Lost Planet 02 - The Stolen Moon

by Searles, Rachel

  “As long as we don’t hit another windstorm,” muttered Lilli.

  “Well, that too, Miss Sunshine,” said Parker. “Get on.” He stood at the controls, his feet balancing the two main slats of the hovers. Lilli climbed into the armchair, and Chase hopped on the back, hugging the back of the seat.

  “What are you doing?” Ksenia’s voice cut through the air. She stood at the edge of the building, looking over their rigged-up hoverbike.

  “We’re going to help Maurus and the others,” said Parker.

  “You don’t need to go,” she said quickly. “I’ve contacted Asa. He’s on his way.”

  Was she telling the truth? Chase’s heart leapt at the possibility. “You contacted Asa? How?”

  Ksenia nodded. “Bawran is hiding a comm station in his trailer. I just found it.”

  “You just found it,” said Parker sarcastically. “How convenient. And what did Asa say?”

  She was lying. She had to be. But her answer came immediately. “He’s on his way here right now. If you leave, you’ll miss him.”

  This made Chase pause. “But they’re in trouble now. If we wait for Asa, it might be too late.”

  “They’re just Fleet soldiers. Stay here with me, where it’s safe.” If Chase had doubted her connection to Asa before, now she even sounded like him, placing their safety over the safety of their friends in the Fleet.

  “Nope,” said Parker. He hit the drive gear and they went sailing down the street, trailed by cheerfully screaming Werikosa children. The chair rocked back hard against its ties, causing one heart-stopping moment when Chase thought they were all going to go flying, but it stayed put. Soon they were speeding across the floor of the crater.

  The steep crater walls loomed ahead. “Either we’re going to fly up this thing, or we’re going to smash into a million bits!” shouted Parker, cranking up to full speed. As they came closer, Chase’s heart pounded harder and harder. Then they hit … and shot straight up the hill. They weren’t even halfway up when the bike began to strain, and the smell of bitter, hot plastic wafted up from below.

  “Come on!” Chase roared, pounding his fist against the back of the chair. The hoverbike slowed to a crawl. They weren’t going to make it. The engine started to make high-pitched broken sounds, and the bike sank to a stop, grinding against gravel.

  “No!” cried Chase. He leapt off and pushed the back of the chair. It felt like he was trying to push a starship, not a hoverbike.

  Muttering under his breath, Parker leaned down and fiddled with the controls, yelping when he touched something hot. He wrapped his hand in the hem of his shirt to pry open the console. “We must have already eaten down on the bearings and put too much friction on the forward rotor,” he said. “Looks like it just tripped a fuse. I can jumper across it—it’s not like this bike has more than one ride left in it. But I need a small piece of metal for the jumper.”

  Chase felt around in his empty pockets, looked around at the barren soil, but saw nothing useful. Then he glanced down, and spotted a tag at the rear of the hovercraft, attached with a thick piece of twisted metal wire. “Hang on,” he said, kneeling to a crouch to untwist the wire. The metal was stiff and bit into his fingers, making it harder to untwist when his hands started to automatically phase through it. Gritting his teeth, he eventually pulled it free and passed it up to Parker.

  “That’ll work.” Parker went to work on the controls, cursing under his breath, and they waited nervously for a minute to see whether their rescue mission had already come to an end.

  “Should we—” Chase started to ask.

  “Here we go!” yelled Parker. The bike roared back to life and shot upward, soaring over the crest of the rim. They sped onward across the featureless surface of the moon, cheering like they’d won the lottery.

  In the distance, the shadowy outline of the gravity mines rose against the horizon. They hurtled toward it, but it was so far away they barely seemed to make any progress. Clutching the armrest with one hand, Lilli tried to pull her sweater over her face to block herself from the lichen and dust they were stirring up. Chase clung to the back of the chair, his arms and hands beginning to cramp and ache.

  Finally, after what felt like at least an hour of travel, the mineworks loomed before them. A gigantic metal frame held up drills that soared into the sky, the lowest section covered with metal panels—probably, Chase guessed, to protect against the windstorms. A long, lichen-covered warehouse was located right beside it, and a menagerie of dormant heavy machinery lay between the two. The lower buildings of a settlement were grouped farther in the distance.

