Blastaway

by Melissa Landers

  I pulled off my backpack and held the tear-proof fabric in front of me as a shield. Then an idea came to mind. I yanked open the top of my bag and positioned it in front of the charging mites. All three of them scampered inside, and I zipped the bag shut as the last beams of light extinguished from my headlamp. Encased in darkness once again, the mites stopped their screaming and scampering.

  I blew out a long breath. “Settle down, big guys,” I whispered, switching on my night-vision glasses. I grabbed a “tasty” chunk of dust and opened my backpack just wide enough to drop it inside, then refastened it and gently hooked both arms though the straps. “You guys don’t mind if I take you back to my lab, do you?”

  The bugs didn’t answer. Not that I expected them to.

  “No dissections or anything like that,” I promised. “Just scientific observation. I’m not a monster.”

  At that point, I realized I was having a one-sided conversation with a trio of mutated space mites when what I needed to be doing was crawling to the pilothouse and taking out the pirates so I could save Earth.

  Priorities, I said to myself. Focus, Kyler.

  I resumed my slippery climb to the third floor, passing more clusters of mutated dust mites as I crawled along. Much like the trio in my backpack, the other bugs weren’t interested in me. Most of them didn’t even bother to move out of my way, forcing me to arch over at an awkward angle to avoid squashing them beneath my hands and knees. I half expected to come across a massive egg stash or maybe a queen, but I observed that the space mites gathered in clusters of three or four, as opposed to colonies. Behaviorally, that made them more like mammals than insects, but I didn’t dwell on that point for very long. As soon as the air duct leveled out, announcing my arrival to the third floor, I heard the low rumble of adult voices and focused my attention on the pirates.

  I couldn’t hear what Corpse and Cadaver were saying, but from the location of their voices, I could tell they were in the pilothouse…right where I needed them to be.

  Perfect.

  I lowered myself onto my belly for maximum stealth and shimmied toward the sound of the pirates’ voices until I was directly on top of them. The homemade blow darts were already loaded in my bag, but I still needed to reach the air vent a few feet in front of me. I inched forward and paused when the pirate woman spoke clearly enough for me to hear.

  “What should we do with her?”

  Based on the way Corpse had said her like a swear, I could only assume she meant Fig. Did that mean the pirates had captured her? To hear them better, I used the side of my fist to scrub clean a section of ductwork before pressing my ear to the metal.

  “Leave her right where she is,” the man, Cadaver, said. Then he clarified, “Alive.”

  I swallowed a lump. Yeah, they’d definitely taken Fig.

  “She’s a liability,” Corpse argued. “She proved that when she threatened to rat us out to the Guard.” A set of knuckles cracked. “I should’ve hired the other ghost. Everyone knows kids can’t keep their mouths shut.”

  I wrinkled my forehead. Corpse had hired Fig? To do what?

  “It’s too late now,” Cadaver said. “She’s the one we hired. And that’s why we have to keep her alive—to finish the job and blow this star to kingdom come.”

  My heart stopped. Fig was the sharpshooter Quasar had mentioned.

  “Yeah,” Corpse agreed. “Then we off her.”

  “And keep the ship she conned off the Centaurus kid. That’s a double win.”

  Corpse snorted a laugh. “A triple win when you consider we already spent her share of the payout.”

  “Well…you spent it,” he muttered, until Corpse silenced him with a smack. Then they both went silent.

  Lying there with my ear pressed to the greasy metal, surrounded by filth and mutated bugs, I realized my mouth was hanging wide open, and I snapped it shut. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and yet it explained so much. Fig had been working with the pirates, and by default, Quasar Niatrix, the whole time. Now everything made sense: how Fig had “rescued” me from Corpse and Cadaver, how she’d known their names, how she had stumbled upon their transmission to Quasar Niatrix, how she’d gotten us on board the barge.

  Oh, and apparently she planned to con me out of my ship, too.

