Текст книги "Animorphs - 11 - The Forgotten"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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"Excellent," I said to my dad. "I'll be here. Don't eat all the bean dip. You know what happens when you eat bean dip."

My mother came into the living room. "Am I even allowed in here?" she asked mockingly.

"When does this room become the temple of male aggression?"

"Not till seven," my dad said. "Until then we will allow females. Especially if the females remembered to pick up chips on their way home from work."

"Chips? Wouldn't you rather enjoy some nice carrot sticks and hummus dip?"

My dad and I just stared at her. "Kidding," she said. "Just kidding. I have chips. Are Pete and Dominick coming over?"

"Yeah, but you don't have to feed them," my dad joked. "Those guys are lucky I don't charge them admission."

I raced through my homework and hoped the fight would be the usual two-or-three-round easy knockout. The one good thing about rushing was that it didn't leave me too much time to think. Thinking meant worry, and worry gets in the way of getting things done. It was a tense family gathering at seven o'clock. Tom seemed as anxious as I was to get away. I could guess why. You see, Tom is one of them. He's a human– Controller.

He had to keep up appearances of normalcy, same as me. But I guess he was trying to get away to go to the grocery store site, too. Same me, again. Tom and I fought in the same war.

On different sides. It was strange thinking of Tom, still alive deep down inside his own head. Trapped. Powerless. But able to see and hear and think. Did he enjoy watching the fight through eyes he no longer controlled? Was there anything, any thing at all, he could enjoy? It didn't help, having thoughts like that. When I started thinking that way the rage would just build up inside me till I felt like I'd go nuclear. I told myself, for probably the millionth time, that I was doing all I could to help Tom. All I could. All I could.

Fortunately, my dad and his work friends made plenty of noise, so no one noticed Tom checking his watch. Or the fact that I kept glancing toward the kitchen, where I could see the wall clock. By round six, I knew I was in trouble. In round seven neither fighter even looked tired. I decided if it went past round eight I'd have to make some excuse, no matter how lame.

In round eight, a lucky uppercut connected. "Oh, that had to hurt!" my dad said. "Five bucks says he goes down!" my dad's friend Dominick said quickly. He was right. The challenger staggered, wandered around on rubber legs for a few seconds, then toppled over. Boom! The fight was over. It was now seven forty-five. I was already late. I snatched the videotape out of the VCR.

"Dad, can I take this over to Marco's and play it for him?"

"It's almost eight. It's dark out," my father objected.

"Yeah," Tom said. "You might get lost and never come back. And that would be such a pity. I'd have to use your room for my weights and stuff."

It was exactly the kind of dumb big-brother joke Tom would have made. But of course it was just something pulled up from Tom's brain by the Yeerk in his head.

For just a second it occurred to me to ask him: "Hey, Tom, what's the big secret with the grocery store? Just tell me, and I can stay home tonight."

I smiled at the thought. Then . . .

FLASH!

Green. Green. Everything was green. It was the greenest place on Earth: trees, moss, vines, ferns. Green everywhere.

Marco was there. And the others. They were all there.

Marco was talking. "... in a jungle fighting brain-stealing aliens and ten thousand annoying species of bugs, and our resident space cadet is a hot-looking monkey. Somebody wake me up when we get back to reality."

FLASH!

I was back. Back listening to Tom tease me like he was actually Tom. Back to hearing my dad say, "Walk, don't ride your bike. Not at night. Especially not when it's about to rain."

The vision was so powerful. So real. Not like a dream at all.

But like I was actually there in a jungle, listening to Marco complain. I felt my heart pounding. I felt sweat forming on my forehead. What in the heck was going on? What was happening to me?

I noticed Tom back out of the room, sliding away like he was going to the kitchen. That brought me back to reality.

I grabbed the videotape and took off, still reeling from the insane feeling of being yanked back and forth from one reality to another. I could hear my dad and his friends rehashing the fight round by round as I went up to my room and opened my window as wide as it would go.

