Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon (47 page)

First I pulled her space-destroying shield off her arm and flung it as far as I could down the hallway. Then I tried to drag her flame gun away, gave up, and kicked it so it rolled a few feet.

I lifted my goggles and rubbed my eyes. Weak and hoarse, I said, “We have to go tell Calvin. He’ll need to know.”

Claire sat down on the main steps, arms crossed over her knees. “Penny, the first chance we get, we go home. I haven’t updated my Twitter accounts in days.”

Bwa?

With great effort, I kept that from being what came out of my mouth, but couldn’t stop the next thought from escaping. “Accounts plural?”

Ray started smirking. “E-Claire has six Twitter accounts, all claiming the others are fakes.”

Claire puffed out her chest proudly, face held as regally high as a lioness’. “And I only run two of them.”

I filled in sarcastically, “…but if they both stop posting at the same time, the game falls apart. Yeah, yeah. I’ll add that to the million of reasons we need to tell Calvin where his sister is, pat him on the back, and blow this popsicle stand.”

Claire grinned at me, and I yanked her up off the steps and gave her a hug. Yes, well done, tension defused. It could be surprisingly great having friends who knew how to push my buttons.

“Would you guard Remmy with this until she wakes up? She’ll finish cleaning out Callisto.”

I turned my head around to see Ray handing the Death-To-Puppeteers Beam to Sabrina. She crouched next to Remmy’s unconscious body, teeth clenched. If only we could do for her what Claire had just done for me.

She growled, “We’ll clean out Callisto, alright. I’ve had enough of living in terror of Puppeteers. We all have.”

Maybe we had given her what she needed―a weapon for revenge. Closure.

A momentary image of Claire tweeting affronted, contradictory messages at herself for a public audience brought my smile back, and let me focus on business.

“I’d rather tell Calvin I knocked his sister cold than risk her outsmarting us on the way to Europa. Let’s get moving.”

hat left a problem, of course.

“How are we going to get home?” I looked up at the glowing ceiling of Calvin’s spaceship. Neither the ceiling, the glow, nor even the ineffable forces of the cosmos answered me.

Claire breezed past me towards the cockpit. “I’ll drive.”

“Why you?” Wait, shut up, Penny. You’ve got a goose-egg on your forehead and your heart aches. You don’t want to drive!

Fortunately, Claire had her answer ready. “Artificially enhanced super reflexes, I’ve been watching Remmy, and I play more flight simulators than you do.”

Relieved to be relieved of duty, I sank down in a chair and closed my eyes. The ship lurched, pulling me down for a second, but that meant we were airborne. Or spaceborne.

I only felt a gentle tug to one side as we accelerated. Claire was getting the hang of the system. I peeked enough to see the wall towards the back of the ship brighten. Evidence for my theory that Remmy used the push of aetheric rotors to disguise the pull of engine thrust.

“Any guesses how I find Europa station?” Claire called out.

Ray’s voice headed in her direction. “That trackball device measures distances to target. We’ll have to be close to aim it, but that won’t be hard. Europa is the white spot over there.”

“The moons must be close together right now. Handy.”

Awhile later, “We’re about halfway there. Reverse thrust.”

“Oh, right.”

I lurched from side to side, and forward and back, like I was riding in a car dealing with particularly difficult traffic. That smoothed out again after a minute.

A loud clang woke me up, bouncing me up in my seat. Had I put the seatbelts on myself? I was wearing them now. The whole ship vibrated for a few seconds.

Her voice shakier than the ship, Claire announced, “We’re docked.”

I opened my eyes as Ray entered the room, worked the lever and wheel to unlock and descend the ramp. Claire arrived several seconds later, leaning against the doorframe.

She took a couple of deep breaths, giving me a muzzy grimace. “Flying one of these is easy. Landing is not. I’ll spare you how many times I thought we were going to crash.”

Unfastening my seatbelt, I stood up, stretched, and petted Archimedes. “Take a break. We’ll be back here as soon as we find Calvin and Juno. We haven’t been gone that long. Ray, you wake him up, and I’ll wake her.”

Even coming down from a case of nerves, that made Claire grin wickedly. “I’m pretty sure they’ll be together, and you’ll be more than a little embarrassed when you find out why.”

I ignored the Jaded Lutra act. Ray agreeing to behave had just opened the door for Claire to take over supplying innuendo. Instead of blushing or delivering a devastating riposte, I squeezed my eyes shut and took advantage of Archimedes’ ability to see through walls.

“They’re nowhere near each other,” I reported smugly. “Calvin is… I think he’s on the top level market, down by the bulkhead seals. Juno is in the dormitories, and she is way more powerful than I thought.” Calvin was a distant green man shape. I couldn’t see Juno specifically, just a misty white blob that filled the area she was in. I had to assume she’d be smack dab in the middle of that cloud.

The real reason I was so happy Calvin and Juno weren’t together was cowardice. Let Ray be the one to tell Calvin what happened to his sister!

Ray gave me an encouraging fist bump to the shoulder when we reached the bottom of the ramp. “You’ve done everything you set out to do. Even if Remmy never forgives you, she’ll have a happier life because you met. All you have to think of now is the best way to get us home, and if Harvey can talk to you through Archimedes, that won’t take long.”

