Lost Planet 02 - The Stolen Moon (21 page)

“Nice,” said Parker sarcastically when he drew his hand away, blue-green with the Werikosa's skin oil. He wiped it on a blanket. Another played with Lilli's hair, leaving punkish streaks of colored oil in the blond as she sat frozen and grimacing.

Two adult Werikosa entered, carrying four large and misshapen metal bowls that looked like they had been beaten out of pieces of tin siding, and distributed the bowls to their guests. Inside was a thin, gray gruel. Chase inhaled the steam rising from his bowl, but it smelled like hot granite.

“What is this?” asked Lilli in a disgusted voice.

“I believe,” said Ksenia dryly, “that this is a lichen stew.” One of the Werikosa was trying to demonstrate to her how to tip the bowl at her mouth. “Yes, thank you, I get it.”

Chase was being encouraged to do the same, so he reluctantly lifted the bowl and slurped a tiny bit of the stew. It had an earthy flavor, much like he imagined dirt would taste, and although it didn't make him gag, he certainly had no desire to eat any more. He tried to set the bowl down, but all the Werikosa were staring at him, and it seemed rude to turn down their offering.

Parker was trying to hand his own bowl back. “I'm so full, thank you, no, no more mud stew for me.” Lilli had shoved hers away untouched, and they looked at the bowl, and then at her, their beady eyes round and inexpressive, making it impossible to tell if their feelings had been hurt. Could they even get hurt feelings?

A deafening metallic crunching noise cut through the air from outside, startling them all. It sounded almost as if a vehicle were crash-landing somewhere in the village. Immediately Ksenia stood and exited the trailer, striding right past the Werikosa and their gruel. Chase looked at their hosts and shrugged apologetically, and ran after her with Parker and Lilli to see what was going on.

They had to circle around to the outside of the settlement until they found what had happened. A hoverbike had landed just outside the structures and appeared to have dragged along several enormous pieces of warped metal sheeting and a tattered, once plush crimson chair.

“Is that—?” Chase began to ask.

“Did you steal that from my ship?” shouted Ksenia, her face turning red with anger.

Bawran walked out from around the back of the hovercraft. He was bare-chested, and although he was definitely older, his build was still muscular and powerful. A dark blue-green sheen covered his face, until he pulled a rag from his pocket and wiped away the thick layer of oil.

“What is this madness?” Ksenia cried. “What do you mean by gutting our ship for salvage not six hours after we were shot down by your colleague?”

Bawran shrugged. “I apologize. It didn't appear that you would be using the ship again, and good metal is in short supply here. As are most things.”

“Other than lichen,” said Parker under his breath.

He unhooked the chair and set it on the ground. “I found some of your people with the ship. I'll send Hotha over to the mineworks for a bigger hover so we can bring them here to you.”

“We need to contact the Federation,” said Ksenia. “I'll go with him to the mineworks so I can send a message out.”

As he untied the bindings on a sheet of metal, Bawran gave her a look and simply shook his head.

“This is unconscionable!” shouted Ksenia. “Do you people not understand loyalty? I was on
your
side. I sympathized with the Werikosa plight.”

“Would you like any of these items back?” Bawran asked as he unloaded a gilded chest from the back of the bike. “You may have them.”

“It's not about the ship, you fool.” She walked up and got in his face. “Petrod
tried to kill me
.”

Bawran look impassively at her. “He must have had a good reason.”

Ksenia glanced at Parker, who ducked his head and looked away. She was trembling with rage. “This won't end well for you. I promise you that. Your people will be dragged screaming from this moon and dumped back on Werikos where you belong.”

Bawran had stopped unloading his trailer, and his expression was grim. “They'll find we put up a fight. We have women and children here, yes, but we also have weapons. We have an army.”

“Your army is a joke. You have no concept of the Federation's strength, and no idea what you're facing.” Whirling around in her tattered suit, Ksenia stormed off, and Bawran started dragging his new metal pieces over to stack against one of the sheds, humming a tune and never sparing a glance for Chase, Parker, or Lilli.

