Were we … getting along? Sort of? A little?
I shook my head. No way. Seriously, I had to get it together. All this alien-space stuff was scrambling my better sense. I told myself it was fine. No big deal. Phox and I could get along for the sake of survival. Not like friends or anything. Definitely not. More like people who could tolerate one another’s existence in the name of not dying.
Yeah. I could handle that.
13
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE ALIEN
Phox ran around for hours while I worked, unfastening one panel after another until I had a heap of twelve at my feet and a fresh sheen of sweat on my skin. Not even my fancy surface survival suit could do anything about that.
Dropping the last of the panels onto the top of the pile, I let my arms sag at my sides as I scanned the horizon for Phox. He was big enough that I could pick him out from a distance. My temples throbbed, like my brain was about to come bursting out of my eardrums, and my chest still felt crushed and too tight. Breathing in Thermax’s atmosphere was like sucking on a hairdryer while it ran on full blast—thin, stifling, and painfully dry. It left my throat raw and my chest sore. Then again, maybe that last bit was just from where the harness had left me bruised.
At last, Phox reappeared around a heap of wreckage and came jogging back with an armload of more stuff. He’d assembled quite the collection so far. Some he took directly into the ship, while others, mostly the spare parts he probably intended to use to fix our ship, he stacked next to where I was working.
“How’s it coming?” he called up.
“Done. How about you?”
“I think I’ve got enough for the repairs. We’ll see. Come on down. Let’s take a breather. Been a while since you ate anything solid, right?”
God, yes. My stomach twisted and tangled at the prospect of food. Maybe that was what had my head throbbing like someone was trying to beat my skull in with a hammer. Er, well, that and the thin air. Whatever. I wanted food. Now.
What I got was definitely not food. Not by human standards.
Sitting back in the cool reprieve of our ship, Phox broke out some of the rations he’d found and tossed me a vacuum-sealed silver package about the size of a paperback book. Inside, a clear pouch of pinkish fluid was nestled alongside two hard, crumbly bar-shaped things. One smelled suspiciously like cat food. The other was green and I didn’t even want to guess what it was made of.
“That’s a protein compound, fiber compound, and an electrolyte fluid with vitamin additives,” he explained around a mouthful of his own food.
I couldn’t hide my skepticism, curling my lip as I held up the snot-green chunk of whatever-it-was. “What does it taste like?”
“Like not starving to death.” He chuckled. “Pass it over if you don’t want it.”
I shot him a glare and defiantly took a bite. It didn’t taste as bad as it looked. More like a somewhat grass-flavored granola bar. The meat one, however, reminded me of old potted meat. If I hadn’t been on the verge of caving in from hunger, I might’ve passed on that. But food was food, and every bite made the cramping in my gut ease and my head clear.
Phox licked his fingers, searching for any remaining morsel before he chugged the packet of alien-Gatorade and tossed the empty plastic bag aside. “Okay. Now for the hard part. If I can get the engines working, then maybe we can leave tonight.”
“Leave and go where?” I asked around bites of my own rations.
He tipped his head toward the glowing, transparent hologram of Thermax still spinning silently above the glass-topped table. A thin red line traced a zigzagging pattern along one small portion of the planet, ending at a pulsing white dot. “The next checkpoint. Every time you advance in the race, you’re given the global positioning coordinates for the next checkpoint to continue. There are four total—one at the start, two mid-race, and one at the finish. This ship’s already got the first set uploaded into the navigational drive. We should be good to go.”
“Did we have that in the other ship?” I couldn’t recall seeing anything like it before.
“Hell no.” He laughed dryly. “Are you kidding me? Rout didn’t want us to advance any farther. We were supposed to die at the starting line. And we still might if we don’t get moving. Sitting here makes us a big, fat juicy target for anyone still roaming the area looking to pick up some easy kill-points.”
I crammed the rest of my protein bar in my mouth and swallowed. “I want to help. Just show me what to do.”
His brows rumpled together as he stared at me, seeming to think that over. “All right then. You’re gonna stand guard.”
“Stand guard?” Why did that sound like a bogus errand? Like a parent telling their child to watch for the light to change just to keep them occupied while waiting in traffic.
Reaching behind him, Phox produced a very large, long-barreled weapon resembling a high-tech gun made of gleaming black metal. A rifle? He handed it over with a smug grin. “Ever shot something before?”
“No. I was an aspiring runner and part-time waitress, not a Marine.” I took the gun with a scowl. For its size, the weapon didn’t weigh nearly as much as I’d thought it might. The shape of it was similar to sniper rifles I’d seen in movies—right down to the scope mounted on the top. But instead of having to squint through one eye, it fit snuggly against both like a pair of binoculars and projected a highly detailed image of whatever lay beyond the end of the barrel. As
