“You’re alive!” Ramona shrieks, giving me a big bear hug before she realizes what she’s done. I have to admit, I’m just as thrilled to see her. Our new gang squeezes into the captain’s quarters—which were clearly not built to house thirty-six pregnant girls, one newborn Jin’Kai baby, two Almiri sharpshooters, and the head of Hanover’s now defunct AV club. But everyone seems too happy to be alive and reunited to notice the cramped space.
“I was wondering when you were going to get back,” Natty says, patting me on the shoulder in a weird sort of halfhug. “Ooh, and I love your new outfit. Very avant-garde.”
Another crash from the sitting room lets me know that the Jin’Kai have broken through the door. Blaster fire starts zipping through the doorway, thankfully missing everyone. Other Cheerleader’s baby, which Heather has strapped to her chest in a makeshift sling made of an old velvet slipcover, begins to wail, frantic screams piercing through the sound of gunfire. Bob slams shut the door we’ve just entered, but this door, in keeping with the décor outside, is made of wood. Even as Bob and Cole hurry to hoist a massive ornate desk in front of the door to block the entrance, the door begins to visibly splinter with shots from the other side, and as strong as our two Almiri heroes are, I’m afraid they’ll never get the desk in place in time. Desi scoops Kate up in his arms and races her down the hall toward the loading dock to the captain’s yacht, limping as he goes. Ramona and I are just beginning to corral girls in that direction as well, when I notice Other Cheerleader. She is struggling with Heather, pulling the howling baby away from its sling.
“Give me that thing!” she shrieks at Heather.
“You told me to carry him!” Heather insists. “What are you doing? He’s upset!”
“Give it to me! It’s mine!” And with one final tug she frees the baby and barrels not toward the safety of the yacht but toward the flipping splintering door.
“What the hell are you doing?” Britta shrieks as her BFF rushes toward the enemy. “Are you a total chromer?” As uncomfortable as it is to know that Britta and I are having the exact same thought at the exact same time, I’m more concerned about just what is happening. Other Cheerleader’s eyes are about two sizes too wide as she stares in our direction, one hand on the doorknob and the other around her bundle of evil alien joy.
“Don’t you see?” she shouts, but she doesn’t seem to really be looking at anyone in particular. “We should just surrender. We have their babies. That’s what they want!” And with that she tugs open the door and disappears down the hallway. The gunfire on the other end stops momentarily, as if even the Jin’Kai are confused by this turn of events.
Britta tries to run after her, but in a moment of true stupidity I decide to risk my neck for Little Miss McSicker and tackle her to the ground.
“Stay put!” I scream into her ear. “You can’t help her!” Britta lets out a feeble moan as she watches her friend go.
I can hear Other Cheerleader shouting as she approaches the Jin’Kai, but from my angle on the floor I can’t see anything but the open door. Britta, though, she can see it—I can tell just by the look on her face as she watches helplessly.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Other Cheerleader wails. “I have one of your babies! I just had the baby! Don’t shoot! Here, here you go. Just let me live, God, please. Oh, thank you, thank you. Here he is. I just . . . What the fuck is wrong with your face?”
There’s a terrifying roar, like a lion screaming into a bullhorn.
And a sickening fttt sound.
Then a thunk.
Britta’s face instantly turns the color of sour milk, and I can feel every muscle in her body go taut underneath me. “She doesn’t have a head anymore,” she says flatly. “They cut off her head.”
A shot rings through the door and catches Bob in the knee, knocking him to the ground. The Jin’Kai are rushing the door again now, the sound of boots and something else—footsteps with a much heavier gait—stomping along side by side, and it’s obvious that there’s no way Cole can close the door and barricade it by himself in time to save us. Bob, seeming to sense this, grabs something small and oval-shaped out of his vest. Something with a button on it. No, not just a button.
A detonator.
“Get them onto that yacht,” he orders Cole.
And without hesitation Cole leaves his post at the door and begins pushing girls toward the back passageway to our getaway ship. But I just lie there, Britta still wedged underneath me. Looking at Bob.
