“You don’t have to ask,” Drue said, looking over at Benny and winking. “I’ll be the brave one and test it out for you. Just don’t be jealous when I’ve got a living rock statue as a bodyguard.”
“In your dreams,” Benny said.
Suddenly, there were gagging noises on the comms. It sounded like someone was choking.
“What’s wrong?” Jasmine asked.
“Hot Dog!” Drue yelped.
“Gross.” Hot Dog coughed. “What flavor are these protein bars they gave us supposed to be? Sunscreen? Dumpster fire? Oh, man, it’s all stuck in my teeth.”
“They’re probably just Moon dust mixed with water,” Drue said.
“This isn’t funny!” Hot Dog shouted.
But the rest of them were already laughing. Eventually, even Hot Dog was, as they shot over the lunar landscape, heading back to the Taj as quickly as they could. When they were closer to the resort, Drue tapped on the dash, turning off the open comm line while Jasmine updated Pinky on everything they’d seen at Dr. Bale’s camp.
“So I know you’re all about not hurting these aliens and stuff, which I totally get,” Drue said, not taking his eyes off their flight path. “But, in the end, if it has to be us or them . . .”
Benny shifted in his seat. All he could think of was the way Commander Tull had described the aliens when he and Hot Dog had been in the asteroid mother ship. How similar they were to his own caravan family back on Earth. People without a permanent home, just trying to survive.
How many others were on that alien world? How many lives were at stake? How many beings not unlike him and his family? Did they even have families?
His head started to pound. There was so much they didn’t know, and the more he thought about it, the more questions plagued his mind, causing his palms to sweat.
“Hopefully it doesn’t come to that,” Benny said. “We’ll figure something out.”
“Sure,” Drue said, though it didn’t sound to Benny like he really believed it. “But if it does . . .”
He looked over at Benny, who just stared back at him. He didn’t want to think about what he would do if he was forced to make that kind of decision. The obvious answer—the one that immediately came to mind when he thought about this dilemma—was that he would do everything in his power to protect his family. To make sure humanity was safe. But he didn’t want to have to consider a future where doing that meant killing a bunch of aliens. Or, worse, an entire species.
The fact that so much of this felt like it was his responsibility terrified Benny, and a tiny part of him actually wished they had invited Dr. Bale back to the Taj to take over. At least then he wouldn’t feel like this decision rested squarely on the Moon Platoon’s shoulders.
Drue flashed his big white teeth. “Okay, you’re right—we’ll figure it out later.” He laughed once. “You impressed? I’m getting better at knowing when to shut up.” He paused. “You’re welcome.”
Pinky was waiting for them in the garage when they returned, pacing back and forth, her intangible body passing through a disassembled hyperdrive. Ramona sat in the pilot’s seat of an oversize Space Runner on one side of the workshop area. As Benny got out of the car, he could hear Pinky talking to her.
“Ms. Robinson,” she said, “should I be concerned that you’ve locked me out of your ancient piece of computing equipment? You’d better not be pirating my copyrighted program files again.”
“Max paranoia, hologhost,” Ramona said. The girl smirked as she tapped on the custom HoloTek she’d brought from Earth and always had strapped to her left forearm. She tucked a coil of strawberry-blond hair behind her ear. “Don’t get your processors worked up.”
Pinky threw her hands out in exasperation and turned to Benny and the others as they gathered around her. “I’m glad to see the four of you back safe. Benny, how are you faring after the crash?”
“I’m fine,” he said, though his body was starting to feel sore all over. “How have things been since we left? Anything we should know about?”
The AI bounced her head back and forth. “Bo and Ash are installing a force field barrier to fix the hole you left near the abandoned alien base. The Pit Crew decamped to Elijah’s quarters. Trevone, too. They don’t know you were gone as far as I’m aware. I think that’s everything of note.”
“Is your memory corrupted?” Ramona asked, leaning out of a Space Runner and pointing over her shoulder with a thumb. “One satellite installed. Ready to launch. Now I’m tinkering with a second. Plus upgrades.”