  My heart throbbed like an infected tooth. At the same time, my face heated with embarrassment. I couldn’t decide which was worse: that Fig had lied to me since the moment we’d met, or that I had fallen for her scam so easily. Because I had. She’d played me like a game of cards, and I’d handed her the whole deck without thinking twice about it.

  She was right. I was the dumbest smart person in the galaxy.

  The warmth in my cheeks turned to anger. It was bad enough that Fig had tricked me, but she’d gone too far when she had used my ship to carry out her dirty work. No way would I let her get away with it. More than ever, I was going to bring this barge to a halt, and then I would hand over all three scumbags on this boat to the Guard—the redhead, her partner, and the Wanderer who pretended to be my friend.

  But the question was how to make that happen. For all I knew, Fig could have told the pirates I was on the barge. I might not have the element of surprise anymore. That changed everything.

  I glanced in front of me, where slats of light from the pilothouse ceiling filtered through the intake vent. The vent would give me a perfect overhead view, but I would have to be silent. One peep out of me, and the pirates would not only know my position, they would have me trapped like a hamster in a cage. All they would have to do is aim a laser pistol in my general direction, and it would be game over for me. Which could mean game over for my whole family and the rest of Earth, too.

  So, yeah. Stealth was the main objective. Time to go full ninja.

  I slithered ahead, barely making enough noise to rival the sound of my breathing as I approached the vent slits. In my backpack, I felt delicate pin-tipped legs tapping against my spine, and I paused, remembering how the dust mites had screeched at my headlamp. Without knowing whether my sack’s canvas was lightproof, I couldn’t risk getting any closer to the intake vent. I slid one arm free of the bag strap, and then the other. Once I had set the backpack to the side, I closed the distance to the vent until I lay squarely on top of it.

  The slats were wide enough to show me nearly the entire pilothouse. I peered at the front end of the room, where buttons flashed and navigation and engineering screens displayed the barge’s position and system status. Squinting, I brought the controls into focus until I identified the emergency shutdown panel, a sequence of two buttons and a key that had to be pressed and turned at the same time. I knew from my research that once the key was removed, the barge couldn’t be started again without a new access code from Fasti headquarters, which the officials would never give to pirates who had just stolen a sun. The shutdown panel was situated to the right of the pilot’s chair…so close yet so far away. My fingers twitched to set the sequence in motion, but I squeezed both hands into fists.

  Stealth, I reminded myself. Patience and stealth.

  I tore my eyes away from the controls and scanned the rear of the room. I spotted Corpse at once. I would recognize her muscles anywhere. She stood with her clownish red head tipped close in conversation with Cadaver. They were whispering too low for me to understand what they were saying, but I had a pretty good idea they were discussing Fig. I say that because Fig was positioned between them, tied to a chair with both hands behind her back.

  For the briefest of moments, my chest ached with panic for her. Then I remembered how she’d double-crossed me, and I put my sympathy on lockdown.

  I didn’t know what the pirates had done to Fig, but I could tell she was just waking up, because her eyelids drooped, and her neck was bent back like a wet noodle under the weight of her head. A rag was stuffed in her mouth to keep her quiet. The bluish hue of her lips told me she had been deprived of oxygen, but now that she was conscious, she pulled in several deep breaths
, and the color returned to her skin.

  I didn’t move or make a sound, and I certainly didn’t want to attract her attention, but she must have sensed me watching her, because all of a sudden her gaze latched on to mine. Her eyes widened. She blinked. Then she shook her head in a small movement as if trying to send me a silent message without the pirates noticing. I shook my head back at her, glaring to send a message of my own:

  Eat snot, traitor.

  I’m guessing my message got lost in translation. She shook her head even harder.

  “What?” Cadaver asked her. “You got to pee or something?”

  Fig’s eyes brightened as if an idea had come to her. She nodded vigorously.

  “Well, too bad,” he taunted with a laugh. “You’re gonna have to hold it.”

  “Mmphhmphmm,” she muttered through the gag. “Mmphhmphmm!”

  Cadaver heaved a sigh and pulled the rag out of her mouth. “What?”

