“Do not dare to lecture us on the value of life, young human,” Tull said, its voices growing louder. “How many species have gone extinct as your kind took over the planet? How many of your own have you let suffer and die?” The commander’s horns began to move, until they were flattened out horizontally, curling up only at the ends like a longhorn bull’s. “The Alpha Maraudi have not warred among ourselves in millennia. Tell me, can your people say the same?”
Tull reached up, removing the gold mask and revealing two diamond-shaped eyes on the sides of its head. Each one held two piercing red irises and shining white pupils. Above them, in the center of the alien’s forehead, a third eye glowed a solid, brilliant blue.
“We have seen what you humans do,” Tull said. “Our judgment is final.”
“Can’t we live together on Earth?” Benny continued, his voice cracking as he stared at the alien’s eyes.
“Impossible. Your planet is already threatened by overpopulation.”
“Then at least let us evacuate. We can . . . we can put people at the Taj and on space stations. Help us do that with your tech.”
“To what end?” the commander asked. “So that you could try to destroy us one day as soon as you had the capability? Use your science of destruction and death to wipe us out completely? We are a peaceful kind, not like you. We seek a safe, stable home. Perhaps you are too young a species to understand that.”
“No,” Benny said slowly. “I get it.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah.” Somewhere inside, he really did understand what they wanted. He even respected it.
“You’re a caravan,” Benny said.
“A what?” Tull’s flat horns curled up more.
“You’re travelers looking for a new home,” Benny said. “I come from a group like that. But we’re different. We don’t just look out for each other, we look out for anyone we come across. We don’t steal or hurt people to make ourselves better. We . . .” He struggled for words. “We care. We’re good. Do you understand what that means?”
Commander Tull stared at him for a moment before continuing. “The Alpha Maraudi have existed since before your planet held life. We have not survived that long without prioritizing self-preservation and reason.”
Benny’s heart sank. If this was true, he had nothing to use against Tull or the Alpha Maraudi, nothing he could say to change their minds.
He felt powerless, so out of his element. If he’d been back on Earth in the caravan, at least he’d have had things he was familiar with. Family. RVs and cars he’d helped rebuild himself. Holographic spiders . . .
Suddenly, he realized he wasn’t as unarmed as he’d thought.
“So what about me and Benny?” Hot Dog asked. “Did you bring us on board to kill us yourself?”
“Of course not,” Tull said. “We are curious. We are a people who strive for knowledge and understanding. You will make fine specimens to teach our younger kind of how intelligent life can fail. Consider it an honor to be the last of your species. We will treat you well. You have my word.”
“I’m not gonna be some alien pet!” Hot Dog shouted.
“You may think you know all about us,” Benny said, tapping on his wrist. “But I bet we can still surprise you.”
A giant spider appeared before him. Tentacles flashed in his peripheral vision.
And then, before Benny could make his next move, everyone was on the floor as the entire asteroid ship shook violently.
29.
The ship jolted again. Alarms blared all around them as Benny got to his feet, muttering a thanks to whatever unexpected luck had come their way. He ran his finger across his bracelet and the giant holographic spider he’d conjured reared back onto its hind legs above the alien with the bladed tentacles, who cried out in shock.
Tull barked some sort of command, and several of the others called back to him. The holograms filling the room shifted to their original view of the exterior, and Benny saw smoke rising from a missing chunk of the asteroid ship.
Hot Dog was already standing, taking a fighting stance as she looked around the room.
“Come on!” Benny shouted. “Let’s go!”
He made for the door, where the shorter of the aliens who’d greeted them stood, the two tendrils around its head unfurling and whipping the air. Benny didn’t hesitate or slow down. He plowed straight into the alien’s gut, sending them both tumbling backward into the hallway.
They wrestled on the ground for a moment before one of the tentacles wrapped around Benny’s neck, raising him into the air. He gagged and fought for breath as the alien got to one knee. Its mask had fallen off in the skirmish, and the being glared at Benny with three narrowed eyes.