I flashed him a weak grin. He reached out and flicked his thumb down the bridge of my nose. “So remember, young miss, when going into space, always bring along your psychic cat.”

I went “Pffft,” at him.

We parted ways in the wrecked marketplace. After just having visited Callisto, the identical layouts felt creepy. I found my way down to the dormitories with ease, but where in these hundreds of rooms was Juno?

Archimedes Vision didn’t help much. I was walking through fog. Okay, that splotch of green and yellow and blue and purple had to be her.

This was the far dormitory from the one we’d slept in, but still much closer than I’d expected to see Juno. Of course, if her power was this spread out, she must not be asleep. These little rooms and deserted hallways provided a lot of peace and quiet to… do… space witch stuff. Worship Jovians?

A quick blink confirmed my direction. I stopped in front of door 43 in Dorm A, and knocked on the door. “Juno?”

No answer. Archimedes wriggled and mewed, agitated. I hadn’t made him do that.

I knocked louder. Still nothing.

Well, time to be rude. I pressed the latch and opened the door enough to peek in.

My throat tightened, strangling a scream. A teenage boy lay on the floor, not even on the bed. He was emaciated, stripped down to his boxers and covered in tendrils of red flesh. Control squid crawled languidly over his skin, and as I watched, a fleshy red bulge on his shoulder shook, split, and a damp, freshly hatched squid climbed out.

My heart raced. Grabbing Archimedes in both hands, I yelled down at the monsters, “Sleep! No, die! Die, all of you! Curl up and die! And let him go!”

They did curl up, and the white lights in their eyes went out, but they didn’t turn grey. The one that had taken over the boy didn’t move.

He looked familiar. Wasn’t this the kid who gave Remmy a hard time back on Callisto?

Criminy, this was a little too much even for revenge. No, no way Remmy knew about this.

But Juno was nearby, probably right across the hall, and the eyes of the squid glowed white. Like they’d glowed white on Callisto.

No way.

I walked Archimedes down to my arm, and checked my pocket for my last remaining cursed coin. Only one door on the opposite wall was closed, and that was where the white glowed brightest.

I shut the breeding room behind me. The last thing I wanted was those monsters sneaking up from behind.

My head felt light from shock. I tried to focus. This would require all the strength I could muster.

I crossed the hall, pressed the latch, and opened the door to Juno’s room.

Not that she was sleeping in it. She floated in the center, legs crossed, hands in her lap. Even with her eyes closed, a white jellyfish shape with bloated tentacles floated around her. It wasn’t entirely visible, but the white light it shone on every surface gave off flashing hints of its outline.

“What are you doing?” I managed not to scream it at her, but only just.

Quiet and tranquil, her voice merely hinted apology. “Regrettably, you already know.”

So, it was true. My grip on my anger failed, and it boiled up inside me. “So
thi
s is your idea of freeing the rotors from the automatons? By mind controlling anyone who disagrees with you?!” Criminy, did I sound screechy.

She smiled. I’d met a lot of villains. Several were my friends. I couldn’t recall ever seeing such a peaceful, smug, evil expression. “No, child. This was the first step of freeing the Jovians from our prison. Through me, we would have had a thousand flesh and blood hands that could wield tools and weapons. I had hoped to keep you usefully ignorant, but the truth is, you are obsolete. You have brought us the key to the Puppeteers’ gate, and we need nothing else.”

Pointing Archimedes right at her face, I snarled, “Shut up and die.” I didn’t yell, but Archimedes did, his howl venting my anger and disgust.

Juno flinched, and stumbled. It wasn’t enough to knock her out, but she had to stand on her own feet, and her hiss no longer sounded tranquil at all. “You dare to fight us with our own power?”

And here I thought I was a melodramatic villain.

She didn’t have to issue commands. The light in the room flashed, and I got the impression of tentacles stabbing at me. My head hurt. My back went stiff.

Archimedes made an ugly sound, like a buzzsaw biting into a nail. I pushed the pain aside, even though I had to clench my teeth and squint. “You hurt. Suffer. Burn!”

My voice might be muffled, but that only let me focus my hatred. I swung it at her like a sledgehammer, and it was her turn to stiffen.

I pressed my advantage. “Give up! Surrender! Let go! It’s over, Juno!”

The commands slid off her, the invisible tentacles flickering like stuttering fluorescent lights. Archimedes’ scream drove them off, but my knees shuddered.

I wasn’t nearly done, and neither was she. That was fine. With all this shouting, backup would arrive shortly. I didn’t have to win, just keep her occupied.

Juno’s smile came back, tight and mean. Her lips barely moved. “You can’t keep up this anger, human child. Soon, it will turn against you. You call yourself a villain, and part of you wants to open the gate yourself, watch humanity kneel in their multitudes to the will of the Jovians, and laugh at the destruction you have caused.”

The temptation speech? Really? Except… she was right. It would be so much fun, standing atop a stone arch on a blasted moon of Jupiter, and unleashing a flood of monsters out into space.