Three
Tony’s father offered to drive JJ and Dyl to the Challenger Center on Saturday for their next mission. Weekends were the only days Tony could help out there, because he had gymnastics practice after school five nights a week. Mr. Vasquez was pleased to see his son spending so much time with a good student like JJ, who helped him with math, and JJ certainly liked being with Tony.
“Because of your assistance, Ms. Wren, Tony’s getting much better grades in algebra. And I can’t believe how hard he’s been working on his new science project.” He turned into the Challenger Center parking lot.
JJ’s heart raced when she saw the Challenger Center building—either from anticipation of adventure or because Tony rode beside her in the back seat of his father’s Lexus sedan, while Dyl sat in front. “What science project?” she asked.
Tony looked sheepish. “It’s a new robot. I’m going to enter it into the science fair. It, uh, was going to be a surprise.”
Dyl turned around from the front seat. “Is that one of your TNT’s—Three New Things?”
“Actually, this project has a lot more than three new things—I had to learn about circuitry, motors and engines, remote controls, receivers,” Tony said. “But I don’t think Commander Zota wanted us to limit ourselves.”
“Can’t wait to see it,” JJ said. “Does the robot do anything useful?”
“I’m programming it to fill Spike’s water and food dish at regular intervals.”
“Wow, feeding your dog? That’ll save the world,” Dyl teased.
“Don’t think small, Junior,” Tony shot back. “It’ll save me time so that I can save the world.”
“Only Song-Ye gets to call me Junior,” Dyl muttered. “And I’m sure she’ll do that in a few minutes.”
“I think it’s great, Tony,” JJ said. “If you could build me a robot that would clean the bathroom and vacuum our apartment for me, then I’d have extra time and we could save the world together.”
“You kids crack me up.” Dr. Vasquez pulled up to the front of the Challenger Center. “I’ll pick you up here late this afternoon. Call me if you’re ready sooner.”
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” JJ said. “I doubt we’ll be done early. Thanks for the ride, Dr. Vasquez.”
They all piled out of the car. JJ held the door while Dyl adjusted his crutches and swung himself out.
Tony’s father said, “Give it your best, Antonio.”
“Believe me, I will, Dad,” Tony said, shutting the car door.
Dyl kept up with JJ and Tony as they hurried up the sidewalk to the front door of the tan brick building. King and Song-Ye were already waiting there, excited.
Song-Ye poked Dyl’s shoulder with a slender finger. “You ready for this, Junior?”
He gave a mock salute, then spoke into a pretend voice recorder in his hand. “Donovan Dylan Wren, Kylarn Hunter, at your service. I’ll pull my share of the weight, but don’t expect me to do the work all by myself. That would be a problem.”
“Nobody asked you to do it alone,” Tony said. “We’ll try to leave a few squidbutts for you to mop up.”
Commander Zota appeared and stood listening to the banter, though his expression remained grave. The scar on his face and the haunted look in his eyes hinted at what he had been through in his future. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but do not ever think this is merely a fun adventure. You’ve seen first-hand how the Kylarn destroyed Moonbase Magellan. And even though no one was killed, thanks to you, the Kylarn had deadly intent. They also meant to destroy the International Space Station Complex.
“They would have murdered everyone aboard and used the ISSC as a staging point for their invasion of Earth. Again thanks to you, they were driven off. The space station is still in human hands, but the danger—both now and in the future—is very real.”
“We understand that, sir,” King said. “We know that Mira and Mentor Toowun, and maybe a whole bunch of humans, are working against us.”
“I still don’t understand how they can take sides against Earth.” Dyl shook his head. “How can they betray the human race and form an alliance with those … squidbutts?”
Zota’s brow furrowed. “I’m not convinced that Toowun is working directly for the Kylarn. If I understand correctly, he wants to make sure that Earth surrenders quickly in order to minimize casualties in the war. To that end, he has chosen to make things easier for the Kylarn. Personally, I disagree with his approach.”
JJ had never been able to believe it herself. “If they are right, there might be fewer lives lost during the initial takeover, but then humans will immediately become slaves of the Kylarn. Who’s to say the aliens won’t keep hurting and killing people for centuries?”