  Parker drew to a stop alongside the outer building, parking the hoverbike beside the metal panels on the frame. As soon as he turned the whirring engine off, they could hear shouting from somewhere inside.

  Lilli closed her eyes for a moment. “They are right inside, by the mine shaft,” she said, heading for a gap in the panels.

  Chase’s feet felt like jelly after standing on the vibrating base of the hoverbike for so long, but he rushed after her. They ran down a short hallway that opened onto a giant outdoor area of a monstrous open framework, like they were standing inside the bottom of a half-built skyscraper. In the center, a drill as wide around as a transport shuttle hung suspended above a massive, ragged hole in the ground.

  Shouts echoed from across the way, joined by the terrible sound of blaster fire, but the drill blocked their view of what was happening. Chase grabbed Parker and Lilli, pulling them to slow down. If blasters were being used, he didn’t want them anywhere near the fight. “Stay back here! Don’t go any closer!”

  Parker shouted something, but Chase didn’t hear it. He sprinted as hard as he could toward the gigantic drill, coming around the side to see what was happening.

  Hotha stood near the edge of the mine shaft, with two more Werikosa standing behind him. All three carried heavy blasters. Hotha was shouting at someone, waving his weapon around.

  As he drew a little closer, with a plummeting feeling in his gut Chase saw that Maurus, Vidal, and Derrick were lined up right at the edge of the chasm. Hotha raised his blaster to point it at Derrick, but with his quick Lyolian reflexes, Maurus reached out with his good arm and knocked it upward, so the blast flew harmlessly over their heads.

  In response, Hotha kicked Maurus in the knee and swung the nozzle of his weapon into Maurus’s burned shoulder. With a yell, Maurus buckled at the waist. All Hotha had to do was shove a bare foot in his chest.

  And just like that Maurus toppled backward, vanishing into the mine shaft.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  For a moment, the universe froze. Chase slowed to a stop, staring at the empty space where Maurus had disappeared into the mine shaft, unable to believe what he’d just seen. His mouth fell open, and all the air rushed out of him. Was that it? Was he too late? The rumblings of a terrible noise began to grow in his chest.

  A scream sliced through the air. Vidal threw herself at the edge of the chasm, scrambling forward to look down into it. Her shrieks went up an octave in an unintelligible garble of words. Behind her, one of Hotha’s colleagues raised a foot as if to kick her in after Maurus. Derrick threw himself at the man, wrestling him backward.

  This shook Chase out of his stupor. He started running toward them again, and as he did, the words of Vidal’s cries became clear.

  “Hold on! Just hold on!” Was she calling out to Maurus? With a surge of hope, Chase raced toward her side, but before he could get there, Hotha stepped forward and pointed his weapon at her back.

  “NO!” roared Chase. His cry caught everyone’s attention, and immediately Hotha swiveled around, aiming directly at Chase’s chest. Blaster fire erupted from the nozzle.

  Both Derrick and Vidal cried out, but Chase braced himself in time, and the blaster fire only made him stagger one step back, scowling at the numb sensation it left in his chest as it passed through him. Hotha lowered the weapon and cocked his head. Even Hotha’s companions paused to
stare at Chase, and Derrick was looking at him in a way he never had on the ship. “What on Taras—?”

  Hotha raised his blaster again to fire, but Chase dodged him this time, trying to lead him away from Vidal, who still crouched at the edge of the mine shaft. As he jogged backward, in the corner of his eye he saw her climb over the edge and down into the hole. Hotha jogged toward him, pointing his blaster again.

  “Hey you!” Lilli stood off to the left, and her cry caught Hotha’s attention. When he turned, she blinked out and reappeared a few feet to her right, then blinked out again and appeared diagonally behind that, and then again, and again. Chase wanted to strangle her for not staying out of it like he’d told her, but he saw his opportunity to grab a long, heavy pick off the ground and swing it at Hotha’s head. The Werikosa fell flat on his face, and Lilli grinned at Chase.

  “We’ll talk about this,” he said, pointing at her in what he hoped was an authoritative way.

