by Adam Holt
“Relax, keep breathing. Good girl,” Buckshot said between breaths. He trailed her by only a few skipping leaps.
Finally, as Janice got closer to the ground, Buckshot unleashed his best jump yet. He was on a collision course with our falling friend. Then his staff glowed purple. Of course! I thought.
Buckshot flew right past Janice, but as he did, he grabbed her with his black staff and pulled her toward himself. This slowed his ascent and her descent. They balanced each other out about twenty feet from the ground, where he pulled her toward himself. They still had a problem though. Janice’s arm was frozen in ice. A hard landing would shatter it, but Buckshot kept his cool though. He swung his staff overhead and blasted fire at the ice below them again and again. The heat created a growing pool of water, and they splashed down into the man-made waterhole. It wouldn’t stay warm—or even liquid—for long though. Europa is dire cold. The second they landed Buckshot sprang out of the pool, pulling Janice with him. Moments later the steaming pool froze as hard as rock. Buckshot and Janice lay beside it.
It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen crazy.
Buckshot didn’t seem phased, just breathless. They struggled to stand, cracking the hard, thin shell of ice that accumulated on their suits.
“Hey, y’all wanna pick up the pace? Me and Carpool were getting bored back there,” he said, breathless and bent over.
“You okay?” I asked Janice. She flipped open her gold visor. She was pale. There was blood above her swollen left eye, and she had a busted lip. One arm was still encased in rock-hard ice. Sunjay tackled her to the ground and squeezed her tight.
“Uhhh-ouch,” she said. “Timing?”
“I thought we lost you,” Sunjay said. “Oh, your poor eye.”
“That ain’t but a scratch,” Buckshot said. “Just a flesh wound. She’ll heal up just fine, Zaxon, if you stop strangulatin’ her.”
“Let’s avoid any more extreme sports today,” my dad said. “Europa is unstable here. We can hope for better at Rathmore. The quicker we reach our destination, the sooner we can find shelter. Surely the Ascendant don’t live with this kind of danger every day.”
I wasn’t so sure. I wondered if we had something to do with the geysers erupting in our path. After all, my dad had a box strapped to his back that contained the Sacred. If anything was going to mess with the atmosphere of Europa, it was in that box.
Sunjay helped Janice to her feet. Then he whacked her arm with the black staff. Janice shouted at him.
“Not like that,” my dad said. He pushed Sunjay aside, turn the staff on, and held it against her arm. The staff vibrated as usual and clinked against the ice, which heated and crumbled.
“Thanks, commander,” she said. Janice limped across the ice field, which was a welcome sight, but it’s not the sights that mattered. The sounds did. Not a whoosh this time.
A thud.
THUD.
Thud. Behind us, maybe twenty feet. More thuds.
“More geysers?” said Sunjay.
Like trees falling in the forest, shaking the ground beneath our feet. And then shadows above us. Oh, man. I’d rather have geysers. What goes up must come down. I remembered all the tiny ice crystals on my gloves. Their bigger brothers were about to rain down on us.
“Run,” my dad said. Together we bounded across the open field.
Behind us, above us, coming through the atmosphere like mutant cannonballs, were chunks of ice, projectiles from the ice geysers falling back to Europa.
The thuds shook the ground behind us as we made for the next cluster of penitentes. Maybe we can hide there if we can make it. Thud. An iceberg fell beside me and shattered to pieces, knocking me sideways. I looked for shelter ahead and saw little to none. We’re not going to make it, I thought.
It was my turn to act. I dropped behind the group a few bounds, and the next time I jumped, I did a full twist to look behind us at the ice chunks on our tail and above our heads. And me with no red powers. I did have a black staff.
I hit the first chunk with an incinerator shot—just enough to deflect it. I landed, spun, and tried to toss the next block of ice. Too heavy. Incinerator shot. Much better.
Suddenly my dad was beside me. We incinerated the next projectile together, and again and again. It was like playing that old arcade game Meteor Blast that he kept in Mission Control. It was pretty easy with one or two targets, but a dozen were headed our way, of varying size and death potential. In this game you’ve only got one life, not three, I reminded myself.
