Space Race (Space Race 1) by Nathan Hystad (book recommendations for young adults .TXT) 📕

“You want to get some sleep, Arlo?” Luther asked.

I was too jacked up to rest. “Maybe in a bit.”

This must have been what it felt like to be Bryson Kelley, taking SeaTech from the bottom to the top ten within a couple of decades. Every rank he climbed was a huge achievement, and I understood his drive even more now, albeit on a smaller scale.

“Captain, we’re getting a message from Espace.”

“Patch it through.” I pretended to be concerned as Captain Clara Durand’s face appeared on screen.

“I know it was you, SeaTech!”

I spoke calmly. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

“I’m not stupid. The Committee sent no such message.”

Her ship’s icon was moving once again, but now it was behind Barret in eighth position.

“Did you have an engine malfunction? Maybe some minor composite blockages?” I asked, hinting I knew the truth of what they’d done.

Captain Durand just stared at the screen, and a second later, the communication was ended.

“Nice work, Arlo,” Jade said. “I would have told her off.”

We flew the few hours without incident, and eventually, I fell asleep in my seat.

____________

“Arlo, there’s something you should see.” Jade gently shook my shoulder, and I blinked my eyes open. I’d been dreaming. My parents were on the beach near their retirement home in the Islands, and I was walking toward them with a woman at my side. Someone watched us from a distance away, and I felt my grandfather’s stare on the back of my head. When I looked up, it was Jade watching me with those big dark eyes.

“I’m awake. What is it?” We’d been flying at full bore for hours, almost a day in total. Luther was gone again, and Holland chatted with R11 quietly while watching the Race feeds.

“I opened the communicator up after adding my new measures.” She demonstrated the program. It showed all incoming messages aimed at us, along with random ones crossing our path. Each was displayed with their destination and origin. “It’s not unusual to find a hundred or so communications passing through a particular region. Some are old, some never reach their true source, and others are misdirected.” She tapped the screen in the middle of the transmission records.

“What’s that one?” It was written in orange text, unlike the green from the rest.

She played with her curls. “Arlo, it might be a glitch, but…I think it’s coming from far away.”

The hair on my arms stood up. “How far?”

She glanced behind her across the bridge, making sure Holland wasn’t listening. “Fifty light years. Give or take.”

“Fifty?” I shouted, and slapped my hand over my mouth. “Fifty?” I whispered.

“I don’t know. It might be the program screwing up, but I made it myself. From what I can tell, there’s a system. Yellow dwarf, estimated to have fourteen planets in orbit. Paedra is her name.”

“Who?”

“The star,” she said.

“Okay, you’re telling me there’s a message from Paedra?”

“Well, the star didn’t send the message, but…”

I swallowed hard, suddenly thirsty. “What does it say?”

“It’s a file. I think there’s embedded audio, maybe visual, but it’s complicated. It’ll take me some time to separate and convert to view.” Jade seemed excited.

“This could be nothing. What if it’s Espace or one of the others trying to distract us?”

Jade tapped her screen. “I don’t think so, but it’s certainly a possibility. But what if it isn’t?”

“If it’s a message from another system, we’re famous.” But there was more to it than that. “Should we tell Bryson?”

“Let me see if I can learn more first. Do you want to see the data files? I only took a quick peek, and they’re…”

“Do it.” I stared at the screen in anticipation while the first file appeared. Text scrolled down the program, and I felt my vision beginning to narrow. The text… it was the same as on the ship I’d encountered. “I’ve seen this before.”

“Barret is advancing, finding the power to catch SeaTech just minutes before the last checkpoint commencing the Pod Race. Keep your eyes peeled, people, because this is going to be one hell of a showdown,” Yon said as Holland turned up the race feeds.

“What? You’ve seen this before? How’s that possible?” Jade asked.

“R11, come over here, please.”

The robot shuffled quickly, standing beside me. “Captain Lewis, is there a task I can—”

“Read this message. What does it say?” I asked.

His response usually came within seconds, and the delay told me all I needed to know. “It’s not in my parameters, but maybe if I link to SeaTech’s master database, I can determine the origin.”

“Don’t bother. I have a distinct feeling there won’t be any hits.” I watched the text, the lines squiggly, broken with large spaces between the symbols.

“Arlo, don’t evade my question.” Jade was growing restless, and I had to make a choice: trust someone I barely knew or pretend I’d slipped up. It was time to be a team, not a solo pilot.

“On my last trip to Eris, I stumbled on…something. Fragments of an ice world were scattered about, and I received a transponder from a ship. The message was in this very same text,” I explained.

“What kind of vessel was it?” Jade urged.

“I don’t know. I have images.” My fingers wrapped around the memory Coin in my pocket, and I pulled it out, laying it on my palm. “I went to investigate, and the thing self-destructed. Blew itself up before I could get any clues to its identity.”

Jade stared at me from her seat, a look of disbelief on her face. “You’re messing with me.”

“No. I swear.”

Holland had broken free from his viewing of the Race coverage and watched from the other side of R11 as I dropped the Coin onto Jade’s keypad. It glowed brightly, transferring the data, and Jade accessed the files, opening the images first.

“I’ve never seen anything like this.” Jade pointed to the nose. “See the way it curves up, and the round hull?” She zoomed to the neck below the cockpit, laughing like she’d heard a funny joke.