Sleepers (The Blue Planets World series Book 1) Read online

  Em’s face turned red, too, but she shook her head. “No, you’re not. You could’ve done that five minutes ago. You’re up to something.”

  Jake wanted to laugh because she saw through him. He tried to decide how much to tell her, and finally decided on the truth. “You’re right. I’m following Captain Hill. He’s got a drone, and I want to see what he does with it.”

  “A drone? No way. I didn’t see a drone.”

  “It’s in a black case that Captain Hill had in the back of the bus,” Jake said.

  Em shrugged. “I saw a black case, but I thought it was supplies. Why’s he got a drone?”

  Jake shrugged, not worried about whether or not she believed him. “Go back to the group. I’ll catch up later.” He turned back to the steep path.

  “No way,” she repeated, but this time, he knew she meant that she wasn’t going to let him go alone to see a drone.

  They trudged uphill in silence, following a narrow path—not much more than a deer trail—around the edge of the lake. Looking left toward the north, Bench Lake quivered slightly, a light breeze just ruffling its surface. Perfectly reflected in the water were the blue skies and the white-capped peak of Mt. Rainier. They were only halfway up the mountain here, maybe five or six thousand feet above sea level. The peak itself still towered in the distance. This vantage gave a perfect view of the majestic south slopes.

  “What’s that noise?” Em said.

  Jake turned forward again and scanned the area for the source of a loud humming noise. A couple hundred feet away, he spotted the drone laid out on a flat rock by the water. Four black legs forming a quad-copter supported a thick white center; each leg was topped with a spinning rotor.

  With a whine, the drone rose straight up, climbing so quickly in elevation that a moment later, Jake wondered if he’d really seen it. While Mt. Rainier’s peak stood at over 14,000 feet above sea level, the crater floor was only a climb of around 9000 feet. Captain Hill would be able to see where the drone was going through its tiny webcam, and thus, control it.

  Jake almost bent double as his stomach cramped. This was his worst fear: if Captain Hill delivered the Brown Matter to the volcano, somehow managed to dump it into a fumarole or a steam vent—the Earth’s core would never be the same.

  The Penning Traps used electromagnetic forces to trap the material, essentially a jar without sides. The Brown Matter would need to be in sufficient quantity—a critical mass—to incite the volcano. The amount of Brown Matter to deliver was a crucial, yet delicate calculation.

  Jake couldn’t let Captain Hill risk that for Earth, like the scientists did on Rison. Brown Matter had the potential to travel through the vent until it reached the heart of the volcano; and from there, it could sink deep into the Earth’s core. When Yarborough/Blevins had been doing his research five years ago, volcanologists thought a Penning Trap could operate indefinitely, drawing upon the magma’s heat for energy. In the last five years, though, Penning Traps were proven to fail after two or three years. That meant the Brown Matter would be free to go where the magma flowed, which was so unpredictable.

  Hill was using old, unsafe technology. Why would he risk it? wondered Jake.

  The drone sounded farther away already, but still Jake didn’t see Captain Hill. He had to find him and stop the drone; this was a deadly hide-and-seek made harder because Captain Hill wore camouflage and was probably sitting still, concentrating on the drone’s screen. Unless he moved and gave himself away, Jake didn’t know if he could find the captain in time.

  The wind picked up, blowing harder and colder. Jake shivered but wondered if it was from cold or from fear.

  Then, Em pointed and whispered, “There.”

  Captain Hill had climbed an evergreen tree and was sitting on a broad limb, hunched over a screen and using a joystick. The black case lay at the tree’s base.

  “How’d you see him?” Jake whispered.

  She shrugged. “Good eyes. I can always pick out things in the midst of clutter. You ever do ‘Where’s Waldo?’”

  Jake had no idea what she was talking about, but it didn’t matter now. “Stay here,” Jake ordered Em, and then started to climb. The tree branches were sharp, poking at him through his jacket. Worse, climbing up through the limbs, it was impossible to be quiet.

  Captain Hill leaned over his branch, saw Jake, and his eyes went big.

  “You can’t do this,” Jake called out. “You can’t dump stuff in a volcano.”

  “Yeah, kid,” Captain Hill said. “What do you know? I’m just playing with a drone.” He sat back against the trunk to concentrate on the drone’s control screen.