  Derrick had managed to pin down one of the two other Werikosa, but the second was coming up behind him, blaster raised as if to club the soldier with it.

  A loud rumble shook the air, and a monstrous mechanical digger rolled toward the mine shaft on thick tank treads, a gigantic scoop on a long metal arm poised over the cabin. Behind the controls, Parker’s pale face was fixed on the fight before him. As the shovel of the machine swung down, Derrick tore free and rolled out of the way, and the shovel clamped over both of the Werikosa, trapping them against the ground.

  Climbing to his feet and wiping his brow, Derrick gave Parker a thumbs-up. He jogged over to the edge of the chasm and squinted down. Then he jumped.

  Chase raced to the edge of the pit. The top of the mine shaft was even bigger than he had realized—the entire Falconer could have fit from end to end across its width, though it narrowed farther below. The walls were steep but not smooth, and a thousand ledges of broken moon rock jutted out to create handholds. Derrick had landed on a wide ledge just below the lip.

  Chase sucked in his breath when he saw Maurus farther down, clinging to an overhang. The rock he’d caught hold of to stop his fall jutted too far out for him to reach any other location, so he hung uselessly, unable to climb or swing to another spot. Vidal had climbed down to a ledge nearby, but she couldn’t find an angle with enough leverage to offer him her hand.

  Derrick scrambled down the wall to a wide, flat shelf of rock and positioned himself on a ledge just to the left of Maurus. He dropped to his stomach and wriggled off the edge of the overhang, extending his right leg toward Maurus. “Here!” he shouted. “Grab my foot!”

  Maurus pushed sideways off the rock wall and seized Derrick’s ankle, using his momentum to swing to a small ledge nearby, but the motion must have been more than Derrick expected, and it yanked him right to the edge of his platform. Maurus let go to grab onto the next outcropping of rock, but Derrick slipped from his handhold and slid down the wall with a shout, grabbing desperately at anything to stop himself.

  Chase looked up for rope, for tools, for anything to help. “Parker, get that machine over here!” he yelled. The shovel wasn’t nearly long enough to reach, but it was all they had. He heard an anguished cry, and what he saw when he looked down again made his heart stop. Far below in the canyon, Vidal had scrambled down to a ledge where Derrick lay facedown and very still. She kneeled by his head, while Maurus’s anguished shout echoed up the rocky walls.

  “Chase, look out!” came Parker’s panicked voice behind him.

  A jumble of images and movement came at him when he looked over his shoulder—Hotha, bleeding and furious, sprinting at him, and a flash of Lilli, sending a copy in to trip him before he reached Chase.

  Alone, Chase could have braced himself against Hotha and let him blast through and into the void. But some instinctive, irrational part of himself automatically reached out to grab Lilli, even though she vanished as soon as he touched her arm. But it was enough to tip him over and sent him careening into the pit along with Hotha.

  For a split second, there was nothing but air and the tangled limbs of the Werikosa. Chase reached out instinctively, catching the edge of a brown rock, and he grabbed it. Hotha plummeted past him.

  Before Parker’s white face appeared at the edge of the canyon, Lilli was already there, crouched on the very rock he was holding on to. Her face was fierce, but tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Here!” she shouted, extending her hand toward him. “Take my hand!”

  If he hadn’t been so close to falling to his imminent demise, Chase would have laughed. “You can’t lift me,” he gasped. “Thanks for the offer though.”

  He could feel his hands slipping through the rocks, burning as his body tried to phase away from the sharp edges. Stop it, stop it! He focused every bit of energy into keeping himself solid so that he wouldn’t tumble down the steep shaft after Maurus and the others.

  If he could just angle the jump right, he might land on the tiny ledge nearby. But if he missed …

  Parker’s head appeared over the top of the canyon, followed by a length of cable. “Grab this!” But it was impossible—even with Parker stretching down as far as he dared, the end of the cable was still a good arm’s length away from Chase.

  His arms burned with the effort of holding on. Chase glanced around, looking to see if there was something else he could safely drop onto. The giant drill was possibly within reach, but what would he do if he landed on the curved surface of the drill bit? Shoot down it like a curly slide?

