1942664419 (S) (16 page)

“David!” He was hidden, swarmed, lost beneath the gigantic, rampaging bugs.

My voice echoed through the chamber, and the pile froze. Thousands of beady, glowing eyes turned toward me.

Shoot!

The spiders flew straight up, filling the chamber with chitters and glowing light. I gasped as the last bug left the platform. David was gone.

“David!”

I shielded my eyes as scads of bony fingers clutched at my torso and dragged me off the platform. Wind slapped my cheeks as I flew into the darkness. Helpless, I cried out as they pitched my body against a wall. My breath fled from my lungs.

I gasped and slid down a slippery wall. My knees smashed against the first solid surface I’d met in the immense chamber. Standing, I backed away as the swirling bugs formed a tornado-like funnel.

That couldn’t be good.

My shoulder brushed a cold surface as my backpack disappeared into the wall behind me.
A liquid door?

Someone yanked the straps, drawing me through the frigid wall and back into the stifling heat.

I sprawled to the floor and stared straight up into the eyes of the Good Will Ambassador. His nose twisted like he’d sniffed rotten chicken.

You gotta be kidding me
.

17

A scuffle started to my right.

“Jess, run!”

David?

The ambassador’s goons wrestled David to the floor and pulled him between Poseidon-guy and me. My heart ricocheted from joy to horror as our gazes met. Seeing David alive almost made it okay that we’d been caught.

The ambassador’s features melted from disgust to the snarl of a homicidal maniac. He spoke softly in Erescopian, nearly hissing at David.

David grunted, not looking up.

Poseidon’s knuckles tangled in my hair as he pulled me to my knees. “Maybe I’ll just slit her throat. Have you seen what happens to a human when you cut them here?” He ran his scorching fingers across my neck.

David’s gaze rose, his eyes full of fire and death. “
Conadlasea emenda, est
.”

A short laugh puffed from the ambassador’s lips. “We’ll see.”

Someone unzipped my backpack and handed Poseidon the canister of powder. The mustard dust shifted within as he tilted the container to the side. “Last chance, little boy. I am more than happy to release this entire container over Mars. Destroy it forever. A simple splice. That is all I am asking.”

David sneered. “You ask too much.”

Poseidon jostled my head. “I think not.”

“
Oa seben ayat, est
,” David said, flinging the aliens holding him backward.

He snatched the doomsday powder from Poseidon and grabbed my wrist. My feet didn’t touch the floor again until we were down the hall and around a corner.

A cacophony of angry-sounding Erescopian words spewed behind us. Poseidon’s feet landed heavily on the floor.

I clung to David’s arm as we whisked through a wall and to the right, slamming smack-dab into a violescent wall of Erescopian bodies.

They drew us apart. One held me from behind, his hand easily encompassing my wrists and wrenching my arms behind my back.

Take pictures of the news, Jess. Don’t become the news.

Dad knew there would be trouble.

Of course there was. I was involved.

When in God’s name would I ever learn to listen to him?

Poseidon sauntered toward us. A triumphant leer stitched to his lips. “You are on my ship, Tirran Coud. There is nowhere you can go that I cannot see. Nothing you can do that I would not know.”

The lights flickered.

The proud smirk slipped from Poseidon’s lips onto David’s.

The ambassador’s eyes narrowed. “What have you done?”

“This ends now. I’m not using this powder,” David said, shifting the canister in his hand. “One thing you were right about is that our race is dying. We need allies. Not more enemies.”

Poseidon’s face became an unreadable mask. He glanced at the alien holding me and pointed at David. “
Atate, est
.”

The pressure on my wrists released. I ran to David. He gathered me in his arms as the goons released him. I collapsed into his warmth.

An alien to our left snickered as Poseidon spat several words in Erescopian. The dude on the other side of David reached for the canister.

“No!” David said, twirling me away from their reaching arms.

We ran back several steps before meeting another purple wall of guards.

Trapped.

David’s grip on me tightened. “Whatever happens, don’t let go.”

Oh, God.
The last time he said that we jumped off a moving train!

