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There was a beeping in his room, and then Pinky’s voice.
“May I have a word?”
“Uh, sure,” Benny said.
The AI appeared in front of him.
“Benny …” She paused for a moment. “I don’t disagree with the choices you’re making right now. In fact, I think you’re doing everything in your power to try to figure out the problem of the Alpha Maraudi. But that’s the issue. I’ve been monitoring your heart rate, and I’m a bit concerned that you might be pushing yourself too hard. I don’t want you to burn out. There’s nothing wrong with taking a break and trying to relax.”
“Relax?” Benny asked. “How am I supposed to relax? If anything, we’re not moving fast enough. What if the aliens are already on their way back to the Earth? What if they’re on the Moon. What if at any moment—”
“You aren’t making me feel any better.” Her expression softened as she put her hands on her hips. “I know a lot about you, Benny. All your background information and application materials are stored on my servers. I’ve watched you rally the kids here and lead them to victory. I can’t imagine how tough that’s been. I know …” She sat down on the bed beside him. “I know you’re worried about your family. Alejandro. Justin. Your grandmother. The rest of your caravan. But you have to take care of yourself, too.”
“There’s just so much going on,” Benny said, staring down at the shining metal on his palm. “How do I know if what we’re doing is going to work or help us at all?”
“You don’t. In the same way Elijah didn’t know if his first Space Runner prototype would fly. And you didn’t know if you could stop the asteroids. Sometimes you have to just believe in yourself and take a leap of faith.”
“I’m pretty sure Elijah did a million tests on the Space Runner before he took it out. And it’s not like we were flying blind up there earlier. We had all your charts and graphs and had tested some of the lasers ourselves.”
“Benny, I’m trying to comfort you here, and as a holographic facsimile with no physical body, you’re going to have to work with me a little on this.”
He snorted, and then took a deep breath.
“Is there anything else I can do or say to make this easier?” Pinky asked.
Benny looked over at her. “Do you really think Elijah’s alive? I know you said so in the thing you sent out, but …”
Pinky stood and took a few slow steps away from him. “I don’t know,” she said. She turned to the screen that made up the wall across from Benny’s bed. Suddenly, videos of Elijah filled the space. He jetted across lunar mares in souped-up muscle cars. He winked at the camera while waving to Taj guests. In a smaller video in the background, he presented what must have been the real Pinky with a bouquet of shiny chrome roses. The AI smiled a sad smile. “But, despite all the mistakes he made, I really hope he is.”
“Yeah,” Benny said. “Me, too.”
Pinky shook her head. The screen went black again. “Jasmine and Hot Dog are already down in the garage. You don’t want to keep your friends waiting.”
“Right,” Benny said. “And, uh … thanks, Pinky.”
“You were right in your application video, you know. You already have changed the world. I have the most advanced processing power of any computer known to man, and there’s no scenario my processors can run in which your father wouldn’t be beaming with pride at your accomplishments.”
And then she was gone.
Benny took one last look at his hand before pulling off the golden glove and shoving it into the pocket of his space suit. Then, he took a deep breath and headed for the door.
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Everyone else was in the garage by the time Benny made his way down. The warehouse-like building hadn’t changed much since the first time Benny had seen it a week before: a ceiling of bright white light reflected off the dark, polished floors, and the acrid scents of electronics and oil hung heavily in the air. Almost all the classic cars that had been retrofitted as Space Runners or Moon buggies had been hidden away underground by the McGuyvers – the solar system’s best mechanics – just in case the asteroid storm had managed to break through the Taj’s defences. The only vehicles left were the ones they’d attached mining lasers to and flown into space earlier that day. Those Space Runners sat in neat lines on one side of the room, some blackened and scorched by enemy fire. On the other side, Jasmine chatted with Pinky and Ash McGuyver while Hot Dog catalogued the contents of a supply box in front of her. Off to the side, Drue sat in a chair with his arms crossed and lips pressed together in a sulk. Bo McGuyver, a huge, hulking man, stood over him, staring down at Drue over the bridge of his crooked nose while wiping his greasy hands on the front of his coveralls.
“I told you, I’m not going to touch anything I’m not supposed to!” Drue said. Bo remained silent. “Do you even know who I am? Who my dad is? I’m a Lincoln. We are very important on Earth.” As Benny walked by, Drue perked up. “Hey, tell him it’s OK for me to be here!”
Before Benny could answer, Jasmine’s voice rang through the garage. “Yes! Here!”
Benny raised a finger to Drue. “One sec.”
Drue huffed but stayed seated as Benny made his way to the huddle. “Tell me you’ve got some good news,” he said.
“Jasmine thinks she’s figured out where this Bale guy might be hiding out,” Hot Dog said. “So much for Elijah being the smart one.”
“Well, maybe,” Jasmine said. “And I’m sure Elijah could have found him if he’d actually tried to. From everything Pinky and Trevone mentioned, it sounds like a reunion with Dr Bale wasn’t a big priority to him.”
