Together, the two heaved open the hatch and descended a staircase into a hallway covered floor-to-ceiling in green rubber.
“We know someone named Bedekken signed for Olari’s stuff,” Zachary whispered. “So that’s who we need to find.”
“We’ll save you the time,” a voice called from behind them.
Zachary and Kaylee spun around to see two figures, one a charcoal-skinned Clipsian wearing a lab coat, the other a broad-shouldered, seven-foot-tall woman coming at them with a stun stick. Kaylee was hit first, and the nerve-numbing blow sent her into instant paralysis. Zachary reached into his pocket for his warp glove, but before he could defend himself, the stun stick struck his neck and he, too, went down. His face hit the rubber floor with a cushioned but firm thump.
What happened next felt like a nightmare made real. He was awake. He could see and hear everything happening around him. But he couldn’t move. Not a single muscle. That meant he couldn’t scream, even though he wanted to.
The giant woman hoisted Kaylee over one shoulder and Zachary over the other, then she and the Clipsian walked through the hall. It was hard to tell which direction they were headed, seeing as how Zachary’s head was upside down and pressed against the woman’s back. He could make out flashes of activity in the rooms they passed, mostly what looked like experiments being conducted. There was one exception that caught Zachary’s attention: behind a thick glass window, a dozen robots tended to a family of cinderbeasts, ash-colored, bearlike creatures common throughout the outerverse. But unlike any cinderbeasts Zachary had seen before, these were emaciated, perhaps even dying. Zachary focused the crosshairs of his lensicon on a purple icon glowing on the window, and he used all his energy and concentration to blink twice.
* * *
OUTERVERSE SYMBOL:
CATEGORY 1 QUARANTINE
NO LIFE-FORM SHOULD TOUCH, BREATHE, OR COME IN CONTACT WITH THE HAZARD CONTAINED WITHIN. DEATH WOULD BE AN INEVITABLE RESULT.
* * *
Well, it made sense that the Black Atom Society had robots doing this research. They weren’t technically life-forms, so no harm could come to them.
The woman carrying Zachary and Kaylee continued ahead, moving through a series of doorways before arriving at their destination: a lab room coated in black rubber. There were cages with lab rats and alien species inside. The woman set Zachary and Kaylee down on the floor.
It wasn’t long before Zachary could feel a tingling in his toes, and soon sensation was returning to the rest of his body. He and Kaylee sat up almost at the same time. They shared a concerned look but didn’t speak a word. The Clipsian and the large woman stood by silently. Then a third figure entered the room, but this one was no stranger. It was the same masked man who had questioned them at Indigo 8 all those weeks ago.
“We found these two in the tunnels,” the Clipsian said to the masked man. “Somehow they made it to the planet’s surface alive. They came in through the service hatch. We’ll send out a search party to locate their ship.”
The masked man walked up to Zachary and Kaylee. He stared down at them. Either he didn’t remember them at all, or he was just doing a really good job of pretending.
“If you’re lost, your memories will be erased. If you’re trespassing, you’ll be held here indefinitely. If you’re spies, you’ll be killed. So which is it?”
Zachary didn’t like any of the options, so he remained quiet.
“Would the two of you please leave us alone?” the masked man asked the Clipsian and the woman.
They nodded and exited. Zachary and Kaylee had been left unrestrained. Either this was the height of arrogance and stupidity, or the masked man was even more dangerous than Zachary first suspected.
The masked man waited for the door to close. Then he leaned in close to the two young Starbounders.
“I’m sorry about my little display just then. But there are traitors within the Black Atom Society. I don’t know who I can trust anymore.” Zachary knew the feeling. “I’m guessing your visit here has something to do with our mutual friend, Excelsius Olari.”
“Are you Bedekken?” Zachary asked.
“I am.”
“We know that you received a delivery of Professor Olari’s belongings,” Zachary said. “He had a pair of lexispecs. We need them.”
“What for?” Bedekken asked.
“And why should we trust you?” Kaylee shot back.
