Infinity Riders Page 9

  Chris circled above and kept the nearby air free of Stingers.

  “Okay, now stop squirming,” Carly grunted at Gabriel. “I think you’re making it worse.”

  She used all her strength to drag him inch by inch along the slick mossy pebbles of the lake shore. “Didn’t…exactly…think…this…plan…all…the…way…through…eh?” She eked out one word per breath as she tugged him up the embankment.

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Gabriel muttered. His voice was muffled by the edge of the Simu Suit.

  “Clear!” Carly shouted to Chris as she successfully drew Gabriel across the threshold of the tunnel. She unzipped his waterlogged suit and helped him climb out.

  When he was free, Carly clapped Gabriel on the back. “Always knew you were nuts,” she commented.

  “Crazy is the new awesome.” He did a funky little dance. “Can’t touch this.”

  “Touched…in the head,” Carly muttered, grinning good-naturedly.

  Chris landed his Weaver on the bank and dismounted.

  Gabriel helped Carly pull the Simu Suit farther into the tunnel. It was heavy, even without him inside. The Stinger pellets must’ve each weighed a ton.

  “How do they fly with these things in their butts?” Gabriel wondered.

  Carly laughed. “Do you think we got enough?” she asked, turning serious.

  “Sure feels like it. And I can’t believe you had to drag me out of there,” Gabriel said, slightly chagrined.

  Carly smiled again. “It’ll be our secret.”

  “No chance,” Gabriel answered. “That was way too awesome. I’m telling everyone!”

  They laughed together, as they plucked Stinger pellets from the suit with tweezers and pliers from Carly’s toolkit. They plopped them one by one into the jar, counting carefully as they worked. Hopefully Gabriel’s crazy trick meant they had gathered enough—but it was much better to find out now than back on the ship.

  The Weavers, who had been standing at perfect attention, suddenly whinnied and shuffled their hooves. Thunder looked over his shoulder, shining his eyes into the tunnel.

  Chris stood up and darted into the tunnel. “We gotta go,” he said when he returned a moment later. His chest tag pinged.

  “But the spores,” Gabriel said. They were still tweezing and counting. They hadn’t even finished the arms.

  “We’re only at two hundred fifty,” Carly said.

  There was no way to refold the suit all the way with the spores inside.

  “Squeeze the water out, and get it on the horse,” Chris said. “We’ve got a Saw coming.”

  Piper floated across the Infinity sky. It felt infinite, for sure. No clouds. No wind. Only the light hum of her chair, and a breathtaking view of the pure blue sky and the craggy gray surface below. Oxygen hissed into the dome of her helmet, and she breathed calmly, gazing through the plastic shield. She was worried about Anna, but she couldn’t help appreciating the scenery. It was an amazing feeling to be flying in the open air, on another planet, across the universe from home.

  Piper had never felt like her wheelchair was holding her back, but it did make her different from her friends. There were times when she missed the feeling of running or jumping. It was special and cool to be able to do something no one else could. She stretched her arms out against the sky as she flew. The heat from the blazing booster rockets below warmed the sleeves of her space suit.

  The Light Blade’s cargo bay doors opened to allow her entry. Colin stood on the Clipper launch pad, an expression of grave concern on his pale face.

  He looked exactly like Chris, except for the glasses. Piper did a double take upon seeing him in person for the first time. It was really uncanny. Even weirder than seeing a large-scale statue of him—which, oddly enough, she had also done.

  “Hi, Colin,” she said. “Where’s Anna?”

  “Right this way,” he said, gesturing formally for her to proceed alongside him into the hallway.

  Piper took in her surroundings. In some ways, the Light Blade seemed similar to the Cloud Leopard, but it was more…sinister. The ship had been shadowing them for months, and it felt like a shadow in here. It had an unfinished quality to it, exposed pipes and wires running along the length of the hallway. And it was dim. Piper half expected things to start leaping out of the walls at her, like in a haunted house. A back-of-the-spine, tingling sensation crept over her.

  “You are the medic, correct?” Colin said.

