Mothership (32 page)

But I can hear whispers.

“Hello!” I scream, banging on the door. “Open up!”

“Elvs, what are you doing?” Cole asks, looking around—making sure we don’t have any unexpected company, I guess.

I bang on the door again. “Let me in there!”

Finally I hear a tiny voice from inside. “Who’s that?”

“It’s Elvie,” I answer. “Elvie Nara?”

“Who?” the voice asks.

Then another voice chimes in. “It’s that girl who fell on her butt in gym this morning.”

My reputation precedes me. “Open the door, will you?”

There’s a click as the person on the other side of the door undoes the lock, and at last the door swings open . . . revealing twenty-two completely unharmed girls, packed into the closet like sardines.

Cole is looking more confused than usual. “Elvie, what the . . .”

“I saw them on Dr. Marsden’s setup. These are the girls
from the On Your Own class. The half of my classmates you haven’t met yet.”

“But . . .” Cole blinks. “They were with the commander when our ship exploded. They all died.”

“Who’s the commander?” asks a very not-dead girl named Amy, notable only because of the spread of red freckles on her cheeks. “Is he that dreamsicle Terrance who told us to hide in here until he came back? How come he left all these guns?” Resting against the wall of the closet, beside a huddle of crouched sophomores, is a pile of Almiri guns, pistols and rifles both. I guess the captain left them so the girls could defend themselves if need be.

“It’s a really, really long story,” I tell her. “I’ll explain on the way, but right now we have to go. We’re getting off the ship.”

“Wait, we’re leaving? Did something bad happen?”

“I will explain on the way,”
I say. “Bring the guns.”

“What should we do with our babies?” a girl named Sara asks.

“Babies?” Cole’s up on his toes, anxious. “Some of you delivered?”

Amy laughs. “No, silly.” She twirls a strand of strawberry hair around her finger. “Our babies, for class?”

And sure enough, as I crane my head farther into the closet, I see that each and every girl is cradling a sack of flour, holding it close and careful like it was a newborn child.

I nearly bit it a dozen times today, and they’ve been nursing
flour sacks with diapers on
?

“Leave the cake mix,” I tell them.

“But it’s fifty percent of our grade!”

I grab Amy’s flour baby and tear it open, spilling semolina all over the floor. The girls all scream in horror.

They’ll get over it. I grab a rifle from the pile and motion for the rest of them to get up.

“Time to move it or lose it,” I say, the butt of the rifle resting on my hip. I catch Cole smirking at me. “What?” I ask angrily.

“You’re pretty awesome, Elvs,” he tells me.

It takes us a little more than five minutes to get down to the aft section of the ship, right near the captain’s quarters. I can tell we’re getting close because of the gunfire. Or ray gun blast-o’s, or whatever you want to call it. It’s loud.

Shit, as they say, is going
down
.

Cole and the other girls and I creep along one of the side hallways, getting as close as we can without being spotted by the Jin’Kai. Even when we come across the one lookout they’ve placed in our path, Cole—in a nice twist—points his ray gun in the right direction and neatly takes the guy out with a shot to the throat before he even notices us.

Cole and I peek our heads around the corner as the sound of shooting grows louder.

We’re currently standing in the doorway of one of the side entrances to the captain’s quarters, which leads down, via a ramp along the wall, to a luxurious sitting room, decorated like a parlor on a nineteenth-century ocean liner. Another ramp on the far side winds around the opposite wall and, along with our ramp, leads down to the sunken sitting area filled with plush velvet sofas and armchairs, meant for entertaining smaller parties
of well-to-do passengers. There’s even an ornate bar to one side, probably made out of real mahogany. Superclassy.

Or at least it
was
superclassy, before, you know, all the holes and burn marks and stuff.

Bob is ducking for cover behind the bar, single-handedly holding back what appears to be an entire squad of Jin’Kai goontroopers. It’s unclear how much longer he can hold them off with only a pistol. From this angle I can’t see any of the girls, but I’m assuming Bob has them in the main quarters behind him, through a door that leads to the captain’s stateroom and, farther along, the loading bay and small hangar that houses the infamous captain’s yacht.

“All right, girls,” I say, turning to face the On Your Own class before we storm the scene. “Remember what Cole told you. Stay low. Don’t die.”

“You guys should be motivational speakers,” Amy tells me.

I’m about to motion for the troops to
movemovemove
, when Cole grabs my elbow.

“Elvs,” he whispers, “are you sure this is a good idea?”

“It’s a terrible idea,” I reply. “But it’s the only one I have. Now let’s
GO
!”

I don’t know much of anything about the Jin’Kai, other than the fact that they are apparently miserable bastards who hold very little value in human (or Almiri) life. But one thing that’s fairly clear is that they are highly militaristic. Which is why I think it’s so impressive how completely unprepared they are to suddenly find themselves flanked by two dozen pregnant teenagers, ray guns blazing. We rain down laser-y hell on them, their cover useless. They return fire as they retreat
through the rear entry that sits at the back center of the room, but they don’t manage to strike anything other than one girl’s funky perm. Which is really not such a crime, if you ask me.

“We’re not hitting anything!” Sara cries out as she blasts away indiscriminately into the room, taking out a very expensive-looking chaise longue. And she’s right on that count. It’s clear that I’m the only one in the group who has logged any hours on Jetman.

“Just aim for their faces!” I scream as I let the blast-o’s fly. The nice thing about these fancy Almiri weapons is that they don’t have any kickback when you fire them.

“No,” Cole cries. “Aim down! Shoot at their feet!”

“Wait, why?” I ask. Who’s he to question my commando skills?

“This lot can’t hit anything they’re aiming for!” he replies over the din. “If they aim low, chances are they’ll hit something by mistake!”

