Lost Planet 02 - The Stolen Moon (26 page)

Asa hit the console on a doorway, leading the way into an office. Chase stepped inside and froze, feeling like he'd gotten all the wind knocked out of him.

Leaning against the desk with her famous perky smile was Parri Dietz.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Chase gaped at Parri Dietz, the face he'd seen a hundred times on the news feed. Asa had to be playing a joke on them. For as much as his secrecy and paranoia finally made some sense, it was impossible that his counterpart was a famous newscaster whose face had probably been seen by every humanoid in the galaxy.

“Are you kidding me?” said Parker. “This is—this is the…? No.”

Ignoring him, Asa walked up in front of Parri Dietz and slammed his hand on the desk hard enough to dent the surface, making Chase jump. “What were you thinking?” he barked.

Parri Dietz stood up off the desk and casually adjusted the cuffs of her silk shirt. “Nice to see you too, Asa.”

“How could you bring four strangers onto my ship?” he hissed. “Do you realize what you've done?”

She tilted her blond head, utterly unfazed by his anger. “After Mina told me they were down on the moon, I wasn't going to just leave them there. One of them was nearly dead.”

“They're
Fleet soldiers
.” Asa said this the way other people might say
Goxar raiders
or
Zinnjerha
.

Parri frowned at him. “They're barely older than Chase and Parker.”

“She knows my name,” whispered Parker, nudging Chase.

“And one of them was the Lyolian,” she continued. “You know he's too valuable to just leave out there for the Werikosa to take their frustrations out on. He knows things.”

“Did any of them see you?” Asa asked.

Parri gave him a pointed look. “Do you think I'd be that stupid? I hid out in the control cabin while Alix brought them onboard.”

“Who's Alix?” blurted Chase.

Parri Dietz turned her sparkling smile on him. “Well, hi there, Chase. It's nice to officially meet you. Alix is my android.” It was the same smile she'd given him on the
Kuyddestor
, around the time Parker's chip went missing, and in Lumos, when he was supposed to be meeting Asa's contact. She'd known the whole time who he was. His brain scrambled to reorient itself to the new reality of those situations, but still it was just too hard to believe that Parri Dietz was an escaped genetically engineered super soldier. Like his parents. Only famous.

“You can't be one of the escaped soldiers,” he said. “You're supposed to be hiding.”

Asa sighed. “Would you let that ridiculous guise down so they can see?”

Winking at Chase, Parri Dietz reached up with both hands and massaged her temples in a sharp circle. When she looked up again, the perkiness had vanished, and her face was transformed into something leaner, harder. Her bright eyes became heavy-lidded and dangerous, the cheery smile twisting into a wolfish smirk. Even her eyebrows looked sharper. Chase had to blink several times to reconcile the change—she was still the same person, the same face, but at the same time completely different.

Asa stood beside her. “This is Fighting Unit 2403. Or as we prefer to call her, Nika.”

Parker scoffed. “We're supposed to believe
that's
enough to fool the Fleet?”

“It's never been a problem,” Parri/Nika said. Her voice was different now, too, dark and liquid. “Facial recognition scanners can't even tell the difference.”

“But just changing your expression can't—”

“We've gone to a little more trouble than that,” interrupted Asa. “Implants of adamantine mesh under her skin change the appearance of her bone structure, reflective screens in her eyes change her irises. And of course that delightful Parri Dietz voice we all recognize has been carefully calibrated to evoke feelings of trust and stability in almost all types of humanoid. The monsters that created Fighting Unit 2403 won't see their handiwork in the Parri Dietz that we created. People believe what they want to believe—if you present them a convincing deception, they'll do ninety percent of the work for you.”

Chase couldn't take his eyes off her altered face. “Did you do all that to her?”

Asa shook his head. “Nika designed and built the hardware herself. Someone else handled the integration surgeries. She's got a busy schedule, as you can imagine, but she makes herself available when she can. Like when I need her to steal back a microchip that someone is too close to figuring out.”