It took me twenty-five minutes to morph and fly to the empty motel.

"I know, I know, I'm late." I apologized as I came in for a landing. I misjudged the distance to the ground, hit it too hard, and rolled over, a tangle of wings and talons.

"Nice landing." Tobias said with a laugh.

"Are you okay?" Cassie asked me. She rushed over and picked me up. Then she set me back down because I was starting to demorph. And I was getting heavier pretty quickly.

"I'm fine," I said, as soon as I could speak. "Embarrassed, but fine."

It was a shabby little hiding place. The back windows of the motel were covered in plywood. The plywood was covered with graffiti. There were overgrown weeds and broken bottles and, for some reason, an old washing machine.

"We get to visit all the best places, don't we?" I said dryly.

Ax was hugging the darkness against the wall. He feels a little obvious out of the woods. With good reason. Anyone who saw him would run away, screaming like a little kid. Unless, of course, they were a Controller. A Controller would know exactly what he was.

"Well?" Rachel asked, looking at me. She was waiting for me to say, "Let's go." But for some reason, I felt a strange reluctance. I felt...

I don't even know what I felt. Just that that moment, that very moment, was terribly important. The others all stared at me, waiting. All I had to say was, "Let's go."

Instead, I looked at my watch. Eight-nineteen. Eight-nineteen.

Like it meant something. Like . . .

Oh, man, I was going nuts! I was losing it. What was the matter with me?

"Should we do this?" I wondered. I was surprised to realize I'd spoken out loud. I'd been talking to myself.

"Why not? I say we do it," Rachel said.

"There's a huge shock," Marco muttered. "Everyone who is surprised Rachel wants to go for it, raise your hand."

"Yeah," I said, shaking off my doubts as well as I could.

"Yeah, let's go."

I was pretty sure it was the right thing to do, but the responsibility was on me. I could have stopped it. I could have talked them all out of it. I could have done something different.

But I didn't. At least not then . . .

"Let's morph," I said.

Let's hope no one has a can of Raid," Marco said.

I tried to laugh. But I hate morphing bugs.

Back when we started morphing, I figured we'd morph things like lions and bears and eagles. And we do. But we also morph things a lot smaller. The insect world is very useful.

Sometimes smaller is better.

That never exactly makes it fun, though. There is no nightmare, no horror movie, no weird psycho vision as scary as actually turning into a cockroach or a spider or a flea or a fly.

When you morph a tiger, you still have four limbs. You have two eyes. You have a mouth. You have bones and a stomach and lungs and teeth. Maybe they're all different, but they're all still there.

The change to a fly is nothing like becoming a tiger. Nothing is where it should be. Nothing stays the same.

The problem with morphs is that they are never exactly the same twice in a row. And the changes happen in bizarre, unpredictable ways. It's not smooth. It's not logical. It's not gradual.

I started to shrink, but when I was still almost entirely human, still probably three feet tall, I felt my skin harden.

See, flies don't have bones. They have an exoskeleton. Their outer shell is what holds them together in one piece. And my exoskeleton was growing. My soft, human skin was being replaced by something dark, something hard as plastic.

My body was squeezed into segments. Insect segments: a head, a thorax, an abdomen.

And when I was still at least two feet tall, way too tall to be anything like a fly, the extra legs came bursting, squishing, slurping out of what had been my chest.

My own true legs collapsed as they shriveled down to match my new fly legs. I fell forward into the dirt. Facedown. Not that I had much of a face anymore.

My proboscis had already begun to form from my melting mouth and lips and nose and tongue. The proboscis was as big as my fly legs – a long, retractable, hollow tube. Flies eat with the proboscis. They spit saliva all over the food, wait till it gets mushy, then suck it up. It isn't pretty. But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst was the eyes. I still had semi human vision when I saw Cassie, lying in the dirt beside me, suddenly grow fly eyes. They popped out of her human eyes.

Popped out, huge and devoid of soul. Big, black balloons that sort of inflated out of her own eye sockets. That's a sight that will make you heave up your lunch.

