Starbounders #2

by Adam Jay Epstein

  DEDICATION

  For Andrew, my writing partner.

  And Christopher, who introduced me to the most

  important person in my life.

  —A. J. E.

  For Scott, my older brother.

  Thanks for teaching me everything I know.

  —A. J.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Back Ad

  About the Authors

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Zachary’s friction boots held fast as he twisted to dodge his opponent’s flexible combat stick. Before she swung again, Zachary somersaulted to what looked like an inverted staircase nearby. Zachary and Tai Sunaka were the final two Lightwings competing in the sparring duel, one in a series of contests that would determine the SQ captains for the annual Indigo Starbounder Games. Tai springboarded through the gravity-free environment of the Qube, blocking Zachary’s attack with her wrist guard and striking him hard in the thigh as she passed.

  “Hey, watch where you swing that thing,” Zachary said, wincing from his upside-down perch.

  “Less talk, more stick,” Tai snapped back, with another lightning-quick hit to his shin. Then to his abdomen. Throat. Face. Zachary tried to brush off each successive blow, but the last one—a brutal strike to his bicep—stung a little more than the rest.

  It had only been a few weeks since Zachary’s late morphology instructor, Professor Olari, had taken hold of Zachary’s arm and burned a strange symbol into his flesh. With his dying breath, Olari had asked Zachary to use the knowledge he had left him to continue what he had started—and, oh yeah, every known galaxy was at risk if Zachary failed.

  Upon their return to Indigo 8, a hidden Earth base for Starbounders-in-training, it hadn’t taken Zachary’s friend Quee long to recognize the symbol on Zachary’s arm. It was identical to one on a pair of hacking hands—robotic hands used to disguise a cyber criminal’s fingerprints while infiltrating an enemy computer system—she’d taken from a discarded carapace. She’d used the serial number engraved on them to determine that the hands were made in the Exo-Shell factory on the planet of Adranus. Someone there would surely be able to translate the message buried in the symbol; now they just had to figure out a way to get there.

  “Ninety seconds remaining.” Cerebella, Indigo 8’s mainframe computer stated, her voice echoing through the giant glass cube.

  Zachary had won his first four sparring duels in the round-robin tournament, and defeating Tai would all but guarantee his spot as one of the captains. But being a captain was the furthest thing from Zachary’s mind. Winning was reward enough for him. Unfortunately, in this duel, he was behind on points, so the only way to get the victory was by scoring a disarm-and-submit. He’d have to strike Tai’s weapon with his combat stick and dislodge it from her grasp. Such an aggressive strategy opened a combatant up, making him vulnerable to the same maneuver.

  Zachary lowered his combat stick, inviting Tai to aim for his head. She took the bait and flicked the flexible baton up at Zachary’s chin. In one quick motion, Zachary disengaged the friction locks on his boots and kicked off with his feet. Caught off guard, Tai wasn’t fast enough to react, allowing Zachary to snare her weapon. With a thrust, he ripped the combat stick free from her fingers, leaving her prone and helpless. Zachary reactivated his friction locks and was in position to deliver the winning blow.

  Buzz.

  Time had run out. Zachary and Tai pushed off, down to the floor of the Qube, exiting through the antechamber into the holding room. All the Lightwing boys and girls, including Ryic, Kaylee, and the newly initiated Quee, were gathered there, along with their resident advisors.

  “Congratulations, Tai,” said Kwan, one of the boys’ RAs. “You were in trouble there at the end, but the point total swung in your favor.”

  Tai’s group of friends flocked excitedly to her side. Zachary wiped a bit of dried blood from his lip, feeling confident that he was still the better Starbounder. Tai hadn’t taken out an entire fleet of Clipsian slicers, preventing Earth’s destruction. But he had.

  “Nice disarm,” Kaylee said. “Now you’ve just got to work on the submit part.”

  “Two more seconds and she would have been mine,” Zachary said.

