Game of Flames Page 3

  “It’s okay,” Dash said, stepping inside. “It’s no big deal.”

  “It is the biggest of deals,” Chris pointed out. “If you don’t receive your injection every twenty-four hours, the consequences will be dire. And potentially fatal.”

  “Uh, yeah, thanks,” Dash said. “I try not to think about that. I just meant, it’s no big deal you forgot. There’s a lot going on.”

  “This is, as your friend Anna might say, the understatement of the century.” Chris smiled.

  “Chris, dude, did you just make a joke?”

  Chris was a nice guy, a brilliant guy, but he was more than a little lacking in the sense of humor category.

  “I made an effort,” Chris admitted.

  “Not bad,” Dash said. “We’ll work on it.”

  Chris’s quarters were pretty much the most personality-free bedroom Dash had ever seen. In Dash and Gabriel’s bunk, Gabriel had tacked up posters of antique aircraft all over his wall. Dash covered his with a gigantic star chart. Photos of their families were scattered across every remaining surface. Dash hadn’t seen the girls’ room, but he was sure they were pretty much the same. Except maybe with more pink.

  Chris’s quarters, on the other hand, were bare. Not empty: the space was crowded with high-tech equipment, screens, controls—it was almost like a second bridge, and Dash suspected that if Chris wanted to, he could fly the ship from here. But who wanted to live on a flight deck? Chris hadn’t done anything to make the space his own. There were no posters, no pictures, no reminders of where he’d come from or the people he left behind, nothing.

  Dash sat down at the bare desk and pulled one of the disposable injectors out of the case. It was an experimental biologic, designed to halt cellular growth. Supposedly, it was freezing Dash’s body at exactly the age it was now so he wouldn’t get old enough that Gamma Speed would kill him.

  Supposedly.

  It hadn’t been tested on anyone. Until now.

  Dash held his breath and jammed the injector into his thigh. It was like an EpiPen—all you had to do was aim it and press a button. There was a quick stab of pain, no sharper than if he’d jabbed himself hard with a pencil.

  Dash was glad it didn’t hurt more, but he still hated this part of his day more than any other.

  It was the one time he couldn’t force himself to forget about the ticking clock.

  Rocket, Chris’s golden retriever, padded over and knelt by Dash’s side. Dash ruffled his soft hair and let the dog nuzzle his hand, wondering if Rocket had any idea how far he was from home.

  “So where do you really think that ship came from?” he asked Chris, trying to distract himself.

  “As I have told you, I do not know—”

  “Yeah, I got that. But, I mean, if you had to make a bet, where would you put your money?”

  “Well…I think the ship came from Earth,” Chris said slowly.

  “Yeah, the crew kind of gave that away. But who could have sent it?”

  “This betting that you want me to do, it’s an activity for those without enough facts to make an informed decision, is it not?”

  The only betting Dash ever did involved betting quarters in lunchtime poker games. “I guess you could say that.”

  “I am a person who prefers facts,” Chris said. “I’ll hold on to my money until I have more.”

  “Anyone ever tell you you’re kind of a strange guy?” Dash said, smiling.

  “Many people. But perhaps they are the strange ones.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Dash allowed. “Perhaps.”

  —

  Orbit.

  The ship spiraled around Meta Prime, trapped by its puny gravitational field. Miles and miles beneath them lay the second stop on their impossible mission. The Cloud Cat gleamed beside the docking bay doors, ready to carry an extraction team down to the planet.

  While in Gamma Speed, the crew had devoured every known fact about Meta Prime. There weren’t many. It was a dwarf planet encrusted with machinery—but, according to the unmanned probes that had flown over years before, no signs of life. Meta Prime had a liquid metal core, fueled by a substance called Magnus 7.

  That’s what they were after. The second element. The thing that would bring them one step closer to getting the Source and getting home. The ship only had enough power for an outbound trip. If they ever wanted to make it back, they needed to acquire extracts of all six elements.

  Even a single failure would doom the mission.

