Mission 2: Supersonic

  Text copyright © Jonny Zucker, 2007

  Illustrations copyright © Ned Woodman, 2007

  “Mission 2: Supersonic” was originally published in English in 2007. This edition is published by an arrangement with STRIPES PUBLISHING, an imprint of Magi Publications.

  Copyright © 2013 by Darby Creek

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Darby Creek

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 U.S.A.

  Website address: www.lernerbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Zucker, Jonny.

  Supersonic / by Jonny Zucker ; illustrated by Ned Woodman.

  pages cm. — (Max Flash ; mission 2)

  Originally published in the United Kingdom by Stripes Publishing, 2007.

  Summary: “Max’s second mission is out of this world! The DFEA tells Max that there’s a vicious alien race preparing for a revenge attack on Earth, and he must blast off into space to defend the planet. Has Max got what it takes to battle evil aliens and save his fellow humans from slavery?” —Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978–1–4677–1208–8 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978–1–4677–2052–6 (eBook)

  [1. Human-alien encounters—Fiction. 2. Outer space—Fiction. 3. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Woodman, Ned, 1978– illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.Z77925Sv 2013

  [Fic]—dc23 2012049020

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – BP – 7/15/13

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-2052-6 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-3308-3 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-3307-6 (mobi)

  The sword came crashing down towards Max Flash. Max thrust out his cutlass and managed to block the powerful blow.

  But it only held off the Ninja Baboon for a few seconds.

  Immediately, the creature smashed the sword towards Max’s knees. Max leaped into the air. The weapon swished just millimeters below his body.

  The Baboon shrieked with frustration. It threw its sword onto the craggy ground. It beat its chest in fury. Orange wisps of smoke poured out of its nostrils. Shoots of stinking grey spittle flew out of its mouth.

  Max tightened his grip on the cutlass. He quickly scanned the darkened graveyard.

  What should my next move be?

  The Baboon breathed heavily. It raised its giant fists. It began to advance towards Max.

  And then Max saw it—the Orb of Justice.

  It was resting on top of a streetlamp just beyond the graveyard wall. It glowed with a flickering pulse of green light.

  If I can outrun this monster, maybe I can make it to the Orb. The Ninja Baboon will be no match for the Orb’s incredible powers.

  Max suddenly remembered the smoke grenade in his pocket. In an instant he pulled it out. He hurled it toward his enemy. The Baboon howled in terror. It began to back off. Max started to run towards the Orb. He didn’t look back until he was halfway across the graveyard. He immediately wished he hadn’t looked.

  The Baboon’s initial fear of the grenade had disappeared. The monkey was now thundering after Max. It was only a few yards behind him. Max upped his pace frantically. When he was fifteen feet from the Orb he leaped into the air. Max reached out to grab the prize. Just as he made contact with it, he felt the Ninja Baboon’s claw on his left ankle. He froze in mid-flight.

  A second later, all signs of the Baboon, the Orb, and the graveyard completely vanished. Max spun around. He was back in the living room. His mom was striding towards him. She had a serious expression on her face.

  “Mom!” he protested loudly. “If I’d got the Orb I’d have made it to level 7!”

  “You can play computer games again later. Zavonne wants to see you,” she said.

  Max arched his left eyebrow and put his electronic control sword down on the table.

  Zavonne? Is it time for my second mission?

  Max had met Zavonne only recently. His parents had introduced them. Without a shadow of doubt, meeting Zavonne had been the biggest shock of his life.

  Max’s mom and dad were a stage magic double act. Max had grown up backstage in theaters. He watched his parents. He watched a whole range of other magical acts. He studied their tricks. He worked out how they were done. Then Max perfected them himself.

  Max had more than just stage-magic abilities. He was remarkably double-jointed. This helped him squeeze in and out of incredibly tight spaces and perform astounding feats of contortion.

  Just over a month ago, his parents had taken him to a secret communications center under their cellar. A woman called Zavonne had appeared on a screen. She told Max about the organization she worked for—the DFEA. It stood for the Department for Extraordinary Activity.

  She’d said that the DFEA dealt with “unusual” activities. Things that would freak out the normal forces of law and order. Things like time travel. Things like creatures from outer space. Max learned that his parents had carried out two DFEA operations in the past. Zavonne then told him his own skills made him a perfect choice to be a DFEA operative.

  Zavonne had gotten Max’s help in fighting a computer game character called Deezil. Deezil was a terrifying lizard man. He had been determined to break free from the Virtual world. He was going to imprison his creators—humans. Max had been transported into the hard drive of a top programmer’s computer. There, he took on crazy racecar drivers, bloodthirsty soldiers, and gross slimy beasts. This was all on his path to stopping Deezil’s evil plan. It had been a totally crazy, terrifying, and brilliant adventure. Max grinned at the thought of a second mission.

  Max’s dad waited for Max and his mom. He stood at the top of the steps leading down to the cellar. The three of them walked down into the dim light. Just like before, Max’s dad flicked a switch that moved a workbench over against a wall. This revealed a small panel in the floor. He slid the panel aside. He stood back.

