Skylar Mars and the Stolen Egg Page 17

  “Who are you?” Skylar asked, a huge knot forming in his stomach as he suddenly felt their plan going sideways.

  “Melody Porsche.” She stared at Skylar and her eyes widened. “What is that?” She pointed at the Solar Drake on his shoulder.

  “Ah…” Skylar was hit by a sudden loss of words.

  Solaria stalked toward the girl. “Melody, why are you on the ship as opposed to in the Galaxeria shopping or your hotel room?” Her tone was harsh and demanding, an edge of danger to the sound.

  Melody stared at her feet and sighed. “My mother cut my credit limit due to my grades slipping. That’s actually why I’m at Stars’ End—it’s cheaper than the school my sisters go to. I can’t afford the hotel fee, but I didn’t want to tell my friends, so I’m sleeping on the ship.”

  “We can do that?” Skylar hadn’t been given that option. With the limited funds that Ms. Grissom had given him from the money deposited in his account, he’d barely had enough to pay for the hotel room when he split it with Del.

  “Not supposed to,” Del said.

  Solaria sighed and slumped against the wall. “But what are we going to do with you? And I thought all you corp-brats had tons of cash all the time.”

  Melody shook her head. “Not when our grades aren’t good. We… well, some of us… have strict parents. If—”

  “If you aren’t up to snuff, you get your money yanked. Yeah, we get it.” Skylar wished she wasn’t there. They were going to have to convince her to keep her mouth shut while they got to Armstrong’s Ring and back. She was not a complication they needed. He hoped she wouldn’t hinder them in getting the Solar Drake back home.

  The stargate lit up. The light drew Skylar’s attention away from Melody. Butterflies danced inside him. Before he’d left Hummassa, he’d never dreamed of going through a real stargate. Then when he’d gone through one with Phil, he knew he wanted to be a pilot. Now he was getting the chance, even if they did just commandeer the ship. If he could just remember everything they’d done in the simulator in recent days, everything would be fine.

  Entering the gate’s event horizon was even more exciting than it had been when Phil was flying. The little Solar Drake tightened his hold on his shoulder as they left normal space. A tiny thrill of excitement emanated from the fledgling. Skylar still couldn’t figure out why he picked up emotions and the occasional thought from it even with the dampening bracelet on his wrist.

  Then they were back in normal space.

  Armstrong, the sun of the system, was a simple yellow star, much like Sol. The stargate was far enough out for it to appear as a mid-size yellow dot in the distance.

  “You are entering restricted space,” a booming automated voice filled the flight deck. “Please identify yourself.”

  “Restricted space?” Melody squealed. “Get back in the stargate! Take us back to the Galaxeria or school.”

  “I’ve got this.” Del quickly entered a code.

  “Authorization accepted,” the system replied. “Please proceed to the research station on Ring Two. Follow beacon AS32R3. Any deviation from this path will be met with resistance.”

  Skylar gulped. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what the system’s idea of resistance was. They hadn’t been able to find out if the system’s defenses were automated or manual.

  “Really, we need to go back,” Melody continued to object.

  Solaria growled and flexed her hands, making her claws slide in and out slowly. “Look Melody, why don’t you go back to the room you’re sharing with the other corp-brats and play a game or something until we’re done here?”

  “Hey, you’re Solaria, the Pantherian who scored the most goals in the Z-GBall game last week.” Melody’s voice sounded weaker, and Skylar remembered how scary a Pantherian could be when they were acting aggressive. “That was really awesome. One of the most exciting games I’ve seen.”

  Solaria’s shoulder’s slumped, and Skylar was fairly sure that if her face hadn’t been covered in white and gray fur, she would’ve been blushing. As it was, the insides of her ears turned a brighter pink than normal. “It was, wasn’t it?” Her voice lost the dangerous edge.

