Space Station Crisis: Star Challengers Book 2

by Rebecca Moesta

  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!”

  The creatures snapped their tentacles like whips and let out an ominous thrumming sound.

  Under his breath, Dyl said, “Squidbutt—I like that!”

  “Retreat!” Tony shouted. “JJ, get out of there!”

  The creatures kept advancing. As the crew backed away, Kloor said to JJ, “What were you hoping the red dye would do, Cadet Wren?”

  “That was just Plan A.” JJ flashed him a predatory grin. “We’ve got plenty of other chemicals to try.”

  Napali continued to struggle against the gummy substance sticking her to the module wall, but the aliens had already gone past her.

  Reaching forward with their tentacles to grab handholds, the two aliens launched themselves toward the humans, and the crew scattered.

  ***

  Eighteen

  While the humans scrambled to get away, instinct took over—but their instincts were designed for a gravity environment. In their retreat from the advancing Kylarn, both the ISSC crew and Star Challengers alike went spinning, bumping, and flying out of control.

  Napali continued to struggle as the sprayed goo held her fast to the wall, but the aliens no longer seemed interested in the security chief; she was out of the fight. Hooking their tentacles ahead, grabbing onto handholds, the Kylarn reeled themselves forward.

  The two creatures focused on JJ, and she threw the dye squeeze bottle at the red-splotched alien. The stained Kylarn batted it away with a tentacle, then aimed its silver thimble weapon at her.

  In hurling the chemical bottle with all her might, JJ lost her grip and found herself dangling in midair. The nearest handhold was out of reach, but Tony called to her. “Stretch your hand behind you!”

  With the aliens thimble weapon pointed at her, she snagged Tony’s hand. He held one of the grips on the wall, and used it as a pivot to give her a short, sharp tug backward. The alien discharged its sticky web. The substance sprayed in the air, missing her and splattered against the racks of chemical vials and squeeze bottles.

  JJ flew like the partner of a trapeze artist, and Tony was expert enough to aim her directly through the hatch behind them. As she shot out of the module and into the crowded node room, she felt less like a circus performer than like a bowling ball. She collided with Ansari, Kloor, and Pi in a tangle of arms and legs, not to mention a bunch of fresh bruises. They all fought their way out of the connecting chamber and into Hab 1.

  Tony vaulted through the node room and into the hab module with the aliens right on his heels. Captain Bronsky grabbed Tony and hauled him forward, while the second alien fired a short burst from its web-squirter. The gooey splat caught the Russian captain on the arm, pinning his wrist to the hull of the module. Bronsky strained and tugged, but even though the still soft glob stretched, he could not break free. The creature didn’t fire another squirt at him.

  King grabbed Bronsky’s hand and planted both of his feet against the bulkhead so he could add extra strength. “This … elastosnot stuff has got to break!” He strained, with the Russian pilot helping, and finally the sticky substance snapped just as the aliens came after them.

  King and Bronsky raced off, bringing up the rear, and one of the Kylarn tentacles snagged King’s left ankle in a tight grip. Grabbing onto a handbar on the wall, he yanked with all his strength. He dragged the weightless alien through the hatch and flung it like a flailing spider against the opposite wall. The impact made a wet sound, and its brown head sack squished flat. The milky eyes bulged out in surprise. Twitching feebly, the Kylarn spurted its thimble weapon, but the globs of adhesive struck only the empty walls, gumming up one of the open sleep stations. King pulled his leg free of the limp tentacle, and Bronsky hurried him along.

  By then, the others had spread out through the hab module and split up, escaping into the connecting passages. Mira led the retreat through the next node room, heading in the direction of the observatory, the Mess Module—and after that, Central. King went with Bronsky, following several crew and Stationmaster Ansari.

  Dyl and Song-Ye bolted for the greenhouse and biosciences lab, with JJ and Tony close behind them. The other ISSC crewmembers headed off in other directions.

  Tony said, panting, “Boy, when we first got here, I thought this space station was huge, but this wild chase from module to module is making me think the ISSC is way too small. How long before we get cornered?”

  “Only so many places we can run from module to module,” JJ said.

