“After what those creatures did to Moonbase Magellan,” JJ said, “I’m not sure we’ll be safe even inside the ISSC.”
They finally reached the open doors of the Equipment Module. The lights of the approaching alien ships came closer, “It is our best bet for now,” Ansari said over the suit radio. “We don’t have any underground bunkers to hide in.”
Bronsky nudged King and Mira. “Inside, hurry!” Dyl and Song-Ye drifted in after them, tumbling out of control.
Tony bumped into one of the struts, rebounded away, and began to spin. JJ grabbed his arm to steady him, but they both began spinning slowly; however, she stopped their motion with a gentle tug on the tether, then pulled them both back toward the open bay. “I’ve never done emergency gymnastics before,” Tony said. He caught the edge of the bay door and eased the two of them inside.
Bronsky nudged him farther into the module and followed them inside. The Russian captain used a jet from his maneuvering pack to reach the internal controls, pressing buttons with his gloved fingers. The clamshell doors silently closed, sealing them inside the space station. The chamber began to pressurize, air hissing in with such velocity that JJ could hear the faint echo through her helmet.
As soon as the lights winked green, Bronsky lifted his faceplate and shouted into the intercom, “Stationmaster, we are inside.”
JJ and Tony scrambled to help each other remove their helmets, then disconnect the bulky MMU packs. “Maybe we should just keep our suits on,” Dylan muttered. “One blast from those aliens could depressurize a whole module—and that’s a heck of a lot worse than getting hit with a little piece of space junk.”
“What is the status on the aliens?” Bronsky asked over the intercom.
“They have … arrived,” Security Chief Napali answered. “But the Kylarn aren’t headed toward the space station—they’re homing in on the Eye in the Sky!”
“Why would they care about a useless satellite?” King asked.
Mira had also removed her helmet. Her face wore a serious frown. “The Eye is not functional. The Kylarn should have no interest in it whatsoever.”
“Maybe they’re convinced we can fix it,” JJ said. “I certainly am … if we get the chance.”
With a push against the floorplates, JJ set herself moving toward the opposite wall, where she pressed up against the modules viewing window. She saw two whirligig starfish vessels like the ones that had destroyed the Recon-1 probe. From a distance, she watched the Kylarn ships slowly circle the observation satellite, as if fascinated. Their movements reminded her of two crows inspecting a squashed squirrel on the road, intrigued and hungry, but cautious, each daring the other one to take the first bite.
“What are they trying to figure out?” King asked.
“Our capabilities,” Mira said. “Maybe they’re checking it out to see if they need to worry about our space technology.”
Stationmaster Ansari said over the intercom, “We’re broadcasting this down to CMC. The Kylarn have sent no transmissions, made no attempt to contact us.”
“They’re not the talkative type,” Dyl said.
Suddenly, like birds startled by a passing truck, the starfish ships withdrew to take up a position above the Eye in the Sky. They circled, then turned their pointed arms toward the satellite. Two blazing energy beams struck the Eye in the Sky and obliterated it in a white flash, leaving behind an expanding cloud of reflective debris and the last wisps of propellant gas.
The cadets let out a simultaneous cry of dismay.
“I guess the repair mission is off,” Song-Ye said.
“The satellite wasn’t functional, anyway,” Mira pointed out. “We didn’t really lose anything.”
“We lost the opportunity to fix it,” King said. “We could have done it.”
Dyl said, “That little demonstration was just for anyone who hadn’t yet figured out the Kylarn are the bad guys.”
JJ nudged herself away from the window. “Let’s get out of these suits. I want to be up in Central.”
Working together, they shucked the suits off. Despite their sense of urgency, Captain Bronsky would not let them cut corners. “I know there is a rush, but this is not your bedroom at home. Suits need to be stowed. No telling when we will need to use them again in an emergency.”
“As in, another emergency,” Song-Ye said.
“Remember the moonbase?” Dyl said. “There’s always another emergency.”
