Skylar Mars and the Stolen Egg Read online

  As Skylar stared through tear-filled eyes at the place his mother had been, the fear that had enshrouded him during their flight through the jungle faded. He wanted to sit down and let the fire take him. His mother was the only family he had in the universe. He wasn’t old enough to be a citizen on his own. Galactic law said he had to have a guardian until he was at least eighteen years old. He’d heard about what happened to orphans. There were more than a few tales, games and vids made about their exploits, and they were all tales of horror. It would have been better to die in the fire than end up in some home for wayward boys that was little more than a slave camp.

  Overhead, one of the raider’s ships fired another round. As he watched more trees blaze up, Skylar knew what he had to do. He was going to find out who they were. They had taken his mother, destroyed his life. Somehow, he was going to make them pay.

  Willing his sorrow-filled tears back, Skylar squared his narrow shoulders and dashed off through the burning jungle. The thick black smoke curled around him, but he just plunged ahead, trying to reach the dim glow of the city. Someone there would know who the raiders were. If not there, he’d find out somehow. All the corp-brats had left, so their parents had to know something. One of the corporations must have discovered something useful on Hummassa and sent raiders to clear the place, so they could get access to it without having to negotiate with the natives.

  Another energy blast cut through the jungle. Skylar spun as a huge tree crashed toward him. He tried to dodge, but a limb caught him across the side of the face and twisted him around. For the second time in minutes, he found himself on the ground as darkness descended.

  BRIGHT LIGHT hurt Skylar’s eyes as he slowly opened them. The jungle reeked of charred wood. He lay still for a moment. His head pounded, a sharp pain centering on his left ear. A throbbing ache radiated from his legs. A dull thudding across his skull made it hard to put thoughts together. With shaking fingers, he reached up and tried to find his ear. There was only about half of it left.

  “No!” He had to get to the hospital. If he got there in time, they should be able to fix it. But his mother was gone; he didn’t have anyone who could arrange his medical care. She was always the one who spoke to the doctors and nurses when he had to go in for anything. She’d made sure everything was okay. But she was gone. He’d seen her body before the power core exploded. There was no way she would be able to help him anymore.

  He pushed at the tree pinning him to the ground, but it was heavy and lay right across his legs. Skylar wiggled his toes. They moved, and a sense of relief went through him. At least he wasn’t going to be a paralyzed orphan.

  “Hello, is there someone out here?” a woman’s voice called in the distance.

  “Over here!” Skylar shouted. Right after he did that, a bolt of fear hit him that the people who’d been shooting at the town might be the ones who found him. He was leading them right to him, but what choice did he have, pinned down and badly hurt? If the woman was with the attackers, then if she didn’t shoot him, she would take him, and he’d know who they were, even if he did end up a slave.

  “There, I’ve got you on sensor now.” The woman sounded closer. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you out of here.”

  A wave of relief flooded Skylar as she came into view and he recognized the red shield on the woman’s gray tunic. She was with Intergal Rescue, a group that traveled the universe helping those people who’d been through disasters both natural and sentient-made. He and his mother had volunteered with them during some unusually high flooding on the coast the previous summer. They were a source of light in the dark galaxy.

  “Looks like you’ve got yourself into a bit of a fix there.” The aid worker smiled. “Do you think your legs are broken?”

  “I can wiggle my toes,” Skylar replied. He was going to live, and that gave him a glimmer of hope. He’d wanted to die with his mother, but if he was going to live, then he could work toward finding the people responsible. It would become his life’s work, no matter how long it took. They deserved to pay for what they had done to her and Cordnisar. The Hummassan were one of the most peaceful races in the universe.

  “That’s a good sign. Let’s get you out from under there, and I’ll scan you properly.” She pulled off her silver backpack and took out a small jack, placing it under the tree trunk next to Skylar’s leg. She removed a remote and hurried around to Skylar’s head. “I’ll yank you out.” When she pressed a button, the jack lifted the downed tree two feet. She grabbed Skylar’s shoulders and pulled him clear of the trunk.