  Max looked at his parents’ concerned faces. They’d come down with him to the communications center the first time. Now, he was a fully fledged DFEA operative. He was to meet with Zavonne alone now.

  “Good luck,” said his mom.

  His dad squeezed Max’s shoulder. He gave him an encouraging smile.

  Max lowered himself onto the ladder. His feet hit the floor at the bottom. He flicked on the lights.

  The communications center was a square room. The walls were dotted with hi-tech equipment and digital display panels. There were racks of red levers and green buttons.

  On the wall across from Max was a giant plasma screen.

  It suddenly came to life. Zavonne’s face appeared. She looked as ice-cool and unsmiling as the last time he’d seen her.

  “We have a situation,” said Zavonne briskly.

  Great to see you too! Max thought sarcastically.

  “It’s connected to outer space,” she continued. “Get ready for blast off, Max.”

  Max stared at Zavonne.

  Outer space?

  Zavonne stared back without emotion.

  “Forty years ago, a UFO landed in a remote area deep in the countryside,” she began.

  Max had read lots of stuff about UFOs. He had never seen anything that offered any hard evidence that they existed. Although, he’d always assumed it was impossible to be sucked into a computer’s hard drive. Unti
l he’d done it himself, that is.

  “The equipment the authorities use to monitor the skies was too unsophisticated to pick up this craft,” Zavonne continued. “But the DFEA spotted it. We rushed a team out to see if it was a manned or unmanned flight. Onboard was a group of aliens. We saw they meant us no harm. They were, in fact, sick. They were incredibly weak. The first problem was understanding what they were trying to tell us. It took over a week to make equipment that was complex enough to communicate with them. Once we built the Speech Pulse Translator, DFEA operatives could finally understand what these aliens were saying. And they could understand what we were saying. The first thing they told us was that they were from the planet Zockra.”

  “Never heard of it,” said Max.

  “That’s because Zockra exists in a galaxy beyond our solar system. The Hedra galaxy can only be entered through a tiny vortex. Conventional astronauts and space scientists know nothing about it. There are many planets up there. Most of them are inhabited by small groups of aliens.”

  “Why were the Zockrans so ill?” asked Max.

  “Humans were producing massive amounts of pollution. The chemicals and gases rose up through the hole in our ozone layer. The gases slipped through the vortex and into their galaxy. Other alien groups were not affected by these pollutants. But the Zockrans were being poisoned. They came to Earth in a last-ditch cry for help. They journeyed to the source of the pollution. They exposed themselves to a massively strong dose of poison to try and find a cure. The DFEA took the Zockrans in. They looked after them in a top secret laboratory. They tried to figure out how to save them.”

  Max was stunned.

  “And did you?” he asked.

  “We did lots of experiments. We eventually discovered that humans have something called Aura Energy. This energy slows down the poisoning process from the pollution. Without this energy, we’d all be dead by now. No one outside of the DFEA knows this energy exists.”

  “So the Zockrans needed some of this Aura Energy stuff?” said Max.

  “Yes. But the problem was how to transfer the energy to them. The Zockrans were getting worse fast. If we didn’t work it out quickly, they’d all die.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Late one night, DFEA engineers had a breakthrough. They discovered that Aura Energy could be transferred from humans to Zockrans with a device called a Re-Energizing Pod.”

  A small inset box appeared on the screen. It showed a metal cage with a domed top.

  “A human enters one of these Pods,” said Zavonne. “Then an Aura-Energy transfer can take place. As long as Zockrans are within a hundred meters of the area. The more humans involved, the greater the amount of energy transferred. For the Zockrans to stay “refreshed,” these transfers have to take place frequently. DFEA engineers also learned that the Re-Energizing Pods need to be deactivated before reaching the Critical Point. For an average adult, that point is reached after five minutes.”

  “Is that all?” asked Max.

  “Yes,” replied Zavonne. “Five minutes is enough. As long as the human spends no more than five minutes in a Pod at a time, this process can be carried out without causing the slightest pain or danger to that human.”

  “Cool,” whispered Max.

  “Anyway,” continued Zavonne, “when the Zockrans were fully recovered, they told us they wished to return to Zockra. We agreed that a ten-person DFEA Unit would travel with them. They would bring along ten of these Re-Energizing Pods. The members of this unit would spend six months on Zockra. They would use the Pods to transfer Aura Energy. This made sure the Zockrans stayed in good health. When the unit finished their six-month tour, they would return to Earth. They would be replaced by another ten-person team, and so on. That way, Zockran survival would be guaranteed.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to stop humans from polluting so much?” asked Max.

  Zavonne gave him a hard stare. “What do you think environmentalists spend their lives doing? Humans are constantly warned of the effects of global warming. They choose to ignore the warning.”

  “Point taken,” Max said with a nod. “But did the Zockrans do anything for the DFEA in return?”

  “They did,” replied Zavonne. “The Zockrans promised they would act as an early warning system if any hostile alien race planned an attack on Earth. They made a commitment to defend our planet if war did break out.”

