Out of This World Read online

  Who are you people? he thought in terror.

  How nice of you to ask. My name’s Ilara, a voice replied in his head.

  Jack goggled at her.

  “Mazzy, get on the console!” Boston snapped. “I need specs on their craft. Tell me if we can take ’em!”

  Mazzy reached over to the console next to her, pulled out a thin cable from her wrist, and plugged it into an input. Glowing lines of data raced across the surface of her eyes.

  “Give me an assessment of our chances,” he barked at her.

  “It’s a Viper-class combat model with elyrium engines and LADAR-guided micromissiles.” She pulled the cable out, and it retracted into her wrist. “We’re doomed,” she said chirpily.

  “Not if I can help it,” said Boston, and Jack felt himself flattened as the Epsilon went into a steep climb.

  Jack was getting some of the feeling back in his arms and legs now, and he could move a little again, enough to stabilize himself against the back of the chair. He swiveled around to see the cockpit, after one last suspicious glance at Ilara. Surely he hadn’t really heard her voice in his mind?

  Through the main window he could see blue sky and fluffy clouds. Smaller screens showed the view from the sides and below, the woods dropping away beneath them, his school, the town shrinking as they climbed. Lifting off from the woods was another aircraft, dirty black, blocky, and brutal. The Hunters, coming after them. Coming after him.

  What did I do? Why are they chasing me?

  Ilara frowned slightly, her catlike gaze still fixed on him.

  “The rift is breaking down,” Mazzy said urgently, scanning through data feeds. “We’re gonna lose it!”

  “It just has to hold on a few more minutes,” Boston told her.

  An alarm sounded in the cockpit. “The Viper has a weapon lock on us,” the Epsilon informed them calmly.

  “That might be a few minutes we don’t have,” Mazzy muttered.

  Boston cursed and flung the Epsilon to port as energy beams sizzled through the air, close enough that the aircraft rattled and its screens lit up with alerts. Jack held on to his seat and tried to ignore the fact that Ilara was staring at him unnervingly.

  “Missiles in the air!” Mazzy cried.

  “Epsilon! Countermeasures!” Boston yelled.

  “Releasing chaff,” the Epsilon said, with the same unhurried tone as someone might use to announce a train delay, or call a cleaner to aisle three.

  A cloud of sparkling metal flakes scattered into the air behind them. Jack watched on the screens as a dozen tiny missiles flew into them and exploded, making the Epsilon shudder again.

  “The message said dead or alive, right?” Boston asked Mazzy.

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “I think they’re definitely taking door number one on this one.”

  “Well, that’s just great.”

  Dead or alive? Why would someone want me dead or alive? What’s going on?

  Oh, come now, Gradius, said Ilara’s voice in his head. Don’t be coy. No need to pretend.

  My name’s Jack! he thought back at her.

  How tiresome. I’m a Host, as you well know. I can pull the truth out of your head if I have to.

  But I’m not whoever you think I am! Jack tried to say it aloud, but all he could manage through his floppy lips was: “MmmMMmmUUURGGH!”

  “The storm’s ahead!” Mazzy called. Through the cockpit window, black clouds had filled the view. “Two minutes. We’re losing that rift!”

  “We lose that rift, we’ll be stuck on this dirt ball planet till it opens again,” Boston said, brow furrowed in concentration as he flew. “And I don’t much rate our chances of survival then.”

  “Don’t much rate them now,” said Mazzy gloomily.

  The clouds swallowed them. The cockpit dimmed and the Epsilon began to shake as it was battered by winds. Lightning flashed all around.

  “Incoming!” Mazzy called. Boston flung the aircraft into another string of evasive maneuvers as the clouds lit up around them with streams of burning plasma. The Epsilon bucked and more alarms rang as the air filled with the smell of melting metal.

  “We have sustained critical damage to the left thruster,” said the Epsilon pleasantly.

  A radio crackled. “Boston! This is Dunk! We’ve sustained—”

  “—critical damage to the left thruster,” Boston and Mazzy said in chorus.

  “Don’t know why I bother telling you anything,” Dunk grouched, and the radio went dead.

  “Boston, are you sure you’ve got this?” said Mazzy. “We can’t take any more hits like that.”

