Blastaway

by Melissa Landers

  We made it halfway down the stairs when the ship shook with a single lurch, almost like a sneeze, and we gripped the stair rail for balance. All movement stopped as the engines shut down. A loud vacuum noise roared overhead, and then there was nothing. No alarms. No popping flames. No whirring machinery. Only the ringing of dead silence in my ears.

  I shared a glance with Ky. Neither of us spoke, but the question What happened? passed between us in the universal language of wide-eyed fear.

  I had just unlocked my knees to go the rest of the way down the stairs when a thump sounded from above, followed by the sound of rolling wheels, and then Cabe’s tinny voice called, “Crisis averted, Goosey and Weirdo. Are you free from mortal danger?”

  A smile bounced to my lips. I turned to find Kyler laughing in relief. Our gazes locked, and for a few short heartbeats, we weren’t so different. We were no longer human and mutant, boy and girl, rich and poor, chump and swindler. We were survivors, each of us the same. As cheesy as it sounds, I felt like I knew him, and for a sliver of a second, I didn’t feel so alone.

  The moment lasted until we scaled the stairs and took in the damage to the second floor. Scorch marks were everywhere—the floors, the walls, the ceiling—all of it so thickly covered in black streaks that the lights seemed dim. I could see into the galley now, although galley was a loose definition for what remained of the room. All of the appliances and furniture were gone. The wall where the stove used to be was covered in a thick layer of metal cable in the shape of a patch. It seemed the explosion had breached a hole in the ship, large enough to blow everything out into space. Overhead, the pierced air ducts were also patched. Cabe must have fastened himself to the wall after sealing himself inside the room, and then allowed the lack of oxygen from space to choke out the fire before he repaired the hull and air pipes. Maybe he wasn’t so bad…for a robot.

  I was about to say so when Kyler whirled on me.

  He spread his arms wide and demanded, “What was that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean one minute you’re this really cool superhero, and the next minute you lose your mind and you blow up my ship. What’s your deal?”

  “What’s my deal?” I repeated while jabbing a finger toward Cabe. “He’s the one who flipped his lid and tried to smother me with rope! What did you expect me to do, just stand there and wait for you to rescue me?”

  “No, but you could’ve waited for, oh, I dunno, like, half a second, before you tried carving up my robot like a loaf of bread.”

  “I was scared,” I told him. “Is that so hard to understand?”

  “So you fired a laser at a combustible power source?” Ky splayed both hands at his temples to mimic an exploding head. “That seemed like a good idea to you at the time?”

  I drew a calming breath. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Yeah, that’s obvious.”

  “I’m sorry. Are we cool?”

  He grumbled something I couldn’t understand and held out a palm. “I want your laser. Then we’ll be cool. You can have it back when we get to Earth.”

  I jutted my chin at the galley. “I dropped it in there.”

  Kyler quirked his mouth to one side, clearly deciding whether or not to believe my story.

  “I did,” I said with a shrug. “It’s long gone. You don’t have to worry.”

  “Fine. I’m going to run a damage report.” Ky opened his mouth as if to say something else, but he must have thought better of it, because he left me with a firm nod and walked away to the pilothouse.

  After he was out of sight, I pushed my laser deeper into my side pocket.

  He could have it when I was dead.

  I sat in the smoky pilothouse, scrolling—and scrolling some more—through the ship’s damage log while I shivered inside a blanket I had snatched from my parents’ bed. The galley was a total loss, no surprise there. It would have to be gutted and reinstalled. But a ruined kitchen was the least of my worries. The heat from the fire had damaged the thermal sensors on the second floor, tricking the ship into thinking we needed an arctic blast of air-conditioning, which explained why I was wrapped in a blanket.

  The air filters weren’t working, either, as evidenced by the haze of smoke in the room. And the metal Cabe had used to seal off the fire had created some kind of byproduct that the ship detected as potentially toxic. Oh, and the best part: The explosion had torn through all three layers of the reinforced hull bordering the galley. So in a nutshell, we had no heat, no way to cook our food, no food to cook, a possibly poisoned air supply, and a weak spot in the hull capable of popping the ship like a soap bubble with a single tap of an asteroid.