“Useless life-forms,” it hissed in English.
“You sure about that?” Hot Dog asked as she touched her collar, powering up the emergency force field around her head.
The alien turned to her, and had just enough time to make a gasping noise before Hot Dog smashed the front of her space helmet into the creature’s face. It dropped to the ground hard, crying out. Benny fell beside it. Hot Dog grabbed his hand, dragging him to his feet and pulling him down the hallway.
“Nice moves,” Benny said through a fit of coughing as he tried to get his breath back.
“You, too.”
“I’ve got two brothers. I’ve spent a lot of time wrestling.”
She wiped a smear of blue off her force-field helmet before powering it down. “Ew. I think I got alien spit on me.”
They raced through the hallways, trying to remember where they’d come from. All around them sirens continued to blare as the lights above them turned purple. The ship shook every few seconds. Benny tapped his wrist, recalling the nanoprojectors. The aliens had definitely figured out the spider was just a hologram by now.
With any luck, whatever was going on outside would keep the Alpha Maraudi distracted long enough for them to escape.
Finally, they came to a dead end—the wall that stood between them and their Space Runners. Hot Dog looked around.
“There’s got to be an ET hammer or something somewhere,” she said.
But Benny just grinned and held up the golden glove he’d swiped off the alien while they were wrestling.
“You sneaky genius,” Hot Dog said as he slipped the device over his palm.
Without knowing what else to do, he smashed his hand against the wall in front of them. The rock didn’t part like before, but exploded, blasting out into the next room and leaving enough space for them to slip through.
“Go, go!” Benny shouted, pushing Hot Dog forward.
They bounded to her Space Runner. Hot Dog slid into the pilot’s seat, immediately pressing buttons.
“It’s working!” she shouted. Her car lifted a foot off the ground and turned, lining the passenger side door up with Benny. “The tractor beam’s off!”
Benny saw a metallic glint out of the corner of his eye.
“One sec!” he said.
He stood in front of his own broken-down Space Runner and wrapped both hands around the hood ornament, trying to pry it off. This was the only thing he had from home—from his father—up in space. His lucky charm. His dad had loved it, and now it was his to keep safe.
But it was no use. It was stuck too tightly. He put both feet on the bumper, straining to wrench it loose.
“Benny!” Hot Dog shouted.
He took one last look at the silver ornament, whispering a silent good-bye. Then he jumped into the passenger’s seat and closed the door as Hot Dog raised the Space Runner farther into the air.
Ahead of them was solid rock wall, no hole to the outside.
“Think this glove thing will open it up?” Benny asked.
“Lemme try something else, first,” she said, smashing her finger down on the red button on the flight yoke and firing her laser. It took a few shots, but eventually a hole appeared, depressurizing the room.
She kept shooting as they jetted forwa
rd, until there was just enough of an opening broken in the hull for their Space Runner to fit through.
As they shot into open space, both of them yelled, voices charged with unabashed joy and astonishment.
“I can’t believe it,” Benny said. “We’re out.”
“Hot Dog?” Jasmine’s voice came through the comms. “Are you there? Ramona, you’re sure you got communications restored to everyone?”
“We’re here!” Hot Dog shouted. “Benny and I both. We just escaped from this giant alien ship.”
“What the heck is going on?” Benny shouted.
“You looked like you needed a little help,” a voice crackled through the interior speakers.
“Elijah?!” Benny shouted.
The Pit Crew’s Space Runners shot past them, lasers taking out half a dozen alien ships that continued to swarm through the air. The Miyamura twins zigged and zagged among the enemy vessels so fast they were nothing but a blur, causing several of the ships to crash into each other.
“No way,” Benny whispered.
Above them, a dark-colored Space Runner plowed into the side of the mother ship. On impact, it exploded in a huge, fiery blast, taking a chunk of the alien craft out with it.