  Jake reached for the next branch and pulled himself upward. He climbed steadily for another twenty feet, until Captain Hill was only five feet away.

  Glancing down, Captain Hill growled, “Stay away.” He shifted his weight, and the sudden movement made a branch swing back and thwack Jake’s head, unbalancing him.

  Seeing this, Captain Hill shoved against the tree trunk, creating a bigger sway.

  Jake’s hands slipped, and he fell, crashing through the leafy branches, trying to catch at anything. Irrationally, he thought: Apples! Where are the curse words when I need them?

  He grasped branches of needles, but the flimsy branches broke off. He fell again, silent, flailing, trying to grasp anything to stop his rapid fall. He landed on his back—thump!

  Em leaned over him, her red jacket filling his vision. “You okay?”

  He blinked. He tried to turn his neck, looking right and then left. Curse, curse, curse—the words thumped like the pulse in his head. Such feeble words. “I think so,” he murmured.

  Behind her, Captain Hill hung by one hand from a branch, and then dropped the last few feet. He dashed downhill.

  Jake shoved up, shaking his head gently to dull the pain. “We have to stop him,” Jake told Em.

  “No. You’re hurt.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him up. She put her arms around his waist to help him walk.

  “No!” Panic threatened to overwhelm Jake. “I have to catch him.”

  Em must’ve caught something of his desperation because she drew in a shaky breath and opened her mouth to say something—

  Turning, stumbling, Jake plunged downhill, following Captain Hill. Em caught at his belt trying to stop him, but missed.

  Hill only trotted because he had to stop now and then to look at the drone’s control screen. It looked like a tablet computer, but it had hinged sun-shields on the sides and two sturdy antennae at the back. The drone was likely high enough that it could glide for a while without his attention, but Captain Hill couldn’t ignore it long, or it would crash.

  Throwing caution to the wind, Jake raced pell-mell down the slope, trying to catch up, Em crashing along behind him.

  And then, Captain Hill was gone.

  Jake pulled up and looked around, trying to spot the captain. Slower now, Jake trotted downward, letting his eyes rove, searching for movement.

  There. Behind a boulder.

  Realizing he’d been spotted, Captain Hill leapt up and crashed down the slope again, Jake and Em following close on his heels.

  They came out of the tree cover at the lake’s shoreline. Hill raced toward a tall outcropping of dark gray granite.

  Em bent over to catch her breath, but Jake raced toward Captain Hill.

  The captain had climbed the ten-foot column of rock and stood fiddling with the drone’s control and looking toward the top of Mt. Rainier. “Almost there,” he cried.

  Jake called, “Stop! You’ll make the volcano erupt!”

  Captain Hill sneered, “So, the Navy has figured out our plans? So what? Your Dad’s a coward, sending a boy to spy on me. Why didn’t he come himself? You won’t stop me, your Dad won’t stop me, and the Navy won’t stop me.”

  Jake climbed the granite column, not knowing how he could stop this crazy soldier, but knowing that Earth’s future depended on him.

  Reaching the top, Jake
peered up at Captain Hill, who was standing spread-legged for stability. Moving the joystick, Hill adjusted the drone’s flight. Jake heaved himself up the final inches of rock and charged. He hit Captain Hill squarely on the back, and as they fell, he batted at Captain Hill’s hand like an NBA basketball player trying to strip an opponent of the ball. The controller crashed onto the rock and then went flying.

  Captain Hill cursed. He was a military man, in his prime; Jake was a teenager who was just getting his full growth. The only reason Jake had escaped from the captain so far was dumb luck. Now, the Captain shoved.

  As he went flying, Jake thought: I just need one English curse word. He wished he knew what Hill meant by the words he screamed out now. Jake landed hard onto the gravel beach. Stunned, he blinked at the blue sky and wondered why Em was screaming.

  But there—when he managed to turn his head—five feet away, almost in the water, lay the drone’s controller.

  Jake rolled over, trying to stand, but only managed to make it to his hands and knees. He crawled toward the controller, watching the images from the webcam. The drone was high up on the mountain, high enough that its webcam only showed snowy slope. Cold lake water seeped into Jake’s tennis shoes. He tried to focus on the controls. Could he make the drone crash? Brown Matter was dangerous, but in a remote area like Mt. Rainier, maybe it wouldn’t hurt anything—unless it fell into a fumarole.