“You shouldn’t. But I assure you, we want the same thing. I know Excelsius had been working on something before his death. I offered my assistance, but he was incredibly paranoid near the end. Turns out he had every right to be.”
Zachary and Kaylee shared a look. What choice did they have?
“He branded a message into my arm,” Zachary said. “His lexispecs are the only thing that can decipher it.”
“Then I’ll bring them to you at once,” Bedekken said. “You need to stay in here, though. Keep up the appearance of being under my custody.”
Zachary and Kaylee agreed. Bedekken wasted no time. He was out the door. Zachary could hear his voice just outside.
“I’ll be right back. Our visitors have decided not to cooperate. Perhaps I can persuade them to be more forthcoming with my tools.”
“Or you could just give me a few minutes alone with them,” Zachary heard the giant woman reply.
“No. I’ll handle this.”
Bedekken’s footsteps faded into the distance, and Zachary and Kaylee were left alone.
“It’s hard to trust a man wearing a mask,” Kaylee said. “Even if you can see his eyes through it.”
“Those creepy leather gloves don’t help,” Zachary replied.
The two waited. As the minutes crept by, Zachary began to wonder if Bedekken was ever going to come back with Olari’s lexispecs. Maybe they had been played. Maybe Zachary had fallen right into Bedekken’s trap, telling him what they had come for, and now he was off making sure they would never find it. Zachary scanned the room for another avenue of escape, but it appeared they were as trapped as the test subjects scratching at their cages across the room. The only way out was through the door guarded by the seven-foot-tall woman. Zachary and Kaylee could take her. Or at least try. Perhaps the element of surprise would give them the upper hand.
Zachary was palming his retracted warp glove, considering his next move, when the door opened and Bedekken returned carrying a small briefcase. He walked over to Zachary and Kaylee and set it down.
“My tools,” he said. Bedekken popped open the case, revealing a pair of lexispecs. It looked like a pair of glasses without the arms and with three layers of fine crystal lenses, each with circuits running across its surface. “I think this is what you’ve been looking for.”
Zachary removed the lexispecs and brought them up to his eyes. Tiny clamps locked onto his brows and cheekbones, holding the device in place. Zachary rolled up his sleeve and tilted his arm so he had a clear view of the grid of black-and-white squares. A scroll of holographic text appeared. But it wasn’t a simple message. It was a dense nest of blueprints and mathematical formulas. What little he could understand didn’t add up to much.
“It looks like plans for something that was being built,” Zachary told the others in a hushed tone. “But it may as well be written in Chinese. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Perhaps you would allow me,” Bedekken said.
Zachary removed the specs from his eyes and handed them over. Bedekken lifted his fingers to the edge of his mask and pulled back the iron shell covering his face. He was human, but scarred and burned beyond recognition.
“An unfortunate hazard of working on Luwidix,” Bedekken said. “I should never have stepped outside.”
He clamped the lexispecs to his eyes and peered down at Zachary’s tattoo. He took in the data that had puzzled Zachary just a moment ago.
“You’re right,” Bedekken said. “These are blueprints. Olari must have secretly retrieved them. I had no idea this was happening here
, right under my nose.”
“What?” Kaylee asked.
“It seems someone may have been building a kinetic force sink,” Bedekken replied. “With the right power source, such a device would be capable of pulling all the heat from an entire city.”
Zachary’s mind was racing. Professor Olari must have known that something with cataclysmic potential was being constructed inside the Black Atom Society. Obviously he didn’t know who was building it, exactly. That was the task Zachary and his companions had been left to figure out.
“What if the sink had unlimited power?” Zachary asked. “Could it extinguish a whole sun?”
Bedekken looked up from Zachary’s arm. “You’ve heard about the disaster on Protos?”
“Do you think it could be related?” Zachary asked.
“Perhaps. Whoever did that would have needed something extraordinary,” Bedekken answered.
“Like a perpetual energy generator?” Zachary asked.
A look of grave concern crossed Bedekken’s face.
“Yes, that would do the trick,” he replied.
“Skold,” Zachary said under his breath.
