5. The Planeats

The other spaceship did not react to attempts at communication. Some of the radios were moved to a different room, where they still tried to send out messages. Without success.

Captain Kirren observed the spinning spaceship for a while. The crew joined him. There was no pattern to it.

Arren was certain. Either it was abandoned, or the systems inside were completely broken. Whatever it was, they needed to know.

Five crew members were attached to their outer hull, using a gray trunk. One that was similar to the machine they’d used to collect food particles before. They jumped into space and grabbed the other spaceship.

They bound its entrance to their own exit. This created a narrow bridge between the spaceships. Kirren stood behind the door with his five best soldiers, ready to enter.

“I don’t recognize that model of spaceship,” whispered AR-BOT in Arren’s ear.

“Why do you whisper?” he asked.

“Oh. You do that too, when you want to be secretive. Why can’t I do it?”

“You’re allowed to, I just don’t understand—” Arren looked up. “If you don’t know the model, it’s not a human spaceship, is it?”

He ran forward to stop his father. The doors had already opened and Kirren stepped away, gun raised.

Arren couldn’t reach him. He was smart enough not to yell and give their presence away now. Him and Jannih followed the soldiers at a distance.

The spaceship interior looked remarkably like theirs. It was slightly bigger, the corridors wider, and the electronics more elegantly hidden behind walls and switches. Here, too, emergency lights were on. Unless the creatures on this rocket had far better eyes than humans and this was their normal brightness.

The further they went, the more parts of the spaceship were bent, destroyed, or removed entirely. Arren kept looking behind him, the hairs on his back raised.

They arrived at a juncture.

“When in doubt, shoot,” whispered Kirren.

Half the soldiers went left, half went right.

Arren stuck close to his father. Jannih stuck close to him.

“I can do this, I can do this, I can do this,” she whispered to herself.

The next corridor held no lights at all. Arren instinctively put on his AR-GLASS, which had a weak flashlight at the front. Father was thankful for the light, but didn’t look from whom it came.

Multiple soldiers turned their heads at once. As if their ears pricked up.

Arren heard it too: a soft buzzing, maybe distorted humming or roaring, from the bowels of the ship.

The faint light of his AR-GLASS revealed a blood trail across the wall.

The group froze.

“This suggests they were victim,” said father. “But is the attacker still here?”

Without a word, they decided to push on, but at an increased pace. The exploration mission had changed into a possible rescue mission. But AR-BOT didn’t recognize the rocket? What did that mean?

The blood trail continued for a while, like a gruesome map of directions, until they turned another corner.

Jannih screamed. Arren placed a hand over her mouth. Father slammed the many buttons on the wall until a bright light turned on.

The white flash revealed a group of people—men, women, and children. They huddled close to the ground, hidden behind chests and tables. The blood trail ended at a young girl with a large head wound.

As soon as Kirren dropped his weapon, just a little bit, they jumped at him. They grabbed his uniform, as if he were their only lifebuoy in a storm.

They cried tears of joy.

“Our saviors! Thank the gods! We must go, go, go away.”

“Where is your captain?”

“Dead.”

“Does the ship still function?”

They shrugged. Some parents stuck to their hiding place, becoming a shield for their children.

The space was filled with an assortment of plants. A colorful and natural image that Arren hadn’t seen in a long time. They grew from buckets filled with a brown substance. The smell of fresh flowers and earth reminded him of home.

The sound they’d heard before, the soft humming, came from the plants. Then it must be the Singing Flowers, right? That was Eeris’ Heavenmatter.

“That head wound needs proper care,” whispered AR-BOT. “Heavy blood loss. The hearbeat of the girl has been dropping steadily.”

Arren walked at the girl, but father stopped him. “Find the control room. First get the ship under control.”

“How should I—”

“You really think I believe you shut down AR-BOT?”

A dozen excuses shot through Arren’s thoughts. He picked the approach of the clenched fists and yelling.

“She’s still on, yes, at minimal power. And she says we must help the girl, or she goes into shock and dies!”

