Mothership Read online

  Ducky is peering out into the room via my phone’s cam. “What are those alien bastards up to?” he asks, pointing to the emitter on the bench in front of us.

  “It blocks phone signals. That’s why mine didn’t work all day.” I check the time on my phone. “I gotta rocket, Ducky. I only have four minutes before the Dumpster heads down planet-side.”

  “Well, what are you talking to me for? I’ve been trying to call your dad on my other line, but so far he’s not answering. I’ll patch you through as soon as I get him, okay?”

  “Thanks.”

  I grab an oxygen tank and lug it up under my armpit, then turn for the door, glancing down inadvertently at the lap-pads lying on the desk. And as soon as I look at the screens, my heart sinks. I had already figured out that the saboteur had his own little makeshift mainframe down here, each computer hacked into a different ship system, screwing with it in ways I can only assume are nefarious. But the one that gets my attention is the lap-pad that isn’t hardwired into the wall. It’s running a remote program, wirelessly.

  The boot-up program for the captain’s yacht.

  Just by glancing at it I see that our villain has control of life support, internal sensors, even the doors. The creep is herding the girls toward the yacht, just like Bob suspected.

  Which is more important to save—the individual or the group? The memory pops into my brain, completely unwelcome and highly inconvenient, given the time crunch I’m facing. At the time the answer to that question seemed so cut and dried. Now . . .

  I sit down at the desk and put my phone down. Tears are once again in my eyes, but they aren’t tears of joy or emotional overload this time. No, these are just tears of acceptance.

  “Elvie, what’s the matter?” Ducky asks. “Why are you sitting down? You have to get to the Dumpster.”

  “I’m not going to the Dumpster,” I tell him. And as soon as the words leave my mouth, I know they’re true.

  “What do you mean you’re not going to the Dumpster?” Ducky screeches. “Elvie, you have to get out of there right now. You only have three minutes and twenty seconds. Three minutes nineteen.” His voice is becoming more and more panicked. “Elvie—”

  “Ducky, there are girls left on this ship. Lots of them. And Cole. They’re planning on escaping on the captain’s yacht, but this doucher has the whole ship rigged against them. They’re headed straight into a trap. If I don’t fix this, they’ll die for sure.”

  “Elvie, you’ll die for sure! Just get off the ship. If there’s some bad guy up there messing with you, then you have to get away.” He is practically crying. “You’re a badass, Elvie, but you can’t take on an evil space invader by yourself.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I say. “Watch me.”

  Just yanking the wires out of the wall works for most of the lap-pads, but in order to deactivate his overrides on the yacht, I’ll have to go inside the system and reestablish manual site control. But first I need to clear a path for Captain Bob. If I can fix everything in time, the gang should be able to launch the yacht without falling into a trap. Ignoring the shrieks of outrage emanating from my phone, I focus on normalizing the environmental settings and deactivating the final few blast doors in the space between the group and their destination. I’m just disengaging the last door when I hear a loud clunking sound. The floor vibrates for a few seconds, and my phone skitters across the table before I manage to catch it.

  “What was that?” Ducky asks.

  “The Dumpster disembarking,” I reply. And—quite stoically, I think, for a girl whose only way off a dying ship has just jettisoned into space—I return to my de-sabotage. I reestablish manual controls on the yacht. “Almost . . . there.” A few more quick keystrokes, and . . . “Done!” The yacht, and the path to it, is safe.

  “Great,” Ducky says. “Now go, okay? You’re freaking me out. Go join the others on this yacht thing and get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Ducky,” I tell him, trying to sound calm and at peace, if only for his sake, “I’m too far away now. I’ll never make it before they get there and leave.”

  The individual or the group. I guess I’ve made my choice.

  “Then there’s got to be another way!” Ducky is pleading with me now, desperate, and I want to cry even more for knowing that all I’ve done by getting in touch with him is give him a front-row seat to my inevitable demise. “You’ve got to try! You’ve got to figure out something! Call Cole. Tell him to wait. Tell him you’re coming.”

  I never in my wildest dreams thought Ducky would suggest that I ring up Cole. It’s not a half-bad idea, actually, and it just might work, if only . . .

