Puzzled, Laureline glanced at her map. She turned the dial. The map spun. She gasped, horrified, as she realized that eighty-one became eighteen.
“Alex? You are on eighty-one?”
“Affirmative, Sergeant.”
“Sorry, my mistake,” said Laureline. “It’s number eighteen!”
“Great!” came Valerian’s voice. “See? I trust you more than I trust myself, and look where it gets me!”
Laureline felt her cheeks grow hot. “Alex? Pick him up! On eighteen!”
She waited, biting her bottom lip. It felt like hours, but it was only about ten seconds before she heard a breathless, irritated Valerian gasp, “Thanks, Alex! Bring on the beach!”
Laureline allowed herself a relieved smile.
Valerian switched his suit to normal mode and clambered into the cockpit. Energy returned to him in the form of adrenaline as the ship filled his screen and he realized that this was definitely the right place. The vessel docked in bay eighteen-not-eighty-one looked exactly like the sort of ships the pale, beautiful Pearls would build. It was huge, and its three sides came together in a shape like a star. The engines at its base were dozens of perfect white spheres, and its prominent surface wasn’t any one single, bold color, but a soft, muted combination of delicate shades that seemed to undulate and shift.
Pretty though it was, it was gearing up to flee, and it had Commander Filitt on board. “I don’t know where you come from,” he muttered as he locked onto his target, “but I know where I’m going to send you.”
The XB982 opened fire on the ship. It swerved away and accelerated, with Valerian hot on its tail. It was fast, and it was smooth, and it led him on a merry chase. The two vessels sped in and out of the queue of tanker ships alongside the docking station, and Valerian was reluctantly impressed at the speed with which the much larger ship could maneuver. Even so, he managed to get a solid lock on the back of the vessel.
“I’m going to shoot out the engines,” he announced to Laureline and Okto-Bar.
“Their protective shields are very sophisticated. You won’t go through,” Laureline warned him.
“Then let’s try something bigger.”
As he was about to fire, the unthinkable happened. Dozens of what looked like fissures appeared along the shell-hued sides of the vessel. For a second, Valerian thought it was going to explode. But instead, the “cracks” became deeper, and Valerian realized that the single enormous ship was splintering into several smaller, identical-looking ones that now peeled away in all directions.
“Shit! Laureline? The ship’s just broken up into a bunch of little ones. Which one has the commander on board?” Valerian shouted.
“Nine o’clock! South!” Laureline answered.
“Nine o’clock?” Valerian repeated, furious and irritated. “You sure? Not six o’clock?”
“Nine o’clock!” Laureline snapped. “Hurry up!”
The vessels were flying above, ahead, behind, and below him now, and he spotted the vessel Laureline had pinpointed zipping along beneath him at, indeed, nine o’clock. The Intruder switched course to chase after the smaller spacecraft, which hurtled into the maze of the station’s innards.
Valerian loved piloting the Intruder. He was very fond of Alex. But after he almost slammed into another vessel and Laureline had yelled, “Watch out!” in his ear, he reached a decision:
“I’m too big to follow them,” he told her and Okto-Bar. “I’ll take the Sky Jet!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Oktobar frowned. “That’s odd. It looks like they’re not trying to escape into open space—they’re heading right back…” His voice trailed off.
The two red dots were approaching the radioactive area at the heart of the station.
“You’re near the dead zone,” warned Laureline. “Reel them in before I lose you!”
Valerian, frenzied, shot back, “I’m working on it!”
Laureline kept her eyes glued to the map, watching with increasing agitation as the red dots that signified Commander Filitt and Valerian drew closer together even as they edged toward the zone that was bombarded with radiation.
“Valerian?” she said. “I’m going to lose you in ten seconds.”
“I can’t slow them down!” Valerian snapped.
“Five seconds…”
“Oh, shit!” Valerian shouted.
Then, silence.
The red dots had disappeared off the map. Laureline’s heart contracted. “Valerian? Valerian, do you read me?”
There was no answer. No sign of life.
Laureline whirled to Okto-Bar. “I need a Sky Jet!”
“Sergeant Laureline, you can’t go after him.” Okto-Bar’s voice was harsh.
“Why not?” she demanded.
He stabbed a finger at the map. “That zone is too dangerous and it’s under enemy control.”
“An enemy you don’t even know!” she retorted.
“An enemy that just attacked us!”
“By putting us to sleep and not killing a single one of us?” she cried. “Why would they spare our lives? Why?”
He stared at her, and for a moment, his commanding, certain expression wavered. “I… don’t know.”
“Valerian has seen these creatures before. They are coming from planet Mül.”
Okto-Bar frowned. “Ridiculous. Planet Mül exploded thirty years ago!”
She was running out of time. Valerian could already— no, she wouldn’t let herself even think it. She turned to leave, done with trying to convince him. Okto-Bar grabbed her arm.
“I can’t let you leave! What you’re saying—it doesn’t make any sense!”
“It’s our mission that doesn’t make any sense, sir!” Laureline shouted. She didn’t care who heard her. “Somebody’s lying to us. While you find out who, I’m going to find my partner!”
She wrested her arm away from him and stormed toward the door. The general nodded to two sentries to block the exit.
Laureline whirled. “General, Valerian’s an invaluable agent. You can’t afford to lose him.”
“I most certainly can’t afford to lose two in one day!” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Sergeant.” To the sentries, he said, “Confine her until backup arrives. Trigger the highest alert level, and find me the commander!”
One of the sentries took Laureline’s gun. “Please follow us, Agent,” he said.
She felt her face grow hot with anger, and bit back a retort. Okto-Bar wasn’t about to listen to her. He was convinced the Pearls weren’t real, and nothing she could do was going to change his mind.
She walked down the hallway, flanked by the two soldiers, her stride brisk and angry. At a junction with another hallway, though, she spied three very familiar squat, long-nosed, winged figures wandering away. An idea flashed into her mind and she came to a halt.
“Hey, guys!” she said to the soldiers. “I think you should cuff me.”
They looked askance at her. “No, I’m serious. Cuff me. First, because it’s procedure. And second, because I’m sorely tempted to escape!”
The two soldiers shared a glance, puzzled. One of them shrugged. “Whatever,” he said.
He pulled out a pair of magnetic handcuffs. As he stepped forward and started to fasten them around Laureline’s slender wrists, she seized his companion’s arm and thrust it forward before the first sentry could halt his motion.
Snap.
The two men, one of them now partially handcuffed, stared at each other for just an instant in mutual shock.
It was long enough. Laureline’s long leg shot out, impacting one sentry’s knee with an ugly crunch. He dropped like the proverbial stone. She seized the other one’s arm, twisted it, and before either one knew what was happening, there was a manacle around one man’s wrist and another about the second’s probably broken leg. He was white as a ghost. Deftly, she plucked her gun from his waist and gave them a shrug.