Blastaway

by Melissa Landers

  Speaking of blasting, my trigger finger twitched, reminding me it had been too long since I’d had a good demolition. I reached into my pocket for the fob I kept there. It was a handheld target game that projected little 3-D bubbles for me to fire at with my fingertip. The tech was nothing special, just a kid’s throwaway that I’d found in a trash can. But when the bubbles burst, they made a satisfying pop that calmed me down when I was feeling edgy.

  I raised my pointer finger toward the sun and imagined popping it.

  “Hey! Don’t look directly at the star,” a blond man snapped at me, tearing my attention away from my game. I recognized the man as the shuttle attendant. He hadn’t smiled during our flight, and he wasn’t smiling now. His eyebrows formed a slash above the same dark sunglasses I was supposed to be wearing. “I told you about the safety lenses when we landed,” he said, handing me an extra pair. “Were you even listening?”

  Muttering a quick sorry, I tucked my game fob back into my pocket, then slid on the sunglasses and scanned the festival grounds. There had been no windows on the shuttle, so this was my first glance at Fasti. I have to say I wasn’t impressed. I’d read about the planet during the flight, but I hadn’t expected it to look so…brown.

  The entire landscape was made of mud, miles and miles of drab tan goop stretching in all directions, with piers and platforms built above it for walking. The setup reminded me of an ocean planet I’d visited once, except not as pretty. There was no natural color here. Nothing grew on Fasti—no trees, no grass, no flowers, not even weeds. The planet didn’t have its own sun, so it spent most of the year frozen. Then when the solar engineers created a new star, the heat from the miniature sun would melt the ice into muck until someone purchased the star and towed it away, and the planet would freeze all over again.

  A cycle of sludge.

  At least from the ground up, the festival organizers had done a decent job of transforming the place. Restaurant booths and hover-chair rentals lined the pier, all of it covered by a clear sunscreen canopy that protected the tourists from getting too toasty. If I stood on tiptoe, I could see beyond the festival to the marketplace, where I had a lead on finding a new blaster. To get there, however, I would have to wade through an ocean of visitors.

  Sweaty visitors.

  Because even hidden, the sun was hot enough to melt my teeth, and people were everywhere. I mean everywhere. They clogged the path to the marketplace, not walking with a purpose but milling around sipping drinks and taking selfies.

  Ugh. Seriously annoying.

  “And I hope you brought a hat,” the shuttle attendant said. I had almost forgotten he was there. “Because the force field isn’t strong enough to protect someone like you from getting a sunburn.” He frowned at the translucent skin on my forearms, already turning blotchy and pink. Clearly he didn’t realize the color change was part of my mutation, and that it was impossible for “someone like me” to get a sunburn. “Where are your parents?” he added. “You said they were coming to meet you.”

  My stomach dipped. I recognized that tone. He wanted to call security.

  “Right over there,” I said, pointing at a general spot near the restrooms. Then I hightailed it off the landing pad and into the festival before he could ask any more questions about the parents I didn’t have.

  For good measure, I avoided the open areas and let the crowd swallow me.

  That was my first mistake.

  You see, Wanderers don’t really do the whole people thing. We keep to ourselves on our ships, mostly because there are no asteroids to blast on the ground (duh), and also because the stares and whispers and “ghost” jokes get old pretty fast. When people used to gawk at me, I had gawked back and given them my I’m-a-mutant-deal-with-it! glare. But that had ended up earning me a few reports to security for suspicious behavior. So now I kept my head down in crowded places and focused on getting where I needed to go. It was easier that way. Plus, I’m an introvert, like next-level antisocial. In fact, while I inched through the mass of bodies, I couldn’t help daydreaming about plowing ahead and knocking people down like bowling pins.

  It made me grin.

  “You there,” called an old woman selling holographic tattoos of a dancing cartoon sun. I thought she might try to harass me or sell me something, but she just tipped her head in my direction. Her skin was brown and paper-thin, crinkling as her mouth curved up. “You have a sweet smile, young one,” she said. “You should use it more often.”