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Parker pawed through the piles of junk at the back of the trailer, pulling out a cracked screen and tossing it to the side. Chase sat back on a pile of rugs next to Lilli, watching the curious Werikosa hanging around the front of the trailer, although they hadn't offered them any more food. Ksenia had not returned since her confrontation with Bawran. He glanced over at his sister, whose eyes were wide but glazed with exhaustion.

“You okay?” he asked softly.

She looked up at him with uncharacteristic openness, and he saw the depth of worry in her expression. “What's going to happen to us? If they take out the ship, if Uncle Lionel is gone … where will we go?”

“That's not going to happen,” he assured her. “They'll figure this out before anything bad happens. We'll be fine.”

Lilli answered this with an unconvinced look, and the best he could give her was a smile and a hopeful shrug. They both knew he was just trying to make her feel better, but somehow this made him feel closer to her than he had in ages.

After leaving Bawran they'd wandered around the settlement until they figured out where the soldiers were being held, in a cargo container on the other side of the settlement. The container was guarded by a handful of young Werikosa, including Hotha. They were too far away for the translink to interpret what the Werikosa talked about, but their strutting and aggressive postures made Chase nervous.

Something Parker was tugging at snapped, and he cursed, wiping his hand on his jacket.

Chase looked back at the mound of broken electronics. “You okay over there?”

“Yeah,” Parker muttered. “Just trying to get at the insides of this enclosure.”

“Are you building us a ride off this place?”

“A news feed. We need to find out what's going on up there.” Parker pointed skyward. “There's enough random junk here to build a fully automated house if I had the time. They've got all these huge antennae here in the settlement—there's one attached to this trailer. There must be a way to tap into a feed.”

Intrigued and more hopeful than he'd felt since they'd crashed, Chase joined Parker's scavenging hunt. They sorted through boxes of cables and piles of broken or discarded pieces of equipment, clothes, and utensils. Parker hooted when he finally pried open a ruined chassis and found a fully intact radio circuit board inside. “This looks good,” he said, peering at the silvery surface of the board.

Within minutes he had wired up the cracked screen to the board. “Now to tap into the antennae outside.” He untangled more cable, jumpered a few pieces together to make it longer, and fed the end of it through a hole near the base of the wall before standing to leave. “When I knock, keep feeding that coax cable through.”

A few seconds later, his knock came on the back of the trailer. Chase tried to push the cable into the hole, but it started to bunch up in his hand. Parker's muffled voice shouted something unintelligible outside the trailer. Chase glanced at Lilli. “Keep an eye on those guys,” he said, nodding at the Werikosa, who were busy playing with strings in the carpets. Then he plunged his head through the back wall.

“Whoa,” said Parker, jumping back as Chase's face came through the trailer.

A quick glance confirmed that no one was around to see. “What did you say?” Chase whispered, his neck already tingling fiercely where he was phasing through the wall.

“I said that the cable must have caught on something. It's not coming out.”

“Hold on a second.” Chase's arm came through the trailer next, and he reached back into the wall, fishing around until his numb fingers came upon the bunched-up cable. It took a minute of concentration to get his fingertips to grab onto the cable while the rest of his hand was phasing.

“This is so weird,” said Parker, watching him. “What does it feel like?”

“It's not awesome,” said Chase through gritted teeth. “It burns.”

“I bet it does.” Parker took the cable from him, once Chase had managed to weave the entire thing around the blockage and through the hole. “Thanks. You can put your head back inside now.”

Chase rolled his eyes and ducked back through. Lilli glanced at him, but the Werikosa were still playing with their strings. Parker jogged back inside. “Okay, we're all hooked up. Let's see.”

He moved a bit of wire from the screen up and down a row of knobby bits on the circuit board, watching the flickering screen carefully. A tinny voice came from the minuscule speaker holes on the sides of the screen, and a second later a blurry video feed lit up the screen.