The goons advanced, and the floor fell out beneath us. I curled into David. My pulse charged as frigid cold stung my skin.

We rematerialized into oven-like heat. My lungs seized, filling with humid, stifling air.

David shoved something into my backpack and zipped. “Stay with me. I know it’s hot.”

We ran, David nearly dragging me the last several feet toward a huge, glistening opal. My head pounded in rhythm with a thundering alarm echoing from the surrounding corridors.

The room fuzzed around me. The heat pressed on all sides. I stumbled.

“I’ve got you.” David boosted me up.

The heat ceded to a chill as we passed through the outer wall of the opal orb, but returned to Sahara-hot as we stepped inside.

“
Caluonte atades
,” David shouted, and the temperature plunged to a chilly-feeling eighty or so.

I took a deep breath as the humidity ebbed away.

David lifted my chin. “Are you okay?” I nodded. “Good.”

He sprinted through a small break in the wall. When my heart stopped trying to leap out of my chest, I followed.

David sat before a blank surface, his hands within the liquid wall.

“What are you doing?”

“The fastest pre-flight ever.” He glanced toward a dull patch in the wall and grumbled something in Erescopian.

“What’s wrong?”

“No time to call a
grassen
.”

“You want one of those homicidal bugs?”

He murmured something that sounded like “if we want the ship to run” and sunk his arms deeper into the wall. The floor shimmied under my sneakers. I gasped as my feet left the ground. Pressure trounced me from all angles, like a million hands pushed from all sides and then disappeared.

I tucked back my hair as my sneakers returned to the floor. “What the heck was that?”

“Compression.” His arms waved frantically through the liquid console, his stare intense, as if he could see past the silvery fluid before him.

His shoulders relaxed, and he pulled his arms from the liquid. I gaped as his hands came out of the gray muck clean. Not even wet.

David stood. “We’re heading back to my father’s ship. We’ll be safe there.” He looked over his shoulder. “
Elebia
.”

The walls shimmered, faded, and disappeared, leaving a million stars sparkling around me like a planetarium from all angles.

“That blob we got on was a spaceship?”

David nodded. “Short-range communications conveyor vessel.”

I flinched. “Like the one you crashed on Earth?”

He glanced at me, and back to the console. “Very funny.”

I reached into the space where the wall had been. Frigid cold met my fingertips. The stars shifted like blowing on a window curtain. “This is amazing.”

David rubbed my shoulders and kissed my cheek. “Someday I’d love to take you for a ride, show you the galaxy, but we need to get this powder to the Caretakers.”

He unzipped my backpack and plucked out the cylinder. He raised the can to eye-level and stared into the powder as if it concealed the secrets to the universe.

“But the Caretakers are the ones who tried to have us executed on Earth. Aren’t they the bad guys?”

“They are our government.” He lowered the canister. “My people were dying. The Caretakers took us in. Helped us. We’d be extinct without them. We owe them a great deal.” His jaw twitched.

“You don’t sound certain about that.”

Daggers shot out of his eyes. I stepped back, frightened of him for the first time. Damn. I must have hit a sore spot.

A silvery-black dot in the distance enlarged. Apparently, we were moving, but it felt like we were standing still.

David placed the canister on the console and sunk his hands back into the wall. “All that matters right now is destroying this powder. We need to—”

His gaze shot up. The walls on all sides re-solidified, leaving only one window in front of David, and several smaller screens showing different clusters of stars.

“Is there something wrong?”

He looked to his right and a seat appeared. “Sit down.”

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

The chair liquefied, becoming hands and reaching for me. The fluid swirled around my waist, pulling me beside David and locking me into a sitting position.

I grimaced. “You didn’t have to—”

My seat jammed forward, as if we’d hit a tree head-on going fifty miles per hour. My head spun. The mustard canister flew off the console and rolled across the floor.

A vision of a green tractor-trailer flashed before my eyes.
I turned the wheel of the car.
Mom screamed. The brakes screeched. A flurry of white fabric crushed my nose.

