Lost Planet 01 - The Lost Planet (7 page)

The two soldiers raced toward them, blasters drawn. Without a second thought, Chase took off after Parker, sprinting toward the entrance of the transway. The relief he felt when Mina emerged from the tunnel in front of them evaporated as a flash of bright light exploded on the ground.

“They're shooting at us?” Parker shouted in surprise.

Even Mina looked confused. Summoning an extra burst of speed, the boys caught up to her and raced inside the transway.

“Is this because I hacked the cruiser?” asked Parker as they dodged around a young couple.

“This isn't about the cruiser,” said Mina. “This is bad.”

“Is it about me?” gasped Chase, but his question was drowned out by shouting that echoed behind them as the soldiers entered the tunnel.

Parker led the way toward a side passage, and they ran into the narrow corridor toward their docking compartment. When they reached the door, Mina stood in back to shield them while Parker fumbled with the lock screen. The door slid open, and Chase dashed inside.

“Get in, Parker!” Mina ordered.

Parker stayed in the hall, fingers flying over the screen. “I'm making sure they can't get through.”

“Don't bother, just get in the—”

Chase turned around as another explosion of light filled the corridor. The beam hit Mina directly in the chest. Without making a noise, she flew violently against the door frame and crumpled to the floor. “Mina!” Chase ran to her side.

Parker stepped over her body and ran to the cruiser. “Clear her out of the door!”

Chase grabbed Mina by the feet and pulled, but it felt like he was trying to pull the cruiser, or possibly a small house. Was she made of solid lead? Straining every muscle in his back, he dragged her slender frame into the docking compartment.

The door barely slid closed in time. A second later someone pounded on it from the outside, and a burst of explosions erupted as the soldiers tried to blast their way through.

“Get in!” shouted Parker, once he had situated himself in the front seat of the cruiser.

Chase paused to get a better grip on Mina's feet. “Help me!”

“Just leave her!”

“What? No!” Chase yelled over the loud shooting from outside. “We can't!”

“She'll be fine!” Parker tore his attention from the piloting console and looked back through the door, his eyes blazing. “She'll find me again. She always finds me. Get in!”

“No!” Chase ran around to Mina's shoulders and hoisted her up. The door rattled behind him as the blasts continued. With a roar, he pulled her around and heaved her up into the cruiser.

“Unable to access CFC network,” said the neutral voice of the cruiser.

“Why isn't this working? I can't access the pathways!” Parker pounded his fists against the console.

Chase climbed over Mina and into his seat. “They're almost in!”

“Close the door, open the gate,” Parker mumbled to himself, his trembling fingers carrying out the commands manually. As the gate rolled back to reveal the horizon of Mircona, a steering yoke and throttle levers emerged from a panel on the dashboard.

A final explosion and a loud clatter told them that the men had finally blown off the door of the docking compartment. Seconds later another blast shook the entire cruiser.

“Go! Go! Go!” screamed Chase.

Parker seized the controls and yanked hard. The cruiser shot out of the gate, ricocheting off the edge of the portal with a crash. They hurtled over the enclosed city, but there was much more air traffic than there had been when they arrived. Dozens of other vehicles careened wildly through the sky, following no particular path or trajectory.

“I think they're all offline!” said Parker. He jerked their Starjumper out of the way of the oncoming vehicles. “Is the entire CFC system down? I've never seen anything like…”

They both gasped as another cruiser shot up from below, narrowly missing their vehicle. A shock wave traveled through the thin atmosphere and sent them rocking backward. The pilot of the other cruiser reacted with a sharp turn and clipped the tail of a second vehicle whizzing by, sending it into a spin.

“Get us away from here!” said Chase, clutching onto the console.

With a white-knuckled grip on the controls, Parker yanked them upward and jerked the vehicle around. They sped toward the outer limits of the enclosed city, where congestion was thinner. Finally they passed the last buildings and cruised for a minute over the rocky brown surface of the moon. Only a few other vehicles traveled within view.

“Can we please contact Dr. Silvestri now?” asked Chase.