  “Yes. What’s happened, exactly?” Piper asked, hovering along next to him. He moved a bit too slowly, she thought, for someone in the middle of a crisis. She chalked it up to his cold, alien nature.

  “Anna has fallen from a great height,” Colin repeated. “I fear an injury of the skull or spine.” He stopped walking then and began fumbling with something he pulled from his pocket and held low at his side. Piper tried to turn to see what he was doing, but being side by side with Colin, the hallway space was narrow for that kind of maneuver.

  Five seconds later, Piper screamed at the top of her lungs.

  —

  At that very moment, two miles below, Siena screamed at the top of her lungs. A cloud of Stingers swooped toward her. The flock shifted as if of one mind, with one goal: to devour her. It was an amazing sight…and deadly.

  Siena slashed her net pole through the flock, then dove for the edge of the lake cavern, stumbling across the pebbled shore and flopping to safety on the cold cave rock.

  The winged cloud surged upward, skating along the cavern wall. They dispersed above. They swirled the air like a tornado.

  “We can’t…keep…doing this…,” Siena panted, pulling herself up onto her hands and knees.

  “How many do we have?” Ravi asked.

  “She got two more,” Niko said, checking Siena’s pouch. Exposed to the drier tunnel air, the Stingers lay limp inside the netting. “That’s ten total. At this rate, it’s going to take hours.”

  “Days,” Ravi amended.

  “And possibly kill us all,” Siena added, trying to keep her voice cheerful. She wasn’t sure why, when the situation was clearly so bleak. She gazed down the dark tunnel. Not dark. Pitch-black. “They’re really not coming back, are they?” she said of the Weavers.

  “Obviously not,” Ravi snapped.

  When the Omegas ran into the chamber for the first time, the horselike creatures had galloped away into the tunnels. It had been a mistake to let go of their reins, apparently. A lesson learned the hard way.

  “I was just saying,” Siena muttered. She was not looking forward to leaving the cavern behind and returning to the dark caves on foot.

  The flashlights from their packs barely made a dent in the wall of night. Ravi’s flashlight, set to the lantern mode, rested on the stones just inside the cavern. That and a stream of light from a crack in the rocks high overhead were all that saved the cavern from total darkness. The pale light reflected off the water, giving the cavern the ambience of a moonlit summer lake.

  “We can take these few back with us to the ship,” Ravi suggested. “They’re not like bees—one sting. They’ll make more spores.”

  “I don’t know,” Siena said. “Bringing home live Stingers wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “So we change the plan,” Ravi insisted. He waved his hand toward the lake. “You wanna go back in there?”

  “We have to keep trying.” Niko agreed with Siena. They had to carry through the plan. He picked up his pole. He was next to plunge in.

  As if sensing Niko’s intentions, the Stinger cloud reformed. The winged things hovered, waiting to descend.

  “Great,” Siena said.

  “How about no.” Ravi stared into the dimly lit cavern. “We’ve done all we can do. Let’s get out of here.”

  —

  From the flight deck of the Cloud Leopard, Dash reopened the comm link to the Light Blade. The screen showed the flight console, empty.

  “Colin?” Dash called, hoping he was just off-scree
n. “Colin, is everything all right over there?”

  Long tense moments passed.

  “Hello? Colin?” Dash tried again.

  The screen flickered to a different angle. Piper’s face filled the screen. “Dash!” she cried.

  Dash’s pulse pounded at the alarm in her voice. But he was relieved to see she had made it over there okay. “How’s Anna? What happened?”

  Piper shook her head. “You were right!” she said. “It was—”

  The screen flipped again. Dash found himself staring at Anna’s grinning face.

  “Why, hello, Dash Conroy. I knew we could count on you.”

  “Are you okay?” Dash asked. Anna looked none the worse for wear.

  Anna laughed. “I have never been better,” she said. “And Piper will be fine too. Eventually.”

  The camera panned out. Behind Anna, Piper floated helplessly on the bridge of the Light Blade, struggling to free herself from the ropes binding her to her air chair. They stretched across her chest, pinning her in place, and her wrists were tied behind her. Her legs hung free, as motionless as ever.

