Starbounders #2

by Adam Jay Epstein

  He was right. The star-killer was starting to glow brighter.

  “Send a mass lang-link to every pitchfork and battle-axe out here,” Zachary said to Ryic. “We need all our firepower here right n—”

  Zachary stopped midword, because the funnel at the end of the star-killer began to suck the energy out of Opus Verdana’s core. The effects were rapidly apparent. The iridescent orb grew dimmer, and it started to shrink in size.

  “Somebody, fire on that device now!” Zachary shouted.

  Opus Verdana was becoming darker and smaller by the second. Zachary could see that Ryic was watching the sun of his home planet die. And he could only imagine the panic and chaos that was surely overwhelming Klenarog and its people now.

  A pair of Indigo 8 battle-axes emerged from the cluster of ships engaged in the firefight and swooped in, blasters a-blazing. But before either could lock in for a shot at the star-killer, they were both struck by voltage rockets. It seemed that each ship’s steering lost power as they spiraled away from the target. A series of blasts from the gizalith’s debris cannons finished the job, blowing them to space dust. Zachary winced, but had little time to mourn the loss of his fellow Starbounders.

  “Kaylee . . . Skold?” Zachary asked.

  “Still nothing,” Kaylee replied.

  Even if the bison’s weapons did kick back in now, it would be too late. Opus Verdana had gone black. All that remained was a small, dense chunk of rock, completely drained of energy. What had been blindingly bright just moments earlier was plunged into total darkness. The one thing left shining in the outerverse was the gizalith. And suddenly it was moving, closer to the rock center of what was formerly Opus Verdana.

  A grim expression overcame Ryic.

  “How long before the temperatures plummet . . . and the entire planet freezes? Weeks? Days? Just hours? Until everyone and everything starves? Until nothing is left and Klenarog becomes a desolate, lifeless rock?”

  “I don’t blame you for being worried,” Zachary said, “but if we’re right about what’s coming next, starving and freezing are the least of your planet’s problems.”

  Zachary looked ahead as metal prongs extended from the tip of the gizalith and a galactic fold that had previously been hidden within the sun’s corona opened. The hole widened and a hundred of Commander Keel’s Binary talons flew through, disappearing from the space around Klenarog. Zachary moved in front of the mass lang-link.

  “This is Zachary Night. All allied starships, prepare to fire on whatever comes out of that fold. I repeat, every particle blaster and debris cannon should be loaded and ready.”

  Only a handful of the pitchforks and battle-axes appeared capable of assisting, including Aggoman’s starjunk and Jengi’s golden ship, as the majority were still locked in an unrelenting exchange of fire with the mass of talons that hadn’t departed through the hole. But those that did were flying into formation beside them, preparing to strike at anything that might come out.

  They waited. Anxiously. What Zachary saw next left him as cold as the sun that had just been destroyed.

  Binary talons emerged from the galactic fold, but they weren’t alone. Following close behind, lured by the bactobait stored in the canisters hugging the outside of the metallic ships, were whale-sized scorpiosites. Hundreds of them. The enormous, diamond-shaped creatures propelled themselves through space, leaving in their wake streams of liquid that immediately turned to ice.

  “Fire!” Zachary shouted into the mass lang-link.

  With power now restored to its debris cannons, the bison led its allies in a coordinated attack, pounding away at the talons and approaching virus. Aggoman’s starjunk was the first to strike one of the scorpiosites, and Zachary watched as the particle blast shattered the creature’s hardened crystalline exterior. Without its protective layer, the next round of fire tore through the scorpiosite’s fleshy body, shredding it.

  Other ships were having similar success, but for every one of the quarantined creatures that was destroyed, another ten slithered out from the fold.

  Zachary saw that the talons were all flying in the same direction, leading the scorpiosites toward what appeared to be a specific destination. He turned to the Kepler cartograph, and sure enough they were heading straight for another galactic fold.

  “What’s on the other side of that fold?” Zachary asked.

  “A string nexus,” the Klenarogian solider replied.

  “If the talons make it through with those scorpiosites, they’ll spread to every corner of the outerverse,” Zachary said. “And there’s nothing anyone will be able to do to track them all down.”