“Cave ahead,” Buckshot yelled between breaths. I turned to look. Sure enough, there was a perfectly circular hole in a penitente straight ahead. He and Janice had not completely recovered from their last dance with death, and they stumbled toward the hole. A shadow loomed above them. Looking up I saw an iceberg the size of a school bus descending on them. I blasted the thing with my staff and so did my dad. It had little effect. Buckshot and Janice would make the cave, but dad and I were too far behind to catch up.
“Tully, incinerate straight back! Now! Now!” My dad launched dozens of incinerator shots behind himself, which launched him forward like a turbo booster. I did the same. We slid at high speed into the cave. The last thing I saw was the iceberg a few feet over my head. Then I felt an enormous thud as it sealed the hole behind us.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The iceberg storm continued as we slid into a cave with slick walls, a dark cave, a cave that angled down, down, down, and we slid, slid, slid in the darkness. I flicked on my headlamp as we zipped through the perfectly round tube. This can’t be natural, I thought, and it wasn’t. This was it, the first sign of the Ascendant on Europa.
A wide opening loomed in front of me. Beyond it, a darkness that swallowed everyone. Their lights vanished. I dug my staff into the ice but it was too hard to dent. There was no way to stop, so I let myself fall. We landed rather roughly in a heap in the dark with a chorus of grunting and panting. Little Bacon repositioned himself in my shirt pocket inside the suit. I checked to see if any of my body parts were broken or ruptured or missing.
We had been on Europa for an hour.
Our headlamps only went so far, leaving most of the room in shadow. All of us stayed still. Then Sunjay and Janice shouted into their mics.
“Ouch, something’s poking me! I’m caught. What the heck is this?”
“It’s got me, too,” yelled Janice. I could feel her flopping beside me like a trapped animal.
Then overhead lights flicked on. We were surrounded by...
...fishing gear? Sunjay and Janice struggled to free themselves from a huge net, which was shoved inside an enormous trap. Buckshot walked over to help them.
We were in a large ice cave. One side was packed full of fishing tackle and nets. The other side opened into a subglacial ocean, which glowed with a purple light. We worked on untangling ourselves from the equipment.
“Huh, these look like crab traps,” I said, pushing aside some netting and pointing to the crab trap that had them trapped. I had seen similar equipment on boats in Dutch Harbor before, only this equipment could have caught enormous crab. “Yeah, look, there’s even bait inside this trap. You throw it in the water and wait for something.”
“Something the size of a school bus,” Sunjay said.
“Why do people always compare stuff in space to school buses?” I asked.
“Because they’re about this size.”
“Anyway, once the mutant school bus crab is inside, you pull in the pod.”
“Glad we slid in on this side of the cave,” said Buckshot, pointing to a watery opening on the other side. “That looks mighty deep.”
“Miles deep,” said Janice. “Below the ice there’s probably nothing but water until you get to the core. It’s warmer here. You were right, White Knight. They fish for a living. Oh, sick, what is THAT?”
Janice tried to wipe some green goo off the side of her spacesuit. It only stuck to her glove. Then she realize
d where it was coming from. One of the exterior pockets on Sunjay’s suit was open. There was a cracked bottle full of green mess seeping down the side of his suit. I knew what it was in an instant.
“Zaxon, you didn’t,” I said, pointing to his leg. He cringed and pulled the busted bottle from his pocket. Everyone understood in a heartbeat.
“I drank the death smoothie,” he blurted out.
“That’s the dumbest—WHY?” said Janice.
“It was too tempting,” he said, flexing his arms. “It’s how I made all these gains.”
“It’s also why you were sick,” I said.
“No, well, probably, but what was I supposed to do?”
“NOT DRINK THE ALIEN DEATH SMOOTHIE!” said Janice.
“You don’t get it,” he shot back. Did he have tears in his eyes? He pointed at me and said, “Tully has all these powers. Buckshot and the Commander are big and strong. You’re smart like Tabitha. What do I have? How am I going to fight the Ascendant? How am I going to protect Tully? Sure it made me sick, but it will be worth it if I can defend Tully. He’s the important one. Not you or me. We all know it’s true.”
