Starbounders by Adam Jay Epstein Read Free Book Online

giddy feeling bubbling inside him. The camaraderie, the adventure, even the danger. It was everything he’d hoped Indigo 8 would be.
    The bonfire had already begun when they arrived. Piles of wood and thin copper strips had been stacked at the center of a ring of rocks, and the fire’s otherworldly green color gave everyone around it an emerald glow.
    Most of the Starbounders-in-training were already sitting on stone benches, paper plates loaded with cookout food balanced on their knees. A trail of meat-scented smoke drifted from a row of industrial-sized gas grills. There was also a make-your-own-sundae table with an ice-cream freezer behind it.
    Zachary, Kaylee, and Ryic had reached the outer circle of the bonfire. They looked around frantically but saw no sign of the vreeks anywhere. Zachary spotted Kwan sitting with the Lightwing boys.
    â€œKwan,” he called as he hurried toward him.
    â€œHey, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”
    â€œI was up at the starchery range,” Zachary said between breaths. “Somehow one of those vreeks from the Ulam terrarium got—”
    â€œStarchery range?” Kwan asked, cutting him off. “You know you’re not allowed to be there without a trainer.”
    â€œListen. There are vreeks coming this way. You have to do something.”
    Just then a trainee with the Indigo 8 infinity sign shaved into the hair on the side of his head pointed down at the ground.
    â€œLoose vreek!” he yelled as he dived to try and grab it.
    The creature easily slipped through his hands and propelled itself toward the bonfire. The other vreek was squirming its way past a group of third-year girls from the Cometeers SQ.
    â€œDon’t let them get to the fire,” Ryic shouted.
    Resident advisors and trainees tried to stop them, but the vreeks had already disappeared into the heart of the flames. A moment later, more than a dozen creatures emerged from the fire. The original vreek had been no bigger than a fist, but its mutated siblings each had grown to the size of an enormous crocodile. And there were no burns on their slimy bodies or any other signs of harm from the fire. Quite the opposite: the heat had turned the two slugs into a pack of vicious alien life-forms, stronger, faster, and much more aggressive than before.
    Zachary watched as one of the new vreeks flung itself onto the back of a fleeing Lightwing girl. The force knocked her face-first into the dirt. The vreek was about to bite into the back of her neck when Monica kicked the supersized outerverse beast clear off her.
    Resident advisors—including Kwan and Derek—were now wielding their warp gloves, using them to push slow-moving Starbounders-in-training out of the way of the onslaught of space slugs. Instructor Avendale and a few other trainers dashed out of a nearby equipment shed armed with what looked like high-tech fire extinguishers—metal hoses attached to handheld, frost-encrusted tanks. They sprayed blasts of freezing vapor at a pair of vreeks that were attacking the kitchen staff. Enveloped in the icy mists, the creatures let out high-pitched squeals and quickly slowed to a crawl. After another blast they were frozen solid.
    Zachary turned to see a mucus-oozing vreek barrel past two of the trainers, knocking aside one of the stone benches as if it were made of balsa wood. Its gelatinous feelers seemed to be sampling the air, in hungry pursuit of human flesh. After a prolonged, deliberate sniff, the vreek honed in on Zachary. He wasn’t sure if the creature was still angry from being shot with his photon bow, but it was heading straight for him and Kaylee with what definitely looked like vengeance on its primitive mind.
    â€œI didn’t shoot you,” Kaylee said, pointing at Zachary. “He did!”
    Ryic stretched his malleable arms to double their length. At first, Zachary thought Ryic was coming to their aid, but then he covered his own head and