  The two Kylarn piled into the node room. The red-stained alien followed JJ through one hatch, while the other alien, looking equally annoyed, raced through a different hatch.

  “If the Kylarn reach the command center, who knows what they can do to the systems? They could destroy the station, cut off life-support.” JJ looked back, but they were cut off from Central right now. She knew from Commander Zota’s grim stories that these aliens wanted to capture the space station.

  “King, Mira, and Stationmaster Ansari can take care of that. We’ve got other things to worry about,” Dyl said.

  “If we circle back around, we can help Chief Napali,” Song-Ye suggested as they drifted into the large greenhouse. “I don’t think she’s hurt, just trapped by elastosnot—and we need her.”

  “Good idea,” Tony said. “Maybe we can find some acid or poison in the CMS lab to use against them. Who knows what chemicals these things might react to?”

  “I don’t think that one liked the new tattoo you gave it, JJ,” Dyl said, pointing back the way they had come. “Maybe the other aliens will call it Red Spot from now on.”

  The pursuing Kylarn entered the greenhouse module, and JJ had to admit that the bright-red splotch across its “face” was quite impressive. She couldn’t tell whether the blobby thing looked angry or not.

  The greenhouse module dead-ended, and they had no place to go. Whipping its tentacles forward, the Kylarn grasped the globes of plants for tentacle holds, damaging them in the process.

  “Now might be a good time to try your harsh language on them, Junior,” Song-Ye said.

  The young man screwed up his face and yelled. “You sure are ugly, Squidbutt!”

  The Kylarn flapped its tentacles but did not pause as it came toward them.

  “I don’t think you scared it,” Tony said.

  “And I’m fresh out of baseball bats,” Dyl added.

  With a strange, burbling sound, the alien launched itself toward the four.

  The ISSC crewmembers scattered from the oncoming tentacled creatures, rushing into the node rooms and dispersing along the passageways. When the red-stained alien followed JJ and her companions into the greenhouse module, the second creature—the brown, blobby one—passed through another connector, as if searching for something.

  King, Ansari, and Bronsky ducked into the fitness module to make a stand. With all the training equipment there, King thought that maybe the three of them could detach the colbert magnetic treadmill and hurl it at the Kylarn.

  The alien stopped at the hatch of the exercise module, glowered at them with its sickly pale eyes and fired a long shot of its snotlike goo at them. King ducked behind the colbert, and the spray gummed up the works. Bronsky and Ansari looked for some way to fight back … but the alien paused for only a moment to stare at them, then dismissed the three crewmembers as if they were insignificant. Intent on something else entirely, Brown Blob scurried away from the exercise module and, in a tangle of tentacles, shot up through the node room, into the Mess Module, where it began to clatter and ransack, throwing prepackaged meals around, smashing some of the galley equipment.

  King yanked off a few gummy strands of the elastosnot that had sprayed onto his shoulder.

  “Where is it going? What does it want?” Bronsky said.

&
nbsp; “We’ve got to stop it somehow,” Ansari said, and the three of them emerged from the fitness module, racing after Brown Blob just in time to see it disappear into the next node room, turn left and up.

  King suddenly knew: “It’s heading for Central! It wants to get to our control center.” He kicked off hard from the station wall, sailing past the stationmaster and the Russian pilot. After what Commander Zota had told them, he had no doubts about why the Kylarn wanted the International Space Station Complex.

  The three of them burst into Central and found that Mr. Pi was there ahead of them and was already cornered. Brown Blob loomed above the various control panels and display screens—clearly up to no good. Its tentacles reached out in all directions, tapping input pads, scanning the screens with its lamplike eyes.

  “Stationmaster!” Pi yelled. “Watch out!”

  One of the Kylarn’s tentacles thrashed back and wrapped itself around Ansari’s wrist, snagging her. She tried to yank her hand away, but the snakelike strand squeezed tighter, pulling her arm.

  Another tentacle slashed past Mr. Pi, who ducked. “It’s shutting down the life-support systems,” he yelled. On cue, alarms began to sound, and the lights flickered in the station.

  While Ansari struggled to break free, King shouted to Bronsky. “Captain, let’s get that thing away from the control systems.”

