“Mina!” Maurus yelled, pulling himself out and crawling down to the nose of the shuttle. “It’s filling up inside, it’s going to sink soon!” Mina didn’t break pace, paddling resolutely onward toward a destination that only she could sense. Chase huddled beside Parker on the roof of the shuttle, wiping the mud from his face. Parker’s eyes stayed closed, and his breathing sounded ragged, as though he were choking on something.
“Parker, can you hear me?” Chase said in his ear. “Just hang on, we’re going to get you help.” He was a liar. They weren’t getting off this planet, and the only thing that awaited them was a horrific death by drowning in a sea of mud.
The shuttle was definitely sinking, and as the nose began to dip below the surface, Maurus scooted back toward the open hatch.
Chase squinted into the distance and blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t imagining things. “Hey, I think I see something!”
Rising from the maroon swampland was the hazy outline of an immense structure on the horizon. As they drew closer, he saw that it was organic, an interwoven network of stalks that sprouted densely from the water to form a towering pale jungle that stretched on for miles.
The shuttle slipped deeper beneath the surface, and Chase pulled Parker higher onto the tail section. Eventually Mina could pull it no farther, and she untied the cable from her waist and fought her way back to the tail section.
“Alright, we’re going to have to swim from here. It’s not as far as it looks. Loop Parker’s arms around my neck and I’ll pull him there.”
“Can you swim?” Maurus asked Chase.
“I think I can,” said Chase. Together, he and Maurus slid off the side of the shuttle and into the cold ooze. If he had found it difficult to move in the planet’s air, the sea was a thousand times worse. He thrashed as hard as he could, until his entire body tingled, but he barely seemed to move forward in the sludge at all. He stopped to catch his breath, and immediately the sea began to suck him down.
“Hey!” shouted Maurus, bobbing in the distance. “Make it over here! You can make it to me!” Chase struggled through the mud, fixed on his goal, and was hyperventilating nearly to the point of blacking out by the time he reached Maurus’s side.
“I can’t do this,” he croaked, clutching at Maurus’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, we’ll do it together,” said Maurus. “Put your arm around my neck, and I’ll help you stay above the surface. See?” They kicked at the mud side by side, Maurus pulling Chase up every time he began to sink. Their progress was minuscule. Maurus heaved for air, and Chase knew he was slowing him down.
Mina and Parker vanished in the distance. Maurus made Chase pause a couple of times so they could catch their breath, and when Chase looked over his shoulder, he was dismayed to see how close they still were to the foundering shuttle. He began to wonder how much longer they would last before they gave up and surrendered to the swampy depths, when Mina’s face emerged from the haze ahead.
“Hold on, I can take him,” she called, and she paddled up close so Chase could grab on to her firm shoulders. “I’ll be back for you,” she said to Maurus.
“I’ll make it,” he panted.
“I’ll come back,” she repeated, and took off toward the pale jungle. Chase appreciated the boundless strength in her android limbs as she moved them steadily forward, her legs churning effortlessly through the thick mud. The outcropping ahead drew closer. The stalks were actually some type of gnarled, leafless trunks that all grew together into one another. It was impossible to tell if they were individual plants, or one endless, knotty growth.
When they reached one of the trunks, Mina ordered Chase to hang on tight as she climbed up the intersecting branches. He clung to her neck, dripping sticky tendrils of mud. She took him up to a wide intersection of twisted branches, where she had left Parker tucked snugly in the fork of two large boughs.
“Keep an eye on him. I’m going back for Maurus.”
Chase touched one of Parker’s arms to let him know he was there and hunched on a branch beside him, shaking with exhaustion. Parker’s skin was waxy pale and he looked like he was already dead, but his body was still scorching hot. Ahead of them lay only swirling haze—the shuttle was too far away to see and had probably sunk by now. Behind them stretched a never-ending forest of pale branches.
Hot winds dried the mud coating Chase, causing it to shrink and pull on the tiny hairs on his arms. Finally Mina appeared below with Maurus clinging to her shoulders. As Chase watched them scale the trees, Parker suddenly thrashed, hitting him on the cheek. He tried to hold Parker’s arm down, but Parker began to shake uncontrollably. His eyes rolled back in his head, and yellow foam ran from his mouth and mingled with the mud on his chin.