“True,” Pinky said. “I think he’d rather have forgotten the man ever existed.”
“Anyway, I looked at places where it seemed like he’d been camping based on evidence the Pit Crew or Elijah came across while exploring. Which, honestly, is mainly just a few footprints and Space Runner landing marks. Dr Bale and his team did a great job of cleaning up after themselves.”
She pulled on one chrome corner of her HoloTek to extend it and then held it up to Benny, showing him a map of the far side of the Moon with several yellow dots on it.
“I think he was hiding in the Daedalus crater for a while, but given when the footprints were discovered and factoring in the amount of time it would have taken to get to Hot Dog and leave her supplies after she went down, this might be his movement pattern.” She tapped on the screen and blinking lines connected the dots. “Fortunately, he’s heading closer to us.”
“Yeah,” Hot Dog said, pointing to the dot on the left side of the HoloTek. “Turns out there was some kind of energy ping around here right after I got shot down and before you guys found me.”
“It was just before our satellites were destroyed,” Pinky said. “The energy signature was comparable to that of a hyperdrive engine.”
“I’d suggest we search this group of mares,” Jasmine continued, gesturing to a spot on the map. “It’s actually not far from the alien base, relatively speaking, which means it’s possible that’s where he’s headed. Maybe for shelter. He might have seen the storm coming.”
“Uh.” Hot Dog groaned. “Didn’t we kind of leave a big hole leading into the underground tunnels back there? Maybe we should get that fixed.”
Ash McGuyver snapped her gum. “Bo and I will take care of it, no problem.”
“Perfect!” Drue said, springing into the middle of their group. “So, what, we’ll just head out and search the crater. Easy.”
“It’s not that simple.” Jasmine waved two fingers across the map, zooming in. “These mares – if he’s even there – can be almost a hundred kilometres in diameter.”
“Uh, can you talk to me in miles, Jazz?” Benny asked. “Or, better yet, how many Tajs is that?”
“The search area is the size of two or three cities. Big ones.” She shook her head. “Honestly, how has everyone not picked up the metric system yet?”
“Don’t lump me into your science shaming,” Drue said. “My tutors taught me both. This should still be pretty easy, though. It’s a whole lot of nothing out there, right? Plus, don’t we have sensors and stuff like that?”
“Heat sensors, energy sensors, you name it,” Ash said. “But if Bale has a way of messing with those, you kids are on your own.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Drue asked.
“One last thing,” Pinky said, furrowing her eyebrows a bit. “Remember that Dr Bale and Elijah don’t have the greatest history together. And in a way … you are sort of intruding on his territory.”
“Yeah,” Benny said. He looked at Drue. “We’ll be careful.”
Even as Benny spoke, though, Drue was racing towards the Space Runners. “I call whatever goes fastest!”
“You’ll take the laser-armed SRs or you’ll stay here,” Ash yelled after him. She wiped her hands on her coveralls. “That boy’ll be the death of me.”
“Jazz, you’ll navigate us, yeah?” Benny asked as they made their way to the vehicles.
“Sure,” she said, but her cheeks flushed a little. “Just, uh, don’t mind me if I get a little behind. I haven’t had much actual experience flying these things.”
Hot Dog winked at her. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.”
They slid into four of the Space Runners with Mustang-red stripes painted across them. A holographic map appeared on Benny’s windshield, a blinking line cutting across the projected lunar surface.
“Here’s our path,” Jasmine’s voice came through the comms, filling the cabin of Benny’s vehicle. “I suggest a diamond flight pattern so we can keep an eye on the surface and each other.”
“Agreed,” Hot Dog said. “Benny, you take the front, Drue and I will take the sides, and Jasmine can bring up the rear.”
Benny waited for Drue to protest that he should take the lead, but he didn’t say anything.
“All right,” Benny said. “Pinky, open up the auxiliary pressurisation tunnel. Uh, please.”
And then they were off, shooting one by one out of the Grand Dome and into the stillness of the Moon’s imperceptible atmosphere.
“Race you guys to the mare,” Drue said over the comms. His Space Runner shot forward. “Last one there has to tell Ricardo we left.”
“Formation, Drue,” Hot Dog said. “We went over this.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He took his spot at Benny’s right again.
“We’re a good half-hour away from this search zone,” Jasmine said, “but we should keep an eye out for anything odd, just in case.”
Benny laughed a little to himself, thinking what a strange thing this was to hear, considering the fact that they were setting out to hunt for a mysterious doctor hiding on the dark side of the Moon to possibly recruit him in their effort to save the Earth from aliens. All of it was odd. Even the fact that Benny was sitting in a Space Runner. Despite the fact that this car had been in battle earlier that day, the inside was still sleek and clean, the surfaces all polished and the artificial-leather seats buffed. He caught his reflection in the rearview mirror and realised that he was pretty clean, too. At least compared to what he usually looked like in the Drylands, where it was impossible to scrub off all the dust even when they did have enough water to bathe, and his black hair was usually stiff with dried sweat, sprouting out in all directions. When he’d first got to the Taj, he’d felt so out of place. Even in the Space Runner on the way up to the Moon, he’d managed to get dirt everywhere because it had spilled out of his bag.