He rises up to his feet, wincing at the pain in his shattered knee. When he sees me, he winks.
“Go on, Elvie,” he says. “You haven’t saved Archer’s ass yet.”
I never even learned his real name.
Bob limps out into the sitting room, gun blazing. I pull Britta to her feet and run toward the passageway. There’s a sizzling sound of laser hitting flesh, and I hear Bob cry out. And then the explosion. The grenade fills the sitting room with napalm or something equally pleasant, the force of the blast so strong that, even from a room away, Britta and I are knocked right back to the ground. The door frame crumbles, and on the other side come inhuman screams, which must be the Jin’Kai and Devastators, on fire.
“Elvie, let’s go!”
It’s Cole, snapping me out of my daze. I get to my feet again and run after him. We, all of us, race down the passageway, around the corner, and toward the hatch to the yacht. I shove my way through the throng of girls already packed into the tiny ship, to get to the cockpit console. The yacht is decorated like some kinky 1970s sex pad, complete with leopard prints and water bed. I push my way through the curtain of hanging beads to take my place in the captain’s chair, a pair of fuzzy dice hanging above my head.
No one seems to have any problem with my being there.
Cole plops himself down next to me in the copilot chair as I fire up the controls. “Everything good to go?” he asks.
“Just need to do a system check, and then we’re out of here. Undo the docking clamps. It’s those switches to your left. Cole,” I say, pausing for just the briefest of milliseconds. “How are we going to outrun their ship?”
“We’ll worry about that when we have to, Elvs. Just get us out of here, okay?”
“I might be able to help with that,” Desi says from the back. We all look at him incredulously. “I know the specs for their transport. We can outrun her if we dip down into the ionosphere and run a counter-rotational course back to the surface.”
We just stare at him blankly.
“I want Kate to be safe,” he says. “Nothing else matters. Nothing.”
Overwhelmed, Kate immediately starts sucking face with Desi. And I’m back to flipping switches.
“Um, don’t you need to open that thing?” Ramona asks, pointing to the hangar door in front of the cockpit window. “Unless you’re planning on smashing through it?”
“Thank you, Ramona.” I whistle through my teeth as I find the button for the hangar door. Then I begin the start-up sequence.
Power.
Life support.
Engines.
. . . Engines . . .
ENGINES.
That’s when I let loose with a string of curses that would make even the saltiest astronaut blush.
“What’s wrong?” Cole asks.
“The engines are dead.” There’s no use whispering about it. We’re screwed.
“Can’t you reroute power from another system?” Desi asks over the din of the “We’re gonna die!”s from the Greek chorus behind us. He peers over my shoulder at the console, Kate still glued to his side.
“It’s not the power; it’s the actual engines,” I say, reading the diagnostic on the screen. “They’re total dinosaurs. The manifolds are all cracked. The fuel lines aren’t even there. They must have been removed or disintegrated or something.” It’s not fair. Not after all this, after the pool, the explosion, the hangar. After Bob just . . . “I’m sorry,” I say. “This yacht isn’t going anywhere.”
/>
“They’re going to get through that rubble any minute!” Kate screeches.
Thank you, Queen Obvious.
Beside me Cole takes a deep breath. “We need to think of something,” he says. “Come on, Elvs. You know every centimeter of this ship.”
Think, Elvie. Thinkthinkthink. “But we’ve exhausted every centimeter of this—” And then, suddenly, I have it.
I pull out my phone from the front of my thermal suit.
“What the hell are you doing?” Britta asks.
I answer calmly as I flick the digits with my thumb. “I need to make a phone call.”
• • •
Each clunk of Jin’Kai boots stomping up the passageway sends a tiny tremor down my spine. Our enemies are walking slowly, no doubt anticipating a volley of gunfire. But when the chatter echoes out from inside the yacht, they all stop. I hold my breath.
“What are we going to doooo?” comes the nasal whine. “They’re going to kill us and wear us like coats or something!”
The Jin’Kai exchange a few hushed words in their alien tongue, and then begin moving even more carefully toward the small ship.