  “Thanks.” Skylar started to get up but she put a restraining hand on his shoulder. His head swam, and he lay back on the ground.

  “Stay there until I scan you.” She straightened. “But let’s get that tree back on the ground before it rolls and hurts one of us.” She hit another button on the remote, and the tree lowered back down. Then the jack waddled out toward her.

  Skylar watched the little robot move. “Why didn’t you have it do all that on its own?”

  “It’s not that smart.” She picked up the jack, returned the remote to its slot and put the tiny box into her backpack, exchanging it for a small hand-held scanner. “It’s an older model. The newer ones can be commanded by voice, but these micro guys still require direct commands.” She pointed the scanner at Skylar. “Do you live around here? Was anyone else with you?”

  He nodded. “My mother and I live in the development at the southern edge of the jungle. She was with me, but our hover car blew up and she…didn’t make it out.” His lower lip quivered, and he fought to keep his voice steady. Tears ran out of his eyes. Somehow, talking about it made it so much more real. His gut clinched and he thought he was going to throw up. His mother was dead. He wasn’t going to see her ever again. He was all alone in the universe. His throat closed up, and he struggled to get the words out. “There’s a crater around here somewhere from when the power cell blew.”

  She frowned and the dappled sunlight glistened off the tear that rolled down her face. “I’m very sorry. Is your father on planet?”

  Skylar shook his head. The motion made his ear hurt. “He died before I was born.”

  The aid worker looked at her scanner. “It doesn’t look like your legs are broken, just bruised a bit. They’ll probably be sore for a few days. Your ear on the other hand—let’s hope we’re in time to regenerate it. Did that happen last night?” She frowned at the scanner, as if not believing the reading. “It seems like it’s already starting to heal.”

  “Yeah, when the tree fell on me.” Skylar didn’t mention that he tended to heal quickly. The family doctor had told his mother it must be something in his DNA, but they couldn’t find anything definitive, and she’d refused to let them check too closely.

  The woman glanced at the scanner again, then back at Skylar. “Have you had psi testing?”

  He couldn’t think of what to say. His mother despised psychics. Although most kids in the developed worlds were tested when they reached age eleven, his mother had used her position in the hospital records department to make sure he appeared on the negative report. He’d asked her about it at the time, when Teir had been tested too, and she had told him he didn’t have to worry, that she’d taken care of it. If he said he’d somehow avoided the test, then it would raise questions. “I was negative,” he lied. The odds were he’d never see the woman again; it wouldn’t hurt to lie to her, even though he usually did his best to not lie to people.

  The aid worker frowned and glanced at the scanner again. “That happens sometimes,” she muttered before smiling at Skylar. “Okay, let’s see if you can stand so we can get you out of here without calling for a pickup.”

  “So, what happens to me now?” Skylar stood. The world shifted slightly as the ache that had settled into his legs blossomed into full-blown pain again. He wobbled, and the aid worker caught his arm. A strange numb feeling washed over him. It was suddenly like nothing mattered but dealing with the pain in his body.
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  “Just stand there for a moment; let the legs get used to your weight.” Eventually letting go of him, she slipped the scanner into her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. “We’ll see if we can find you some family. There are very good odds that there’s someone out there you’re related to who’ll take you in. You’re almost old enough to be on your own.”

  As the pain dropped off to a sharp ache, Skylar shook his head. “I’m only fifteen.”

  “Then you’re ready to go to school off-world. I bet that’s what’s going to happen to you.” She glanced about. “Well, try a few steps. If it hurts too much, I’ll call for a pickup. I need to keep scouring these woods. There may be more people trapped.”

  Skylar tried a few steps, and after the third one, the pain was at a level he could manage without wanting to cry out with each step. “I think I can make it.”