  “You didn’t hear me making excuses.” Zachary didn’t even have to turn to know that the voice belonged to Apollo, an obnoxious cabinmate of his who acted like they had some big rivalry going.

  “That’s because Tai kicked your butt so hard, Derek and Kwan had to help you out of the Qube,” Kaylee replied.

  “She did not,” Apollo protested. “She blindsided me, is all.”

  “Who’s making excuses now?” Zachary asked.

  “Whatever. Second best is just a loser with bragging rights,” Apollo said. He didn’t give Zachary a chance to get in the last word, either; he was already halfway across the holding room.

  “Tai Sunaka’s mother was a Karteka warrior,” Ryic said. “She fought off a whole army of snagglevire with nothing more than her knuckles and a bo. Tai was probably given her first combat stick when she was in diapers. It’s a miracle you lasted as long as you did. I’d say second place is something to be plenty proud of.”

  “How did you take such a beating in there and keep fighting, anyway?” Quee asked Zachary.

  “It comes naturally for me,” he replied. “I’m a middle child.”

  Later that day, during free hour before dinner, Zachary, Kaylee, Ryic, and Quee were practicing warp glove–wielding maneuvers on the pebbly beach between the boys’ and girls’ SQs. As had become customary for the foursome, they were hanging out by themselves, away from their fellow trainees.

  “Is it just me, or have we gotten a little cliquey since we’ve come back?” Ryic asked. “We hardly socialize with anyone else here.”

  “That’s because we have nothing in common with them,” Zachary replied. “After all we’ve been through, what do we have to talk about? Who’s going to be SQ captain, or what they’re serving for dinner in the Ulam dining room tonight? It just doesn’t seem that important.”

  Quee twisted her wrist and pointed at a row of soda cans resting on top of a rock pile in the distance.

  “Remember, use your forefinger to adjust direction,” Zachary said. “You don’t need to aim with your whole hand.”

  In the weeks since Quee had been formally welcomed as an Indigo 8 Starbounder-in-training, she had received her very own glove, and only now was she starting to get the hang of it. Sort of. A black disc formed before her, and she reached her gloved hand through. But she overshot her target, opening a second hole about ten feet beyond the cans.

  “Almost,” Zachary said. “You just have to keep practicing. Here, watch. Notice how I don’t rush my distance calibration.”

  He pulled a metal orb from his pocket and, with a squeeze of his pinky and thumb, the ball expanded, enveloping his hand in a tight-fitting green-and-silver warp glove. He pointed at the cans, then turned his wrist thirty degrees to set the distance. His glove opened up a pair of holes and darted through them. He grabbed one of the sodas, bringing it back to his side.

  Kaylee walked up and snatched the can out of Zachary’s glove. She used one of the sharp points on her spiked bracele
t to punch a hole in the top.

  “Thanks,” she said, before taking a big swig.

  Just then, Zachary’s Indigo 8–issued tablet chimed. He pulled it out of his pocket and unlocked it with a swipe. He then touched a prompt that read INCOMING MESSAGE.

  “Permission granted for off-base declassified communication,” Cerebella said.

  “She’s talking about you calling your parents, right?” Quee asked.

  “Indigo 8 takes its security very seriously,” Zachary replied. “You can’t just make a cell phone call anytime you please.”

  “You still planning on keeping your parents in the dark about Olari when you talk to them?” Kaylee asked.

  “I don’t have much choice,” Zachary replied. “I know they’d tell Madsen, and you saw what happened the last time we trusted the IPDL. An assassin was sent to kill us. I still think there’s a way my mom and dad can help us, though. And I won’t even have to tell them the secret Olari was so desperate to protect.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ryic said. “Why do you feel it’s necessary to deceive them?”

  “Because if they suspect I’m in even the slightest bit of danger, they’ll do whatever they can to protect me.”

  “Even if it jeopardizes the entire outerverse?” Ryic asked.

  “Rational thinking gets thrown out the window,” Zachary said.

