Lost Planet 02 - The Stolen Moon (22 page)

“What on Taras—” Chase began. They ran toward the commotion just as a hovercraft lifted off the ground, stirring up dust and lichen. The only person remaining was Ksenia, shouting in the vehicle's wake. The door of the container where the soldiers had been kept swung on its hinges.

“What happened?” asked Chase. “Where did everyone go?”

She whirled around, livid. “He took them.”

“Who?” asked Parker.

“Hotha. He rounded up the soldiers and took them away to the gravity mines.”

A bad feeling started to grow in Chase's stomach. “Why?”

Ksenia gave him a flat look. “Why do you think? To hurl them into the center of the moon, most likely, and prove his loyalty to the cause.”

This couldn't be happening. Not so soon. Chase began to back away from the building. “Where is Bawran? We have to stop them!”

Ksenia scowled. “I just saw him leave on a hover, off to raid my ship again, I'm sure. They waited until he was gone to do this. By the time we catch up with them, it will be all over.”

Parker was already off and running down the street, skidding to a stop at the row of hoverbikes. He fiddled with one for a moment, and with a sigh of disgust moved on to the next before standing. “These are a mess. It's going to take me hours to fix either of them.” He looked over to the side, where a third hoverbike frame rested, but it had already been raided for parts, and the handlebar and entire seat segment were missing. Parker leaned over and did something to the controls, and immediately it powered up, lifting off the ground. “And this is the one that works. Great.”

Ten minutes later, they had hauled the plush crimson chair around from the junk pile and lashed it to the hoverbike frame with loose cabling. Parker had jerry-rigged a handlebar out of some piping. “It's way out of balance so we're probably going to wear out the bearings really quickly, but as long as it doesn't leave us stranded in the middle of the moon, this should do.”

“As long as we don't hit another windstorm,” muttered Lilli.

“Well, that too, Miss Sunshine,” said Parker. “Get on.” He stood at the controls, his feet balancing the two main slats of the hovers. Lilli climbed into the armchair, and Chase hopped on the back, hugging the back of the seat.

“What are you doing?” Ksenia's voice cut through the air. She stood at the edge of the building, looking over their rigged-up hoverbike.

“We're going to help Maurus and the others,” said Parker.

“You don't need to go,” she said quickly. “I've contacted Asa. He's on his way.”

Was she telling the truth? Chase's heart leapt at the possibility. “You contacted Asa? How?”

Ksenia nodded. “Bawran is hiding a comm station in his trailer. I just found it.”

“You just found it,” said Parker sarcastically. “How convenient. And what did Asa say?”

She was lying. She had to be. But her answer came immediately. “He's on his way here right now. If you leave, you'll miss him.”

This made Chase pause. “But they're in trouble now. If we wait for Asa, it might be too late.”

“They're just Fleet soldiers. Stay here with me, where it's safe.” If Chase had doubted her connection to Asa before, now she even sounded like him, placing their safety over the safety of their friends in the Fleet.

“Nope,” said Parker. He hit the drive gear and they went sailing down the street, trailed by cheerfully screaming Werikosa children. The chair rocked back hard against its ties, causing one heart-stopping moment when Chase thought they were all going to go flying, but it stayed put. Soon they were speeding across the floor of the crater.

The steep crater walls loomed ahead. “Either we're going to fly up this thing, or we're going to smash into a million bits!” shouted Parker, cranking up to full speed. As they came closer, Chase's heart pounded harder and harder. Then they hit … and shot straight up the hill. They weren't even halfway up when the bike began to strain, and the smell of bitter, hot plastic wafted up from below.

“Come on!” Chase roared, pounding his fist against the back of the chair. The hoverbike slowed to a crawl. They weren't going to make it. The engine started to make high-pitched broken sounds, and the bike sank to a stop, grinding against gravel.

“No!” cried Chase. He leapt off and pushed the back of the chair. It felt like he was trying to push a starship, not a hoverbike.

Muttering under his breath, Parker leaned down and fiddled with the controls, yelping when he touched something hot. He wrapped his hand in the hem of his shirt to pry open the console. “We must have already eaten down on the bearings and put too much friction on the forward rotor,” he said. “Looks like it just tripped a fuse. I can jumper across it—it's not like this bike has more than one ride left in it. But I need a small piece of metal for the jumper.”