  “Good. The shuttles are going to be busy with folks a lot more banged up than you are.” She began to walk back the way she’d come.

  Skylar followed alongside her. For a moment, his gaze rested on the tree that had pinned him. It was the only tree in the visible forest that hadn’t been burned. There was a slight mark on the end of the trunk where the raiders’ laser had caught it, but beyond that, the leaves were still green and the bark still brown, unlike the trees around it that were deeply charred. He had gotten really lucky. “Do you know who did this?”

  “We got the call from the Solar System Defense Network. The local enforcers said it was Boarisk raiders. Enforcement thinks they may have been after slaves. Over the past few years, the market for slaves has really taken off.”

  Skylar shuddered. He’d been talking to Teir about fighting slavers in a game, and then slavers came to Hummassa. In the game, the raiders would attack a city and haul off the people who were lucky enough to survive. He wondered how anyone could have survived the attack in better shape than he was. If he’d been unconscious when the slavers came through, was that why they’d left him behind? Had they thought he was dead?

  The aid worker turned and looked at him. “You feel afraid. You don’t need to feel afraid. I’ll make sure everything you need is taken care of.” Her words seemed to carry a sense of emotional disconnection, as if she were trying to make him numb to everything around him.

  “Wait a minute.” Skylar stared at the woman, trying to see what set her apart from normal humans. She looked to be from standard Sol stock, didn’t even have any of the enhancements that so many families tried to splice into the genes of their offspring. “Are you a feeler?”

  She nodded. “Only a low level. That’s one of the reasons I work for Intergal Rescue. I can pick up just enough from strong emotions to find people who others might miss.”

  He’d never met a psychic before. Skylar frowned. “Doesn’t it make you feel like a freak?” His mother had always made sure to keep them away from psychics. Most of the natives of Hummassa tested negative for psychic abilities. His mother had liked that about them. It wasn’t natural for people to have psychic powers.

  “Now you’re afraid of me.” Confusion etched the woman’s brow. “What’s wrong? I’m not going to hurt you. I’m trying to get you help.”

  “No.” Skylar shook his head and took a couple of steps away from the woman. “Mom said we couldn’t be around psychics. You’re dangerous.”

  In that moment, he wasn’t sure who was more dangerous—the feeler or the raiders. He wished his mother was there to help him figure out what to do, but this was his life now, and he had to make his own decisions.

  The aid worker didn’t look scary or dangerous. She looked like the other aid workers he and his mother had worked with to help find and save the flood victims.

  She was just trying to do her job and save him.

  The woman put her hands out in front of her. She wasn’t reaching for Skylar. It looked more like she was trying to appear non-threatening. “It’s okay. I’m not dangerous. I’m just a level two feeler. I’m not telepathic. You don’t need to worry about me reading your mind. Most people who are afraid of psis are afraid of having their mind read. We need to get you to the aid center. Come on. Trust me, just for a little while, until we can get you to safety.”

  Looking around at the towering black pillars that had, the day before, been a thriving jungle, Skylar had to admit that she was right. He wasn’t safe there in the remains of the woods. “Okay. But keep a good foot or more from me. I don’t want you touching me again.” He brushed at his shoulders where she’d pulled him free of the tree. It didn’t feel like she’d done anything to him, but he couldn’t be sure.

  She sighed. “Let’s get going. The sooner we get you to the aid center, the sooner I can get back out here and find people who want my help.”

  Skylar followed her. By the time they cleared the charred remains of the jungle, they were on the street that passed the school. The raiders’ attack had done a real number on the buildings. Like the jungle and his mother’s hover car, there wasn’t much left. In the big playing field beside the devastated building, a series of bright white tents blew in the soft wind kicked up from a shuttle lifting off. People wearing gray jumpsuits emblazoned with the red shield hurried about.

  The aid worker walked him over to the first tent. “Wait here. I’ll let them know that you need to be taken to the hospital ship in orbit to see about repairing that ear. I hope it’s not been too long. There’s already a fair amount of scar tissue.”