My own vision went dark then. I was blind for a couple of seconds, then yow! The fly eyes turned on, and the whole world was different. How can I explain what it's like to look through compound eyes? It's like you're watching a thousand tiny TV sets all at once. A thousand tiny TV sets, all clustered together. And each set has really weird color. Like someone twisted all the color knobs. Yellow is purple, green is red, blue is black. It's insane. Like some disturbed kid got loose with a Crayola box and colored in everything with different colors. But what's awful is the way the eyes look in all directions at once. I could see the tube, that was now my mouth, sticking out in front of me. I could see my own twig legs. I could see the stiff hairs poking out of my armored body.

Still, there is one good thing about being a fly – if you can get past the screaming horror of it. Part of what I could see was the pair of gossamer wings that sprouted from what should have been my back.

Flies can fly.

Man, can they fly.

"Everyone okay?" I asked.

"Aside from the fact I make myself sick? Yes." Marco said.

Then . . . PAH-LOOOSH!

An explosion on the ground ahead of me. The dirt just seemed to blow up. Like a mortar explosion.

"What the . . ." Rachel yelped.

PAH-LOOOSH!

"It's starting to rain, guys." Tobias informed us calmly.

The explosions of mortar shells were just big, fat raindrops hitting the dirt.

"Jeez! I thought someone was trying to kill u." Cassie said.

"Let's get on with th." I said.

I fired the springs in my legs and turned on my wings. I was airborne instantly. It's not like being a bird. A bird has to really work at flying.

For a fly, it's automatic.

Instantaneous. You think let's fly and a split second later you're zooming crazily through the air.

Across the weird mass of tiny TV sets I could see the others rise up from the ground. They flew like pigs. Like big fat balls with these tiny little wings that looked like they couldn't lift a speck of dust. But, like I said before, flies can fly. I zoomed Wildly upward. Like a wallowing rocket!

"Hah-Hah! Oh, man!" Rachel exulted. "I'd forgotten how great this was!"

"Disgusting, but oh yeah, these things can haul." Marco agreed. "Tobias, you only think you can fly. You haven't flown till you've flown Maggot Airways."

"Maybe" Tobias said calmly. "And, not to burst your balloon, but you guys are all heading the wrong way."

"We are?"

"Yes. You're heading toward a Dumpster." Tobias said with a laugh. "Turn left. Turn left and get some altitude. Then you should be able to see the car lights on the road."

I would have smiled if I'd had a mouth. The fly brain had been easy to control because we'd already done this morph before.

But the fly's instincts still had some input. See, the fly smelled rotting food in the Dumpster and it knew right where it wanted to go. We followed Tobias's directions. I rocketed higher, and then . . .

"Whoa! Whoa! What is that? Are those cars?" Cassie demanded.

"These eyes are seeing ultraviolet light." Ax commented.

"They're seeing something, that's for sure." I agreed.

The cars racing past were not cars so much as they were glowing, red-and-purple meteors. The road was a blur of movement, all of it strange and disturbing to the fly brain.

"Stay above the cars." Tobias warned.

"Why?" Ax asked.

"A little something we call windshields." Tobias said dryly.

"A windshield moving sixty miles an hour is death to bugs."

"Good point." I agreed.

"Going higher." I powered my wings and bobbed and weaved and rolled higher and higher. But the fly inside my head didn't like it. He lived close to the ground. The ground was where you found food. And food was all the fly brain cared about.

"It's starting to rain harder." Tobias said.

I began to notice more drops. They were sparkling meteorites, each three times my own size. They plummeted around me. But in my fly scale of things they were fairly far apart. Then . . .

more rain. Closer together. Falling thick and fast all around me.

WHAM!

"Ahhhh!" I was slammed. I tumbled through the air, covered in something like heavy glue. Water! Just water, but sticky as glue to my fly body.

My wings shook off the water and I found myself flying upside down. I spun around and advanced again.

"0h, man." I complained. "This is a whole new reason not to like rain!"

