The Softwire: Betrayal on Orbis 2 Read online

  “Vairocina?” I called out once more as Weegin pulled us through the door and down another corridor.

  Red globes hung from the walls, illuminating the hallways. Inside each globe something moved, but I could not tell what it was.

  “I don’t like it,” Max said.

  “I’m not afraid of this,” Switzer boasted.

  Theodore was mumbling, “Three hundred twelve, three hundred thirteen, three hundred fourteen . . .”

  He was counting his steps again. “Good idea,” I whispered.

  There are twenty-one of us, I thought. If we all worked together, why couldn’t we drag Weegin back the way we came? What about that guy at the door, though? I didn’t like thinking about running away. It’s not what I wanted to do on Orbis. I was trying to make a life for myself here.

  “Get in,” Weegin snapped. He was stopped in front of three shallow rafts that fit snuggly in a narrow trough. “Get in!” He jerked on the rope, making Ketheria stumble.

  “Where are we going, Weegin?” I asked.

  “Get in or I’ll cheelo into the water,” Weegin said. He spoke each word slowly, as if giving time for our translation codec to work, but the codec still failed to translate completely.

  “This isn’t the way to Magna, Weegin. I want to know where you are taking us.”

  Weegin grabbed Grace and pulled her to the water’s edge. The kids closest to her were forced down also. Grace screamed as Weegin wrenched her hand over the water.

  “It’s your choice,” he said, baiting me. “Tey Hoolies would chi a snack.”

  Grace stared at the water, crying. The black surface rippled. Grace yanked herself back, but Weegin held tight.

  “Don’t, Weegin!” I shouted, stepping onto the raft. “You win.”

  I don’t know if Weegin was lying about the Hoolies, but no one said a word as we loaded ourselves onto the narrow rafts. The metal skiffs then drifted along a river of black water that sucked up the light bleeding from red globes mounted to the walls. A heavy dampness crept over me, and the only sound was Grace’s sniffling. She was attempting to compose herself after Weegin’s threat, but she still flinched every time the water rippled.

  “Do you smell that?” Max whispered.

  A sweet aroma lingered in the air.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  The narrow channel finally emptied into a wide cavern, maybe three floors high. My raft came to a rest at the edge of a large pool crowded with similar skiffs.

  “Treck Core City shool tok edge,” Weegin said, stepping onto the pool’s concrete banks.

  “What did he say?” Max said, and Theodore shrugged.

  “I don’t know. Just follow him,” I told them. “Unless you have a better idea.”

  Weegin yanked the light rope, and one by one we stepped onto the landing. The rope shrunk as we gathered together. Then Weegin climbed a narrow stone staircase that curved up and along the damp wall and ended at a small arched tunnel.

  “What is this place?” Max asked.

  “It’s not a good place,” Ketheria said as we followed Weegin through the arch.

  Farther down the tunnel, torches of purple fire lit the old stone walls. Weegin stopped in front of a large, fleshy, humanlike alien draped in blue silk. I could hear the high-pitched chatter of several smaller aliens crawling all over him. They looked like bugs, yet they seemed to be talking to each other. The big alien guarded another archway glowing with a red light that reflected off the creatures as they munched on whatever they could pull off his body. He grunted something at Weegin, but I could not hear him over the shouts and other sounds coming from the red hole in the wall.

  “JT, ask Vairocina where we are,” Theodore said.

  “She won’t answer,” Ketheria said.

  “How do you know?” I asked. “Vairocina?” I whispered, but there was still no response. “Vairocina?”

  “It’s no use. She can’t hear you,” Ketheria said.

  “Why?” Max asked.

  “Because the central computer is not online here. There is no connection to the computer that runs Orbis. That’s why we don’t understand what everyone is saying,” Ketheria said.

  “How do you know?” Theodore asked.

  Ketheria tapped on the device the Keepers used to control her telepathy.

  “It doesn’t work?” I asked her, and Ketheria shook her head. “You can read our thoughts?”

  Ketheria nodded.

  “Then they must be using a smaller computer to translate each other. I can understand some of the words but not all of them,” Max said.