  “I can outfly them!” Boston insisted.

  “Why don’t we put the Epsilon into Com—”

  “Don’t say it!” Boston warned her.

  Mazzy thought for a moment. “But if we put her into C-O-M-B-A-T M-O-D-E,” she said, spelling out the letters, “we might have a better chance of escape.”

  “Did somebody say COMBAT MODE?” the Epsilon shrieked.

  “Fancy that,” said Ilara blandly. “Our hyperintelligent onboard computer, capable of navigating us through nine-dimensional space, knows how to spell.”

  “Oops,” said Mazzy.

  “Ya-HOO!” the Epsilon screamed, and slammed hard to port, spiraling crazily. Jack was thrown off his seat, hanging on only by his manacles.

  “Whaff haffening?” he groaned as the Epsilon spun into the heart of the storm.

  “The Epsilon only ha-ha-has two modes of op-op-operation,” Mazzy said, swaying wildly in her chair. “Ri-ri-ridiculously chill or hysterically psycho!”

  “I think you mean COMBAT MOOOOOODE!” the Epsilon howled, slamming to starboard hard enough to rattle Jack’s teeth. Plasma bolts scored the clouds around them.

  “I could have flown her!” Boston protested, pinned in his seat, his cheeks rippling with the g-forces.

  “Rift up ahead!” Mazzy cried.

  Jack raised his head and saw the clouds part before them. There, hidden in the center of the storm, was a shimmering patch of light, pulsing with strange colors that made his eyes water. The clouds swirled around it like water down a drain, firing lightning into it.

  “It’s closing up!” said Mazzy. And indeed it was getting smaller by the second.

  “Lock in destination coordinates!” Boston called. “We’re going for it!”

  “Done!”

  They were slammed against their seats again as a new volley of plasma fire raked the sky. Jack watched on the screens as the Viper emerged from the storm, hammering through the air in pursuit. A dozen glowing lights detached from it and came streaming through the clouds toward them.

  “More missiles!” Mazzy cried. “Where’s the chaff?”

  “No more chaff!” the Epsilon yelled happily. “Hold on, everybody!”

  The Epsilon’s engines bellowed. Jack hung on to his seat for dear life, his legs skidding around on the floor, as they raced toward the swirling lights.

  “Impact in five seconds!” Mazzy yelled. “Four!”

  The missiles streaked closer.

  “Three!”

  The light had filled the cockpit now, shining through the window, blinding him.

  “Two! One!”

  “Say goodbye to Earth, kid!” Boston yelled.

  “Place was a dump, anyway,” Mazzy muttered.

  The air stretched like putty, and Jack screamed.

  Bursts of steam hissed like angry snakes, and the air stank of engine grease and oil smoke. The corridor rang with clanks and thumps, the bang of hammers and the wheeze of pistons. Striding through it all, her boots clicking on metal grilles underfoot, came General Kara, her face stern as always.

  What was left of it, anyway.

  She was part woman and part machine, but how much of each only she knew for sure. Beneath her drab military uniform, pumps pushed fluid through pipes where a heart should have been. One hand was robotic, and half her face had been replaced, her left eye a narrow white slit. The human side
of her face was as emotionless as the other, lightly lined with fifty years of not smiling. The eye there was dull and cold, her hair buzz-cut and gray.

  She swept through the facility, surrounded by the restless industry of the Mechanics. They never stopped creating, constantly building new weapons and new recruits. But to create, they had to destroy, break things up to make them anew. The whole of the Nexus was fuel to them, raw material to be tossed into their furnaces.

  She admired that about them. Their ruthless desire, their lack of weakness, of compassion. It was why she had joined them, why she let them change her. Most people lived in terror of being caught by the Mechanics and transformed into one of their cyborgs. Not Kara. She had volunteered.

  A door squealed open and let her into the comms room, where several drones hunched over their consoles. They were mindless robot workers assembled higgledy-piggledy, all leaking joints and jerking gears. The Mechanics were expert scavengers, using and reusing whatever they could, and many of their creations were bolted together from junk.

  A screen crackled to life as she entered. Scorch loomed there in the dim cockpit of the Viper, glowing eyes gazing out of the cloudy dome that sat atop the neck of his armor.

