“Move!” Maurus leapt up, grabbing a branch above them as the rest of the nest began to break apart. Chase scrambled for a branch, but the one he grabbed splintered away from the tree.
With a shout, Maurus reached out and caught his arm, hanging on to the tree with one hand and Chase with the other. The branch Chase had grabbed splashed into the mud.
“Hang on! Grab something!” Maurus pulled Chase higher, and Chase reached for a nearby branch. There was another sharp cracking noise above, and a shot of panic raced through Chase.
Then it happened again, out of his control: Although Maurus had a tight grip on his arm, Chase slipped through as though his arm had simply dissolved, and plummeted toward the sea.
He smacked into the mud hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and the sludge sucked him down deeper. Below the surface it was thick and silent. He wasn't even sure which way was up. His chest began to hitch for oxygen, and mud shot up his nose. His mind screamed incoherent thoughts.
So this was what it felt like to die.
A strong arm reached around his chest, and someone began jerking him upward. He gasped for breath as he broke the surface and wiped the mud from his face and eyes, coughing and spitting.
“Here,” said Maurus, pushing him up toward the lowest branch. Chase grabbed hold of it, but it peeled away from the tree and dropped into the mud. Maurus reached for the next branch up, but it pulled off as well. Tree limbs rained down around them, as though the tree were shedding them voluntarily, and with them came Mina and Parker, tumbling into the mud. Mina looped one arm around Parker and towed him to the next tree, but its low branches came off in her hands as well.
“It doesn't want us on it,” called Maurus. “The trees are somehow all connected, and they don't want us to climb them. Parker must have poisoned them.”
Chase clung to the wide trunk of a tree, but there was no easy handhold and he kept slipping. Finally he let himself sink a little, so only his nose and his eyes were above the surface.
“No! Hold on!” Maurus reached over and grabbed Chase under the armpit. “Don't let go!”
“I can't hold on forever,” mumbled Chase, spitting out more mud. He tried to keep his grip, but he was hot and exhausted and couldn't breathe. Blackness crept into the edges of his vision again, and Maurus's face seemed to be getting smaller and farther away. At least Parker wasn't dead yet, because the sound of his retching carried over the mud, interrupted by the choked rattle of his breathing.
Chase knew he was nearing his physical limit as a roaring sound filled his ears, growing progressively louder. Maurus screamed something, probably telling him to hold on, but he just couldn't anymore.
Maurus grew frantic, waving an arm wildly. He let go of the tree and splashed out, struggling to paddle away from the jungle. Was he trying to go back to the shuttle, to see if they could still climb back onto it? Chase used his last ounce of strength to turn and look.
A dark shadow passed across the mud, and a moment later, a narrow airship broke through the haze, skimming over the sea, engines roaring. Maurus waved his arms to get the ship's attention. The vehicle approached and hovered, as Maurus fought his way back and pulled Chase from the tree.
“Go get Parker,” Chase mumbled as they swam back out to the airship.
“Mina's bringing him,” panted Maurus. “Get in!”
A hatch on the airship opened, and a man in a bulky insulated jumpsuit and reflective helmet leaned out and reached for Chase, grabbing him under the arms and pulling him inside the ship. He dragged Chase into the middle of the cabin floor and crouched down in front of him.
“Were you the ones with the distress signal?” the man shouted, his voice muffled by the helmet. “An escape shuttle, NQR coordinates?”
Chase gaped stupidly back at his own distorted reflection on the man's visor. Of courseâthese people had followed the shuttle's distress beacon. He nodded, and the man turned back to the door and left him sitting in the dark interior.
When all four of them had been pulled on board, dripping mud everywhere, the man gestured outside to ask if there were any others, and Maurus made a cutting motion under his chin to indicate that there were not. The man went to the front of the ship, where a pilot sat at the controls, and the door sealed shut.
Parker lay with his head in Mina's lap, his arms and legs trembling. “This boy needs immediate medical attention,” she said.
Maurus crouched by Parker's feet and held his ankles down. “He was exposed to Goxar poison almost twenty-four hours ago.”
The man in the space suit pressed the barrel of a handblaster against Maurus's temple.