  “I erased it,” I tell Ducky, staring at my phone. Suddenly that move seems like the dumbest of all my teenage girl drama queen moments.

  “Elvie, it isn’t that I doubt your resolve as an independent woman, but I also know for a fact that somewhere in that jumbled brain of yours you’ve got the damn thing memorized. Now think.”

  And wouldn’t you know it, the Duck is right.

  “Stay on this line,” I tell him.

  I dial the number, seriously doubting that Cole brought his Nokia with him during a covert rescue mission. But it doesn’t matter, because when I hit send, nothing happens. The call loading screen just spins its cute overly designed wheels.

  “It won’t go through,” I tell Ducky when I switch back to him. “The signal is still scrambled. The saboteur doucher must have it set up so he can send signals from here but keep the rest of the ship scrambled. He must be . . .” And suddenly it all becomes remarkably clear, like, hello, freaking lightbulb. “Shit, Ducky. He must have been signaling his buddies this whole time. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a whole fleet of them on their way right now.”

  “Very astute, Miss Nara.”

  When I hear the hard voice behind me, I tense up like I’ve just heard a ghost. With a surreptitious flick of my index finger I turn off my phone, disconnecting me from Ducky, the last image of his face going white as he wonders what horrible fate stands behind me. If this is really the end for old Elvie Nara, I don’t want my bestie to have to witness it.

  “Kindly place your hands behind your head and stand up slowly,” says the voice. It’s low and raspy, raw from the day’s excitement, no doubt.

  “So I guess this is it, then,” I say as I rise.

  “It is,” he replies.

  At first the nauseating scent that hits my nose befuddles me. The stench of brussels sprouts.

  It’s the goddamn cook?

  But no, that’s not the monster who’s been making my life a living hell for the past twelve hours. Underneath the smell of vegetables is a more familiar scent, with fonder memories attached. Brut aftershave and peppermint. I stand up and turn around to face the saboteur, at last.

  “Hello, Dr. Marsden.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WHEREIN OUR HEROINE GETS ALL HEROINIC

  “Hello, Elvie,” Dr. Marsden says, with the same genial smile he always wears on his face—despite the fact that he’s pointing a ray gun directly at me.

  My hand twitches, creeping ever so slightly closer to the ray gun stuffed down my boobs, but one look at the doc’s face, and I know he’s watching me like a hawk. I’d never reach the thing before he disarmed me. “I thought you were going to be Fred,” I tell him, trying a different tactic. I gesture to the chef’s jacket the doc has slipped on.

  “Oh, this?” he says. “Just a little bit of subterfuge, along with the body you no doubt discovered outside my office. No one would spend time searching for a dead man.”

  “Too bad,” I reply with a forced casual shrug. Keep up the banter, I tell myself. The bad guys never shoot you while you’re bantering. “I had a great line all prepared if it was the cook.”

  Dr. Marsden cocks his head to a sharp angle. “I’d hate a good one-liner to go to waste. Please share.”

  “First Seafood Surprise Fridays, and now this.”

  His smile broadens. It�
��s so genuine and warm that you’d never know he was a mass-murdering shithead. “You always were my favorite, Elvie. Such an agile mind.”

  “True,” I say, all nonchalant-like. “So. You gonna put the gun down or what? We both know you’re not going to shoot me.”

  “I’m not?”

  “Not while I’m carrying your precious Jin’Kai cargo in my uterus.”

  For the first time Dr. Marsden’s smile drops. “My, you have learned a lot, haven’t you?”

  “I saw the list,” I reply, my confidence growing stronger with every syllable. If there’s one thing I’ve figured out today, it’s that these hottie evil alien dudes have baby fever. I’ve got something they want, and my only way out of here is to use it to my advantage. “I know I was ‘processed.’ And I’m pretty sure your bosses would be sort of pissed if you guys went to all this trouble and then zapped your incubator.”

  “Elvie.” The doctor’s tone is serious but calming, the voice he once used to make me more comfortable during exams. An unexpected shiver runs down my spine underneath my thermal suit. “I hate to break it to you, but you haven’t been processed. The child you’re carrying now is the one you came here with.”