  “You failed,” General Kara said flatly.

  Scorch’s eyes burned more fiercely. He made an angry hissing noise, like a strong wind through the treetops of a forest. Words appeared on the screen, subtitles provided by the translation software.

  THERE WERE COMPLICATIONS.

  “Complications,” said Kara flatly.

  SOMEBODY GOT TO HIM FIRST.

  “Somebody?”

  A smaller inset screen appeared in the corner of Kara’s display. Boston Sark stared out at her, a data feed displaying his information alongside.

  WE IDENTIFIED THE AIRCRAFT.

  Kara studied the data feed for a moment. “A small-time smuggler. Or at least that’s what he seems. Is he working for Gradius Clench?”

  PERHAPS HE WAS IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME. PERHAPS HE INTERCEPTED THE SAME TRANSMISSION WE DID.

  “You mean he was already on Earth? What would he be doing there?”

  SMUGGLING.

  The inset picture switched to show Mazzy, her multicolored hair growing wild around her face.

  “She’s from Rakkan,” said Kara in faint surprise. “She must have escaped when the Mechanics invaded.”

  WHEN YOU LED THEM TO YOUR HOME PLANET TO ENSLAVE YOUR OWN PEOPLE, Scorch corrected her. Even through the subtitles, Kara heard the disapproval. It didn’t bother her. Scorch was from Oma III, a gas giant planet where there was no solid ground. The Omians were intelligent clouds, like miniature storms, only able to live outside their home planet by traveling in armored suits. Kara wasn’t about to be lectured by a whiff of gas.

  “She had top-of-the-line wetware,” Kara observed. “Computers integrated in her brain and eyes, allowing her to hack into electronic systems remotely. Must have had rich parents. Who else are we dealing with?”

  The screen changed again to show Dunk, squat and frowning. His shoulders were so wide and his legs so short that he was practically a cube.

  Kara studied the face. A Thuvian, from a high-gravity world where everything grew low to the ground. Thuvians were tough as stone and only a little smarter, but their talent with machines was second to none. This one must have fallen on hard times if he was working on a smuggler’s ship instead of in one of the great Thuvian aircraft factories.

  Last to be shown was Ilara, a Host from Cerinus Minor. That was a surprise. Hosts were arrogant sorts who thought themselves superior to everybody else. Mostly they kept their own company, but occasionally they became bored of being pampered and ventured out into the world searching for the kinds of interesting things that only happened to the poor and ignorant. She must have been very bored to stoop so low.

  “Can you find them?” she asked Scorch.

  WE HAVE THEIR ENGINE SIGNATURE. NEXT TIME THEY USE A RIFT, WE WILL KNOW.

  “I’ll put a bounty out on them. That ought to flush them out. They might even decide to give him up, once they realize who it is they have.”

  DO YOU THINK IT REALLY IS GRADIUS CLENCH?

  A smile touched the edge of Kara’s lips. “Does it matter? We’re going to kill him, anyway, aren’t we?”

  With a wave of her hand, she blanked the screen and swept out of the room.

  The faint sharp light of a distant sun, colored purple by a toxic haze of smoke, shone through the windows as General Kara made her way to the Gristle Pits. As she walked, she turned things over in her head. Had Clench slipped up and revealed himself, or was this just a false alarm? That boy had been a thorn in her and the Mechanics’ sides for a long time now. He needed to be put down before he caused some real damage.

  As long as he didn’t find out about the Firehawk, she thought. But surely he couldn’t have. They were safe here, even from him.

  A door clanked open as she approached, letting her out onto a balcony overlooking a large metal pit. Down below, a small figure dressed in black was being circled by a pair of beasts three times his size. They were Gristlers, nightmarish monsters fashioned by the Mechanics from metal and flesh, all oily claws and greasy jaws, seeping black smoke as they moved.

  The beasts lunged together, surging in to rip their prey apart. Their target moved like lightning, somersaulting out of the way, and their jaws snapped shut on thin air. A blaster appeared in one hand, a blade in the other. Eerie colors swirled off it like mist.

