by Dan Wells
“Gotcha,” said Spider, right in his ear.
Zero swung the flashlight at her hand, smashing her fingers. She yelped, and he jumped back down the tube. She recovered and followed him. He looked at the painted sign on the wall: Ring 193, Section B. He was almost by his family! That gave him an idea. He threw himself down the next tube, trusting that even though Spider could find him, he could at least move faster than she could.
“You can’t run forever,” she said through the speakers.
I’m counting on it, thought Zero, and dropped out of the tube into Ring 181. He pushed off the wall and flew down the aisle toward his family, and toward his stuff: the food, the brushes, the paint cans, and the chain. He grabbed the chain, looped it through the handle on the nearest can of paint, and started whirling it around himself like a weapon. Blue paint sprayed out at first, flying through the air in an expanding spiral, but as his swing sped up the centripetal force kept the rest of the paint firmly in the can. Spider came around the corner and he let go of the chain—it flew toward her with terrifying speed, and she grunted when it caught her squarely in the gut. He jumped off the nearest stasis pod and launched himself at her, hoping he could reach her before she recovered, but she pulled out a stun gun and fired it at him. He grabbed a stasis pod and yanked himself to the side just in time; the metal darts flew past him, sparking in the air.
“I am going to really enjoy hurting you,” she said.
“With what?” asked Zero, trying to catch his breath. “You just wasted your stun gun.”
Spider smiled, and pulled a second stun gun from a holster on her belt. “Surprise.”
“Crap,” said Zero, and reached down desperately for a weapon. All he found were the other paint cans, and he started throwing them at her wildly. A splash of color hit her face, and she howled and shielded her eyes. The narrow aisle filled with paint, covering the walls and the stasis pods and the lights, and as the lights got covered up, the aisle grew darker. Zero saw the darkness, made a quick decision, and started targeting the lights specifically. Soon the entire aisle was plunged into black.
“You think you can hide from me?” she asked.
Zero hid in the dark. “You know I’m in this aisle,” said Zero, clutching his flashlight, “but do you know where? You can’t aim a stun gun at computer data.”
“It’s always the same with you cavemen,” said Spider. “You’ve got paper and rocks and scissors, and you think you rule the world. But advanced technology will beat you every time.” Her face lit up suddenly, and he saw green lights on a pair of goggles. Her night vision! She’d used them before, trying to find him in the computer banks! They worked by amplifying light, taking the tiny amount that was present in the aisle and magnifying it so that she could see perfectly. She aimed the stun gun straight at him and smiled. “Say hi to the other cavemen for me.”
“Wrong caveman,” said Zero, and held up his flashlight. “This one invented fire.” He turned on the light and aimed the bright LED beam straight into her eyes; the goggles magnified the brightness and blinded her. She screamed and ripped the goggles off, trying to save her eyes, and Zero grabbed the last can left in the aisle and threw it at her—but it wasn’t a paint can this time. It was the jar of jalapeños. The spicy pepper juice flew out in a cloud and hit her square in the face, right in her wide-open eyes, and the acids went to work on her eyeballs. She screamed, clawing at her face.
“What have you done?”
Zero jumped forward, staying below her flailing arms, and plucked her communicator off her belt. She swung at him—missing completely—and Zero jumped away again.
“Sorry about your eyes,” he said. “I recommend you get back to the Drago, and fast.”
“I’ll kill you!” she screamed.
“Yeah, people keep saying that,” said Zero, and launched himself up another maintenance tube.
He angled toward the fore of the ship. It was time to end this, once and for all.
Chapter Twenty-Five
LIFE SUPPORT
AS ZERO JUMPED from Ring to Ring, he realized that he was leaving paint prints everywhere he went—not just little smears like before, but giant blobs and handprints. He looked down at himself and saw that he was covered in paint from head to toe: green and yellow and orange and black, most of it covered with a thick layer of blue. There was nothing he could do about it now, though, so he kept jumping. He had to find the other pirates while he still had the element of surprise.
