Game of Flames

by Robin Wasserman

  That she didn’t trust Colin at all.

  She told herself there was no need for concern. One way or another, they would get the elements, they would fuse them together into the Source, and they would get home.

  Everything would work out fine.

  She told herself that over and over, and she believed it.

  Mostly.

  —

  Ike Phillips glowered down from the view screen. “You understand how paramount it is to keep the Cloud Leopard in your sights, yes?”

  “Of course I do,” Colin snapped.

  “Everything is resting on you,” Ike said. “Don’t screw this up.”

  Colin waited until the transmission cut out before rolling his eyes. He supposed he should be grateful to Ike. After all, the man had created him. But the man was obsessed with being in charge.

  Colin had learned a lot from Ike, including how good it felt to be in control. And now, with millions of light-years between him and his creator, he finally could be. The Light Blade was Colin’s ship, and the mission was his too. The Omega crew would do what he said, or they would be sorry. As the Alpha team would be sorry, if they got in his way.

  Let Chris weep and moan about his faraway homeland. Colin shared Chris’s intelligence and his abilities, but not his past. Under Ike Phillips’s watchful eye, Colin had studied the logs from Chris’s ship, and knew nearly every detail of the alien’s journey.

  Once, long ago, Colin had been jealous of Chris. After all, Chris was the original, Colin was merely the copy. Chris had a history, a life, a whole and independent self. Colin had only what Ike Phillips told him.

  But Colin had come to understand that he wasn’t simply a copy of Chris, he was an improvement. Because the past only held you back. Colin didn’t need one of those. He had a future. Let Chris drown in his pathetic little memories of home. Colin’s home was Earth, and when he returned there with the Source, his planet and everyone on it would be his to control.

  Ike had taught Colin something else: if you wanted something, really wanted it, you should do everything in your power to get it.

  Colin planned to get what he wanted.

  No matter what.

  The Magnus 7 was too hot to store in the Element Fuser, at least until they had all the elements and were ready to fuse. Instead, TULIP stationed herself beside the fuser. The molten lava would stay in her belly for the rest of the voyage, until they needed it.

  Of course, they would only need it if they succeeded.

  “Do you think she’ll get lonely in here?” Piper wondered.

  “Lonely? I won’t let that happen, no sir,” STEAM assured her. He’d taken a liking to the new robot. “TULIP, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, yes sir!”

  TULIP cheeped and beeped, and her belly glowed just a little brighter.

  “Dude, are you blushing?” Gabriel asked her. “You’re a machine—have a little dignity!”

  TULIP whirred.

  “I think she’s telling you that she can do whatever she wants,” Piper translated.

  “Yes indeed,” STEAM said. “This is an A”—he pointed to himself—“and B”—he pointed to TULIP—“conversation, so you can C yourself out of it.”

  A crash of mechanical sounds erupted from STEAM and TULIP. It took the crew a moment to catch on: the robots were laughing.

  —

  By the time they slipped back into Gamma Speed, things had finally gotten back to normal. The crew gathered around the dinner table, peppering Chris with questions about his home planet and what it was like to be an alien.

  “What is it like for you?” he asked.

  “Dude, weren’t you paying attention?” Gabriel asked. “You’re the alien. We’re human.”

  “That makes us aliens to him,” Carly pointed out.

  The thought stopped everyone cold.

  “Whoa,” Gabriel said. “Mind blown. So does that mean you want to ask us some questions, Chris? Want to know what it’s like to have such puny, feeble brains?”

  “Perhaps someday you will show me your third eye,” Chris said drily.

  “Did everyone hear that?” Gabriel exclaimed. “The extraterrestrial almost made a joke!”

  Carly tossed a French fry at him. “I too would like to know what it’s like for you having such a puny brain, Gabe.”

  The others burst into laughter, their tension leaking away by the second. It felt good to be together like this, all five of them. It felt right. But before the meal could give way to hysteria and a potential food fight, Dash cleared his throat. “We need to talk about something serious for a second.”