  Which meant right now, there was nothing more important than getting down to the planet, and getting it right.

  “Preliminary readings confirm no signs of organic life,” Carly said once the crew had gathered in the docking bay. She’d spent the last hour monitoring the planet from her lab workstation, processing all the data she could. Carly believed in information, in facts. If you had enough of them, she thought, you could understand the whole universe. “It looks like the old scans we have are still accurate. There’s definitely a lot of machinery down on the surface, but it’s not putting out much of an electromagnetic signal. Whatever was down there isn’t working anymore.”

  “If there is machinery on the planet, then someone built it,” Chris reminded them. “Intelligent life was present here once.”

  “Couldn’t have been too intelligent, or they’d still be around,” Gabriel pointed out.

  “Still, I suggest you proceed with caution.”

  “We?” Dash said. “I take it that means you haven’t changed your mind about coming down to the surface with us?”

  “As I’ve explained, my extensive knowledge about the ship and the mission is too valuable to risk on—”

  “Yeah, yeah, we know, you and your big brain have to stay up here where it’s safe,” Gabriel said. “Leave the rest of us to do the dirty work.”

  Chris ignored the sarcasm. Or maybe he didn’t hear it. “Precisely. I’ll stay on the ship monitoring your communications. There’s significant electrical interference in the atmosphere, so maintaining contact when you’re on the surface might prove difficult. You could end up on your own,” Chris warned.

  “We can handle that,” Dash said.

  Chris nodded. “I know you can.”

  Dash suppressed a smile.

  “You’ll need to retrieve a sample of Magnus 7,” Chris reminded them. “There’s a river of molten lava cutting through the center of the landing site—you’ll extract the Magnus 7 from that.”

  “Yeah, we know,” Gabriel said, ducking a cloud of ZRKs. The small robots buzzed around the Cloud Cat, readying the shuttle for the journey. “What we don’t know is how we’re supposed to get it back up to the ship. We can’t exactly bring molten lava home in our pockets.”

  “No, not at seven thousand degrees Fahrenheit you can’t,” Chris agreed, almost cheerfully.

  There was nothing on the ship with the capacity to hold that kind of material. They would have to find some sort of container on the planet.

  “I believe you will not be disappointed by what you find,” Chris added. “If the intelligence that designed this machinery is as sophisticated as it seems, I’m sure it will have left something useful behind.”

  “I thought you didn’t like to make guesses without all the facts,” Dash said, assembling his gear for the mission.

  Chris had a funny look on his face, like a cat that had gotten away with something. “In this case, I have all the facts I need.”

  “So, Chris and Piper will stay up on the ship,” Dash said. Even though they were pretty sure the machinery on the planet was dead and abandoned, there was a chance they were wrong. And back at Base Ten, they’d seen what the Meta Prime machines could do in action. The Alphas had finally beat them by shutting off the power that fed the simulation.

  It was Carly who’d realized that maybe they could do the same thing on the real Meta Prime. The Cloud Leopard could send out a targeted electromagnetic pulse that would shut down all electrical activity in the immediate area. There was n
o guarantee it would work, and Dash was hoping they’d never have to find out. Still, Carly had spent several days drilling Piper on everything she needed to know about EMPs. Just in case.

  “You all set, Piper?”

  Piper grinned. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  “Uh, actually, Dash, I’ve been thinking we should make a little change in plans,” Carly said quickly. “I’m going to stay up on the ship. Piper can go down to the surface.”

  “You’re bringing this up now?” he said.

  Carly gave him a sheepish smile. “Better now than once we’re already halfway down to the surface?”

  Dash couldn’t believe it. Didn’t they have enough to worry about without a last-minute substitution? Besides, Carly had stayed up on the ship for their last planetary expedition. It didn’t make any sense she would volunteer to do it again. “What’s going on, Carly? What’s this about?”

  “This ship is my job, Dash. I know it inside and out. You know that. If anything unexpected happens down there and you need backup from the Cloud Leopard, I want to be there to be sure you get it.”

  “You don’t think I can handle it?” Piper said, looking hurt.

