Lost Planet 01 - The Lost Planet (17 page)

Chase grinned back, as happy to see a glimmer of the old Parker as he was about the delightfully greasy pile of snacks in front of them. His stomach roared with approval as they shoveled the crackers in their mouths by the double-handful, chewing as fast as possible.

An outraged squeal from down the hall announced that their theft had been noticed. A second later Ferkel charged into the room, scrambling onto a chair and diving across the table. Crackers flew everywhere.

“We're hungry!” bellowed Chase, snatching up loose crackers.

“Hey! Give those back!” Parker tried to push Ferkel away, and the little creature took a swipe at him, leaving a long scratch down Parker's forearm. “What the—ouch!”

“What's going on in here?” Maurus stood in the doorway, haggard and sunken-eyed. Seeing Parker's arm, he grabbed Ferkel by the nape of the neck and lifted him off the table. “Do I need to lock you in a closet?”

Kicking wildly, Ferkel answered with a stream of indignant squeals. Although it sounded like gibberish to Chase, Maurus must have understood at least some of it, because he waved his hand dismissively.

“No, we aren't going to run out of food. One box of crackers won't make a difference, and don't say otherwise because I've seen the secret stash of junk Vo's hiding upstairs.” He set Ferkel back on the floor, where the creature flared his frilled nostrils and hacked a wad of brown spit at his boots. Maurus swung his foot, more a warning than an attempt to actually kick Ferkel, but the Lakito had already scampered from the room. “And bring me a pot of hot caff,” Maurus shouted after him.

With a cautious glance at the boys, Maurus sank into a chair and absently stuffed a few crackers in his mouth. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing at the other chairs. His eyes were bloodshot, and his hair hung loose and stringy around his face. Chase took the seat across from him, scraping up another handful of crackers as he did. After a moment's hesitation, Parker joined them.

“How bad did he get you?” Maurus asked, indicating the fiery scratches on Parker's arm.

Parker wiped his hand over the marks. “It's nothing.”

“You both doing okay down here? Other than the food?”

Chase shrugged. “Just kinda bored.” Parker swept most of the remaining crackers into a pile on his side of the table, his expression daring Maurus to say something about it.

Maurus rubbed his eyes for a long time and ran his hand through his hair. “I wish we could drop you off somewhere, but it's just not…” He trailed off and took a deep breath. “You'll be well taken care of when we get to my people. They'll help you on your way.”

Maurus looked Chase in the eyes as he said this, his expression weary but earnest. Chase felt a strong urge to share their whole story with him—how he'd shown up on Parker's lawn, how they'd been chased by the Fleet, even the part about the identical microchips that Parker didn't know about. But that seemed like a good way of making sure that Parker would never speak to him again, so he just nodded acknowledgment.

Ferkel waddled back into the bunkroom holding a metal carafe that was nearly half his size. He hoisted it onto the table and left, returning a few moments later to slam a mug and a bowl of sugar alongside it. Maurus poured a stream of dark, steaming liquid into the mug.

“At least it looks like we might be able to trim a day off our original schedule.” He scooped generously from the sugar bowl and gave his drink a quick stir. “I've been running some upgrade processes on the ship's flight software.”

Parker glanced at him and lowered his eyes back to his cracker pile. “There's a generator in the engine room that looks like it could use a software patch. Its cycles are running too high.”

Maurus arched his eyebrows in surprise. “Really? That's good to know. I'll take a look at it.”

“I can do it,” muttered Parker.

Maurus hesitated. “Maybe we can look at it together.” He added another two scoops of sugar to his drink.

“You already added sugar,” Chase pointed out.

“I like things sweet.” Maurus lifted the mug to his face and inhaled the drink's malty aroma.

Parker snorted. “Like all Lyolians.”

Maurus shook his head and took a big gulp. His eyes bugged out as he swallowed, and his face twisted in a horrible grimace. “Ahhhh!” he gagged, slamming the mug on the table. For a terrified heartbeat, Chase thought Ferkel had poisoned Maurus, but Maurus just leaned over the floor and spat. When he sat back up, he was making a disgusted face that lay somewhere between hideous and hilarious.