“Hey!” Amy shouts, offended. But just as she does, she wings one of the retreating Jin’Kai in the knee and he crumples to the ground, where Bob has a clear shot to put him down for good.
“Hey!”
she says again, more brightly. “It worked!”

The Jin’Kai have fallen back completely out of the room in an attempt to regroup. What they don’t know is that I brought one of Dr. M’s handy dandy lap-pads with me, which I use to remotely seal the door behind them. For the moment, at least, all of us “good guys” are in the captain’s quarters, and the baddies are not. We scurry down into the room, where Bob greets us.

“Nice work, Archer!” he says, clasping Cole by the forearm. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Cole says. “This was all Elvie. She found and neutralized the saboteur and all his booby traps, rescued the other girls, and hatched this little bit of battlefield strategy.”

Captain Bob looks at me with the sort of blank stare you’d give an opossum you just found out could play the ukulele.

“Not bad for an incubator, huh?” I say.

The shocked expression on Bob’s face is replaced by a strange, warm smile. I can only assume that it’s equal parts glad to see me, impressed with me, and feeling like an absolute shit for his behavior earlier.

But what do I know from smiles?

“Not bad at all, Elvie,” he tells me. “But we’re not out of this yet.” And just like that he’s back in captain mode, all seriousness and hard angles. “That door won’t hold them for long, and there’s at least another full squad on board. And . . .”

“And what?” I ask. It’s not a good sign when the steely hero types trail off like that.

“They aren’t from around here,” he finishes.

Cole’s eyes go wide. “You don’t mean . . . Devastators?”

“What the hell are Devastators?”

“They’re Jin’Kai, but not born from human mothers,” Cole explains. “They’re from a previous Jin’Kai colony world. The host species there was a little more . . . Well, you know the poster you had in your bedroom of that old flat pic,
Alien vs. Predator
?”

“Wait, are they like the Alien or the Predator?”

“Kinda both.”

“And you call them
Devastators?
” I thought these guys were supposed to be creative supergeniuses.

“Why don’t we talk about it on the yacht,” Cole says.

As if on cue, there’s a tremendous crash from behind the door I closed on the Jin’Kai, as though something seriously bad and burly is trying to bust through. The metal frame begins to buckle in. We take that as our sign to hightail it the hell out of there, running toward the captain’s main quarters at top speed.

I have never been so happy to see my Hanover classmates.

“You’re alive!” Ramona shrieks, giving me a big bear hug before she realizes what she’s done. I have to admit, I’m just as thrilled to see her. Our new gang squeezes into the captain’s quarters—which were clearly not built to house thirty-six pregnant girls, one newborn Jin’Kai baby, two Almiri sharpshooters, and the head of Hanover’s now defunct AV club. But everyone seems too happy to be alive and reunited to notice the cramped space.

“I was wondering when you were going to get back,” Natty says, patting me on the shoulder in a weird sort of halfhug. “Ooh, and I love your new outfit. Very avant-garde.”

Another crash from the sitting room lets me know that the Jin’Kai have broken through the door. Blaster fire starts zipping through the doorway, thankfully missing everyone. Other Cheerleader’s baby, which Heather has strapped to her chest in a makeshift sling made of an old velvet slipcover, begins to wail, frantic screams piercing through the sound of gunfire. Bob slams shut the door we’ve just entered, but this door, in keeping
with the décor outside, is made of wood. Even as Bob and Cole hurry to hoist a massive ornate desk in front of the door to block the entrance, the door begins to visibly splinter with shots from the other side, and as strong as our two Almiri heroes are, I’m afraid they’ll never get the desk in place in time. Desi scoops Kate up in his arms and races her down the hall toward the loading dock to the captain’s yacht, limping as he goes. Ramona and I are just beginning to corral girls in that direction as well, when I notice Other Cheerleader. She is struggling with Heather, pulling the howling baby away from its sling.

“Give me that thing!” she shrieks at Heather.

“You told me to
carry
him!” Heather insists. “What are you doing? He’s upset!”

“
Give
it to me! It’s
mine
!” And with one final tug she frees the baby and barrels not toward the safety of the yacht but
toward the flipping splintering door
.

“What the hell are you doing?” Britta shrieks as her BFF rushes toward the enemy. “Are you a total chromer?” As uncomfortable as it is to know that Britta and I are having the exact same thought at the exact same time, I’m more concerned about just what is happening. Other Cheerleader’s eyes are about two sizes too wide as she stares in our direction, one hand on the doorknob and the other around her bundle of evil alien joy.

“Don’t you see?” she shouts, but she doesn’t seem to really be looking at anyone in particular. “We should just surrender. We have their babies. That’s what they want!” And with that she tugs open the door and disappears down the hallway. The gunfire on the other end stops momentarily, as if even the Jin’Kai are confused by this turn of events.

Britta tries to run after her, but in a moment of true stupidity I decide to risk my neck for Little Miss McSicker and tackle her to the ground.

“Stay put!” I scream into her ear. “You can’t help her!” Britta lets out a feeble moan as she watches her friend go.

I can hear Other Cheerleader shouting as she approaches the Jin’Kai, but from my angle on the floor I can’t see anything but the open door. Britta, though, she can see it—I can tell just by the look on her face as she watches helplessly.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Other Cheerleader wails. “I have one of your babies! I just had the baby! Don’t shoot! Here, here you go. Just let me live, God, please. Oh, thank you, thank you. Here he is. I just . . . What the fuck is wrong with your face?”

There’s a terrifying roar, like a lion screaming into a bullhorn.

And a sickening
fttt
sound.

Then a thunk.

Britta’s face instantly turns the color of sour milk, and I can feel every muscle in her body go taut underneath me. “She doesn’t have a head anymore,” she says flatly. “They cut off her head.”