  Fig glanced at me and said, “Eyrethay earingway odybay armoryay.”

  My brain took a moment to catch on. By the time I realized she was speaking pig Latin, I’d forgotten half of what she’d said. The only words I recalled were odybay armoryay.

  Body armor.

  “Aimway orfay ethay ecknay,” she told me.

  Aim for the neck.

  The pirates were wearing a protective layer under their clothes. Now I understood what to do. It would be a challenge to aim for their necks, but luckily I’d brought plenty of blow darts. I backed away a few inches to reach my bag.

  I shouldn’t have done that.

  Remember how I was lying on top of an intake vent? Well, unknown to me, the only thing holding that vent to the ceiling was a basic latch…a latch that dislodged as soon as I slid my body backward. Before I knew what was happening, the steel panel gave way and clattered to the floor, leaving my upper body dangling from the ceiling like an idiot chandelier.

  Blood rushed to my head while I swung my arms for something to hold on to, but it was no use. My legs slid against the air duct, unable to get enough traction for me to swing myself back up and crawl away. The only thing I managed to do was hook one foot around my backpack strap, so when Corpse marched over and plucked me out of the ceiling, she got my bag of supplies as a bonus.

  “Two hostages for the price of one,” she said, baring her gums in a grin as she yanked back my head and identified me. “Kyler Centaurus.”

  It might seem silly, but all I could say was “Hey, you got my name right. No one ever gets my name right.”

  “You know what helps me remember a person’s name?” she asked in a tone that made it clear she wasn’t looking for an answer. To drive the point home, she held her knuckles in front of my nose. “When that person bounces me on the floor a bunch of times and then dumps me out the garbage chute. Now shut your ugly face hole before I plug it up with my fist.”

  I didn’t want her fist in my “face hole,” so I took her advice and shut up.

  Cadaver kicked the chair that Fig was tied to. “You said you ditched him.”

  “Never trust a pirate,” she told him. “Or a mutant who’s—”

  Cadaver stuffed the rag back in her mouth. “What now?” he asked his partner.

  “Send a transmission to the kid’s house,” Corpse said, shaking me to demonstrate which kid she meant. “Tell them to send half a million credits to our account if they want to see him with all his fingers and toes attached. They have twenty-four hours. For each hour the money is late, I’ll start sending him home in pieces.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. I reminded her, “In twenty-four hours, you’ll be terrorizing Earth with the star you’re towing. If the banks close for bogus holidays like Columbus Day, I’m pretty sure they’ll shut down for the end of the world, too.”

  “Good point.” Corpse nodded thoughtfully and told Cadaver, “Better make it six hours.”

  Well, that backfired.

  My family didn’t have half a million credits, especially considering that our most valuable asset—the Whirlwind—was docked two floors below me in the barge hangar. I glanced around the pilothouse, brainstorming ideas to turn the tables before the pirates started liberating my niblets to mail back home to Mom and Dad. There was nothing to use as a weapon, and I hadn’t brought my remote control fob to activate Cabe. I might be able to make a run for the door, but where would I go? Where would I hide? What was the point in playing cat-and-mouse if I couldn’t lay any traps? All of my supplies were in my backpack.

  My backpack.

  Inspiration struck. I looked for my bag and found it resting on the floor where it had landed.

  “All right, you can call my parents,” I said. I bit my bottom lip and flicked my gaze to the backpack. “But whatever you do, please don’t tell them what’s in my bag. They’ll kill me for taking it.”

  One of Corpse’s red eyebrows arched with interest. “Why?”

  “Yeah,” added Cadaver, scratching his jaw. “What’s in the bag?”

  “Something I stole when I ran away from home,” I told them. For effect, I made my chin wobble. “A family treasure. They’ll hate me if they find out—or worse, they won’t pay the ransom.”

  Corpse snorted a laugh and rolled her eyes as if to say Kids are so stupid.