  Suddenly, Jake was shoved from behind, and the controller was snatched from his hands. Nausea welled up, and Jake let his head droop again. When he looked up moments later, Captain Hill was back on top of the granite column, gazing up toward the top of Mt. Rainier.

  Jake forced himself to stand, to climb.

  Standing near the rock’s base, Em called, “Jake are you hurt? Just leave it. Don’t let him hurt you again.”

  She didn’t understand; she’d never lived on a dying planet, where you wake up every morning wondering if today was the day that your planet would implode. Mom once said, “You can’t live in crisis mode. At some point, you must go into maintenance mode. You just live. Day by day.”

  He’d never understood that. His last month on Rison before he evacuated had been crisis mode all the way, with every day bringing reports of dormant volcanoes erupting and thousands more dead.

  He had to stop Captain Hill and prevent that from happening to Earth, too.

  Jake heaved himself back onto the top of the rock, lying flat for a minute, catching his breath. Then he stood. He tried to be light on his feet, tried to keep his knees bent, to be ready for a fight. Instead, he felt sluggish, heavy. He charged. Everything slowed to a crawl. Three steps to reach Captain Hill, who merely sidestepped at the last second. Momentum carrying him onward. Another step. Another. Then thin air. Hanging ten feet above the water. Kicking. He longed for a curse word. Nothing!

  Then cold water all around him. Frigid water. Shock!

  Momentum carrying him deep, reaching the lake’s bottom. It might’ve killed a human. But Jake wasn’t human. His mouth snapped shut. Nose lids shut down so water didn’t flood his lungs. His underarm gills opened and shut, switching automatically to water breathing. It happened instantly, without thought, just the normal functioning of his body. And he relaxed. Pure, cold, refreshing ice melt. Luxurious. He hung underwater, just floating.

  Above him, though, he saw Captain Hill pumping his arm in a motion that to humans meant, “Victory!”

  The Brown Matter was inside Mt. Rainier.

  Going Commando

  “Hurry! Keep moving!”

  Em raced back to the bus, pushing hard, not letting Jake even take a deep breath. “You’ll get hypothermia if we don’t get you dry,” she insisted.

  They stumbled into the parking lot where Mr. MacDuff sat in the driver’s seat with strange music coming from a portable speaker. Seeing Jake in wet clothes, the driver jumped into action.

  MacDuff started the bus, turned the heater to full blast, and made Jake sit in front of it. Jake wasn’t worried. His magma-sapiens body heat was actually drying out his clothes, but he pretended to shiver because it was expected.

  The driver called Coach Blevins—and surprisingly, both phones had reception. Blevins charged back from Snow Lake, herding the freshman class with about as much luck as a shepherd with unruly sheep. But when they saw Jake sitting there in damp clothes, the students eagerly offered him odd pieces of clothing. One tall guy had worn jeans and sweat pants over that, so handed Jake the sweats. Another had on three shirts and donated one that smelled strongly of cologne. Dry socks were offered by three kids who had worn multiple pairs.

  Fortunately, the driver shooed everyone off the bus, so Jake could at least change in privacy; otherwise, Jake didn’t know how he could hide his unusual anatomy. Jake pulled on the sweats, but they were way too long, and the fabric too soft to stay rolled up. Instead, the tall guy came onto the bus and they switched jeans and sweats, Jake using the bus seats to keep his legs hidden. The jeans fit well enough in the waist, but Jake had to roll them up three times.

  “Going commando?” joked the tall guy.

  No underwear was bad, Jake thought. And then, he pulled on the least smelly pair of socks and vowed to stuff an extra pair in his backpack in case this ever happened again; wearing someone else’s sweaty socks was the worst. Throughout all the clothing changes, MacDuff’s strange music played, high-pitched and wailing, somehow reminiscent of Risonian opera, Jake thought.

  Finally, Jake was in the dry and sitting in front of the bus’s heater again. He only lacked shoes.

  When kids boarded the bus again, Em was first. She frowned at MacDuff and asked. “What’s that music?”

  He flushed, jammed buttons on his smart phone, and turned off the portable speaker. “Bagpipes,” he said curtly.

