Starbounders (19 page)

Z
achary's eyes opened. A blinding light reflected through the flight-deck window. It took a moment to gather his senses. Ryic and Kaylee were passed out in their seats, but he could see they were breathing. The buckler had touched down on a massive landing strip, just one spacecraft among hundreds. From their spot at the edge of the lot, they were just a short walk from a row of small, pointy buildings that were sticking out of a rolling fog.

Zachary reached out and gave each of his companions a firm shake.

“Guys,” he said. “Wake up.”

Ryic and Kaylee slowly came to, adjusting their eyes to the brightness.

“We're safe,” Zachary said. “We've landed.”

Releasing his safety belt, Ryic touched a purple ooze that stained the midsection of his shirt.

“I . . . I think I've been hit,” he said, alarmed. “It must have been a stray particle blast.”

Zachary immediately got up and went to his side. Kaylee looked less worried. She scooped some of the ooze up with her finger and examined it more closely. Then she licked it.

“Ah, you're a cannibal!” Ryic exclaimed. “I knew it.”

“Unless you bleed peanut-butter-and-jelly spaste, I think you'll survive,” Kaylee said.

Ryic stood up and pulled a punctured pouch out from his clothing.

“I didn't realize I had that in there,” he said.

Zachary was equal parts relieved and frustrated.

“Come on,” he said. “Tenretni awaits.”

The three climbed down the buckler's departure ramp onto a slick black sidewalk much like the ones at Indigo 8. Arrows directed them toward one of the small buildings at the edge of the lot. Passengers from other arriving ships joined them on the sidewalk. Others passed in the opposite direction, ready to head back into space.

As they got closer to the edge of the lot, Zachary realized that these weren't small buildings at all, but the very tops of skyscrapers. Looking down, he could see that the entire landing lot had been built thousands of feet above the surface of the planet. The rolling fog was actually clouds.

Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee entered the top floor of one of the skyscrapers and found themselves inside a circular glass elevator along with a dozen other arriving visitors. Once the doors closed, the elevator rapidly descended, going below the clouds and revealing the dense city of Tenretni.

It was a sprawling metropolis, with multiple tiers of development. Sidewalks, roads, and buildings were stacked layer upon layer, all supported the same way as the landing lot: on giant girders. The elevator came to its first stop on the 170th floor, which was the entry point for the highest tier of the city. The best dressed of the newly arriving travelers disembarked.

Zachary tapped one of the elevator passengers about to exit on the shoulder and showed her the scrap of paper with the symbols he'd drawn.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Do we need to get off here to get to this building? Discrape Towers?”

The passenger laughed.

“Bottom tier,” she said in a deep voice.

The elevator resumed its descent, not stopping again until it reached the eighty-fifth floor. This led to Tenretni's second-level district. Now the moderately attired visitors departed. That left only Zachary, Ryic, Kaylee, and three others, whose filthy appearance made it obvious that none of them belonged to the privileged class.

One, a hunched, wrinkled humanoid figure with stringy hair and fungus growing from her arms, stared at Zachary. Then without warning she grabbed Zachary's hand with her bony fingers. Before he could pull free, she stuck out her long tongue and drew it along his palm, past his wrist and toward his elbow. She snapped it back into her mouth and let out a cackle.

“Pay me and I'll tell you your future,” she said. “At least what's left of it.”

The elevator reached the first floor and Zachary quickly exited.

“Don't you want to know the death and misery I tasted on you?” asked the crone, hobbling after him.

“Take your crazy someplace else,” Kaylee said.

Zachary was still wiping the spittle from his arm as his friends came up beside him. Looking around, they found themselves below so many roads and passageways that it was hard to believe they weren't underground. The densely populated lower tier looked to Zachary like it had once been a place of great prosperity. Perhaps it was overpopulation or overcrowding that had led to its demise. Either way, its infrastructure was crumbling, and any investment in the future of Tenretni had been directed upward, not down here. Where above they had spotted automated hover-cars zipping around crystal pathways, on the bottom tier rickshaws were pulled by enormous slithering alien creatures who left trails of slime pooling in the roads.

