CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Chase sat back in his seat and waited for his dizziness to subside as the external air slowly filled the shuttle. The planet had a thick, sticky atmosphere, and his forcing the moist air into his lungs felt like breathing syrup.

Maurus looked over at him, his face flushed and his eyes bulging slightly. Chase wondered if his own eyes looked that way. It certainly felt like it.

“Let’s get out of here,” Maurus wheezed. “Mina, open the door.”

Mina unlocked the ceiling hatch and pushed it open. Maurus struggled to his feet to join her. Chase looked skyward as a blast of hot, humid air swirled through the cabin, blowing his hair across his forehead. He didn’t have the energy to stand. He could hear them talking, but their words were swept away by the wind.

Mina hoisted herself out onto the roof, and Maurus sat back down in the shuttle, heaving a deep breath. Chase rolled his head over to look at him. “And?”

Maurus attempted a wry smile. “Could be better. We’re in the middle of some kind of mud sea. Might be this world’s version of an ocean. Can’t tell how far it goes, but it looks like a pretty thick soup out there.”

Chase peeled himself off the seat and twisted around to look at Parker’s still, pale form on the floor. He stared at Parker’s chest until he could see its shallow rise and fall. “Aren’t there any people living here?”

“Guidance systems indicated there were no colonies on the planet.” Maurus leaned toward the controls. “We’ll have to hope someone picks up our distress beacon.”

Chase turned back around and looked at the flickering console screen. “Where are we?”

“This is a Zeta-grade planet. That means it can support organic life, but has no native civilization. Some Zeta planets are colonized, like Qesaris, or…” He hesitated, and said, “Or Trucon. But ninety-nine percent of the time they’re deemed unfit for settlement—this one probably because of the thick atmosphere.”

“Why was Trucon colonized if it was full of those monsters?” Chase asked. It seemed like years since the scaly creatures had attacked him outside Parker’s house.

Maurus paused for a moment to catch his breath. “The Zinnjerha? They were a threat, but I suppose the planet was very appealing for colonization because of its proximity to three other hospitable Zeta planets.” A dark look crossed his face.

“What is it?”

“I should have known,” Maurus muttered.

“Known what?”

“The mission my captain had sent me to investigate was a report of nighttime trafficking movement in the Truconian desert—Lyolians, of course, which is why it had to be me. But when I got there, none of it was true. The story wasn’t even feasible. I wasted all my time trying to figure out how my captain got his information wrong, when he was the one who knowingly sent me on a fool’s errand. I should have known something was wrong.”

The bitterness and regret in Maurus’s voice evaporated any doubt Chase might have had that he wasn’t behind the Trucon attack. He was telling the truth—he’d been set up. “It’s not like you could have known what was going to happen,” Chase said.

Maurus shook his head. “No, but I should have questioned every possibility. You can respect authority without mindlessly trusting it.”

Mina’s face appeared in the open hatch overhead. “The shuttle is beginning to sink,” she said.

A spike of adrenaline shot through Chase’s stomach. “What?”

She climbed into the back. “It’s gone down three centimeters in the last minute.”

Maurus cursed. “We must have split a seam when we hit the ocean.” He clambered out onto the roof. Chase struggled to follow him, but it seemed as if his body weighed twice as much as usual—just raising his hand felt like pushing his arm through water.

Taking a looped length of black cable from a storage compartment, Mina hopped out onto the roof of the shuttle. Chase hauled himself after her through the open hatch and looked outside at the strange world they had landed on.

All around them, for as far as he could see, was a wide expanse of flat, brick-colored ocean, rippling in a strong wind. The air was hot, moist, and earthy, and swirling clouds of pink- and cream-colored gases filled the sky. Mina tied one end of the cable around her waist and handed the other end to Maurus. Before Chase could ask what she was doing, she jumped off the sinking shuttle and without even a splash disappeared into the thick, murky liquid.

Chase looked at Maurus for an explanation, but he only studied the spot where Mina had gone under. A moment later, her head popped back up, glazed in viscous red mud. She wiped her face. “It’s very sticky, but I think I can swim in it.” She began a lap around the vehicle.

“What’s she doing?” Chase asked Maurus.

“She thinks she sees some trees, or land, far in the distance. She’s going to try pulling the shuttle there.”

Chase squinted. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s too hazy to see very far. She’s the android; I’m taking her word for it.”

“Are we going to sink?” Chase asked. “What if no one hears our distress call? How are we going to get off this planet?”

