Space Runners #4

by Jeramey Kraatz

  Benny half waited for Drue to chime in and correct Zee, but his friend had already gone to the resort’s infirmary to find his father. Instead, it was up to him and Hot Dog to escort the young alien—Commander Vala’s adopted kid—down into the depths of the Moon to release the Alpha Maraudi prisoners.

  He was starting to remember not only the times that Zee had helped them out in the past few days but the many, many instances where he’d been a pain, or worse, almost gotten them killed.

  “Well, it’s not like we have time to take you to the video game room or the holographic race tracks,” Hot Dog said. “And I’m guessing the reverse bungee jumping equipment got trashed.”

  All four of the alien’s tentacles twitched. “I take it back. Now I’m interested. And I don’t even know what a spongee jump is.”

  “Later,” Benny said. He turned his attention to Hot Dog. “You positive this was a good idea?”

  She shrugged. “When was the last time any of us was sure of that?”

  “What?” Zee asked, taken aback. “This is perfect! I get to free the Alpha Maraudi prisoners! Vala is going to be so happy whenever she wakes up. Seriously, this is the kind of stuff my people will be talking about way after humanity is gone.”

  A few moments of silence passed between them.

  “I mean,” he continued, “assuming you die out for reasons not related to us.” He shrugged. “Just since we live so much longer and have been around since you were crawling out of the sea or whatever.” Another beat of silence. “And stuff.”

  Benny groaned. “I feel so much better now.”

  “He is basically their commander’s kid,” Hot Dog said.

  “They’ll listen to me,” Zee said, and even though he was wearing a mask, Benny was sure he was grinning. “I’m the most loved person on our ship! I’ve explored constellations you’ve never even heard of with some of these crew members before. Relax.”

  All Benny could think about was how when they’d snuck onto the ship that belonged to Tull—the Alpha Maraudi commander who’d led the original asteroid storm against Earth and seemed dead set on wiping out all life on Earth—Zee had tried to convince the guards that he was one of them. And had failed miserably.

  But they didn’t have many other options and Benny definitely wanted to free the aliens being held in Elijah West’s underground bunker as quickly as possible. The place was large enough for the crew and well stocked since Elijah had intended for the EW-SCABers to live in it indefinitely, but even a prison full of resources was still a prison.

  He let out a long breath and turned to the lobby elevators. “Pinky. Get us down there, please.”

  “You got it,” she said through his comm speakers. “Happy to be in control of these lifts again.”

  A few minutes later, the elevator doors closed behind them, and then their force field helmets powered down. Zee ripped off his mask as they began to plummet rapidly through the Moon.

  “Okay,” he said, his tentacles bracing him against one of the walls. “I take back every time I thought you humans were lazy for complaining about stairs. Elevators are pretty cold.”

  “Cool,” Benny said. A weight settled like a growing piece of stone in his stomach as he realized how unprepared they were. “How do we do this? They won’t be happy to see us. They’ll think we’re with New Apollo.” He clenched his eyes shut. “Ugh. Maybe we should have just sent Zee.”

  “Um, I guess ‘We come in peace’ probably isn’t going to get us anywhere,” Hot Dog said.

  Zee opened his mouth wide and let a harmonic sound ring out, echoing off the sleek metal walls. Then he nodded, as if he’d answered their question. “That’s our word for ‘I know you think I’m here to hurt you, but I promise I’m not.’”

  “Great,” Benny murmured. “I can’t wait to try to make that noise while a tentacle is wrapped around my neck.”

  “I thought your people didn’t fight each other,” Hot Dog said. “Why would you need a word like that?”

  “We haven’t had civil wars since your kind were still trying to figure out fire,” Zee said. “But who doesn’t fight? We’re not . . . What are those metal things humanity thinks are so cool? Cyborgs?”

  “I think you’re thinking of robots or androids,” Hot Dog said. “Trust me, there’s a big difference. I reached the highest possible level in this post-dystopian shooting game where . . .” She looked back and forth between Benny and Zee. “You know what? Never mind.”