Maurus grabbed the half-full mug and jumped to his feet, running from the bunkroom as he shouted, “You'd better hide, little hog!” Ferkel's terrified squeals were muffled behind a closed door. “Open up! Open up and give me a bottle of water right now!”

Chase stared at Parker. “What just happened?”

Parker leaned across the table to dip his finger in the sugar bowl and pressed his fingertip to his tongue. A smile forced its way across his face, and he bit his lips together trying to stop it.

Chase tasted the sugar as well and winced at the unexpected flavor. “Ugh, it's salt!”

Maurus came back into the room, chugging from a rubber canteen. He paused to take a deep breath. “Oh, this's funny, is it?”

Chase glanced at the contorted expression on Parker's face, and when their eyes met, the boys burst out laughing. Maurus sank back into his chair. “I'm going to kill that little bugger.” He pushed his hair off his face again and squeezed his temples, closing his eyes. He smiled a little and shook his head as their laughter rose and fell in giddy, uncontrollable bursts.

After several tries Chase managed to get his voice under control. “I'm sorry. You look really tired,” he finally said.

Maurus nodded. “I am.”

Calculating backward, Chase realized that Maurus probably hadn't slept since they'd picked him up over Mircona. Did being unconscious count as sleep? “Why don't you take a nap?”

Maurus shook his head. “Can't afford to. I have to keep an eye on Vo.”

“Mina said she'd help you navigate.” Chase glanced at Parker as he spoke, but Parker had leaned back in his chair and was staring into the distance, seeming deep in thought. If he could get Maurus to stay in the bunkroom and keep Parker from leaving it, he'd get a chance to talk with Mina in relative privacy.

Maurus gave Chase a doubtful look. “I don't think it's a good idea for me to leave the control deck for more than a hot caff…” He glanced at the mug and scowled. “A water break.”

“Just sleep a couple hours. You look like you're about to drop dead.”

Maurus glanced longingly at the empty bunks. “A couple hours is pretty tempting. And, to be honest, I think I'm starting to hallucinate a bit.” He stood up, rolling and cracking his neck. “I'll tell Mina I'm taking a break.”

“I'll do that for you. Just go lie down.”

Maurus glanced at him for a second and shrugged. “Thanks.” He dropped heavily onto one of the lower bunks, and within two breaths he was asleep.

Chase stood, silently hoping that Parker wouldn't want to come with him to the control deck. “So, I'll go talk to Mina.”

Parker glanced up and nodded but made no move to join him. Breathing a sigh of thanks, Chase left the bunkroom.

Mina was at the console piloting the ship by herself. Vo dozed beside her in his crusty captain's chair, his chin wet with saliva. Based on the chair's heavy padding and general disgustingness, Chase wondered if Vo ever left his seat even when he didn't have four stowaways aboard.

“How are you?” Mina asked.

“Okay. Maurus is taking a nap.”

“I heard.” Chase frowned at her, and she smiled. “My hearing sensors are very sensitive. It's a small ship.”

Chase gazed out through the windshield at the light-streaked universe before them, slightly stunned as always at the unfathomable enormousness of it. “Do you think Asa's out there somewhere looking for Parker?”

Mina adjusted a slider on the control panel. “I'm not authorized to talk about Asa with you.”

He stared at her. “Are you serious? Why not? Who is he?”

Mina didn't answer. It was true, Chase realized, that she'd only spoken of Asa to Dr. Silvestri or Parker, never directly to Chase. This put a kink in his plans. He racked his mind for ways to get information about Asa without directly asking about him.

“Who do you think made my microchip?”

“I never saw your microchip.”

“But Dr. Silvestri said…,” he began, trailing off so she could finish the sentence. She didn't take the bait.

Chase had been thinking about Asa a lot in the past four days. Maybe Asa designed his microchip like Dr. Silvestri said, but there was no guarantee their connection went any further than that. At first Chase had suspected he was probably a ward of Asa's, like Parker, living in a different compound that had been attacked. But the little girl he'd seen didn't seem to know Asa, and she definitely knew Chase. Or at least she knew the Chase who she claimed was dead.