Zachary broke out coughing as his nostrils filled with an unpleasant odor. The air had a smoggy brownish hue, and Kaylee was trying to wave it away from her face. Ryic was the only one who seemed unfazed. All the pollution in Tenretni had seemed to settle down here on the ground, leaving the levels above pristine and clear. Zachary lifted his shirt up over his nose and took a breath, turning to a once-majestic building sitting at the center of a park whose grass had all dried up, overrun with weeds and dirt. His lensicon targeted the building and he blinked twice.

NO INFORMATION AVAILABLE
.

Zachary turned to an old, run-down bank on the street corner. The same message appeared. Then his eyes spun to a floating car moving overhead.
No information
. A strange alien passed them by. Still nothing.

“Looks like we won't be getting much help from our lensicons,” Zachary said, feeling more than ever the direness of their search.

The search for Discrape Towers was even harder because they were unable to read the native language. Finding the signage from Hartwell's extracted memory seemed impossible.

One of the rickshaws came around the corner, and the alien manning the reins pulled it to a stop alongside some pedestrians, who climbed aboard.

“Maybe we can hitch ourselves a ride,” Kaylee said.

They waited until another of the two-wheeled passenger carts rolled up, and Zachary ran out to stop it. The creature slowed.

“Can you take us to Discrape Towers?” Zachary asked the alien driver.

The driver shrugged, not understanding. Zachary reached out to show him the piece of paper. The alien looked at the drawing and shook his head as if he couldn't read it either. Then he tapped the side of the spiked beast hauling the wagon. The beast turned, looked at the paper, and nodded. Clearly, the driver wasn't the brains of this operation. He gestured for Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee to get in, and the three sat upon the torn satin cushions of the rickshaw. Burning sticks of incense were wedged precariously in the cracks of the wooden frame of the carriage, sending up smoke that filled the wagon with the smell of tangerines and roses, a welcome break from the stink outside.

The beast pulled them forward, more swiftly than any seven-hundred-pound blob should have been able to travel. They passed alleys filled with trash and discovered where it all came from. Long tubes ejected it in sudden bursts from the tiers above. Stranger still was an orderly line of residents waiting for their turn to pick through the fresh scraps.

While they were still moving, the driver extended an open palm toward Zachary and let it linger there.

“Looks like he wants us to pay him,” Kaylee said.

“Do you think he'll accept my galactic bank account number?” Ryic asked.

“Not likely,” Kaylee said.

“Well, then I hope this is sufficient,” Ryic said, pulling a cube of serendibite from his pocket and offering it to the driver. “Enough?” he asked, enunciating the word slowly.

The alien looked at it and his eyes lit up big and wide. He let out an exclamation in his alien tongue and began weeping.

“Oh, no, I've upset him,” Ryic said.

“I'm pretty sure those are tears of joy,” Kaylee said. “I'm guessing that's more money than he's ever seen in his life.”

They continued on, passing marble statues aged beyond recognition, reminders of the once-thriving city that previously existed on the ground level. The enormous blob slowed, coming to a stop before a hotel. It was the very building that Zachary had seen in Hartwell's memory. There above the door were the same symbols he'd quickly transcribed on the paper.

The driver ran around and opened the rickshaw's rear doors. He lent an overeager hand to Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee, helping each of them down to the ground. Then he pulled off his overcoat and laid it over a pool of slime on the sidewalk so the three wouldn't have to get their shoes dirty. They nodded appreciatively as they stepped across his jacket.

“During the extraction, I saw something else,” Zachary said as they approached the entrance to the hotel. “Quee's knuckles had neon tattoos on them. Small grids with colored squares. Keep an eye out.”