  “Don’t do it!” yelled Parker, reading his movements. “I’ll get another rope!”

  But there was no time left—Chase’s stamina was giving out. He used his feet to push off from the stony wall, barely catching the edge of the drill bit with his hands and swinging his body to land on the curved surface below. Immediately he started to slide, picking up speed as he whipped around the bit. The metal was smooth from wearing against hard moon rock, too smooth to leave anywhere to grab onto.

  A bright light flashed in his eyes as he scrabbled and slid down, again and again as he whipped around the curves. Was something floating in the mine beside him, or was he hallucinating? He tried to turn himself sideways, to wedge his body into the curves, but all he managed to do was turn himself around so that he was sliding backward. Any second he was going to shoot out into the mine shaft like a greased egg.

  This had been a terrible idea.

  The end of the drill bit came without warning, and for a moment Chase was weightless, flailing through the air before the inevitable plummet down toward his doom. But instead, three walls appeared around him, swallowing him up as he hit a hard metal floor. The canyon still swam before his eyes in a dizzying swirl, and it wasn’t until he started to roll across the floor that he realized he’d landed in the back cargo area of some kind of small cruiser, the entire back hatch of which was wide open. He turned to see who was piloting, but the back of the cargo hold was just a blank wall with a door.

  With a gut-wrenching turn, the cruiser whipped around to show the surface above the canyon, and standing right outside the hatch was Parker. Seeing Chase, Parker leapt into the cargo area beside him with a relieved grin.

  “Who’s piloting this?” Chase yelled. He looked around for any clues as to whose cruiser this was, but the inside of the cargo hold was blank and sterile.

  “Who cares?” Parker grabbed hold of the wall as the vehicle shot across the mine, coming level to where Lilli was on the other side of the mine shaft. Chase reached out to help her aboard, and as soon as they were all inside, the rear hatch of the cargo hold closed, encasing them in the cruiser.

  Chase dashed to the window on the back hatch, looking down as the canyon shrunk away below them. “No, we have to get Maurus!” he shouted, pounding on the window. “Go back!”

  Parker was trying unsuccessfully to open the door into the rest of the vehicle. “Hey!” he shouted. “Whoever you are, let us out of here! We need to go back for someone!”

  Without warning, the r
oom simultaneously shrank and expanded, with the accompanying brain-compressing feeling that Chase recognized as a fold. The back window went immediately dark—whoever had picked them up had leapt right off the surface of Rhima into deep space.

  “No!” he screamed, beating against the blackened windows. They’d left Maurus and Vidal there, stranded at the bottom of the canyon. And Derrick …

  Lilli sat hunched on the floor, her cheeks still stained with tears.

  “Hang on,” Chase said to Parker, gearing up to jump through the locked door and rush the pilot’s deck.

  “Be careful,” warned Parker. “You don’t—”

  But before he could finish, the cargo door zipped open, and Chase stumbled backward, stunned into silence. Because the person who walked through the door was someone Chase hadn’t seen in months, someone he hadn’t expected to see ever again.

  Mina fixed him with her piercing blue eyes and smiled. “Hello there. It’s nice to see you again.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When Chase saw Mina in the cargo hold of that transport vehicle, the first feeling that flooded through him was relief. Dependable, reliable Mina—he’d never been so happy to see her placid face, and for the first few seconds, it didn’t matter how she’d found them, or what kind of conclusions that led to about Ksenia. He just wanted to hug her.

  He gestured out the window, although the green sphere of the moon wasn’t visible. “We have to go back. Maurus is still down there with two others.”

  Dependable, reliable Mina’s brown hair swung around her heart-shaped face as she shook her head. “I’m sorry. Maurus is on his own now.”

  It took a moment to register her answer. Was she really refusing to help? This wasn’t some random stranger who’d picked them up—this was Mina, their friend. As soon as the thought entered his mind, Parker’s judgment echoed behind it: She’s not your friend. She’s an android. She doesn’t have friends. But she knew Maurus. They had all traveled across the galaxy together, as a team. Why wouldn’t she want to help him? “Are you kidding? We can’t leave him stranded. One of his crewmembers is hurt really bad—maybe dead.”