They were nearing the sunlit side of the small moon again, and the cabin slowly began to lighten. Chase leaned forward and gazed at the stars all around them when a soft beep sounded from the console. He looked down. “What was that?”
Parker frowned and slid a few frames across the screen. “A distress signal?” He took the yoke and steered by watching their beacon move across a map on the console.
Chase watched out the window. “Look!”
A mass of something hovered far in the distance above the moon’s surface, and as they neared, the shape became clearer: a wrecked spacecraft, its sleek black frame twisted. Lights flickered on its underbelly.
Parker cursed. “It’s a Khatra! What happened?” He steered down toward the ruined vehicle.
“Careful!” said Chase. A small, dark object had appeared on their right. Parker swerved hard to the left, and a pair of boots flashed by the window.
“Sweet ladies of Taras,” Parker said. “I think that was a person!”
“What?” As Parker swung the Starjumper around, Chase realized that he could see the outline of four limbs floating motionless. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t know. Probably. Looks like he’s wearing a protective suit; I think you can survive for a couple of hours in one of those. The crash probably killed him already.” Parker stared out the window, shaking his head.
Chase glanced at Parker. “You’re not going to leave him out here, are you?”
“Oh. Of course not.” Parker began typing at the console. “I’ll try to scoop him up in the cargo hold.” He moved the Starjumper alongside the still figure and pulled just past him. Twisting the steering yoke, he gently swung the vehicle a full 360 degrees. “I think I got him. Let me close the hold and put us in autocruise.”
Chase followed him through the door in the back of the cabin, stepping over Mina into the bunkroom. The cargo-hold hatch had a red light beside it, and when it turned green, Parker pulled the cover open and started down a ladder. By the time Chase’s feet touched the floor in the bare, brightly lit room, Parker was already leaning over the suited figure splayed out in the corner.
Parker fiddled with the man’s face mask until he finally found the clasps that made it spring loose. Gripping the sides of the helmet, he pulled it away to reveal a young man with dark hair and very high, sharp cheekbones. Before Chase could ask Parker if he was dead, the man groaned.
“He’s alive!” Chase tapped the man’s face a few times, but he didn’t open his eyes. “His skin’s really cold.”
“I bet he was out there for a while,” said Parker. “But he’s Lyolian. What on Taras was he doing in a Khatra?”
Chase stared at the man’s sharp features, trying to remember what he’d heard about Lyolia when they were watching the newsfeed. “What do you mean?”
“That Khatra’s a Fleet fighter,” said Parker. “Lyolians aren’t allowed in the—”
A tremendous WHOOSH! interrupted him, and a shock wave rocked their cruiser, sending them both sprawling across the cargo-bay floor. Parker scrambled for the ladder and rushed to the operating console. “What was that?” Chase shouted, staggering behind him into the cabin.
What they saw through the front windshield was so horrific, it took them both several seconds to comprehend.
They had drifted around the moon far enough that the complete sphere of Trucon was visible. But the planet looked nothing like the peaceful, sandy orb they’d seen before. Now waves of red and orange and black spread out across the surface in great whorls.
It looked like the entire planet was on fire.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Chase stared out the cruiser’s front window, mesmerized by the slow swirl of fire that blanketed Trucon’s surface, and struggled to put together what was happening. Not half an hour ago, the planet had looked fine. How could it have been consumed so quickly? A sickening realization came to him: This couldn’t possibly be a natural disaster. It must have been a deliberate attack. And behind that realization, a tiny question bubbled up: Was this somehow related to him?
He finally managed to spit out two words. “What happened?”
White with shock, Parker whispered a reply without turning away from the window. “We’re dead.”
At first Chase didn’t know what Parker was talking about. Out here they were safe, separated from the inferno by many miles of space. Then he saw the wave of movement as thousands and thousands of vehicles, large and small, fled from the planet. As they came closer, the space between Trucon and its moon grew thick with traffic, each ship forging its own frantic path. There was a sudden burst of orange as two ships got too close and crashed into each other. Vehicles were headed in every direction possible, but many appeared to be headed for the moon, and only minutes away.
“Parker—they’re coming our way,” Chase said. “We need to move.”
Parker said nothing, still staring at the devastation that had been his home.
“We need to move, Parker,” Chase repeated. The first vehicles in the onslaught were getting close, and a few of the fastest fighters and cruisers zipped past. “Parker!”
Parker blinked a few times and reached for the controls. “I … I don’t know where to go,” he murmured.
“Anywhere! Get us out of here!”
More vehicles rushed past them, all at safe distances, but thousands were following, like a giant moving wall. Trembling, Parker pulled up on the controls to steer away from the moon and out of the path of the oncoming traffic.
“Faster!” said Chase. More and more vehicles filled the space around them, and many of them appeared to be slowing down as they neared the moon’s surface, adding to the congestion. The Starjumper surged desperately upward, but it was clear that they were not going to outrun the deluge of ships.
Suddenly they were surrounded by hundreds of vehicles, beside them, above them, oncoming, and none following a straight path. Parker swerved erratically to avoid them, but he had lost all confidence in his piloting and his reactions were slow. Chase clutched the arms of his seat, yelping at every near miss, bracing for impact.