  “Fortunately, the virus doesn’t move as fast as starships do,” Ryic said. “So they won’t reach the fold for at least twenty minutes.”

  Kaylee and Skold continued to fire off debris cannons, but keeping the enemy onslaught at bay was proving increasingly difficult. The Binary robots had adapted their flight pattern, maneuvering the talons so that hitting the weak spot where the canisters were attached was nearly impossible.

  “We know that Binary robots are programmed with orders,” Quee said. “There must be a central hub for all communications on that gizalith. If we can get ourselves on board, I can hack in and reprogram those robots to fly back to the Olvang Nebula.”

  “And how do you plan on getting there?” Ryic asked.

  Quee didn’t have an answer, and Zachary was equally unsure. But it seemed like their only option.

  “We’re going to need every ship out here to cover for us,” Zachary said into the mass lang-link. “And escorts on both sides until we arrive at the gizalith’s docking portal.”

  Aggoman and Jengi were quick to respond, flanking the bison on the tail and bow. Other volunteers encircled the rest of the ship. With the escorts firing from every side, the fleet made a collective charge for the gizalith. Zachary expected the Binary talons to swarm them, but the allied Starbounder spacecraft were being given a clear path to the giant floating pyramid.

  “Proceed with caution,” Zachary said. “I think they might be leading us into some kind of trap.”

  But his warning wouldn’t help them, as a barrage of voltage rockets began raining down from the gizalith. As the bolts struck the surrounding escorts, one by one their power was shorted, and the disabled ships drifted aimlessly through space, leaving the bison exposed. Zachary calculated his chances. Make a final thrust for the docking portal, or fall back? More rockets were coming at them in a flurry, and he had no choice but to reverse course.

  Once the bison had dipped clear of the gizalith’s attack, it was immediately met by a threat even scarier than electron projectiles. A scorpiosite that had been trailing one of the talons was coming straight at them. It stretched out its long, spindly appendages and gripped down on the ship’s metal exterior. Through the flight deck windshield, Zachary could see part of the creature’s body hugging the bison, but the rest of it was obscured.

  “How do we get rid of that thing?” Ryic asked.

  “Maybe we can use it to our advantage,” Zachary replied.

  He motioned his hand forward and the bison went flying toward the gizalith once more. And this time, he wasn’t dodging the voltage rockets coming their way. The bolts were hitting the scorpiosite, but its crystalline armor was deflecting it.

  “Not a bad shield,” Zachary said.

  There were smiles all around the flight deck—until a screeching sound reverberated from above and the scorpiosite’s syringelike appendage punctured the metallic roof. The Klenarogian soldier unharnessed himself and reached into the nearest underbin, grabbing a photon bow. But before he could even turn and fire, six smaller scorpiosites—roughly the size of the one Zachary had found in the cryo freezer—squeezed out from the hole at the end of the appendage.

  A particularly feral one wasted no time jumping onto the Klenarogian’s chest. Its underbelly opened up and a thin needle shot out from it, stabbing the soldier in the neck. He let out a scream and dropped th
e photon bow, then clutched at the wound, desperately trying to stave off the infection. But it was futile. Black tendrils were rapidly spreading across his flesh, sucking the life out of him.

  Zachary, Ryic, and Quee quickly put on their warp gloves. The other five scorpiosites were bouncing from wall to wall, no doubt looking for something to feed on. As Zachary reached his gloved hand into the underbin, he kicked one of the crystalline creatures away from him. The virus barely flinched, going after Ryic instead. Two others were flying toward Quee, propelling themselves with liquid blasts expelled from their tendrils. And the remaining two had set their sights on Zachary.

  Zachary, now armed with a photon bow in his free hand, began taking shots at the scorpiosites. But just as the larger creature clinging to the outside of the bison was immune to the gizalith’s voltage rocks, these smaller viruses seemed able to withstand the concentrated beams of superheated light. The blasts merely reverberated off their exoskeletons.