  “The smaller computer can’t translate fast enough,” Theodore guessed.

  “If the central computer is off-line, then this whole area must be outside of the control of the Keepers,” I said.

  I was used to being connected to computers. In a weird way it gave me comfort. I don’t like this, I thought.

  “Me either,” Ketheria said.

  “Don’t do that,” I told my sister.

  When the alien finally let Weegin pass, we filed through the red-glowing door and gathered on a landing perched above a wide staircase. Nugget reached up and took my hand. He held on to Ketheria with his other. We were at the top of a huge room. Hanging on the back wall were three floors of balconies with aliens huddled around pots of seeping smoke. The yellowish haze collected over the center of the room and stung my eyes. I watched one alien point at Ketheria’s headpiece and then snatch up a pile of crystals on his table to the protest of a trio of bald creatures. There must have been a hundred aliens. Every one of them fell silent when they saw Weegin desend the stairs with us in tow.

  “This can’t be good,” Max said.

  Weegin tugged on the rope, dragging us to a thick counter that looked like it was carved from a single stone.

  “Cha now Paka koo,” he barked at two identical buglike aliens. The one farthest from Weegin reached under the counter, and a green spotlight cut through the smoke, exposing a small stage in the center of the ground floor.

  The audience of aliens burst into cheers. A thick creature with four metal tubes protruding from a mask that covered his face reached out to Ketheria. His brown robe stank of rot, and his gloved hands were wrapped in some sort of glistening wet weed. Weegin slapped the alien’s paw away and jerked the light rope toward the center of the room.

  “What are you doing, Weegin?” I asked.

  “Che quiet,” Weegin snapped.

  The cheering grew louder.

  “No!” I stopped and grabbed the rope. The crowd responded with more shouting. “What are we doing here?”

  “I’m getting my payback. That’s what I’m doing,” he said slowly. “Now come here!” Weegin grabbed Nugget.

  “No!” the little alien yelped.

  “Leave him,” Ketheria shouted.

  “Not for sale,” Weegin snapped, pushing his son aside.

  “For sale?” Max said.

  That’s when I noticed more than one alien counting crystals on the tables. I saw another hurriedly waving over smaller robot drones, which then scurried back to the two aliens at the main counter.

  “You can’t sell us,” Switzer protested.

  “You’re supposed to take us back to the Keepers,” I reminded him.

  “They have a decree,” Theodore said.

  “I will be drrek gone before anyone eesh aware of tey transaction,” Weegin said.

  I saw Switzer staring at me. He looked at me with a smirk, slowly shaking his head.

  “Really thinking about that opportunity you gave up on the Renaissance aren’t you, dumbwire?” he said, referring to his futile attempt to hijack our seed-ship.

  I was. I could not think of any way out of this. I could not talk to Vairocina or alert the central computer. I could not break the rope Weegin used, and even if I could, I didn’t think I could make it out of there. I couldn’t figure out what to do. There were no options.

  The large a
lien in the smelly brown robe was now next to me. He put his hand on my head and shouted, “They’re diseased!”

  Weegin whipped around and pulled me away from him. The crowd was on its feet. Max tried to say something, but all I could see were her lips moving in the racket.

  “He lies! He’s crazy!” Weegin shouted to the crowd. “They are healthy. Perfect condition. Soon they will be of breeding age.”

  “Weegin, please. Stop this. You can’t do this to us,” I begged.

  “I am doing it,” he growled at me.

  “Dreekt ten foort crystals. For the semel female!” yelled one alien, standing on his stool.

  “Ne, ne, ne!” Weegin yelled back, quickly waving his hands above his head. He stepped onto the stage and pulled us up with him. “Ne Dreekt. You must take trell!” he shouted.

  The alien who bid made a hissing sound at Weegin. One of the small aliens, with a narrow forehead and big eyes, pushed the large, cloaked alien aside and stepped onto the stage with Weegin.

  “We have to do something,” Max whispered.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said.

  “Who would expect anything else? That dumbwire isn’t worth the brain it’s stuck in,” Switzer sneered.