Maurus’s mouth twisted, and he squeezed Chase’s shoulder. “Come on. We’ve made it this far, haven’t we?”

“Throw me the rest of the cable.” Mina had completed her lap, and the head that poked above the surface was barely recognizable. She tied the free end of the cable to the shuttle and began paddling out in front, trying to pull the shuttle, but with no landmarks, it seemed like they weren’t moving at all.

“This is useless,” Chase said. “She’s not going anywhere.”

“Look behind you.” A shallow wake, barely indented in the swampy surface, showed that they were making some kind of progress. “I’d imagine she’d burn her limbs out and wear them down to stumps if that’s what it took to save Parker. Not that she will—I’ve seen androids similar to her take a lot tougher beating than this.”

Chase still couldn’t see anything in their hazy environment other than swirling hot gas, but he hoped Mina’s senses were better than his.

Maurus gazed ahead, and then he gave his head a shake, as if to clear it. “I feel like I’m getting the hang of breathing this stuff, how about you?”

“I feel like I’m underwater,” Chase admitted.

Maurus laughed. When he looked over, a stab of fear went through Chase. Maurus’s face was crinkled up in a friendly grin, but a spot of bright red had bloomed in the white of his left eye. Chase felt the urge to touch his own eyes, wondering if the same thing was happening to him. He looked away, glancing down into the cabin, and shouted in alarm.

Below them, Parker lay in a shallow puddle of glossy mud that had formed on the floor of the shuttle. Maurus leapt down into the cabin and hoisted Parker’s limp body so Chase could pull him out onto the roof.

“Mina!” Maurus yelled, pulling himself out and crawling down to the nose of the shuttle. “It’s filling up inside, it’s going to sink soon!” Mina didn’t break pace, paddling resolutely onward toward a destination that only she could sense. Chase huddled beside Parker on the roof of the shuttle, wiping the mud from his face. Parker’s eyes stayed closed, and his breathing sounded ragged, as though he were choking on something.

“Parker, can you hear me?” Chase said in his ear. “Just hang on, we’re going to get you help.” He was a liar. They weren’t getting off this planet, and the only thing that awaited them was a horrific death by drowning in a sea of mud.

The shuttle was definitely sinking, and as the nose began to dip below the surface, Maurus scooted back toward the open hatch.

Chase squinted into the distance and blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t imagining things. “Hey, I think I see something!”

Rising from the maroon swampland was the hazy outline of an immense structure on the horizon. As they drew closer, he saw that it was organic, an interwoven network of stalks that sprouted densely from the water to form a towering pale jungle that stretched on for miles.

The shuttle slipped deeper beneath the surface, and Chase pulled Parker higher onto the tail section. Eventually Mina could pull it no farther, and she untied the cable from her waist and fought her way back to the tail section.

“Alright, we’re going to have to swim from here. It’s not as far as it looks. Loop Parker’s arms around my neck and I’ll pull him there.”

“Can you swim?” Maurus asked Chase.

“I think I can,” said Chase. Together, he and Maurus slid off the side of the shuttle and into the cold ooze. If he had found it difficult to move in the planet’s air, the sea was a thousand times worse. He thrashed as hard as he could, until his entire body tingled, but he barely seemed to move forward in the sludge at all. He stopped to catch his breath, and immediately the sea began to suck him down.

“Hey!” shouted Maurus, bobbing in the distance. “Make it over here! You can make it to me!” Chase struggled through the mud, fixed on his goal, and was hyperventilating nearly to the point of blacking out by the time he reached Maurus’s side.

“I can’t do this,” he croaked, clutching at Maurus’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, we’ll do it together,” said Maurus. “Put your arm around my neck, and I’ll help you stay above the surface. See?” They kicked at the mud side by side, Maurus pulling Chase up every time he began to sink. Their progress was minuscule. Maurus heaved for air, and Chase knew he was slowing him down.

Mina and Parker vanished in the distance. Maurus made Chase pause a couple of times so they could catch their breath, and when Chase looked over his shoulder, he was dismayed to see how close they still were to the foundering shuttle. He began to wonder how much longer they would last before they gave up and surrendered to the swampy depths, when Mina’s face emerged from the haze ahead.

“Hold on, I can take him,” she called, and she paddled up close so Chase could grab on to her firm shoulders. “I’ll be back for you,” she said to Maurus.

“I’ll make it,” he panted.