"I'm going ahead." Tobias said tensely.

"Raining too hard. I gotta land."

WHAM!

A glancing blow from a raindrop the size of a truck. It spun me around in the air.

"Ahhhhhhh! Man!"

"Jake! Are you okay!" Cassie cried.

Once again, those amazing fly wings turned me around and kept me in the air. But suddenly I realized I was in a sea of brilliant lights.

Purple! Red! Green!

Green?

Motion! Every hair on my nasty fly body felt it. Every screen in my fly eyes sensed it. Something moving. Fast! Big! A monstrous wall came at me with impossible speed! It was a mountain! Huge. Tall. Sloped. A mountain moving sixty miles an hour right at me, glowing in a rainbow of eerie colors! A windshield!

"Uh-oh." I said.

"TAAAAAHHHH!" I screamed in thought-speak as the deadly windshield blew toward me.

FLASH!

The jungle! Sudden movement in the deep bush.

A cocked arm.

A human arm belonging to a kid!

A spear flew!

I saw it coming for me. Saw the bamboo point, blackened with deadly poison. One scratch and I was dead. I .

FLASH!

Spear! No, windshield.

My wings beat the air at hundreds of strokes per second. I was fast, but not fast enough. A downdraft! A vicious wind that sucked me toward the windshield. I fought it, then ... in a split second, the wind became a magic carpet.

The power of my wings, the slipstream of wind ... I missed the top of the windshield by a millimeter!

I could actually see color-distorted human faces inside the car. I saw their glowing eyes as I flew past and over and seriously hauled my little fly butt up and up and up.

"Jake? You still with us, Jake?" Rachel asked.

"0h, yeah." I said. "Barely. But I'm here. You know, they really need to lower the speed limit. Cars shouldn't go more than maybe ten miles per hour."

We passed the road and left the eerie stream of fast lights behind us. We all got slammed by more raindrops, but personally, I was past caring about that. Then, even through the cleansing rain, I be gan to smell the grocery store. The fly sensed food. We didn't need Tobias to guide us the rest of the way. Our fly bodies were eager to head for the smell of rotting garbage. I was still reeling from the twin sensations of being attacked by a windshield and a spear. The jungle visions were so real. They were so absolutely real. I mean, I felt every single thing while I was in them. I felt heat and humidity on my skin, I felt bugs buzzing my face, I felt . . .

But I didn't have time for that now. The Safeway was beyond our ability to see. I mean, it was just so big it had no meaning to our fly eyes. What had meaning to the fly was that there was food up ahead.

We zipped in under the plastic sheeting that covered the damaged wall. Once inside the store, everything was very bright. I saw brilliant lights that seemed to be spewing a whole rainbow of unusual colors. There were people walking around below us. There was machinery moving. And there was a mound, a mountain of food all shoveled into one corner.

The Controllers had simply used earthmovers to shove all the shelves, the freezers, the refrigerators, the loose cans, the glass meat display' case, the donuts and cupcakes from the bakery area, the flowers, the cooked chicken and beans . . .

everything that had been in the store, all into one corner.

"You know." Marco said,"if you threw in some dog poop, this would be fly heaven."

"We are not alone." Ax pointed out. "There seem to be many others of this species here."

He was right. We had chosen the right morph. There had to be ten thousand flies in that store. I could hear them and smell them and even see them as they flew past.

"Well, no one is going to notice us, that's for sure." Cassie said. "We could dive right in."

"Excuse me? Hello? We're not here to eat garbage and make maggots." I said. "We are in and out, so let's pay attention.

What's going on here?"

"Well . . . there's that big thing in the middle of the room."

Cassie said. "That's what all the Controllers are clustered around."

"Let's get closer." I suggested. We zipped in our crazy fly way toward the middle of the store. There was a huge object there. As big as a small house, I would have guessed. But it's hard to tell how big something is when you're less than a quarter-inch long.

"Wait ... I think I hear Chapman's voice." Cassie said.