  The same feral creature that had disposed of the Klenarogian soldier leaped onto Ryic’s back, and the thin needle protruding from its mouth was preparing to strike him next. With a thrust the needle shot toward Ryic’s flesh, but it was stopped just an inch from his neck by a metal glove that clamped down and gripped it tight. The gloved hand snapped the needle clean out of the scorpiosite’s underbelly. Zachary saw out of the corner of his eye that the glove belonged to Kaylee, who had floated into the flight deck’s entryway. Skold was right beside her, with an ionic dagger in one hand and a sonic crossbow in the other. One of the viruses came at him and he stabbed it with the dagger. The blade managed to penetrate its crystalline shell, but just barely, and the creature was hardly deterred.

  “Some things just don’t like dying,” Skold said.

  “Then we need to get them off this ship,” Zachary replied.

  “I don’t think they’re going to crawl back up into that thing they came out of,” Ryic said, gesturing to the giant syringelike appendage still sticking through the flight deck’s roof.

  “Yeah, I figured asking nicely wouldn’t work very well,” Zachary said. “So I thought we’d throw them out. Spaceship walls are no obstacle for a warp glove.”

  “No way, I’m not grabbing one of those,” Ryic said. “That thing just tried to turn me into a pin cushion.”

  Zachary wasn’t asking. This was the plan. He rotated his wrist forty-five degrees and pointed his finger. A warp hole appeared before him and he stuck his glove through. A second hole materialized inches away from a scorpiosite. Despite its struggling, Zachary was able to grasp his fingers around its hardened exterior, and with a tug, he pulled it back to his side. The virus’s pincer-tipped legs flailed wildly, but before they could clamp down on Zachary’s arm, he opened another warp hole. Only this time the exit hole was on the outside of the ship, in the void of space. Zachary’s gloved hand disappeared through the entry hole with the scorpiosite held tightly in the gauntlet, and once it emerged on the other side, he let go.

  Zachary pulled his hand back through, and he watched out the windshield as the small organism drifted away. Kaylee and Quee disposed of another pair the same way, and Ryic begrudgingly did the same, although he made sure to go after the one whose needle-like appendage had already been removed.

  With the remaining pair of scorpiosites eluding capture, Skold, who had no warp glove of his own, was left with a different job. He had removed the boots from the now lifeless and floating Klenarogian soldier and was cramming them into the hole at the end of the larger appendage to make sure that nothing else came through.

  Finally Zachary managed to snatch one of the last two viruses, while Kaylee grabbed the other. Once he caught it, Zachary didn’t have much trouble depositing the scorpiosite into space. Kaylee, however, had a real thrasher in hand, and the creature wasn’t going quietly. It kicked and jabbed its spindly legs, and before Kaylee could yank it through the warp hole, the needle stabbed her arm. She was forced to let go, leaving Zachary to swoop in and finish the job. He clutched the organism and dumped it into the vacuum of space.

  Kaylee was tending to her swollen limb, grimacing.

  “Are you okay?” Ryic asked.

  “I’m fine,” Kaylee replied.

  “We can’t be sure,” Skold said. “For all we know, you’re infected, and scorpiositic fever spreads quick. We need to get you in quarantine, now. Along with the dead Klenarogian.”

  “Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Zachary said. “Let’s not overreact here. We don’t know anything for sure.”

  “Exactly,” Skold said.

  “Better to be safe, right?” Ryic asked.

  “That needle barely broke the surface of her skin,” Quee said.

  Zachary glanced over Kaylee’s shoulder and could see a soft throbbing of black in her veins.

  “Where should I go?” Kaylee asked.

  “I saw some shipping containers in the cargo hold,” Skold said. “Make yourself comfortable in one of those.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Zachary said. “We need her up here, with us.”

  Skold ignored Zachary and gestured to the Klenarogian. “As for him, see if you can’t shoot him out the vacuum tube.”

  “It’s for everyone’s safety,” Kaylee said to Zachary.

  She floated out of the flight deck and was gone.

  “I’ll take care of him,” Quee said, pulling the floating body out back.

  The enormous scorpiosite hugging the exterior of the bison was beginning to move its pincers again. And the appendage began to retract. Skold pushed himself toward it and wrapped his arms around the crystalline tube.