  The truth hit Dash hard. Anna was never injured. It was a trap! And he’d fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.

  “Let her go,” Dash demanded. He jumped out of his chair, as if to run and help her. But there was no way for him to get from one ship to the other without the Cloud Cat.

  “I could do that,” Anna admitted. “But this way, you’ll be sure not to lose us in Gamma Speed.”

  “You already have Pollen Slither,” Piper said angrily. “You don’t need a hostage.” She wished they would lock her in a room or tie her to a post. She hated having her air chair used against her. Even more, she hated that she’d let her guard down, thinking the Omega crew really needed her help. It had been far too easy for Colin to lasso her wrists with the rope. Something like this never would have happened during a mission. She should have been ready for anything, even here. “Let me go!” she shouted.

  “We’re not going to ditch the Light Blade in space,” Dash insisted. “We would never do that.”

  “A little extra insurance never hurt,” Anna said.

  “You won’t keep her,” Dash said. “You can’t. We’ll never leave this planet without her.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Anna said. “The mission comes first.”

  “No, my crew comes first,” Dash insisted.

  The words spilled out before he even had time to think. He meant them, from the bottom of his heart.

  And yet…

  Eighty-four days remaining in the mission, with two planets still to visit. If Anna and Colin wanted to play hardball in a standoff over Piper, could Dash afford to wait them out?

  “Hurry,” Chris urged. The Saw slithered and gnawed its way closer.

  Carly and Gabriel used their weight to press on the Simu Suit’s foamy limbs. Water poured out of it in seemingly endless streams. Their hands began to ache from pressing against the hard, knobbly pellets within. There was no way the suit would fold up as small as usual with all that baggage inside it.

  Chris was monitoring the Saw’s approach. “We can’t get ahead of it now,” he said finally. “The side tunnel is no longer an option.”

  Carly looked up in alarm. “It’s past the nearest crossroads?”

  “It’s probably coming here to drink,” Chris said. “We’ll have to wait inside the cavern.”

  They folded the Simu Suit as best they could and hefted it up behind Carly’s saddle. They secured it to Thunder’s haunches with rope that they lashed to the saddle straps. Thunder had the longest body of the three Weavers, and he didn’t seem to mind terribly having a mess of damp foam strapped to his rump. He calmly allowed them to work on him, as if he understood the importance of his duty.

  They climbed onto their Weavers. Barrel trotted willingly toward the water.

  “Great,” Gabriel grumbled. “Back into the lion’s den.”

  “Aww,” Carly said, nudging Thunder forward. “But the Stingers just love you.”

  Gabriel shot her a withering glare as they soared up into the cavern. They waited, protecting themselves from Stinger assault with the Weavers’ beating wings.

  Below, the Saw slithered its toolshed-sized face into the water.

  “Tunnel’s clear. Let’s get out of here,” Carly said.

  “You got me out of the cavern; I’ll get you out of the tunnels,” Gabriel promised. He and Barrel took the lead. “Let’s just hope that Saw didn’t completely mess with my plan.”

  “You have a plan?” Carly asked.

  “This is my coup de grace,” Gabriel assured her. “My biggest trick ever. Check it out.” He pulled one of the Jackals’ special neon-yellow-handled flashlights from his backpack and powered it on.

  In the darkness, the light that had been too pale to see earlier shone like a lantern. Like Weaver eyes, almost. Except the light cast a slightly darker, stronger beam. Carly could see it pointing ahead even though the tunnel was aglow with Weaver light.

  Gabriel swung the beam upward, and it reflected off a patch of something high on the wall.

  “Is that paint?” Carly asked.

  Gabriel nodded.

  “The paint from the safe?”

  “Yup. It is a tunnel navigation system,” he said, laughing. “It’s just a super low-tech one.” He flourished the light like an orchestra conductor waves a baton.

  Carly laughed too. “I guess so. Lead us back, maestro!”

  She and Chris followed as Gabriel led the way through the tunnels.

