Game of Flames

  It was over.

  Gravity returned to normal. Or, at least, artificial normal. The ship stopped shaking, the engines stopped roaring, Gabriel shifted them into a stable orbit, everything was totally fine. Exactly as it was supposed to be. Except…

  “Uh, guys, am I seeing things?” Gabriel asked, taking off his flight glasses and pointing a shaky finger at the window, which, only seconds ago, had looked out at a starry stretch of empty space. “Or is that…?”

  “Mass hallucination?” Carly suggested hopefully. “Some kind of side effect of Gamma Speed they didn’t tell us about?”

  “It’s really there,” Piper said, chewing on her lip. “But I don’t see how it’s possible. Dash? What do you think?”

  Dash said nothing. Only gaped at the view, eyes wide. He blinked hard as if to clear his vision.

  It didn’t work.

  Something was materializing in space before his eyes, something huge that blotted out the stars.

  And that something was another ship.

  The navigation deck exploded with confusion.

  “What is that?”

  “Who is that?”

  “How can there be anyone else out here?”

  “Are they following us?”

  “Who are they?”

  Voices overlapped, all of them tinged with panic. They were hundreds of light-years away from home, hurtling through the vast emptiness of space. It was impossible that they would just happen to cross paths with another ship.

  And yet…

  There it was, a dark, hulking ship, about the same size as the Cloud Leopard. Where the Cloud Leopard was all graceful sloping curves, this ship was straight lines and sharp angles, like an arrow slicing through the fabric of space. But there was still something familiar about it. Something niggling at the back of Dash’s mind. Something about the two ships that made them feel like a matched pair.

  Chris appeared on the bridge within seconds. He looked just as shocked as everyone else.

  “Did you know about this?” Dash asked him, even though the answer was written across his face. “Another ship?”

  Chris shook his head. Even though Dash still had questions about how Chris ended up on their mission, he’d come to rely on the older boy as a source of steadiness and guidance. There was something comforting about having his knowledge on board. It was unsettling to see him so confused.

  “What do we do if they try to fire on us?” Gabriel asked. “Shouldn’t we be, like, readying the photon torpedoes?”

  “A photon torpedo is a physical impossibility,” Chris said, sounding puzzled.

  “Okay, how about a laser cannon?” Gabriel tried. “There must be some kind of laser cannon. In case we find a Death Star or something.”

  “This isn’t a movie,” Carly said wearily. “There aren’t any Death Stars. Or Klingons. Or laser cannons.”

  “Why are we even talking about shooting at them?” Piper said. “They haven’t done anything.”

  “Yet,” Gabriel said meaningfully.

  “Shouldn’t we find out who they are?” Piper insisted. “And what exactly they’re doing out here?”

  “Definitely,” Dash agreed. “Let’s open up a channel of communication with them.” Then he turned uncertainly to Chris. “Uh, we can do that, right?”

  “We can certainly try,” Chris said. “There’s no guarantee they’ll answer.”

  Carly, who’d studied every inch of the ship, including the communication system, took the controls. She chose a wide-band frequency, then gave Dash a sharp nod.

  Dash cleared his throat. He stared into the pin-sized camera that would beam his image to the other ship. “This is Dash Conroy, on the Cloud Leopard, leader of the Alpha team. We’re on a mission from Earth. We…uh…” He searched for something impressive and leader-like to say. “We come in peace.”

  Behind him, Gabriel snorted.

  There was a long moment of silence. Then an image appeared on the giant monitor overhead, revealing the inside of a ship—and a girl’s face.

  A face Dash had come to know extremely well. One he thought he would never see again.

  Or at least, hoped he would never see again.

  “You?” he said.

  Anna Turner, who he’d beaten out for mission leader, gave him a wicked grin. “Me.”

  —

  Back on Earth, at Base Ten, Anna and Dash had competed side by side for weeks. Anna was bossy, selfish, hot-tempered, and determined to win at all costs. Dash would never forget the look on her face when she found out she’d lost. That she would have to return home, a failure. That there would be no mission, no ten-million-dollar prize money, no intergalactic adventure for her.