  Skylar ran his finger along the crusty, scabbed surface that marked the point where the rest of his ear was missing. It was one more thing the Boarisk raiders had taken from him.

  3

  Shot Off Into Space

  SKYLAR SAT in the front of the tent for nearly an hour before anyone stopped for him. During that time, he watched a lot of people leave the tent in various states of injury. Most of them were hurried out to several shuttles that seemed to land right after the dust from the previous ship had settled. He quickly lost count of the number of people ferried to space. The enormity of the situation slowly sank in, and he wondered how many people were missing after the attack, and if it had been a world-wide assault or something focused on their small part of the large tropical planet.

  At one point, he’d stopped one of the natives who wasn’t in too bad a shape. “Excuse me, do you know if the Puddle family is okay?” Not knowing where Teir was gnawed at him. At least with his mother he knew what had happened to her. Teir was just an empty hole.

  The frazzled old woman stared at him for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t know. So many lost.”

  “Do you have a com I could borrow to try and call them, to make sure they’re alright?”

  Sadness hit Skylar as the woman held up torn bleeding hands. “I’m sorry.” She obviously had nothing beyond the freshly torn clothes on her back.

  An Intergal worker stopped by and took the woman into the main tent. Skylar asked around for more information, but all he found out was that the local com network had been one of the first things taken out by the raiders and no one knew anything. Then it was his turn to go into the tent.

  SKYLAR DID his best not to fidget as the Intergal nurse looked him over, but he wasn’t used to anyone he didn’t know poking at him like that.

  The nurse let out a heavy breath. “I’ve seen worse, but you’ve already got a lot of scar tissue. I just hope it doesn’t heal much more before we can get you to a regeneration station. I’d be tempted to put you in a cryotube but there aren’t any available, and it’s comparatively minor damage.”

  Skylar gripped the side of the cold metal examining table. “What happens if there’s too much scar tissue?” He didn’t want to go through life without part of his ear. He knew from biology class that the external ears of humans were just for focusing sound, so he’d still be able to hear, but he didn’t want to be a freak. Everyone would know something horrible had happened to him. Even if they gave him a fake ear, someone would be able to tell it wasn’t real. He just knew
it.

  She waved dismissively. “We’ll just have to shave the scar tissue off. If there’s too much new growth, it’ll impact the way the ear grows back. If we trim the ear, the new tissue’ll grow back in closer to the way it was.”

  Skylar leaned back and glared. The jumble of emotions he’d been feeling since he’d been rescued bubbled to the surface. “Really? If it’s not growing right, you cut it off, try again and hope it looks better? I’m not a plant, you know. You can’t just trim off what you don’t like.” Anger surged out of him and he wanted to get off the table and storm out of the tent. Maybe he could go live in a swamp with a deformed ear and plot his revenge on the Boarisk until he was old and gray.

  “Mr. Mars, it would really help if you could just remain calm.” Her brown eyes suddenly widened and the tired look left her face. She looked like she was about to run, like something had scared her. “Everything will be fine.”

  “Really?” Skylar had been trying to keep his cool. Ever since being brought to the camp by his empathic rescuer, his stress and sorrow at losing his mother and not being able to find out anything about Teir had been slowly replaced by anger. Now, in the guise of the nurse with a less than acceptable bedside manner, he’d found an outlet. “Are you going to take what’s left of my mother and pop her into a regeneration chamber and grow me another mom? Are you going to find all the people who’re missing after last night’s raid? I don’t think so!” He hopped off the table and started toward the cloth door that led out of the tent. “I’m so out of here!”

  The woman who’d found him in the forest appeared in his path. Behind her stood a burly man with a brown furred face and the bright, slitted, yellow eyes of a Pantherian. “Skylar, I understand your agitation, but we’re about ready to get you to the orbital hospital ship. If you can just calm down.”