  Jake nodded to himself. He liked that music; later, he’d look it up and find out more.

  Em flopped beside Jake, silent and waiting patiently until the bus was loaded.

  Captain Hill boarded last, swaggering down the aisle, slapping hands, and joking.

  When Jake had pulled himself out of the frigid lake, Hill had threatened Jake and Em.

  “You won’t tell anyone about this, will you? Because it’s your word against mine. Who will they believe? An officer in the ELLIS Forces or a 9th grader?”

  Em furiously protested, “You pushed him.”

  “So you say.” Captain Hill smiled grimly. “I say, he was clumsy and fell. Your Navy Dad may believe you, but he’s got no proof.”

  Jake easily accepted that he couldn’t tell anyone, because he didn’t want any kind of investigation that would look at him closely. On the way back to the bus, Em tried to protest, but then got wrapped up in making sure Jake didn’t get hypothermia. Of course, Jake knew his anatomy wouldn’t allow him to get overly chilled, but it was a convenient way to distract Em. He let her fuss and cajole him to hurry.

  Still, at the sight of Hill’s celebration, Jake’s lips tightened, and he sat hunched over, sitting on his hands to keep from standing up and swinging. He had to be patient now until he could tell Dad what had just happened. Only time would tell how bad it would be for Earth.

  When the bus finally pulled out of the parking lot, Em leaned toward him and asked in a reasonable voice, “You want to explain what happened up there?”

  Jake forced himself to stretch, to lean back. Casually, he let his arm rest along the back of Em’s seat. How much would she understand? And what could he say with Coach Blevins sitting just two rows behind them? The truth? Okay, she asked for it. “With the drone, Captain Hill dumped something into a steam vent, a fumarole, on Mt. Rainier.”

  “Why?” Em asked.

  She went for the heart of it. Didn’t ask him what was dumped or about the drone or anything. She just wanted to know, “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure I know all his reasons.”

  “But you think you know something. Or else you wouldn’t have followed him. You wouldn’t have tried to stop him
.”

  “I think I know something,” he agreed. “But I can’t explain here.”

  Slowly, Em turned so that her feet were in the aisle and her back was toward him. Casually, she scratched her ear and turned her head. Just as casually, she turned back to face the front. Softly, so softly, he almost didn’t hear, she said, “Coach is listening to everything you say.”

  “I know.” And sitting in the back of the bus was Captain Hill, with his feet casually propped up on a black case.

  “You owe me answers,” Em whispered. “Soon.”

  “Soon,” he promised gladly, because it was a good excuse to see her again.

  Need-to-Know

  When Jake got home, he wanted to call Mom or Dad immediately but Easter insisted that he take a bath; she still didn’t realize how alien his metabolism was, and he still had to pretend to be cold. The hot bath, after the long bus ride to and from Mt. Rainier, made him groggy, so he lay down for a quick nap. When he woke, it was ten p.m., which made it one a.m. in New York City. He should wait till morning to call Mom. He could call Dad any time, day or night, but since Dad was on a secret mission, it’d just be a Navy officer who would relay a message, and there was no guarantee of how fast Dad could answer. No, it was Mom or nothing. And that left him wide-awake to debate as to what to actually tell her.

  Did his parents really need to know about the Brown Matter? That was complicated. First, would Brown Matter really affect Earth’s core like it had Rison’s core? Was it dangerous to use Brown Matter just once, or was it the constant use for a couple decades that caused Rison’s core to become unstable? So many questions, so few answers. It’d take a team of scientists years to figure out the answers. Maybe the best course was to wait and see what happened before bothering his mom and worrying her.

  Jake shoved back his crumpled sheets. With a sigh, he rose and padded over to his open window to lean out and stare at the stars. High thin clouds blotted out half the night sky. How much longer did Rison have?

  Restless, he turned back inside and lay rigid on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Was he just being selfish? The real reason he didn’t want to tell his parents about the day’s events was that he wanted to stay here on Bainbridge Island. If he told his mom, he’d have to explain that Coach Blevins was actually the infamous Dr. Yarborough. And that Captain Hill was trying to get a photo of the ambassador’s son. That would end with drastic decisions, like moving him to a new location, just when he was starting to settle in and make friends. Like Em.