Mothership Page 22

  Ah, screw it.

  Without another word I fire three times. Dr. Marsden stumbles back, a genuinely stunned look on his face as he topples off the catwalk.

  And then it’s just me, alone. It’s quiet. I lean my head down against the cool metal floor and begin to weep, rocking in the fetal position. I don’t want any more of this. No more aliens. No more parasitic babies. No more dilapidated space cruisers. I lie there, crying, resigned to stay perfectly still until whatever happens to me happens.

  And that’s when I hear it.

  “Elvs?”

  No flipping way.

  My eyes fly open. There, straining to maintain their grip on the grate of the catwalk where the rail broke away, are some seriously bruised, seriously dreamy fingers.

  “Cole!” I scream. “I thought you fell! I thought you . . .” I scramble out of the locker to the edge of the catwalk. Sure enough, there he is, half dead, hanging on for dear life with one hand.

  I grab hold of Cole’s arm and try with all my might to pull him up, but the dude weighs a ton. I never realized he was quite so heavy.

  “Cole, I can’t lift you,” I say, huffing with effort. “Can you get your other hand up here?”

  “But what about this guy?” he asks.

  “Huh?”

  I peer farther over the railing until I see it. Cole’s other hand has a firm grip on Dr. Marsden’s ankle. The world’s worst baby doc is dangling upside down, moaning softly. So . . . not dead.

  Apparently marksmanship is not a skill I should boast of on my college application.

  “Um, I dunno, drop him?” I suggest without much sympathy. “I mean, he is the saboteur.”

  “I, uh . . . Good point,” Cole replies. Beautiful and stupid as ever.

  And with that, Cole lets go, sending Dr. Marsden plummeting down headfirst to the solid titanium hull ten meters below. His last confused exclamation is clipped off midgasp.

  SPLAT!

  So . . . yeah. That happens.

  I pull Cole up onto the catwalk and cradle him in my lap. “Oh, Cole,” I whisper, kissing him all over. He looks like Rocky Balboa at the end of Rocky IX, the one where he fought the Terminator. “Cole, baby, I’m so glad you’re alive. I’m so—” I stop talking when I see the look on Cole’s face.

  “Did you just call me ‘Cole baby’?”

  “Yeah, let’s forget that ever happened.”

  “Agreed.”

  I push a sweaty lock of hair back off his forehead and check for bruises. There are several, and some scrapes and cuts as well. There’s a deep gash on his arm where he hit the rail. “How in orbit did you find me down here?” I ask.

  “Well, there weren’t that many other places you could have gone. Unless you figured a way to tunnel behind the convection ovens. Sorry it took me so long. I had to, um, slip away.”

  “Slip away?” I ask. But I think I already know the answer. Cole probably disobeyed a direct order from Captain Bob to come after me, something I’m sure the doucher will relish bringing up to his superiors if we get back to Earth.

  “Elvs, I know . . . why you ran. I knew there had to be something in those files you tried to hide from me in the doctor’s office.”

  I caress his hair. “I was just scared,” I tell him.

  “I know. I just wanted to tell you . . . I don’t care. I mean, I do care that they murdered my baby, but . . . I still love you, Elvs. Nothing will change that.”

  I want to tell Cole right then about the mix-up, that for some reason Dr. Marsden never swapped my fetus at all, that he falsified the records for his own unknown purposes. But as I’m about to whisper the good news into his ear, I notice that Cole seems to have lost consciousness. Panicked, I rock his shoulders lightly, trying to wake him.

  “Cole? Cole?”

  As I cradle Cole in my arms, I swear I can feel him healing. His body is burning hot, and while it may be an optical illusion of the lights down here, the puffy bruises on his face seem to be, like, un-swelling right before my eyes. He turns onto his side and nuzzles his face against my thigh. I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Cole?” I ask again tentatively. He may look like he’s getting better, but who knows what kind of internal damage Dr. Marsden inflicted? Even a godlike supercreature has a breaking point. When Cole doesn’t answer, I nudge him more forcefully. “Cole, are you okay? Can you get up?”