His chest heaved.
“You’re important, too,” Janice said softly.
“Not like him,” he said. “And that’s okay. That’s why I have to protect him. I had to get stronger.”
I wanted to say something but words failed me. Sunjay stood tall, and I could see he was proud of what he did, not ashamed.
“You won’t do us any good if you hurt yourself,” Janice said. “That would make it worse.”
“I know, but – ”
“Use codenames,” my dad said.
“Oh, sorry,” Sunjay said. My dad walked over to him and squared up his shoulder. “Zaxon, I know what you are trying to say, but listen to me. You do not know your own strength. You know what it is?”
“No,” he said.
“You are a fierce friend,” my dad explained. “Everyone should have a friend like you, but they are hard to find. And you should know something else: your best is what you should ask of yourself. Nothing more. It’s all that we would ask of you. It’s all that a good commander would ever ask of you.”
Sunjay stood face to face with my dad, our commander, his hero. He nodded and tossed the bottle aside. I had no idea until then how much he wanted to protect me. A fierce friend. My dad was right. He patted Sunjay on the shoulder and was about to say something to get us back on track when the lights went out.
My first thought was, These must be motion-activated. I waved my hand in front of my face. Nothing. Then I heard a number of sounds: a loud crunch, Sunjay’s scream; heavy breathing; and footsteps coming my way. The last sound I heard was a loud boom. I felt a sharp pain in my neck and everything went black.
ICA-WHO?
My senses returned. I heard a gruff voice echoing off the walls of a room, a room that slowly came into focus as I shook my aching head.
A rough-faced Ascendant stood in front of me, with wrinkles around his dark eyes and tattoos scrolling across his worn face. He had a long braid of black hair, as they all seem to have. He wore a grey tunic, and every inch of him was covered with tattoos and muscle and fish guts. A chunk of ice formed in my stomach. We were captured.
“I heard your English styles,” the voice said. “You spoke in your sleep. You called out for that Earther girl, her by name Tabitha. What about that, hey?”
I surveyed my surroundings. My hands were bound behind my back with rope. My helmet was off. I was seated in a small room with walls of ice. The Ascendant grabbed me by the chin and pulled me forward. Monstrous sea creatures swam across his face.
“Hey, what about the English then? You some actors traveled beyond the Rathmore out so far? We all Earth-leaving soon so that don’t make the sense.”
Stars floated across my vision. My head felt bruised. Tully, focus. Think. Look around. This is a fisherman. He thinks you’re an actor. What are you doing out here? Everyone is about to leave for the Earth. I needed time to “make the sense.”
“My friends,” my voice sounded hoarse, “where are they?”
The fisherman slapped me and gripped my face again. The impact rattled my brain. I thought that I might pass out.
“Only speaking to me in English, hey? That’s grave. Downstairs is where they are. Tossed aside their staffs when I captured you. You, the weak one. Who are you? Make the sense or I take you to Rathmore, let them make it.”
How was I supposed to make sense of the last hour of my life? We went from happily hopping across a moonscape to dodging death icebergs to fisherman interrogations. He raised his hand again, and I recoiled. He waited, but he wouldn’t wait long, so I said the first thing that came to mind.
“I am Tully Orion Harper,” I said.
The fisherman frowned at me for a moment, turned my face back and forth in his rough hands, then dropped my head and let out a rib-splitting laugh. He slapped his leg and pointed at me. His breath smelled like salt and seaweed.
“Tully Harper is you,” he said between laughs and leg slaps. “The Red Thief. Him sitting right here in my house. And who’s that down there? Your father?”
“Yes, Commander Mike Harper,” I said.
“Oh-ho-ho!” More laughter. A lot. The fisherman beat his hand upon his knee. Behind him, a boy appeared, not much younger than me, with black hair and a braid but no tattoos. He stared at me wide-eyed. The fisherman waved him in.
