldn’t have agreed to this. Now they’ll be after him. What did he say?”
Parker stared Chase in the eyes for a moment. “He didn’t say anything. He’s gone.”
Chase gasped. “He died?”
“What? No—while you were letting yourself get blown to smithereens, Mina helped him up and they booked it out Bennin’s escape passage.”
“They just left?” After all that Mina had done to protect Parker, Chase couldn’t imagine she’d abandon him in the heat of battle.
Parker made a wry face. “I’m sure it wasn’t personal. Mina was created to protect me, but Asa’s her true owner, not me. Apparently in her settings, ‘Asa in mortal danger’ overrides ‘Parker in mortal danger.’ Anyhow, his not being there to defend himself gave Lennard an easy scapegoat to put in Maurus’s place.”
“But it wasn’t Asa or the Karsha Ven that attacked Trucon,” Chase said. “It was someone in the Fleet. They’ll know, and come after Maurus.”
“Not likely,” said Parker. “Whoever planned this wanted it to look like an attack by the Karsha Ven, right? So in effect they got what they wanted. Now they can’t step forward without identifying themselves.”
“But now they know that Lennard knows the truth…,” said Chase.
Parker nodded and leaned back in his chair. “Which means that Captain Lennard, and Maurus, and basically everyone on this ship are going to have to watch their backs.”
* * *
Chase stared at the metal walls of the tiny room that the quartermaster had assigned him, picking at a plate of rehydrated beans and noodles. It was a space of his own, but it was far from comforting—it looked like someone had thrown a bed and table into a supply closet. And although he knew he wasn’t a prisoner on the Kuyddestor this time, he jumped every time he heard a noise in the hallway outside his room.
He’d been on the ship almost a full day and still hadn’t been allowed to see his sister, and it was driving him crazy. Parker had finally told him she’d fallen back into a coma during transit to the Kuyddestor, and Forquera said she was being treated in an isolation unit of the medical ward. Chase thought that if he was able to see her, to squeeze her hand, maybe that would speed her recovery. He wanted more than anything to look her in the eyes and feel a connection with her again.
The door to his room slid open, and Captain Lennard stood in the doorway. His presence was as imposing as ever, but his pale eyes looked weary. “Hello, Chase. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come talk with you.” He pulled a chair up to the table. “How are you doing?”
Chase set down his fork, feeling like he had so many questions that he might explode. He started with the biggest one. “What am I?”
Lennard ran a hand over his face. “I wish I knew. We never saw any signs that you had inherited anything.”
“What do you mean?” Chase asked, growing agitated. “How do you know so much about me?”
“Chase, I’ve known you since you were a baby. I knew your parents long before you were born.”
This still wasn’t an answer. Chase wanted to scream with frustration. Instead he repeated slowly, “What do you mean?”
Lennard nodded and cleared his throat. “Let me start at the beginning. I met your parents nineteen years ago, when I was a lieutenant on the DR-Explorer Roscommon. I found them hiding in the cargo hold—they were stowaways. At first I thought they were just a pair of regular Earthan teenagers running away from home, but they were more than that.
“They told me how they had just escaped from some sort of genetic modification program, that their lives were in danger. I should have turned them in to the master-at-arms, but they begged me not to. They were so frightened—even though I suspect they could have snapped my neck if they needed to—and from the way they acted, it seemed as if something very traumatic had happened to them. So instead of reporting them, I helped them find a place to hide, and we formed a friendship that lasted…” He trailed off and closed his eyes.
Chase absorbed the information hungrily, building a rough image of his parents in his head as the captain spoke. As the pieces of his past began to fit together, he was filled with a strange combination of relief and melancholy. Finally, here was the answer to where he came from, why he was different—but he knew these explanations wouldn’t have a happy ending.
“What kind of genetic modification?” he asked quietly.
“They never explained that to me, though it was clear that they were different because of it. From the outside, they looked like normal Earthans, but they were light-years smarter than anyone I�
��ve ever met, and their senses seemed … heightened. I swear they could communicate with each other without saying a word, just like the Falasians do. I knew they were afraid of the consequences their modifications would have on any children they might have, but they were in love. And you were born, and you were so normal. And then came Lilli.