  “Give me a second and their system won’t be a problem,” Del muttered as he started punching things into the ship’s communication’s panel. He frowned several times before he looked up from the control panel in front of him. “Okay, I think I’ve got it. Until I tell it otherwise, the security system should let us go wherever we want. Just in case we don’t like the answers we get from the research station personnel.”

  “How did you do that?” Melody asked.

  “I’ve studied up on what I need to do to get us out of this mess alive,” Del snapped.

  “Oh,” Melody replied. “None of you told me what that is.” She pointed back at the Solar Drake.

  “It might be better if you don’t know that,” Solaria said. “The less you know, the less trouble you’ll get in if we get caught, or if you blab about this little adventure when we get back to school.”

  “What’s it worth to you for me to keep quiet?” Melody put her hands on her hips and glared at Solaria.

  Solaria flashed her fangs. “You corp-brats are all alike. Always trying to see what you can get out of the rest of us. I should just throw you out of the airlock, and then your parents will think Boarisk slavers grabbed you at the Galaxeria and sold you to someone who didn’t think you were worth the price they paid and tossed you out of their ship.”

  Melody deflated. “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Wanna bet?” Solaria prowled forward.

  “I’m sorry.” Melody’s bottom lip quivered. “I won’t tell. Honest. I’ll even give you all my allowance when I get my grades up.”

  Solaria shook her head. “Money. It always comes down to money with you brats.”

  The ship bucked and slowed to a stop. Skylar looked at his control panel. Everything appeared to be in order.

  “What just happened?” Skylar stared at Del hoping for an answer.

  Del frantically adjusted controls on his panel.

  “Del, did you do something wrong?” Solaria asked as she leaned over the back of his seat.

  “This shouldn’t have happened,” Del replied. “I just shut down the security scans.”

  Skylar turned and looked at his friend. “What happened?”

  “The automated system that’s supposed to fly us down has cut out. I wonder if it’s tied to the security system I turned off.” Del shrugged. “That does make a little sense. That way if you don’t pass security, then you don’t get the automated beacon to get you down to the research station safely.”

  “We should still be able to fly down manually, right?” Skylar tried the yoke and the ship maneuvered like it had when they were leaving the Galaxeria. “I think I can do this. If you can get me a path to fly.”

  “Wait a minute!” Del sounded more than a little nervous. “You want me to plot a course to fly? But navigation’s my worst subject. I could fly us into the sun or too close to an asteroid.”

  Solaria sighed and leaned back against the wall. “Del, what is spatial navigation? It’s just using math to figure out where we’re going.”

  “But there’s so much to it,” he objected. “There’re gravity wells, and asteroids-”

  “And an angry Pantherian if you don’t get it worked out,” she cut him off. “Look, you’re the smartest kid in the academy. This shouldn’t be that hard for you. We know where the planet is. We know where we are. You just draw a line from here to there, bypassing any really large celestial bodies along the way.”

  “I could help,” Melody pipped in. “I’m pretty good with spatial navigation. Where are we?”

  “The Armstrong System.” Skylar hadn’t thought she might prove to be useful. Most of the corp-brats he knew weren’t good for anything but making his life worse.

  “Did you forget that the Ring is a binary planet?” Del continued as if Skylar and Melody weren’t talking.
“We’re not even sure which one the research station is on. Not to mention that landing on a binary planet is one of the hardest things to navigate through, and this is Skylar’s first time flying.”

  “Binary planet?” Melody asked. “You mean more than just a planet with moons? Like two parts of a planet in close orbit?”

  “Yes, that’s what they mean,” Solaria said.

  Not wanting to feel like Del was insulting his flying skills, Skylar straightened up in his seat. “It might be my first time flying, but I’ve done great in the simulators and I was one of the best players in Galaxy Explorer.” He tried to sound more sure of himself than he really was. He needed to give Del the confidence to get them to the Ring and find a safe course down. “You find us a path and I’ll make sure we stay on it.” The little Solar Drake chirped as if in agreement. “Come on, Del, you’re the brains here, you can do this. Besides, if the guys at the research station realize we made it down without a beacon, don’t you think that’s really going to impress them?”

