Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon (49 page)

Once more, mad scientist = crazy cat lady.

Dread crept up into Ray’s face, and my joy faltered. What horrible thing was he not telling me?

Closing his eyes, he whispered, “I still don’t know where Claire is.”

“I do. Juno has taken her to Kalyke. Claire’s power confuses Puppeteers. Juno thinks she can walk right up to Harvey and take over the moon, the gate, Jupiter, maybe the solar system.”

Ray grabbed my shoulders, and hauled me in for another hug. This one wasn’t as tight, but I could feel him shaking. His voice cracked. “I am… going… to hurt her.”

I pulled away carefully, and swatted him on the chest with the back of my hand. I had to go back to being the person who wouldn’t have gotten us into this mess. “We don’t kill people, even out in space where there are no rules. We’ll find some other way to make her regret this.”

And he grinned, and it was wonderful. Grabbing my hand, he dragged me through a tight wood-paneled hall, down some stairs into another tight, wood-paneled hall, and up to a clumsy airlock with two wheeled hatches. Both stood open, because on the other side…

…was the creepy scarlet interior of the Red Herring, and Juliet grinning nervously and fiddling with her blotchy black-and-white hair.

I could make one exception to my hatred and distrust of Puppeteer tech. Charging through the airlock, I threw myself onto Juliet in a hug that at least was at the bottom of the same league as the one I’d given Ray.

She held me much more gently, and looked me in the eyes. Well, her front pair of eyes looked me in the eyes. “I wish that we had leisure for me to tell you all the wonders I’ve seen. Instead, I… you have given me far too much already, but please, Penelope, will you save Harvey for me?”

“I’ve already agreed,” I assured her, and she gave me her ugly, adorable crooked grin. Looking up into it made me giggle, despite my terrible day.

Then a thought clicked into place in my head. I looked around the Red Herring, and out at the starscape through its giant monitor eye. “Wait. Harvey, you said that you’d help me if I helped you, but you must have sent Ray and Juliet to save me hours ago.”

Juliet looked curiously past me at the wall. I followed her gaze, and didn’t see anything, but I heard Harvey’s voice. “I would have saved you anyway. I told you, I am evil, and value individuals more than what they can do for the group.”

I smirked. “Yeah, well, same here. I’m going to save you and take down Juno no matter what. I set this in motion, and I have to stop it.”

ou know what I wanted? What I really, really wanted in the bottom of my soul? To not smell like sweat. I wanted it so bad that I strangled down the chilling fear I felt stepping into the Red Herring’s bathroom, and mostly succeeded in not screaming when it grabbed hold of me.

Facing my fear was so worth it. I staggered out fresh, clean, with silky dry hair and neatly tied ribbons, and ready to save the world. Any world. I had several to choose from.

Penelope’s Log: never play hooky. You will end up locked in a closet in the icy depths of space totally stinky and wearing armor that hasn’t been washed in days.

Giving my braids an extra flip, I walked up the space fish to the control deck. I was just in time to watch us approach Kalyke, which on the monitor looked like a giant, lopsided ball of red putty.

“Is all of that Puppeteer flesh?” I asked, morbidly fascinated.

“Uh huh. Its proper name, according to Harvey, is ‘bio-medium.’ I have personally argued that it cannot have a proper name, since he is translating into English from a completely alien language regardless. Oh, and there is quite a large rock underneath, of course.” Juliet made a show of flicking her hooved fingers across the monitor as if that were helping pilot us. I knew quite well she would fly this thing through the soles of her feet.

I resisted the urge to look at Juliet’s feet. I didn’t want to know how mutated they were, or how connected to the Red Herring.

Instead, I returned to the thought at hand. That was a whole lot of goo. “And that all came through the gate?”

Harvey’s voice answered this time. “As did humanity. As did the race that built the gate. As will the Jovians, if Juno reaches me. They are a race so used to relying on bio-control signals―”

“I still believe ‘animal magnetism’ is both better sounding and more accurate,” interjected Juliet.

“―that they view all other life as tools. Your intelligence is an unnecessary attachment to be pruned, like pulling the stem off an apple. They are the ones you should have called Puppeteers.” Harvey sounded pretty disgusted.

Ray had his head cocked. So, this wasn’t a voice in my brain. I glanced at the monitor in time to see us land.

I jumped, not because we landed with any kind of shock, but because the asteroid was so small. Even Ceres had a horizon. Yes, this was a really big rock, but, like, airport big. Not moon big.

The actual touchdown was so gentle, I had to wait a couple of seconds to be sure we’d landed. Half the moon’s surface was a big mouthlike crater. From the inside, it was obviously a hangar.

Trying not to think about what an idiot I’d look like if we left our spacesuits behind on Europa, I pointed at the gill slit airlock. “Is there an atmosphere out there?”

“And gravity, both provided by the race that built the gate. Their preferences are so close to Earth’s levels that the difference is negligible,” said Harvey.

Juliet held out both hands. The wall spat a pencil into one, and a small, tied-up pack of papers into the other. “Perhaps the gates are here because the Earth and its solar system suited their needs?”

I grunted. “I wish we had time to discuss it.” Raising an arm, I pulled my goggles into place while Archimedes climbed my arm into firing position.