“Great,” Benny said. And then his shoulders slumped. “But that doesn’t help if we can’t get past the asteroids.”
Ramona clicked her tongue. “Buzzkill.”
“Sorry. Thank you, this is a huge help.” He clenched his teeth and stared at the dark, shiny floor. “It’s just that we’re still no closer to getting back in touch with Earth unless Dr. Bale comes through. We’re no closer to anything.”
“Hmmm,” Pinky said, taking a long look at Benny, “I am one hundred percent not your mothers, but I am trying to keep you all alive up here. What you all need now is food. Most of the EW-SCABers are in the restaurant for dinner. You’re not going to come up with any good plans on empty stomachs, and I know for a fact that none of you have eaten since breakfast. Except for Ramona, who has consumed what I continuously point out is an alarming amount of energy bars and sodas.”
Ramona glanced up from her HoloTek. “You want my skills, I need brain foods.”
“Now that you mention it,” Drue said, “I’m starving. And some of my tutors have said I get kind of moody when I haven’t eaten.”
“By all means, then, let’s get you some food,” Hot Dog said, making her way to one of the garage exits. “We can plan over whatever Pinky cooked.”
They left the garage, walking across the dark gravel of the courtyard. Benny kept his eyes up on Earth, his hands shoved in his pockets, fingers grazing the gold alien glove. He was so focused on his home and trying to figure out what they should be doing next that he didn’t notice the doors to the entrance of the Taj swing open until Drue stopped walking in front of him and muttered something.
Ricardo was making his way down the steps, followed by the Miyamura twins.
“Where have you been?” Ricardo’s voice boomed as he approached.
None of them spoke. For a second, Benny thought about telling Ricardo everything they’d found on the dark side. But then he remembered how desperate Ricardo was to track down Elijah. If he told the Pit Crew about Dr. Bale, would they go after him themselves and try to use all those weapons against the Alpha Maraudi? Would they bring the cannons and the Tank back to the Taj?
And how mad was Ricardo going to be if he found out they’d disobeyed him and gone off to the dark side on their own?
Benny didn’t know what to do or say, so he shoved his hands even deeper into his pockets and shrugged. “We’ve been around.”
Jasmine turned to stare at him, but Benny didn’t meet her gaze.
“They were obviously in the garage,” Kai said, tossing his head back to get his dark bangs out of his face.
“Probably trying to steal another one of Elijah’s classic cars,” Kira said with a sneer.
Ricardo just glared at Benny. “What are you up to, Love?”
Drue stepped forward. “Oh, come on. You said yourself on our first tour of the Taj: the garage is the coolest place up here. Of course that’s where we like to hang out.”
Ricardo grunted. “I don’t want you touching anything in there. Those SRs are our resources. We’re putting together a plan to head into deep space to find Elijah just as soon as we figure out a way to track that mother ship.”
“Yeah,” Benny said. “Cool.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Ricardo said as he walked away, the Miyamuras in tow. He pulled a HoloTek out of his space suit pocket and tapped on the device a few times. “Trevone,” he said, once he’d connected the other Crew member. He glanced back
at Benny. “We need to talk about locking down parts of the Taj to the EW-SCABers.”
When the Pit Crew was inside the garage, Hot Dog let out a long sigh, like she’d been holding her breath the whole time.
“Well, that’s just great,” she said.
“He’s really committed to this whole trying-to-find-Elijah-somewhere-in-literally-the-entire-universe-if-he’s-even-still-alive plan,” Drue said.
“I get that he’s upset,” Hot Dog continued. “But we almost got our butts kicked by just a few of those ships. Even if we sent out a whole fleet of Space Runners, we’d be outnumbered by . . . I don’t know, a whole lot.”
“Yeah. If the Pit Crew is going after Elijah, they’d at least need some of the doc’s weapons . . .”