“Thief!” exclaimed Parker.

Chase frowned. “That whole time we thought Ksenia was the one who took the chip and left me the note.”

Nika shook her head. “That was me.”

“So, Chase's parents and the two of you. That's only four,” said Parker. “What about the last three soldiers from your group?”

“Ah.” Asa glanced at Nika. “One is around and stays in regular contact with both of us.”

“And the other two?”

“They're dead.” Asa's expression gave away no emotion.

Nika sat down in the command seat, rubbing her face. “Oh, this feels good. I can't remember the last time I turned off my implant mesh. If you want, Asa, I can take the two uninjured soldiers with me when I leave, drop them off somewhere remote. The third won't be mobile for a while, I'm afraid. He's all yours.”

“We're taking them back to the
Kuyddestor
,” said Chase. “Asa's going to help us take it back from the hijackers.”

Nika dropped her hands from her face. “Excuse me?”

“There's been a hitch in the plans,” said Asa. “The children are under the impression that I'm going to help them take back the ship from the Werikosa rebels.”

“After he just rescued you from it?” Nika asked Chase in a scolding tone.

“Rescued?” Lilli's scratchy voice turned everyone's heads. “We never needed to be rescued. We were fine on the ship—I mean, before the hijacking.”

“You weren't fine,” said Asa harshly. “You were captives.”

“We were safe!” she fired back.

“You were brainwashed.”

Lilli's face turned fiery red, but before she could start a response, Asa continued. “We've set a course back toward the
Kuyddestor
. When we get there, we'll take a cruiser and latch onto the sidewall, cutting a hole through the exterior and extracting you in the thirty seconds available before the Werikosa realize what's happening. You will be where I tell you to be, when I tell you to be.”

Lilli put her hands on her hips. “I won't be anywhere unless you promise to fight the Werikosa and give the
Kuyddestor
crew control over their own ship again.”

Asa stared at her. “You would honestly sacrifice yourself to save that ship? I don't think you understand—”

“
You
don't understand,” snapped Lilli. “I don't know you. I've never even seen you before today. I don't care if you were made in the same soldier factory as my parents. You never came to our home; they never mentioned you. I've known Uncle Lionel my whole life. He's my family. So if you want to keep me alive, you'll keep him alive too.”

Impressed with the steely strength in his sister's voice—even as his gut plummeted at her suggestion that she would let herself go down with the ship—Chase jumped in. “You think that Captain Lennard is just another Fleet officer, but he's different. He knows there are some bad people in the Fleet—people bad enough to destroy Trucon and blame it on Maurus and the Karsha Ven. After all of you escaped from the Fleet, my parents were trapped and he helped them find a safe place to hide. He was their friend.”

“I see,” said Asa. His gaze rested on Parker for a moment, and he exhaled in a short, loud burst. “Fine. I will help you save the
Kuyddestor
, but on one condition: After the ship is secured, all of you will come with me. Your place is here, not living under the roof of the establishment that killed your parents.”

“No,” said Lilli automatically.

Asa clenched his hands like he wanted to shake her. “I will not negotiate—”

“Asa, you have the social finesse of a man who's spent the last decade surrounded by androids,” interrupted Nika smoothly. She turned to Lilli. “But you're being foolish, my dear. Even if Captain Lennard is your family, like you say, he can't keep you safe like Asa can. Look what's happening to his ship right now.”

“But that's only because—” Chase began.

“He's a Fleet captain, Chase,” said Asa. “Even if he's as anti-Fleet as you say—especially if he is—he's a target. He will always be within their striking distance. And as long as you stay close to him, so are you.”

Chase dropped his head and took a deep breath. He hated to admit it, but Asa was right. Of all the places in the universe to hide from the Fleet, aboard a Fleet starship was possibly one of the worst. He knew that Captain Lennard cared deeply about him and his sister, that he would do anything to protect them, but was he the best person to do that?

“Are you going to lock us up in some compound like where you had Parker?” he asked.

Asa considered this. “Not necessarily. We can negotiate.”

