CHAPTER 020
According to Knot, who had been monitoring the communication channels, the fleet of the Watchman was in complete disarray. Some ships were even in open rebellion against the government, no doubt infuriated that a group of children was missing.
It meant that the path to Dulonia would be fairly clear. However, it would take the ship at least a day to reach the sector. Time that they didn’t have. Luckily, there was another option on board the schoolship.
“Okay . . . ,” Sabik said. “We’re locked in for Dulonia. But what do we do once we get there? It’s a big planet. Really big.”
Sabik and Elara were on the bridge, as were Beezle, Knot, Suue, and both Milos. There were also several kittens running around and playing. They seemed to be quite adaptable to the ups and downs of the day, and none was injured from the recent battle.
“We have to stop the planet from blowing up,” Elara answered, her confidence waning.
“Yeah,” Sabik agreed. “But we don’t even know what specific force blows the planet up. How are we supposed to stop it from happening?”
Elara waved away the concern. “It’s a heavily populated planet,” she said. “We’ll find someone to help us—”
Knot was sitting in a corner of the bridge, at the sensor station, sipping tea. With that comment, though, she laughed so hard that she snorted tea out of her nostrils. “Pff . . . ,” she said, tea dripping everywhere. “I am so sorry for the mess . . . but . . . no. Elara. Sweetie.”
Elara felt her temper surge but remembered how difficult she had been at the start of this disastrous school year. Instead, she decided she would try to listen.
“Okay. Sorry, guys,” Elara said. “I’m clearly not thinking it through. Help me understand why.”
Knot finished dabbing her face with a napkin and poured another cup of tea. “Please, sit,” she said in a very gentle voice.
Elara sat at the scanner station with the large Grix, while Knot poured a second cup of tea.
“You . . . ,” Knot said, politely but firmly, “have the least experience of anyone on this ship with a capital planet. People aren’t always comfortable with strangers. Especially ones running around warning about bombs.”
“Plus,” Sabik added, “we are on that ‘wanted’ list. Even if the Watchman is actually the bad guy, we still can’t count on local authorities to not . . . y’know . . . arrest us.”
Elara let out a deep breath. “Point taken,” she said after a long moment of thinking. “Sorry. I just . . . I thought we had a solution.”
Beezle stood up, looking thoughtful. “Elara . . . you have mentioned that the Watchman used some device to share his memories. Correct?”
“Uh . . . yeah,” Elara answered. “While you guys installed Clare into the computer systems, he showed me the explosion on his home world.”
“So, you have some idea of where you need to be,” Beezle said confidently.
“Maybe?” Elara said, unconvinced. “I mean, it was a city. But most of the planet is a city, right?”
“Seriously?” Suue sneered. “You didn’t recognize which city? I mean . . . the skylines of Dulonia are famous—”
“Suue,” Knot growled. “Have some tea.”
“I don’t really want—”
“Sit down,” Knot said firmly, her voice heavy enough that it caused Elara’s teeth to shake. “Sit and have some of this lovely tea and join us as we chat. Okay?”
Suue began to open her mouth but then thought better of it and sat down at the station with Elara and Knot. Knot produced a third cup and poured a cup of tea for the mean girl.
“I’m just . . . ,” Suue started to say before changing course. “What I mean to say is . . . I agree with Knot,” she said, finally. “Unless Elara has exact information, the exact location of the explosion could be anywhere. And she can’t pinpoint it.”
“But you know the cities of Dulonia well?” Beezle asked with curiosity.
“Yeah. My family owns some businesses there. And I’m from the Third Ring of Sahbrahntee. It’s practically a neighboring system.”
Beezle smiled. “Then you can help Elara identify the location! This is most helpful!”
Suue looked uncomfortable. “I mean . . . yeah? But . . .” She glanced at Knot. “No offense intended, but it would take forever. And even then . . . she doesn’t have much to go on. I need more info than what Elara can remember.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” Beezle replied, smiling. “No . . . I did not mean you would discuss this with Elara. I meant I would link your minds, and you can share the memories directly and instantly.”