  The elevator began to slow. They were almost there.

  “Maybe we should have brought weapons other than these electro gloves?” Hot Dog said. “Just in case?”

  “You two need to trust me,” Zee said, lifting his head into the air and letting his four tentacles smooth down his back. “I’ll walk out, explain what happened, and everything will be perfect. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

  Their car came to a stop. An electronic chirp sounded somewhere from inside the control console, and a second later the doors began to part.

  Chaos erupted before they were even halfway open.

  Tentacles shot into the widening crevice, wrapping around Benny’s neck and pulling him toward the sliding metal. It was pure luck that the appendage manually powered on his helmet, which slammed against the edge of one of the doors. Still, the force of the impact jarred his head, and in his daze the scene around him was temporarily fuzzy, like his helmet had suddenly been clouded with Moon dust. Zee cried out something he didn’t understand. Hot Dog raised her silver glove, but an Alpha Maraudi warrior was already squeezing past Benny, knocking her arm out of the way. Hot Dog—ever the fighter—landed a kick in the alien’s stomach, but another soldier took its place. A whiplike tendril wrapped around her leg; and in half a second she was in the air, flailing, her shouts a harsh crackle in his helmet.

  Then he lost sight of her. He was pulled out from the elevator and thrown into what seemed like a mob made up of squirming tentacles and hands greedy to get a piece of him, to make sure he didn’t get the chance to fight back. Just as palpable as the lashing tendrils and grabbing fingers was the roar of sound that filled his helmet, as though his head had been shoved into a speaker blasting every note on a keyboard at once. He couldn’t hear his own screams as he pressed the button on his silver glove over and over again, sending indiscriminate electromagnetic blasts out in every direction. But they did no good. Each time one Maraudi was gone, it seemed two more had taken its place.

  Benny wasn’t even sure if he was right side up or not as he was passed through the crowd, his heart a hyperdrive engine threatening to explode as his brain hammered. He tried to get his bearings, but it was impossible. He might as well have been floating in space. And then, suddenly, he could see clearly, though he wished he could not. Stretching out below him was an unfathomable expanse of black, a drop that may have led all the way to core of the Moon itself; he had no way of knowing. He tried to catch his breath as he looked back up, his eyes finally focusing on the tentacles that held him over the edge of a floating platform. Even though they were wrapped so tightly around both his legs that they caused him pain, he wished they were tighter.

  “Zee! Hot Dog!” he yelled out repeatedly, unsure if the two of them could hear him or not. Other platforms bobbed in the air around him, powered by hyperdrives. They held gardens and staircases that led to tunnels in the walls and what looked like makeshift tents, but mostly his brain only registered the dozens and dozens of eyes on him, burning red pupils and glowing blue diamonds staring from every ledge.

  He gasped for breath, caught somewhere between the urge to wriggle free from his captor and the fear that doing so would mean the end of him. And what had he expected? Vala’s crew had been through too much, and they were trying their best to survive. He knew what desperate people could do and was a fool for thinking they could come down here and explain what was happening above, even with Zee at their side. He was sure that stupidity was going to get him killed.

  Worse yet, he’d put h
is friends in danger. And the others topside in the Taj, too. And without the Moon Platoon, what hope did Earth—did his family have?

  After what seemed like a lifetime of dangling above a dark abyss, the overwhelming sound of the Alpha Maraudi began to die down, and a new, trilling noise rang out over the crowd, like the sound of a choir. It took him a second to realize that it was coming from just one person.

  Zee.

  “Say the thing!” Benny shouted. “We come in peace. We come in peace!” Then, out of instinct, he tried to make the noise Zee had made in the elevator. It sounded like he was gargling.

  “Good humans!” Hot Dog shouted. “Good humans!” And something inside Benny relaxed at the sound of her voice. At least he knew she was alive.