“Right,” Benny said. “And do we really want Ricardo and the rest of the Crew going after the aliens with all that tech Dr. Bale has? That’s just begging for the aliens to declare war on us or something.”
“Uh, Benny,” Drue said, “I hate to break it to you but I kind of think we’re already at war here.”
“So that’s why you lied to them?” Jasmine asked.
Benny turned to her. “I thought . . .” But he didn’t know what to say. They were all quiet for a moment.
Jasmine shook her head. “We snuck out, yeah, but I figured we’d tell them whatever we’d found when we got back. They should know Dr. Bale is out there. What if they went out looking for him and got attacked? That would be on us.”
“I don’t know,” Drue said. “I see Benny’s point. If I were Ricardo, I’d totally go after that Tank of his and drive it into space, guns blazing.” He paused. “I kind of want to do that already.”
Jasmine looked over at Hot Dog, who raised her hands away from her sides and shrugged, her face scrunched up in confusion.
“We can’t just start lying to the Pit Crew,” Jasmine said. “To Trevone, who helped us destroy those asteroids. You’re the one who said we were in this together, Benny.”
“This is different,” Benny said. “I’m just trying to do the right thing. And we’re not lying, we’re just . . . not telling them everything.”
“I know someone else who thought the same way,” Jasmine said softly before turning away from them and heading up the stairs and into the Taj.
Benny wanted to call out to her, but he didn’t know what to say. He knew what she meant. And she was right. Keeping this from the Pit Crew was sort of like Elijah keeping the truth about the aliens and the EW-SCAB from them. And even as he tried to tell himself this wasn’t the same thing, that the Pit Crew wouldn’t see the logic because they were too worried about saving Elijah, he could remember the world’s most famous adventurer saying pretty much the same thing to him just days before.
It made him feel terrible.
8.
Jasmine wasn’t in the lobby.
Benny looked for her in the restaurant, too, but he didn’t see her anywhere. He assumed she’d gone up to her room. His body was beginning to feel heavy, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of his hunger, the fact that he’d been thrown around in a Space Runner several times that day, or because he felt like he’d just disappointed one of his friends and didn’t even know if it was for a good reason. Maybe it was a combination of all those things.
True to Pinky’s message earlier in the day, dinner had indeed been served, and the air inside the restaurant was thick with the scent of spices Benny had no names for in his brain. On one side of the dimly lit room was a table piled high with tacos that sat beside what looked like a fountain of steaming, thick orange cheese.
“They usually have celebrity chefs up here in the busy season,” Drue said, inhaling deeply as he led the way. “I had my doubts about how good Pinky’s computerized kitchen was going to be, but I gotta say she has yet to disappoint.”
“I wonder what they’re eating underground,” Hot Dog said.
Drue shrugged. “Probably the same thing. I checked out some of the blueprints earlier, and there’s a lot to that mined-out village we didn’t see. Elijah was even building a spa down there.”
“Of course he was.” Hot Dog paused. “I don’t guess it got completed, did it?”
Drue sighed deeply and shook his head. “No such luck.”
They started for the food table, where various other kids were going back for seconds—maybe thirds or fourths as far as Benny knew. As they walked, the restaurant grew quieter, almost imperceptibly at first, and then so quickly that Benny was sure something had happened.
And it had. He and his friends—the ones who’d recruited, trained, and led the kids in the restaurant on the mission to stop the asteroid storm—had walked into the room, and everyone’s attention had turned to them. Benny slowed until he came to a stop, suddenly feeling very exposed. All around him at the half-filled tables, kids were staring. These weren’t just his fellow Mustangs or random EW-SCABers—they were the almost forty brave kids who had followed him into outer space that morning not knowing what their future held.
And then, all at once, they were talking and jumping out of their seats, rushing over to Benny and his friends. At first it was just a wall of sound that hit him so hard he almost had to take a few steps back.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Iyabo, one of his fellow Mustangs, yelled. She jumped in front of the crowd and held up her hands as she faced them. “Let’s not turn into a mob maybe? We can ask questions one at a time.”
