Lost Planet 02 - The Stolen Moon (7 page)

That sounded like a lot of strangers aboard the ship at one time. Chase didn't say anything, but his panic must have showed on his face. “This is a good thing, Chase,” said the captain, softening his tone a bit. “We have a higher level of security aboard the
Kuyddestor
, which means everything will be under our control, and everyone will be safer.

“I'm going to be busy making sure these negotiations go smoothly, so I might not always be available when you need me. If I'm not, you can go to Colonel Forquera with any problems you have, okay?”

Chase glanced down at Forquera, who was still talking with his crew and didn't give any sign he noticed that his name had been mentioned.

The captain leaned toward Chase, waving him to come closer and dropping his voice. “But more importantly, Chase, I need you to promise me that you'll stay on the soldiers' level during the talks tomorrow. There are already a lot of non-
Kuyddestor
personnel onboard right now to help out with preparations, and tomorrow there will be five times as many strangers on the ship. I need you out of sight, for safety's sake. Same goes for your sister and Parker. I need you to keep an eye on them.”

Chase started to shake his head. “Lilli's impossible to keep track of. I never know where she's at.”

“Then today it's your job to find her, and make sure she understands how important this is.”

Chase wanted to explain how she'd been hiding, but that would require talking about her traveling within possible earshot of the bridge crew. “Okay.”

“Promise me you'll all keep out of sight, okay?”

“I promise.”

The captain smiled. “And I promise you that nothing will go wrong tomorrow.”

But somehow, the captain's promise didn't make Chase feel any better.

 

CHAPTER SIX

Chase sat alone in the canteen running his fork through a plate of greasy synth biryani, wracking his brain for ideas on how he could find his sister before the peace talks began. He hadn't planned on eating alone, but Parker had come with him to get lunch and then left to take his plate back to the room and keep working. Chase scooped up a forkful of rice and stuck it in his mouth just as he realized that someone was standing across from him. Analora pushed her hair behind her ears and smiled at him as she sat down.

“Hey,” he said, gulping quickly. “I haven't seen you around.”

She shrugged. “I've been catching up with my dad. He always wants to hang out together all the time when I first come back here. Takes a while before things get back to normal.”

“Ah.” He stirred his rice awkwardly, and set his fork down. “We're supposed to arrive at Storros tomorrow. Are you excited?”

She shrugged. “I guess. I doubt we'll be allowed to go visit Storros ourselves. The Storrians have a super strict immigration policy.”

It hadn't even occurred to Chase that they might ordinarily have been able to go visit a planet they were stationed near. “How many planets have you been to?” he asked.

“Oh, gosh, a lot.” She began counting off on her fingers. “Earth, Jypras, Banafiel, Namat, so about four origin planets, plus maybe half a dozen colony planets.”

“Did you ever go to Trucon?”

She grew quiet. “Yeah, my mom and I went there once for a conference in Rother City.” She looked cautiously at Chase. “It was a nice place. Very sunny.”

Chase had only meant to find a planet in common that they had both visited, but he realized she thought he was from Trucon. Desperately he tried to change the topic. “So, what's Jypras like?”

“It's all water,” she said, shaking her head. “How do you like living on the
Kuyddestor
now?”

Chase placed his napkin over his plate as he considered this. “It's okay. I don't have much to do, besides my appointments with your dad. The blackout last week was kind of exciting.”

She grinned. “I slept through it. Time adjustment from Jypras.” She looked at the walls around them. “I guess the old girl needs to go in for a tune-up.”

Without thinking, Chase said, “Parker thinks somebody hacked the power grid.”

She frowned at him. “Who's Parker?”

Before she even asked the question, Chase regretted saying Parker's name. He liked having his own secret friend, someone he could just pretend to be normal around without all the baggage of his past that Parker and everyone else knew about. “Uh, he's a friend,” he muttered.

“Why does he think someone hacked the power grid?” She wasn't going to let this go, Chase could tell.