“It's the end of the road for you, Lieutenant Maurus,” he said in a cold voice.
Chase looked up, and with a gasp he noticed the elliptical symbols on everythingâthe equipment, the walls, the space suit. The Fleet had found them.
Maurus reacted instantly, throwing his hand up to knock the blaster away and tackling the man to the floor. He landed a solid punch to the man's side before lunging for the pilot, who had already jumped up from the controls. Swinging an arm around, the pilot planted a taser into Maurus's back with a sizzle. He wavered for a moment and dropped to the floor.
“No!” cried Chase, jumping to his feet.
The pilot turned to him, pulling off a shiny helmet and flicking a long dark ponytail out from underneath. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes glittered. “You want to go next?” she asked, snapping the taser at him.
The man Maurus had knocked over removed his helmet, revealing a narrow, grimacing face. “I don't think that will be necessary, Vidal,” he said dryly. He glared at Chase. “Sit down.” The pilot returned to the controls, and the man pulled a set of shackles from a drawer and used them to bind Maurus's hands behind his back.
The cabin darkened as they zoomed out of the atmosphere and left the mud planet behind. Blue track lights illuminated along the floor. Chase sank to the floor, numb with despair. Their run was over; Maurus was a dead man. And whatever it was about Chase that had caused the Fleet to raid Dr. Silvestri's lab, he was probably about to learn.
Beside him, Parker arched into another seizure, his feet beating a staccato rhythm against the floor. Mina lifted his head up to keep him from choking.
Chase tried to hold Parker's feet down. “Help!”
The man came over and pressed two fingers to Parker's muddy neck, jerking his hand away when he noticed the crust of yellow foam around his mouth. He shook his head with a frown. “Kid's not going to make it.”
“Come on, Parker, stay with us,” pleaded Chase. Parker jerked violently on the floor, making horrible choked noises. This couldn't be happeningâhe couldn't just die like this.
On the other side of the cabin, Maurus began to stir, moaning and cursing when he realized that his hands were bound. “Forquera, you traitor,” he hissed.
With a snarl, Forquera wheeled around on his heels and wrapped his hands around Maurus's throat.
“Say that again,” he growled. “Try it.”
Parker's feet drummed against the floor. Mina pulled him upright, trying to clear the thick foam out of his airway. A nasty odor hit Chase's nose as the bio-molding on her fingers began to dissolve.
“Stop!” Chase shouted at Forquera, trying to grab Parker's arms to keep him from hurting himself. “Please, help us!”
But Forquera ignored them, choking Maurus until his eyes rolled back in his head. By the time he took his hands off Maurus's throat, Parker's feet had stopped kicking.
Because Parker had stopped breathing altogether.
Â
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next minute was a blur.
Forquera shouted orders and moved around them, but all Chase saw was Mina pumping Parker's chest and fishing in his mouth to try to clear his blocked airway. His own voice, shouting Parker's name over and over again, rang strangely in his ears, as if it were being shouted from the other end of a long hall.
Colored lights streaked past the front windshield as the airship decelerated and drew to a stop. Outside, the rhythmic stomp of approaching bootsteps grew louder. The hatch on the side of their vehicle cracked open, and soldiers streamed in, shouting and pointing their weapons at Maurus. He struggled to sit upright, his face set in a defensive snarl.
“On your feet!” yelled an officer.
“Where is the medical bay?” Mina demanded, her voice nearly drowned out by the shouting and commotion around them.
Forquera waved his hand to get someone's attention. “Reyes! Take these two straight to sickbay.” Without so much as a glance back at Chase, Mina scooped up Parker and jumped off the airship.
A pair of soldiers dragged Maurus to his feet and shoved him out the hatch. He shouted as he crashed to the floor. Chase tried to follow, but one of the soldiers cut him off with the nose of his weapon.
“Colonel, what do you want to do with this one?”
Colonel Forquera examined Chase, a frown darkening his lean face. “Keep him with Maurus for now. We'll let the captain decide.”
