Starbounders #2

by Adam Jay Epstein

  If there were any doubts about Quee’s theory, they were quickly put to rest when a snaggletoothed beast wearing metal armor floated into view.

  Zachary turned his voltage slingshot toward it, but before he fired, he saw that the creature’s tongue was hanging out of its mouth and its diamond-shaped eyes were rolled back in its head.

  Zachary blinked, and his lensicon’s heads-up display identified the creature.

  * * *

  LIFE-FORM:

  MOLKING RAIDER

  THIS OUTERVERSE SPECIES OF SPACE PIRATES HAVE NO ALLEGIANCE OR TIES TO ANY KNOWN GOVERNMENT OR INTERPLANETARY COALITION.

  AFTER THEIR HOME PLANET WAS DESTROYED DURING A CIVIL WAR, THE MOLKINGS BECAME A NOMADIC TRIBE, EVER IN SEARCH OF NEW TERRA ORBS TO CALL THEIR OWN. COMPROMISE IS SEEN AS A SIGN OF WEAKNESS, AND THE ONLY WAY THEY VIEW AN ARGUMENT SETTLED IS WHEN ONE PARTY IS DEAD.

  * * *

  “I found two more members of the crew,” Skold called out from the neighboring flight deck. “They’re dead, too.”

  “If the perpetual generator is still on the ship, the only place it would be is the cargo hold,” Zachary said, pushing himself toward the back of the dreadnought.

  “I wouldn’t hold your breath,” Skold replied. “It looks like this place has been picked clean.” He pointed to the rows of emptied underbins and the spots where circuit boards had been ripped out of the walls. “Molking raiders take everything.”

  “Why would they bother with scraps and wiring if they came for the generator?” Ryic asked.

  “They’re Molks,” Skold said. “They can’t help themselves. If it’s not nailed down, they take it. And if it is nailed down, they take that, too.”

  Zachary, now moving alone, came to the open door of the cargo hold. He pulled himself inside and saw the large empty space where something had once been strapped down, but only the security webbing remained. He was about to head back for the main cabin when his eyes caught sight of a dead Basqalich stuck to the ceiling. Skold had said there were two crew members in the cargo hold. So where was the other?

  Suddenly Zachary felt something grab his ankle. He looked down and had his answer. A Basqalich was weakly gripping his friction boot. The creature’s skin was stained purple from the fluid still oozing out of its wounds.

  It labored to speak but managed to get out a few words. Unfortunately, they were in an off-planet language that Zachary was unable to understand.

  “Og-weil-tbora,” the Basqalich wheezed from its cracked lips.

  “I don’t understand you,” Zachary said.

  “Ngro-non eh . . .”

  “Skold, get in here!” Zachary shouted. “One of them is alive.”

  The Basqalich was fading, its life draining from its face. The creature turned and began rubbing its finger along the metal wall, making lines of purple ooze. Zachary watched expectantly as letters formed.

  IOIOIOIO

  “What does that mean?” Zachary asked, half to the Basqalich and half to himself.

  But he would not get a response. No one would. The creature was dead.

  Skold and the others flew into the cargo hold with weapons drawn.

  “It’s too late,” Zachary said.

  Kaylee and Quee were already eyeing the markings on the wall.

  “Io?” Kaylee asked. “That’s Jupiter’s moon. The one that the Callisto Space Station is hidden behind.”

  “Why would Basqalich traders be telling us to go there?” Ryic asked.

  “They wouldn’t,” Quee replied. “It’s not an I and an O, it’s a one and a zero. It’s binary code. The only universal language in the galaxy.”

  “What does it mean?” Zachary asked.

  “In this context, I have no idea,” she responded.

  Zachary saw that Skold was jimmying open a secret compartment in the floor. Glass canisters filled with a green liquid were hidden inside.

  “Nitro chargers,” Skold said. “Any raider worth his salt never would have left here without finding these.”

  Skold pushed himself back out into the cabin.

  “Where are you going?” Zachary asked.

  Skold didn’t answer. Zachary and his companions followed. When they caught up, Skold was examining the blast wounds covering the Molking raider’s body.