  Ryic’s naivety made sense, considering he had no experience with how overprotective moms and dads could be when their kids were in trouble. Where Ryic came from, a distant planet called Klenarog, people didn’t have parents. Instead, they were birthed from a primordial spring known as the Origin Pool.

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, Ryic, it doesn’t make sense to me, either,” Quee said, calibrating her warp glove for another attempt at grabbing a can. “The closest thing I had to parents in Tenretni was the gang of hustlers and thieves who took me in after I was abandoned. And they had me crawling through air ducts before I could walk.”

  “And I thought time-outs were bad,” Kaylee quipped.

  “I’m not complaining. They taught me how to survive. I never would have made it this far without them.” This time when Quee reached her gloved hand for the can, she came up a few feet short, having miscalculated the distance again. But she was undeterred, lining up her glove once more.

  “Do you regret leaving?” Zachary asked. “Coming here and starting over?”

  “No. For the first time in my life I feel like I have a purpose. Like I’m doing something that matters. But I worry sometimes about forgetting where I came from, and who I was before.”

  “I think about the life I left behind, too,” Ryic said. “I was going to be made supreme commander of my people. But I ran away, thinking this would be easier.” He sighed. “That certainly hasn’t turned out to be the case.”

  “We’ve all reinvented ourselves since we got here,” Zachary said. “Well, everyone but Kaylee.”

  “That’s not true,” Kaylee said.

  “Really?” Zachary asked. “Name one thing that’s different about you.”

  “I tried this new shade of purple nail polish.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think that counts,” Zachary replied.

  “I did it!” Quee shrieked.

  The others turned to see her jumping up and down excitedly, holding one of the soda cans in her warp glove.

  “What did I tell you?” Zachary said. “It’s all in the wrist.”

  Quee smiled. She popped open the can and was met by a blast of carbonated fizz that sprayed her directly in the face.

  Zachary was being led by a robotic attendant down an underground hallway in the Ulam.

  “Beautiful day today, isn’t it?” Zachary asked, making small talk. The robot continued its methodical walk forward without responding. “You don’t get out much, do you?”

  The two arrived at a small, enclosed room with a single seat before a holographic projector. “You just going to wait outside?” Zachary asked as he sat down in the chair. The robot inserted the double prongs sticking out from its fingers into the wall. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  Within seconds, a face appeared on the screen. But it wasn’t his mom or dad. It was his younger sister, Danielle, still a few years away from being old enough to attend Indigo 8 herself. She was deaf, but that wasn’t going to keep her from being a Starbounder. Nothing would.

  What’s up? Danielle signed.

  Hey, sis, how you been? Zachary replied.

  The same. Except I’ve been using the training room in the garage a lot more since you left. I even talked Mom and Dad into letting me put a mattress in there.

  “And a minifridge,” Zachary’s mom added, appearing next to Danielle in the frame, along with Zachary’s dad.

  That hardly came as a surprise to Zachary. He could picture his old neighborhood now: all the kids riding their bikes outside, while Danielle blasted holes through a com-bot with her sonic crossbow.

  “So, what do you need?” Zachary’s dad asked, cutting to the chase. “I know you’re not just checking in to say hi.”

  “I resent that,” Zachary replied. “But now that you mention it, I could use a little extra cash in my canteen account. I totally shredded my last pair of friction boots.”

  “Uh-huh,” Zachary’s dad said. “I had a feeling.”

  “It’s still great to see you, though,” Zachary said.

  “Not so fast, young man,” Zachary’s mom said. “You’re going to have to tell us something about what you’ve been up to at Indigo 8 before we just send money.”

  “Well, I’ve really gotten into engineering. In fact, do you guys still keep in touch with that contact you had at the Inertia Starcraft plant on Adranus?”

  “Arg-Nik-Vo,” his dad responded. “Yeah, why?”

  “The Lightwings are scheduled to go on a field trip to the Musuem of Quantum Engineering,” Zachary said. “I’m sure it will be interesting and all, but I thought maybe you could pull a few strings with Arg-Nik-Vo and get us a guided tour of the real deal.”