  Trouble everywhere. And I hadn’t started any of it.

  No, I had a certain trigger-happy Wanderer to thank for that.

  Right on cue with my thoughts, Fig shuffled into the pilothouse with her own blanket pulled around her shoulders. She plopped down beside me in the copilot’s seat as if she hadn’t just wrecked my life ten minutes earlier.

  “It’s cold in here,” she said.

  I slid her a glare. “You don’t say.”

  “So turn off the thermal regulators and set the temperature manually,” she suggested, as if that wouldn’t have occurred to me. She nodded at the nasty look I gave her. “Yeah, okay, I’m guessing you already tried that.”

  “That and more.”

  “Where’s Cabe?”

  “Charging.”

  “Good,” she said. “He earned a break. He’s kind of smart, for a robot.”

  At least we agreed on one thing.

  With a sigh, I closed out the damage report. Rereading it wouldn’t accomplish anything except maybe giving me a headache. “We need to stop for repairs,” I said. My stomach growled, reminding me that the pasta I had cooked was now floating somewhere in deep space. “And food. It’s two more days to Earth, maybe three depending on how long it takes a mechanic to fix the air-filtration system.”

  “I know a place.” Fig tugged the blanket over her head until only her nose was visible. “Travel depots are everywhere, especially along the route to Earth. It won’t be a problem to get the ship fixed and pick up a few supplies.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But there’s the matter of money.”

  “As in…” she prompted.

  “As in we don’t have any.”

  “So ask your parents to transfer some credits,” she said. “They can afford it.”

  Maybe it was fate, or just my lousy luck, but my parents chose that exact moment to call the ship for the first time since I’d left Fasti.

  “Incoming transmission,” the ship announced. “Centaurus residence, Earth.”

  When I didn’t tap the ACCEPT button after the first few beeps, Fig nodded her blanketed head at the comm station. “You going to get that?”

  I swiped the screen, dismissing the call.

  “Guess not,” she muttered.

  Guilt gnawed at my empty stomach. I should have answered. I knew my parents were worried about me, and honestly, I had planned to call them after the festival. But what was I supposed to say? Hey, Mom and Dad. Sorry I’ve been ignoring your calls, but I’m on my way home now. Oh, and I’m bringing a guest. Don’t freak out or anything, but after I stole your ship, pirates attacked me—twice—so I promised to give a ride to a girl who just blew up the galley. That’s cool, right?

  Yeah, no. They were going to kill me. I was practically dead already. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Man Upstairs was already arguing with the devil for custody of my soul…and losing. I could almost feel that pitchfork in my butt.

  “Recorded message,” the computer announced. And before I could stop her, Fig reached for the screen and tapped PLAY.

  My mom’s face appeared on the screen, giving me an instant ache in my chest. She looked terrible, worse than the time she had caught pinkeye from Bonner when she’d chaperoned his third grade field trip to the petting zoo. Her skin was almost as pale as the girl sittin
g next to me, and that was saying a lot. My mom’s typically glossy blond hair was dishwater dull, scrunched at the temples like she’d been running her hands through it over and over again.

  She probably had. Because of me.

  My dad leaned in to press his face next to hers. His eyes were clear and his jaw was freshly shaven, but I could see new creases around his mouth and across his forehead. I didn’t know if I was the reason for his frown lines, though, because I recognized the T-shirt he was wearing, and I knew that right below the camera cutoff, the word RESIST glowed in holographic lettering. It was the shirt he wore to all of his protests. I frowned at the tight set of his jaw. He had probably just returned from an anti-Niatrix demonstration. Not even a missing son could come between my dad and his hate affair with Quasar Niatrix.

  “Kyler Gregory Centaurus,” my mom said in a soft, scratchy voice that negated the threatening use of my middle name. “I know you’re seeing these messages because I’ve been getting read receipts from the ship.”

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Fig said to me. “Busted.”

