Lost Planet 02 - The Stolen Moon (24 page)

Mina led them across the room and opened a door at the back of the docking bay. “There is no everyone. The ship mostly runs itself.”

Their footsteps echoed off the walls as they walked from the docking bay into a spacious white hallway with wide blue floors. Parker turned to Mina. “So this is the mother ship I never got to see. How long were you guys tracking us?”

“Since you sent the SOS,” she said.

“No.” Parker's angry voice echoed down the empty hall. “
How long
have you been tracking us?”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Since you boarded the
Kuyddestor
. More or less. You never destroyed your chip.”

“But I firewalled it.”

“And checked the signal a hundred times a day. That's basically cutting off communications with someone and then strolling past their house every day thinking they won't notice you because you're wearing a different colored shirt.” She looked Parker up and down. “You seem well. You've gotten taller.”

“That's what growing humans do,” he replied crisply.

They hadn't seen what kind of ship they'd arrived at, but going by the time it took them to walk down what felt like endless empty hallways, Chase guessed it was a large one. Most of the doors they passed were closed, although they got an occasional glance into a sterile meeting room or a darkened lab. How many people did it even take to run this ship, he wondered, and were any of them besides Asa humans?

Finally Mina led them into an elevator, and they descended several floors. The elevator doors drew open, and standing in the hallway right before them was Asa Kaplan. His tall, lean frame, all wide shoulders and narrow waist, took Chase by surprise again—he'd forgotten what an intimidating figure Asa cut in person. His dark hair, slicked back severely, framed his pale face, which was a study in controlled intensity, as if he were holding back an explosion of glee or rage or some other gigantic emotion.

“You're here.” His tone was darkly triumphant. “Well done, Mina.” They crossed over to a door opposite the elevator, which opened on a large sitting room with a console-topped desk at one end and a black leather seating arrangement at the other. Asa led them to the chairs and bade them sit while he stood and looked them over with his hard blue eyes. Chase stared back at him, his heart racing. There was so much he wanted to say, to ask, but he found himself afraid to open his mouth.

Fortunately, Parker had no such fears. “Don't you have anything better to do than stalk and kidnap a group of kids?”

Asa raised an eyebrow. “It's nice to see you again too, Parker.”

“It's not nice to see you at all,” Parker spat. “Did you order Mina to leave our friends behind on Rhima? They were in trouble, and one of them—”

“I told her to only bring the three of you onto my ship,” Asa interrupted. “And those aren't your friends. They're Fleet soldiers.”

Anger finally loosened Chase's tongue. “You don't get to say who's our friend. Maurus is one of the best friends we have.”

Asa gave Chase a glare that made the words dry up on his tongue, and continued. “Mina will give you a tour of our ship and show you which areas are off-limits. Once you've settled in—”

“You can't do this,” said Parker angrily. “We're not staying here.”

Asa raised his eyebrows. “You think you have a choice? I'm still your guardian, Parker.” He gestured at Chase and Lilli. “I'm their guardian, too.”

“According to who?” cried Chase in frustration. “How do you know us?” He glanced over at Lilli, who was leaning back against her seat and looking paler by the minute.

“Some guardian you are,” sneered Parker. “I'd take you more seriously if you hadn't run off and ditched us on Qesaris. After the first time you ditched us, on the
Kuyddestor
.”

Asa's face remained expressionless at these accusations, and he responded calmly. “If you'll recall, on Qesaris I'd been blasted in the chest. I couldn't fight. And Mina was no match for that many Fleet soldiers. Leaving was the only tactical decision.”

“You sound like an android,” said Parker.

This, of all things, made Asa flinch. After a pause, he said, “Well, it was easy enough to find you again. You couldn't stop toying with that chip. Every time you tweaked your chip's signal, I knew exactly where you were. I stayed just outside the
Kuyddestor
's range, waiting for the right time.”