Chase felt around in his empty pockets, looked around at the barren soil, but saw nothing useful. Then he glanced down, and spotted a tag at the rear of the hovercraft, attached with a thick piece of twisted metal wire. “Hang on,” he said, kneeling to a crouch to untwist the wire. The metal was stiff and bit into his fingers, making it harder to untwist when his hands started to automatically phase through it. Gritting his teeth, he eventually pulled it free and passed it up to Parker.

“That'll work.” Parker went to work on the controls, cursing under his breath, and they waited nervously for a minute to see whether their rescue mission had already come to an end.

“Should we—” Chase started to ask.

“Here we go!” yelled Parker. The bike roared back to life and shot upward, soaring over the crest of the rim. They sped onward across the featureless surface of the moon, cheering like they'd won the lottery.

In the distance, the shadowy outline of the gravity mines rose against the horizon. They hurtled toward it, but it was so far away they barely seemed to make any progress. Clutching the armrest with one hand, Lilli tried to pull her sweater over her face to block herself from the lichen and dust they were stirring up. Chase clung to the back of the chair, his arms and hands beginning to cramp and ache.

Finally, after what felt like at least an hour of travel, the mineworks loomed before them. A gigantic metal frame held up drills that soared into the sky, the lowest section covered with metal panels—probably, Chase guessed, to protect against the windstorms. A long, lichen-covered warehouse was located right beside it, and a menagerie of dormant heavy machinery lay between the two. The lower buildings of a settlement were grouped farther in the distance.

Parker drew to a stop alongside the outer building, parking the hoverbike beside the metal panels on the frame. As soon as he turned the whirring engine off, they could hear shouting from somewhere inside.

Lilli closed her eyes for a moment. “They are right inside, by the mine shaft,” she said, heading for a gap in the panels.

Chase's feet felt like jelly after standing on the vibrating base of the hoverbike for so long, but he rushed after her. They ran down a short hallway that opened onto a giant outdoor area of a monstrous open framework, like they were standing inside the bottom of a half-built skyscraper. In the center, a drill as wide around as a transport shuttle hung suspended above a massive, ragged hole in the ground.

Shouts echoed from across the way, joined by the terrible sound of blaster fire, but the drill blocked their view of what was happening. Chase grabbed Parker and Lilli, pulling them to slow down. If blasters were being used, he didn't want them anywhere near the fight. “Stay back here! Don't go any closer!”

Parker shouted something, but Chase didn't hear it. He sprinted as hard as he could toward the gigantic drill, coming around the side to see what was happening.

Hotha stood near the edge of the mine shaft, with two more Werikosa standing behind him. All three carried heavy blasters. Hotha was shouting at someone, waving his weapon around.

As he drew a little closer, with a plummeting feeling in his gut Chase saw that Maurus, Vidal, and Derrick were lined up right at the edge of the chasm. Hotha raised his blaster to point it at Derrick, but with his quick Lyolian reflexes, Maurus reached out with his good arm and knocked it upward, so the blast flew harmlessly over their heads.

In response, Hotha kicked Maurus in the knee and swung the nozzle of his weapon into Maurus's burned shoulder. With a yell, Maurus buckled at the waist. All Hotha had to do was shove a bare foot in his chest.

And just like that Maurus toppled backward, vanishing into the mine shaft.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

For a moment, the universe froze. Chase slowed to a stop, staring at the empty space where Maurus had disappeared into the mine shaft, unable to believe what he'd just seen. His mouth fell open, and all the air rushed out of him. Was that it? Was he too late? The rumblings of a terrible noise began to grow in his chest.

A scream sliced through the air. Vidal threw herself at the edge of the chasm, scrambling forward to look down into it. Her shrieks went up an octave in an unintelligible garble of words. Behind her, one of Hotha's colleagues raised a foot as if to kick her in after Maurus. Derrick threw himself at the man, wrestling him backward.

This shook Chase out of his stupor. He started running toward them again, and as he did, the words of Vidal's cries became clear.