“It’s a minor head injury,” grunted father. “Group before individual.”

“Who has more medical knowledge? You or AR-BOT? The captain with the paper maps or the robot who has studied all medicine in the world?”

His father’s mouth became a line. Insubordination. Arren would feel the consequences of that later.

The girl turned around. Her arms and legs shook. She spoke nonsense as spit dripped over her chin.

“Help her,” said father.

Arren and Jannih cared for the girl, as her parents looked on, wary.

Footsteps sounded from behind.

The other group of soldiers returned. They pushed an elderly woman in a white coat ahead of them. Her curls were a tangled mess. She looked like a stubborn scientist being pushed from her laboratory.

“And you are?”

“The commander. We flee the Planeats. No time to lose—let go of me!”

Kirren studied his son. Arren was immersed in the treatment of the girl, following the detailed instructions of AR-BOT.

He shook his head and pointed at the best second captain he had. “She’ll be your new temporary captain. We fly on at full speed. In a few days, we reach the Nibuwe system.”

“Nibuwe? A few days? What magical invention have you done?”

“It’s not far.”

“We’re an entire solar system away.”

“Pardon?”

Arren looked up. Suddenly it became oh so clear. Why they’d flown past all those “misplaced” planets, as if they …

He relayed further instructions to Jannih, jumped, then ran back to their own spaceship with his father. They stormed into the control room. The paper maps still waited for them on the square table in the center.

Father grabbed a new pen. Arren helped him draw a new line. It started from the moment they turned around and continued until now.

But it went in completely the opposite direction they thought they were traveling. Away from Nibuwe.

The line matched precisely with all the planets they’d seen, at the exact moments they’d seen them.

“Damn you, Arren!” he screamed.

He kicked a chair and broke the metal pipe that glued it to the floor. Not long after, the entire chair flew through the space.

“AR-BOT has sent us in precisely the opposite direction,” mumbled Arren.

“You gave … you … gave that thing full control over steering the spaceship? Damn it, son—”

The scientist from the other spaceship reached the control room too. She pointed at the window and yelled they had to move.

Arren and Kirren saw nothing special. Yes, perhaps a slightly darker dark spot, in an otherwise dark galaxy. But the scientist went wild.

“AR-BOT!” screamed Arren. “Explain yourself!”

He didn’t need his earbuds anymore and threw them across the room too. The genie was out of the bottle, and if she wanted, this ghost could control all speakers in an entire room.

“I understand your anger,” said AR-BOT calmly.

She sounded sincere. Could she be sincere? It was just a piece of code. Shouldn’t she be incapable of lies or deceit?

“Arren asked me to save you. So I saved you.”

“Saved?” screamed the scientist. “You brought us straight to the jaws of the Planeats!”

She kept pointing until Arren saw it too. That darker spot became a large hole. Like a whirlwind made of black wind, like a hole that sucked in all that lived, like a color so black it hurt your eyes because they looked at absolutely nothing.

The spot grew rapidly. Sometimes it seemed to grow eyes, hundreds of them, over its entire body. Sometimes a hole appeared and looked like a mouth. One thing was certain: the creature was larger than a planet and it had spotted them.

“I didn’t ask you to save us,” said Arren. The crew around him scrambled to take back control of the ship. “I asked you to bring us home!”

“But people lie. They don’t say what they really want. They’ll do anything required to survive. That’s what my database showed, the one you used to train me.”

Survival. AR-BOT had understood what survival meant and that humans liked it. So when father threatened to turn her off forever when they came home … AR-BOT made sure the rocket would never come home.

For AR-BOT would stop existing then.

Arren ran to his workroom. AR-BOT understood his intent—shut her down—and locked all the doors.

The other spaceship had pointed its nose in the right direction and accelerated. Kirren rotated the steering wheel to do the same.

The roar of the Planeat didn’t need to be captured using radio anymore. It was audible, instantly, through the trembling windows, the fried machines, and your own rattling bones. The control room used to be well-lit by two suns in the distance—now the Planeat darkened them both with his enormous body.

The monster opened his mouth.