  “These are dry,” Skold said. “The ones on the Basqalich are still relatively fresh. My guess is he was dead before he ever stepped foot on this ship. Someone brought him here to throw us off their scent. It was a setup. Molking raiders don’t seem like the type who build star-killing devices, anyway.”

  “So somebody hires Basqalich middlemen to round up all the parts,” Zachary said, “then kills them off and tries to make it look like Molking raiders are behind it. They really must have wanted to cover their tracks.”

  Quee pulled herself to the flight deck and zeroed in on the starbox. She jammed her ionic dagger into the equipment panel and popped it open. After a quick hack, she turned back to the others.

  “They swept it clean,” she said. “All communication logs. Future destinations. Even the ship’s manifest. Gone.”

  “There’s a separate memory bank,” Skold said. “It’s built into the engine itself. It stores the coordinates of the last docked location.”

  “What good is that going to do us?” Ryic asked.

  “Well, since we’ll never know where this ship was headed next, we may as well find out where it came from,” Skold replied.

  Skold moved past Quee and removed a thin wire from the artificial flesh of his right wrist. He inserted it into the opening in the equipment panel and waited for the intended information to upload.

  “Subquatica,” he said. “A deep-sea tourist trap in the Tranquil Galaxies. The ship’s arrival is time-stamped. If you want answers, you should go there.”

  “Aren’t you coming with us?” Zachary asked.

  “I already did my part,” Skold replied. “You won’t even have to take me home. I’ll fly this.”

  “Um, guys, you’re going to want to see this,” Ryic said from the flight deck window.

  Zachary and the others turned to look. Outside, the stars were spinning again and the ship was being swept into the pull of the black hole. It was the same one they had escaped from earlier, only now it had grown in both size and magnitude.

  “On second thought, maybe I will join you,” Skold said.

  “We need to get back to the sledge,” Quee said.

  Skold retracted the wiring back into his arm, and the five rushed toward the dreadnought’s docking portal, springboarding themselves through the corridors. Zachary caught a sideways glance out one of the ship’s portholes and could see that the O2 bridge was beginning to splinter. The sledge appeared as if it wanted to spin in one direction while the dreadnought spun in another. It wasn’t clear how much time they had before the two would break apart completely.

  The group reached the exit, and after Quee soared through, the others squeezed their way into the clear tube leading to their ship. Everyone but Skold, that is, whose broad shoulders got stuck in the narrow opening. What sounded like nails dragging across glass pierced Zachary’s eardrums as the bridge was twisted like a piece of taffy. The noise nearly drowned out Skold’s call for help, but Zachary turned. He doubled back and extended a hand to Skold, attempting to pull him free.

  Zachary heard a loud pop and saw where the first fissures had turned into a full-blown hole. Air was quickly being sucked out. Zachary gave one final yank and tugged Skold through. A long gash down Skold’s right shoulder revealed the pistons and wiring beneath.

  As oxygen continued to drain from the tube, Zachary and Skold hurried across. With every fraction of a second that passed, Zachary felt it getting harder to breathe. The hole in the bridge was growing and the suction was getting stronger.

  Kaylee, Ryic, and Quee had safely passed through the entrance portal to the sledge. Although Zachary’s fingers were beginning to lose their grip on the walls of the tunnel, Skold was right beh
ind him, pushing him forward. The two reached the door and crossed inside, pulling it shut. As they did, the O2 bridge snapped clean off, tumbling toward the void.

  By the time Zachary reached the sledge’s flight deck, Ryic was already in the pilot seat, starting the ship’s engines. Kaylee had projected the Kepler cartograph onto the windshield and mapped out the fastest bounds to Subquatica.

  “Get this thing moving,” Skold said. “We don’t have much time.”

  As Skold and Zachary buckled in, Ryic gestured to the control panel and the sledge lurched forward, directly toward the black hole.

  “Turn around!” Skold shouted.

  “I’m trying,” Ryic replied.

  Zachary unlatched Ryic’s harness and pushed him aside.

  “Don’t worry, I got this,” Zachary said.