  “That is either very brave, or very foolish, my friend,” the Russian pilot said, with a grin.

  Acting together, the two of them dove toward the creature, grabbing its flailing tentacles, and began to pull, stretching the Kylarn in opposite directions. The thing squirmed and flexed, but for a few moments at least they dragged it away from the station controls.

  Pi knew exactly what to do. He jumped back to one of the terminals and reset the systems, activating lifesupport and closing the valves that bled oxygen off into space.

  As King and Bronsky struggled with the tentacles, and Ansari broke herself free, King realized that the two Kylarn intended to make the station uninhabitable, to kill and discard all the crewmembers. Then the aliens could take the ISSC for themselves. He didn’t intend to let that happen.

  Using moves he had learned from his kickboxing training, he attacked Brown Blob. The alien, surprised by their desperate resistance, turned its attention from the station controls again. Thrashing, the alien wrapped one tentacle around King’s waist and grabbed Bronsky by the throat with another. Then it began to squeeze.

  ***

  Nineteen

  JJ’s eyebrows drew together as Red Spot closed in on them in the greenhouse module. “Since Commander Zota told us to do personal training, I’ve got some pretty strong muscles. With a little help from you”—she looked over at Tony—“I could become quite a projectile.”

  “You got it! Crack-the-whip, zero-G gymnastics … just an average day of alien fighting.”

  “I’ll kick off from the wall. Tony, take both of my hands and swing me as hard as you can to add momentum. I’ll keep my legs straight, and as long as you aim right, I’ll plow right into that thing.”

  Red Spot lurched toward them, looking ominous. Tony hooked his feet through one of the handhold rungs. He took JJ’s arms as she bent backward, counting, “One—two—three!” She launched herself, and Tony flung her like a discus.

  JJ shot feet-first through the air. She stretched out her legs, leading with her heels. Ten feet from the attacking alien, she thought, I sure hope that thing doesn’t pop. Eww.

  She plowed into the soft and sagging bag that was its head. Her feet sank into it up to her ankles, and Red Spot’s bulbous sac collapsed as if it were a jellyfish. What if it swallowed her?

  The rebounding Kylarn struck the greenhouse wall, clattering bean and tomato plants out of the way. When it hit the side of the module, Red Spot recoiled and pushed off with its tentacles. The alien flew across the greenhouse—straight toward Song-Ye and Dyl. Thrumming and shuddering, the creature pointed its silver thimble and squirted a mass of goo that drenched Song-Ye like a bucket of runny sealant.

  She cried out in disgust and fear. “The elastosnot got me!”

  “I’ll keep it away.” Instinctively, Dyl grabbed for anything nearby—a small fire-extinguisher canister. As Red Spot approached Song-Ye, looking enraged now, Dyl sprayed a blast of white vapor.

  Struck by the fire-extinguisher jet, the Kylarn reacted much more frantically than when JJ had squirted it with scarlet dye. Red Spot writhed as if it had been hit with bug spray, crumpling, reaching backward with a tentacle to grab onto anything to pull it away.

  “Don’t like that, huh?” Dyl shouted. “I’m having a blast—how about another one!” He fired a long burst from the fire extinguisher, and the jet sent him spinning backward.

  JJ had caught herself on the other side of the module, panting. For a split second, the whole scene went into slow motion before her. Dyl was using a fire extinguisher to battle the Kylarn intruder. Since their father had died in a burning house, JJ’s only phobia had been fire. The Kylarn were an immediate danger, though, and Dyl was fighting them just like he would fight a fire. Genius! Dad would have approved.

  Tony scrambled after her. There was a second canister nearby, and she yanked it from its hook on the wall. So as not to be knocked backward, she held on and directed a long blast at Red Spot. “Back off, Spot!” The alien was in full retreat now, and JJ chased after it.

  Tony kicked himself over to the intercom station on the wall. “Everyone, use the fire extinguishers! The squidbutts hate fire extinguishers!”

  A burst of chatter came over the station speakers; they could hear sounds of a scuffle, then Mr. Pi’s gasping voice. “Acknowledged! The other creature is up here in Central.”