Tony let go of his helmet, and it drifted away from him, twirling through the air with the leftover momentum from his rushed movements. Before it could strike Mira in the head, JJ snagged the helmet. “Always secure the pieces. Loose items can cause a lot of damage in zero-G.” She still had painful memories of how the pubs bag had knocked her nearly unconscious during her recent training flight with Uncle Buzz; in fact, she could still smell the acrid odor of the smelling salts he had waved under her nose to wake her up.
Mira shot a sharp look at Tony. She still seemed suspicious of how he had so conveniently joined the Star Challengers. “No need to be careless. The Kylarn pose enough dangers without you adding to our problems.”
“Sorry.” He sounded sheepish.
“No harm done,” JJ said. “Let’s move.”
Working their way through the hatch of the node room, into the next module, and up through another intersection and across, they made their way to the command center. When they drifted into Central, Stationmaster Ansari was floating beside her station with a grave expression on her face.
“What is the status, Stationmaster?” Bronsky asked.
Ansari did not take her eyes off the screens. “After they destroyed the Eye in the Sky, one of the alien ships flew away, but the other one is coming straight toward the ISSC.”
On the screen, JJ watched the silvery star spinning toward the space station complex. She remembered what Commander Zota had told them, how the aliens had captured the defenseless ISSC in his future, and how they had used the platform to stage their invasion.
“Do you think it’s going to blast us, like it destroyed the satellite?” Tony asked.
Song-Ye paled. “Is there any chance we can evacuate?”
“We have two emergency evac lifeboats,” Napali said.
Mr. Pi answered, “But we can’t get everyone there before that alien ship closes the distance. There’s still prep time.”
“Even if we launched the lifeboats,” King pointed out, “what’s to stop the Kylarn ship from just coming after us and shooting us down anyway?”
“I’m not leaving my station,” Ansari said, putting an end to the discussion.
“Can the Kylarn get aboard?” JJ asked. “What if they want to capture the station for their own reasons, not just destroy it?”
Captain Bronsky gave a gruff, angry answer. “The ISSC would be a valuable strategic asset—a much closer base to stage an attack on Earth. We must not let them take it.”
“I don’t intend to,” Ansari said.
“They shouldn’t be able to get inside,” Napali said.
“All node rooms have auxiliary hatches to the outside—it’s how the ISSC was constructed, for expansion and flexibility,” Pi pointed out. “But it’s extremely unlikely that Kylarn hatches would be compatible with ours. How could they dock?”
The ominous starfish ship cruised over the station, analyzing the modules and structure. It circled the ISSC several times, like a prowler searching for an unlocked door.
“They’re obviously spying on us,” Tony said.
“That goes both ways,” King answered. “The station’s sensors are capturing images of the alien ship and transmitting them to Earth.”
“Maybe it’ll just fly away like the other ship did,” Mira suggested.
“Good luck with that,” Dyl said.
Colonel Fox’s voice from Earth crackled through the loudspeakers, startling them. “If we could do anything to help from down here, we would try it, Stationmaster—you know that.”
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p; “We’re keeping our fingers crossed, Colonel,” she said. “We don’t know yet what the Kylarn ship wants.”
Suddenly, the starfish vessel stopped spinning and approached the node room that connected Hab 2 and the Chemistry and Materials Sciences module. It lowered itself toward the airlock hatch.
“How does it think it’s going to get in?” JJ asked.
“I have a feeling they’ve got a plan,” King said.
Then, as she watched, JJ realized just how alien the Kylarn race was.
From the bottom of the starfish-ship’s body, a ring of pliable metal extruded like soft squishy lips, closing around the external hatch and sealing in a bizarre alien kiss. The metal lips sloshed and shifted, like jelly, until they matched up with the node-room’s airlock seals, aligning with the shape. Then the alien metal hardened.
Pi looked down at his controls. He swallowed nervously. “They’ve made a solid seal with the hatch. The Kylarn are going to enter the station.”
Mira spoke in an awed whisper, “Our first face-to-face encounter with the aliens.”
“Not ours. I wasn’t too crazy about the last time we ran into them,” JJ said.
Dyl shuddered. “I have a feeling this is going to be a lot more up-close and personal.”