They walked through a broken revolving door. The glass panes had been shattered, and all that remained was the rusty metal frame. Their entrance did not go unnoticed by the two dozen cyber hacks sitting on dirty couches inside. Heads turned, looking up from their palm and wrist tablets. Any one of them could have been Quee. And Zachary was wondering what the best strategy was for finding him. Perhaps an inconspicuous survey of all the hackers' knuckles? Or delicate one-on-ones in which Quee's name was only brought up after trust had been earned? Maybe they would quietly—

“Are any of you here named Quee?” Ryic shouted to the room. “We're looking for a cyber hack by the name of Quee.”

A handful of the squatters immediately scattered, hopping out of windows and slipping through cracks in the wall. So much for Zachary's plan.

“We're not here to get any of you in trouble,” Zachary called. “We've actually come to warn Quee about some danger he's in.”

A female lizard-like alien emerged from beneath a table where she'd set up a patchwork of computer screens. The creature was about the size of Zachary's sister, Danielle, but covered in scales. She had long, bony fingers, three on each hand.

“Quee's not here,” the alien said. “But I can lead you to him.”

“How do we know we can trust you?” Kaylee asked.

“Who said anything about trusting me?” the alien replied. “This is bottom-tier Tenretni. If you're looking for loyalty, try the eighty-fifth floor or higher.”

The alien moved toward the entrance to a stairwell and glanced back before continuing on.

“Well?” she asked.

Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee decided to follow. What choice did they have? They headed downward, descending even lower into what appeared to be the basement of the old hotel. There they saw a hole in the wall that had a tangle of colored wires running out of it. It looked like dynamite had blasted through thick layers of concrete to form the opening. The creature crawled through, leading them into a tunnel. Inside, Zachary was struck by an impressive sea of giant rubber tubing that stretched for miles.

“All of the power and information for the city above runs through here,” said the alien. “It took us years to tunnel in, but now we siphon power and information from the grid.”

“If you don't trust us, then why are you telling us this?” Zachary asked.

“Because if you're here for the reason you claim to be, you won't be getting out of here alive,” the alien said.

They continued through the underground corridor, occasionally passing more spots where the power cables had been tampered with. The alien stopped at a side door.

“Quee resides through here,” the creature said. “Follow me.”

They entered to find a room roughly the size of a school classroom. It had been converted into secret living quarters and a work station, filled with both home furnishings and computers, all of which looked like they had been scavenged from the trash heaps. A hooded figure sat in the far corner of the room with its back turned to them.

“Quee, you have visitors,” the alien said.

The figure turned to reveal a humanoid with large fish eyes on the sides of his head and a thick snout. As his gloved fingers typed on a flexible keyboard resting on his lap, a voice echoed out from a pair of speakers connected to it.

“What do you want with me?” the computerized voice asked.

“An IPDL officer turned mercenary was hired to kill us,” Zachary said. “Once he was finished, you were next on his list. Any idea who might want you dead?”

“I have my fair share of enemies,” the voice replied. “Before we continue, I'll need to verify that what you're saying is true.” Quee gestured to a monitor with electrodes attached to it. “Standard lie detector test.”

“You don't have to stick anything into my eyeballs, do you?” Zachary asked.

“No,” Quee answered.

“Then I'm fine with it.”

Zachary walked over and took a seat next to the monitor. Quee removed his gloves to pull off the paper backings covering the adhesive side of the electrodes. Zachary's eyes peered down at the alien's knuckles and he was shocked to see that Quee didn't have any tattoos on them.

Zachary immediately jumped to his feet. He drew his sonic crossbow and took aim.

“Who are you?” Zachary demanded. “I know you're not Quee.”

The fish-eyed humanoid snatched a photon gun from under the table and pointed it at Zachary. With his free hand, he typed into the keyboard.

“What now?” the voice asked.

The lizard-like alien who had led them here stepped forward.

“I'm Quee,” she said.

Zachary looked at her with a smirk. “I don't think so. Try again.”

“I'll hook myself up to that machine if you don't believe me.”

“I saw an image of Quee's hands,” Zachary said. “They were more human than yours. And the knuckles had neon tattoos on them.”