  “You must really want those friction boots,” Zachary’s mom said. “Buttering up your father like that.”

  “Don’t discourage him, dear,” Zachary’s dad said. “It sounds like he’s taking a genuine interest. Of course I’ll talk to him. He’d be thrilled to show a bunch of young Starbounders where all their cool gear comes from.”

  Please don’t say “cool,” Dad, Danielle signed. It makes you seem anything but.

  “That’s assuming Director Madsen will even sign off on the additional stop,” Zachary’s mom said.

  “I can’t see how that would be a problem,” Zachary’s dad replied. “It’s great to see that you’re so keen on engineering and astrophysics. Those were my favorite subjects, too.”

  Zachary just smiled and nodded. Little did his dad know, this trip would have nothing to with science.

  “Whatever you do, do not, and I repeat, do not stray from the shadow path,” the engineer known as Arg-Nik-Vo warned the thirty Lightwing boys and girls following behind him.

  Zachary and his fellow Starbounders-in-training were walking under the sun-resistant cover of a breezeway connecting their ship’s docking station to the Inertia Starcraft manufacturing plant. Just beyond the reflective roof protecting them were the three suns of Adranus. Except for those native to the planet, like Arg-Nik-Vo, whose shimmery, quartzlike skin acted as a safeguard, exposure to the intense light would result in spontaneous combustion.

  Zachary’s plan had gone exactly as he’d hoped, and after the previously scheduled stop at the quantum engineering museum, here they were visiting the place where all the real IPDL fighter ships—pitchforks, battle-axes, dreadnoughts, and more—were built. Normally, Zachary would be excited to see the most talented engineers in the outerverse at work. But today, he had a more urgent matter to tend to.

  “There it is,” Quee whispered, pointing to a shimmering domed structure far beyond the boundaries of the shadow path. “The Ex
o-Shell factory where my hacking hands were manufactured.”

  “We’ll have to sneak away once we’re inside,” Zachary whispered.

  “Everybody, through here,” Arg-Nik-Vo said. “And if you haven’t already, make sure to remove your lensicons. We’re entering a level-one clearance zone.”

  He held open a door leading from the breezeway onto the factory floor of the Inertia Starcraft plant. Zachary stepped inside and was awed by what he saw. Hundreds of ships in various states of construction filled the room, and giant sunbeams shone through the skylights, directed down at the metal exteriors of the spacecraft. Engineers of all species were spread throughout the facility. Those native to Adranus were able to work without protective gear, while the rest were covered head-to-toe in mirrored mesh bodysuits that reflected the heat away.

  “Now you can see why the IPDL decided to build their ships here,” Arg-Nik-Vo said. “The light from the planet’s three suns heats the metal to a malleable state. It allows engineers to bend and ply the outer hulls to the exact shape they wish.”

  “I want that for my sixteenth birthday,” Kaylee said, eyeing an ultra-sleek ship that resembled the open mouth of a cobra.

  “Get in line,” Arg-Nik-Vo said. “Those are strictors. They’re chase ships, for Elite Corps officers only. They’ve outrun every spacecraft in the outerverse, even lunaracers.”

  “What’s behind there?” asked Apollo. He was pointing to an area enshrouded by digital curtains.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Arg-Nik-Vo answered. “It’s classified, even from high-level engineers like me. We’ve got a pretty extensive R and D pipeline. The projects are on a strictly need-to-know basis. And none of us need to know.”

  Zachary had turned his attention away from the ships on the floor. He was focused on finding an exit they could slip through unnoticed.

  “Now we’re going to move into the instrumentation wing,” Arg-Nik-Vo said. “There you’ll see how starboxes and Kepler cartographs are programmed.”

  He led the Lightwings toward a set of double doors on the opposite end of the floor. Zachary, lingering at the back of the group, was still searching for a way out when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see one of the engineers, hidden behind the visor and helmet of a bodysuit.