Napali was already moving out of the module.
Ansari said, “I’m not giving up the ISSC without a fight. Come on!”
“We’re in,” JJ said.
“Right behind you,” King added.
***
Seventeen
Stationmaster Ansari activated a general alarm. “Attention, the ISSC is about to be boarded by the Kylarn! Since these creatures destroyed Moonbase Magellan, Recon-1, and the Eye in the Sky satellite, we must assume their attentions are hostile. Security Chief Napali will employ full defensive measures.”
“Shields at maximum,” Dyl muttered.
“I’m sealing off the Med Module,” Dr. Romero reported over the intercom. “My patients still aren’t recovered, but they’ll tight tooth-and-nail if they have to.”
“I’d rather they didn’t have to,” Ansari said, “but there might not be any way around it.”
JJ took the lead as they shot like human torpedoes through hatches, touching handholds to adjust their courses, pulling themselves up through node rooms and intersections, moving toward the CMS module, near which the starfish ship had docked.
Pi received a message as he rushed along beside them. “Dr. Kloor reports that Hab 2 is evacuated.”
“It might be a good idea to prep those evacuation lifeboats just in case,” King suggested. “Remember, if we hadn’t been ready at Moonbase Magellan, nobody would have survived.”
The Stationmaster obviously didn’t want to give up. “I’ll consider that, but I’m not leaving the ISSC unless we have absolutely no choice. First let’s see what the aliens intend to do. Maybe we can stop them from coming inside.”
Mira warned, “We’ve witnessed how much destructive power they have. Fighting the Kylarn will harm us more than it hurts them.”
The remaining members of the space station crew began to converge from other modules. Pi made an uneasy suggestion, “Maybe we could try to communicate with them, find out what they want. There’s got to be common ground somewhere.”
“They’ve already proved they’re not interested in peace talks,” Song-Ye said.
“We’ve tried playing nice,” Dyl said. “I’d rather kick their butts … or, er, their rear tentacle cluster—whatever the appropriate body part is.”
King was more pragmatic. “Offering them milk and cookies and a chat won’t help, but we should study them. If we capture the aliens, we can learn about their biology, their civilization—and their weaknesses. That’s a lot more useful than the snapshots we got from Recon-1”
Tony agreed. “Or, if we could study that starfish ship docked to the node airlock, Earth might be able to come up with a defense. Build on their technology.”
JJ considered the idea of getting into that pointed alien ship, testing the controls, taking it out for a spin. She loved her flying lessons with Uncle Buzz. An alien ship would be even more exciting. “Sounds good to me.” Commander Zota himself had used stolen Kylarn technology to travel back in time and find the Star Challengers. Having more alien equipment to study could only help.
Security Chief Napali, who had zoomed ahead, rejoined them. Her face looked as ominous as a thundercloud. “Not much more we can do to get ready.” She brandished a steel pipe as long as her arm, wielding it like a club.
“Don’t you have any guns aboard this station?” Tony asked. “Any blasters or laser beams or lightsabers, even?”
“Firing bullets aboard the ISSC would be disaster,” Napali said with a frown. “We’d kill ourselves faster than the Kylarn could do it. Projectiles would either ricochet, or puncture the hull. High-powered lasers would be equally hazardous.”
“How about baseball bats? Soft cushions?” Dyl tried. “Maybe harsh language?”
“I’ve got what I need.” Napali smacked the metal pipe against her palm, taking point as they all stopped inside the CMS module.
Because of the experiments and lab tests performed in the Chemistry and Materials Sciences Module, the curved walls held small sealed glovebox chambers, racks of chemical squeeze bottles, computer data stations, and work surfaces. Near each laboratory bench was an assortment of tools and measuring instruments connected to retractable thin threads. Many of the items drifted loose on their strings, not clipped back into their proper holders, because the scientists had evacuated their stations in such a rush.
At the far end of the module, Dr. Kloor stood by the sealed hatch to the node room. He turned to look at them, as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. “I heard the ship attach itself,” he reported. “I sealed off the node room after I got the other crew out of Hab2.”
