Mothership (31 page)

Cole knocks Dr. Marsden to the ground and stands between us, a paragon of protective hunkitude. But then Dr. Marsden reaches out with one hand and flings an enormous metal trash can at Cole. Cole ducks—giving the can a clear path to my noggin. So much for Cole the Protector. There’s a loud clang, and my vision goes all wobbly. I think I hear my name being called, but it sounds like I’m underwater. Am I underwater? I’m in the pool? Oh, crap, I have to save all those girls. The teachers are drowning the girls! I have to stop them. I have to . . .

I’m not in the pool. I’m flat on my back in the maintenance locker at the bottom of the
Echidna
, trying to escape from an evil band of baby-swapping aliens. And Cole is . . .
Cole! I rise from the ground, still a little shaky, and see that Dr. Marsden has Cole pressed up against the railing on the catwalk outside the locker. He’s giving Cole’s face a real pounding. Cole is dead on his feet, and Dr. Marsden’s pushing him farther and farther over the rail, until his entire upper half is dangling over the perilous ten-meter drop. Dr. Marsden is saying something I don’t understand—for all I know he’s calling Cole a dirty donkey-punch enthusiast in Jin’Kai. What I
do
know is that Cole’s toast if I don’t do something. But what in this locker can I use as a weapon?

Um, dur, Elvie. How about the ray gun you’ve got crammed down your boobage?

In seconds I have the gun released from inside the sweaty confines of the thermal suit. I wrap my right hand around the butt of it, then the left, aim, and . . .

Drop it.

Seriously? My big moment and
that’s
what I do?

So of course that sucks, because in addition to alerting the good doctor that I’m awake again, I’ve also ruined any chance of using this other really cool line I thought up to say right before I fried his alien ass.

“You know, Elvie, there are several exercises you could be doing to help with your hand-eye coordination,” Dr. Marsden says, turning around to see me scrambling on all fours for the gun. He comes at me fast . . . but not as fast as Cole, who I thought was out for the count. Cole grabs the doctor by the arm, spinning him and slamming him into the rail so hard that the bar breaks away. But Cole must’ve gotten most of the energy sucked out of him earlier, because he can’t manage to
push Dr. Marsden off the catwalk. Instead, with one backhand slap, Dr. M sends Cole reeling over the edge.

“No!”

The scream comes from somewhere deep inside me. But rather than lose myself in the pain of watching Cole plummet to his doom, I reach out, snatch the gun off the floor, and, still kneeling, lock Dr. Marsden in my sights. He has regained possession of his own gun, and now we face each other in a standoff. My hands are trembling as I tightly grip the alien weapon.

“It’s okay, Elvie,” he says, smiling like a prick. “Just put the gun down. Put the gun down and you’ll be fine. My brothers are already on their way. They’re coming for the babies, Elvie, and after the children are delivered, we will spare your life. I can protect you, I promise. The other Jin’Kai will listen to me. But shoot me, and you sign your own death warrant. Your friends will die too. I guarantee it.”

I could tell this dipshit that they’re not my friends. I could tell him he just killed the love of my life, so to hell with his offer. I could bust out that new awesome one-liner I thought up specifically for him when I . . . Shoot, what was it? My head’s still a little wonky.

I get woozy for a moment and my aim falters. I see Dr. Marsden ready his weapon.

“You’re going to feel a sharp pain, dear, but it will last only a moment,” he says bittersweetly.

That’s when fate hands me a big fat overdue piece of good luck. The
Echidna
rocks hard with another convulsion, and there is a sudden buckling and a howling noise as somewhere near us along the hull atmosphere is sucked out into space
with ferocious speed and intensity through a microscopic hole.

A Yeoman’s Curve. Too bad the doc isn’t sitting on the toilet.

The suction lasts only a moment before the edges of the hull crumple in toward each other, sealing the breach. But it’s enough time that Dr. Marsden, outside the locker room on the edge of the catwalk, loses his footing and drops his gun, grabbing on to the broken rail to keep from flying away. On the floor inside the locker room, I am pulled forward, my knees scraping against metal, but I have the sense to block myself in the doorway. When Dr. Marsden regains his footing and looks up, I’ve got Cole’s ray gun about three feet away from his chest. Now, what was that line?