  “We also know,” Dad chimed in, “that you set a course for Fasti. And judging by the charges to my account before the bank froze my money, you were safe enough to play a hundred credits worth of video games on the way there.” He paused to grind his teeth and suck a loud breath through his nose. “What we don’t know is why you disabled the ship’s tracker two days ago.”

  “What?” I said. I hadn’t disabled the ship’s tracker. I didn’t even know how to do that. The pirates must have done it the first time they’d attacked the ship.

  “Kyler, you need to tell us where you are,” my mom said. “We can’t send help for you if we don’t know your coordinates. And after what happened on Fasti…” Her voice faltered, and she cleared her throat. “We’re not mad at you. Just tell us where you are.”

  “We are mad at you,” my dad said with a lifted finger. “But we’re more worried. Bottom line: Call home, right now. Whatever trouble you think you’re in, I promise it’ll be worse for every minute you make us wait to hear—”

  I paused the playback, intrigued by something my mom had said. I glanced at Fig and asked, “What happened on Fasti? Aside from us ditching the Guard, I mean, because that wouldn’t have made the news.”

  Fig didn’t seem to be listening. Her eyes were still fixed on my parents’ frozen faces. She jutted her chin at the screen. “Are you going to call them back?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said, though I didn’t know why she cared. Maybe she was just nosy. If so, she would have to live with disappointment, because I wasn’t going to call home while she was in the room. I didn’t want an audience when my parents yelled me into next year.

  I pulled up the computer’s search bar and typed Fasti Sun Festival, then waited for the results. “First I want to find out what my mom was talking about.”

  Fig jerked her gaze to mine. The blanket on her head fell back far enough for me to see the anger in her eyes. It caught me off guard, because I hadn’t done anything wrong. This girl had serious mood swings.

  “What?” I demanded.

  She shook her head at me and muttered something I couldn’t hear.

  The computer displayed my search results, and all thoughts of Fig’s weirdness vanished. Now I understood why my mom had been so freaked out. Right there in bold headlines, a dozen news sources reported “Fasti Star Stolen!”

  “No way,” I muttered, expanding one of the stories for more information. How could anyone steal a sun? Even in miniature form, a ball of radioactive gas wasn’t the sort of thing you could simply tuck in your back pocket and sneak home with a five-finger discount.

  My reaction made Fig curious enough to lean in over my shoulder, and together we skimmed the article.

  GALAXY ROCKED BY SUN THEFT

  ___________

  Festivalgoers at this year’s Fasti Presentation of Man-made Stars got front-row seats to the heist of a lifetime—the theft of an artificial yellow dwarf sun from its route to the Dingo system, which had purchased the star to complete its terraform process, making the orbiting planets habitable for human colonists. Security specialists are tight-lipped regarding the details of the crime, but sources have reported mutiny on board the solar barge tasked with towing the star to Dingo, and multiple witnesses have claimed it was the act of mutants, who many believe are protesting “unfair treatment” on Earth.

  “We urge everyone to remain calm,” said Fasti spokesman Joshua Ulti. “The culprits won’t get far. Each man-made sun is kept in a state of miniature and suspended activity until it reaches its new home. While the process is incomplete, the star poses no greater threat to nearby planets than a hundred nuclear bombs—”

  “A hundred nukes?” Fig gave a sarcastic snort. “Yeah, there’s no reason to panic or anything.”

  “—likely not enough to destroy an entire planet.”

  Now heading in the wrong direction, the star-toting barge is causing panic, riots, and mass evacuations for colonies in its path. In response to the threat, interplanetary travel in the affected quadrant has been restricted to government ships and authorized evacuation vessels. The Galaxy Guard insists that the motive for the theft is unknown, as is the star’s ultimate destination, but if reports of mutant terrorism are correct, Earth could be a likely target. Until more details are available, citizens are urged to remain at home and report suspicious activity to the Galaxy Guard hotline.

  “Oh, sure, blame the mutants,” Fig said. “Story of my life.”