“I’m too young to die!” a slightly higher-pitched voice chimes in. “I can’t believe this is happening. I’ve never even kissed a boy!” A little more, just a little more . . .
“What are you talking about?” The first voice responds. “You’re pregnant.”
“Well, yeah, but I never kissed him. It’s, like, totally different. Nail polish, hair products, boys, boys, boys.”
I roll my eyes.
The Jin’Kai are very close now. From where I’m crouched I can’t see anything, but I can smell them all right. A sharp, pungent stench pierces my nose. It’s like nothing I’ve ever come in contact with before—wretchedly sour, the scent so thick it seems to line the inside of my nose and mouth as I breathe, creeping its way down my throat and burning through my lung tissue. I can hear their skin slick-slick as they walk, and their breathing is raspy, unsettling, inhuman.
These must be the Devastators. I really don’t want to meet those guys.
The yammering from the cockpit reaches a fever pitch as the two arguing voices vie for glass-shattering supremacy, and the Jin’Kai and Devastators rush up the ramp into the yacht, barking commands at their would-be captives. I can’t help but smirk as the last of the Jin’Kai walks up the yacht’s ramp, expecting to find a gaggle of frightened girls . . ..
Only to find my phone propped up on the cockpit console.
“Hi, fellas.” I hear Ducky greet them through the tinny phone speaker. I can almost see him putting down his giant bowl of cereal, smirking at these freakish baddies, who’ve been taken in by a teenage boy chattering to himself in falsetto. “Wow, what is up with your faces?”
“Okay. Now!” I say, and with a solid kick the metal door of the ship’s outer baggage compartment, where we’ve been hiding, pops open, and we all jump out into the loading bay. I tap the controls on Dr. Marsden’s lap-pad and with a shunka-shunka! all the yacht’s external security doors slam shut and lock.
We make our way back up the passageway amid the racket of the Jin’Kai futilely blasting away at the thick titanium doors.
“You’re sure they can’t get out of there?” Natty asks as we run.
“Sure they can,” I reply. “If they keep at it for, I dunno, the next ten hours.” The yacht’s security doors were designed to protect the captain and VIPs from the most extreme attacks. I’m certain they can withstand considerably more punishment than even the Jin’Kai guns can dole out. And since I disabled the controls inside the ship, there’s no way for them to get out . . . at least not before the Echidna breaks apart.
Which, by the looks of things, is going to be soon. The ship is groaning and creaking as we make our way through the newly accessible direct passageway, back toward the hangar bay where the Jin’Kai ship is docked. What wasn’t sparking and hissing before is doing so now. Suddenly the ship jolts sharply. We’re thrown into the wall.
“The ship’s artificial gravity is going screwy,” I say, picking myself off the floor. I offer a hand to Heather, still visibly shaken after the incident with Other Cheerleader. “We’re getting pulled farther into the Earth’s atmosphere. At this rate the ship will be down in less than an hour.”
“Then wasn’t it nice of our friends to prep their ship for our departure?” Cole asks as we head into the open door of the waiting Jin’Kai vessel.
I can’t help but agree.
The only Jin’Kai on board is the pilot, who doesn’t even see the shot that kills him.
“Nice shooting!” I declare, looking around to see who blasted him.
Meekly, Amy stuffs her ray gun into her back pocket. “I think I could get the hang of this,” she tells me.
I situate myself at the control panel, but immediately notice the problem. “Shit!” I cry. “I have no idea how to fly this thing!” The layout of the controls is, quite literally, alien. I can’t tell which button powers up the fusion cells and which one microwaves frozen burritos.
“Here,” comes a voice from behind me. “Let me.”
It’s Desi, who takes his place at the control panel with a sort of calm dignity I’ve never seen from him before. “Like I said, I know these specs inside and out.”
And for once I am more than happy to let someone else take the controls.
The Jin’Kai ship lifts off the platform and heads out the hangar door that I’ve remotely activated, and we pull away from the Echidna moments before it starts to buckle and collapse in the Earth’s lower atmosphere. It burns a trail in the sky like an enormous shooting star as it hurtles toward the ground, the Jin’Kai still trapped helplessly inside the captain’s yacht with no one but Ducky for company.