“That is exactly what they will do. I have no doubt about that.” Commander Zota drew a deep shuddering breath. “Come into my office with me, and I’ll tell you a story that I have never told you, nor anyone.”
Commander Zota led the cadets down the hallway to the lobby, where Newton played in his transparent habitat. Song-Ye opened the lid, scooped the hamster out, and petted him. Instead of turning toward the briefing room and the simulated Mission Control that classes visited, Zota took them down another short hallway into a small administrative office that contained a desk, a few chairs, and a computer. Astronomical photos decorated the walls. A plastic model of the space shuttle Challenger sat on the corner of his desk, as well as a small rock encased in Lucite—a meteorite found in the African desert. The locked steel door on the back wall looked like a small coat closet. If it was a coat closet, Zota didn’t seem to use it, since his jacket and a spare flight-director jumpsuit hung on hooks on the wall.
“You cadets already know that I come from the future, where the worst possible things have already happened.” When he turned to look at them, he carried a weight of memories around him. “That’s why I’m so determined to make sure it doesn’t happen again—to your future, to your children and grandchildren. We have to plan now.”
“We’re on your side, sir, don’t worry. The things we’ve already seen …” King shook his head.
Zota took a seat behind the desk. He was very intense as he leaned forward, turning his haunted gray eyes on them. “It’s time I told you more about how I came to be here. I have given you only sketchy details before.
“I thought my life was comfortable, and everything was normal. We didn’t have big dreams or ambitions, but not many worries, either. I was a university professor of engineering. I never gave a second thought to how small my classes were—that was just the way it had been for years. To be honest, I didn’t think about the space program often. I knew we had Moonbase Magellan, which was mostly empty. I knew we had the ISSC, but the news networks rarely featured any stories about it. None of my students dreamed of careers as astronauts or making a mark in the aerospace industry. We hadn’t sent space probes to the planets in a generation or two. Nobody really cared.”
Zota blinked, and though he was looking at JJ and her friends, his gaze seemed far away. “The Kylarn sent secret scout ships to Earth over the years, but since we didn’t have anyone watching, our first visitors went unnoticed. They built their whole base on the far side of the Moon, and we never suspected a thing. Then, when the aliens finally attacked and destroyed Moonbase Magellan, the human race was so stunned we didn’t know what to do.”
“But it’s different now—we changed it!” JJ said passionately. “We exposed the Kylarn base before it could be completed. We forced the squidbutts to move sooner than they expected.”
“And the people on the moonbase got away,” Song-Ye added. “In your timeline, everyone was lost.”
“Yes, you changed that part, but it was probably too little, too late. In my time, the Kylarn took over the space station, killed everyone aboard, then brought in their whole attack fleet. In my time, Kylarn drones—the tentacled fighters you met aboard the space station-swarmed over the cities and continents of Earth. They cut thousands of people to pieces with their laser shredders trying to shock us into surrender.
“They had already diverted two small asteroids, which came in on a collision course with Earth, and because nobody was doing any sky surveys, we weren’t keeping an eye out for approaching asteroids. Those giant chunks of rock were upon us before we could do anything. One struck the Gulf of Mexico, and tidal waves swamped the coastal cities. The second asteroid hit China—I never heard an estimate of how many millions of people were killed there.
“When the Kylarn swept in, all the nations of the world tried to fight back, but we were caught by surprise. Somehow, the Kylarn learned to communicate with humans—if only to provide instructions to slaves. The Kylarn queen commanded that we surrender, but we kept fighting. There were pockets of resistance everywhere.
“Even so, what could we do? With laser shredders, the aliens mowed down all resistance. They rounded us up, put us in camps. My whole family was killed.” He paused, took a breath and fell silent. JJ could see a sheen of tears in his eyes. “My father, my wife, my two daughters—all dead. The Kylarn didn’t care. I stayed alive somehow in one of their prison camps. The aliens set cities on fire, drove people out who were starving. They had no medicine, no food, no shelter. More people died from the side effects than from the attacks themselves—diseases, untended injuries, exposure.
