Starbounders (20 page)

Now it was Quee who was smirking. “Don't you think I know where every surveillance camera on this planet is located? That's why I never use my real hands when I'm hacking.” She walked over to an old mahogany dresser and slid open a drawer. It was filled with pairs of robotic hands, some humanoid, some alien. One of the humanoid pairs had the same tattoos that Zachary had spied in Hartwell's memory. “All taken from discarded carapaces.”

Zachary lowered the sonic crossbow. Quee signaled for the humanoid to do the same with the gun.

“Every precaution has to be taken in my line of work,” Quee said. “Now what else can you tell me about this mercenary?”

Zachary recounted every last detail he could remember about Hartwell. Quee listened closely before speaking again.

“I took a job recently, one that paid extraordinarily well. Not your typical identity theft or data trolling. I was contracted to create a computer virus that would be able to activate the emergency defenses of any security system, even if no imminent threat was present. Typically cyber hacks are hired to
de
activate security systems. It felt funny from the start, but I never ask questions. Professional courtesy.”

“Why would Cerebella need a hacker to make a computer virus?” Ryic asked Kaylee and Zachary.

Zachary was thinking the same thing. This changed their theory completely.

“Who would be looking to do something like that?” Kaylee asked.

“I don't know,” Quee said. “But there might be a way to find out. It won't be easy though. We'll have to go to the galactic bank where my payment was wired. The only way I can hack into their mainframe is to hard-line it on-site. Most of my employers cover their tracks, but any track can be uncovered, assuming you have the right tools.”

Quee held up a pair of five-fingered robotic hands.

“These look like good ones,” she said.

“Slight problem,” Zachary said. “Our ship was damaged on the way here. We'll need to repair it before we leave.”

“Lucky for you, I know a few people who might be able to help,” Quee said.

Zachary, Ryic, and Kaylee stood on the landing lot watching with Quee as a grease-stained alien welded a metal plate over the hole at the back of the buckler.

“That doesn't look very secure,” Ryic said. “Are you sure that's going to hold?”

“You said you needed to move fast,” Quee said. “And this was the best I could do on short notice.”

A second, disreputable-looking alien had all three of his arms deep inside the ship's influx tube, trying to wedge something out. After a moment, the creature removed the Clipsian scouting beacon. Quee walked over and took it in her hand, examining it.

“I never had any toys of my own,” Quee said. “I had to play with things that I found. Junk tossed out from the floors above. This would have kept me entertained for hours.”

With the repairs complete, Zachary, Ryic, Kaylee, and Quee climbed aboard the ship. Quee was carrying two shoulder bags, stuffed full with her belongings.

“Packing pretty heavy for such a quick trip,” Zachary said.

“Oh, I'm not coming back,” she said. “Sure, somebody might want me dead, but living all alone, below the bottom of Tenretni . . . I feel like I've already been buried.”

Zachary took another look at Quee; he hadn't been expecting such a dramatic response, but she seemed sincere.

Ryic paid the two Tenretni mechanics, and once the boarding ramp ascended, the doors closed shut. Kaylee started the ship, and oxygen began to circulate. Zachary cautiously lifted his hand to where the hole had been and was relieved to find that the sealant was holding fast.

The four took their seats and fastened themselves in. As the buckler leaped into the sky, Zachary looked out the window and saw that Tenretni stood on the side of the desolate cracked planet Irafas. Unlike Earth, which was an oblate spheroid, Irafas looked like a broken eggshell, hollow on the inside with pieces of it missing. Giant mining shafts crisscrossed through its empty innards. It was a horrible, decaying place.

No wonder Quee wanted to leave.

“T
hat makes nineteen,” Ryic said. “Only one question left.”

“It's furry, gray, doesn't live on the ground, and eats worms,” Zachary said, repeating the clues out loud. “I don't know. Is it a koala bear?”

“No,” Ryic said. “It's a veildar gastropod!”

Zachary and Kaylee both sighed in frustration. Even Sputnik let out a groan.

“Ryic, you're supposed to think of things that everyone has heard of,” Kaylee said.

“Who hasn't heard of veildar gastropods? They're the scourge of a thousand planets.”

“Yeah, well, not Earth,” Kaylee said.

While the others played twenty questions, another road trip staple of the Night family, Quee had been preoccupied with the Clipsian scouting beacon, taking it apart piece by piece and examining each nook and cranny as she did. She had become fixated on a square object that she had removed from inside the beacon.

“This must be the beacon's internal navigation system,” Quee announced. “It has the entire manifest of where Nibiru's armada has been and where it's going.”

“I don't care where the Clipsians are headed as long as it's not the same place as us,” Ryic said.

“Then you should be sure to avoid Earth at all costs,” Quee said.

Zachary and Kaylee both did a double take.

“What?” Kaylee asked. “That doesn't make any sense. It would be suicide for the Clipsians to attack Earth.”

“Are you sure you're reading that correctly?” Zachary asked.

“The next location programmed into this beacon is your home planet,” Quee said. “You can see for yourselves. The estimated arrival time is 13-721-863-55.21 ABB.”

They all looked at her blankly.

“In Earth time, that's approximately three hours from now,” Quee said.

“The Clipsians won't stand a chance against the IPDL,” Kaylee said.

“Especially today,” Ryic said.

“Why?” Zachary asked, having lost track of time. “What's today?”

“The Octocentennial, of course,” said Ryic. “Starbounders from all across the outerverse will be at Indigo 8. Nibiru literally picked the worst possible day to stage an attack.”

Kaylee thought for a moment. “Which would be counter to every strategic decision Nibiru's ever made as a general. What are we not thinking of?”