“The hijacking occurred at approximately fourteen hundred local Earthtime. Few details are available as to how the Werikosa were able to pull off such a highly orchestrated attack, but here with more information is our reporter on the scene, Parri Dietz.”

At the sound of the video feed, several curious Werikosa crept to the back of the trailer and crowded in, watching the screen in awe. Parri Dietz's calm, professional face filled the screen, but Chase could barely hear her speak over the Werikosa's delighted squeals.

“The standoff between the hijacked starship and Storrian defense fleet continues. Officials have not been able to determine if there were any survivors in the Federal embassy ship that was shot down late yesterday, as the moon is still being closely guarded by the hijackers, but they say that there may have been—”

The image cut out. Fearing that they'd been discovered, Chase looked up in alarm. Instead he saw that two of the Werikosa kids had followed the cable back to the hole and yanked it, disconnecting the middle cables to twist them into bracelets.

“Hey, knock that off!” shouted Parker, trying to snatch the cables back from them. “I need that!” The ones who had been watching the news feed took the screen from his hands, turning it around and poking at it. “Let go! I was using that!” He grabbed for it, and the Werikosa made a high-pitched noise of delight and scampered out of the trailer.

Parker roared with frustration. “They're like a pack of animals!” Chase shrugged, exasperated. These kids thought it was all a game, and short of roughing them up or making a loud fuss, he couldn't see a way to stop them. Parker snatched up the circuit board and what cables he could get away from the Werikosa. “Come on, let's get out of here.”

They went out into the dusty street. “Well, at least we learned that nobody's looking for us,” said Chase grimly. “Now what? Is there a way to contact someone? Lilli, can you maybe travel to Parri Dietz?”

Lilli shook her head. “That would take ages—I have no idea where she is.”

Parker looked at the circuit board in his hands and sighed. “At the very least, maybe I can send out a super primitive SOS signal on a public distress band to let them know someone's here.” He lifted his head and looked around. “Let's see if we can use that big yagi antenna over there.”

They had to slide past a few stacks of crates and a pair of Werikosa women who barely glanced at them to get to the building where the antenna in question was attached. Parker used a pocketknife to pry open a panel at the base of the antenna, and plugged the loose cable in the box onto the circuit board.

“I'm not sure this will work,” he said with a frown. Parker fiddled with some switches on the circuit board until he seemed satisfied. With another wire, he started to short two spots on the circuit board, muttering to himself as he did. “Stranded on moon. S-O-S. Crash survivors. Please send help.”

“What's going on here?” came a translinked voice behind them.

Filled with dread, Chase looked back to see Bawran standing behind them. A handblaster hung at his waist.

“We were playing a game,” he said quickly, stepping toward Bawran so he wouldn't notice Parker untwisting wires behind him. “Hide-and-seek. With the other kids here.”

“Hide and what?” Bawran asked. “We don't know that game.”

“That's why we're teaching it to them,” said Lilli.

“And we're about to lose!” Parker barked, dashing right past Bawran, the circuit board stashed in his jacket. Running after him, Chase paused once they were back in the street, but Bawran didn't appear to be coming after them. The Werikosa children were all there, cheering and ready for play, and Parker swiftly handed over the circuit board, which one of them took as if it were a precious gift and ran off.

They wandered back down the street, surrounded by their new friends. Chase looked up at the sky. He wondered what was happening aboard the
Kuyddestor
at that moment, and if they'd ever get onboard again. How long had they been on Rhima now? Half a day? More? Parker had been right about the tidal-locking—the sky never changed, and it just looked like dusk the whole time.

“They're all okay right now,” said Lilli beside him, as if she'd read his mind. When he looked over at her, she said, “I've been checking. Sending quick flashes up to the ship. Everyone's fine so far.”

“I can't believe you can travel that far,” he said.

“Practice,” she told him simply. He looked over at her pale face, her tired eyes, and for a moment a preposterous possibility occurred to him—one that he quickly pushed out of his mind.

On the far side of the settlement, shouts arose, Maurus's clear baritone rising above the rest.