“Son, look what your father caught. You should be deep fearing. It’s not a ketea maximus. No, this is worse. It’s the Red Thief, he himself.” Oh, bangers. Word gets around quickly on Europa. I have a nickname already. “He flown on magic wings from Earth to Europa. And what would the Red Thief with us be wanting?” he said. “Him he already stole the Sacred. What he want now?”
“Nothing,” I said, looking at the boy. “I want to go to the Rathmore Chaos.”
More laughter. Then the fisherman reared back and backhanded me. His face boiled into seething anger. He pulled out what looked like the handle of a knife. He flicked his wrist and, well, the rest of the knife appeared, a glowing purple blade that he held to my throat. This felt way too familiar.
“I’m not you to Rathmore traveling,” he growled. “We make our own punishment here in the Outlands. Don’t need the Lord Ascendant for to help me with thieves. Now you think on this one: which hand do you want to keep, thief? I’m one of them taking.”
The fisherman grunted toward his son, spoke something more in Greek, and left.
Great, now Trackman and I will have something to talk about. Hey, Tully, I haven’t seen you since you chopped off my hand. Oh, who chopped off yours?
The boy knelt beside me and tied my wrists tighter. He bound my feet with shaking hands. He stole a few glances at my face but would not make eye contact with me. Something about his demeanor made me wonder about him.
“Your dad thinks we are thieves,” I told the boy, “but we are not. I am Tully Harper.”
The boy finished binding my feet and picked up more rope. He could not finish the job though. He could only stare at my hands, which I held in front of me. My hands. Had he heard stories of Tully Harper and his terrible powers? He stared at me with doubt in his eyes. There was no time to waste. I had to prove myself.
“Look, wait. Hey, LB, can you help me with something?” I asked. My pocket began to wriggle as Little Bacon popped his head out and straightened his hat. The boy tossed the rope toward me and scurried away from the strange being that lived in my pocket. “Who am I, Little Bacon?”
“You are Tully Harper,” he said. “And I am Little Bacon. Who is this fine young man?”
The boy collected himself. He crept toward me cautiously. “You are the Red Thief?”
“I am Tully Harper.”
“Like in my dream?”
That comment got my attention. The boy looked unsure, like there were two ideas in combat in his mind. I had to take a chance.
“Will you fr
ee me?” I asked. “I can give you my black staff, this space suit, Little Bacon.”
“Yes,” said Little Bacon, “I can show you better knots for securing people.” Oh, Bacon. Helpful as usual. Fortunately the boy ignored him.
“You can’t be the Red Thief. Earthers cannot be journeying to Europa. So says the Lord Ascendant.”
“So he does,” I said, “but here I am.”
“And how would my dad catch The Red Thief? Him who would have burned us with fire or sliced us open. He’s an Earther, and Earthers are full of hate for us. So says the Lord Ascendant.”
Of course. More Ascendant propaganda. He thinks I’m a cold-blooded killer. I probably started this war.
“I don’t run around toasting aliens for fun—I mean, I don’t want to burn you. Those are lies. That’s not who I really am. Was there something about me in your dream?”
He didn’t respond.
“If you let me go, I promise I won’t harm you or your dad. You can tell your dad that the thief slipped out of his bonds.”
“That is highly likely, as these ropes will not hold up under duress,” said Little Bacon.
The boy looked at me, confused. Without a word, he ran out of the room.
Well, that went well. Little Bacon burrowed back into my pocket. I struggled with the knot on my feet. It was better than Little Bacon made it sound, and I couldn’t budge it. With tied hands I could run. With tied feet? Hopping to freedom did not seem like an option even in low gravity. I sat back on the floor, trying to clear my head. Time passed. His dreams! I should have asked him more about them. That missed opportunity could have cost me my life. Unless the others can escape and free me. Stars, we never even made it to Rathmore. I’ll never see Tabitha again.
In the distance I heard footsteps echoing off icy walls. Well, goodbye, right hand. I’m going to miss you. Maybe they will call me the Red Lefty now. I saw the purple glow of the knife blade coming around the corner, but it wasn’t the fisherman. It was the boy. He held the knife in a quivering hand. A backpack of beautiful fur was slung across his shoulder.