The soldier prodded Chase toward the exit hatch. Their airship had parked in an enormous flight bay with a high white ceiling. Rows of other small spacecraft lined the floorâsome similar to the one they had arrived on, others sleek black fightersâand soldiers in blue jumpsuits moved around the vehicles in a constant stream of activity. An empty pathway cut through the middle of the room, ending at a tall interlocking door.
Maurus had been shoved out to the middle of the floor. The activity in the hangar came to a halt as everyone stopped working to stare at him. Silence fell across the room. Maurus sat stiffly, his hands still bound behind his back, hair and clothes matted with dried orange mud.
“Murderer!” cried a thin voice from the back of the hangar.
Maurus locked gazes with Chase. His dark eyes boiled, though with fury or fear, Chase could not tell.
Something nudged Chase in the back. “Keep going,” said the soldier behind him. Colonel Forquera pushed past, glancing around at the crowd as he stepped down out of the airship. Chase followed him across the hangar, feeling conspicuous in the cracked layer of mud, but hardly any of the soldiers bothered to look his way.
“We should just eject this traitor out the spaceway right now, Colonel,” said a tall blond officer who stood closest to Maurus. “Never should have let this kind of filth into the Fleet.” He looked down at Maurus and spat.
Maurus kicked out and tried to sweep the officer's feet out from under him. With a curse, the officer jumped back, reaching for his handblaster.
“Stand down, Lieutenant Derrick!” said Forquera angrily. The officer scowled and dropped his hand. “On your feet,” he said to Maurus. “You still have to go through decontamination.”
Maurus staggered upright, swaying to catch his balance without the use of his hands. A trickle of sweat cut a dark line through the mud caking his face.
A shout echoed across the bay: “Captain on deck!”
On the far side of the hangar, a set of doors flew open as Captain Lennard burst through. Chase recognized his pitted face from the transmission he'd seen on Vo's ship. The captain was barrel-chested, with close-cropped hair that might once have been brown but now was sprinkled thickly with gray. His pale eyes blazed as he charged toward them and stopped just short of Maurus, and his lip curled up in a snarl. “You⦔
A tangible anticipation hovered over the hangar as everyone, including Chase, waited to see what the captain would say to Maurus. Someone in the back coughed, and Lennard glanced around the flight bay, anger twisting his face.
“What are you all doing?” he shouted. “Don't you have jobs to do?”
Noise surged as everyone rushed back to work.
Forquera snapped a salute. “Captain, I was about to take them over to decontamination. They were in some sort of swamp down on the Zeta, but there were no known reads on any possible toxins they may have picked up.”
The captain turned his fierce gaze on Chase, whose pulse quickened as he stared back like an animal caught in a trap. “Who is this?”
Forquera paused. “He was on the surface with Lieutenant Maurus, sir. There were two others, an android and a boy with Goxar poisoning. Ensign Reyes already took them to sickbay. It didn't look like the boy was going to make it.”
Captain Lennard cocked his head. “Was the android poisoned too, Forquera? Send word to sickbay that it should be restrained. I don't need a rogue andy running around my ship.”
“Sorry, Captain.” Forquera ducked back and spoke into a device on his wrist.
The captain turned back to Maurus. “Move,” he growled, pointing to a door. Maurus turned away from him and led the way, shoulders thrown back defiantly. Forquera gestured to Chase that he should follow. A soldier in a blue jumpsuit met the four of them at the door, swiping the door open with a badge hanging around his neck, and they entered a long room lined with shower stalls that would have seemed like a communal bathroom were it not for the strange medicinal smell in the air.
As soon as the door closed behind them, the captain whipped around and with a powerful backhand knocked Maurus to the floor.
“Scum!” he spat. “Your treachery has taken thousands of innocent lives.”
Of course the captain had to keep up the façade of blaming Maurus for the Trucon disaster. His crew wouldn't know about his involvement in the sabotageâhe certainly wouldn't admit to it in front of them. Chase waited for Maurus to reveal to everyone in the room that Lennard was the true criminal, but lying on his back where he'd fallen, Maurus only pressed his lips tightly together and shook his head.
Lennard continued. “If it weren't for the need to maintain the integrity of the Fleet, I'd execute you on the spot.”
Maurus barked out a short laugh. “Integrity? I truly hope you don't believe that.”