  “Seriously, no serious,” Gabriel said. “I’m tired of serious. Serious needs a serious nap.”

  “You guys all heard Phillips,” Dash said. He couldn’t stop thinking about this, and needed to get it out. “He thinks we can’t handle knowing what’s actually going on with this mission. He said flat out he’s going to keep more secrets from us.”

  “Have you ever met a grown-up?” Carly said. “They all think that way.”

  “Shawn only wants what is best for you,” Chris said, trying to defend his friend.

  “I know that,” Dash admitted. “But what makes him think he knows what’s best for us? Or at least, how does he know better than we do? Listen. We’re the ones on this mission; we’re the ones getting this done. Phillips doesn’t know what it’s really like out here. None of them back there do. We can’t just trust the grown-ups to do our thinking for us. We need to trust our own judgment. Trust ourselves and each other. Uh…”

  Dash felt his cheeks warm. He wasn’t used to making grand speeches. He suddenly wondered whether this one had sounded inspiring or ridiculous. “Does that make sense?”

  “One hundred percent,” Carly said. “And I’m with you.”

  “We’re all with you,” Piper said. Gabriel agreed.

  “Commander Phillips and I selected each member of this team for good reason,” Chris said. “He trusted you to make the right decisions. I trust you too.”

  They looked at him expectantly, but Dash wasn’t sure what it was they were expecting. “Um, okay, then, that’s good,” he said. “So, I guess, serious stuff officially concluded.”

  “Excellent,” Gabriel said. “Now can we get back to what really matters? Like the fact that we’re heading for pirates? Shiver me timbers! Ahoy, adventure!”

  Carly looked at him like he was the alien. “You are so weird.”

  Gabriel narrowed his eyes at her. “No, you aaaaargh.”

  The others sighed. It was going to be a long three months.

  —

  Commander Shawn Phillips glared at the face on the monitor. He hated everything about it—the iron jaw, the narrow lips, the arrogant tilt of the brow. But most of all, he hated how much this face reminded him of his own.

  “Father,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady and confident. “We need to talk.”

  “No, son,” Ike Phillips said. There was no warmth in his voice. No indication that they were anything but strangers to each other. “I don’t think we do.”

  “You cloned Chris? You built a ship of your own and sent it after mine? You’re trying to get the Source for yourself? Have you lost your mind?”

  “You see? There’s no need to talk, you’ve got all the answers. You’ve always been a sharp boy.”

  Shawn grimaced. No matter how old he got, his father could always make him feel like a silly child.

  “What could you possibly think you’re doing?” Shawn said. “Even I don’t have an answer to that.”

  “And you don’t need one,” Ike Phillips said. “Look at you, all grown up and running a base of your own. Running a mission to save the planet. You probably thought I’d be proud of you. That I would respect you.”

  “I don’t think about things like that,” Shawn Phillips said. Which was a lie. That was the thing about having a man like Ike Phillips for a father. You never stopped wanting him to be proud
of you. Or at least to respect you. But he never did.

  He never would.

  “You’ve been a great disappointment to me,” his father said. “You and your little friend Chris too. But your sorry government mission has offered me an opportunity to achieve my goals, and for that, I suppose I should thank you.”

  “And what are those goals, Dad?” Shawn said, exasperated. He knew he’d never get a straight answer, but he couldn’t help himself. He had to ask. “What exactly is it you want?”

  “Why, I only want what I’ve always wanted,” Ike Phillips said, as if surprised that Shawn hadn’t caught on already. “Everything.”

  —

  Later that night, Dash slipped into Chris’s quarters to inject himself with the metabolism-freezing biologic. He should have been in a great mood—they’d retrieved the second element, they were well on their way to their next planet, things with Chris were finally settled—but he couldn’t shake the black cloud hanging over him.