  A smile crosses his lips, and he peeks up at me with one eye.

  “I was hoping if I didn’t move you’d let me just lie here for a while.”

  I smack his arm lightly, but I’m smiling too. My smile quickly fades, however, because even this sweet moment can’t erase the terrible reality of how screwed we are.

  “We have to get back to the others,” I say.

  Slowly Cole sits up, rubbing the side of his face. “That’s supposed to be my line.”

  “There are more Jin’Kai coming,” I tell him, “and when they get here, we’re el finito. Dr. M was luring everyone to the back of the ship, just like Bob suspected. He wanted us all in one spot so his buddies could scoop us up, nice and neat.”

  “Dr. M?” Cole asks, his face twizzled in confusion once again. “Bob?”

  There’s no time for explanation. I hoist myself to my feet and head to the maintenance locker, to look at the doctor’s computer hookups again. I need to make sure I didn’t miss any booby traps before. “We’ve got to warn them. Even if they launch the yacht before the Jin’Kai get here, they’ll never manage to outrun—”

  Thunk! The ship vibrates gently.

  “What was that?” Cole asks as he enters the room behind me. “Don’t tell me the ship’s flying apart again?”

  “No,” I say with a sigh. “Worse. Our new friends have officially arrived.”

  I pick up Dr. Marsden’s pulse emitter and smash it on the ground.

  “Where’s your communicator?” I ask Cole. “We need to get in touch with the captain. Now.”

  “Um.” Cole scratches the back of his neck. “I kinda ditched it when I came after you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “The captain was very . . . detailed in his description of what he’d do to me if I followed you, Elvs. I figured it was better to have radio silence.”

  I check each of the lap-pads on the desk again, just for the slightest hope that I can tap into the intercom. But no deal. I guess announcing the results of yesterday’s intramural volleyball matches was not high on Dr. Marsden’s list of priorities once he came down here. But I refuse—refuse—to let some alien baby snatcher win after I’ve already killed him. I am not giving up.

  “Then we’re going to have to hurry,” I say. “If they can’t get to the yacht before the Jin’Kai find them, then they’re going to need all the help they can get.”

  “Elvs, we’re too far away. There’s no way we can—”

  “We don’t have to jump through Dr. Marsden’s hoops anymore,” I tell him. “I already opened all the blast doors that aren’t shielding us from the hull breaches, and I’ve got the lifts running again. We’ll be there faster than it takes to . . .” I trail off. Hidden behind a window on one of the lap-pads is a surveillance camera display. But it isn’t Bob and the girls that it’s been keeping tabs on.

  “No. Flipping. Way.”

  Cole squints at me. “What? What is it?”

  “Cole, let’s get going. We’ve got to pick something up on the way.”

  • • •

  Riding the lift back up from the bottom of the ship is fast—so fast, that we make it to the lido deck in exactly thirty-three seconds. Nothing like an elevator to put twelve-plus hours of climbing through wreckage into perspective. By now Cole’s wounds and bruises are almost completely healed. At worst he looks like he slept on the wrong side of the bed. I, on the other hand, am beet red, dripping sweat and garbage juice in my now totally unnecessary thermal suit, my hair matted to my head.

  “And I thought I’d never find an outfit for the junior prom,” I mumble.

/>   “What?” Cole asks.

  “Nothing.”

  When the elevator opens, we make our way past a series of exterior blast doors that are sealing the open side of the hull. There’s scoring and burn damage all around the place.

  “This is where our ship was docked,” Cole says.

  “I know,” I say, and I try to add a bit of sympathy to my tone for his fallen compatriots, but honestly, at this moment, I have other things on my mind. Like what’s behind the door to the utility closet, not three meters to the right of the scorched hull where the Almiri ship exploded, sucking more than half of Cole’s buddies out into space. I jerk on the door handle, but it’s locked or stuck or something.

  But I can hear whispers.

  “Hello!” I scream, banging on the door. “Open up!”

  “Elvs, what are you doing?” Cole asks, looking around—making sure we don’t have any unexpected company, I guess.