“Ryic just said it himself.” Zachary's mind was racing. “If every IPDL officer and Starbounder in the outerverse is collected
on
Earth, what if they can't get
off
?”

“I'm not following,” Ryic said.

“All of the starships are docked in the hangar beneath the Ulam,” Zachary said. “If the officers can't get to them, they won't be able to launch into space.”

Ryic still appeared confused. “What would be stopping them?”

“Giant iron doors,” Kaylee said, catching on to Zachary's logic.

And she wasn't the only one up to speed.

“Say a cyber hack created a computer virus,” Quee said. “One that activated the emergency defenses of a security system. Cerebella could be used to lock people
in
as opposed to locking them
out
. Earth would be helpless.”

“That doesn't answer how someone was able to infect Cerebella with your virus,” Kaylee said. “Only Director Madsen can grant access to the mainframe. And even then, humans aren't allowed inside, just aux-bots.”

“If the Clipsians have been planning this all along, they must have had help from within Indigo 8,” Zachary considered. “The accidents. The gravity failure in the Qube, the malfunctioning stun balls, the escaped vreeks. What if they weren't caused by Cerebella, but by someone who wanted to
infect
Cerebella? What if someone was using them as a way to get Madsen to okay an aux-bot repair? An aux-bot already carrying the virus. The question is who.”

“We have to warn Indigo 8,” Kaylee said.

“What about hacking into the galactic bank?” Quee asked.

“Change of plans,” Zachary said, reaching for the lang-link—but it was dead.

“Don't you remember what Doveling told us?” Ryic asked. “There's no lang-link probe past the Asteroid Curtain.”

“Then we better speed up this ship,” Zachary said. “Where's the closest fold? We have to get to the other side.”

“I'd take it easy on her,” Quee said. “This buckler is in no shape to be pushed.”

But Zachary wasn't listening. He was already gesturing at the flight-deck window to accelerate. Kaylee was spinning the Kepler cartograph, looking for the nearest bend in space. She set some new waypoints, reorienting the ship's path to Earth.

The buckler started rattling. It was feeling the strain of the extra speed, shaking as it moved toward the space fold.

“Even if you're right about the Clipsians attacking Earth, what does it have to do with us?” Ryic asked over the noise. “And why did someone want us dead?”

Zachary and Kaylee were both at a loss.

The ship made a final push for the fold and bounded through. Once it rocketed out the other side, they could see the Asteroid Curtain behind them. Zachary immediately turned back to the lang-link and sent a signal to Indigo 8. All that came back was static.

“I thought after we crossed the curtain our communications would be operational,” Zachary said.

“They are,” Quee said. “It's Indigo 8's that are down. The virus I created doesn't just infect the security system. It also temporarily disables all contact in or out of the site.”

“Then we have to go back and warn them ourselves,” Zachary said.

“And what do we do when we get there?” Kaylee asked. “All the ships will still be locked inside the hangar.”

“Every virus has an antidote,” Quee said. “If I can gain access to Indigo 8's mainframe, I can reverse it. But this ship has one more bound in it, tops. If you want to get back to Earth, we're going to have to find another ride.”

All Zachary had to do was glance back at the metal plating covering the hole to know she was right. It was beginning to hiss loudly, and the last thing he wanted was a repeat of their previous landing.

“Where are we supposed to find a ship in the middle of the outerverse?” Ryic asked.

Not for the first time since they'd crash-landed on Sirocco, Zachary wished he knew where his brother was stationed on his Elite Corps mission. But of course it was classified, and Jacob wouldn't be dropping in anytime soon to save them.

Kaylee looked up from the Kepler cartograph.

“There is one person we could go to. Skold.”

Zachary and Ryic looked at her like she was crazy.

“Cratonis is only one bound from here,” she said. “If we can make it through that fold, we stand a chance.”

“Who's Skold?” Quee asked.

“Just a galactic felon who held us hostage and tried to sell us into slavery,” Ryic said.

“You know what we call that on Tenretni? A friend.”

Nobody was offering up any better ideas.

“Set the waypoints,” Zachary said.

Kaylee punched them in, and the buckler headed for the next fold. Before they knew it, the ship was jumping again.

It was clear even from orbit that Skold was not a subtle salesman. Projected across the clouds floating above Cratonis in giant laser lettering was an advertisement. And although the alien language was illegible to them, the pictographs that accompanied it made it clear that Skold was selling ships and parts. If there was any question where Zachary and the others needed to go to find him, the large arrow pointing to a green spot on the moon's surface left no doubt.

“Bring her down easy,” Quee said.

The buckler had survived the last leap, but just barely. Every light on the cockpit window was flashing, and the only thing keeping the metal plating from popping clear off the hole was Ryic's pressing his back and shoulder against it.

“This isn't going to hold much longer,” he called, digging in his heels.

The ship was heading for the tip of the arrow, where a circular lawn served as a landing pad for incoming customers. Two other spacecraft were already sitting there. The buckler landed with a jolt, and the ship's rattling engine abruptly shut down.

Cratonis defied Zachary's expectations. When he had heard Skold describe his chop shop and the place he kept his stolen ships, Zachary imagined something dingy like Tenretni turned out to be or disreputable like the Fringg Galaxy Void Market. This was more like a park or a sculpture garden. There were small rolling hills with well-manicured grass that reminded Zachary of the fancy golf course he and his friends would sneak onto to sled during the winter. A large glass building sat on one of the hills, looking like it had been dropped there out of the sky. On the surrounding fields there were ships and machines of all sizes. Some appeared brand-new, others old and rusted. Four other customers were walking about, examining the inventory. Zachary, Kaylee, Ryic, and Quee began browsing as well.