“What?” Elara said, a look of horror on her face.
“You want me . . . ,” Suue said, pointing at Elara, “to go into her head? Really?”
Elara gagged. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Suue glared at Elara. “It’s not like I want to share memories with you!”
Knot poured more tea and politely cleared her throat. “Need I remind you, ladies, the fate of billions of lives hangs in the balance? Hmm?”
Suue sunk down in her chair, looking utterly defeated. “Ugggh,” she said, diplomatically.
“Let’s just get it over with.” Elara glared.
“Excellent! You teamwork is admirable!” Beezle said with a clap. “Now, hold still. Normally, such a process would be very, VERY dangerous, but I believe, Elara, since your mindscape was recently manipulated, it should be possible—and likely not even painful?”
“Should be?” Elara asked, suddenly concerned.
“Likely?” Suue added.
Beezle offered up her most comforting smile. “Well. It would be no more painful than say . . . five hundred volts of electricity.”
“That’s . . .” Elara exchanged a glance with Suue. “That’s . . . a lot. I mean . . . really a lot.”
“Oh!” Beezle frowned. “Are your species electro-sensitive? Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Elara asked, uncomfortable with where this was headed.
Beezle shrugged. “Because this will actually hurt quite a bit then.”
And with that, the Arctuiaan placed her hands on the foreheads of the two girls, and everything went black.
Elara opened her eyes. She was back on her home planet, Vega Antilles V. Fields of grain stretched out as far as the eye could see. The silver light of the ringed moon was shining brightly, allowing a clear view across the landscape. Elara could even see her parents’ farmhouse in the far distance. She could smell the damp grass under her feet. Everything was exactly as she remembered it, and she was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of loneliness. She had just left . . . a week ago? But it seemed like years.
Elara knelt to the ground and scooped up a handful of the soft black soil that covered her farming planet. All terraformed, of course. Built by the Seven Systems to produce life-supporting grains. It was the perfect engineering that inspired her to pursue terraforming in the first place.
For a moment, none of it mattered. The Watchman. The threats of the Frils. Her mission. She closed her eyes and breathed in the air. For a moment . . . she was home.
“This place suuuucks,” interrupted Suue Damo’n.
Elara rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Do you mind?” she asked impatiently.
“A little, yeah,” Suue answered. “Like, kind of on a mission here. And this boring field—which I’m sure is precious to you in some absolutely boring way—is not Dulonia Prime.”
“It’s my home world,” Elara answered defensively. “And this is how it looked the night before I left for school.”
Elara heard a familiar voice. “Look!” her brother Danny yelled. “Check it out!”
Danny was running toward her, and Elara turned to greet her younger brother. She had barely thought of him since she was transported to the schoolship. How could she? Everything just kept . . . happening. She hadn’t had any downtime since she left home.
And then Danny ran right through her, as if she weren’t even there.
“Hello?” Suue said. “Just a memory? Remember?”
Elara turned and watched her brother run across the field, cutting a line through the grain as he moved. Her memory from a few weeks ago.
“Okay,” Elara finally said, shaking her head. “So . . . we’re in the wrong memory. How do we get to the right one?”
Instantly a door opened up in front of her. “Okay.” Elara shrugged. “That was easier than I expected.”
And then a second, identical door appeared.
“And now it just got harder,” Elara said.
“How about this one? It feels right,” Suue said, indicating the door on the left.
Elara glanced at it, then pointed to the one on the right. “I think we better go this way.”
Elara reached out and opened the door, and suddenly everything turned upside down. They were somewhere else now. Somewhere familiar . . .
“Wait . . .” Suue squinted. “Is this the school train?”
Elara rubbed her eyes. It was the chain of shuttlecraft that had transported Elara to school her first year. “Why are we here?” Elara whispered to herself.
“Because you have a terrible sense of direction?” Suue asked.
“Shut up,” Elara answered as she pushed past the mean girl to explore the train.