  I didn’t expect her to say that, and it knocked me off my game, as kindness usually did. I hesitated for a beat, unsure of how to respond. It rubbed me the wrong way when people, even other Wanderers, told me to smile. My face belonged to me, and if I wanted to smile, I would friggin’ smile. But the woman had kind eyes, and that was rare, so I decided to thank her and take a closer look at what she had to sell.

  I noticed something unusual lying among the souvenirs, an object that didn’t seem to belong with the others. It had a thin handle, roughly the length of my palm, and protruding from the handle were three “branches” with clips at the end. I couldn’t figure out what the object was used for. I was starting to think someone had left it there by accident, when the elderly woman picked it up and held it out for me to examine.

  “Popular item,” she said. “This is my last one.” She pointed at the clips. “It’s an automatic braider. You divide your hair into three sections, snap these over the ends, and choose what kind of braid you want. Then, voilà.” She waved a hand like a magician. “A perfect plait, without the hassle of bending over backward to do it yourself.”

  An instant ache opened up in the pit of my stomach. My mother used to braid my hair at night to keep it from tangling. It was part of our bedtime ritual. Back then, I’d complained about how long it had taken to brush and separate my thick locks, but secretly I had enjoyed the way her gentle fingers had raised chills over my scalp. There had been love in my mama’s touch. The kind of love a machine can’t duplicate. But even if it could, I didn’t need a gadget to do my hair for me. I could learn how to braid for myself if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to. Just the idea of trying it made my chest feel tight.

  I reached up and touched my rat’s nest of a hairdo, so snarled I couldn’t even work my fingers through it. I eyed the braiding machine while I bit my lip in hesitation. Maybe it would be nice to get rid of the knots in my hair. Mama had always said it was a sign of respect to look my best each day. She wouldn’t be proud to see me like this. If she were here, no doubt she would tell me to buy the gadget. I could probably afford it if I skipped a couple of meals or picked up an odd job at the festival.

  I had just begun to reach for the braider when a surge of panic rose in my chest, and I pulled back my hand. What was I thinking? I didn’t have the credits to waste on something so silly as a styler. What did it matter if my hair was in knots? All my clients cared about was my aim, and that was on point.

  I shook my head at the old woman. “No, thanks. I have better things to spend my money on.”

  Then I turned and walked away.

  My mood soured after that, and by the time I made it to the other side of the pier to the marketplace, my shoulders were tensed halfway to my ears. The crowd was thinner at the outer booths, probably because the vendors there were selling useful (aka: boring) things like engine parts and tools instead of flashy souvenirs of a cartoon sun. I let out a long breath and tried to relax, but my muscles were still locked when I walked up to the laser booth to negotiate for a blaster.

  That was my second mistake.

  Never haggle on a bad day or on an empty stomach—my father used to say that. Money was important to people (double duh) and getting someone to take less of it was a tricky dance with a lot of steps to follow. You had to pretend to be a little bit interested but not too interested. You had to pretend to think hard about a price, even when you knew you could pay it. And most important, you had to be willing to walk away from a deal. Because if the seller knew
you needed what he had to offer, you lost the control. Game over.

  Even more complicated was negotiating for something illegal. So the last thing you wanted to do was march up to a seller and blurt, “I need an asteroid blaster.” Which was exactly what I did.

  The guy behind the booth already looked kind of sketchy, bald and tattooed and picking his fingernails with a rusted knife that had seen better days. But when a slow grin crept across his lips, I swear he could have made the devil wet his pants. In fact, I was glad I’d peed before leaving the shuttle.

  “Is that so?” he asked, looking me up and down. “And what would a sweet little girl like you want with a big, nasty laser blaster?”

  The gleam in his eyes told me he knew exactly what I wanted with the laser blaster. Everyone knew that Wanderers blew stuff up for a living. It was also common knowledge that blasting for hire was criminal. Only Earth-trained demo experts were supposed to destroy asteroids. But certified experts were pricey, and Wanderers weren’t. That was why we got the work.