  He took the pilot seat and shifted the ship’s direction, thrusting the sledge away from the looming cosmic vortex, leaving the dreadnought as the only space vessel the hole would be swallowing today.

  Soon, they were soaring for the nearest fold.

  “Why did you come back for me?” Skold asked Zachary.

  “You were in trouble.”

  “You could have been killed,” Skold said.

  “Does that mean you’ll come with us?” Zachary asked.

  Skold looked out through one of the side windows and watched as the dreadnought began to crush in on itself.

  “I guess I don’t have much choice now,” he said.

  Zachary wasn’t sure if Skold was referring to the fact that he no longer had a ship to fly himself home or that he now owed Zachary a favor. Either way, it appeared as though their team of four had become a team of five.

  The flight to Subquatica was taking longer than anticipated, so the sledge was forced to stop at a remote fueling hub in the Crossroads region of the galaxy. While Skold negotiated a fair deal for a dozen fission canisters with the hub attendant, Zachary and the others discovered a lang-link in the docking station. Zachary sat before a small video screen displaying routing numbers to every IPDL base in the outerverse. He located the icon for Indigo 8 and touched it, activating a link to their Earth base.

  “Director Madsen, this is Zachary Night. I’m sure you’re aware by now that Ryic, Kaylee, Quee, and I escaped Captain Aggoman’s starjunk while it was docked at the Mammoths of Xero. I wish I could explain everything, but we can’t risk compromising our mission. Just know that we’re safe and doing everything we can to protect the outerverse. And please, don’t come looking for us—”

  “Hey, Zachary,” Ryic interrupted, “we’re all fueled up and the galactic fold to Kibarat is opening.”

  “Not now, Ryic!” Zachary shouted.

  He quickly reached out his hand and terminated the lang-link. Once he was sure the message had been sent and delivered, he turned to Ryic.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  “I don’t know, you really think they’ll believe I was stupid enough to blurt out where we were going right in the middle of the message?” Ryic asked. Kaylee’s and Quee’s looks said it all. “Don’t answer that.”

  “If they do come searching for us, they’ll be headed ten billion miles in the opposite direction,” Zachary said.

  Zachary felt they were making real progress, but he still knew that there were traitors intent on stopping them. Even within Indigo 8. They couldn’t be too careful. Besides, he was getting used to going it alone, and they had made it this far just fine.

  The four exited the booth and walked through the station. Even though it was a small port, it had a gravity anchor that simulated the pull of Earth perfectly. It’s nice to be walking for a change, Zachary thought. They passed by a spaste shop filled with nothing but thousands of tubes, each bearing a picture of the flavor stored inside. Next door was a news portal, where holographic screens displayed live news feeds from around the outerverse. The group’s attention was drawn to a particular story playing on over a dozen of the screens. Only one was in English.

  “This is now the second star within the last forty-eight hours to be hit,” a newscaster reported. “But unlike the attack on Protos, the sun of Clu 5 was completely extinguished, leaving its inhabitants in utter darkness. Evacuations are in progress, but the magnitude of these disasters is catastrophic.”

  “They’re not going to stop at just two,” Zachary said.

  “We don’t know that,” Ryic replied feebly.

  “The IPDL Security Council has put every available Starbounder on assignment,” the newscaster continued. “Several high-ranking Clipsians, formerly under Nibiru’s command, have been detained. But we want to stress that no one has taken responsibility yet for these attacks.”

  “You don’t think we should tell Madsen what we know?” Ryic asked. “Think of all the manpower that’s being wasted.”

  “We already know that somebody’s working on the inside,” Zachary said. “How else would those Basqalich bounty hunters have known that we were going to be on Adranus? Anyway, we don’t need anyone else’s help. We can finish this ourselves.”

  The trainees returned to the fueling hub, but Skold was nowhere to be seen. They looked around and called out his name before Quee finally spotted him on the opposite side of the station, sitting beside an aux-bot. As the group walked closer, they could see that Skold was having the damage to his shoulder fixed. Evidently the self-repair mechanism on his carapace couldn’t quite match the precision of a maintenance robot.