  Del swallowed hard. “Okay. I’ll get something worked out. We’re lucky that this system doesn’t have a ton of planets. Now just hold us steady right here while I get the calculations done. It might take a few minutes.”

  “Let me see if I can help.” Melody pushed past Solaria. She peered at the screen Del was looking at. “This is an interesting system. I wonder why it’s restricted.” She fell into easy conversation with Del as they worked together to get the course laid in and told Skylar how to navigate through the system, avoiding the planets, moons, and asteroids that popped up in their path.

  ARMSTRONG’S RING came into view. At first, it just looked like an odd-shaped green planet, more egg-like than round, surrounded by the stellar dust cloud rings that gave the system its name. But as they drew closer, it became obvious that there were two large bodies, each about twice the size of a standard moon, with only a short distance separating them.

  “Okay, I think I’ve got a signal from the research station,” Del announced. “Let me make a few adjustments to our course. They’re on the far side of the starboard planetoid.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Solaria peered over the back of Skylar’s seat while petting the Solar Drake perched there. “I don’t know if I like all the green or not. It’s nothing like Pantheria. It also looks really hot.”

  “It’s really pretty,” Melody added. “I bet even my mom has never seen anything like this.”

  Del nodded. “It is hot. It’s on the high end of standard habitability.” He glanced over his shoulder at Solaria. “You might have problems with the temps.”

  An updated course appeared on Skylar’s control panel. He turned the yoke slightly to allow for the correction. “How long until we land?”

  “With proper braking and if we’ve got the angle of descent right, and if the gravity from the left planetoid doesn’t interfere, we should be on the ground in about ten minutes.”

  “Nine minutes thirty-seven seconds,” Melody said, sounding more exact than Del. It felt odd for someone to be more on pinpoint than Del who had a tendency to get the fact dead on.

  Skylar nodded. “Good, ‘cause I’ve really got to pee.” He got out of his seat and hurried to the crew lavatory.

  AS THEY cleared the dust cloud and entered the atmosphere, the ship bucked roughly and Skylar had to grip the yoke firmly to keep them on the course Del set. He struggled as the ship pulled hard to the right. A light flare started on the ship’s nose. The light made it difficult for Skylar to see where they were going and he really hoped they weren’t about to crash. It was his first landing and the school ship was on the large side for atmospheric maneuvering. As they started down he was thankful they weren’t in the same ship they’d taken to the museum, they’d have had to us a shuttle to get down.

  “We’re about to be on instruments only for forty-three seconds,” Del said.

  The light flare intensified and a security shield dropped into place over the window as Skylar blinked spots out of his eyes. He focused on the control panel in front of him, displaying a bright yellow line indicating the path they were following with a blue ship-shaped icon. The strain of holding the yoke on their course caused an ache in his arms, but he didn’t say anything as the ship continued to buck through the atmospheric turbulence.

  The blast shield rose to reveal a thick jungle canopy rushing toward them.

  “You might want to pull up a bit, Skylar,” Solaria said.

  “Yeah, we don’t need to crash!” Del wasn’t as calm as Solaria.

  “Crashing would be bad!” Melody added as she clung to the back of Del’s chair.

  Skylar pulled back on the yoke and the ship’s nose lifted as they leveled out. They skimmed over the canopy, only missing the tallest trees by twenty feet or so.

  “The research station should be coming into view about now,” Del announced.

  They cleared the trees and instantly spotted a series of small buildings sitting along the edge of a large valley. There were three other ships parked near the buildings.

  “Looks like the far side of the ships is our best bet.” Solaria pointed past the other vessels.

  There weren’t any people obviously moving around. Skylar fired the landing thrusters like he’d done in the simulator and they slowed even more. It took him several flybys to get close to lined up with the others. Then he slowly brought it down. Even with the instruments, he couldn’t judge exactly how close they were to the ground when he cut the landing thrusters. The ship dropped about ten feet before it hit the green grass. The landing jarred all of them, throwing Skylar and Del against their control panels while Solaria and Melody hit the floor hard. Only the fledgling stayed where it was, clinging tight to the back of the pilot’s chair.