Benny felt a momentary wave of relief and said a silent thank you to Iyabo. She’d been a big help during their video game sims before everything went crazy, and had been a stellar pilot in the attack on the asteroid storm. She was obviously someone who knew how to take control of a situation and get stuff done.
But his relief faded as Iyabo turned to him, her braids flicking around her back. “I’ll go first,” she said. “Any word on Elijah?”
“No,” Benny said.
“All right,” she continued. “Are the aliens coming back?”
Benny was quiet for a few seconds. “I’m not sure.”
The group behind Iyabo started whispering. She put her hands on her hips. “’Kay,” she said. “So what are we supposed to do now?”
“I don’t know.”
And then they were all shouting again.
“How long will we be safe at the Taj?” Alexi, a dark-haired kid from Greece, wondered.
“Do we have to fight them again if they show up?”
“What if they go to Earth?”
“I don’t know!” Benny said.
He’d been in the meeting room or out on the dark side most of the day since they’d returned from space, working alongside his friends without having to give answers to anyone. Now it seemed like all the fears and anxieties that had been building up inside the rest of the EW-SCABers were coming to a head there in the restaurant. Other questions filled the air around him as his pulse kicked into overdrive, even as Iyabo tried to calm everyone down.
“How much food is here?”
“Should we go underground just in case?”
“When can I call my parents?”
“I’m sorry!” Benny said, his voice growing louder and cracking. His cheeks felt hot. “I don’t know!”
Hot Dog stepped up beside him.
“Drue,” she said, “answer their questions.”
“Huh?” Drue turned to her, eyes full of panic. “Why me?”
But Hot Dog didn’t respond. Instead, she grabbed Benny’s arm and dragged him through a swinging door that led back into the kitchen. His heart felt like it was a hammering piston, and all he could do was follow her, still muttering apologies.
“What are you doing?” he asked when she finally stopped pulling and he could start to think about catching his breath.
“You looked like you were about to faint out there,” she said. There was a tray of fruit on a counter nearby. She tossed him an apple. “Here, eat something.”
“I’m fine,” he said. He didn’t even feel hungry anymore. In
fact, his stomach felt too full, like he might be sick.
“Eat,” Hot Dog insisted, grabbing an orange for herself. “I don’t wanna have to carry you to the elevators with Drue if you pass out. Can you imagine how nuts everyone would go if they saw you like that?”
He didn’t answer.
She frowned. “I watched you stand head-to-head with an alien overlord this morning and you didn’t look half as scared as you just did out there.”
“I’m not scared,” Benny said, despite knowing full well that he was. “It’s just . . . a lot.”
“I know. I mean, sorta. I was only the flight school teacher. You were . . .” She laughed a short, breathy laugh. “You were a lot.”
Benny stared down at the red piece of fruit in his hands. “I haven’t had a real apple in a long time. I’m not sure my brothers have ever had one that wasn’t in an old can of fruit cocktail.” He shook his head. “Why am I even thinking about that when there are so many other things to worry about? You heard them out there. Everyone’s terrified. They think we—I—know what to do, but . . .”
He could still hear the muffled sounds of the other EW-SCABers shouting questions back in the restaurant. Standing there in the kitchen, he suddenly felt doomed to fail them.
Hot Dog bit her lip. “Pinky might be right. Maybe you are under too much pressure.”
Benny looked up at her quickly, his forehead creasing. Hot Dog seemed to realize immediately that she’d said the wrong thing, her mouth forming words that didn’t actually come out.
“You’ve been talking to Pinky about me?” he asked.
“No, no, she was just a little worried is all. And, you know, maybe she mentioned it to me earlier when I was getting supplies to go out and find Dr. Bale.”
Benny’s mind was racing, his head light as he once again realized there was so much out of his control, so many moving parts in their situation that he could never hope to get a handle on everything. And now he knew that others were talking about him behind his back. Plus, he’d upset Jasmine earlier, not to mention the fact that he was lying to the Pit Crew . . .