  I bang on the door again. “Let me in there!”

  Finally I hear a tiny voice from inside. “Who’s that?”

  “It’s Elvie,” I answer. “Elvie Nara?”

  “Who?” the voice asks.

  Then another voice chimes in. “It’s that girl who fell on her butt in gym this morning.”

  My reputation precedes me. “Open the door, will you?”

  There’s a click as the person on the other side of the door undoes the lock, and at last the door swings open . . . revealing twenty-two completely unharmed girls, packed into the closet like sardines.

  Cole is looking more confused than usual. “Elvie, what the . . .”

  “I saw them on Dr. Marsden’s setup. These are the girls from the On Your Own class. The half of my classmates you haven’t met yet.”

  “But . . .” Cole blinks. “They were with the commander when our ship exploded. They all died.”

  “Who’s the commander?” asks a very not-dead girl named Amy, notable only because of the spread of red freckles on her cheeks. “Is he that dreamsicle Terrance who told us to hide in here until he came back? How come he left all these guns?” Resting against the wall of the closet, beside a huddle of crouched sophomores, is a pile of Almiri guns, pistols and rifles both. I guess the captain left them so the girls could defend themselves if need be.

  “It’s a really, really long story,” I tell her. “I’ll explain on the way, but right now we have to go. We’re getting off the ship.”

  “Wait, we’re leaving? Did something bad happen?”

  “I will explain on the way,” I say. “Bring the guns.”

  “What should we do with our babies?” a girl named Sara asks.

  “Babies?” Cole’s up on his toes, anxious. “Some of you delivered?”

  Amy laughs. “No, silly.” She twirls a strand of strawberry hair around her finger. “Our babies, for class?”

  And sure enough, as I crane my head farther into the closet, I see that each and every girl is cradling a sack of flour, holding it close and careful like it was a newborn child.

  I nearly bit it a dozen times today, and they’ve been nursing flour sacks with diapers on?

  “Leave the cake mix,” I tell them.

  “But it’s fifty percent of our grade!”

  I grab Amy’s flour baby and tear it open, spilling semolina all over the floor. The girls all scream in horror.

  They’ll get over it. I grab a rifle from the pile and motion for the rest of them to get up.

  “Time to move it or lose it,” I say, the butt of the rifle resting on my hip. I catch Cole smirking at me. “What?” I ask angrily.

  “You’re pretty awesome, Elvs,” he tells me.

  It takes us a little more than five minutes to get down to the aft section of the ship, right near the captain’s quarters. I can tell we’re getting close because of the gunfire. Or ray gun blast-o’s, or whatever you want to call it. It’s loud.

  Shit, as they say, is going down.

  Cole and the other girls and I creep along one of the side hallways, getting as close as we can without being spotted by the Jin’Kai. Even when we come across the one lookout they’ve placed in our path, Cole—in a nice twist—points his ray gun in the right direction and neatly takes the guy out with a shot to the throat before he even notices us.

  Cole and I peek our heads around the corner as the sound of shooting grows louder.

  We’re currently standing in the doorway of one of the side entrances to the captain’s quarters, which leads down, via a ramp along the wall, to a luxurious sitting room, decorated like a parlor on a nineteenth-century ocean liner. Another ramp on the far side winds around the opposite wall and, along with our ramp, leads down to the sunken sitting area filled with plush velvet sofas and armchairs, meant for entertaining smaller parties of well-to-do passengers. There’s even an ornate bar to one side, probably made out of real mahogany. Superclassy.

  Or at least it was superclassy, before, you know, all the holes and burn marks and stuff.

  Bob is ducking for cover behind the bar, single-handedly holding back what appears to be an entire squad of Jin’Kai goontroopers. It’s unclear how much longer he can hold them off with only a pistol. From this angle I can’t see any of the girls, but I’m assuming Bob has them in the main quarters behind him, through a door that leads to the captain’s stateroom and, farther along, the loading bay and small hangar that houses the infamous captain’s yacht.