  “Not to rush you or anything, but suns are dying as we speak,” Kaylee said.

  “I know, I heard,” Skold replied. “That’s why you’re going to want me in tip-top shape.”

  Subquatica was a shining blue orb in space. Its entire surface was covered in ocean waters. Satellite beacons orbited the planet, guiding ships down to a giant artificial island with a landing pad on it. As the sledge slowly made its descent, Zachary could see that the waters were teeming with life. Pods of iridescent fish zigzagged just below the cresting waves. Gelatinous blobs with colorful tendrils carpeted swaths of sea.

  The metal island was nothing more than long rectangles of steel used for takeoffs and landings. Zachary guided the sledge down, docking it between two clairvoyant observation ships.

  “It’s a popular tourist destination,” Skold said. “Best underwater sightseeing in the outerverse.”

  The five disembarked and walked across the platform to a small building on the edge of the island with brightly painted pictures of fish covering the outside. Local Subquaticans, who looked like dolphins with legs and arms and gill-like folds on their temples, were there to welcome the visitors. One came up to Zachary and spoke in perfect English.

  “Everyone here says they can show you around Subquatica,” he said. “Sure, they’ll take you to all the main attractions, but I’m the only one who will dive deeper into the secret realms. Come with me for just a few serendibite.”

  Zachary smiled but kept moving. He was pretty sure he could overhear every other guide there making the exact same promise.

  They walked through the double doors to the building, and once inside saw passengers entering clear cylindrical vessels floating atop the water. As soon as the submersibles were filled, they would seal themselves shut and drop into the ocean.

  “Well, they all look the same to me,” Kaylee said.

  Kaylee led the others into one of the undersea vehicles. A dozen seats were positioned around the outside ring of the glass bubble. Once everyone on board had strapped in, the doors locked and the vessel dipped below the water.

  The view took Zachary’s breath away, and it became instantly clear to him why so many traveled here to experience it. It wasn’t just the fish and flora, but the water itself, which constantly shifted colors as the light from above caught it at different angles. It was like flying through a kaleidoscope, both dizzying and wonderful at the same time.

  A voice spoke quietly from a speaker built into the headrest directly above Zachary’s ear. “Welcome to Nautilus One
, your underwater transport to the seafloor of Subquatica. During the trip, you might experience some increased pressure in your ears, so we’ve provided complimentary chewing gum in the armrests. Now, if you look to your right, you can see Subquatica’s very own version of the sea horse.”

  Zachary turned to see a creature with a mane of yellow seaweed that waved and floated in the water, half galloping, half swimming right past his line of sight. He was so busy staring, it took him a moment to notice the school of suckerfish pressing their mouths up against the glass in front of Skold.

  “And just a bit farther,” the voice continued, “you’ll find the Coral Mountains, roughly the length of the Great Wall of China.”

  Zachary looked out at the enormous range of spiky orange stone branches extending well beyond where he could see. It seemed as if each seat was giving personally guided tours depending on the passenger’s planet of origin. Zachary could barely make out the voice whispering to Ryic in what he assumed was Klenarogian.

  The submersible continued its descent, the water growing darker the deeper they sank. “It seems we have an unexpected special treat for you today,” Zachary’s voice guide continued. “One of the largest Subquatican species, the boulder whale, is approaching. Please don’t make any sudden motions. We don’t want to aggravate it.”

  At first Zachary couldn’t see anything, except for a giant shadow advancing toward them. But when the shape of the creature fully came into view, Zachary could see why it was called the boulder whale—it was huge. It had small, stubby legs that reminded him of a hippopotamus’s, but the behemoth swam gracefully, getting frighteningly close to their vessel. Every passenger on board appeared to be just as much in awe as he was, their faces pressed up against the glass, staring out.

  The submersible moved in for an even closer look, but apparently got a little too close, grazing up against the beast’s nose. Even though it was just a gentle tap, the boulder whale didn’t look happy. It opened its mouth and let out a gurgling roar. The vessel attempted to make a fast retreat, heading in the opposite direction, but the angry whale followed. As it closed in on them in what could only be described as attack mode, some of the passengers let out terrified screams.