“Yes.” Keeping one hand on the yoke, Parker scrolled through a number of screens on the console, tapping in information. A silvery panel at the top of the console lit up, and after a minute, Dr. Silvestri's face appeared.

“Parker, where have you been?” he barked. He looked exhausted and sweaty, and sounded out of breath. His glasses were missing. “Where's Chase?”

“He's right here,” said Parker. Chase tried to lean in toward the doctor's face.

“I'm sorry, I can't find my glasses right now,” mumbled Dr. Silvestri. “Listen, Chase—something's happened. I think I made a mistake. I contacted a former colleague about that DNA sample I'd taken from you, and within five minutes my entire system was locked. Fleet transport vehicles are pulling up outside the lab right now. I'm sorry, Chase, I had to destroy your microchip.”

There was a loud crash in the background, and Dr. Silvestri jumped. “I have to go. Parker, can you find Mina?”

“She's here with us, but—” said Parker.

“Have her get in contact with Asa—he'll know what to do next.” He glanced over his shoulder as more crashes rang out. “I have to go.”

Parker waved his hand at the screen. “Wait, Doc, it's not that easy. We just got chased by a bunch of Fleet soldiers, and they were firing at us and, well, Mina's actually out of commission right now.”

“What?” The horrified look on Dr. Silvestri's face sent tendrils of dread through Chase's stomach. “They must have been following Mina already. Look, whatever you do,
don't go home
. Don't go to any authorities—and
do not
go to the Fleet, not under any circumstances. Oh, Parker, I was afraid this would happen to us someday. Listen to me, you have to find Asa. Look for him at—”

An extremely loud roar drowned out the rest of his sentence, and a woman's screams filled the background. “Anna!” shouted Dr. Silvestri, turning. He rose from his seat, and the screen went blank.

The boys sat in shocked silence. The cabin gradually darkened as they cruised away from sunlight into the dark side of the moon. Lights from the console illuminated their faces.

“What on Taras is going on?” Parker turned and looked at Chase. “Who
are
you?”

The scream still echoed in Chase's mind. “Are they going to be okay?”

“The doc and his wife?” Parker shook his head. “I have no idea.”

Chase stared at the console. “It's all because of me. Maybe I should turn myself in to the authorities.”

“Are you stupid? Dr. Silvestri just told you not to.”

“But they were looking for me, weren't they? Why is the Fleet looking for me?”

“You don't know for sure if they were looking for you. The doc sounded like he's been expecting something like this to happen for a long time. He might have been doing illegal stuff in his lab.”

Chase gave him a skeptical look. “You think that's why they were shooting at us?”

Parker opened his mouth to speak, but no answer came out, and instead he shrugged.

“So how are you supposed to get in touch with Asa?”

“Yeah, so, there's a problem with that. I don't have the first clue how to find him. Mina's the only one who's ever been able to contact him.”

“Why?” For being Parker's guardian, it sure seemed like the guy made a huge effort to ensure Parker had as little to do with him as possible.

“To keep me safe? To keep himself safe? I don't know if you'd noticed, Chase, but the guy's kind of obsessed with safety. That much I know about him.” Parker looked down at the console and made a few adjustments to their path as they soared over the dark terrain. “This is so stupid.”

“What are we going to do?” asked Chase.

“We can't go home. I guess we find a place to hide out on Trucon for a while, and I'll take Mina into Rother City and try to get her fixed.”

Chase looked out at the moon and watched it roll away underneath them as they cruised onward. Why would the Fleet be after him—who was he? He might never know, now that the chip had been destroyed. He rested his head on his hand, wishing he could rewind back to the morning, when the only thing he had to worry about was how soon Mina could contact Asa Kaplan.

They were nearing the sunlit side of the small moon again, and the cabin slowly began to lighten. Chase leaned forward and gazed at the stars all around them when a soft beep sounded from the console. He looked down. “What was that?”

Parker frowned and slid a few frames across the screen. “A distress signal?” He took the yoke and steered by watching their beacon move across a map on the console.