In his heart, Zachary had always had a feeling they’d be hearing about the alien fugitive again. He had saved their lives at the Callisto Space Station, but he had stolen its perpetual energy generator, too. It was one of the few of its kind, and no doubt worth a fortune on the black market.
“You think he could have been involved in what happened on Protos?” Kaylee asked.
“Skold is a profiteer, not a killer,” Zachary replied. “But he might be able to lead us to whoever was behind it.”
“I think you’re right. You find who has the perpetual energy generator, you’ll find who’s responsible for Protos’s sun going out,” Bedekken said.
Even though they were just for show, the shockles now clamped around Zachary’s wrists were emitting frequent bursts of energy, making his fingers twitch uncontrollably. Kaylee’s hands were immobilized as well, and she looked even less pleased with the painful restraints. Bedekken exited the lab room with his two prisoners in tow. The tall woman and the Clipsian remained stationed at the door.
“Where are you taking them?” the woman asked.
“I’m going to expedite their transfer to an extraction center,” Bedekken replied. “Make sure there’s nothing these two are hiding.”
“Do you require our assistance?” the Clipsian asked.
“No, I can take it from here.” Bedekken pressed a small button on a handheld device, causing the shockles on Zachary’s and Kaylee’s wrists to fire off a sudden charge. Both flinched. Once Bedekken led them down the hall and out of the others’ sight, he leaned in quietly. “Sorry about that.”
Bedekken hurried them through three more corridors, passing scientists of different species, each too busy to give them a second look. Zachary couldn’t help but glance their way, though, his curiosity piqued by the shrouded gurneys they were pushing in and out of lab rooms. A bony tail reached out from beneath the plastic sheeting on one of the gurneys and poked at Zachary’s leg. He hustled closer to Bedekken.
“What was that?” Zachary asked.
“I’m not sure,” Bedekken answered. “There are so many experiments being conducted, it’s impossible to keep track of them all.”
“If the Intergalactic Humane Board knew what was going on here, they’d shut this place down so fast,” Kaylee said.
“They do know,” Bedekken said. “And they agreed unanimously to allow us to continue our work unmonitored. The research we’re doing is for the good of the outerverse. And while the thought of it might not be pleasant, it’s necessary.”
He pushed them through a set of double doors and down yet another hallway. Up ahead was the entrance to a small space hangar.
“I’ll procure us a ship and get us out of here,” Bedekken continued. “We should be able to make it three bounds away before they realize we’re not headed for an extraction center.”
“Our friends are waiting for us in a skipjack just beyond the nearest space fold,” Zachary said.
“Then we’ll signal them to follow us,” Bedekken said. “We won’t have time for a rendezvous.”
Bedekken stopped before a glass barrier at the end of the hall and jutted his masked face forward, allowing the optical scan to read his iris. Immediately the glass partition descended into the floor.
He ushered Zachary and Kaylee into the hangar, which appeared to be functioning as both a launch portal and a high-tech mechanic shop. One side had your standard-issue noncombat starships; the other, dreadnoughts, pitchforks, and various crafts Zachary had never seen before, all with their weapons and engines disassembled. A variety of workers, both organic and mechanical, were busy building prototypes with the old parts and new ones composed of pulsing glass and glowing metal.
Bedekken gestured across the hangar to a launch-ready starship that resembled the cylindrical head of a sledgehammer. “We’ll be taking that one over there, the sledge. Just keep your eyes down and follow me.”
They started toward it but were quickly stopped by a fair-skinned, red-haired woman who appeared to be carrying an invisible object in her arms.
“What’s this?” the woman asked, eyeing Zachary and Kaylee.
“Trespassers,” Bedekken replied. “I’m taking them to Gation 6. What are you doing back so soon?”
“We had some bugs with the new transparency silk. It becomes visible under high-level gamma radiation. Back to the drawing board.”
They shared a smile and went their separate ways. Bedekken continued his approach toward the sledge when the red-haired woman called out from behind.