  “I . . .” My brain is spinning. I haven’t been processed yet? This should be good news, if it weren’t for the ray gun trained at my forehead. “But the list . . .”

  “The list showed what I wanted it to. It was important that my superiors believe you had been processed.”

  “Why?” I ask, truly puzzled. The doc is sabotaging our efforts to escape, while he’s also hiding things from his own people. What is this guy playing at?

  “Why?” he repeats, as though the answer is, like, überobvious. “To protect you, of course.”

  “Gee, I’m touched. Are we having a special moment or something?”

  The smile slowly creeps back onto his face. “I’m not going to kill you, Elvie.” He does not lower his gun. “I’m sure we can find a use for you yet. So bright. And so much potential.”

  And okay, maybe I should just go ahead and take the compliment from the creepy dude with the gun aimed at me, but for some reason I’m not feeling so friendly. “Too bad Carrie and Danielle didn’t have any potential,” I spit. “Maybe you could have spared them, too.”

  “Sorry?” To his credit Dr. Marsden’s looking genuinely confused. Although maybe they teach you that expression in evil alien medical school, I don’t know.

  “Carrie and Danielle. Remember them? The two girls you murdered in the hangar with your fancy little sabotage?”

  “My goodness, you went through the hangar?” Dr. Marsden says. “I’ve been trying to shepherd you to the captain’s quarters, not pick you off like flies. Why wouldn’t you simply take the path through the ballroom? I left that wide open.”

  Shit. I didn’t even think of that. “That would’ve been, like, a million times easier,” I agree.

  “A pity, I’ll admit, but all things considered I’m relieved that it’s you who made it through the gauntlet.” He raises an eyebrow thoughtfully. “Of course, who else but you could adapt so readily to such a terrible situation? You are a special one, Elvie Nara, there’s no doubt in my mind. Hopefully someday you’ll understand just how special.”

  “If you try to pull some lame-ass ‘I’m your father’ bullshit right now, I’m gonna lose it,” I tell him.

  His smile only broadens. “I do so envy your wit. Now, please be civil and step aside so I can return to my work, will you? We can talk more once your friends are in hand.”

  I might be doomed, I think, but if I can just keep the doc talking, there’s a good chance I might buy the others enough time to get away safely. Keep talking, Elvie. Keeping talking . . . “Seriously, though, Doc,” I say. “I don’t understand why you’re doing all this.”

  And to my relief he’s still feeling fairly chatty. “Well, Elvie, you see, my people, the Jin’Kai, left a planet called Horon-4 more than a century ago—”

  “No, I know that part,” I say, before realizing I should probably let him prattle on as much as he wants. “I mean, you have to realize that the way things are going, you guys are going to run out of hosts eventually. Earth is the sixth colony, right? That means there’s no more after this. Where do you parthenogenetic freaks go from here?”

  “Ah, yes,” the doc says. “Manifest Destiny with an expiration date. But as I think you’ve learned by now, things aren’t always what they seem. Have faith that there is a plan at work. And now you must let me get back to that work.”

  “Maybe it’s time you took a coffee break.”

  Not the best line in the world, admittedly, but when I see who’s said it—standing behind Dr. Marsden outside the doorway—I break into a broad grin.

  Dr. Marsden turns to see who it is, interrupting our expository interlude just in time to make out a Cole-shaped blur zooming at him with tremendous speed. In an instant Cole has knocked the gun from Dr. M’s hand, and the two are fighting. I mean, really fighting, like in those old superhero flat pics where the guys just wail on each other, jumping off walls and busting out kicks and punches that have their own special sound effects. You can practically see the FWOOSH!es and KAPOW!s appearing over their heads as they pummel each other with attacks that no one should be able to inflict—or survive. It’s another example of some of the tremendous differences between the Almiri, the Jin’Kai, and little old me and the rest of humanity.