“I was thinking about the impossibility of what you were doing, and the things I’ve done in my life,” Elijah continued over the comms. “Back when I was first designing hyperdrives, I had a number of them overheat and explode on me. Obviously I fixed that, but then it occurred to me: stripping away all the safety components from under the hood could turn my little hot rods into pretty powerful unmanned missiles.”
Another car exploded against the alien ship.
“Oof,” he said. “Granted, they’re likely the most expensive bombs ever created. What a shame.”
“Hot Dog, get out of there!” Jasmine shouted. “Elijah and the Pit Crew will cover you.”
Hot Dog obliged, gunning her hyperdrive and shooting forward, past ships scrambling to take down any of the Space Runners they could find. But the Pit Crew was proving to be much more adept at flying than the EW-SCABers had been, and they were turning out to be a real problem for the Alpha Maraudi.
“That’s the last of the unmanned SRs,” Trevone said as another explosion rocked the ship. “But this thing is still moving forward! We haven’t stopped it.”
“I can send out more units,” Pinky suggested. “I’ll just need to reconfigure them.”
“There’s no time,” Elijah said. “The debris field from something this size would be just as dangerous as the original storm if it gets any closer to Earth.”
“We could send out the laser fleet again,” Benny said. “Maybe—”
Their Space Runner lurched to a halt.
“No, no, no, not again!” Hot Dog said.
“What’s wrong?” Jasmine asked. “Why are you stopping?”
“We’re stuck in that stupid tractor beam!”
Hot Dog yanked on the controls. But it was no use. The beam pulled them straight back toward the asteroid ship.
Benny turned to Hot Dog. She was shaking her head, looking at him with worried eyes.
“Okay,” he said. “It’s okay. When we get inside we’ll, uh . . . Let’s just get out and run. We can find a place to hide. I’ve got this glove thing so maybe we can—”
“Benny, look out!” Hot Dog interrupted him, her eyes glued to something over his shoulder.
“Brace for impact!” Elijah yelled over the comms.
Benny turned just in time to see Elijah pivot so that the side of his car—the same one he’d driven into the Grand Dome on the first day—was parallel to theirs. He slammed into their Space Runner with such force that it dislodged them from the alien tractor beam. Both Benny and Hot Dog screamed as their craft spun, careening away from the mother ship.
“Come on, come on,” Hot Dog shouted, slamming the dash buttons with one hand while twisting the flight yoke with the other. “Don’t fail me now.”
She managed to level them out, twisting the craft around so that they faced the chaos the Pit Crew was causing. The twins continued to outfly the alien ships, while Sahar and Trevone took down enemy combatants with deadly precision. Despite being in the middle of the battlefield, Ricardo was barking orders that were now blaring through the speakers of Hot Dog’s and Benny’s Space Runner, all while covering his team’s backsides.
“Where’s Elijah?” Hot Dog asked.
Benny’s heart dropped into his stomach.
“There!” He pointed at the muscle car slowly being sucked into the side of the asteroid.
Ricardo must have spotted it at the same time. “Hold on, Elijah. We’re coming! Everyone, form up on me.”
“No!” Elijah shouted. “Stay back. You’ll just get caught up in this thing, too, and your engines aren’t powerful enough to break out of it.” He paused. “Something I never thought I’d say about my own designs.”
“Then I’ll knock you out like you did Benny and Hot Dog.”
“Don’t you dare,” Elijah said. “I’ve got a plan.”
There were a few seconds of silence on the comms before Benny spoke again.
“Elijah, what are you doing?”
He could hear the best driver in the galaxy laugh. Just once.
“What does it look like, kid?” Elijah asked. “I’m saving the world. Let’s just say I’ve had a change of heart after watching my scholarship winners live up to their potential. Just make sure you finish what you started. There’s more of these aliens out there. I’m counting on all of you.”
That’s when Benny figured out what was going on, what Elijah was doing. He just didn’t want to believe it.
“He’s not planning on escaping,” he whispered.