  Finally, Chris called him on it. “Your treatment seems to be troubling you tonight,” he said. “Are you experiencing symptoms? Or are you worrying about whether we’ll complete the mission on time?”

  “No,” Dash said. “I mean, yeah, sure, I worry about that sometimes. No one will tell me exactly what happens if I’m out here too long, but it doesn’t sound so good.”

  “Would you like me to tell you?” Chris asked.

  Did he want that? Would it be better to know the details? Maybe all his hair and teeth would fall out; maybe his intestines would melt. Maybe he’d spontaneously combust, or simply vanish in a puff of smoke. These were the things that happened in his nightmares. He didn’t particularly enjoy them—but on the other hand, he really didn’t want to imagine the nightmares he might have if he knew for sure.

  “Uh, not right now,” Dash said. “And anyway, that’s not really the problem. If I had a problem.”

  “Let’s pretend you do,” Chris said. “What might it be?”

  “It’s this,” Dash said, gesturing toward the case of injectors. “I made this big deal about everyone having to be honest with each other, I got so mad at you for keeping this big secret—”

  “I understood that,” Chris interrupted. “You were right to be upset with me.”

  “Was I?” Dash said. “I can’t tell anymore. Because aren’t I keeping a huge secret from everyone, too? Should I tell them the truth?”

  “Do you want to tell them the truth?” Chris asked.

  “Yes? I mean, I want them to trust me. I want to deserve their trust. So, maybe? Well, no. I don’t think so.” Dash ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know.”

  “I can’t tell you the answer, Dash. This is your life, your truth. It has to be your decision.”

  “Great,” Dash muttered. Sometimes he got tired of making decisions. Sometimes he wished he was just a kid, and that there were some grown-ups around to tell him what to do.

  “But I’m not sure I believe keeping some things private is the same as lying,” Chris added. “And maybe trusting someone doesn’t mean knowing every last thing about them. Maybe true trust means letting people make their own decision about how much to reveal. It’s one of the things I like about human friendship. You believe in your friends—not because you know all the facts. But because you trust you know the ones that matter.”

  Dash thought about that moment back on Meta Prime, when he’d finally decided to accept Chris’s help. There’d been so many reasons not to trust him, but Dash had done it anyway. And he’d been right.

  “So you think maybe it’s okay if I keep a secret or two for myself?” he asked.

  “We all have secrets,” Chris said, sounding almost sorry.

  Dash left that night feeling really good for the first time since he’d landed on Meta Prime. He felt so good, in fact, that it didn’t occur to him to wonder about the last thing Chris said.

  Or about whatever it was he hadn’t said.

  —

  Finally alone in his quarters for the night, Chris slid a small metal cube out from beneath his bed. It was the box he’d taken from planet J-16, having left it there for safekeeping several decades ago. As he’d done many nights before, he pried open the lid. Inside was evidence of his long journey: star charts, notes on the mineral content of planets across the galaxy, observations about the alien races he’d encountered. Everything he needed to help guide the Alpha team through the next several phases of their mission.

  There was something else in the box.

  Chris pulled out a small pouch and emptied the contents into his palm.

  A smooth, polished stone that he had found by the sea when he was a small child.

  Grains of the rust-red soil that surrounded his home on Flora.

  A dried flower, its bright red and purple hues long since faded, that he’d been given by someone he loved.

  A metal disk the size of a penny that, when activated, would project holographic images of anyone on Flora. It was the only way he could see the faces of the people he once knew.

  Some days, it seemed like the only way he could remember them.

  Chris pressed the disk into his palm but didn’t activate it. He wasn’t thinking about the friends he’d left behind, not tonight. He was thinking about the friends he had now, the friends on this ship, who thought they were all in this mission together. Who thought they knew what Chris really wanted.

  He’d told the crew the truth: He wanted to help them achieve their mission. He wanted them to find all the elements, to synthesize the ultimate renewable energy source, to find their way back to Earth and save their planet.