Ah, screw it.

Without another word I fire three times. Dr. Marsden stumbles back, a genuinely stunned look on his face as he topples off the catwalk.

And then it’s just me, alone. It’s quiet. I lean my head down against the cool metal floor and begin to weep, rocking in the fetal position. I don’t want any more of this. No more aliens. No more parasitic babies. No more dilapidated space cruisers. I lie there, crying, resigned to stay perfectly still until whatever happens to me happens.

And that’s when I hear it.

“Elvs?”

No flipping way.

My eyes fly open. There, straining to maintain their grip on the grate of the catwalk where the rail broke away, are some seriously bruised, seriously dreamy fingers.

“Cole!” I scream. “I thought you fell! I thought you . . .” I scramble out of the locker to the edge of the catwalk. Sure enough, there he is, half dead, hanging on for dear life with one hand.

I grab hold of Cole’s arm and try with all my might to pull him up, but the dude weighs a ton. I never realized he was quite so heavy.

“Cole, I can’t lift you,” I say, huffing with effort. “Can you get your other hand up here?”

“But what about this guy?” he asks.

“Huh?”

I peer farther over the railing until I see it. Cole’s other hand has a firm grip on Dr. Marsden’s ankle. The world’s worst baby doc is dangling upside down, moaning softly. So . . . not dead.

Apparently marksmanship is not a skill I should boast of on my college application.

“Um, I dunno, drop him?” I suggest without much sympathy. “I mean, he is the saboteur.”

“I, uh . . . Good point,” Cole replies. Beautiful and stupid as ever.

And with that, Cole lets go, sending Dr. Marsden plummeting down headfirst to the solid titanium hull ten meters below. His last confused exclamation is clipped off midgasp.

SPLAT!

So . . . yeah. That happens.

I pull Cole up onto the catwalk and cradle him in my lap. “Oh, Cole,” I whisper, kissing him all over. He looks like Rocky Balboa at the end of
Rocky IX
, the one where he fought
the Terminator. “Cole, baby, I’m so glad you’re alive. I’m so—” I stop talking when I see the look on Cole’s face.

“Did you just call me ‘Cole baby’?”

“Yeah, let’s forget that ever happened.”

“Agreed.”

I push a sweaty lock of hair back off his forehead and check for bruises. There are several, and some scrapes and cuts as well. There’s a deep gash on his arm where he hit the rail. “How in orbit did you find me down here?” I ask.

“Well, there weren’t that many other places you could have gone. Unless you figured a way to tunnel behind the convection ovens. Sorry it took me so long. I had to, um, slip away.”

“Slip away?” I ask. But I think I already know the answer. Cole probably disobeyed a direct order from Captain Bob to come after me, something I’m sure the doucher will relish bringing up to his superiors if we get back to Earth.

“Elvs, I know . . . why you ran. I knew there had to be something in those files you tried to hide from me in the doctor’s office.”

I caress his hair. “I was just scared,” I tell him.

“I know. I just wanted to tell you . . . I don’t care. I mean, I do care that they murdered my baby, but . . . I still love you, Elvs. Nothing will change that.”

I want to tell Cole right then about the mix-up, that for some reason Dr. Marsden never swapped my fetus at all, that he falsified the records for his own unknown purposes. But as I’m about to whisper the good news into his ear, I notice that
Cole seems to have lost consciousness. Panicked, I rock his shoulders lightly, trying to wake him.

“Cole?
Cole?
”

As I cradle Cole in my arms, I swear I can
feel
him healing. His body is burning hot, and while it may be an optical illusion of the lights down here, the puffy bruises on his face seem to be, like, un-swelling right before my eyes. He turns onto his side and nuzzles his face against my thigh. I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Cole?” I ask again tentatively. He may look like he’s getting better, but who knows what kind of internal damage Dr. Marsden inflicted? Even a godlike supercreature has a breaking point. When Cole doesn’t answer, I nudge him more forcefully. “Cole, are you okay? Can you get up?”