  “What? If you’re so smart, then you do something,” I told him.

  “I will.”

  The bug-eyed alien began to speak. Its voice resonated throughout the entire arena, and everyone grew silent. The alien spoke slowly so every word was translated.

  “Joca Krig Weegin . . . is offering . . . these twenty . . . human children . . . for trade,” the alien shouted.

  “This can’t be happening,” Max said.

  “Trading begins . . . at forty thousand yornaling crystals,” he added.

  More than one alien laughed at the price. Others sat back down at their smoking pots, shaking their heads.

  One alien yelled out, “Not for the whole ring.”

  “One child is a telepath. The other is . . . a softwire,” the buglike alien announced.

  There was a brief moment of complete silence before the entire crowd erupted into a fierce bidding war. A tall slender alien whose spine and ribs appeared to be outside its body stepped forward and bid forty-one thousand yornaling crystals. Another bid forty-two thousand, then forty-five. Then a large, burly alien with long teeth and thick, gray skin shouted out ninety thousand. I couldn’t keep track, things were happening so fast.

  “JT?” Max whispered. There was panic in her voice.

  If there had been some kind of computer translating the alien languages, then maybe I could have used that to link back to the central computer. Didn’t they have to do that, I wondered, for air control or waste management or the zillion other things the central computer controlled on the rings? I didn’t know, but it was my only shot.

  The pace of the bidding increased, and I scanned the area around me for any sort of computer terminal. All I found was a small blinking key plate on the wall behind the stage. It’s a start, I thought, and slunk toward it as far as the rope would allow. I pushed into the device and immediately sensed something was wrong. My ears burned hot, and the inside of whatever computer I had just pushed into was dense with a thick, green fog of static electricity. Normally, a cool rush of current surges across my skin and the colors inside the computer brighten with an enhanced sense of clarity. But not this time. Security devices were mounted on top of more security devices, and everything looked as if it was patched together, piece by piece.

  I pushed in farther and turned down a corridor, looking for anything familiar. The dataway opened into a long, thin hallway that was at least a thousand times taller than any computer I’ve ever been inside. Way up, through the thick, crackling soup of data, I saw something floating above me. The hallway darkened as someone bellowed, “Who is in my computer?”

  I thought my head was going to crack open, literally. I yanked myself out of the computer and staggered back, bumping into Max with my hands clamped around my skull.

  “JT, what’s wrong?” she asked as an alien with pitch-black eyes and cracked copper skin stood up from the top railing.

  “One million yornaling crystals for the Softwire,” he announced, flinging back his cape and motioning with his gloved hand to one of his entourage. The alien placed his hands on his hips and stared at everyone below, as if challenging them to outbid him. But no one else in the room bid again. My head was still pounding. The stage was spinning underneath my feet. What was happening?

  “The generous SenniUg has offered one million yornaling crystals for the Softwire. A moment, please,” the buglike alien shouted to the crowd, then leaned in toward Weegin. He whispered frantically, occasionally glancing over his shoulder at me.

  “JT, snap out of it,” Max said. “We have to get the light rope off Weegin’s belt.”

  But Weegin took care of that. He removed the blue crystal from his hip and chomped down on it. When the crystal was crushed between Weegin’s teeth, the light rope released each of us from its grip.

  “Deal!” Weegin shouted up at the black-eyed alien, and stepped toward me, grabbing me by the shoulder.

  “No!” Ketheria cried, but Weegin pushed her away.

  “If you have any ideas, Switzer, I would really like to hear them right now,” Max said, but Switzer didn’t move. He looked to the other kids, but they were waiting for him.

  The aliens shouted and chanted. One alien bounced up and down on his chair while another howled at the ceiling. Why all the commotion? What did it matter that this alien had just purchased me? Who was he?

  “He is a very bad person,” Ketheria said.

  SenniUg strode across the balconies on the third floor toward the stairs. I looked at the doorway, but the stage was surrounded by at least thirty aliens, maybe more. Two aliens who had been seated with SenniUg earlier stomped toward the stage. One, sporting a scar that circled his knobby, bald head, handed Weegin a metal case. Weegin smiled and grabbed at the case. It secreted a blue gel that molded around Weegin’s fist.