  “All right, girls,” I say, turning to face the On Your Own class before we storm the scene. “Remember what Cole told you. Stay low. Don’t die.”

  “You guys should be motivational speakers,” Amy tells me.

  I’m about to motion for the troops to movemovemove, when Cole grabs my elbow.

  “Elvs,” he whispers, “are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “It’s a terrible idea,” I reply. “But it’s the only one I have. Now let’s GO!”

  I don’t know much of anything about the Jin’Kai, other than the fact that they are apparently miserable bastards who hold very little value in human (or Almiri) life. But one thing that’s fairly clear is that they are highly militaristic. Which is why I think it’s so impressive how completely unprepared they are to suddenly find themselves flanked by two dozen pregnant teenagers, ray guns blazing. We rain down laser-y hell on them, their cover useless. They return fire as they retreat through the rear entry that sits at the back center of the room, but they don’t manage to strike anything other than one girl’s funky perm. Which is really not such a crime, if you ask me.

  “We’re not hitting anything!” Sara cries out as she blasts away indiscriminately into the room, taking out a very expensive-looking chaise longue. And she’s right on that count. It’s clear that I’m the only one in the group who has logged any hours on Jetman.

  “Just aim for their faces!” I scream as I let the blast-o’s fly. The nice thing about these fancy Almiri weapons is that they don’t have any kickback when you fire them.

  “No,” Cole cries. “Aim down! Shoot at their feet!”

  “Wait, why?” I ask. Who’s he to question my commando skills?

  “This lot can’t hit anything they’re aiming for!” he replies over the din. “If they aim low, chances are they’ll hit something by mistake!”

  “Hey!” Amy shouts, offended. But just as she does, she wings one of the retreating Jin’Kai in the knee and he crumples to the ground, where Bob has a clear shot to put him down for good. “Hey!” she says again, more brightly. “It worked!”

  The Jin’Kai have fallen back completely out of the room in an attempt to regroup. What they don’t know is that I brought one of Dr. M’s handy dandy lap-pads with me, which I use to remotely seal the door behind them. For the moment, at least, all of us “good guys” are in the captain’s quarters, and the baddies are not. We scurry down into the room, where Bob greets us.

  “Nice work, Archer!” he says, clasping Cole by the forearm. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  “Don’t thank me
,” Cole says. “This was all Elvie. She found and neutralized the saboteur and all his booby traps, rescued the other girls, and hatched this little bit of battlefield strategy.”

  Captain Bob looks at me with the sort of blank stare you’d give an opossum you just found out could play the ukulele.

  “Not bad for an incubator, huh?” I say.

  The shocked expression on Bob’s face is replaced by a strange, warm smile. I can only assume that it’s equal parts glad to see me, impressed with me, and feeling like an absolute shit for his behavior earlier.

  But what do I know from smiles?

  “Not bad at all, Elvie,” he tells me. “But we’re not out of this yet.” And just like that he’s back in captain mode, all seriousness and hard angles. “That door won’t hold them for long, and there’s at least another full squad on board. And . . .”

  “And what?” I ask. It’s not a good sign when the steely hero types trail off like that.

  “They aren’t from around here,” he finishes.

  Cole’s eyes go wide. “You don’t mean . . . Devastators?”

  “What the hell are Devastators?”

  “They’re Jin’Kai, but not born from human mothers,” Cole explains. “They’re from a previous Jin’Kai colony world. The host species there was a little more . . . Well, you know the poster you had in your bedroom of that old flat pic, Alien vs. Predator?”

  “Wait, are they like the Alien or the Predator?”

  “Kinda both.”

  “And you call them Devastators?” I thought these guys were supposed to be creative supergeniuses.

  “Why don’t we talk about it on the yacht,” Cole says.

  As if on cue, there’s a tremendous crash from behind the door I closed on the Jin’Kai, as though something seriously bad and burly is trying to bust through. The metal frame begins to buckle in. We take that as our sign to hightail it the hell out of there, running toward the captain’s main quarters at top speed.

  I have never been so happy to see my Hanover classmates.