“And this is?”
“For helping open up the engine compartment while I go scouting for more stuff,” he quipped, snatching up two pairs of heavy-duty goggles that were tinted so that looking around under the glow of a red giant and not one but two white dwarf stars didn’t blind us for life. They’d been packed alongside the survival suits, and he tossed the other pair to me.
“If you see anyone approaching—” He started what I could only assume was going to be another lecture on how I wasn’t supposed to try to fight anyone.
“I know, I know. Get back in the ship, lock down the door, and wait,” I finished for him. It sucked to have him treating me like a child. But until I got a better handle on all this alien, super-advanced technology crap, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I didn’t have a card to play in order to earn any respect from him.
“I won’t be gone long. Five minutes, tops. I’m gonna walk you around to the engine access panels and show you where you can start removing the locking bolts. Once they’re open, I can see how bad the damage is and maybe start fixing this thing.” Phox pulled his goggles down as he swaggered by on his way to the door. “Ready?”
I pulled my goggles down, too, adjusting them to cover my eyes behind two circular panes of near-black glass. “Ready.”
Light poured in as soon as the door hissed open. The air wavered and rippled with heat that stole the breath from my lungs even through the suit. Immediately, the sleeves of the suit lit up with a series of light blue glyphs that winked on and off. Coolness spread through my chest like I were lying on top of an icepack. I shivered, my skin prickling at the bizarreness of it. Little by little, the rest of my body acclimated until the heat was little more than a mild discomfort.
Wow. Phox was right. The effect was almost immediate. Keeping my heart and chest cold made the rest of me feel cooler, too.
I followed him out into the furnace of a midafternoon on the surface of Thermax. The name of the planet made a lot more sense now. No wonder nothing seemed to be growing anywhere I looked. No trees. No shrubs. No cacti. There weren’t even tumbleweeds.
“Can anything live here?” I asked as he rounded the sleek silver runner craft. It was worlds better than what we’d had before, although Phox seemed sure it was still an older model.
Overall, it was only a little larger than the one we’d had before. The size of a short school bus rather than a van. The hull had been painted with streaking black and red designs with a single yellow stripe that ran from the nose all the way to the back. The two engines looked at least a little familiar. They had the same basic look and shape as jet engines. Granted, they were a lot smaller and I seriously doubted they were similar at all.
“You mean like people?” he asked as he climbed on top of the craft and turned around to offer me a hand.
“Or animals.” I seized his palm, diligently ignoring how strong, solid, and warm it was. Nope. Not thinking about that.
With one small tug, Phox pulled me up onto the roof of the ship like it was nothing. “Yeah, but not on the surface. Most of the cities are subterranean. Animals, too, I guess. I haven’t actually been here before, so I don’t know for sure.”
My head spun a little as I straightened and looked around. Phox had explained that the atmosphere here was thinner. It was going to feel like I was standing at a high elevation. Neither of us were sure if it was too thin for me, but I wasn’t about to sit around inside the ship while he did all the work.
“You okay?” He leaned down to look at me closely. “You’re breathing hard.”
Was I? I hadn’t even noticed. My heart pounded and my chest felt heavy, making every breath a bit of a struggle. No way was I about to tap out yet, though.
I nodded. “Fine. Let’s do this.”
No sooner had Phox put me to work unfastening the heavy-duty bolt-things that fastened down the access panels than one of the white hovering orbs zipped past us across the desolate landscape. It hovered for a few seconds, then went on darting past other wrecked crafts, as though it were trying to get closeup shots of the bodies and smashed ships. My blood boiled just thinking about all the eager eyes on the other end of that camera—alien creatures like Rout all over Alzumaris watching in suspense.
“That’s a camera, isn’t it?” I whispered. “I saw a bunch of those right before the race started.”
“Yeah. They call it a spec-cam.” Phox’s expression had gone cold, his eyes tracking the sphere as it blurred silently through the air. “Probably taking the final death count and looking for survivors.”
“What does it do if it finds any?”
His mouth set in a grim line. “Nothing. Bunch of assholes. They don’t interfere with the race beyond filming it for the spectators.”
We stood in silence as the sphere zoomed around, finally making a pass back in our direction. When it stopped in front of our ship, the dark spot containing the lens pointed right at us. Phox made a gesture with his hand, something I could only assume was the alien equivalent of the one-finger salute.
I grinned and threw my hand up right alongside his, giving that fancy hovering camera a clear view of my middle finger.
“You’re all right. You know, for a human,” Phox mused as we watched the floating camera-orb speed away into the distance.
“Thanks. You’re okay for a freaky giant alien guy.”
“Unciathris.”
“Whatever.”
Phox didn’t retort, swaggering away to jump off the top of the ship and start his search across the debris-strewn battlefield.