  Except that here she was, in a spaceship of her own. So maybe she hadn’t lost after all? Dash had never been so confused.

  Anna’s grin widened. “And not just me. Meet the crew of the Light Blade.”

  At her words, the view on the monitor expanded to reveal the rest of her crew. Dash couldn’t believe it. None of the Alpha team could. Strapped into flight chairs on this strangely familiar ship’s bridge were all four of the other finalists for Project Alpha. Anna Turner, Ravi Chavan, Niko Rodriguez, and Siena Moretti. Each had competed fiercely for a spot on the Cloud Leopard.

  Each had lost.

  “What, did you think you guys were the only ones up here?” Anna jeered. “Outer space is a big place. You never know who you’ll run into.”

  “But—but—but—” Dash felt himself sputtering. Anna had that effect on him. She was always so sure she knew better than everyone else, especially Dash. And she loved rubbing it in his face. She was smart and tough and, most of the time, annoyingly right. Dash and the others had been sure she would be chosen for the mission.

  They’d all been secretly relieved when she wasn’t.

  Well, maybe not so secretly.

  Piper jumped in. “I think what Dash is trying to say is, how did you get here?” She said it nicely, even though Anna had been even ruder to her than she’d been to the rest of them. Piper always tried not to hold a grudge. Wasn’t winning the best revenge?

  “And what are you guys doing up here?” Piper added.

  “Yeah, weird timing for a pleasure cruise,” Gabriel said.

  “In a multibillion-dollar ship,” Carly added.

  Anna peered over her glasses at the Alpha team. She and her crew were wearing uniforms of their own. They were all black, with an omega symbol emblazoned across the shoulder. “We’re doing the same thing you’re doing,” Anna said, like it was the dumbest question ever. “Hunting down elements, trying to save the Earth—ring a bell?”

  “I don’t get it,” Dash said.

  Anna laughed. “Talk about the understatement of the century.”

  “Did Commander Phillips decide to send a second ship?” It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Shawn Phillips had kept important information to himself. Dash turned to Chris, whose expression was grave. If there were another ship, Chris would know about it. But Chris looked as lost as the rest of them. Dash realized it was the first time he’d ever seen the older boy caught off balance.

  “Commander Phillips?” Anna laughed, and the rest of her crew joined in. “No, don’t worry, your precious Phillips still thinks you four are his best bet. Lucky for Earth, we found someone who knows better.”

  “Who?” Dash said. He hated being out of the loop, having to beg Anna for answers. Anna was loving every second of it.

  “If you must know, it was—” Anna stopped abruptly. Dash could hear a voice offscreen, but he wasn’t able to make out the words. Anna’s lips narrowed into a tight, straight line. Dash recognized that look: it was the face Anna made when someone told her what to do. “It’s none of your business, that’s who,” she told Dash tersely. “What matters is that the Omega team is going to get all the elements long before you Alpha losers do.”

  “Nice to see you haven’t changed, Anna,” Carly said sarcastically.

  Gabriel s
norted. “Yeah, still totally delusional.”

  “She’s simply being accurate,” Siena said. Unlike the others, she didn’t sound like she was boasting or rubbing it in their face. She was simply stating a fact. “Our odds of success are substantially higher than yours. For reasons we’re not allowed to share.”

  “Look, we both care about finding the elements and getting back home,” Dash said. He didn’t like this situation any more than the others did, but he was the team leader. He had to think about what was best for the mission. Anna and the others were here now, and two ships had to be better than one, right? “Why don’t we team up?”

  Carly, Piper, and Gabriel looked at Dash in surprise. “Team up with them? You’ve got to be joking,” Gabriel said.

  Commander Phillips had chosen the Alphas partly because they were so good at teamwork. Niko, Ravi, Siena, and especially Anna, on the other hand, had proven they worked best alone.

  “With two ships and two crews, we might be able to find the elements twice as fast,” Dash pointed out.