Another tremor rocked my liquid seat, jerking my neck to the side. I cried out. Cold liquid instantly coalesced about my neck, stabilizing me before the next shockwave hit.

David squinted at the screens before him. A swirling opal passed before us. The orb hesitated, and the space around the craft wavered. David braced against the control panel before the whirling vibrations leaped toward us. Our ship heeled back, shaking.

Sweet Lord! We were in a spaceship dogfight!

The silvery-black dot we had been heading toward had become a huge molten spaceship. David shifted his shoulders, and we turned away from the vessel.

“Isn’t that where we were going?”

“Not anymore. The ambassador told them we had a weapon of mass destruction. If they scan our ship, they’ll see it’s the truth. He neglected to mention he was the person we took it from.”

Of course he did.

Another spiral of swirling, nearly clear vibrations shot from the other ship and splatted across the front window. I closed my eyes until the shaking subsided.

David moved his hands from the wall and inserted them in a different panel. His look of deep concentration melted into a furrowed brow and panicked eyes.

He’d crashed on Earth on his first mission. Had he flown since, or was this only the second time he’d piloted one of these things?

The ship rattled again, and the lights went out. The walls faded to stars on all sides, as if we were free-floating in space.

“Was that supposed to happen?” I asked.

A small light illuminated David’s face. His lips formed three words he never spoke. He straightened, turned to the console, and inserted his hands.

“Don’t.” A voice rattled through our chamber, the tone chilling my skin.

An orb circled us three times. I felt like a goldfish stuck in its bowl as a cat stalked him.

“It doesn’t have to be like this, Tirran Coud.”

I clung to my chair, Poseidon’s voice cutting through me.

He continued. “Give me what I want. Deep down, you know it the best for our people.”

David closed his eyes. His jaw quaked before he steadied himself and tapped a glowing spot on the translucent panel before him. “I can’t sacrifice the humans. It’s not right.”

A deep, menacing tone echoed throughout our ship. David hopped away from the console.

“What was that?” I asked.

His wide eyes scanned the clear walls. “I don’t know.”

Poseidon’s craft stopped in front of us and eased closer. If I could reach through the glassy surface of our ship, I probably could have touched his hull.

David stepped back as Poseidon’s ship shimmered. The opalescence faded, showing the ship’s interior. Poseidon leaned against the glass. It looked like he was drifting alone in space. His grin sent the hairs on my arms to attention.

His lips moved. A second later, the ambassador’s voice boomed through our ship. “Make a choice, Tirran. Your little pet or this one.”

He reached down and pulled a man in camouflage from the floor. He flung the soldier against the glass as if he weighed no more than a loaf of bread.

My vision skewed and refocused. The warmth drained from my face.

Dad.

My father’s eyes seemed swollen shut. His face bruised. A whimper escaped my lips as I clenched the arms of my chair.

Poseidon pulled Dad back and smashed him against the glass again.

“Stop it! You’re hurting him.” Tears ran down my cheeks. I cringed as my father’s mouth stretched against the clear hull.

David touched the console and whispered in his native tongue. His lips quivered as his gaze sunk to the flooring.

The ambassador’s retort came in a stern ramble of Erescopian words. David’s hands covered his face. What had he said?

Poseidon laughed. “What will you do, Tirran? Do you have the conviction to stand there and let your little pet watch her father die?”

“No!” I screamed as Dad rose into the air.

David reached for the console before he drew back.

I turned to him. But what could I say? A painful lump formed in my throat.

That was my father.

The one person I could always count on.

All I had left on Earth.

The pain burst from my lips in a sob. “Please don’t let them hurt my dad.”

David’s eyes closed. An alien appeared beside Poseidon and pointed a silver disc at my father’s temple.

“David!” I screamed.

He turned to me, a gamut of emotions transitioning across his features until he settled on grim determination. “I’m sorry, Jess.”

He turned back to the console and punched his arms into the liquid surface. Our ship jolted, throwing me back in my seat.

Poseidon’s eyes widened before he, his ship, and my father’s beaten form faded into a blur and disappeared.