“I’m sorry, but I have to ask. If those are trespassers, why are only their wrists shockled? Protocol code two-forty-four clearly states that any prisoners must be secured at both the wrists and the ankles.”
Bedekken stopped, then whispered to Zachary and Kaylee. “Get on that ship and don’t turn back. I’ll deal with her. Find whoever took that perpetual energy generator. Finish what Olari started. I fear this is bigger than any of us imagined. Go!”
Zachary and Kaylee didn’t wait another moment. They were sprinting for the sledge. Behind them, the red-haired woman had pulled her sonic crossbow, but Bedekken was tackling her to the ground.
It wasn’t until Zachary reached for the spacecraft’s door handle that he realized his wrists were still shockled. Of course, Kaylee’s were, too. But Bedekken was in the midst of a brawl that was keeping him a bit preoccupied at the moment.
Despite his limited range, Zachary was able to jimmy the door open, and he and Kaylee hurried on board. The two entered the flight deck and Zachary examined the steering mechanism.
“With our hands shockled, neither one of us will be able to fly the ship on our own,” he said.
“Then we’ll have to do it together,” Kaylee replied.
Kaylee sat down in the pilot seat but made sure to take up only half of it. Zachary settled in beside her, and although it was a tight squeeze, it would have to do. They strapped the single seat belt across both of their waists, and their shoulders were pressed up snugly against one another.
With Zachary adjusting direction and Kaylee handling altitude, the pair gestured with their hands and motioned for takeoff. At first, the sledge lunged erratically, as their coordinated commands weren’t quite synchronized.
“Slow down,” Zachary said.
“How about you speed up?” Kaylee countered. “We’re trying to get out of here alive.”
They gave it another go. This time Zachary watched Kaylee’s hands and she watched his. Outside, several of the hangar mechanics had apprehended Bedekken, and a few others were trying to signal Zachary and Kaylee to stop. The young Starbounders ignored them and together navigated the sledge toward the galactic fold. Zachary peered out the corner of the flight deck window to catch a final glimpse of Bedekken. Whether or not he suffered the same fate as Olari, Zachary would remember him as a her
o, and make sure others did, too.
Zachary let his hands drift forward, increasing the ship’s speed toward the fold. Suddenly the flight deck’s lang-link hummed to life and a voice called out, “Surrender now. You are making an unauthorized exit. Return to Luwidix immediately.”
Paying the warning no heed, Zachary and Kaylee hurtled the craft in the direction of the black disc hovering at the end of the tunnel and shot through once they arrived. Their bound took them into space, and as soon as the nose of the sledge exited the fold, the ring of particle turrets began an all-out assault.
“Inverted roll, z-axis,” Kaylee commanded.
“What?” Zachary asked.
“I can’t do it without you.”
Zachary racked his memory. He knew he had learned this maneuver in his Indigo 8 flight class. As he was sitting there, momentarily frozen, the sledge got hit by another burst of fire, sending them spiraling rapidly. Once they stabilized, Zachary suddenly recalled every detail of making an inverted roll. But it was a little too late for that now.
More particle fire was coming their way. Only this time he didn’t need Kaylee’s prodding.
“Solar dive, sixty degrees,” Zachary said.
Kaylee nodded and the two crossed their arms, allowing the ship to corkscrew downward, out of the range of the turrets. Safely in the clear, Zachary and Kaylee were able to breathe easier. For the first time since they’d shared the pilot seat, Zachary realized just how closely he and Kaylee were pressed up against each another. He tried to scoot aside to put a little distance between them, but seeing as they were buckled together, he didn’t have far to go.
“I sure am glad I wore deodorant this morning,” Zachary said.
Kaylee smiled, a bit uncomfortably.
Zachary’s cheeks began to flush, but his embarrassment didn’t last long. Up ahead, he could see Wayfare’s skipjack. Zachary activated the flight deck’s lang-link and sent out a message to the ship.
“Wayfare, it’s us. We made it.”
After a short silence, Wayfare’s voice responded: “Well, I’ll be a son of a gun. I thought you’d be goners for sure.”
Starbounders #2 Page 6