Bursts of color flickered around them as more vehicles collided in the packed space. The cruiser darted through narrow openings between other ships, flipping and turning in a dizzying way. Parker was losing control. Chase squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation of a crash, but they hit a clear patch and zoomed forward, veering in a sharp arc down toward the moon’s surface.
“Get us out of here!” Chase yelled.
“I can’t!” Parker’s voice was hysterical. “We’ve gotta try the breakaway!”
“The what?”
His face frozen in a rictus of terror, Parker flipped open a clear cover on the console. Underneath was a round lever. “Hold on!”
Then he yanked the lever.
The last thing that Chase was aware of was being thrown violently backward out of his seat and, briefly, the feeling of his head crashing into the cabin ceiling.
* * *
When Chase opened his eyes, he saw Parker’s body lying crumpled beside him. “You okay?” His voice sounded brittle in the silent cabin.
Parker grunted and rolled over onto his back. “I feel like I got hit by a planet.”
A glance out the front window told Chase that they were no longer part of the flood of traffic from Trucon. “What just happened?” he asked, pushing his palms to his temples.
“Breakaway.”
“What?”
“I pulled the breakaway. The emergency escape. It hypercalculates and folds us over to a random coordinate.”
“What?”
“Good lords, dummy. It moves the cruiser without us having to calculate where it’s going. You pull it as a last resort.” Parker climbed gingerly to his feet and returned to the piloting console. “We could be anywhere within a fifty-parsec range of Trucon. We’re lucky it didn’t put us in the middle of a star.”
Chase crawled to Mina, who lay in a jumbled heap in the corner, and rolled her over.
Her eyes remained closed. He leaned in toward her ear and murmured her name.
Parker glanced over his shoulder. “She’s not going to wake up without some serious technical intervention. Why don’t you check on the guy we picked up, make sure he’s still alive?”
“Probably not after this,” said Chase. He left Mina in the corner and went back down to the cargo hold, where the man in the space suit still lay flat on his back. He was breathing, but his skin was deathly pale and he didn’t stir when Chase prodded his neck. Looking at his face, Chase realized that the man was much younger than he’d first thought—underneath a layer of scruffy facial hair, he looked about nineteen years old, maybe twenty at most.
Chase returned to the piloting cabin. “He’s not waking up. What should we do with him?”
“I don’t know,” said Parker. “Let’s worry about ourselves first.”
Chase sat quietly beside him. The scene above Trucon replayed in his mind—the frantic flood of spaceships, the doomed planet in flames. “What happened back there?”
“I told you, the breakaway. How hard did you hit your head?”
“No, before that.”
Parker was quiet for a minute. “Something pretty awful.”
“Do you think it was an attack?”
Parker shrugged and shook his head.
“What about your home? What about Dr. Silvestri?”
“Stop.” Parker’s face was pale and glazed with sweat. “I don’t want to talk about it. We need to focus on the immediate problem.”
Looking at the complex piloting console, Chase knew he wouldn’t be able to help Parker with the cruiser. Piloting was definitely not in his semantic memory. “So how do we do this?”
“I’ve just got to find our coordinates, and map a route to, uh…” Parker trailed off, and the cabin fell silent.
There was nothing to see out the front window except never-ending, star-speckled space. Chase closed his eyes and tried to absorb everything that had happened in the course of only a few hours. He’d just been getting used to the idea of being on Trucon, and now the entire planet was gone, along with Parker’s home, and probably Dr. Silvestri as well. Mina was basically useless, and Chase was pretty sure she wouldn’t have had time to contact Asa before everything happened. Not that Asa could find them now anyway.
Panic rose up in his throat. If they couldn’t reach Asa, he wouldn’t be able to ask questions about his microchip. He’d never be able to find his identity. Feeling his panic edge toward hysteria, he stopped himself. First things first. Before they could do anything, they had to find their way to another planet. Then get Mina fixed. And then he could get back to work figuring out his identity.
“Are you sleeping?” Chase’s eyes snapped open to see Parker glaring at him. “So you’re not going to help? I have to figure out how to get us out of this mess by myself, is that right?”
“What am I supposed to do?” said Chase. “Can’t you just punch in the CFC destination or whatever?”
Parker hunched over the screens and shook his head. “Out here in deep space everything works differently. Different communication system, different piloting system. And I can’t figure out these stupid mapping programs—do I calculate in the rate that the universe is moving when I plot a route, or is that already figured into the equation?” He banged his fist against the console in frustration.
Chase didn’t have the slightest clue how to answer these questions, but he racked his brain for an idea. “Um … maybe if we wait for the guy down there to wake up? He must be able to pilot.”
“And what if he’s in a coma and isn’t going to wake up?” countered Parker. “He might have suffered too much exposure by the time we found him. And even if he’s fine, we can’t trust him. He’s not a Fleet soldier. I bet he stole that Khatra.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like I was telling you before, he’s a Lyolian. A Khatra’s a Fleet vehicle. He can’t be from the Fleet, because even though they call it the Federal Fleet, it’s pretty much run by Earth and only Earthans are allowed to be soldiers. He’s probably a smuggler.”