  “Team up? Forget it,” Anna said. “We don’t need you Alphas slowing us down.”

  “Maybe we should think about it,” Siena said quietly. “Statistically our odds of success increase if—”

  She abruptly cut herself off. Once again, there was the sound of someone talking offscreen. This time, the figure came over and joined the rest of the crew. He was a few years older than the others, with a pair of squarish black glasses perched on his stern face. “This is Colin, the fifth member of our crew,” Anna said, sounding none too happy about it.

  Dash thought it was only on TV that people’s jaws dropped. But now his mouth popped wide open. Piper, Gabriel, and Carly wore identical expressions of cartoon shock. Four pairs of eyes turned to Chris. Then back to Colin. They swiveled back and forth, back and forth, like they were watching a tennis game.

  Dash thought he must be imagining things. But no, it was real—except for the glasses, the boy on the Light Blade looked exactly like Chris.

  Except that Dash had never seen Chris smile like Colin. Like he was watching a colony of ants scurry around beneath a magnifying glass. Like he was thinking very seriously about setting those ants on fire. Then stomping them.

  “What is this?” Chris said. His voice was as expressionless as ever, but Dash had gotten to know him pretty well over the last few months. He could tell that the older boy was shaken. “How is this possible?”

  “I think we’ve wasted enough time chatting,” Colin snapped. Even his voice was exactly the same as Chris’s. Except while Chris always sounded calm and friendly, Colin’s words were coated with ice. “May the best team win. And trust me…” He stepped aside to reveal a large bone-white object sitting at the center of the navigation deck. It was the other piece of the Raptogon tooth, the piece they had left behind on planet J-16. “We will.”

  The screen went black.

  “Wow,” Piper said. She couldn’t pull her gaze away from Chris. “That was…unexpected.”

  “That guy was definitely older than thirteen,” Carly said. “How can he survive Gamma Speed? I thought Chris was the only one who could do that.”

  “That’s what you think is weird about this?” Gabriel asked. “That he’s a teenager? Did you see his face?” He was staring at Chris too. “What’s the deal—do you have an identical twin or something?”

  Chris shook his head. “Definitely not.”

  “Maybe a long-lost twin?” Carly suggested. “Separated at birth, like in a TV movie or something.”

  “Or maybe it was a clone,” Gabriel said. “Anyone ever mention anything about cloning you, Chris?”

  “There’s no such thing as clones,” Carly said.

  “Oh yeah? Then what do you think’s going on?” Gabriel countered.

  “Maybe, uh…he’s a robot,” Carly suggested.

  “A robot designed to look and talk exactly like Chris,” Piper said, giggling at the idea.

  “Only instead of cheeseburgers, he eats motor oil,” Gabriel added.

  “Okay, okay, so probably not a robot,” Carly gave in. “What do you think, Dash?”

  Dash was watching Chris carefully. The older boy wasn’t giving anything away with his expression. “I think I want to know what Chris thinks.”

  “I think there’s no point in speculating without any data,” Chris said. He sounded perfectly calm, as usual. Like he hadn’t just gotten the biggest surprise of his life. “Let’s not get distracted by things that don’t matter.”

  “There’s another ship following us through space, and they’ve got their own you, and you don’t think that matters?” Carly said in disbelief.

  “Whoever he is, he’s not me,” Chris snapped. Something about the way he said it made Dash wonder if his feelings were hurt. But there was no way of telling from his face. “We’re to launch our extraction mission to Meta Prime, where we’ll find the second element. That’s what matters right now.”

  “Uh, Chris is right,” Dash said, because on the one hand, he was. On the other hand, Anna Turner was out there commanding her own ship with a duplicate copy of Chris on board. Which seemed more than a little relevant. “Let’s meet in the docking bay in an hour for a mission briefing so we can get down to the surface ASAP.”

  Chris nodded sharply and left the room.

  “So, that was weird,” Gabriel said. “I mean, he’s always weird, but that was special recipe weird, am I wrong?”

