“What?” Jeff asked. “Whatever it is, it sounds bad.”
“It is bad,” Tim said, voice shaking. “All the Embassy kids are missing. Becky and JR included.”
“How?” Jeff asked.
“No one’s sure. One moment they were all there, the next, they’d disappeared. Most of them have hyperspeed and we all know they compensate for the ones that don’t, just like all we adults do.” Tim held up his hand that I was still holding. “Why they chose now to do this, though, is really unclear. And badly timed.”
“What’s Alicia doing?” Had to ask, because I’d rarely heard Tim yell and never at his wife.
“She’s going with Amy and the other parents to search for the kids.”
“Why is that a bad thing?”
Tim shook his head. “Because they think the kids are on the ship.”
Got a really bad feeling. “Jamie called them, didn’t she? She hid somewhere and called her friends over to her.” Looked at Charlie and thought about several things—mainly that it wasn’t Charlie’s nap time and yet he was sleeping like the dead, and that Jeff had said Charlie was talking to someone. In his sleep. Just like I had earlier. Maybe we both were having really weird dreams today. Or maybe that whole DreamScape thing was real. “Wake him up, Jeff. Wake him up now.”
“What?” Jeff sounded confused. Realized his stupid blocker was working far too well, because if he couldn’t feel me, then he couldn’t read my mind, either. Due to the amount of Surcenthumain—what I called the Superpowers Drug—Jeff had been given by our enemies during Operation Drug Addict, his abilities had expanded. He couldn’t read everyone’s minds, but he was very good with mine and the kids’. But this blocker appeared to be better.
“Wake him up, right now!”
“Why? Him sleeping means him not being frightened.”
“All required personnel accounted for,” a pleasant robotic female voice announced. “Takeoff imminent. All personnel to assigned stations.”
We stared at each other again. “What was that?” I asked Tim. “Or, rather, who was that?”
“That was the master computer, I think. But unless Christopher was wrong or the crew came back inside after he took them out, personnel can’t be accounted for, let alone the required ones.”
“Jeff, what is Charlie dreaming? Tell me what’s going on with him, and don’t argue, just do it.”
Jeff still looked confused. “He’s talking to that imaginary woman.” He jerked. “And he sees the other kids—they’re with Jamie and Wasim in some room where they can all sit in what look like bucket seats. They’re all buckled in, too. Lizzie and Christopher just arrived . . .”
He’d have said more, but we were all too busy trying not to fall down the stairs, as the ship lurched upward for real this time. And this time, it didn’t stop.
CHAPTER 10
THANKFULLY, Jeff had a good hold on Charlie or he’d have gone flying through the air. As it was, the only reason the four of us didn’t go tumbling down was that Tim managed to grab the railing and none of us had let go of each other.
Banged up but not too badly, we managed to regroup. “Is the ship doing what I think it’s doing?” Jeff asked.
“If you mean flying, yes, I think it is,” Tim replied. “We need to get to the command deck pronto—I don’t know how the autopilot feature got activated, but that’s what I think happened.”
Looked at my snoozing son. “I think I have a really good idea for how autopilot got activated. But Tim’s right, let’s go.”
We couldn’t go quickly—some kind of g-force was still pressing down on us and it made using hyperspeed difficult. But superstrength was also a good thing, and Jeff was the superstrongest, so we managed, him doing most of the heavy lifting in terms of dragging me and Tim along.
The feeling of extra weight let up as we hit, per Tim, the halfway point. “Gravity sensors engaged,” the pleasant robotic female voice shared.
“That means we’re in space, doesn’t it?” I asked, merely for the joy of confirmation.
“Yep,” Tim said grimly. “It does.”
That acceleration wasn’t shoving us down meant hyperspeed was easy again, so we were able to zip off. The stairwells were, thankfully, laid out intelligently, so we reached the command deck, which was Deck Three, quickly. Realized that this ship reminded me a lot of the Dulce Science Center in New Mexico. Lots of levels, none of them made sense to me, more bells and whistles than you could shake a stick at, and even more blinking lights.
It also reminded me of Dulce in the fact that I was already confused about what was where within one short visit. Really hoped Drax had added a lot of “You Are Here” signs to the ship, because otherwise I was going to be lost within seconds if I was left alone to wander.
But Tim knew where we were headed and we arrived to find no one there, as expected. “Autopilot’s definitely engaged,” Tim said, as he ran to one of the control stations. As with the helicarrier, Drax had designed this ship to have a modest crew, but it still needed six people at the various controls. “I can’t make out what the coordinates are, though.”
“Well, get it stopped and turned around,” Jeff said, looking out the windshield. “Because I’m looking at the moon in close-up.”
“Good, that means warp isn’t engaged yet,” Tim said. “I need at least another person at the controls and two would be better. Frankly, the rest of Airborne here with Chee and Brian would be best, but we’ll deal with what we’ve got.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Any time, Kitty. Go to Station Two. Jeff, go to Station Six—that’s the one set up for A-Cs. Both of you buckle in and Jeff, be prepared to have to really hang onto Charlie.”
We did as ordered—in emergency situations, we’d all learned that whoever knew the most was who was in charge. Jeff nestled Charlie into his chest as he strapped them both into the seat together. “How much turbulence do you think we’re going to hit?” he asked Tim worriedly as he put the flight helmet that was attached into the main controls onto his head.
“No idea. We didn’t train for this, honestly.” Tim’s helmet was on. “Kitty, hurry up. You’ve got Communications as well as some internal controls. That means you can talk to those inside the ship as well as connect externally. Jeff, you’ve got Weapons, just in case.”
“In case of what?” Jeff asked while I buckled my purse in as if it was Charlie and put on my helmet. There was no way I was risking losing my purse and its contents right now. Chose not to contemplate how my hair was going to look later—we were in the middle of something potentially dangerous and I still had no idea where Jamie and Lizzie were. My hair would just look like it always did during times like these—like I had a dead weasel or a drowned cat on my head.
Speaking of weasels, had no idea where Algar and the least weasels had gotten to. Would have made a mental note that this would be a good name for a band but I was too busy.