  The Gristlers turned and lunged again, but once more he was not where they thought he was. He leaped into them, firing plasma bolts, his blade swinging down to plunge into his opponents. The beasts fell on him hungrily, and he was lost in a snarling, shrieking tangle of limbs and claws. But his blade flashed left and right, cutting through the Gristlers’ armor as if it were paper. Pale fluids squirted and machinery sparked as the creatures were cut to bits by the small warrior darting among them. Though they clawed at him desperately, they could not so much as scratch him. At last they slumped to the ground in twitching heaps, leaving their killer standing alone.

  “Are you done exercising, Vardis?” Kara called.

  He looked up at her. His face was a mirror, an oval of polished black metal, behind which no features could be seen.

  “Good. I have news of Gradius Clench.”

  Jack howled as he was assaulted on all sides by scrubbing brushes, scrapers, shavers, and other things he couldn’t identify, all whizzing around him on thin metal arms. Trapped inside the decontamination tube, naked as the day he was born, he had no way to escape them. There was a thick glass window at face height. Through it, he could see his kidnappers watching him.

  “Quit probing me!” he squealed helplessly as he was poked and prodded in all kinds of unmentionable places.

  “Oh, shut up,” said Mazzy. “We all had to go through it. Even Dunk, and he almost broke the machine.”

  “There’s filth, and then there’s my filth,” said Dunk proudly, picking a boulder of wax from one hairy ear.

  “Why do we have to be decontaminated, anyway?” Jack complained.

  “Because we’ve been to Earth,” said Mazzy. “The most disgusting place in the universe. Eww, my skin’s crawling just thinking about it. Unless I’ve got ticks.” She looked at Boston, alarmed. “Can you see any ticks?”

  “You mean in the entire universe there’s nowhere more disgusting than Earth? There isn’t, like, a planet of slime people or something?”

  “The slime people are actually very nice,” said Mazzy, sounding slightly offended. “And their slime is good for the skin.”

  “But what’s so bad about it?” Jack said, moving his head to avoid a toothbrush that was trying to jam itself between his lips. “I mean, it’s got nice parts!”

  “It’s because the whole planet is swarming with tiny invisible things whose only purpose is your horrible and painful death,” said Boston patiently.

  “Germs? What, don’
t you have— MmMMFFff?” He was prevented from saying anything further when the robot arms clamped his head to keep it still and rammed the toothbrush into his mouth.

  “No, we don’t,” said Mazzy. “Not like you do. Earth has the most vicious and nasty diseases in the Nexus. You have flesh-eating viruses, some that make your limbs go black and drop off, some that make you lose control of your body. Even just standing still you can catch the flu and die. And, I mean, the Black Death? Killed half the people in Europe? Who does that?”

  “And that ain’t even mentioning the animals,” Dunk added. “We got great big monsters in the Nexus, but you have spiders. Tiny poisonous things that kill you with one bite. Poisonous frogs, poisonous jellyfish. Poisonous insects.”

  “Yeah, and Australia? Forget about it,” Mazzy added. “Literally every living thing on that continent is trying to kill you at all times.”

  “The whole planet has been quarantined ever since it was discovered,” Boston told Jack. “No one’s allowed to come here.”

  The toothbrush was violently jerked from Jack’s mouth. “So why were you here?” he managed to say, before he was blasted with hot steam from all sides.

  “Because there are some things you can only get on Earth,” said Boston, “and people will pay a lot for them.”

  Jack’s reply was muffled by the top that was pulled down over his head by a half-dozen robot arms. He whooped in surprise as a pair of briefs were pulled up his legs and pants were yanked on afterward. In a matter of seconds he was dressed again, in new and unfamiliar clothes, and then the door hissed open and he was ejected out of the chamber. Dunk grabbed him and slammed his butt down on a chair.

  They stood over him, glaring down. All except Ilara, who was standing off to one side, a wry half smile on her face. Jack looked around for a way to escape, but there was nowhere to go. They were in a chilly storage room in the hold of the Epsilon. The only feature other than the chair he sat on was the decontamination chamber, sitting amid a mass of pipes and cables against one wall. The door to the room was sturdy and metal and locked.

  “I don’t know what you want. I’m just a kid,” he said helplessly.