He sighed. “He's pretty good at hacking and electronics and stuff like that, so he's been trying to figure out what caused the blackout.”

Analora leaned forward, her curiosity fully piqued. “Why didn't you mention him before? Is he from Trucon as well? Can we go see what he's doing?”

“Um, Parker doesn't like to interact when he's working on something. He doesn't really like people at all, actually.” Well, at least the first part was true.

“Oh.” Analora's face fell.

Chase's mind raced for a way to grab her interest again. “Oh hey, I met the ambassador,” he said. “Corinthe. He was on the ship.”

“Really? Did you hear they're hosting the peace talks on the
Kuyddestor
?”

“Yeah.” After thinking it over more, Chase had decided that this did make him feel slightly better about the mission—if the
Kuyddestor
was such an important part of the process, the Fleet really couldn't do anything bad to them. “The captain ordered me to stay on the soldiers' level the whole time. He thinks I'll … get in the way or something. So I'm not going to get to see anything.”

“Oh. Well, that stinks.” Analora fiddled with his empty tray, looking like she was thinking hard. “There are ways around that, you know.”

“What do you mean?” asked Chase.

She gave him a sly grin. “I know every inch of this ship, and all its secrets. Trust me—there's a way.”

*   *   *

Standing in a narrow back hallway on the soldiers' level near the ship's maintenance offices, Chase watched as Analora wedged a knife stolen from the canteen into a panel of the wall, popping it loose. Behind was a black crawlspace with a bracket of wires running overhead.

Chase crouched and stuck his head through the opening, looking down the dark tunnel inside. “We're going in there?”

“Behind the walls there's a whole other
Kuyddestor
,” said Analora. “The maintenance corridors. You just have to know the right places to get to them.”

“How do we get out again?” In the back of his mind, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Parker's said,
You phase through it, dummy
. But he couldn't do that with Analora around. She thought he was normal—he didn't want her to see that he was actually a freak.

“We can push this panel back out from the inside. This hall's usually empty, so we just have to be sure to come back to the same spot. I've never been caught.” She held the panel steady with a knee as she looped her hair up on top of her head. “Get in and head to the right. I'll be behind you.”

Looking quickly up and down the hall, Chase crept inside the wall. The crawlspace was dark and dusty, but as he scuffled along, his eyes adjusted and he realized there were ventilation spots every so often that let a tiny amount of light through. Behind him, he heard Analora get inside and pull the panel shut. He glanced back at her once and she flapped a hand, waving him onward.

After a few minutes, the crawlspace ended, but someone had cut a neat hole in the metal, and he crept out into an open space. As he waited for Analora to join him, he looked around. They were now in a tall, narrow corridor that curved and disappeared in the distance. Square utility lights sunk into the wall every few meters provided dim light, and the air was hot and smelled like wax and hair.

Analora clambered out, rubbing the dust off her hands and grinning.

“Where are we?” he asked in a whisper.

“We're in the maintenance area, beside the ship's air filtration and climate control.” She placed a hand on the tall wall beside them. “This is the influx chamber.”

“How do you know all this?”

“My friend Dany knew the ship better than any of us. We used to come back here all the time, and he'd explain where we were and how everything worked.” Her voice sounded soft and happy describing these memories, and Chase felt a tiny twinge of jealousy toward this person he'd never met.

They walked along the wall of the gigantic influx chamber. At one point the closed crawlspace beside them curved back into the wall, creating a little alcove. Chase squinted at something crumpled in the corner. “Hold on,” he said. He crouched in the corner and picked it up, shaking out what appeared to be a woolen Fleet standard-issue blanket.

Chase squeezed the blanket, suddenly feeling ill. Could
this
be where Lilli spent her time hiding—in a dark corner inside the walls of the ship? He felt around on the floor and up around the pipes running along the wall, but there were no other clues as to who might have left the blanket.

“Is everything okay?” asked Analora.