  What happened next Benny couldn’t fully comprehend. The blood was rushing to his head, causing his cheeks to prickle and his eyes to water. But it sounded to him like there was arguing going on up on the platform, Zee versus a crowd of soldiers and crew members. An entire invasion team. Still, all Benny could see was the rocky sides of the platforms, the blazing eyes, the snakelike tentacles constricting around his legs, and the impossible depths below.

  Finally, there was silence, which was somehow worse than the barrage of sound. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes, waiting. And then, he felt himself being raised back up, slowly, as if the Alpha Maraudi holding him wasn’t sure it was the best thing to do or not—that he should have just let go of Benny and been done with him.

  Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Benny was a few feet off the ground when the soldier dropped him, and he was never so happy to fall face-first on a slab of stone. He flexed his fingers against it, as though he could cling to that flat surface and never be pulled away from it again, his pulse beating in overdrive as he tried to steady his breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see movement among the aliens.

  Zee emerged from the throng, followed by Hot Dog, who limped slightly, her wide eyes darting side to side, uneasy. Even when she knelt beside Benny, she didn’t take her gaze off the aliens.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “I’m not dead?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” Benny said as he got up to one knee, “I guess I’m fine, then. What happened?”

  “I talked to them,” Zee said. “Told them what the situation was.”

  Benny looked at the rows of Alpha Maraudi soldiers in front of him. Their long, spindly fingers were clenched into fists and their blade-tipped tentacles flexed and twitched. He realized they’d formed a semicircle around the three of them, blocking them off from the elevator—and was keenly aware that their backs were up against a seemingly infinite drop. If Jasmine had been there, she would have thought them idiots for ever having allowed themselves to be cornered in such a way. She was their strategist, after all, and Benny knew that this was not his strong suit.

  “And,” Benny said after a long breath, “they . . . understand?”

  “Mostly?” Zee said, but it didn’t sound to Benny like he was 100 percent sure.

  Benny got to his feet, his entire body tense as he ran several possibilities through his head. If the aliens attacked again, could he and Hot Dog hold them off and get to the elevator? No, they’d have to wait for the doors to open, which would never work. Were there still mining carts parked somewhere nearby, the kind they’d used to escape the underground city the first time they’d found it? Or maybe they could make it into the one of the tunnels burrowed into the Moon and barricade themselves inside a meeting room until . . . what, until help arrived? Who would that be? Elijah? Griida?

  One of the soldiers stepped forward, a behemoth of an alien with a single, thick tentacle trailing down his back, almost to the ground. It slashed back and forth through the air, and Benny was sure that it could crush him without even trying or bat all three of them into oblivion before they could so much as say “peace.” It would take one swipe, an instant.

  His thumb rested on the trigger button of his silver glove, unsure if it would even be effective against such a giant.

  And then, the alien stepped aside, barking something in a deep chord. The others behind him, hesitantly, began to part, making a path for them.

  Zee let out an accordion sigh. “See?” he said, but the relief in his voice was obvious.

  The large Alpha Maraudi said something else, and then he and Zee were talking back and forth. Eventually, Zee turned to Benny and Hot Dog.

  “They’ve got to get their masks and make sure the injured can be moved, but they’re ready to go. I’ll stay here and lead the way back to the ship when they’re ready,” Zee said, scarcely able to hide his smile. “Trust me, they’ll feel a lot better when they’re there.” His voice got quieter. “And Vala wakes up.”

  The group bristled at the mention of their unconscious commander’s name.

  Zee put his hands on his hips, pepping up again. “Leave it to me; I’ll candle everything.”

  “Handle,” Hot Dog whispered.

  “Whatever. Just tell Griida to land so we can get on board.” He paused, and his eyes flashed. “Or I can take a Star Runner and bring them back and forth so fast that—”

  “We’ll park the ship,” Benny said. “There’s plenty of room.”

  “That’s it?” Hot Dog asked. “We’re good here?”

  Zee shrugged. “What?” he asked, seemingly unconcerned with everything that had just happened. “I told you not to worry.”

  4.