I hope he’s telling them his best knock-knock jokes.
“We made it, girls!” Cole shouts, and everyone goes nuts. Like, bonkers. You’d think we’d just escaped from evil alien baby snatchers or something.
“Where are we going now?” Ramona asks.
“Headquarters, to start,” Cole answers, “In Pennsylvania. The Poconos, to be precise.”
“The Poconos?” Ramona snorts. “What, do all the Almiri go around masquerading as superhot ski instructors?”
“It’s better cover than you might think,” Cole says sheepishly. “Look, you’ve all been through a lot, and most of it was done to you without your knowledge. I don’t think that’s right.” He looks me straight in the eye as he speaks. “If we’re all going to live together, each one of you, individually, has to decide what’s best for you. We’re going home, all of us. And the choices that were taken from you, I’m going to see that you get those choices back to make for yourselves.”
I love that dumbass alien.
Desi is busy tapping something into the computer, and maybe I’m paranoid, but I still don’t totally trust the guy. I catch Cole’s eye and motion to Desi.
“What are you doing there, Des?” I ask. Cole’s hand reaches slowly to his holstered gun.
“Syncing with the Echidna’s bio-rhythms monitor,” Desi says, finishing his typing with a flourish. He looks up at me, grinning. “Tragically, every person at the Hanover School—faculty, students, ‘guests’—was killed as the ship fell to Earth.”
The import of what Desi has done is not lost on anyone. If the Jin’Kai think we’re all dead, they won’t come looking for us.
“Why would you do that?” Cole asks, still suspicious. “Why the sudden change of heart?”
“There’s nothing sudden about my change of heart,” he says, wrapping an arm around Kate’s waist. She swoons at his gesture.
“Oh, pookie-kins!” she coos, covering the side of his face with smooches.
“I’ve helped you escape with your young, Almiri,” Desi says, addressing Cole. “All I ask is that I’m allowed to remain—safely—by Kate’s side.”
“But she’s not even carrying a Jin’Kai baby,” Chewie says through a wad of hair.
“She’s still got an Almiri in her.”
“My concern is with the mommy,” Desi says, and they both dissolve into a nauseating display of PDA that starts the girls all fawning about how romantic they are. Desi comes up for air long enough to ask Cole: “You think it can be arranged?”
“I guess I can find out,” Cole replies, as if Desi just asked to borrow his dad’s car. The girls cheer.
As Cole settles back into his chair, I can’t help studying his face. He is the same beautiful, wonderful Cole I’ve always known, and yet there’s something different about him now. He seems stronger, older. And it might be just my imagination, but I think the constellation of freckles on his left cheek is beginning to fade, ever so slightly.
“Cole?” I whisper. “I have to tell you something.”
He turns to me.
“The Goober,” I begin, clearing my throat. “It’s . . . yours.” I put a hand on my stomach. “It’s still yours. Dr. Marsden told me, on the catwalk. It wasn’t swapped.”
The look on Cole’s face as he takes in the news is pure happiness. Despite everything that’s happened to him, everything that could have happened, he is happy in this moment. “Oh, Elvs!” he breathes, and he reaches toward me for a kiss, that look still splayed across his face. It’s an exquisite sort of look.
Which is why I can hardly believe what I’m about to say to him.
“I’m not going to the Poconos.”
“But the baby . . .,” he begins.
I pause. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet, Cole.” He blinks, and I can tell there’s so much he wants to say to me, but he doesn’t. He lets me continue. “I’ll tell you when I decide, but for now . . . I’m not going with you. I don’t care if you have to lie or fight or argue or what, but I’m not going.” I watch through the view screen as Earth grows closer and closer, welcoming us back from the longest, strangest day of my life. “I am going home.”
Cole thinks about that, and nods slowly. Then, without a word of response, he punches up the comm.
“Home One, this is Archer. Do you read?”
A crackling noise comes over the comm, followed by that unmistakable voice.
Mothership Page 23