“I’ll come back,” she repeated, and took off toward the pale jungle. Chase appreciated the boundless strength in her android limbs as she moved them steadily forward, her legs churning effortlessly through the thick mud. The outcropping ahead drew closer. The stalks were actually some type of gnarled, leafless trunks that all grew together into one another. It was impossible to tell if they were individual plants, or one endless, knotty growth.

When they reached one of the trunks, Mina ordered Chase to hang on tight as she climbed up the intersecting branches. He clung to her neck, dripping sticky tendrils of mud. She took him up to a wide intersection of twisted branches, where she had left Parker tucked snugly in the fork of two large boughs.

“Keep an eye on him. I’m going back for Maurus.”

Chase touched one of Parker’s arms to let him know he was there and hunched on a branch beside him, shaking with exhaustion. Parker’s skin was waxy pale and he looked like he was already dead, but his body was still scorching hot. Ahead of them lay only swirling haze—the shuttle was too far away to see and had probably sunk by now. Behind them stretched a never-ending forest of pale branches.

Hot winds dried the mud coating Chase, causing it to shrink and pull on the tiny hairs on his arms. Finally Mina appeared below with Maurus clinging to her shoulders. As Chase watched them scale the trees, Parker suddenly thrashed, hitting him on the cheek. He tried to hold Parker’s arm down, but Parker began to shake uncontrollably. His eyes rolled back in his head, and yellow foam ran from his mouth and mingled with the mud on his chin.

“Mina!” Chase screamed. “Come quick!”

A second later she was leaning over Parker. “He’s having a seizure. We have to turn him on his side so he doesn’t choke.”

Maurus clambered up beside them and shook his head, his face twisted with grief. “We’re too late. The poison is starting to overload his brain.”

“Do something!” Chase looked frantically back and forth at Maurus and Mina. “There’s got to be something we can do!”

Lying on his side, Parker coughed, spraying thick yellow foam on the branch beside him. A sharp, acrid smell hit Chase’s nose, overpowering the fetid stench of the mud sea.

“Don’t let any of that touch you,” warned Maurus.

The tree gave a tremendous shudder, and with a sharp crack, one of the branches supporting them broke loose.

“Move!” Maurus leapt up, grabbing a branch above them as the rest of the nest began to break apart. Chase scrambled for a branch, but the one he grabbed splintered away from the tree.

With a shout, Maurus reached out and caught his arm, hanging on to the tree with one hand and Chase with the other. The branch Chase had grabbed splashed into the mud.

“Hang on! Grab something!” Maurus pulled Chase higher, and Chase reached for a nearby branch. There was another sharp cracking noise above, and a shot of panic raced through Chase.

Then it happened again, out of his control: Although Maurus had a tight grip on his arm, Chase slipped through as though his arm had simply dissolved, and plummeted toward the sea.

He smacked into the mud hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and the sludge sucked him down deeper. Below the surface it was thick and silent. He wasn’t even sure which way was up. His chest began to hitch for oxygen, and mud shot up his nose. His mind screamed incoherent thoughts.

So this was what it felt like to die.

A strong arm reached around his chest, and someone began jerking him upward. He gasped for breath as he broke the surface and wiped the mud from his face and eyes, coughing and spitting.

“Here,” said Maurus, pushing him up toward the lowest branch. Chase grabbed hold of it, but it peeled away from the tree and dropped into the mud. Maurus reached for the next branch up, but it pulled off as well. Tree limbs rained down around them, as though the tree were shedding them voluntarily, and with them came Mina and Parker, tumbling into the mud. Mina looped one arm around Parker and towed him to the next tree, but its low branches came off in her hands as well.

“It doesn’t want us on it,” called Maurus. “The trees are somehow all connected, and they don’t want us to climb them. Parker must have poisoned them.”

Chase clung to the wide trunk of a tree, but there was no easy handhold and he kept slipping. Finally he let himself sink a little, so only his nose and his eyes were above the surface.

“No! Hold on!” Maurus reached over and grabbed Chase under the armpit. “Don’t let go!”

“I can’t hold on forever,” mumbled Chase, spitting out more mud. He tried to keep his grip, but he was hot and exhausted and couldn’t breathe. Blackness crept into the edges of his vision again, and Maurus’s face seemed to be getting smaller and farther away. At least Parker wasn’t dead yet, because the sound of his retching carried over the mud, interrupted by the choked rattle of his breathing.

Chase knew he was nearing his physical limit as a roaring sound filled his ears, growing progressively louder. Maurus screamed something, probably telling him to hold on, but he just couldn’t anymore.