“Mina!” Chase screamed. “Come quick!”
A second later she was leaning over Parker. “He’s having a seizure. We have to turn him on his side so he doesn’t choke.”
Maurus clambered up beside them and shook his head, his face twisted with grief. “We’re too late. The poison is starting to overload his brain.”
“Do something!” Chase looked frantically back and forth at Maurus and Mina. “There’s got to be something we can do!”
Lying on his side, Parker coughed, spraying thick yellow foam on the branch beside him. A sharp, acrid smell hit Chase’s nose, overpowering the fetid stench of the mud sea.
“Don’t let any of that touch you,” warned Maurus.
The tree gave a tremendous shudder, and with a sharp crack, one of the branches supporting them broke loose.
“Move!” Maurus leapt up, grabbing a branch above them as the rest of the nest began to break apart. Chase scrambled for a branch, but the one he grabbed splintered away from the tree.
With a shout, Maurus reached out and caught his arm, hanging on to the tree with one hand and Chase with the other. The branch Chase had grabbed splashed into the mud.
“Hang on! Grab something!” Maurus pulled Chase higher, and Chase reached for a nearby branch. There was another sharp cracking noise above, and a shot of panic raced through Chase.
Then it happened again, out of his control: Although Maurus had a tight grip on his arm, Chase slipped through as though his arm had simply dissolved, and plummeted toward the sea.
He smacked into the mud hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and the sludge sucked him down deeper. Below the surface it was thick and silent. He wasn’t even sure which way was up. His chest began to hitch for oxygen, and mud shot up his nose. His mind screamed incoherent thoughts.
So this was what it felt like to die.
A strong arm reached around his chest, and someone began jerking him upward. He gasped for breath as he broke the surface and wiped the mud from his face and eyes, coughing and spitting.
“Here,” said Maurus, pushing him up toward the lowest branch. Chase grabbed hold of it, but it peeled away from the tree and dropped into the mud. Maurus reached for the next branch up, but it pulled off as well. Tree limbs rained down around them, as though the tree were shedding them voluntarily, and with them came Mina and Parker, tumbling into the mud. Mina looped one arm around Parker and towed him to the next tree, but its low branches came off in her hands as well.
“It doesn’t want us on it,” called Maurus. “The trees are somehow all connected, and they don’t want us to climb them. Parker must have poisoned them.”
Chase clung to the wide trunk of a tree, but there was no easy handhold and he kept slipping. Finally he let himself sink a little, so only his nose and his eyes were above the surface.
“No! Hold on!” Maurus reached over and grabbed Chase under the armpit. “Don’t let go!”
“I can’t hold on forever,” mumbled Chase, spitting out more mud. He tried to keep his grip, but he was hot and exhausted and couldn’t breathe. Blackness crept into the edges of his vision again, and Maurus’s face seemed to be getting smaller and farther away. At least Parker wasn’t dead yet, because the sound of his retching car
ried over the mud, interrupted by the choked rattle of his breathing.
Chase knew he was nearing his physical limit as a roaring sound filled his ears, growing progressively louder. Maurus screamed something, probably telling him to hold on, but he just couldn’t anymore.
Maurus grew frantic, waving an arm wildly. He let go of the tree and splashed out, struggling to paddle away from the jungle. Was he trying to go back to the shuttle, to see if they could still climb back onto it? Chase used his last ounce of strength to turn and look.
A dark shadow passed across the mud, and a moment later, a narrow airship broke through the haze, skimming over the sea, engines roaring. Maurus waved his arms to get the ship’s attention. The vehicle approached and hovered, as Maurus fought his way back and pulled Chase from the tree.
“Go get Parker,” Chase mumbled as they swam back out to the airship.
“Mina’s bringing him,” panted Maurus. “Get in!”