  Benny was still trying to slow his revving pulse when he and Hot Dog turned down a hall of the Lunar Taj they’d never been in before; the medical wing on one of the basement floors wasn’t the sort of place the Pit Crew had been anxious to show them on their initial tour of the resort, not when there were video game rooms and antigravity basketball courts and dozens of other awe-inspiring sights to see. This wing of the Taj was surely full of similar wonders, Benny assumed, but having never actually been to a hospital that he could remember—it’s not like they were easy to find in the Drylands—he wasn’t totally sure how this one would compare to the finest facilities back on Earth. Still, in the messages about the Lunar Taj he’d received before ever boarding his first Space Runner, Pinky had been sure to point out that the resort was equipped with cutting-edge medical technology, seeing as how major injuries would need to be treated on the Moon if a trip back to Earth was out of the question.

  It wasn’t hard to believe, even without being familiar with the setting. As they walked down the hall, Benny and Hot Dog peeked into open doors. He noted sleek capsule-like beds made of glass and covered in holograms, as well as tables of equipment and tools that were completely foreign to him. As they continued, they came across a few of the capsules that housed injured New Apollo soldiers, wobbling lines shining in the air above them, marking the beats of their pulse. Some of the men and women wore helmets covered in flashing screens, others had limbs wrapped tightly in thin sheets of silver.

  They were looking for one bed in particular. Zee and Pinky were dealing with transporting the Alpha Maraudi back to the surface. Elijah was attempting to get in contact with Earth, Ramona was trying to upgrade radars, and the Pit Crew and Moon Platoon were all diligently busy at their respective tasks. Most important—and the thing furthest from Benny’s understanding—Jasmine and Pito were working in the basement labs. The best thing Benny and Hot Dog felt they could do was check on Drue.

  “It’s kind of spooky down here,” Hot Dog said.

  “Yeah,” Benny agreed. “And kind of unreal. The closest I’ve ever been to a real doctor was when my brother Alejandro got sick and we had to drive all night to a relief station at the edge of the Drylands, and even then it took us forever to find someone with antibiotics.”

  “Whoa.” Her voice was quiet. “I can’t imagine. At least we had hospitals back in Dallas.”

  “We always heard those were impossible to get into.”

  Hot Dog shrugged. “Totally easy, I think. If you’re rich. Mostly everyo
ne I knew went to these clinics where you had to wait all day, and half the time—”

  She stopped short when a woman darted out of one of the rooms in front of them. She was tall and slender, with long, shiny dark hair braided down to her waist—for a split second Benny actually thought it was a tentacle. When she turned to them, the knee-length white coat she wore fluttered around her. Black tattoos in a script Benny didn’t recognize wrapped around her neck.

  “Excuse me,” she said, her voice curt but rich. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m Hot Dog Wilkinson.” She crossed her arms. “Of the Moon Platoon.”

  They stared at each other for a moment before Hot Dog elbowed Benny’s side.

  “Benny,” he blurted. “Uh, same.”

  “Lovely,” the woman said. “I’m Dr. Parsi of New Apollo, and you’re in my medical wing, which is the last place you likely need to be. Certainly not poking around unsupervised.”

  Hot Dog stood her ground. “Well, the Taj is back under our control now, so . . .”

  “Oh,” Benny said. “Wait, there’s a doctor here?”

  Dr. Parsi’s lips drew together in confusion. “It’s an infirmary. What did you expect?”

  “Honestly, for everything to be automated.”

  “Yeah,” Hot Dog agreed. “Or, like . . . robo-surgeons.”

  The doctor seemed taken aback for a second, her dark red lips parting. “If you want to trust some kind of machine to come at you with a scalpel, then be my guest. But until that particular form of robotics advances by leaps and bounds, I’m afraid you’re stuck being treated by an actual human with more advanced medical training than any sane person would ever accumulate.”

  Benny was a little surprised to hear this this last part. The woman looked to be in her late twenties, maybe—far younger than he expected a doctor to be. Still, he believed her. Despite her annoyed tone, there was something caring in her deep brown eyes as they scanned over the two of them. Or maybe it was just worry.