  I glanced at the navigation equipment to see how close we were to the restricted area. Just my luck, we were smack-dab in the middle of it. “The restricted area is the same quadrant we’re in. Now we really have to find a place to land.”

  Fig shivered in her blanket, shifting me a worried glance. “If we get caught flying during a landside curfew…”

  “Then we’ll explain that we tried to land as soon as we could. Worst-case scenario is they give us a ticket. It’s no big deal.”

  “No big deal for you,” she stressed. “You’ll get a warning or a lecture or, at the very worst, a ticket. You’ve got the right kind of DNA.”

  “The right kind of DNA? This isn’t a human versus mutant thing.”

  “Everything is a human versus mutant thing.”

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes. This girl had a Milky Way–size chip on her shoulder when it came to humans. “Oh, come on.”

  “Don’t ‘oh, come on’ me,” she said, using her fingers to make quotes. “Didn’t you read the article? Your people are blaming my people for stealing the star. Which is ridiculous. First of all, why would we do that? And second, did you even see any mutants at the festival?”

  “Besides you?”

  “Well, obviously.”

  I thought about it and came up with nothing. I hadn’t been looking for Wanderers at the festival, but I was pretty sure I would have noticed if one of them had crossed my path. Wanderers tended to stand out in a crowd.

  “No,” I admitted. “Not unless they were in disguise.”

  “Okay, for argument’s sake, let’s say they were in disguise. Why would Wanderers steal a sun? What are they going to do with it?”

  I nodded at the article. “They could crash the star into Earth and—”

  “And kill billions of innocent people,” Fig interrupted. “Just because we’re salty about not being allowed to live there? Does that make sense to you?”

  Honestly, no, it didn’t. I came up with another motive. “If I were a Wanderer, maybe I’d use the star to create a solar system for my people. So we’d have a planet of our own, and we wouldn’t have to keep moving and living on ships.”

  “Okay, but there’s a huge hole in that theory,” she said. “Think about it.”

  I did, and right away I saw a snag in my logic. “A star is impossible to hide. Everyone would know where it was, and that it was stolen. No one would let the Wanderers get away with it. The people who bought the sun wou
ld want their merchandise back—either that or a refund—so they would try to take back the star.”

  “Or hire paid fighters to round up all the mutants on that planet and send them to farms, to pay for the cost of ten stars.”

  “Farms?” I asked, confused. “Like with cows and crops and stuff? I thought all the farms were run by machines. Why would anyone send Wanderers to work there?”

  She shook her head. “Not that kind of farm. I’m talking about the prison camps where my people get sent to do slave labor for life.” She huffed bitterly. “We’re not even allowed on Earth to go to jail. How messed up is that?”

  “What prison camps?”

  “Huh? You’ve seriously never heard of them?”

  “No,” I said. And I really hadn’t. On Earth, people who broke the law went to huge floating prison complexes in the middle of the oceans. The system was seriously flawed, but it didn’t sound anything like these labor camps.

  “They’re run by an oily slimeball from Earth,” Fig explained. “He builds new planets for people to live on. Or rather his slaves build the planets while he sits back and collects the profits.”

  I sat bolt upright in my chair. There was only one person who terraformed planets and sold them to settlers. “Do you mean Quasar Niatrix?”

  “The name sounds familiar. Does he have a pretty face and a smile that belongs in a toothpaste commercial?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” she said. “That guy is living proof that looks can be deceiving. Do you know him?”

  “Not personally,” I said. “But I know of him. Everyone does. He’s probably the most famous man on Earth right now because of the vote.”

  “What vote?” she asked.

  “Wow. You really are cut off, aren’t you?”

  “Dude,” she said, giving me the stink eye. “Thirty seconds ago, you didn’t know prison camps were a thing.”

  That was a fair point. So I told her about what was happening on Earth, mainly that Quasar wanted to absorb the planet into his private company and run it like a business. “He said we’ll get free money out of it, something called dividends. And he promised to take over the planet’s security, since the Galaxy Guard budget is the reason taxes are so high.”