But now he’d changed. And for some reason that made him miss home even more.
Eventually, they were flying across the far side of the Moon. Benny pressed his face against the passenger window, looking at the pockmarked landscape below him.
“I thought it’d be darker,” he said. “I mean, it seemed darker when we were by that alien base.”
“Probably because we were in a crater,” Jasmine said. “The dark side of the Moon isn’t really dark. It’s just the side we can’t see from Earth.”
“Hey, remember when Iyabo was telling us that story about skeletons roaming the dark side?” Drue asked.
Benny did. How could he forget? The girl from Cameroon had painted such a clear picture of long-forgotten scientists pounding on the Grand Dome, desperate to get back inside the artificial environment. He’d tried to remember every detail to tell his brothers when he got back home – the perfect scary bedtime story.
“Well,” Drue continued, “what if it wasn’t an urban legend? What if that’s what this doctor and his friends are? Moon zombies.”
“Drue, are you getting enough oxygen in your Space Runner?” Benny asked.
“I’m just saying. They’ve got to get out of their space suits and wash them sometimes. Maybe all the radiation out here messed them up. Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie? This is a classic zombie setup.”
“That’s actually kind of true,” Hot Dog said.
“Not you, too,” Benny said.
“What? After everything that’s happened to us today, you want to draw the line of impossibility at Moon zombies? I head-butted a space Medusa earlier.”
“OK. Good point.”
Benny looked down at the craggy surface, imagining a dozen decomposing figures clawing their way out of the dust, mouths gaping as they reached towards the sky, towards them. He couldn’t help but think of the skeletal faces of the flying robots they’d blasted in the video-game room, which seemed like forever ago. Surely Elijah hadn’t modelled them on Dr Bale and his assistants … right?
“I’m not even going to begin to poke holes in this idea,” Jasmine said. Then, after a pause, she continued. “But if I were going to, I’d start by—”
“Hey, guys,” Hot Dog said, cutting into the comm feed. “I think I see something.”
“Strange,” Jasmine replied. “The scanners aren’t picking anything up, and we’re not very close to the mare.”
“Not on the ground.” Her voice was wavering now. “Above us.”
It took Benny a moment to see what she was talking about, but then there it was. A dark spot, blotting out a few stars. A smudge of deep purple against the black sky.
And then there were more, four – no, five jagged shapes.
“Oh crap,” Benny muttered as the shard-like alien ships shot towards them.
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“Evasive manoeuvres!” Hot Dog shouted as the ships sped closer.
Benny paused for only a second before twisting his flight yoke to the left, remembering some of the basic skills Hot Dog had taught him and the rest of the Moon Platoon in her piloting crash course. His Space Runner veered, dropping towards the dark crater below.
Moments later, the five alien ships were upon them; the same type that had come out of the mother ship during the asteroid storm. Their hulls were shaped like jagged arrowheads shooting through space, made out of some deep purple mineral. The backs of the crafts were capped with gleaming silver devices, as though some kind of metallic claw had latched on to the ships.
“They must have some sort of cloaks up,” Jasmine said. “They’re not on my radar. I can’t get a target lock.”
Benny glanced at his instrument panel, but only their four Space Runners showed as blips on the holographic screens.
“If they attack,” Hot Dog said, “keep weaving. Just make sure we don’t hit each—”
She stopped as ice-blue bolts of energy rained down around them.
Benny swerved, narrowly avoiding one of the blasts. He’d been hit by one of these before, and the result had been a total loss of control over his vehicle. All Space Runners were equipped with moderately strong antigravity shields, but from what he could tell they didn’t offer all that much protection from whatever advanced weaponry the aliens had.
“I’m monitoring the situation!” Pinky’s voice filled his car. “I’m calling more of the Moon Platoon to the garage for backup, but their ETA is twenty minutes at least.”
“There’s no time,” Benny said. “Keep everyone else safe at the Taj. Be on high alert. We don’t know how many of these things are out here.”
“Benny …” She paused. “Please be careful.”
He pushed his flight yoke forward and dived towards the Moon’s surface, two ships in pursuit. “Yeah. Sure thing.”
“All those foster families were right,” Jasmine squeaked through the comms. “I should have played flight sims and video games instead of studying so much!”
Above Benny, his friends were fighting. Hot Dog and Drue were by far the most adept at manoeuvring, their Space Runners spinning and darting around the alien vessels as they shot the lasers mounted to the fronts of their cars. But Jasmine was holding her own, too. She’d flown well away from the others and was sniping from a distance with precise shots. One of them hit the rear of a ship, causing the metal on the back to explode in an eruption of sparks.
“Oh my gosh,” she said, her voice full of astonishment. “I hit one!”