Like a spider
, thought Chase.
Waiting for us to fall into your web
. “You have to take us back,” he said. “The
Kuyddestor's
been hacked and hijacked, but if we can sneak onboard, Parker knows how to beat the hacker to get the ship back in the crew's hands.”

“That's not happening,” Asa said, ending the discussion abruptly by walking away from them over to the desk, where he took a seat and began scrolling through the console. Without looking up, he said, “Mina will take you to your new quarters. Any questions or requests can be directed to her.”

“No!” said Chase. He stood and took a few steps, deliberately walking right through a coffee table in the middle of the room. It didn't escape his attention how Asa's eyes locked onto his phasing legs with a strangely hungry look. “You can't keep us here.”

Asa looked up at Chase's face again, his expression resettling back into cold neutrality. “You can't go back, Chase. In time you'll see that this is the best thing that could've happened to you. The
Kuyddestor
is doomed, whether it gets destroyed by the Storrians or the Fleet or the Werikosa blow it up themselves. You'll be presumed dead by anyone who knew you, and you can take a new alias and get a fresh start at life, far away from the Fleet.”

“I don't want a fresh start!” yelled Chase. Asa barely knew him—that he could possibly claim to know what was best for Chase was beyond infuriating. “I don't care how much you hate the Fleet. These aren't just soldiers, they're people. They're our friends. You can't tell us that it's best for us if we abandon them all to die.”

“Chase, you don't understand everything right now,” said Asa.

“Then tell me.”

Asa sighed and shook his head. “We'll talk about it later. When you're ready.”

Chase's voice was strained as he tried to contain the anger and frustration and desperation raging inside. “Tell me what I don't know. Or send me back to the
Kuyddestor
.”

“I won't let you go back there.”

“Yes you will,” came a thin, scratchy voice across the room. Lilli stood, looking like a warm breeze could blow her over. “You'll help us get back onto the
Kuyddestor
, and you'll go along, too.”

Asa gave her a look that could wilt a flower. “And why would I do that?”

Lilli looked at Chase, and he realized that she was on the verge of tears. “Because I've been lying this whole time. To everyone. Because I'm not really here. And if you let everyone on the
Kuyddestor
die, I'm dead too.”

And then she vanished.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY

The act of Lilli disappearing jammed Chase's thoughts. It defied logic—this was the real her, not a traveling copy. Wasn't it? His mind raced, replaying every interaction he'd had with Lilli since they'd taken that stupid escape pod from the
Kuyddestor
. It was impossible. He'd seen her send a traveling copy all the way across a city before. But from a starship down to a planet? And all the way to wherever they were now?

Asa had gone pale, his face a frozen mask. “Where did she go?”

In Chase's mind, one thought looped in a panicky blur:
She's on the ship, she's on the ship, she's on the stupid ship.
On the ship that was under attack and at risk of being blown up with all its passengers. He took a moment to collect himself, and turned to Asa. “She's not here,” he said coldly. “She never was. That was only a projection of her. Turn your ship around, and take us back to the
Kuyddestor
so we can get her.”

She had told him she'd practiced sending her traveling copies, but he knew now that her ability had become much more powerful than he'd realized. It wasn't just the distance she was able to send them—she also must have developed the ability to make multiple copies at once. He cursed himself for not figuring out on his own that it hadn't been the real Lilli ever since they left the
Kuyddestor
, even though he knew it was impossible.

Mina spoke from where she stood by the elevator. “Asa, Starseeker-Four has arrived in the docking bay.”

“Fine,” said Asa dismissively, his eyes still fixed on Chase.

“Alix reports there were five passengers aboard the vehicle, and—”

He looked up. “What?”

“They're headed up to medical,” she continued impassively.

His jaw tightened, and his guise of control slipped a bit as he turned back to Chase and Parker, standing quickly. “We'll continue this later. In the meantime, find out where your sister went.”

Chase shook his head. “I already told you, she's on the
Kuyddestor
.”