"I don't know how you can make sense out of all this noise."

Rachel grumbled.

"I've done the fly morph more than you." Cassie said.

"Remember, I was in fly morph when I spied on Chapman at the mall. There he is! I'm going closer."

I couldn't see where Cassie was going or where she landed. One fly looks pretty much like the next. And the store was like a fly airport. Flies were zipping all around.

"Cassie? Where are you?"

"I'm close to Chapman." she said. "0n his head, actually. On the bald spot."

"Get off of there! He could swat you!"

"Wait... I'm listening . ."

I buzzed around aimlessly, afraid for Cassie, and trying to figure out what on Earth the big ... thing. . . was.

"Whoa!" Cassie said. "Whoa! Whoa!"

"What? What? What?" I asked.

"Whoa!"

"What whoa!" I practically yelled in frustration. "What's going on!"

"It's a Bug fighter." Cassie said. "It's something new. An experimental Bug fighter. Faster, more weapons ... a new, prototype Bug fighter."

Bug fighters are the small, basic Yeerk spacecraft. They look like a streamlined cockroach with two long, serrated spears pointing forward. Those are the Dracon beams.

"What's it doing here? In a Safeway?" Marco asked.

"It crashed. Duh." Rachel said.

"I don't know." Cassie said. "Chapman isn't talking about how it got here. He's just telling this other Controller it has to be out of here in three hours or Visser Three is going to be madder than he already is. The guy says it's almost ready to go, he just needs to run some tests. Three hours will be no problem. Chapman says, "Good, because if it's three hours and one minute, I'll personally feed you to Visser Three for a snack.""

"Three hours?" Tobias said.

I was surprised to hear his thought-speak voice.

"Tobias! I thought you went for cover."

"The rain stopped." he said. "And I can see down into the store. They've knocked a hole in the roof so the security guys up on the roof can get down into the store quickly. There's a ladder.

I'm flying over."

"What do you see up there?"

"A bunch of nervous human-Controllers with machine guns."

"What should we do?" Rachel wondered. "In three hours they could fly this thing out of here."

"If only we could get some TV news people here." Cassie mused.

"If people could see this thing, and have proof. ."

"The Yeerks have too many people at the local TV stations and newspapers." I pointed out.

"You know what we could do, though?" Rachel began.

"Uh-oh, a suggestion from Rachel." Marco groaned.

"What we could do is steal this thing."

"Steal it and do what with it?" Tobias wondered.

I laughed. "We could always steal it and fly it to Washington and land it on the White House lawn. Let the Yeerks try and cover that up."

I meant it as a joke.

Really. A joke.

"Hey." Rachel said. "That could work."

"Ax? Can you fly that thing?" Tobias asked.

"I am an Andalite." Ax said. "That's just a Yeerk fighter, even if it is experimental. No second-rate Yeerk technology is too sophisticated for me."

"But. . . we'd have to do this like right now." Cassie pointed out.

"Yep." Rachel said. "Right now. Jake?"

"There can't be many people inside the Bug fighter." Ax pointed out.

"They usually only have a crew of two. At most there would be four or five technicians inside, Prince Jake."

"Yeah, well, four or five people versus five houseflies is not good odds for usr" I said. It was moments like this that I resented. Moments when I tended to make the decisions. And when I would carry the responsibility. "Still . . ."

"I hear the gears in Jake's little brain grinding away." Marco joked.

"Still." I said. "There may be a way."

"Okay, fellow flies, into the Bug fighter."

We zoomed crazily around the outside of the huge-seeming Bug fighter till we spotted a door. Inside we saw the blurry, strangely colored shapes of humans.

Actually, human– Controllers. We buzzed right on inside.

"I count five." Rachel said.

"Just what we expected." I said. I was trying to sound confident, to help everyone else stay calm. But I was tense. I was on edge. This was a spur-of-the-moment plan thought up by a guy who was having jungle hallucinations. It was a desperate, possibly stupid plan. I didn't know for sure. It could easily end with Tobias dead.