“Even when she was a baby, your parents started to notice strange things. They would lay her down for a nap in her bedroom, then walk out into the living room to see her sitting on the floor, playing with an orange. But they’d turn around, and there she was, lying in her crib. We called what she does ‘traveling.’ She can be in one place and produce an identical copy of herself anywhere else. At first it was fascinating, but then we began to see the possible dangers of her ability—we had no control over where she goes, what she sees, who sees her. If she receives a cut on her traveling copy, the same cut manifests itself on her original body. That was when your parents placed a special sort of tracking chip under her scalp, and for safety’s sake they gave you one as well.”
So that was how Lilli had attacked him in the café—she’d sent a traveling copy of herself—while the whole time her real body had been strapped down on a hospital gurney, a captive of the Fleet. Trackable by the same technology that Chase had carried. Asa’s technology.
“Do you know where they got the chips from?” he asked.
Lennard shook his head. “They never told me. I’m sure they had contact with more people than just me, but you grew up hidden in a deep corner of the galaxy, isolated from the rest of the universe. Your parents wanted nothing to do with the outside world.”
It was possible Chase’s parents had simply bought the microchips on the black market, looking for a dealer who could keep their transaction confidential. But then how would Asa have known that Chase was different? If he was a friend of the family, wouldn’t he have claimed Chase as soon as he saw him on the Kuyddestor instead of pretending not to know him? Chase’s mind turned to another, darker possibility—that Asa, with his shady connections, had somehow been involved in the Garretys’ eventual downfall. Maybe he was the one who led their attackers to their home. It would take time for Chase to sort out all his suspicions, and he wished he’d had more time to demand everything Asa could tell him about his parents.
“So what happened to them?” he asked, his stomach tightening with dread at what he knew would come next.
Captain Lennard sighed heavily. “Everything was fine until about four weeks ago, when I tried to contact your parents and got no response. That had never happened before.” He lowered his head and massaged his temples with his thumbs, pausing for a moment before he continued.
“By the time I was able to get to your home, it was clear that whoever your parents had escaped from had finally found them. Your house was empty, and there were signs that there had been a struggle. I took a molecular readout, and found biotraces of your mother, your father, and you. Hard evidence that all three of you had been killed with a particle disperser.”
Although he already knew most of this information, Chase watched his own hands tremble as the captain spoke. He remembered something Parker had said to him once, when they first met: Maybe what happened to you is so horrible, once you find out, you’ll wish you never knew.
“Why not Lilli? Why did they keep her alive?”
“They must have known about her ability, and I’m sure there were people who wanted to learn more about what she could do. You, they eliminated, because they thought you were just a normal boy. We all did.” Lennard was looking at Chase with a strange, almost pleading expression on his face. “Can you imagine my shock at seeing you, who I knew was dead, turning up on my ship over three weeks later? I was completely consumed with my search for Lilli. It was impossible that you’d survived, and with everything that had just happened on Trucon, I assumed someone was setting a trap for me. How could I have known?”
“So why did I survive? What am I?”
“Chase, the combination of your parents’ altered DNA must have given you a genetic advantage we couldn’t see. Whether or not your phasing ability existed before the incident, I can’t say, but my ship’s doctor thinks that when you were dispersed in your home, it triggered a change in your molecular makeup. Your particles were spread far and wide, which should have killed you, but instead they managed to find their way back together. Unfortunately it seems that your memory didn’t rejoin the rest of you.”
“So I’ll never remember my life before this? I remember everything that happened before Bennin tried to disperse me. Isn’t there a chance I’ll get my memory back?”
Lennard frowned. “When you turned the disperser on yourself yesterday, you got kind of blurry but stayed in the room with us. Your body came back together quickly. But the first time you were dispersed, it was completely different.” He gave Chase a cautious, sad look, as if he were trying to soften the blow of bad news. “After you were attacked at home, two weeks passed before you reappeared on Trucon. It’s possible your body just didn’t know how to reassemble itself yet. Dispersal is violent, sudden—and the brain is such a complex organ, it’s not really a surprise that yours sustained a serious injury. You’re lucky to be alive.”
Chase stared at the half-eaten food on his plate. His parents were gone, and he might never even know who they were, what they sounded like or looked like. An idea occurred to him.