  “Is that why I’m here?” asked Max. “Are we about to be attacked?”

  “We strongly suspect so,” replied Zavonne. “We just received a distress signal from the Zockrans. Last night, planet Zockra was invaded. The current DFEA Unit was kidnapped. This has had an immediate effect on the Zockrans’ health. They’re in critical condition.”

  “So you’re sending another DFEA Unit up there?”

  “No, Max,” replied Zavonne. “We’re just sending you.”

  “You’re sending me alone?”

  “That is correct.”

  “But why me? Why not an adult DFEA operative?”

  “One of the reasons I recruited you in the first place was your exceptional agility and contortionist skills,” Zavonne explained. “I believe those qualities will be central to this mission. That’s why I’ve selected you above an adult operative. We don’t know what we’ll be dealing with up there. Your special skills may give you the edge in a dangerous situation.”

  “OK,” Max agreed. “But there are ten people in the DFEA Unit. The combined Aura Energy they transfer will surely be greater than the amount I can give.”

  “That’s true,” said Zavonne. “But you’ll be able to provide enough energy to keep the Zockrans alive until the kidnapped unit is found and freed.”

  “How long will my energy transfer last?”

  “We have been looking into this,” replied Zavonne. “An adult can stay in a Pod for up to five minutes. DFEA engineers have figured out that a child should only stay for two minutes. You must leave the Pod when those two minutes are up. Failure to do so could be life-threatening. Do you understand?”

  Max nodded as Zavonne pressed on. “We can get you to Zockra incredibly quickly in one of our spaceships. The speed you’ll be traveling at is so fast that no radar on Earth will be able to pick it up. But before you set out, you’ll need to complete a brief training. You must go to the DFEA’s hidden Space Base immediately. There is no time to lose.”

  Max’s dad checked his rearview mirror. There was no other car in sight. They’d been driving on an empty country road for just under an hour. They followed Zavonne’s instructions to the letter.

  “Be careful,” he said. He looked worried. He gave his son an affectionate squeeze on the shoulder. “We want you brought back to Earth as quickly as possible.”

  Max gulped nervously. He got out of the car. He stepped over to a very tall bunch of shrubs at the side of the road. He climbed up the bank. He stepped past the large patch of daffodils. Max dipped his head and walked straight into the hedge. Feeling around with his right hand, he finally found the small metal dial. Max twisted it to the left as Zavonne had instructed.

  Instantly the hedge parted, leaving a very narrow gap. Max turned around and waved. Max slid through the opening. As soon as he was past it, the hedge slid shut.

  In front of him was a long path that cut through some trees. Max hurried forward. He saw a stone square on the ground in front of him. The stone began moving. It revealed an opening. Max stepped forward. He slid down a chute into total darkness. He crashed into a room a few moments later. He picked himself up. A series of spotlights came on. They lit up a line of arrows leading into the distance. Max followed the arrows. He reached a high, steel door.

  What shall I do? Hang around until someone comes? Or knock?

  He’d just raised his left fist to knock when a panel in the door opened. A man wearing a dark green jumpsuit and a radio headset appeared.

  “Operative Hunter,” said the man, introducing himself. “You must be Max.”

&nbs
p; Max nodded.

  “We need to get straight to work,” said Hunter. He showed Max through the door and down a narrow, dimly lit corridor. Max struggled to keep up with Hunter. He heard strange noises all around him—twisting metal, grinding machines, and whirring motors.

  Finally Hunter stopped in front of a door on the left. He swiped some sort of card and disappeared inside. Max followed and found himself in a whitewashed room. It was as large as an aircraft hangar.

  Around the walls were hundreds of pieces of shiny equipment. They gleamed under bright lights. They were in all shapes and sizes. Some were no bigger than a football.Others were at least thirty meters high. Each piece was covered in buttons and levers.

  “Unreal!” murmured Max.

  “Right,” said Hunter briskly. “The Zockrans are deteriorating rapidly. We need to get you up there fast. But as Zavonne explained, I need to give you a crash course in space survival.”

  Max listened anxiously.

  “First, we need to fit you with a spacesuit.”

  Hunter pressed a panel on the wall. A long metallic arm shot out. It held a perfectly folded garment. Hunter lifted it off. He passed it over to Max.

  “It goes over your clothes and MUST be worn at all times in space,” said Hunter.

  Max excitedly slipped on the spacesuit. He wondered whether he could smuggle it home after the mission.

  “The helmet is operated by that little green button on your chest.”

  Max pressed the button. A see-through helmet flipped out from the back of the suit and over his head. Hunter motioned for him to put it back down. Max pressed the button again. The helmet snapped back into place.

  “And now for your weightlessness training.”

  Hunter pointed to a glass door that faced a large open space. It was surrounded on all four sides and on its ceiling by mesh. Max grinned.

  Of course! Floating in space. How cool!

  He went through the door, which immediately closed behind him. Max stepped onto the large mat that ran across the entire floor. Before he’d made it to the center of the mat, he heard a loud whooshing sound. He was lifted upwards.