The communicator he’d stolen from Spider crackled in his hand—out loud this time, because he didn’t have the headphones anymore. It was Mama’s voice:
“Spider?” said Mama. “Spider, did you find him?” Zero didn’t answer, and a few moments later it crackled again. “Spider, where are you? Why aren’t you answering?”
“Maybe he got her,” said Jim.
“He’s a little boy, Jim, how’s he going to ‘get’ anybody? If I hear one more—oh no. Here it goes again.” Zero heard a long, loud, farting noise, so disgusting it almost made him gag. “I’ve never been this sick before in my life,” said Mama.
Zero couldn’t help but wonder about Nyx—where was she? What was she doing? And why hadn’t she told her family where he was?
Was she trying to protect him?
Zero raced all the way to the fore, then hovered out of sight near the entrance to the rec room, trying to psych himself up. This is where his lack of a plan became a serious problem. Should he just jump into the room and start yelling? Would they even take him seriously? He was a scrawny, half-naked weirdo covered with paint. What would he do if they just laughed?
He listened, knowing that Mama had to be close by, but he couldn’t hear anything. This was the only place with a restroom—she had to be here. He peeked around the corner, and his hand left messy blue paint smears on the bulkhead. He tried to wipe the smear away, but all he did was make a bigger mess.
“I found her,” said Jim. “Spider’s on Ring 206, totally unconscious. She’s covered with some kind of colorful slime, and her eyes are all red and puffy. Looks like she was blinded—probably some kind of acid.”
Mama sounded furious: “If you tell me it’s aliens—”
“What else is it going to be?”
Zero frowned. He’d left Spider on Ring 181—had she gotten to 206 by herself, totally blind? How? And why was she unconscious?
Whatever the answer was, both Mama and Jim had been shouting into their communicators, and Zero hadn’t heard a peep out of the rec room. He didn’t think anyone was in it.
A moment later, Mama confirmed his suspicions: “Just bring her to me in the Drago. We’ve got that first aid kit. Do you know if she was able to finish the flight plan?”
“Totally finished,” said Jim. “And automated. As soon as we clear the Kuiper Belt, the new route will engage automatically, and we’ll go straight to Tacita.”
“Good,” said Mama. “Now get her in here.”
Zero shook his head—that wasn’t good at all. Even if he got the pirates off the ship, the Pathfinder was programmed to betray the colonists all by itself! Everything he’d worked for, everything he’d accomplished, would be completely undone.
Zero jumped past the rec room to the pilot’s office, desperate to try to do something, but he had no idea what to do. He wasn’t a pilot or a programmer or anything else. In this whole mess, this was the worst thing to happen yet.
And then it got worse.
The screen on the pilot’s desk was flashing a warning in large red letters: Asteroid Collision Warning.
“You have got to be kidding,” shouted Zero.
And then, somehow, it got even worse than that:
“Hurry back to the Drago,” said Mama on the communicator. “I’ve got an idea.”
Zero was already halfway to the pilot’s chair, desperate to stop the asteroid, but something about Mama’s voice scared him even more than the alarm. He grabbed the back of the chair and listened.
“I’m o
n Ring 222,” said Jim. “I’ll be there in a second.”
“I’m looking at this airlock,” said Mama, “between our ship and the Pathfinder. We have full environmental controls, you realize that?”
“Thanks to my docking codes,” said Jim. “I gave us full access.”
“And we’re going to use them,” said Mama. “When you get back, we can seal our doors and then vent the Pathfinder’s oxygen into space. That’ll get this brat.”
“No,” said Zero. “No, no, no, no.” He looked at the communicator in his hand, and almost hit the button and repeated the outburst directly to Mama. Venting the oxygen would kill him—there’d be no way to save himself.
He tapped the asteroid warning, pulling up the full report: it was more than an hour away. It would kill him, yes, but venting the atmosphere would kill him faster. He had to solve that problem first.
Another voice crackled through the communicator: “You can’t do that!” It was Nyx, and by the sound of it she was as shocked as he was. Wasn’t she on the Drago? She shouted again: “What about me?”
