Lost Planet 01 - The Lost Planet (31 page)

Chase sat down in a chair and put his fists on his forehead.

“What's wrong?” asked Parker.

“I keep thinking this is going to be a trap. Last time we were here, Lennard hated me, and he wanted Maurus dead.”

Parker shook his head. “Yeah, but last time we were here, he thought you were a clone. Surviving that disperser was proof enough to everyone that you're really Chase Garrety. That, and the microchip you had under your scalp.”

Chase touched the back of his head. The microchip, Dr. Silvestri … everything on Trucon seemed like it had happened ages ago. “Too bad the chip got destroyed.”

“But that wound you had there, you probably got that before you were dispersed. It left a bit of a scar, right? No clone would have that. It's proof of who you are. As for how the captain knows you, that's something you'll have to find out from him.”

“What about Maurus? Last time, Lennard was pretending not to know anything about the Trucon attack and setting Maurus up to be executed. Did he change sides?”

Parker dragged a finger across the table, and a console illuminated in its shiny surface. He started flipping through screens, frowning as he spoke. “Lennard wasn't pretending. He was never involved in the plot against Trucon. He was set up, just like Maurus was—he sent him out on a falsified report, and he believed everything that happened afterward was Maurus's fault. After we escaped, I think he realized this. When Maurus called the mission bogus, he must have taken a second look and figured it out.”

“But he was working with Fersad. I saw it myself—he was going to pay him off.”

Parker grinned. “I bet he did. Apparently you weren't watching the newsfeed in your transport. Check this out.” He scrolled through a few screens, and landed on a video feed of a blond reporter standing in an area that looked like the Shank.

“And it's no surprise the Karsha Ven's response to this news has been abject denial,” she said. “I'm Parri Dietz, here on Qesaris with a surprising turn of events in the story of the millennium, the attack on Trucon—if you've been watching, you'll know that I was just speaking with Captain Lionel Lennard, commander of the
IFF Kuyddestor
, who has stepped forward to exonerate his officer Lieutenant E. Maurus, previously the prime suspect in the attack.”

The screen switched to a recording of Captain Lennard glaring at the camera, his eyebrows drawn in a fierce frown. “We had attempted to maintain cover in order not to ruin the months of undercover work that my soldier did posing as a Karsha Ven militant, but recent events have made it necessary for me to take this information public. I can vouch that Lieutenant Maurus was
not
involved in the Trucon attack—he had nothing to do with it, and was acting under my orders to investigate a Lyolian trafficking ring in the Ganthas colonies. It was simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I've pulled him from the field, and he's currently recuperating in an undisclosed location.”

The image flashed back to the reporter. “Supporting this statement is the taped confession we recently received from a Kekilly mercenary named Fersad who claims to have knowledge that the Karsha Ven was in fact behind this attack, and that he provided them the means to their advanced weaponry by linking them with a black-market weapons dealer named Jonah Masters.”

Chase looked up from the screen. “Asa?”

Parker touched the image to pause it and nodded. “When Lennard's team caught Fersad leaving Bennin's hideout, the captain must have bribed him to say that Asa was the one who helped the Karsha Ven get their hands on the thermodetonators—the ones that someone in the Fleet actually gave to their own soldiers.”

“But … Asa couldn't have agreed to this. Now they'll be after him. What did he say?”

Parker stared Chase in the eyes for a moment. “He didn't say anything. He's gone.”

Chase gasped. “He died?”

“What? No—while you were letting yourself get blown to smithereens, Mina helped him up and they booked it out Bennin's escape passage.”

“They just left?” After all that Mina had done to protect Parker, Chase couldn't imagine she'd abandon him in the heat of battle.

Parker made a wry face. “I'm sure it wasn't personal. Mina was created to protect me, but Asa's her true owner, not me. Apparently in her settings, ‘Asa in mortal danger' overrides ‘Parker in mortal danger.' Anyhow, his not being there to defend himself gave Lennard an easy scapegoat to put in Maurus's place.”

“But it wasn't Asa or the Karsha Ven that attacked Trucon,” Chase said. “It was someone in the Fleet. They'll know, and come after Maurus.”

“Not likely,” said Parker. “Whoever planned this wanted it to look like an attack by the Karsha Ven, right? So in effect they got what they wanted. Now they can't step forward without identifying themselves.”

“But now they know that Lennard knows the truth…,” said Chase.

Parker nodded and leaned back in his chair. “Which means that Captain Lennard, and Maurus, and basically everyone on this ship are going to have to watch their backs.”

*   *   *

Chase stared at the metal walls of the tiny room that the quartermaster had assigned him, picking at a plate of rehydrated beans and noodles. It was a space of his own, but it was far from comforting—it looked like someone had thrown a bed and table into a supply closet. And although he knew he wasn't a prisoner on the
Kuyddestor
this time, he jumped every time he heard a noise in the hallway outside his room.

He'd been on the ship almost a full day and still hadn't been allowed to see his sister, and it was driving him crazy. Parker had finally told him she'd fallen back into a coma during transit to the
Kuyddestor
, and Forquera said she was being treated in an isolation unit of the medical ward. Chase thought that if he was able to see her, to squeeze her hand, maybe that would speed her recovery. He wanted more than anything to look her in the eyes and feel a connection with her again.

The door to his room slid open, and Captain Lennard stood in the doorway. His presence was as imposing as ever, but his pale eyes looked weary. “Hello, Chase. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to come talk with you.” He pulled a chair up to the table. “How are you doing?”

Chase set down his fork, feeling like he had so many questions that he might explode. He started with the biggest one. “What am I?”

Lennard ran a hand over his face. “I wish I knew. We never saw any signs that you had inherited anything.”

“What do you mean?” Chase asked, growing agitated. “How do you know so much about me?”