With every second he spent deliberating on this, time was slipping away for the
Kuyddestor
crew. Chase had to make a decision. “Fine,” he said. “We'll go with you. Lilli, say you promise. You too, Parker.”

“We'll go with you,” said Parker immediately. “I promise.” Chase glanced at him, frowning. He'd expected some—okay, more than some—resistance from Parker. Was he saying this for the good of the crew, or was there some other reason he was suddenly okay with leaving the
Kuyddestor
?

Lilli balked. “We belong with Uncle Lionel,” she repeated.

Chase took her by the shoulder. “I don't know if we do or don't belong on a starship. But this is the choice he's giving us, so either we promise to live here, or the
Kuyddestor
is lost—and that means not just you, but everyone on the ship. Do you really want to make that decision for them?”

With a shudder, Lilli shook her head, angry tears filling her eyes, and vanished. Chase looked up at Asa. “We'll come with you as soon as we know the
Kuyddestor
is safe.”

Asa nodded and began entering information on the console in the desk.

“Well, that was interesting,” said Nika dryly. “I do wish I could come along and help.”

“You can't blow your cover,” said Asa, not looking up from the desk. “Get out of here and go do your thing.”

Nika nodded and walked toward the door. “I'll be watching and reporting,” she said. “Be safe out there, soldier.”

*   *   *

As they walked back to the medical bay, Chase nudged Parker. “Are you really okay with going with Asa when all this is over?” he asked.

Parker shrugged, glancing up at Asa. “Might not be so bad this time.” Something had changed, but Chase couldn't figure out what.

Vidal had been pacing beside the submarine apparatus, but she whipped around as soon as they entered the medical bay. Her eyes narrowed at Asa. “Who are you? What kind of ship is this?”

“I'm Asa Kaplan,” said Asa. “And this is my personal vessel, nothing more.”

“But who
are
you? All I know is that some unidentified cruiser with an android pilot rescued us from the bottom of a lunar mine shaft and brought us here.”

“That's as much as you need to know,” said Asa.

Parker had crossed the room to peer inside the window of the medical machine where Derrick lay. Chase joined him, but the inside was dark and there was nothing to see.

“You must have been fairly close by,” commented Maurus. He still sat in the chair, but his arm was no longer encased in the mending machine, and someone had given him a fresh shirt. “I have to know, did you set up that whole Lumos thing so you could get your hands back on the kids?”

Asa ignored the question. “We're going back to the
Kuyddestor
, and I need your help figuring out the safest place to board the ship.”

Vidal shook her head. “They'll blow you out of the sky as soon as you come close. If there was a way to break through the ship's scramblers and teleport on board, that might—”

“Not an option,” said Asa. “Fleet scramblers are impossible to bypass. The only place you can teleport onto a Fleet ship is the teleport chamber, and that will be locked down and crawling with Werikosa.”

“But how are you planning to get anywhere near the ship?”

“We'll take a small cruiser, and we'll fold right up beside it.”

Maurus scowled. “That kind of precision is impossible with a fold. Between the ship's movement and the expansion factor, you'll end up splitting the
Kuyddestor
wide open and taking your own head off in the process.”

“Normal ships can't do it. Mine can. We'll have to board quickly, but we'll be too close to the
Kuyddestor
for them to be able to fire on us. We'll just have to be ready for what's coming at us from the inside.”

Maurus gave him a skeptical look. “We're going to need a lot of firepower.”

Good thing we're planning this with a weapons dealer
, thought Chase.

“Two of my androids will come with us. We'll need to get to an onboard computer to fight the hack.”

“I'll take care of that part while you fight off the Werikosa,” said Parker.

“Oh, you're not coming with us,” said Asa quickly. “I can handle the trojan.”

“Before you're fighting off a herd of angry Werikosa, or during?” snapped Parker. “I can fix the hack while you fight.”

Asa shook his head, white-lipped and furious. “Absolutely not. I will take care of the trojan and get Lilli off the ship with my androids.”