“I remember this . . . ,” Elara said. “This was when I first walked the length of the train. It was . . . it was all so overwhelming and exciting. I had never seen so many different life-forms before . . .”
It was true. There were lots of humans and humanoids, but there were also fluffy yellow-and-green kids with gills, translucent crystalline students . . .
“Right,” Elara said to herself. “And the kid who looked like a living shadow. He ended up in one of my classes. Exo-biology, I think.”
Suue had walked a little bit ahead, but she suddenly stopped short. “Oh. Oh, I am so going to punch you when we get out of here,” Suue said, interrupting Elara’s trip down memory lane.
“What?” Elara responded, confused.
“Because I just discovered your first memory of me. And I hate you for it,” Suue said coldly.
Elara stepped forward. “Right. I was looking for a place to sit . . . and the first open seat I found was next to—”
“Buuhhh-duhhhh!” came an inarticulate voice from one of the seats. “My name is Suue! And I like to eat used chewing gum! Faaaaarrt!”
Elara opened her mouth, then closed it again. It was, in fact, her first memory of Suue. Only it wasn’t really Suue so much as a rude re-imagination of the mean girl.
“In my defense,” Elara said with a voice tinged with shame, “you were pretty mean to me that first day. And the rest of last year, actually. So I may have misremembered things a tiny little bit.”
The memory version of Suue managed to stick her entire hand up her own nose. “Woot!” she yelled. “I struck gold!”
The real Suue glared at Elara and stormed past. “Let’s just find the way out of this memory,” she grumbled as she pushed forward, shoving her way through another door.
Once again, everything flipped upside down and spun briefly, before Elara was able to focus on her new surroundings.
“Oh no . . . ,” Elara moaned.
“Hey . . . I know this one,” Suue said, looking around. “Visitors Day last year at STS. The day that Headmistress Nebulina tried to destroy the school.”
“Yeah,” Elara said, her voice grim. “Not my favorite day.”
Suue looked out at the spectacle. “Pff. You seemed happy enough. Had an entire audience for your big dramatic moment!” Sure enough, the memories of Elara and the headmistress were at a standoff, with Headmistress Nebulina ready to use the terraforming bomb to transform the planet.
The explosion went off, and Elara looked away from the bright glare. It was Nebulina, consumed by her own weapon. Her atoms rearranged, her body burned away into salt before disintegrating completely. Elara looked up, expecting to see a memory of the good Groob burst forward to save the day.
Instead, the Watchman floated above—or at least a mental construct of him did.
“Elara . . . ?” Suue said, sounding uncertain. “What’s wrong . . . ?”
“I can see the Watchman . . . the evil Groob,” Elara said, feeling overwhelmed. “He’s . . . it’s like he’s in my memory. In a place he shouldn’t be.”
“Then we’re probably getting close, right? I mean . . . if you’re seeing him here—”
“I think . . . ,” Elara said, reaching up, “I think maybe . . . he’s trying to intimidate me. Scare me away from the memories.”
Suue shrugged. “How can he do that? We’re in your memory, not his.”
“I don’t know,” Elara answered. “I’ve never done any of this before.”
Suue looked around. Everything was transforming into a hurricane of energy. “Whatever we’re doing here . . . maybe hurry it up? I think we need to leave, now.”
Elara pushed forward. The false memory of the Watchman looked down at her and sneered. Instantly Elara felt her head start to pound again. The energy inside her pressed forward . . . wanting release. She hadn’t been able to control it. She hadn’t been able to make her power work on command. But now. . . .
She extended her glowing hands toward the false Watchman. It exploded out of existence.
“That. Was cool,” Suue murmured under her breath.
Suddenly everything flipped around and spun again. The false version of the memory had been erased, and with it, Dulonia suddenly came into view.
Elara opened her eyes and looked out across the horizon. She and Suue had finally arrived at the right city, at the right moment in time. The Watchman’s past. Elara’s present. Dulonia stretched out in front of the pair. But it was . . .
“Burning,” Suue said.