Maybe the rest of us as well.

But Tobias was thrilled to be playing a major role.

"Tobias? You ready?"

"Anytime you say, Jake."

"0nce around the room, that's." I warned him.

"You're the boss." Tobias said.

"0kay. Now!"

Outside, above the grocery store, Tobias had been gaining altitude. Which was extremely difficult in the cool night air.

Hawks are not night birds. But Tobias flapped his way up and up, always keeping sight of the bright hole in the grocery store roof.

"Here I come!" Tobias yelled.

He plunged at maximum speed, straight for the hole in the roof. "I'm inside!"

I could tell, because right away there was shouting. Yelling.

Orders being barked out.

Then . . .

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Gunfire! They were shooting at him!

"These guys couldn't hit... yikes! That was close!"

The plan called for Tobias to provide a distraction. The Yeerks knew we used bird morphs. And they would know that a hawk did not belong flying around inside a store. They would put two and two together. They would know Tobias was not a real hawk.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!

Someone was firing a machine gun. Even with my vague fly hearing I could hear the air shaking with the noise. Hundreds of rounds were being fired inside that store!

A human voice yelled something like, "Get out here and help!

It's an Andalite bandit in morph!"

That's what the Yeerks think we are: Andalites.

The technicians inside the Bug fighter went piling out the exit, glad of the chance to take shots at an Andalite "bandit."

"That's enough, Tobias! Bail out! Bail out of here!" I yelled.

"Ax! Morph! Everyone morph! Now! Now! Now!"

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!

"Can't get out!" Tobias cried. "The guys on the roof are shooting down through the hole!"

Of course! Why hadn't I realized that? Of course they would block Tobias's escape.

I was still mostly fly, but morphing as fast as I could. I could feel myself getting bigger. I could see my fly wings shriveling away. Tobias couldn't escape. They'd get him.

Sooner or later, no matter how fast he flew, they'd get him.

An answer... an answer...

I needed an answer. I needed to – "Tobias! Tobias! This way." I yelled. "Inside the Bug fighter!"

"No, that will draw them after – YAH! Whoa! That one clipped my tail feathers!"

"Come inside!" I yelled.

"Whatever you say" Tobias said.

My human eyes were just reemerging as Tobias blew in through the door of the Bug fighter. I looked left. A horrifying creature with a small scorpion tail and fly legs and a semi humanoid face with a gigantic proboscis was trying to work the controls of the ship with clumsy fly stick legs. It was Ax, halfway through morphing.

Suddenly, the door shut. Or in this case, the bulkhead simply dimpled and closed up again, eliminating the door.

"They're in the Bug fighter!" I heard Chapman howl in rage.

"They're in the Bug fighter! Get them!"

I was mostly human now, but still at that stage where I wouldn't have wanted to see myself in a mirror. The rest were coming out of morph, too. Cassie was fastest, as usual. She was already checking Tobias for wounds.

Ax was almost fully Andalite once more.

"Ax, get us outta here!" I said, as my human mouth returned.

"Yes, Prince Jake."

I didn't waste time telling him not to call me "Prince."

"These are unusual controls." Ax admitted.

BAPFFBAPFFBAPFFBAPFFBAP!

Bullets rattled against the Bug fighter's outer skin.

Then I heard the grinding sounds of the engine. Through the cockpit window, I saw the Controllers turning big earthmovers toward us.

"They're going to ram us!" Marco warned.

"Ax?" I asked tersely.

"I think I... I don't know. Prince Jake, I can try but it may not work."

"Just do it!" I yelled. There was a whirring noise. Lights came on all over the cockpit. A sound like a low siren.

"I found the "on" switch." Ax said.

"Great," Marco said. "Now find the get-us-the-heck-outta-here switch!"

I felt the ship lift up off the Safeway floor. It rose just a foot and sort of wallowed slightly, side to side. The heavy equipment was still coming for us.

Ax turned the fighter, pointing it toward the missing wall.