A hatch on the airship opened, and a man in a bulky insulated jumpsuit and reflective helmet leaned out and reached for Chase, grabbing him under the arms and pulling him inside the ship. He dragged Chase into the middle of the cabin floor and crouched down in front of him.
“Were you the ones with the distress signal?” the man shouted, his voice muffled by the helmet. “An escape shuttle, NQR coordinates?”
Chase gaped stupidly back at his own distorted reflection on the man’s visor. Of course—these people had followed the shuttle’s distress beacon. He nodded, and the man turned back to the door and left him sitting in the dark interior.
When all four of them had been pulled on board, dripping mud everywhere, the man gestured outside to ask if there were any others, and Maurus made a cutting motion under his chin to indicate that there were not. The man went to the front of the ship, where a pilot sat at the controls, and the door sealed shut.
Parker lay with his head in Mina’s lap, his arms and legs trembling. “This boy needs immediate medical attention,” she said.
Maurus crouched by Parker’s feet and held his ankles down. “He was exposed to Goxar poison almost twenty-four hours ago.”
The man in the space suit pressed the barrel of a handblaster against Maurus’s temple.
“It’s the end of the road for you, Lieutenant Maurus,” he said in a cold voice.
Chase looked up, and with a gasp he noticed the elliptical symbols on everything—the equipment, the walls, the space suit. The Fleet had found them.
Maurus reacted instantly, throwing his hand up to knock the blaster away and tackling the man to the floor. He landed a solid punch to the man’s side before lunging for the pilot, who had already jumped up from the controls. Swinging an arm around, the pilot planted a taser into Maurus’s back with a sizzle. He wavered for a moment and dropped to the floor.
“No!” cried Chase, jumping to his feet.
The pilot turned to him, pulling off a shiny helmet and flicking a long dark ponytail out from underneath. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes glittered. “You want to go next?” she asked, snapping the taser at him.
The man Maurus had knocked over removed his helmet, revealing a narrow, grimacing face. “I don’t think that will be necessary, Vidal,” he said dryly. He glared at Chase. “Sit down.” The pilot returned to the controls, and the man pulled a set of shackles from a drawer and used them to bind Maurus’s hands behind his back.
The cabin darkened as they zoomed out of the atmosphere and left the mud planet behind. Blue track lights illuminated along the floor. Chase sank to the floor, numb with despair. Their run was over; Maurus was a dead man. And whatever it was about Chase that had caused the Fleet to raid Dr. Silvestri’s lab, he was probably about to learn.
Beside him, Parker arched into another seizure, his feet beating a staccato rhythm against the floor. Mina lifted his head up to keep him from choking.
Chase tried to hold Parker’s feet down. “Help!”
The man came over and pressed two fingers to Parker’s muddy neck, jerking his hand away when he noticed the crust of yellow foam around his mouth. He shook his head with a frown. “Kid’s not going to make it.”
“Come on, Parker, stay with us,” pleaded Chase. Parker jerked violently on the floor, making horrible choked noises. This couldn’t be happening—he couldn’t just die like this.
On the other side of the cabin, Maurus began to stir, moaning and cursing when he realized that his hands were bound. “Forquera, you traitor,” he hissed.
With a snarl, Forquera wheeled around on his heels and wrapped his hands around Maurus’s throat.
“Say that again,” he growled. “Try it.”
Parker’s feet drummed against the floor. Mina pulled him upright, trying to clear the thick foam out of his airway. A nasty odor hit Chase’s nose as the bio-molding on her fingers began to dissolve.
“Stop!” Chase shouted at Forquera, trying to grab Parker’s arms to keep him from hurting himself. “Please, help us!”
But Forquera ignored them, choking Maurus until his eyes rolled back in his head. By the time he took his hands off Maurus’s throat, Parker’s feet had stopped kicking.
Because Parker had stopped breathing altogether.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next minute was a blur.
Forquera shouted orders and moved around them, but all Chase saw was Mina pumping Parker’s chest and fishing in his mouth to try to clear his blocked airway. His own voice, shouting Parker’s name over and over again, rang strangely in his ears, as if it were being shouted from the other end of a long hall.