But Asa walked from the room without answering, leaving through a door behind his desk. Mina stayed behind, waiting patiently beside the elevator.

“What on Taras is going on?” Parker said to Chase. “Is Lilli really still on the
Kuyddestor
?”

“I don't know,” said Chase. “I didn't think she could travel this far.”

“Neither did I,” came Lilli's voice behind them.

They whipped around to see her sitting on the edge of Asa's desk. Parker whistled appreciatively. “Impressive move, little Lil. How'd you do this?”

A glint of pride flashed in her eyes. “I told you I've been trying to push the limit on my traveling to see how much I could do with it. Going on the escape pod was a test. It was hard at first, keeping up the projection at that distance, but I got used to it pretty quickly. There's a”—she twiddled her fingers in the air—“feel to it. A frequency.”

“How far are you traveling right now?” asked Parker.

“Farther than I've ever gone before. Actually I don't know how much longer I can keep it up. It'll get better if he turns the ship around.” The violet circles under her eyes seemed deeper than ever.

“But I saw you make a copy on Storros,” said Chase. “Can you make more than one at a time?”

Lilli nodded, and an identical copy appeared, very briefly, sitting on the desk beside her. She shrugged. “Practice.”

It was fascinating and horrible at the same time. “Why didn't you tell me? This whole time I thought you were safe with us.”

Lilli lowered her eyes. “I never thought you'd find out. None of us knew this was going to happen when we left the
Kuyddestor
. And then once things started going really bad, I just thought you'd be mad, and worried.”

“Of course I'm worried!” Chase exploded. “You're trapped on a ship that's been hijacked!” He turned to Mina. “Will you tell Asa she's here now? We need to go back to the
Kuyddestor
immediately.” Mina inclined her head slightly, which Chase took for an affirmative.

Parker stared at Lilli with a kind of fascination. “So where are you?”

She hesitated. “What?”

“On the ship. You have to tell us where you're hiding. You
have
to.”

“Oh.” Lilli's face started to close again, the familiar guarded expression, and Chase realized she was in the place that had been her hiding spot on the ship for the past three months.

He stepped toward her. “We need to know where you are, Lilli. How are we supposed to help you if you don't trust us?”

She ducked her head and spoke in a tiny voice. “There's a crawl space in the walls next to Uncle Lionel's—the captain's apartment. You can only get to it by climbing up a duct that looks like a dead end. Not even your girlfriend knows how to find it.”

Heat flushed across Chase's cheeks. “She's not my girlfriend.”

“Isn't she your friend? Who's a girl?” Unbelievably, a tiny smirk tugged at the corner of Lilli's mouth.

The teasing only added to his frustration. “Why did you need to hide? You could have done your practice from anywhere. What was the point of hiding all the time?”

She looked away, and it seemed for a second like she wasn't going to answer, but in a quiet voice she said, “I feel safer there.”

“Well you're not safe now, are you? Guess it didn't work.” Lilli recoiled from his words, and immediately Chase felt guilty for saying them. Because they never spoke about what had happened to Lilli—because they never spoke at all—he still had no idea how deep the damage from her past went. It was something they needed to work on. If they got the chance.

The door behind Asa's desk slid open. His bright blue eyes locked immediately on Lilli and he strode right up to her with a ferocious look in his eyes. “Is this some kind of trick? Where are you?”

She seemed to shrink before him. “I'm on the
Kuyddestor
.”

“Prove it.” He took her by the arm. “Prove you're not actually hiding here and trying to trick me into returning to the Fleet.”

Lilli vanished off the desk, leaving him holding air, and reappeared simultaneously beside Chase. “Good enough for you?”

The same greedy look came over Asa that Chase had seen when he'd phased through the table. “You could be doing that from anywhere. How do I know you're not somewhere besides the Kuyddestor?”

“Is that a risk you're willing to take?” asked Lilli with a hint of her old fierceness. “Anyway, you'll find out in about five minutes if you don't turn your ship around. I can't keep up this distance much longer.”