  But he hadn’t told them the whole truth. He hadn’t told them that the Source had another capability. That hidden away in a secret compartment of the Cloud Leopard was a much smaller ship—a ship that could be powered up with a small fraction of the Source.

  It was Chris’s ship. This mission was his chance—his only chance—to get back to Flora. He was keeping many secrets from Dash and the others, but this was the most important, and the most painful.

  At the end of this journey, when the Cloud Leopard and the Alpha team returned to Earth, Chris wasn’t going with them.

  Chris was going home.

  Find the Source. Save the world.

  Follow the Voyagers to the next planet!

  Excerpt copyright © 2015 by PC Studios Inc. Published by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Something about seeing Piper in the docking bay as the Cloud Cat prepared to lift off made Dash wonder if he’d made the right choice leaving her behind. Test scores didn’t always determine the best person for the job; he’d learned that from personal experience. What had Chris said? Don’t underestimate what Piper can bring to this mission.

  “How would you guys feel about bringing Piper with us in the Cloud Cat?” Dash asked Carly and Gabriel. “I’d like to have her closer to the surface if something comes up.”

  “I thought we were going for an in-and-out extraction, nothing complicated,” Carly reminded Dash.

  “Yeah, totally. We are. But Chris and STEAM are already on the main ship. We’ve got them to navigate if we need to move the Cloud Leopard. Nothing’s going to happen there. Why not bring her along, you know, just in case?”

  Carly and Gabriel smirked at each other.

  “What?” Dash asked.

  “We knew this wasn’t going to be as easy as you were hoping,” Gabriel said. “Never is.”

  “Well, it should be quick and painless, but you’re right, Gabriel,” Dash admitted. “If there’s one thing I’m learning out here, it’s that things are always more complicated in real life than they are on a tablet.”

  “Especially in outer space,” Carly added.

  “Sure, bring Piper along for the ride,” Gabriel said. “Can’t hurt.”

  Dash felt good about the team again, confident and ready to roll.

  “Hey, Piper!” Dash shouted down to the
launch deck.

  Looking up, Piper floated toward Dash, Rocket following her, barking excitedly. He was doing his canine best to wish them well.

  “Chris and STEAM can manage things here,” Dash said. “We need you with us.”

  Piper hesitated. Aqua Gen was a water planet, and she couldn’t suddenly become a swimmer if things got out of control.

  “You’ll stay on the Cloud Cat,” Dash said, reading her expression. “I just want you close by in case we need something. We’ll position you right outside the atmosphere, where the AquaGens can’t see you. STEAM could pick us up remotely, but you’ve gotten good at backup navigation. Better if we have a real person on deck.”

  In space—real outer space—Piper had fallen in love with navigation training almost as much as medicine. Gabriel and STEAM had put her through her paces on the long journey, and she’d mastered the Cloud Cat controls. She would never have the natural skills Gabriel had—he was off the charts—but she had to admit Dash was right.

  Piper’s apprehension seemed to fade away, and she drifted her air chair up the length of the ramp with Rocket close behind. The dog jumped into the Cloud Cat right behind Piper.

  “Welcome aboard, Piper,” Dash said. “And, uh, Rocket.” Dash, Carly, Gabriel, and Piper exchanged a look, then laughed.

  “It looks like this will be his first voyage to a distant planet, too,” Carly said with a smile.

  Rocket wagged his shaggy tail and barked.

  “Ready to get this show on the road?” Gabriel asked.

  Dash shook off what little nervousness remained and got down to the business of entering the world of Aqua Gen.

  “Bring us in at zero mark fifty,” Dash said. Gabriel had already plotted out their options and found a location entirely empty of life. No one on Aqua Gen would ever know they’d been visited by Voyagers.

  “Zero mark fifty,” Gabriel said, pushing the Cloud Cat into high gear as it blasted away from the docking bay. The smaller ship wobbled under the power of its thrusters.

  “Take it easy, Gabriel,” Dash said. “Remember what Chris said: low profile.”