So not only were they stranded and homeless, but they were probably ferrying a criminal around in the cargo hold. Things just kept getting better. “How do you know he’s Lyolian?” Chase asked.
“Because he looks like one!” Parker exploded. He began rapidly typing information onto one of the screens. “I’m just going to plot a small fold to test it out. I’ll try to move us over to the next star system.” Parker’s finger hovered over a button on the screen. “Better buckle in.”
“Don’t, Parker.” Chase tried to move his finger away from the button. “Let’s wait one more—”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Parker snapped, and pressed his finger against the screen.
Chase was slightly more prepared this time, and so he fully experienced the fold. There was a strong jolt, and he felt as if his head were being sucked backward and his body being compressed. A bright flash filled his vision. He blinked a few times, feeling almost like he had blacked out for a moment. Strange, dark shapes filled their front window, but before Chase could figure out what they were, their ship shook with a loud bang! Something had hit the side of their cruiser. It hit again. Bang!
“It’s some kind of debris field!” Parker grabbed the manual controls and spun the cruiser around.
“Oh, this is much better than where we were!” shouted Chase. “Look out!”
A massive rock appeared right in front of them, and Parker pulled up hard on the yoke. Something else struck the roof of the cruiser with a painfully loud crunch. He fought with the controls, wheeling the ship back in the other direction. A long metallic squeal rang out, echoing throughout the vehicle as their port side dragged along another giant cosmic boulder.
“Oh lords,” Parker choked out. “I think … did we puncture…?”
A zipping noise sounded behind them as the door to the bunkroom opened. Chase whirled around in his seat. The young man staggered through the doorway in his space suit, his sunken eyes roving wildly.
“Are you trying to kill us?” he shouted. “Move aside!”
“Hey! What are you doing?” yelled Parker as the man shoved him away from the controls and squeezed into the seat in his bulky suit. “This is my cruiser. You can’t just take it over.”
Whoever the guy was, he proved that he knew his way around a piloting console by quickly slowing the cruiser to a stop. They hovered motionless among the particles while he slid his fingers across the screen and opened up a map on the console. On the screen, hundreds of white dots surrounded the pulsing beacon of their cruiser. The field of debris around them was thick, and so large that it went all the way to the edges of the map.
“We’re in the middle of an accretion disk. How did we get here?” the man asked in a strange, lilting accent. He opened up another screen, full of numbers.
“I had to pull the breakaway to get us away from Trucon,” said Parker. “It put us here.”
The man opened up a few more screens and studied them for a minute, and then he sighed loudly. “You’re lying. There’ve been two folds.”
“Oh, well, I think the ship took a double-jump, must’ve been—” Parker faltered.
“Don’t lie to me. What happened?” The man glared at him, his dark eyes blazing feverishly against the unhealthy pallor of his skin.
Parker stared at him, lost for words. The man lurched to his feet and grabbed Parker by the collar. “Tell me the truth!”
“We tried to plot a route,” Chase blurted out.
The man turned his glare on Chase for a moment, his lip curling. “Idiots! Do you know how much energy a single fold uses up in a granny cruiser like this? We’ll be lucky if we last another day!” Shaking his head and muttering in another language, he began to unfasten his space suit.
Chase looked back at the console, trying and failing to see how much energy the cruiser had left. “Do you know where we are?”
“Not yet.” As he undid the latches on his sleeves, the man glanced around the cabin. His eyes rested on Mina for a moment, but he didn’t say anything.
“Who are you?” asked Parker, squaring his shoulders and brushing a few sweaty strands of hair out of his face. “Did you know we saved your life?”
The man pulled off the top half of his suit. “My name is Maurus.”
“And you’re from Lyolia.”
“That’s right.”
“We found you floating next to a wrecked Khatra over Mircona. What happened?” asked Parker.
Maurus stepped out of the bottom half of his suit and tossed it on the cabin floor beside Mina. Underneath he wore a trim black jumpsuit. “That’s none of your business,” he said, and returned to the pilot’s seat.
“You’re not from the Fleet. Did you steal the Khatra?” Parker asked.
Maurus ignored him.
“Did you see what happened to Trucon?” asked Chase. “Do you know what caused it?”
“Will you both shut up?” Maurus ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “I can’t do this if you’re babbling in my ear the whole time.”
Parker scowled and watched over Maurus’s shoulder with his lips pressed together. Chase tried to watch as well, but the blur of screens, numbers, and maps made no sense to him. He looked back at the vast field of rubble crowding around them, the massive, dark shapes outlined by the light from some distant star.
“Clear out,” said Parker, nudging Chase from his seat.
Chase hastily buckled himself into one of the seats on the back wall as Maurus announced the next fold. With the same brain-sucking feeling, they left the debris field and reappeared in an area of blank, empty space.
“Do you know where we are now?” Chase ventured.
Maurus didn’t answer.
“Do you know—” Parker began to repeat.
“Still working on that,” snapped Maurus. They sat in tense silence as they waited for Maurus to complete his calculations. “We’re within a five-parsec range of Senica.”
Lost Planet 01 - The Lost Planet Page 6