“How big is the interior maintenance area, the whole thing?” Chase asked. “Could we walk through it all right now?”

“Oh, no way. It's huge, and not all the parts are connected. There are a bunch of different entry spots we used to use.”

How would he find out where Lilli hid? There had to be a million places like this one. Chase looked down the long walkway in despair. Did she even come back to the same spot, or did she hide all over the place?

“Come on.” Analora grabbed the metal rung of a ladder embedded in the wall. “Let me show you how to get to the conference level.”

Watching Analora navigate the maintenance corridors and the randomly placed ladders that connected them, Chase grew more and more impressed with how well she knew the interior of the ship. “The best way to get up and down levels is in the rear of the ship, where the energy core is,” she told him. “The core cuts through from the lowest level up to, I think, the fifth? It's inside an insulation chamber, but the outside of that chamber has entry points and ladders. We're at the wrong part of the ship to get to it right now, though.”

They climbed up to a level where Analora said the teleport chamber and conference rooms were located and walked along another musty corridor, this one longer and darker, until they reached another crawlspace with the end cut out.

“Did you do this?” asked Chase as he pointed at the hole, although he already had half an idea what the answer would be.

“It was Dany. A couple have been found and patched, but most of his modifications are still here.”

“Didn't he get in trouble for cutting up the ship?”

“Dany didn't like rules,” she said simply.

They moved along the crawlspace, Analora leading the way this time. She paused in front of each group of ventilation slits, peering out to see where they were. At the third, she pulled her head back sharply, peered out again, and turned to Chase with wide eyes.

Look
, she mouthed.

He squinted through the ventilation holes, at what appeared to be the entrance to a meeting room. Two armed MPs stood guard outside the room, but a third person stood there as well—a blond woman in a suit, adjusting her hair. Something about her looked very familiar, but Chase couldn't immediately place her. She removed an item from her pocket and held it out at arm's length from her face, where it hovered in the air, a flat disk that faced her. She cleared her throat, and that's when Chase realized who she was.

“This is Parri Dietz, coming to you live from the IFF
Kuyddestor
, where tomorrow the first round of peace talks in the Storros/Werikos conflict will take place. Federation Ambassador Royben Corinthe is leading the process, with representatives from both parties seated at the table. More details as the story emerges. Back to you, Boris.”

Parri Dietz paused a moment and then plucked the disk out of the air. “Did you get that? Okay. I'll have something more for you in a few minutes. No, this isn't going to take long—this one's just a formality.” She stuffed the disk in her pocket and turned away, heading down the hall.

Grinning excitedly, Analora motioned to Chase that he should head back the way they came. It wasn't until they'd both climbed out of the crawlspace that she grabbed his arm and said, “Good stars, did you see who that was? We're going to be on the Universal Newsfeed!”

“Not
us
,” said Chase cautiously. The last thing he needed was his face plastered on newsfeed screens across the galaxy.

“Well, no, but the ship—and probably people we know. This is so exciting!”

Having located the conference level—and being unable to top the excitement of seeing Parri Dietz on the ship—they headed back down to the soldiers' level, to exit where they came in by the maintenance offices. Analora went first so she could open the right panel, but she was halfway out of the wall when Chase heard her say a surprised “Oh!”

Tapping footsteps approached in the hallway. By the time Chase climbed out of the wall, the ambassador's colleague Ksenia stood before them, a half-smile on her face. “Well, this is interesting,” she said in her rich voice. “What exactly are you doing?”

Analora's face was scarlet. “Just playing around.”

Pushing aside his first impulse, which was to turn and run like a chicken, Chase went on the offensive instead. “What are you doing down here? These are the soldiers' quarters.”

“Ah, the young Trucon survivor,” Ksenia said with a curious smile. “Hello again. Perhaps you can help me—I seem to have gotten lost in my search for your utility officer. My translink is malfunctioning, and we don't have any spares of this particular model on the
Falconer
.” She smiled and tapped her ear as she said this.