A smile crosses his lips, and he peeks up at me with one eye.

“I was hoping if I didn’t move you’d let me just lie here for a while.”

I smack his arm lightly, but I’m smiling too. My smile quickly fades, however, because even this sweet moment can’t erase the terrible reality of how screwed we are.

“We have to get back to the others,” I say.

Slowly Cole sits up, rubbing the side of his face. “That’s supposed to be my line.”

“There are more Jin’Kai coming,” I tell him, “and when they get here, we’re
el finito
. Dr. M
was
luring everyone to the back of the ship, just like Bob suspected. He wanted us all in one spot so his buddies could scoop us up, nice and neat.”

“Dr. M?” Cole asks, his face twizzled in confusion once again. “Bob?”

There’s no time for explanation. I hoist myself to my feet and head to the maintenance locker, to look at the doctor’s computer hookups again. I need to make sure I didn’t miss any booby traps before. “We’ve got to warn them. Even if they launch the yacht before the Jin’Kai get here, they’ll never manage to outrun—”

Thunk!
The ship vibrates gently.

“What was
that
?” Cole asks as he enters the room behind me. “Don’t tell me the ship’s flying apart again?”

“No,” I say with a sigh. “Worse. Our new friends have officially arrived.”

I pick up Dr. Marsden’s pulse emitter and smash it on the ground.

“Where’s your communicator?” I ask Cole. “We need to get in touch with the captain.
Now.
”

“Um.” Cole scratches the back of his neck. “I kinda ditched it when I came after you.”

“What? Why?”

“The captain was very . . . detailed in his description of what he’d do to me if I followed you, Elvs. I figured it was better to have radio silence.”

I check each of the lap-pads on the desk again, just for the slightest hope that I can tap into the intercom. But no deal. I guess announcing the results of yesterday’s intramural volleyball matches was not high on Dr. Marsden’s list of priorities once he came down here. But I refuse—
refuse
—to let some alien baby snatcher win after I’ve already killed him. I am not giving up.

“Then we’re going to have to hurry,” I say. “If they can’t get to the yacht before the Jin’Kai find them, then they’re going to need all the help they can get.”

“Elvs, we’re too far away. There’s no way we can—”

“We don’t have to jump through Dr. Marsden’s hoops anymore,” I tell him. “I already opened all the blast doors that aren’t shielding us from the hull breaches, and I’ve got the lifts running again. We’ll be there faster than it takes to . . .” I trail off. Hidden behind a window on one of the lap-pads is a surveillance camera display. But it isn’t Bob and the girls that it’s been keeping tabs on.

“No. Flipping. Way.”

Cole squints at me. “What? What is it?”

“Cole, let’s get going. We’ve got to pick something up on the way.”

•  •  •

Riding the lift back up from the bottom of the ship is fast—so fast, that we make it to the lido deck in exactly thirty-three seconds. Nothing like an elevator to put twelve-plus hours of climbing through wreckage into perspective. By now Cole’s wounds and bruises are almost completely healed. At worst he looks like he slept on the wrong side of the bed. I, on the other hand, am beet red, dripping sweat and garbage juice in my now totally unnecessary thermal suit, my hair matted to my head.

“And I thought I’d never find an outfit for the junior prom,” I mumble.

“What?” Cole asks.

“Nothing.”

When the elevator opens, we make our way past a series of exterior blast doors that are sealing the open side of the hull. There’s scoring and burn damage all around the place.

“This is where our ship was docked,” Cole says.

“I know,” I say, and I try to add a bit of sympathy to my tone for his fallen compatriots, but honestly, at this moment, I have other things on my mind. Like what’s behind the door to the utility closet, not three meters to the right of the scorched hull where the Almiri ship exploded, sucking more than half of Cole’s buddies out into space. I jerk on the door handle, but it’s locked or stuck or something.