Maurus grew frantic, waving an arm wildly. He let go of the tree and splashed out, struggling to paddle away from the jungle. Was he trying to go back to the shuttle, to see if they could still climb back onto it? Chase used his last ounce of strength to turn and look.

A dark shadow passed across the mud, and a moment later, a narrow airship broke through the haze, skimming over the sea, engines roaring. Maurus waved his arms to get the ship’s attention. The vehicle approached and hovered, as Maurus fought his way back and pulled Chase from the tree.

“Go get Parker,” Chase mumbled as they swam back out to the airship.

“Mina’s bringing him,” panted Maurus. “Get in!”

A hatch on the airship opened, and a man in a bulky insulated jumpsuit and reflective helmet leaned out and reached for Chase, grabbing him under the arms and pulling him inside the ship. He dragged Chase into the middle of the cabin floor and crouched down in front of him.

“Were you the ones with the distress signal?” the man shouted, his voice muffled by the helmet. “An escape shuttle, NQR coordinates?”

Chase gaped stupidly back at his own distorted reflection on the man’s visor. Of course—these people had followed the shuttle’s distress beacon. He nodded, and the man turned back to the door and left him sitting in the dark interior.

When all four of them had been pulled on board, dripping mud everywhere, the man gestured outside to ask if there were any others, and Maurus made a cutting motion under his chin to indicate that there were not. The man went to the front of the ship, where a pilot sat at the controls, and the door sealed shut.

Parker lay with his head in Mina’s lap, his arms and legs trembling. “This boy needs immediate medical attention,” she said.

Maurus crouched by Parker’s feet and held his ankles down. “He was exposed to Goxar poison almost twenty-four hours ago.”

The man in the space suit pressed the barrel of a handblaster against Maurus’s temple.

“It’s the end of the road for you, Lieutenant Maurus,” he said in a cold voice.

Chase looked up, and with a gasp he noticed the elliptical symbols on everything—the equipment, the walls, the space suit. The Fleet had found them.

Maurus reacted instantly, throwing his hand up to knock the blaster away and tackling the man to the floor. He landed a solid punch to the man’s side before lunging for the pilot, who had already jumped up from the controls. Swinging an arm around, the pilot planted a taser into Maurus’s back with a sizzle. He wavered for a moment and dropped to the floor.

“No!” cried Chase, jumping to his feet.

The pilot turned to him, pulling off a shiny helmet and flicking a long dark ponytail out from underneath. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes glittered. “You want to go next?” she asked, snapping the taser at him.

The man Maurus had knocked over removed his helmet, revealing a narrow, grimacing face. “I don’t think that will be necessary, Vidal,” he said dryly. He glared at Chase. “Sit down.” The pilot returned to the controls, and the man pulled a set of shackles from a drawer and used them to bind Maurus’s hands behind his back.

The cabin darkened as they zoomed out of the atmosphere and left the mud planet behind. Blue track lights illuminated along the floor. Chase sank to the floor, numb with despair. Their run was over; Maurus was a dead man. And whatever it was about Chase that had caused the Fleet to raid Dr. Silvestri’s lab, he was probably about to learn.

Beside him, Parker arched into another seizure, his feet beating a staccato rhythm against the floor. Mina lifted his head up to keep him from choking.

Chase tried to hold Parker’s feet down. “Help!”

The man came over and pressed two fingers to Parker’s muddy neck, jerking his hand away when he noticed the crust of yellow foam around his mouth. He shook his head with a frown. “Kid’s not going to make it.”

“Come on, Parker, stay with us,” pleaded Chase. Parker jerked violently on the floor, making horrible choked noises. This couldn’t be happening—he couldn’t just die like this.

On the other side of the cabin, Maurus began to stir, moaning and cursing when he realized that his hands were bound. “Forquera, you traitor,” he hissed.

With a snarl, Forquera wheeled around on his heels and wrapped his hands around Maurus’s throat.

“Say that again,” he growled. “Try it.”

Parker’s feet drummed against the floor. Mina pulled him upright, trying to clear the thick foam out of his airway. A nasty odor hit Chase’s nose as the bio-molding on her fingers began to dissolve.

“Stop!” Chase shouted at Forquera, trying to grab Parker’s arms to keep him from hurting himself. “Please, help us!”

But Forquera ignored them, choking Maurus until his eyes rolled back in his head. By the time he took his hands off Maurus’s throat, Parker’s feet had stopped kicking.

Because Parker had stopped breathing altogether.