“Hold on! Just hold on!” Was she calling out to Maurus? With a surge of hope, Chase raced toward her side, but before he could get there, Hotha stepped forward and pointed his weapon at her back.

“NO!” roared Chase. His cry caught everyone's attention, and immediately Hotha swiveled around, aiming directly at Chase's chest. Blaster fire erupted from the nozzle.

Both Derrick and Vidal cried out, but Chase braced himself in time, and the blaster fire only made him stagger one step back, scowling at the numb sensation it left in his chest as it passed through him. Hotha lowered the weapon and cocked his head. Even Hotha's companions paused to stare at Chase, and Derrick was looking at him in a way he never had on the ship. “What on Taras—?”

Hotha raised his blaster again to fire, but Chase dodged him this time, trying to lead him away from Vidal, who still crouched at the edge of the mine shaft. As he jogged backward, in the corner of his eye he saw her climb over the edge and down into the hole. Hotha jogged toward him, pointing his blaster again.

“Hey you!” Lilli stood off to the left, and her cry caught Hotha's attention. When he turned, she blinked out and reappeared a few feet to her right, then blinked out again and appeared diagonally behind that, and then again, and again. Chase wanted to strangle her for not staying out of it like he'd told her, but he saw his opportunity to grab a long, heavy pick off the ground and swing it at Hotha's head. The Werikosa fell flat on his face, and Lilli grinned at Chase.

“We'll talk about this,” he said, pointing at her in what he hoped was an authoritative way.

Derrick had managed to pin down one of the two other Werikosa, but the second was coming up behind him, blaster raised as if to club the soldier with it.

A loud rumble shook the air, and a monstrous mechanical digger rolled toward the mine shaft on thick tank treads, a gigantic scoop on a long metal arm poised over the cabin. Behind the controls, Parker's pale face was fixed on the fight before him. As the shovel of the machine swung down, Derrick tore free and rolled out of the way, and the shovel clamped over both of the Werikosa, trapping them against the ground.

Climbing to his feet and wiping his brow, Derrick gave Parker a thumbs-up. He jogged over to the edge of the chasm and squinted down. Then he jumped.

Chase raced to the edge of the pit. The top of the mine shaft was even bigger than he had realized—the entire
Falconer
could have fit from end to end across its width, though it narrowed farther below. The walls were steep but not smooth, and a thousand ledges of broken moon rock jutted out to create handholds. Derrick had landed on a wide ledge just below the lip.

Chase sucked in his breath when he saw Maurus farther down, clinging to an overhang. The rock he'd caught hold of to stop his fall jutted too far out for him to reach any other location, so he hung uselessly, unable to climb or swing to another spot. Vidal had climbed down to a ledge nearby, but she couldn't find an angle with enough leverage to offer him her hand.

Derrick scrambled down the wall to a wide, flat shelf of rock and positioned himself on a ledge just to the left of Maurus. He dropped to his stomach and wriggled off the edge of the overhang, extending his right leg toward Maurus. “Here!” he shouted. “Grab my foot!”

Maurus pushed sideways off the rock wall and seized Derrick's ankle, using his momentum to swing to a small ledge nearby, but the motion must have been more than Derrick expected, and it yanked him right to the edge of his platform. Maurus let go to grab onto the next outcropping of rock, but Derrick slipped from his handhold and slid down the wall with a shout, grabbing desperately at anything to stop himself.

Chase looked up for rope, for tools, for anything to help. “Parker, get that machine over here!” he yelled. The shovel wasn't nearly long enough to reach, but it was all they had. He heard an anguished cry, and what he saw when he looked down again made his heart stop. Far below in the canyon, Vidal had scrambled down to a ledge where Derrick lay facedown and very still. She kneeled by his head, while Maurus's anguished shout echoed up the rocky walls.

“Chase, look out!” came Parker's panicked voice behind him.

A jumble of images and movement came at him when he looked over his shoulder—Hotha, bleeding and furious, sprinting at him, and a flash of Lilli, sending a copy in to trip him before he reached Chase.

Alone, Chase could have braced himself against Hotha and let him blast through and into the void. But some instinctive, irrational part of himself automatically reached out to grab Lilli, even though she vanished as soon as he touched her arm. But it was enough to tip him over and sent him careening into the pit along with Hotha.