  “So this is why you’ve been bouncing off the walls?” Carly called.

  Gabriel grinned. “Go ahead. Doubt my methods. I won’t mind. I’ll be too busy saving our lives.”

  “And to think, I was feeling bad for you, not being able to fly straight,” Carly said. She was relieved to know Gabriel wasn’t such an inept rider after all. There was a method to his madness. “This paint trail’s gonna get us out of here?”

  “You better believe it.”

  The beat of the Weavers’ wings made a soft shushing noise around them. When the shushing grew louder, they almost didn’t notice until it was too late.

  “Saw!” Gabriel shouted. He yanked on the reins and Barrel reared back. Carly’s and Chris’s mounts reared back in echo, before they even had time to react.

  A Sawtooth Land Eel, moving much faster than the ones they’d encountered earlier, shimmied toward them through the tunnel. The gnashing teeth sounded like construction equipment.

  “Quick,” Gabriel screamed. “Get back, get back!”

  The three Weavers, acting on instinct no doubt, whinnied and wheeled around. They swooped away from the oncoming Saw, plunging back into the dark. It was a minute before Gabriel realized he was no longer actually steering his ride—the Weaver was flying in whatever direction it wanted. He quickly tightened the reins, and Barrel slowed to hover in place while the others caught up.

  Gabriel shone his light on the walls nearby. No sign of paint. “Uh-oh.”

  “Lost the trail?” Carly said.

  “We have to go back, then,” Chris said.

  “Straight into the jaws of death?” Carly said. “I don’t think so. What’s plan B?”

  “Uh…we could try to loop around.” Gabriel consulted the map. “This way.”

  He unsnapped the paint can at his waist. “I’ll start marking the trail again, so at least we can get back to this place later, if we need to.”

  Gabriel drew a giant G on the wall.

  Carly grinned. “Leaving your mark?”

  “You better believe it.” Gabriel raised the brush triumphantly, the way track runners do after crossing the finish line in first place. “I was here.”

  The Saw snapping behind them drew closer. Gabriel kept his brush at the ready as the Weavers bolted through the tunnel to stay ahead of the giant jaws.

  They circled to the right. It should have been a full circle, like going around the block. It should have
led them back to their old trail, but it didn’t. Gabriel saw no sign of his previous marks.

  And it felt like they were going down, deeper into the planet, not up toward the surface, Gabriel thought. They had to get back. He led them onto the next upward facing turn, and—

  “Oh no.”

  They were back at Gabriel’s giant G. He reined in Barrel and hovered as he stared, horrified, at his own handiwork.

  “And you wondered why they call this place Infinity,” Chris said dryly.

  “I’ve lost the trail completely,” Gabriel admitted. “We took a really bad turn somewhere.” A hopeless, sinking feeling descended upon him. Navigation was his responsibility. He had let the team down. They might be lost in these tunnels forever.

  “I think we only took one turn the first time,” Chris said. He pointed. “Back there.” The Saw that had originally chased them to this point would be long gone by now. They could double back the way they came.

  “Maybe we can find the trail again,” Carly said. “We have to keep trying.”

  “Okay,” Gabriel said, more confidently than he felt. He led them back, shining the dark light over the walls. Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Finally…

  “Aha!”

  Gabriel paused as the light glanced over the smallest snippet of a paint blotch. It had to be his own, from earlier. The genius of the Jackals’ special paint was that its potency faded over a matter of hours, Colonel Ramos had told him. Within a day or so, the trail would be gone forever—so as not to lead future travelers in the tunnels astray.

  Gabriel had his bearings now, but the area was still not safe. The sound of snapping jaws echoed from the tunnel ahead. They couldn’t see the Saw yet, but one was definitely coming. And untagged—Gabriel’s map showed the whole area around them as clear.

  “That’s the way we need to go,” Gabriel said, pointing in the direction of the sound. He’d lost the trail once. It wasn’t going to happen again.

  “Uh, we can’t…,” Chris said. “Start marking. We’ll just have to retrace our steps again later.” He started to retreat down the tunnel, but wheeled around almost immediately.