  “Okay, I guess any landing you can walk away from is a good one.” Solaria stood and dusted herself off. “But, Skylar, I, for one, think you need a bit more time in the simulator before you try landing on a planet again, at least, if we know it’s going to be an unassisted landing.”

  Skylar nodded and rubbed his head. His hair was slick with sweat and it was running down his forehead toward his eyes. “I agree. But hey, we’re here.”

  “Yeah, we’ve arrived.” Del sat up and twisted in his seat. “It feels like everything’s fine. Let’s go see what’s going on at the research facility. The sooner we get back to the Galaxeria, the less chance we’ve got of getting into deep trouble.”

  “Not horrible for a first landing,” Melody said. “My dad said he was the only person he knew of who didn’t crash a ship the first couple of times they tried.”

  Her words didn’t help him much, but he pushed them out of his mind. “Okay.” A knot formed in Skylar’s stomach as he looked back at the drake on the pilot’s chair. He didn’t really want to say goodbye to the little guy. He rubbed his small yellow head. “You stay here for now, okay? We’ll be back when we figure out what’s going on. Then we’ll make sure you get a good home.”

  The little drake caught Skylar’s finger in his mouth and held it softly. “Home.”

  Skylar swallowed hard, then stood and followed Del, Melody, and Solaria out and down the stairs that would lead to the hatch to let them out of the ship.

  21

  Searching For The Researchers

  THE AIR outside the ship was thick and hot. It felt like walking into a wall of water and took Skylar’s breath away. “Are you sure we can breathe this stuff?” he gasped.

  Del nodded. “Yeah, it’s a ninety-eight percent Sol Three-level atmosphere and the other two percent are not dangerous gasses for humans and human-like life forms. I did what research I could before we left. If we’d needed them, I’d have gotten us breathers.”

  Solaria grabbed hold of the hatch for support. She drooped and the skin around her eyes looked pale.

  Skylar stopped and stared at her. “Solaria, what’s wrong?” He hoped they weren’t killing her with their adventure onto the strange planet.

&nb
sp; “The temperature and humidity are too much for me.” She paused to pant for a second. “I’ll need to grab an envirosuit before I can go out there. We Pantherians aren’t made for hot environments. You three go on, I’ll catch up. I guess there’s some advantages to being human and aquatic.”

  “We can wait,” Skylar offered. He didn’t like the idea of splitting up. In stories and videos, that was always when something bad happened.

  “No, go on,” Solaria insisted. “They probably saw us land. If we take too long, they’ll come looking for us. I’ll be along in a couple of minutes. If the suits aren’t in the closet up here, they’ll be in the back of the ship.”

  “Okay.” Skylar looked at Del and Melody, who were already halfway to the nearest building. “We’ll see you in a few minutes. If you take too long, we’ll come find you.” He hurried after them.

  “I was wondering about that,” Del said as Skylar caught up.

  “About what?” Skylar and Melody said in unison.

  “About whether or not she was going to need a suit here.” He shook his head. “Solaria can be very stubborn. I figured she’d try to move around here unencumbered, just to save face. It’s a good thing she went back for the suit. She’ll feel a lot better. Plus, I don’t want to have to carry her back to the ship after she passed out from the heat.”

  Skylar held up his hand for Del to be quiet. His gut was still knotted from worry about what was going to happen to them and the Solar Drake. He hoped he didn’t come across as rude, but he really wanted Del to not run on like he was prone to do. “I get it. So, any idea which of these buildings we need to look in to find the research team?” He didn’t bother to add that he already had a steady stream of fresh sweat trickling down his back, and the heavy, sweet smell of rotting vegetation was getting to him.

  “They didn’t say in the communication I received accepting my request to come for a tour. Let’s just start at the first one.”