  “What are you doing?” Ryic asked.

  “What does it look like?” Skold shot back. “Once this thing leaves, we’ll have a two-foot-wide hole in our roof. And no more oxygen.”

  In the midst of the flight deck infestation, Zachary had been too preoccupied to notice that the bison had never stopped moving toward the gizalith. Now it was just a short distance from the docking portal. But there was one last safeguard protecting the Binary mothership from being infiltrated—dozens of Binary robots with grappling hooks securing them to an outer deck rail, all armed with photon cannons.

  “Even if we do make it, those robots will pick us off one by one before we ever make it across the O2 bridge,” Ryic said.

  It was too late to turn around now. The talons and trailing scorpiosites were nearing the galactic fold to the string nexus. They had to get on that ship, even if it meant becoming target practice for a bunch of sniper bots.

  Skold continued to wrestle the appendage, using all the carapace’s strength to keep the tube from exiting the bison. The ship came into the docking portal and extended its O2 bridge.

  Zachary took one last look at the tethered robots, who all had their weapons pointed at the bridge.

  “I’m not going to be able to hold this much longer anyway,” Skold said.

  “Then it looks like we’re just going to have to take our chances,” Zachary replied.

  Just before he reached the tunnel extending from their ship’s entrance portal, the sniper robots were gunned down in a spray of particle fire. Zachary stopped. He glanced out the glass window beside the bridge. There, behind them, was a sledge.

  Suddenly a voice rang out over the lang-link.

  “Excelsius would have been proud.”

  Zachary turned and floated back to the flight deck video monitor. There on the screen was Bedekken.

  “I can’t believe you’re here!” Zachary exclaimed.

  “You’re clear to cross that bridge,” Bedekken replied. “We’ll be covering your back.”

  Zachary nodded and started to push his way back to the tunnel.

  “I told you, I can’t hold this much longer,” Skold said, still fighting off the large scorpiosite’s appendage. “You need to get Kaylee a bio regulator. I’ll stay back and see if I can’t patch up the hole. If Quee’s able to reverse the Binary order, we’re still going to need a way home.”

/>   Zachary reached into a flight deck underbin and grabbed one of the bio regulators. He was about to take off again but stopped.

  “You know, for someone who just wanted to clear his name, you’ve been awfully helpful,” Zachary said.

  “Yeah, well, if everyone in the outerverse is gone, there’ll be nobody left to steal from.”

  Zachary gave him a nod and propelled himself forward into the main cabin. He continued toward the cargo hold, pulling himself along the wall. On the far side of the hold was a trio of shipping containers, only one of which was sealed shut. Zachary pried open the door and found Kaylee sitting in the corner, hugging her knees and clutching her arm, where the flesh was now blackening all the way to her fingertips.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “We may start losing air,” Zachary replied. “And when we do, you’re going to need this to breathe.”

  He tossed her the bio regulator, which floated into her waiting palm. Zachary eyed the black in her veins, which was stretching past her wrists.

  “Don’t look so glum,” Kaylee said. “I’m sure you’re probably worried about going in there without me, but you’ll be fine.”

  Zachary shook his head. “I’m not as tough as you are. I think the only reason I’ve gotten us this far is because I’ve been trying to impress you.”

  “Tough?” She chuckled to herself. “A new shade of purple nail polish isn’t the only thing that’s changed about me since I got to Indigo 8. Back home, before I was Starbounder Kaylee, I was just Kaylee, a girl who slept with stuffed animals and kept the night-light on.”

  “Well, you fooled me,” Zachary said.

  “You should get going,” Kaylee said. “Just shut the door on your way out.”

  “I hate leaving you like this.”

  “It beats getting blown out the ship’s vacuum tube.”

  Zachary wanted to reach out his hand and give her one last comforting squeeze, but seeing as how she had been infected with the fever, that was a sure way to get it himself. So all he could do was smile, making his best effort to let her know that everything would be okay. But by the looks of her arm, he had his doubts. He locked the storage container’s door back up and soared out of the cargo hold.