Ray stepped up next to me in front of the airlock. His hand caught mine, and gave it a squeeze. If only I had time to blush about that. He was also unusually all business, asking with an entirely sober frown, “Do we have a plan?” That arch in his voice suggested we needed one, badly.

Fortunately, I agreed. “We do. Archimedes and I can psychically fight her to a standstill, so we double-team her. Whoever knocks her down, we hit her with a cursed penny. That will destroy her defenses, and I’ll use Archimedes to knock her out. And then…” I took a deep breath. “Harvey uses his surgical skills to remove her psychic powers. Once she’s no longer a conduit for the Jovians, she’s not our problem anymore.”

The Red Herring’s monitor eye turned, showing me Calvin’s ship landed at the other end of the hangar. Harvey said, “Please hurry. She is already inside the tunnel system.”

Ray and I stepped out into the red-shelled crater, and I gave his hand one more squeeze. “We’re coming for you, Claire.” Then I let go and tried to think about business and not giggle.

A dash of guilt should do. I had something I didn’t want to say out loud. If we kept Juno so busy she lost her grip on Claire, we’d have the fight in the bag. Claire was the crown royal princess of sucker punches and surprise attacks.

A crack formed in the ground at our feet. It led off towards one wall. Being friends with the sentient moon Juno was invading would make this a whole lot simpler.

We followed, and I looked back to see the crack seal up behind us.

I had to fight the urge to run. When we caught up with Juno, I would need to be at full strength. We followed Harvey’s trail into a corridor, and the deeper we got, the more I looked around in surprise. It really was a corridor! I’d expected perfectly round tunnels, with all kinds of bulging cysts and dripping mucus and breathing vents and stuff like that. Nope. The walls might be made of red chitin and the corners rounded, but this man-sized, squared off hallway was downright boring.

“How big a lead does she have?” I asked the walls.

The shell split into a face, with bubble eyes and a jagged, beaked mouth. “Difficult to say. The perfect organism is too distracting. I get lost admiring how she freely touches and reacts to all life around her, how her body adapts to―”

“Focus, Harvey!” I barked. Criminy, Claire’s power really did a number on him.

A new face opened up ahead of us, replacing the one we’d left behind. “I can deny her nothing. If I segregate my senses from my abstract reason, I know that the Jovian relay must be physically close to her. I would not block the perfect organism from wherever she wants to go, but I am encouraging her to take longer, more interesting paths.”

“It’s not all blank, straight corridors, huh?” I grinned despite the gravity of the situation.

My grin disappeared as the hallway in front of me buckled, chitinous shards stabbing inward. I drew myself up short and squeaked, “Sorry! Sorry! You don’t have to take it personally!”

The ceiling, walls, and floor smoothed out, leaving only a network of cracks. Suddenly distant, Harvey said, “I apologize. A pain reaction. Human vehicles have arrived. They have fired incendiary projectiles at the surface. One vehicle is landing. Another is chasing Juliet and the Red Herring, but they have no realistic chance of catching her.”

I groaned. Tesla’s Nine Engineering Degrees!

Ray grimaced, too, tugging down the brim of his hat. “Collateral damage. Bystander casualties.”

I groaned louder, throwing in some exasperated ‘arrrg!’ “Do we have time to go back?”

Harvey’s voice echoed out of several different cracks in the damaged walls. None of them quite kept the same rhythm, making the words sound slurred. “I am indulging the guilty pleasure of luring the perfect specimen through the respiratory tunnels. The effect of the wind―”

I rolled my eyes. Even alien boys were all the same! “Right, right. Give in to temptation. Run with that as long as you can. We’ll… I don’t know. We’d better figure something out fast.”

Turning around confronted me with more cracked walls and floors. The only part of the corridor that hadn’t convulsed and turned into a sharp-edged death trap was the bit Ray and I had stood in. Not only was it nice not to be punctured, it was sweet of Harvey to protect us even while being shot.

At least, we weren’t that far. It took, what, a couple of minutes to get back to the landing crater? We ended up back in the same in the doorway, looking out and up on a huge, fat Rotor spaceship. Their ships looked a lot like their space stations, bloated boats with biplane wings and propellers. People crowded around a huge exit ramp.

Someone saw us. I knew this, because the white spots of flame guns shot out at us.

“Have you lost your minds? We’re human! Stop shooting!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

“Bad Penny?” The shooting stopped.

Ray and I ran closer. A bunch of Rotors, men and women, were setting up barricades, sitting atop security platforms that had been jury-rigged to copy Remmy’s, watching the walls and floor with guns pointed everywhere, and unloading barrels with big flame stamps and ‘DANGER’ painted on them.

The presence of those last did not make me happy.

I slowed down when we were close enough to have at least a shouted conversation. “What are you doing here? This place is dangerous! Go home!”

One of the walkers stomped up to the metal sawhorses marking the barricade. It crouched down, and on its back, Sabrina lifted her goggles to shout back, “No! Not again! We’re not going to cower in our homes anymore hoping the Puppeteers have forgotten us. We represent all the remaining human colonies, and we’re going to burn out the entire infestation. We’ll burn this place down to the rock, and take back the gate to Earth so no monsters can ever come through again!”