  Cole knocks Dr. Marsden to the ground and stands between us, a paragon of protective hunkitude. But then Dr. Marsden reaches out with one hand and flings an enormous metal trash can at Cole. Cole ducks—giving the can a clear path to my noggin. So much for Cole the Protector. There’s a loud clang, and my vision goes all wobbly. I think I hear my name being called, but it sounds like I’m underwater. Am I underwater? I’m in the pool? Oh, crap, I have to save all those girls. The teachers are drowning the girls! I have to stop them. I have to . . .

  I’m not in the pool. I’m flat on my back in the maintenance locker at the bottom of the Echidna, trying to escape from an evil band of baby-swapping aliens. And Cole is . . . Cole! I rise from the ground, still a little shaky, and see that Dr. Marsden has Cole pressed up against the railing on the catwalk outside the locker. He’s giving Cole’s face a real pounding. Cole is dead on his feet, and Dr. Marsden’s pushing him farther and farther over the rail, until his entire upper half is dangling over the perilous ten-meter drop. Dr. Marsden is saying something I don’t understand—for all I know he’s calling Cole a dirty donkey-punch enthusiast in Jin’Kai. What I do know is that Cole’s toast if I don’t do something. But what in this locker can I use as a weapon?

  Um, dur, Elvie. How about the ray gun you’ve got crammed down your boobage?

  In seconds I have the gun released from inside the sweaty confines of the thermal suit. I wrap my right hand around the butt of it, then the left, aim, and . . .

  Drop it.

  Seriously? My big moment and that’s what I do?

  So of course that sucks, because in addition to alerting the good doctor that I’m awake again, I’ve also ruined any chance of using this other really cool line I thought up to say right before I fried his alien ass.

  “You know, Elvie, there are several exercises you could be doing to help with your hand-eye coordination,” Dr. Marsden says, turning around to see me scrambling on all fours for the gun. He comes at me fast . . . but not as fast as Cole, who I thought was out for the count. Cole grabs the doctor by the arm, spinning him and slamming him into the rail so hard that the bar breaks away. But Cole must’ve gotten most of the energy sucked out of him earlier, because he can’t manage to push Dr. Marsden off the catwalk. Instead, with one backhand slap, Dr. M sends Cole reeling over the edge.

  “No!”

  The scream comes from somewhere deep inside me. But rather than lose myself in the pain of watching Cole plummet to his doom, I reach out, snatch the gun off the floor, and, still kneeling, lock Dr. Marsden in my sights. He
has regained possession of his own gun, and now we face each other in a standoff. My hands are trembling as I tightly grip the alien weapon.

  “It’s okay, Elvie,” he says, smiling like a prick. “Just put the gun down. Put the gun down and you’ll be fine. My brothers are already on their way. They’re coming for the babies, Elvie, and after the children are delivered, we will spare your life. I can protect you, I promise. The other Jin’Kai will listen to me. But shoot me, and you sign your own death warrant. Your friends will die too. I guarantee it.”

  I could tell this dipshit that they’re not my friends. I could tell him he just killed the love of my life, so to hell with his offer. I could bust out that new awesome one-liner I thought up specifically for him when I . . . Shoot, what was it? My head’s still a little wonky.

  I get woozy for a moment and my aim falters. I see Dr. Marsden ready his weapon.

  “You’re going to feel a sharp pain, dear, but it will last only a moment,” he says bittersweetly.

  That’s when fate hands me a big fat overdue piece of good luck. The Echidna rocks hard with another convulsion, and there is a sudden buckling and a howling noise as somewhere near us along the hull atmosphere is sucked out into space with ferocious speed and intensity through a microscopic hole.

  A Yeoman’s Curve. Too bad the doc isn’t sitting on the toilet.

  The suction lasts only a moment before the edges of the hull crumple in toward each other, sealing the breach. But it’s enough time that Dr. Marsden, outside the locker room on the edge of the catwalk, loses his footing and drops his gun, grabbing on to the broken rail to keep from flying away. On the floor inside the locker room, I am pulled forward, my knees scraping against metal, but I have the sense to block myself in the doorway. When Dr. Marsden regains his footing and looks up, I’ve got Cole’s ray gun about three feet away from his chest. Now, what was that line?