Colored lights streaked past the front windshield as the airship decelerated and drew to a stop. Outside, the rhythmic stomp of approaching bootsteps grew louder. The hatch on the side of their vehicle cracked open, and soldiers streamed in, shouting and pointing their weapons at Maurus. He struggled to sit upright, his face set in a defensive snarl.
“On your feet!” yelled an officer.
“Where is the medical bay?” Mina demanded, her voice nearly drowned out by the shouting and commotion around them.
Forquera waved his hand to get someone’s attention. “Reyes! Take these two straight to sickbay.” Without so much as a glance back at Chase, Mina scooped up Parker and jumped off the airship.
A pair of soldiers dragged Maurus to his feet and shoved him out the hatch. He shouted as he crashed to the floor. Chase tried to follow, but one of the soldiers cut him off with the nose of his weapon.
“Colonel, what do you want to do with this one?”
Colonel Forquera examined Chase, a frown darkening his lean face. “Keep him with Maurus for now. We’ll let the captain decide.”
The soldier prodded Chase toward the exit hatch. Their airship had parked in an enormous flight bay with a high white ceiling. Rows of other small spacecraft lined the floor—some similar to the one they had arrived on, others sleek black fighters—and soldiers in blue jumpsuits moved around the vehicles in a constant stream of activity. An empty pathway cut through the middle of the room, ending at a tall interlocking door.
Maurus had been shoved out to the middle of the floor. The activity in the hangar came to a halt as everyone stopped working to stare at him. Silence fell across the room. Maurus sat stiffly, his hands still bound behind his back, hair and clothes matted with dried orange mud.
“Murderer!” cried a thin voice from the back of the hangar.
Maurus locked gazes with Chase. His dark eyes boiled, though with fury or fear, Chase could not tell.
Something nudged Chase in the back. “Keep going,” said the soldier behind him. Colonel Forquera pushed past, glancing around at the crowd as he stepped down out of the airship. Chase followed him across the hangar, feeling conspicuous in the cracked layer of mud, but hardly any of the soldiers bothered to look his way.
“We should just eject this traitor out the spaceway right now, Colonel,” said a tall blond officer who stood closest to Maurus. “Never should have let this kind of filth into
the Fleet.” He looked down at Maurus and spat.
Maurus kicked out and tried to sweep the officer’s feet out from under him. With a curse, the officer jumped back, reaching for his handblaster.
“Stand down, Lieutenant Derrick!” said Forquera angrily. The officer scowled and dropped his hand. “On your feet,” he said to Maurus. “You still have to go through decontamination.”
Maurus staggered upright, swaying to catch his balance without the use of his hands. A trickle of sweat cut a dark line through the mud caking his face.
A shout echoed across the bay: “Captain on deck!”
On the far side of the hangar, a set of doors flew open as Captain Lennard burst through. Chase recognized his pitted face from the transmission he’d seen on Vo’s ship. The captain was barrel-chested, with close-cropped hair that might once have been brown but now was sprinkled thickly with gray. His pale eyes blazed as he charged toward them and stopped just short of Maurus, and his lip curled up in a snarl. “You…”
A tangible anticipation hovered over the hangar as everyone, including Chase, waited to see what the captain would say to Maurus. Someone in the back coughed, and Lennard glanced around the flight bay, anger twisting his face.
“What are you all doing?” he shouted. “Don’t you have jobs to do?”
Noise surged as everyone rushed back to work.
Forquera snapped a salute. “Captain, I was about to take them over to decontamination. They were in some sort of swamp down on the Zeta, but there were no known reads on any possible toxins they may have picked up.”
The captain turned his fierce gaze on Chase, whose pulse quickened as he stared back like an animal caught in a trap. “Who is this?”
Forquera paused. “He was on the surface with Lieutenant Maurus, sir. There were two others, an android and a boy with Goxar poisoning. Ensign Reyes already took them to sickbay. It didn’t look like the boy was going to make it.”
Captain Lennard cocked his head. “Was the android poisoned too, Forquera? Send word to sickbay that it should be restrained. I don’t need a rogue andy running around my ship.”
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