  Since I had already lost my bargaining power, I didn’t see any point in playing nice. So I heaved a sigh and snarked, “I think it’ll look pretty next to my doll collection.” Then I scanned the counter and the racks on the rear-booth wall, seeing only personal weapons. “Where’s the T-five cannon? I heard you’ve got one for sale.”

  “Shhh!” He darted a nervous glance around the booth. “Keep your voice down, kid. I don’t keep the big guns on display. And even if I did, a T-class laser is nothing to play around with. I’d hate to see you blow your feet off. If your old man wants the blaster, he should come see me himself. I’ve dealt with your kind before, but I don’t sell to kids.”

  There were those words again: your kind. I nearly rolled my eyes out of my head. “I think my feet will be okay.”

  “For real,” he said. The edge in his voice told me his patience was wearing thin. “Let the grown-ups handle it. Go get your dad and tell him to come deal with me.” He pointed at a minilaser that looked like a squirt gun. It was the sort of thing an old lady might use to make her cats chase a red dot across the floor. “This is more your size.”

  I didn’t know what made me angrier, that he had mentioned my dad, or that he assumed I played with toys. But either way, I snapped. I picked up a hefty laser pistol and aimed it at a few discarded plastic cups sitting on the pier railing. With a series of quick trigger pulls, I melted each one before the man could open his mouth.

  I blew a wisp of smoke from the pistol tip. “Still think I’ll shoot my feet off?”

  His jaw dropped. It took a few tries for him to sputter, “Put that down. Now.”

  I did as he asked.

  “What’s your problem?” he asked.

  “Problem?” I repeated. “I don’t see any problems here. Only solutions. You have a laser cannon to sell. I want to buy it. Seems simple enough to me, so let’s talk price.”

  His beady eyes focused on me, this time taking in my patched clothes and scuffed boots. He scoffed. “It’s more than you can afford.”

  “Try me.”

  “All right,” he said, lifting a beefy shoulder. “Ten thousand credits.”

  Ten thousand credits?

  That was twice the amount a blaster should have cost, and it was everything I had—the exact amount of the credit chip Corpse had given me. And because Corpse hadn’t answered her comm since I’d landed on Fasti, I had no idea if the job was still a go or when I would get paid again. Sure, I could maybe use the laser cannon to score some other jobs if I hustled my mining connections, but I couldn’t eat a laser cannon or sleep in it…or fly it off this stinking mud planet if Corpse left me stranded here. I needed to save some money to give myself a safety net.

  “Seven,” I countered.

  “Ten.”

  “Eight.”

  “Ten.”

  “Nine,” I said, and when the word ten formed on the man’s lips, I added, “Come on! I could buy a new blaster for that!”

  He swept a go-ahead hand. “Then do it. I’m not stopping you.”

  We both knew I couldn’t. Only licensed professionals were allowed to buy hard-core laser weapons. “You’re a jerk,” I spat.

  He leaned down until his eyes were level with mine. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m the jerk who’s gonna turn you in for illegal blasting if you don’t shut your annoying mouth and pay me ten thousand credits.”

  I snorted. He was bluffing—he had to be. “You won’t turn me in, because you’d get busted, too,” I pointed out. “For illegal weapon sales.”

  “I’d get off with a warning, because I have the right kind of DNA,” he said. He used both hands to showcase his face before pointing at my mutated skin. “But you? I think we both know you wouldn’t be so lucky. You’d get a one-way ticket to the farm.”

  The farm. A prison work camp.

  I pressed my lips together while my pulse thumped with fear. He was right. The farms were full of my kind. Some Earth-born sleaze owned the prison-camp system. He used prisoners like slave labor to build stuff for him to sell for a huge profit. And when Wanderers went into the system, they rarely came back out again. The camp owner found ways to keep prisoners around, making up new charges and adding years to their sentences until he used up their lives and discarded them like dead batteries.

  Suddenly, I missed my parents so hard it almost buckled my knees. I wished my dad were here to close this deal so I wouldn’t have to do it. I wished my mom were here to braid my hair so I didn’t look like a rabid animal. I wished I knew where I was going to sleep that night, or whether I’d be able to afford dinner.