Chase looked down at his hands. The question driving him crazy ever since he'd seen the girl was whether he was actually a clone of some other, dead Chase. That would explain the lack of memory, but not the blaster wound or the microchip with the name Chase Garrety on it. The microchip that Asa Kaplan may or may not have made. All his questions just kept feeding back into one another, and thinking about them too hard made him feel like he was caught in a maze.

In his encounter with the Zinnjerha on Trucon, he recalled how he'd been unharmed after the creatures had slashed at him with their razor-edged pincers. He'd felt his skin being cut—hadn't he? In retrospect, he was no longer sure. And when the girl attacked him in the bathroom on Qesaris, how had she managed to stab him without leaving a mark? She looked crazy. Maybe she was just an escaped mental patient who'd overheard his name from Parker.

But even if he wasn't sure about the attacks he'd survived, Chase could not deny his escape from the metal container. He'd simply passed right through the door. That wasn't normal. He wasn't normal. But what was he?

Feigning interest in the control console, Chase glanced at Mina's still face. “Have you ever heard of people running through walls?”

“Running through walls? That's called phasing.”

“So there are people who can do that?”

Mina shook her head. “No, it's just a hypothetical ability invented by Earthan storytellers.”

“But maybe on another planet there are people who could?”

Mina was still for a moment. “Every species has its own unique abilities. The Falasians have the most advanced extrasensory skills—part of their communication is a form of telepathy. But phasing just doesn't exist. Why are you asking this?”

Chase barely heard her question as he tried to figure out how to express his next idea. “What about, um, man-made people? Could they do phasing?”

“You mean androids?” Mina smiled. “The physics involved in creating a phasing android would be nearly impossible. It would have to be capable of a very sophisticated kind of self-controlled teleportation. Humankind has mastered teleportation for transportation uses, but the only further development that's come from that invention is weapons research.”

“Teleportation weapons?”

“Annihilation weapons. Teleportation breaks things up at a particulate level and puts them back together. Particle dispersers skip the second step.”

Chase frowned, trying to visualize this. “What do you mean?”

“A particle disperser can vaporize things—people, buildings. They're illegal.” Mina paused. “These are strange questions, Chase. Is there a reason why you're asking them?”

“Just curious,” he said quickly. He couldn't be a phasing android—he knew from his passage through the container that he wasn't controlling anything. As the days passed and the memory lost its sharp edges, he began to wonder whether that was actually what had happened.

Chase padded back through the metal hallway to the bunkroom. Maurus had passed out hard in one of the bunks, and Parker had also fallen asleep, another brochure lying half on his face. Chase climbed into his own bunk, which smelled musty and sour but was otherwise comfortable, and drifted off to an uneasy sleep.

*   *   *

Out of nowhere, a terrible rumbling tore through the ship.

Chase sat up in his bed, adrenaline flooding his veins. The walls shuddered as if the ship were coming apart. The door to the bunkroom was open, and Maurus was already gone. Shouts echoed down from the control cabin. Parker was headed to the bunkroom door to look out by the time Chase had jumped down from his bunk.

Maurus ran down the hall at them, wild terror on his face. “Stay in there!” he shouted as he ran. “Shut the door and do not come out!” He grabbed the door and slammed it in their faces.

The ship still shook. “What's going on?” Chase grabbed the bed frame to hold himself upright. “Did the Fleet find us?”

Parker's face had gone pale.

Maurus's shouts came through the door. “We need to build a barricade! No, find something heavier!”

“We can help,” said Parker, opening the door again. This time it was Mina who pushed them to the back of the room.

“Stay in here, stay away from the door,” she ordered.

“But we can—” Parker began to say, but she had already slammed the door shut again.

They stood near the back of the bunkroom. Outside in the hall, footsteps pounded past their door along with the metallic scraping of something heavy being dragged. “Where did you put the munitions chamber?” Maurus yelled over Ferkel's panicked squeals.

Finally the ship stopped shaking, and for a moment there was silence.

Chase took a deep, shaky breath. In a whisper, he asked, “What's hap—”