“What about you, you little traitor?” asked Mama. “I do everything for you. I give everything to you. And then you find the kid that’s doing all this, and you let him go! You refuse to tell us where he is!”
“Because I didn’t want you to kill him!” cried Nyx.
Zero reeled: Nyx was helping him. And now her family was going to kill her for it.
“This is going to make us rich,” said Mama. “We’re not stealing a ship; we’re creating a planet—a whole civilization! Thousands of years from now, people are going to look back on the glorious empire of Tacita, and they’re not going to care about one obnoxious little brat who tried to stop it all from happening.”
“I refuse to be one of the bad guys,” said Nyx.
“Your loss,” snarled Mama. “Let’s see how long you can hold your breath.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE ALIEN
ZERO JUMPED OUT the door and raced back down the central column, heedless now of being seen. If he didn’t make it to the Drago before Jim and Spider did, he was dead anyway. Every time he landed from a jump he felt like he was gluing himself to the new surface, thanks to all the paint, and had to peel himself off again on the next leap. He jumped from wall to wall and strut to strut, racing sixty Rings down until he arrived at 240, and then charging into the cross-hall toward the docked Drago. He saw Jim pulling Spider’s floating, unconscious body through the docking Ring, and cursed himself for being too late. But Mama wasn’t standing by the control panel, yet. So he still had time.
“We’re here!” shouted Jim. “Where are you?”
“In the bathroom!” she shouted back. “Where do you think!”
Jim pushed Spider toward the wall of the Drago’s main room, looped one of her arms through a cargo net, and floated to the bathroom door. That meant all of the pirates were aboard the Drago. Zero looked at the airlock door. There were two control panels that ran it—one inside the Drago, and one inside the Pathfinder. If they closed the doors, Zero could leap out and disconnect the docking clamps—cutting their connection to the Pathfinder’s system before they had a chance to ruin the atmosphere. But only if they actually closed the door. He ducked around a corner, waiting for his chance.
“Do it now,” shouted Mama from the bathroom. “Seal the doors, and vent the oxygen in the Pathfinder!”
“Nyx is still out there!”
“Nyx betrayed us,” said Mama. “She had a chance to catch that boy and she gave it away—she’s nothing but trouble, just like her no-good mother.”
“She’s your granddaughter—”
“Not with that attitude, she isn’t,” said Mama. Then her voice changed, no longer angry but subtle and cajoling. “Besides, she isn’t even the real threat, is she?”
“You mean the boy?”
“I mean the alien.”
Jim froze, and Zero as well. Was she just trying to convince Jim, or was the alien real? Was that how Spider ended up unconscious?
Zero glanced around himself, suddenly mistrusting everything he’d seen and heard on the Pathfinder. Was there really an alien? He hadn’t believed Jim before—nobody had—but what if it was true? Out here, in the farthest reaches of the solar system, in the dark and the cold and the vast, endless mystery. Who’s to say what was real and what wasn’t?
“An alien?” said Jim. “You really think it might be out there?”
“Obviously there are aliens out there,” said Mama. “I’m more worried about the aliens in here with us.”
Zero peeked around the corner again, just the barest glimpse, showing as little of himself as he could. He ducked back out of sight again instantly. Jim was standing in the middle of the Drago’s docking Ring, his wide eyes darting around as he scanned the Pathfinder for any sign of movement or sound or creepy alien invaders. Had he seen Zero? Surely he would have shouted or screamed. Especially with Zero painted bright blue, smeared with orange dots and green stripes and—
A beautiful, glorious, wonderful idea struck Zero like a thunderbolt, and he almost laughed out loud.
“Hey, Nyx?” said Jim. Zero scrambled to turn down the volume on his communicator, hoping that if Jim heard it, he’d pass it off as an echo. “I, uh, I really need to close this door right now. For the safety of . . . everybody. If you haven’t been . . . eaten, or whatever, uh, please come back as soon as you can. Okay.”
“Oh, for crying out loud!” shouted Mama. “Just close the door!”
Zero held the communicator close to his mouth, pushed the button, and made a soft gargling noise.