  King’s voice called out, and the struggle continued; a loud, hissing sound from the speakers must have been another fire-extinguisher blast. “Get your squid butt off this station, Brown Blob! Hah! There it goes!”

  Glaring at the miserable, red-stained creature that wriggled and lurched its way out of the greenhouse module, JJ knew the tables were turned and both of the aliens were fleeing. She called out, “I’ll herd this one back toward the Mess. Let’s try to seal it in one of the node rooms!”

  While Dylan occupied himself extricating Song-Ye from the adhesive mass, JJ and Tony launched after the fleeing Kylarn. Fortunately, each of the ISSC modules had at least two fire extinguishers for safety, since a fire would be a serious danger aboard the enclosed station. JJ squirted another burst of fire-suppressant gas at Red Spot. Like a cattle prod, the jet spurred the Kylarn ahead.

  At the node-room intersection with the observatory module, Dr. d’Almeida surprised them by popping out in front of the alien; the astronomer sprayed a fire extinguisher in its “face,” so that Red Spot recoiled, changed course, and shot through a different airlock.

  King and Stationmaster Ansari arrived, chasing the other alien. They shouted to JJ and Tony, “Herd those things to the node room between Med Module and the Mess! Dr. Romero has Medical sealed, so they’ll have no place to go.”

  “Got it,” Tony said.

  “Just don’t let them get back to their ship,” JJ said. “They’ll escape.”

  “Protecting the station is our priority,” Ansari said.

  In her mind, JJ envisioned how all the station’s modules fit together, and she drove the fleeing alien in the right direction. Remembering everything that Zota had told them about what these hideous things intended to do to humanity, JJ growled, “Still don’t think humans can fight back? Think again.”

  Tony seized a fire extinguisher from the adjacent module, launched himself from the bulkhead, and shot past them like a cannonball. He slowed himself by the force of the fire extinguisher blast he released, using it like a retro-rocket. The panicked Kylarn scrambled away, while JJ, Tony, and d’Almeida managed to direct it. The creature obviously hadn’t expected this furious of a resistance. King and Stationmaster Ansari herded the second alien, with Captain Bronsky yelling loudly i
n Russian behind them.

  The pair of tentacled aliens raced into the node room that dead-ended at the sealed Med Module. As soon as the two aliens were crowded into the chamber, Red Spot and Brown Blob turned about like cornered rats. They lashed out, trying to fight back, but the fire extinguisher spray made their whiplike appendages recoil. JJ and King quickly sealed the outside hatch.

  “Believe me, they’re bottled up tight,” Tony breathed in relief, looking at the sealed hatch.

  “Yeah, and no Get Out of Jail Free card,” JJ added.

  Ansari, breathing hard, looked satisfied. “Excellent work, Cadets. The hatch into Medical was already sealed.” Her fingers danced across a keypad on the opposite hatch. “And now they can’t open this one, either. Caught like a bug in a bottle.”

  Dr. Kloor glided into the room and went to the hatch window to peer in at the two aliens.

  “What about the other two hatches in the node room?” JJ asked.

  “They don’t connect anywhere,” Bronsky said, “except to open space.”

  JJ felt good about what they had accomplished.

  Panting, King said, “We stopped them for now. Bet they thought we’d be an easy conquest.”

  “Instead we have two captive Kylarn,” Dr. Kloor said. “We can study them.”

  With a jittery stomach, JJ came forward with Tony to look into the observation port. Inside the sealed node room, the two aliens were busy at the controls, frantically trying to escape, but they could not operate the hatches that led into Medical or back out the way they had come.

  King started singing “Hotel California” under his breath, the part about checking out but never leaving.

  Tony smiled at the lyrics. “Exactly. They understand that they’re trapped.”

  “Let’s not get too smug,” Kloor said. “Those squid things still destroyed Recon-1 and the Eye in the Sky.”

  He was right, of course. Watching the Kylarn, JJ saw Brown Blob focus on the other two sealed hatches—the ones that led into space. “What is it doing?” She began to suspect the worst. “Uh-oh. Stationmaster Ansari, I think they’re trying to—”