“Do you think my parents could have had the same ability as me? Maybe they just reappeared somewhere else, the same as me?”
Lennard shook his head. “I really wouldn’t hold out any hope for that idea, Chase. They were special, but they weren’t like you. You’re a completely new evolution.”
Chase nodded, but resisted this answer all the same. He knew the chance his parents were alive somewhere was basically nonexistent, but it made him feel better to imagine that one day he still might find them. And maybe that would unlock his memory, and everything could just go back the way it was supposed to be. He looked around at the metal walls of his room. “What happens now?”
“Right now we’re headed to a mining colony in the Movala system. We need to lie low for a while, so in advance I grabbed an assignment that would take us as far into deep space as possible. We’re essentially going to hide out there until we can figure out who’s behind this.”
Suddenly Chase realized he had potentially helpful information. “It was Colonel Dornan. I saw her talking with Fersad, and she destroyed the disks—”
“I’ve already talked with Parker about that. She mentioned someone else, didn’t she?”
Chase thought back to what he’d heard Dornan say. It was his foolish idea to make a hard copy in the first place. At the time, he’d assumed she was talking about Lennard. He nodded.
“There’s a bigger conspiracy behind this. Right now, I can’t fathom what possible end could have been served by destroying an entire planet. I’ll be investigating that along with my team, but while we do, I have to make sure I’m protecting the crew of the Kuyddestor.”
Hearing the ship’s name again, Chase looked up. “‘Guide the star.’ It’s the only thing I remembered when I woke up on Trucon.”
Lennard leaned toward him. “And that’s a testament to how diligently your parents trained you for what to do in case of an emergency. I can’t tell you how many times they repeated, ‘If anything ever happens, get to the Kuyddestor.’”
“But, ‘guide the star’?”
“Is what Lilli called it when she was a toddler. It was a family joke. So, in a way, you remembered her too.” Lennard smiled, letting his gaze rest on Chase for a moment. “Well, I should let you get some rest. I know it’ll take some time for you to adjust, but I’ll do anything I can to help. You have no idea how glad I am—”
A low beep from the door interrupted him, and it opened on a soldier Chase didn’t at first recognize. In the gray uniform of the Fleet, Maurus looked like a different person. His nose had been mended, and his hair was secured in a tight
knot at the base of his skull. More noticeable, though, was that the hunted, desperate look was gone from his face. He stood tall and confident, eyes gleaming with energy.
“Captain,” he said, snapping to attention.
“Lieutenant Maurus, how can I help you?” said Lennard. Chase stared in disbelief at the respectful exchange.
Maurus dropped his salute. “I came to see if Chase wanted to come down to the officer quarters for supper this evening, so I can introduce him to some of the crew. If that’s alright with you, Captain?”
“I think that’s a fine idea, as long as Chase wants to.”
The idea of sitting down with a roomful of soldiers sounded intimidating, but Chase knew Maurus’s intent was to help him get settled on the ship. “Yeah, thanks. That sounds good.”
“I was just leaving,” said Lennard, rising from his chair. “I’ll let you two have some time together.” At the door he stopped and turned back to Chase. “Not many of the crew know the real details of who you are. I’m telling everyone that the three of you were orphaned after Trucon and the Fleet is taking you in as future cadets. If anyone starts asking a lot of questions about who you are or where you came from, you have to tell me.”
Chase nodded assent. “When can I see my sister?”
“Maybe tomorrow.” Lennard furrowed his eyebrows. “We need to take it slow, okay? Lilli’s had a very traumatic experience.”
“But if I can just—” Chase began.
“I know you want to see her, and I understand. But you don’t remember Lilli. She was a difficult child before any of this happened. I just want to make sure she’s … ready for you.”
Biting back the protest that rose to his lips, Chase nodded, but his thoughts swirled with fresh worry. What did the captain mean, a difficult child? Did she not want to see him?
Maurus saluted as Captain Lennard left. When the door slid closed behind him, he grinned at Chase. “Well, just look at us.”
Chase returned the smile shyly. Maurus was still the same guy who’d traveled with him from one end of the galaxy to the other, who’d saved his life and whose life he’d saved, but things felt different now. He was a soldier again, and Chase was just a boy. “So everything’s … okay?”
Lost Planet 01 - The Lost Planet Page 24