“What was that?” shouted Jim. “Did you hear that? There was something on the communicator. Nyx! Nyx, is that you?”
Zero did it again, and then let go of the communicator, letting it float in the narrow aisle. He cupped his hands around his mouth, trying to amplify the sound, and made the noise again: a low, soft gurgle, like an alien purr. He moved his lips while he did it, changing the tone and the pitch: “G-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g.”
“Is anybody else hearing that?” asked Jim.
“It’s just Nyx screwing around,” said Mama.
“That’s not me,” said Nyx. Zero made the noise again, louder and more angry, talking over the top of her to make sure Jim knew she was telling the truth. He floated farther back in the aisle, found a gap near the base of a stasis pod, and wedged his flashlight underneath it, pointing it toward the wide cross-hall where Jim was standing. He took a deep breath, psyching himself up, and turned it on. A large, bright circle appeared on the wall, right where Jim would have a perfect view of it.
“Aahhh!” Jim shouted. “What’s that?”
Zero curled himself up into a ball, trying to present the most inhuman silhouette he could make, and then floated in front of the light. His shadow appeared on the wall like a jointed blob, bits of paint flaking off and drifting around him like a cloud. He moved his arms and legs slightly, watched the silhouette ripple, and made the gargling sound again.
“Marge, get out here!” Jim shouted. “Spider, wake up! I was right! Everyone come look at this thing! I was—oh no.”
Zero was moving forward now, dragging himself along the wall, moving his shoulders and legs to keep his shadow constantly changing shape: a blob that twisted and undulated, with now and then a limb reaching out like a pseudopod or a tentacle.
Jim was practically screaming now: “It’s getting closer! It’s coming toward us! Everyone get in the Drago, I’m closing the door!”
“I’m not there yet!” shouted Nyx over the communicator.
“Too late,” said Jim. “I’m not getting my brain sucked out by an alien monster. Closing the doors now—aahhhh!”
Zero reached the end of the aisle, unfolded into a humanoid shape, and launched himself around the corner, straight at Jim, gurgling and screaming and hissing. Zero twisted his face into a snarl, showing his teeth, and hoped his bright blue skin would do the trick. Jim shri
eked in terror, eyes as wide as cereal bowls, watching Zero’s approach with abject fright and moving desperately backward into the Drago. He moved toward the airlock control panel, and then past it—Zero’s plan had worked too well! Jim was so scared, he couldn’t even reach the controls to close the door.
Zero had to close the airlock himself. He caught the edge of the open door, pulling himself to the side, then let out a shriek of his own when a massive shape loomed up at the edge of his vision. A man in a space suit, emerging from another aisle. The man took off his helmet.
It was Kratt.
“Hello, kid,” said Kratt, looking at Zero with predatory hatred. “It’s time for some payback.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
PAYBACK
ZERO STARED AT KRATT in shock. “But . . . you were outside! You were chained to a hook on the hull of the Drago!”
Kratt grinned, and held up the long length of chain still welded to the back of his suit. The other end was welded to a piece of the Drago’s hull, now floating torn and bent on the edge of the chain. “I ripped it off,” said Kratt. “It’s amazing what you can you do with all that free time and nowhere to go.”
Zero searched for a response, too scared to think, but before he could form any words, Kratt swung the chain sharply through the air, using the broken chunk of hull like a medieval morning star. Zero pushed himself backward to get away, and the piece of hull whistled past his ear, missing him by centimeters. Kratt snapped the chain around and whipped it out again, never giving Zero a nanosecond to gather himself. Zero had to keep moving backward, tumbling and scrambling, just to keep from getting his head crushed.
“Look out, Kratt!” yelled Jim. “It’s an alien!”
“Shut up!” Kratt yelled back, and pressed forward still attacking. He slammed the hull fragment back and forth through the hallway, throwing off sparks as it clanged from one bulkhead to another. “Ten hours!” screamed Kratt. “You locked me outside for ten hours! No food, no sound; no one coming to help me or save me or even talk to me!”