  With a shove, she sent me stumbling into the copilot’s chair. My eyes darted to the emergency shutdown panel, just out of reach. If I tried to begin the sequence now, Corpse would only grab me before I could finish it. I needed to wait for the right moment.

  While Corpse and Cadaver stalked toward my backpack with greed curling their fingers, I shot a glance at Fig and mouthed, Get ready. Even though she was the enemy, I didn’t want her freaking out and ruining my plans. Then I turned away from her to watch the pirates. After that, several things happened in a rush.

  Corpse and Cadaver knelt over my backpack and unzipped it.

  They peered inside.

  Light entered the bag.

  An unholy screech tore through the air.

  Two giant dust mites leaped up and latched on to the pirates’ faces.

  Corpse and Cadaver screamed as they scrambled across the floor, clawing at their faces in an effort to pry the arachnids loose from their ugly mugs.

  Most important, I saw my chance, and I took it.

  I bolted up from the copilot’s seat and ran to the emergency shutdown panel. Using one hand, I pressed both buttons while I used my other hand to turn the key. The barge responded at once. The whirring of the engines ceased, and the floor no longer vibrated. But one of the pirates landed on top of me—I’m guessing Cadaver, because of the awful smell that slammed my nostrils. His weight forced my body onto the controls, mashing a bunch of other buttons. I managed to wriggle out from beneath him. Then, to make sure he couldn’t restart the engine, I removed the key and ran to the opposite wall, where I pitched the key out the waste chute.

  An alarm buzzed in three loud blasts that forced me to cover my ears. I didn’t know what I’d done to trigger it. Corpse and Cadaver shared a look of panic and bolted out the door without a backward glance. Something about that didn’t feel right, so I glanced at Fig and found her shouting muffled nonsense through her gag and bouncing in her seat hard enough to make it jump back and forth.

  I jogged over to her and pulled the gag from her mouth. She told me in a rush, “You can’t mess with the control panel after an emergency shutdown!”

  My stomach took a dip. Not only because I had the sense that something bad was about to follow, but because the barge lurched upward hard enough to send my guts careening toward the floor. I stumbled and righted myself against the wall.

  I was almost afraid to ask. “Why? What’ll happen?”

  Fig didn’t have to answer me. The overhead speakers did the job for her. An automated voice crooned in a tone far too smooth and chipper for the message it was about to deliver, “Self-destruct sequence initiated. Detonation will commence in sixty seconds.”

 
; I have a theory that the laws of physics are flexible, at least when it comes to the passage of time. I’m no Einstein, but allow me to explain my reasoning. Have you ever noticed that sixty seconds feel like an eternity when you’re doing something painful, like holding your breath underwater, or listening to your brother talk about his game-winning touchdown, or watching your parents suck face at the kitchen table after they had too much wine with dinner?

  (Blech! Pass the brain bleach.)

  My point is during moments of boredom or torture, it’s almost as though time slows down. Like the universe is an evil monster that wants to prolong your suffering. On the flip side, if you do something you enjoy or if you’re racing against the clock, it’s over in a flash. Now imagine a critical task that has to be done quickly…like, oh, say, running for your life from an impending explosion…and you’ll see that a minute goes down faster than a bowling ball on a waterslide.

  I was thinking about that while I sprinted to my ship, wondering where the sixty seconds had gone.

  “Detonation in twenty seconds,” the computer chirped.

  It probably goes without saying that I had untied Fig. Right off the bat, that cost us more than a few precious beats. Then there was the trip from the pilothouse on the third floor to the hangar on the bottom level, which included a long, bendy hallway and two flights of stairs. Even at top speed, it had still taken us thirty seconds to reach the Whirlwind where it was docked at the far end of the landing pad.

  “Detonation in fifteen seconds,” droned the computerized voice as Fig and I raced up the Whirlwind’s ramp. From my periphery, I could see Corpse and Cadaver strapping into their shuttle, and I knew they wouldn’t give us the courtesy of letting us make it inside our own ship before they opened the hangar door and blew us into space. If Fig and I didn’t hurry, we would end up as human Popsicles.