Chase watched out the window. “Look!”

A mass of something hovered far in the distance above the moon's surface, and as they neared, the shape became clearer: a wrecked spacecraft, its sleek black frame twisted. Lights flickered on its underbelly.

Parker cursed. “It's a Khatra! What happened?” He steered down toward the ruined vehicle.

“Careful!” said Chase. A small, dark object had appeared on their right. Parker swerved hard to the left, and a pair of boots flashed by the window.

“Sweet ladies of Taras,” Parker said. “I think that was a person!”

“What?” As Parker swung the Starjumper around, Chase realized that he could see the outline of four limbs floating motionless. “Is he dead?”

“I don't know. Probably. Looks like he's wearing a protective suit; I think you can survive for a couple of hours in one of those. The crash probably killed him already.” Parker stared out the window, shaking his head.

Chase glanced at Parker. “You're not going to leave him out here, are you?”

“Oh. Of course not.” Parker began typing at the console. “I'll try to scoop him up in the cargo hold.” He moved the Starjumper alongside the still figure and pulled just past him. Twisting the steering yoke, he gently swung the vehicle a full 360 degrees. “I think I got him. Let me close the hold and put us in autocruise.”

Chase followed him through the door in the back of the cabin, stepping over Mina into the bunkroom. The cargo-hold hatch had a red light beside it, and when it turned green, Parker pulled the cover open and started down a ladder. By the time Chase's feet touched the floor in the bare, brightly lit room, Parker was already leaning over the suited figure splayed out in the corner.

Parker fiddled with the man's face mask until he finally found the clasps that made it spring loose. Gripping the sides of the helmet, he pulled it away to reveal a young man with dark hair and very high, sharp cheekbones. Before Chase could ask Parker if he was dead, the man groaned.

“He's alive!” Chase tapped the man's face a few times, but he didn't open his eyes. “His skin's really cold.”

“I bet he was out there for a while,” said Parker. “But he's Lyolian. What on Taras was he doing in a Khatra?”

Chase stared at the man's sharp features, trying to remember what he'd heard about Lyolia when they were watching the newsfeed. “What do you mean?”

“That Khatra's a Fleet fighter,” said Parker. “Lyolians aren't allowed in the—”

A tremendous
WHOOSH!
interrupted him, and a shock wave rocked their cruiser, sending them both sprawling across the cargo-bay floor. Parker scrambled for the ladder and rushed to the operating console. “What was that?” Chase shouted, staggering behind him into the cabin.

What they saw through the front windshield was so horrific, it took them both several seconds to comprehend.

They had drifted around the moon far enough that the complete sphere of Trucon was visible. But the planet looked nothing like the peaceful, sandy orb they'd seen before. Now waves of red and orange and black spread out across the surface in great whorls.

It looked like the entire planet was on fire.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

Chase stared out the cruiser's front window, mesmerized by the slow swirl of fire that blanketed Trucon's surface, and struggled to put together what was happening. Not half an hour ago, the planet had looked fine. How could it have been consumed so quickly? A sickening realization came to him: This couldn't possibly be a natural disaster. It must have been a deliberate attack. And behind that realization, a tiny question bubbled up: Was this somehow related to him?

He finally managed to spit out two words. “What happened?”

White with shock, Parker whispered a reply without turning away from the window. “We're dead.”

At first Chase didn't know what Parker was talking about. Out here they were safe, separated from the inferno by many miles of space. Then he saw the wave of movement as thousands and thousands of vehicles, large and small, fled from the planet. As they came closer, the space between Trucon and its moon grew thick with traffic, each ship forging its own frantic path. There was a sudden burst of orange as two ships got too close and crashed into each other. Vehicles were headed in every direction possible, but many appeared to be headed for the moon, and only minutes away.

“Parker—they're coming our way,” Chase said. “We need to move.”

Parker said nothing, still staring at the devastation that had been his home.

“We need to move, Parker,” Chase repeated. The first vehicles in the onslaught were getting close, and a few of the fastest fighters and cruisers zipped past. “Parker!”