  “JT, what are we going to do?” Theodore said.

  “You are going to do nothing,” Weegin snapped.

  I leaned toward Max. “The computer here is no help to us. I tried. We have to make a run for it. You grab a person and —”

  “Who is in my computer!”

  I fell to my knees and squeezed my skull to keep my brain from spilling out of my ears. Who was saying that?

  “JT!” my sister screamed.

  What happened next was such a blur that it’s hard to describe. The building shook with the tremor of an explosion. The far concrete wall cracked under the pressure, and the explosion was followed by another brain-melting scream. I pulled my head to my knees, trying to hide from the voice tearing at my brain.

  “Do you hear that?” I shouted.

  “Who doesn’t? This place is gonna blow up,” Theodore panicked.

  “Not that,” I said. “The voice.”

  “What voice?” Max said.

  The arena rumbled again. In the middle of all of this I heard the words: Who dares enter my computer?

  I looked around, but no one else seemed to notice the strange voice.

  Show yourself, intruder.

  The walls of the cavern shook once more. This time the stone behind the stage cracked. Water sprayed through the opening.

  “The tank has been breached,” the insectlike alien screamed, and bolted for the stage. When the water hit the alien, he screamed as if it was burning his skin.

  Another blow. I didn’t think the room could take much more.

  “Move,” Theodore screamed when the wall behind us came crashing down. Water gushed toward every corner. The aliens tried to scramble to higher ground, but once the water caught hold of them, it seemed to suck the life from their bodies.

  I jumped to the other side of the stage, but Weegin was not as lucky. A piece of the stone wall struck him, pinning him to the ground. He screamed out in pain as the water rose around
the stage.

  “The tank. The tank will flood Core City!” someone shouted.

  “This way!” another shouted.

  SenniUg, the alien who had tried to buy me, was now on the lower level. He maneuvered through the water toward us.

  “Hurry,” I shouted. “Head for the stairs.”

  “Don’t touch the water!” Max yelled.

  “Nugget!” Ketheria screamed, searching the stage for her friend.

  The little guy was kneeling next to his unconscious father, too frightened to move. He whimpered and stroked Weegin’s forehead with his big hand.

  “Choo, choo,” he said as Ketheria knelt next to him.

  “We have to help Weegin,” Ketheria begged.

  “No, we don’t,” Switzer replied.

  “Nugget, come with us,” Ketheria urged the alien.

  The little runt looked up at my sister. He would not leave his father. Even though the vile creature had never showed him a single tender moment, he would not go. Instead Nugget tried to pull Weegin from under the rubble. Ketheria began to help him.

  “We can’t,” I said. “Weegin’s fate on Orbis 1 would be far worse than the fate he will suffer here. Trust me.”

  Two of SenniUg’s goons reached the stage, and one grabbed me by the shoulder. Max wheeled around with both fists clenched, catching one alien across the chin and knocking him back into the other one. They both fell into the rising water.

  “Thanks,” I told her, then turned to my sister. “C’mon, Ketheria. Now is our only chance!” I said. More and more aliens rushed the stairs, and fewer of them seemed to care about us anymore.

  My sister stood up as Switzer disabled the last alien with the remnants of a chair. Nugget knelt down next to his father again. He looked up at Ketheria.

  “I find you,” he mumbled. “Nugget . . . stay.”

  Ketheria swallowed hard, but she could not hold back her tears. Her eyes welled up as she scratched Nugget under the chin.

  “Now, Ketheria!” I shouted, grabbing my sister.

  We pushed our way to the stairs as the room shook once more and a wave of water and debris washed away SenniUg and the others.

  After SenniUg and his trolls disappeared, little effort was made to stop us. I think everyone was too busy trying to save their own lives at that point. Max stormed through the debris, screaming at anyone who stepped in her way. The large, fleshy humanoid that guarded the door sat slumped in the corner, unconscious and bleeding from his head. A thick chunk of stone lay at his feet, and his alien parasites were gone.