  “No, that’s not it,” Carly said quickly. “I just…I think I can serve this mission better if I stay on board the Cloud Leopard. I know I can.”

  “I don’t like it,” Dash said. “We planned all this out ahead of time for a reason. You make changes at the last minute, you get sloppy.”

  Carly glared at him, her temper flaring. “Fine. Whatever. Feel free to ignore what I think. You’re in charge, right?”

  “Come on, Dash,” Gabriel said. “It’s no big deal who stays and who goes. And you know Carly knows this ship better than anyone.”

  Carly shot him a grateful look.

  “Other than me, of course,” Gabriel added.

  Dash turned to Piper, uncertain. “What do you think, Piper? Are you okay with joining the extraction team?”

  “Whatever you think is best, Dash,” she said.

  Gabriel and Carly shared an eye roll. Dash pretended not to see. He hadn’t known how tough it was to be a leader, especially when it meant leading his friends. Sometimes—like when they bickered over who got the last slice of pizza—they were like any other friends. All on the same level, messing around about stupid stuff, entertaining themselves with arguments where it didn’t matter who won.

  When they went into mission mode, it was like flipping a switch. Suddenly, Dash wasn’t one of them anymore—he was, sort of, the boss of them.

  Being in charge made the whole friendship thing tricky sometimes.

  And being friends sometimes made the in-charge thing seem impossible.

  Times like now.

  “Okay,” he said. It went against his every instinct, but instincts could be wrong. “Carly stays up here with Chris. Everyone else, prepare for departure.”

  Chris headed up to the bridge, from where he would monitor the Cloud Cat’s journey. Piper raced back to her quarters to change into something more mission-ready, and Dash checked over the ZRKs’ work on the shuttle. He wanted to make triple-sure it was good to go.

  Gabriel lingered for a moment. “You sure about this?” he asked Carly quietly. “Aren’t you getting a little sick of being stuck in this tin can? Don’t you want to breathe some fresh alien air?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want,” she told him. “This is for the good of the mission.”

  He gave her a skeptical look. Then, serious for once, he said, “You know, if there’s something else, you can always tell me.”

  She pressed her lips together and gave him a light punch on the arm. “Good luck down there. Don’t get blown up by any robots.”

  Gabriel winked. “Hey, you know me, I’ve got metal in my veins. I’m practically part machine. They’ll recognize me as one of their own.”

  Carly smiled—and she managed to keep that smile frozen on her face until she was safely out of the docking bay and on her own.

  Then it disappeared.

  Finally alone, Carly sagged against the corridor wall, fighting back tears. What had she just done? Had she screwed up the mission for her own stupid, selfish reasons?

  She let Dash believe she’d been thinking about it for a while, but that was a lie.

  It wasn’t until she stepped into the docking bay and her knees nearly buckled beneath her that she knew she couldn’t go down to the planet. She had to stay on the Cloud Leopard. Not because she thought she knew more than Piper. Or because she thought it would help the mission.

  She wanted to stay on the ship because she was afraid of leaving it.

  She, Carly Diamond, youngest member of the crew and determined to be the toughest, was afraid.

  She knew this ship. She’d spent six months studying the Cloud Leopard back on Earth, memorizing every inch of it. Nothing up here could surprise her. But an alien planet? That was another story. Anything could happen down there. Anything. There was nothing Carly hated more than being scared—and nothing that scared her more than the unknown.

  She told herself she wasn’t letting down the crew or the mission, and that the others would never know the truth. But she knew. And that was almost worse.

  The Cloud Cat streaked toward the atmosphere, carving a line of fire through the sky. Inside the small ship, Dash, Gabriel, and Piper were strapped into their flight seats, watching the planet loom in the window. Swirling red-and-brown clouds blanketed the surface, making it impossible to see what lay beneath. The atmosphere churned and sparked with electrical storms.

  It was going to be a rough ride.