“But I was saved because they considered me useful. I was assigned to maintain Kylarn machinery in various buildings. One building was off limits, though. They often took human prisoners there for experiments. According to the few survivors I met, the building held giant hospital wards and research chambers, where the Kylarn did horrible things—poisoning, dissecting, exposing captives to viruses. I learned everything I could about the Kylarn in hopes of helping those tortured humans, but it seemed impossible to escape from that nightmare!”
“So that’s how you knew those Kylarn words you’ve been teaching us for the past couple of weeks,” JJ said.
Zota gave a somber nod. “While I fixed machinery for the Kylarn, I met another man who sometimes translated for them—a man I got to know very well. He was also professor at the university, teaching linguistics and philosophy. Like me, he had lost his family and fervently wished to prevent further human suffering. We talked long into the night, while we shivered in our tattered tents, trying to imagine scenarios of how the war might end. Neither of us believed humans could defeat the Kylarn—not with what we had. Time and again I wished I could go back and change the short-sighted thinking that had left the human race incapable of defending itself.”
“Who was this other man?” King asked.
“His name was Toowun. Professor Toowun.” Zota looked up. JJ’s surprise was reflected on her friends’ faces. “He theorized that if human beings could show the Kylarn that we were no threat to them, they would leave more of us alive.”
Commander Zota lowered his gaze, looking down at his desk. His eyes were drawn to the Challenger model. “Others, though, didn’t give up the fight. Some military commanders gained access to old nuclear missiles and launched them, destroying a Kylarn outpost. They took the aliens by surprise.”
“Good for them!” Dyl said.
Zota didn’t smile. “Because of that resistance, the Kylarn queen retaliated by massacring more than four hundred million humans.” He stopped, letting the words hang in the air. As the very idea sank in, JJ tried to grasp the magnitude of so many deaths.
“Then one night Professor Toowun and I were taken to the experi-mental building. There were chambers dedicated to medical experiments, psychological experiments, even some high-tech physics experiments … one of which was a time machine.” Zota sat up straight. JJ’s pulse raced as they waited to hear what he would say next.
“It’s a long story. I don’t know what they intended to do with Toowun and me that night. We heard enough of what they were saying to be convinced they intended to kill more humans, either quickly or by inches. And they expected us to help them.
“Maybe because we seemed so docile, or because Professor Toowun acted completely submissive and helpless, the Kylarn let down their guard. I surprised them by fighting. It’s amazing how strong you can be once you make up your mind to act. When you take bold action, you must commit to it. I got one of the laser shredders away from the guards and killed them. Toowun was astonished. We tried to escape, but the laboratory building was crawling with other Kylarn. Alarms began to sound. They were going to find us soon.
“We locked ourselves into a room with two time machines, each the size of a refrigerator. The controls were quite complex, but by this point I understood Kylarn controls and their written language. We could both have fled in the same machine, but we didn’t want to leave one for the Kylarn to come after us with. So, Toowun and I each activated one of the devices, set a destination back in time—and adjusted the field so it would encompass ourselves and the machines. I ended up here. I knew I had work to do.” He drew a deep breath and visibly slumped in the chair, as if merely telling the tale had exhausted him.
“What about Toowun?” JJ asked. “We know he’s here.”
“I do now,” Zota sighed. “You reported that he’s been training Cadet Mira—and who knows how many others? I thought Toowun and I were on the same side, but evidently we came to different conclusions. I never heard from him again. I thought he’d been lost in the transport process, or maybe he had his time set to a slightly different destination.”
“We never thought this mission was going to be easy,” JJ said. “But it looks like Mentor Toowun and Mira are going to make it harder for us.”
“As if fighting the Kylarn invasion wasn’t hard enough,” Dyl said.
King sounded disappointed. “I think Mira’s just brainwashed. She wouldn’t be fighting against us if she understood the real story.”
Song-Ye gave King a wry look. “I’ll bet she’s thinking exactly the same about us.”
Tony crossed his arms over his chest. “Believe me, it’s best to be optimistic about the future.”
“Optimistic, but realistic.” Zota stood from his desk. “Are you ready to learn about your mission?”
“More than ever,” JJ said.
***