“Always one step ahead of me, kid,” Elijah said. “Think of what kind of damage one of these explosions could do from inside. I’ve gotta say, this has been quite a thrill. I thought I’d been on the greatest adventures of my time already. But I guess I was wrong.”
Above them, Benny could see the underside of Elijah’s Space Runner start to glow.
“What?” Ricardo was yelling now. “No way. Come on, Crew, we’re getting him out of there.”
“Elijah, your hyperdrive is reaching a critical state,” Pinky said. “Think about this. There’s got to be—”
“If you get in contact with Earth again, tell the real Pinky I’m sorry,” Elijah said, cutting her off. “For everything.”
“No,” Pinky said. “I won’t let you do this!”
“Command override: Detroit.” There was a moment of silence on the line. “Now, bring the rest of them home. That’s an order.”
“You reckless fool,” Pinky whispered.
“No!” Ricardo shouted. But it was too late. The AI had taken over his controls, and already their Space Runners were jetting away from the asteroid ship and back toward the Moon.
Benny and Hot Dog looked at each other for a beat before scrambling to stare out the back windshield. As they raced away, the giant ship that had loomed so terrifyingly large just seconds before got smaller and smaller.
Still, they were able to see the explosion a minute later, fire and debris shooting out of the rocky hull. Benny may not have worked on Space Runners in the Drylands, but he did know what happened to an engine that overheated. With all the power churning inside a hyperdrive, the resulting explosion must have taken out the entire docking area of the ship. Maybe the whole interior.
Benny and Hot Dog were speechless, but the rest of the Pit Crew erupted on the comms, shouting at one another in a horrified roar of sound.
Benny tapped on the dashboard until it was just him and the Taj on the Space Runner comms.
“What happened to the alien ship?” he asked.
“It’s still moving,” Jasmine said. “But it’s definitely retreating. And fast.”
Benny looked over his shoulder. The ship was a pinprick in the distance now. Just a speck of dust on the back windshield.
30.
br /> Jasmine supplied updates throughout the rest of the trek back to the Taj. Benny and Hot Dog listened in silence, too overwhelmed to try and make sense of anything that had happened. Except for them, the rest of the Moon Platoon had returned to the resort. There’d been some damaged Space Runners and a few minor injuries, but everyone made it to their temporary home all right—even if some of them, like Drue, had to be towed through space by the McGuyvers.
Eventually, as they closed in on the Taj, Benny spoke.
“Thanks,” he said.
“For what?” Hot Dog asked.
“I don’t know. For flying us outta there?”
She laughed a little. “You’re the one who distracted them and tackled an alien.”
“Yeah, well . . .” He struggled for words. “I’m glad I didn’t have to do it alone.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
He was quiet for a few seconds. “And I’m glad it was you and not Drue. He would have ticked off the aliens and they would have kicked our butts.”
Hot Dog nodded. “That’s exactly what would’ve happened.” She smiled weakly at him. “Don’t look so worried, Benny. We saved the day. This was a success.”
She was right. The asteroid storm had been stopped. The Alpha Maraudi ship was retreating.
They’d done it.
But this was only the first step. He knew that. They both did.
“Ugh,” Hot Dog groaned as they entered the pressurization tunnel. “I hate this part so much.”
Despite knowing the Alpha Maraudi were still out there and that Elijah was gone, Benny felt like he was full of electricity as their Space Runner shot through the entry tunnel back into the Grand Dome, where the rest of the fleet had gathered along with the McGuyvers and a hologram of Pinky. Their car stopped by the fountain, right in front of the Taj’s entrance, and as Benny and Hot Dog opened their Space Runner doors, everyone in the Grand Dome cheered for them.
The sound was deafening. So loud that Benny had to wonder if Pinky was somehow miking it through the speakers.
Jasmine came racing down the steps, and before either Hot Dog or Benny could say hello, she was hugging them with such ferocity that they almost fell over.