“Chase, I've known you since you were a baby. I knew your parents long before you were born.”

This still wasn't an answer. Chase wanted to scream with frustration. Instead he repeated slowly, “What do you mean?”

Lennard nodded and cleared his throat. “Let me start at the beginning. I met your parents nineteen years ago, when I was a lieutenant on the DR-Explorer
Roscommon.
I found them hiding in the cargo hold—they were stowaways. At first I thought they were just a pair of regular Earthan teenagers running away from home, but they were more than that.

“They told me how they had just escaped from some sort of genetic modification program, that their lives were in danger. I should have turned them in to the master-at-arms, but they begged me not to. They were so frightened—even though I suspect they could have snapped my neck if they needed to—and from the way they acted, it seemed as if something very traumatic had happened to them. So instead of reporting them, I helped them find a place to hide, and we formed a friendship that lasted…” He trailed off and closed his eyes.

Chase absorbed the information hungrily, building a rough image of his parents in his head as the captain spoke. As the pieces of his past began to fit together, he was filled with a strange combination of relief and melancholy. Finally, here was the answer to where he came from, why he was different—but he knew these explanations wouldn't have a happy ending.

“What kind of genetic modification?” he asked quietly.

“They never explained that to me, though it was clear that they were different because of it. From the outside, they looked like normal Earthans, but they were light-years smarter than anyone I've ever met, and their senses seemed … heightened. I swear they could communicate with each other without saying a word, just like the Falasians do. I knew they were afraid of the consequences their modifications would have on any children they might have, but they were in love. And you were born, and you were so normal. And then came Lilli.

“Even when she was a baby, your parents started to notice strange things. They would lay her down for a nap in her bedroom, then walk out into the living room to see her sitting on the floor, playing with an orange. But they'd turn around, and there she was, lying in her crib. We called what she does ‘traveling.' She can be in one place and produce an identical copy of herself anywhere else. At first it was fascinating, but then we began to see the possible dangers of her ability—we had no control over where she goes, what she sees, who sees her. If she receives a cut on her traveling copy, the same cut manifests itself on her original body. That was when your parents placed a special sort of tracking chip under her scalp, and for safety's sake they gave you one as well.”

So that was how Lilli had attacked him in the café—she'd sent a traveling copy of herself—while the whole time her real body had been strapped down on a hospital gurney, a captive of the Fleet. Trackable by the same technology that Chase had carried. Asa's technology.

“Do you know where they got the chips from?” he asked.

Lennard shook his head. “They never told me. I'm sure they had contact with more people than just me, but you grew up hidden in a deep corner of the galaxy, isolated from the rest of the universe. Your parents wanted nothing to do with the outside world.”

It was possible Chase's parents had simply bought the microchips on the black market, looking for a dealer who could keep their transaction confidential. But then how would Asa have known that Chase was different? If he was a friend of the family, wouldn't he have claimed Chase as soon as he saw him on the
Kuyddestor
instead of pretending not to know him? Chase's mind turned to another, darker possibility—that Asa, with his shady connections, had somehow been involved in the Garretys' eventual downfall. Maybe he was the one who led their attackers to their home. It would take time for Chase to sort out all his suspicions, and he wished he'd had more time to demand everything Asa could tell him about his parents.

“So what happened to them?” he asked, his stomach tightening with dread at what he knew would come next.

Captain Lennard sighed heavily. “Everything was fine until about four weeks ago, when I tried to contact your parents and got no response. That had never happened before.” He lowered his head and massaged his temples with his thumbs, pausing for a moment before he continued.

“By the time I was able to get to your home, it was clear that whoever your parents had escaped from had finally found them. Your house was empty, and there were signs that there had been a struggle. I took a molecular readout, and found biotraces of your mother, your father, and you. Hard evidence that all three of you had been killed with a particle disperser.”

Although he already knew most of this information, Chase watched his own hands tremble as the captain spoke. He remembered something Parker had said to him once, when they first met:
Maybe what happened to you is so horrible, once you find out, you'll wish you never knew.

“Why not Lilli? Why did they keep her alive?”

“They must have known about her ability, and I'm sure there were people who wanted to learn more about what she could do. You, they eliminated, because they thought you were just a normal boy. We all did.” Lennard was looking at Chase with a strange, almost pleading expression on his face. “Can you imagine my shock at seeing you, who I
knew
was dead, turning up on my ship over three weeks later? I was completely consumed with my search for Lilli. It was impossible that you'd survived, and with everything that had just happened on Trucon, I assumed someone was setting a trap for me. How could I have known?”

“So why did I survive? What am I?”

“Chase, the combination of your parents' altered DNA must have given you a genetic advantage we couldn't see. Whether or not your phasing ability existed before the incident, I can't say, but my ship's doctor thinks that when you were dispersed in your home, it triggered a change in your molecular makeup. Your particles were spread far and wide, which should have killed you, but instead they managed to find their way back together. Unfortunately it seems that your memory didn't rejoin the rest of you.”

“So I'll never remember my life before this? I remember everything that happened before Bennin tried to disperse me. Isn't there a chance I'll get my memory back?”

Lennard frowned. “When you turned the disperser on yourself yesterday, you got kind of blurry but stayed in the room with us. Your body came back together quickly. But the first time you were dispersed, it was completely different.” He gave Chase a cautious, sad look, as if he were trying to soften the blow of bad news. “After you were attacked at home, two weeks passed before you reappeared on Trucon. It's possible your body just didn't know how to reassemble itself yet. Dispersal is violent, sudden—and the brain is such a complex organ, it's not really a surprise that yours sustained a serious injury. You're lucky to be alive.”

Chase stared at the half-eaten food on his plate. His parents were gone, and he might never even know who they were, what they sounded like or looked like. An idea occurred to him.