  I wished I weren’t all alone in the galaxy.

  But then I came to my senses and remembered that wishes didn’t come true for people like me. And since whining about my life wouldn’t change anything, I stood up straighter and faced the man who was trying to bully me.

  Like it or not, I was alone.

  And like it or not, I was taking this deal on the chin.

  But I would not be bullied.

  “Fine.” I held up my credit chip, but I yanked it back when the man reached for it. “After I see the blaster.”

  He frowned, eventually giving a reluctant nod. “Meet me in the docking lot an hour before the show starts. Look for a red ship with a white stripe down the middle.” He jabbed a warning finger toward me. “And no funny business. If I catch one whiff of trouble off you, I’ll—”

  “Whatever,” I interrupted. On a normal day, trouble wafted off me like perfume dabbed behind my ears. If you stood too close to me on a day like this, you were bound to catch more than just a whiff. “I’ll be there.”

  I turned my back on him but immediately stopped short at the sight of a dark-haired boy blocking my path. It was obvious the boy had heard at least part of my conversation, because he stood there watching me like a spectator at the zoo. He seemed roughly my age, though a few inches shorter than me, and with the kind of clean haircut and shiny boots that said his family had money.

  Must be nice.

  I expected the boy to move, but instead he pulled down his sunglasses—actually lowered them all the way to the tip of his nose—to get a better look at me. It was a bold move that would have gotten his butt kicked if we were in a less crowded place. As I gripped my hips, I met his eyes, and then the little jerk pruned his mouth like he’d stepped in something gross.

  That was all I could take.

  “What’re you staring at?” I snapped. “Never seen a mutant before?”

  He didn’t answer. His eyes flew wide with fear, and then he backed away and made tracks so fast I expected to see skid marks on the pier.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I muttered with a laugh. “Keep running, brat.”

  Brat?

  What had I done to deserve that? All I’d wanted to do was look at the girl, maybe find out what she was like. So I had gawked a little bit—sue me. I’d never seen a Wanderer before, and I’d always thought it was interesting how th
eir bodies had mutated to adapt to life in space. Not only could Wanderers’ blood cells fight radiation, but their bones and muscles stayed strong, even after years in zero gravity. And their skin made its own vitamin D, so they could get by with less sunlight than the rest of us.

  Forgive me for thinking that was wicked cool.

  My parents had taught me Wanderers and humans were equals. Now I knew that was true in more ways than one. Today I learned that Wanderers can be equally as mean as humans, too. That girl was a serious jerk.

  I didn’t know what her problem was, but I took her advice and kept on walking. No way would she ruin this day for me. I had waited my whole life to see a Fasti star, and considering my life would be over as soon as I got home, I planned to jam twice the fun into every moment.

  I set out to explore the festival.

  In the marketplace, I used some credit chips I’d found on my ship to try the kinds of foods we can’t get on Earth. I bought frozen citri-berries (a hybrid fruit that tasted like strawberry lemonade), fried protein on a stick (which was every bit as boring as it sounds), and cloned corn on the cob (which tasted like…corn on the cob). My favorite dish was called slorghetti, a pasta made from grain that expanded and contracted when it cooked, so the noodles moved around like buttery worms in my bowl. Bonner would have lost his mind over the stuff, so I took a video to capture what he’d missed. Not gonna lie, the idea of bragging about the noodles tasted better than the actual slorghetti. When my stomach was full, I browsed the souvenir booths and spent my last few credits on a holographic sun bracelet that rose and set around my wrist, so I would never forget the day my life peaked.

  As I walked, I raised my sunglass-covered face to the sky and spread my arms wide, soaking up the man-made rays that filtered through the invisible canopy above the pier. I couldn’t see the sun, but I could feel it in the blanket of heat that surrounded me, warming me from head to toe. The sensation was amazing, like a hug from the sky. I didn’t know what the difference was between a Fasti star and a natural one, but this radiance seemed completely real to me, and I couldn’t wait to find out more.