  Gabriel peered through his dark flight glasses, his palm resting on a smooth plate that could pick up every twitch of a finger. He steered the shuttle steadily as they dropped out of orbit, preparing for a rocky atmospheric entry. The computer had plotted out a course based on the old scans from the unmanned probe. But those scans were years out of date. Conditions on the ground might have changed since then, and the computer would have no way of knowing.

  It was a lesson they’d learned on J-16—a lesson they’d almost learned too late.

  “Fasten your seat belts,” Gabriel told Dash and Piper. “It’s about to be an extremely bumpy ride.”

  Dash gripped the edges of his seat. “Just be careful—”

  The last word flew out of his mouth as Gabriel pushed the throttle into high gear. They plunged beneath the clouds and plummeted toward the surface of the planet.

  The flight glasses allowed Gabriel to control the ship with the tiniest of eye movements. It felt like his mind fused with the engine. Like the ship was an extension of his body. They sliced through the air at hundreds of miles an hour. Every millisecond counted. But Gabriel was totally relaxed. You couldn’t fly tense. You had to give in to the motion, become one with the speed.

  He pushed the shuttle faster, and faster still.

  He was in total control.

  No matter how it felt to his passengers.

  Piper sat quietly, her eyes closed, trying not to puke. She kept a thin smile fixed on her face, just in case Dash and Gabriel were paying attention. (They weren’t.)

  Dash fiddled with his backup glasses, willing himself to trust Gabriel. They weren’t going to crash.

  They weren’t going to slam into a wall of machinery or spin out of control.

  They weren’t going to smash into the ground at full speed and explode on impact.

  Gabriel wouldn’t let those things happen. Dash knew that. Just like he knew Gabriel was the better pilot, by far.

  Still, he wished he were flying the ship himself.

  They closed in on their landing site. Gabriel took it low and fast, skimming over and around rusted machinery. Two enormous, flat gray structures stretched for miles across the planet’s surface. A thin red ribbon of fire sliced between them. That was the river of lava, where they would find the element. They hoped.

  The shuttle banked hard to the right, then dove sharply, its nose pointed at t
he ground.

  “Pull up!” Dash yelped. It looked like they were headed straight into the river of fire.

  “Easy,” Gabriel murmured. “Give it a minute.”

  “In a minute we’ll be swimming in molten lava,” Dash insisted. “Pull up!”

  “I got this,” Gabriel said.

  The Cloud Cat plummeted down and down. Piper’s stomach was turning somersaults. Dash was about to seize control when, at the very last second, they pulled out of the dive.

  The Cloud Cat veered up, skimming along the river. Fire lapped at their belly. Huge metal walls rose on either side of them, scraping the clouds. The Cloud Cat sped through the narrow alley, tracing the river, weaving back and forth, hugging its curves. Until…

  “Brace yourselves,” Gabriel warned. “Touchdown in three…”

  Dash held on tight.

  Piper held her breath.

  “Two…”

  The Cloud Cat banked shallowly to the left, aiming for a narrow bare spot along the bank. It was barely as wide as the ship.

  “One…”

  There was no room for miscalculation. Too far to the left and they’d crash into the wall. Too far to the right and they’d be neck-deep in lava.

  “Touchdown!” Gabriel shouted as the Cloud Cat settled into the dirt with a bone-rattling thud.

  Piper let out her breath in a huge whoosh of relief. Dash thumped Gabriel on the back. “You got it, man!”

  “You sound surprised,” Gabriel said.

  Dash laughed. “How should I sound?”

  “Awed is always welcome,” Gabriel suggested. “I’ll also accept amazed, intimidated, or blown away.”

  “Can we settle on the right adjective later?” Piper said. “We’ve got an element to retrieve.” The sooner they got started, the sooner they could get safely back to the ship.

  Hopefully.

  Dash and the others stepped cautiously out onto the surface. Dash took a deep breath. It amazed him that there were alien planets with atmospheres just like Earth’s. According to their scans, the air here had exactly the same proportions of oxygen and nitrogen. But it tasted different: almost metallic, like the taste of biting your lip and drawing blood.