  “No, that was definitely weird,” Piper said. It was unusual for Chris to snap like that. Was he more concerned by the other ship and his impossible twin than he was willing to admit?

  “We should make contact with Earth,” Dash said. “Phillips will want to know about this.”

  “You’re assuming he doesn’t already,” Gabriel pointed out.

  Dash shook his head. “No way would he—”

  “Keep life-altering secrets from us?” Gabriel cut in. “Fail to tell us the most important things about our own mission until it’s too late for us to do anything about it? Send us into space without mentioning we might not make it home again?”

  Dash couldn’t argue with any of it.

  But he still couldn’t believe Commander Phillips would keep something like this from them. “Only one way to find out,” he said.

  Carly opened up a communications channel with Earth—or at least, she tried to.

  “Nothing but static,” she reported. Communications with home were patchy, especially once they left Gamma Speed. Sometimes it took days to get a clear signal.

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” Gabriel snorted. “Most advanced piece of technology humanity’s ever built, and it can’t manage a stupid phone call.”

  “It’s a ‘stupid phone call’ across several million light-years,” Piper pointed out.

  “We’ll keep trying,” Dash said, “but in the meantime, it looks like we’re on our own with this.”

  “What else is new?” Gabriel grumbled. “It’s not like he’d tell us anything, anyway.”

  “What now?” Carly said. “Should we go after Chris? Try to get him to tell us what’s going on?”

  “What makes you think he knows any more than we do?” Dash asked.

  “Come on, he obviously knows something,” Gabriel said. “Something more than he’s telling us at least.”

  “If he does, he must have a good reason to keep it to himself,” Dash said diplomatically. They had agreed that if the five of them were going to work together as a crew, they would have to trust one another.

  Carly frowned. She trusted Chris too—or at least, she was trying to. But Carly wasn’t the type to trust anyone completely. “I really hope you’re right about that.”

  Dash hoped so too.

  Dash headed down the Cloud Leopard’s central corridor toward Chris’s private quarters. That room had no connection to the ship’s tubing system. There was only one way in: knocking.

  Before he reached the door, Dash tried to step into one of the
restricted passageways. He always did that when he was in this part of the ship.

  And, as always, a force field bounced him gently away.

  Commander Phillips had told them these restricted areas contained delicate equipment that they couldn’t risk damaging, and that’s why the crew was barred entrance.

  They’d believed him, because they had no reason not to.

  Then it had turned out that one of the restricted rooms contained Chris.

  After that, Dash couldn’t help wondering what else was hidden away behind closed doors. And he couldn’t stop trying to get in, just in case, one of these times, the force field malfunctioned and let him pass.

  Dash continued on to Chris’s door and knocked. It slid open with a soft hiss.

  “I told you, I know nothing about that…person on the other ship,” Chris said, blocking the entrance. He still sounded pretty testy. “If you don’t believe that, I’m sorry.”

  “I believe you,” Dash said. “That’s not why I’m here. It’s time for, uh—but if this isn’t a good time, I can—”

  “Oh, no, of course,” Chris said, stepping out of the doorway. “In all the commotion, I had forgotten your injections.”

  Dash was taken aback. He’d never known Chris to forget anything. Especially anything this important.

  Chris was the only one who knew his secret, that he was six months older than the others—which was six months older than he was supposed to be. Dash would turn fourteen by the time their mission ended. And anyone older than fourteen might not survive traveling in Gamma Speed. Chris, the super-genius, had apparently designed some kind of serum for himself that would protect him from Gamma effects. But all Dash had was an experimental daily injection that was supposed to slow down his metabolism. There was no guarantee it would work—or for how long. If they didn’t get back to Earth on schedule…

  Dash shook it off. It was important not to think about that. He’d taken a risk coming on this mission, he knew that. But saving the Earth—saving his mom and Abby? That was worth it. Still, he didn’t want the others knowing he was taking such a risk; he didn’t want them to worry. Dash shared a room with Gabriel, which didn’t offer much privacy. So Chris had agreed he could move his store of injectors here, to make sure his secret didn’t get out.