“Then even if the aliens make it into the airlock, they’ll be trapped in the node room, won’t they?” Song-Ye asked.
JJ wasn’t convinced. “The Kylarn didn’t have much trouble docking to the station. I don’t think they’ll let a locked door stop them.”
Pi came forward, his face worried and pale. “We’re going to have to face them, sooner or later.”
“I’m not rolling out the welcome mat,” Ansari said.
Kloor went to one of the screens at a lab station, toggled through images of various modules on the ISSC, until the screen was filled with gray static. “We have a camera in the node room, but it’s not functioning. The aliens must have deactivated it.”
At the far end of the module, JJ heard clunking noises from inside the cramped connecting chamber, a thump, then a clang as the aliens emerged from the starfish ship fused to the airlock. Tension hung thick in the air, but JJ pushed aside her fear. She went forward without asking. “Well, somebody’s got to see what they’re doing.”
“Careful, Cadet Wren,” Ansari said, but JJ was already moving to the node room.
The indicator lights on the hatch controls flickered, as if the aliens were trying different methods of unlocking it from inside the node room. JJ caught a handhold on the wall and pulled herself toward the hatch.
Behind her, Security Chief Napali stood ready with her club.
JJ maneuvered herself to the small window, getting close enough to see into the sealed room. She pressed her face up against the small porthole.
Suddenly a damp brownish patch of skin flashed in front of her, and then she saw a milky, membrane-covered eye that looked like an undercooked egg glaring out at her. With a yelp, she flinched backward, accidentally let go of the handhold, and tumbled in the opposite direction. Napali caught her, pulled her to safety.
Before JJ could say anything, the Kylarn figured out how to activate the hatch controls. The heavy door unsealed.
“I’m ready with my harsh language,” Dyl said nervously. “Who’s got the baseball bats?”
The hatch slid open. Moving with freakish speed, two
things pulled themselves forward in the weightlessness, creatures that were too ugly to stay inside a nightmare. It was as if they boiled out of a shaken soda bottle, racing toward the waiting humans.
The Kylarn were squishy, tentacled sacs, like half-deflated balloons that had sprouted flailing whips. Each alien had two pale eyes and a patchy, vibrating membrane over a soft floppy head. The two creatures lashed out with their tentacles, as if they were lion tamers’ whips, snagging handholds, yanking themselves into the CMS Module.
Napali bravely put herself in front of them, raising the club. “Stop! Leave this station immediately.” She faced the invaders, committed now.
The two floating Kylarns hesitated at the security chief’s boldness. JJ supposed they must imagine that someone so brave was either powerful or carried a great weapon. How would an alien know anything about human appearances?
The pair of tentacled creatures hung there, waving their whiplike arms for a long tense moment. JJ remembered how they had taken the time to study the Eye in the Sky satellite before acting. Without coming within reach of her club, the Kylarn pointed several tentacles at Napali. Each appendage was capped with a silvery tip that looked like a pointy thimble connected to a thin tube running up the snakelike arm.
When the aliens aimed the thimbles, a murky green substance squirted out that looked like a cross between phlegm and fat noodles. Napali tried to duck sideways, but the sticky strands splattered her, knocking her toward the curved wall of the module and holding her to it, as if she were covered with a wad of fresh chewing gum. The security chief yelped and struggled to pull free, but she and her metal club were glued to the wall.
“Get to safety!” she shouted, squirming in place. “Don’t worry about me—fall back.”
As the other crewmembers yelled, scrambling for some way to defend against the alien creatures, JJ reached for the nearest screened-off chemical locker. She grabbed a squeeze bottle of scarlet liquid. She didn’t know what it was, hoped it might be dangerous. After all, nobody knew what could harm the Kylarn.
The two aliens raced toward the crew, but JJ squeezed her chemical bottle as hard as she could. She squirted a jet of the bright red fluid, and it splattered the soft head sack of the foremost Kylarn, leaving a bright scarlet stain. “Take that, squidbutt!”
Space Station Crisis Page 10