"Is that plastic sheeting very strong?" Ax asked.

"Let's find out," I said. Then . . . WHOOOOOOOSH!

It was like getting kicked in the chest. We all tumbled backward – all but Ax, who has four legs. The acceleration was incredible. The Bug fighter rocketed forward. We blew through the plastic sheeting.

We blew across the parking lot.

We arched up toward the dark night sky.

"We did it!" Rachel yelled.

"Sorry about the acceleration caret Ax said. "I forget that humans fall over easily."

"Just get us out of here, Ax," Marco said.

"We're going to Washington, D.c., to meet the President."

It was crowded inside the Bug fighter. Especially because Ax takes up a lot of room.

But we huddled together and looked over Ax's shoulders as he worked the controls. And we looked past Ax, out through the transparent panels at the front of the Bug fighter.

"This ship is very difficult to handle." Ax said. "The design is strange. Some controls are psychotronic. But others require physical handling. Unfortunately, those controls are designed for Taxxons. They have more hands than I like."

"Can we do anything to help?" I asked.

"Someone should take weapons station." Ax said.

"Cool," Marco said. He leaped forward, but I was closer.

I slipped into the area beside Ax. Ax's pilot "seat" wasn't a seat at all, of course. Taxxons are like huge centipedes, so they can't really sit. Which was good, because Ax doesn't sit, either. But the weapons station was built for Hork-Bajir.

Hork-Bajir are seven feet tall and have thick, spiky tails, but they do sit.

"No way you should handle the weapons," Marco said, leaning over my shoulder. "I kick your butt in video games."

"Yeah, right," I said. "In some alternate universe, maybe."

"Grab the joystick," Marco suggested. As strange as it seems, there actually was a joystick. It was for much bigger hands than mine, and the two buttons on it were clumsy to reach. But it was a joystick.

"Maybe I should test the weapons," I said to Ax.

"Yes." he said tersely, distracted.

We were rising up through the atmosphere.

We were above the clouds already. I could see brief flashes of the lights of the city down below, but mostly it was clouds and more clouds. But we weren't rising as fast as I would have expected. Ax was definitely working to control the ship.

I looked ahead, saw nothing in the way, and pressed one of the buttons on the joystick.

Nothing.

Ax glanced over. "That was the safety. The Dracon beam should be armed now. See the screen before you? The red circle is how you aim. Use a combination of moving the joystick, but also use your mind."

Marco put his hand on my shoulder. "Phasers on full power!" he said in a Captain Picard English accent. "Arm photon torpedoes! If the Borg want a fight, we'll give them one! Make it so!"

I moved the joystick and watched the target circle track across the screen. It still showed nothing but starry sky.

That should be safe enough.

I squeezed the second button.

TSEWWWW! TSEWWWW!

Twin red beams of light fired forward, converging too far away for me to see.

"Yes! Most splendid!" Marco yelled.

"Okay, that was cool,"

I admitted, trying not to cackle like an idiot with his first video game.

"Boys with their toys," Cassie teased gently.

"Prince Jake?" Ax said. "I must apologize"

"Why?"

"I did not at first realize: This Bug fighter's cloaking field is not working."

It took a few seconds for me to track on that. "You mean . . .

people can see us?"

"The clouds will hide us from people on the ground." Ax said.

"But human radar will observe us. In fact, they have already observed us."

"Uh-oh. Maybe we better get higher," I suggested.

"Yes. But we are rising slowly. I don't know why. And there are two objects approaching us."

"Probably just airliners," Rachel said.

"The objects are moving at one and a half times the speed of sound." Ax said.

"Okay, that's not a passenger plane," Marco said.

I groaned. "Military jets. Oh, man, it's the Air Force after us. They're "good guys." They're on our side. We can't shoot them down."

Suddenly . . .

SWOOOOOSH!

SWOOOOOSH!

Two pale gray jets blew past us. The backwash rattled the Bug fighter.

"I can access their radio signals." Ax said. And a second later we heard the voice of one of the pilots.