by Maggie Allen
Behind him, Mouse turned with a grin to face down the adults that grabbed for him. Despite his diminutive size, the boy’s ease in weightlessness offset the advantages of the two women and a man grabbing for him. “Stop! Oof—!“ the man and women collided, with the third grabbing for Mouse’s shirt. He twisted out of it, leaving her holding fabric as he reversed his position with his back to the doorframe and shoved at the woman with both feet and a heave of his shoulders. Without gravity, the momentum sent her cartwheeling across the hangar toward the ceiling on the far side.
Turning mid-air, Mouse grabbed the pair clinging to the each other and heaved them off in yet another direction. “They’re coming!” he yelled, and gathered himself to push off for the New London gangplank as voices sounded from behind him. As he landed beside Ollie with a handhold on the edge of the hull, he eyed the prybar in her hand and winked. “That’s the spirit.” With a pat on her shoulder, Mouse pushed up past her.
From the entry point, there came a rush of youths in the plain grey overalls from the holding cells. Yelling and whooping, they rushed the Indian Princess as well as two more ships in the decommission line, easily overwhelming the three uniformed officers to cuff them to the fuel pumps. But no Dodger and Callie. Ollie grew anxious.
“Ready to depart, Ollie. Any sign of Dodge?” Mattie’s head poked out.
“Not yet. He—“ Ollie was interrupted by yelling from the entrance.
“Dark and stuffy rules lawyer! Defend yourself!” came a familiar voice echoing through the hangar.
“Idiot! Just get rid of him!” Callie appeared first in advance of her brother, and shoved herself through the entryway. She looked around a touch wildly until her gaze landed on her own ship, and she launched herself toward the Indian Princess.
Dodger appeared in the doorway, hooking one foot on the edge as the rest of his body dangled sideways back into the long hallway he’d just vacated.
“The prisoners will return to their holding cells. You are irresponsible and unfit for citizenship in the Federation, let alone command as an officer.” Hook’s voice boomed after him, echoing through the hangar as if he addressed all those escaping. The man himself appeared a moment later, catching Dodger around the waist as the two of them went flying together in a tangle of arms and legs across the open space.
“I know you are, but what am I?” taunted Dodger in return. As if all his fierce, irrepressible nature needed to exert itself at once, he was a flurry of fists and feet and knees and elbows, striking at Hook as well as any surface they encountered as the two bounced about like a pair of rubber balloons held together by static.
Ollie sucked in a breath as she watched, hand tightening on the steel bar. The two were surprisingly well matched in the struggle. Hook was clearly more experienced with combat and causing bodily harm, but Dodger’s ability to manoeuver in zero-gee and upper arm strength served him well, and he made sure Hook bore the brunt of each impact even as the boy’s face took a pounding.
The return of full gravity, when it happened, was helpful to neither. The two were perhaps four meters up a wall, where Hook had Dodger pinned, when weightlessness ended and the two fell to the ground in an awkward heap. The older man rose first, a sneer twisting his lips. “That’s it, boy. You’re mine now.” He grabbed Dodger up from the deck with a hand around the boy’s neck.
Ollie let go the hydraulics once her feet were on the ground, and launched herself across the distance to close in silence. Hook’s hand cocked back in a fist as Dodger struggled in his grip, the boy’s fingers struggling to pull the older man’s hand loose. He made choking noises, body writhing against the wall behind him. Hook leaned in close, his face close enough as he nearly spit in the lad’s face. “You are nothing but a little space rat, and you’ll be a space rat until the day you die, which will be soon if I have anything to say about it.”
“But you don’t,” grunted Ollie as she swung her pry bar at the back of Hook’s head. He staggered, then dropped like a puppet with his strings cut as Dodger threw himself sideways. The boy lay on his hands and knees for a moment, sucking in breaths as he rubbed at his throat. Ollie leaned down to listen at Hook’s lips.
“Is he dead?” Dodger asked hopefully.
Straightening, Ollie shook her head. “Nope. Good thing, too. We don’t need a murder rap chasin’ either one of us.” She offered Dodger a hand, which he ignored as he struggled to his feet.
“I didn’t need no help,” Dodger muttered.
“Reckon not,” Ollie nodded, trying for a straight expression. “Your ship is ready fer takeoff, Cap’n Dodger. Your sister?” They both looked to the Princess, whose gangplank was closing as the engines started to gow.
“She’s goin’ alone,” Dodger sighed, and grabbed Ollie’s hand as the two turned to run across the tarmac to the New London, whose engines were starting their low whine that presaged the thunder to come. “Apparently we both got us a powerful need to be in charge. I couldn’t reason with ‘er.”
“Girls are like that,” Ollie grinned as the pair dashed up the gangplank. She hit the closing controls, letting go of his hand when they were together in the belly of their ship.
Dodger lifted his voice to yell, “All clear, Paris! Get us outta here!”
“Aye aye, Cap’n!” came the response, and the London lifted to head out of the space station. A few moments later, they were on full burn out of the system with Dodger and Ollie on the bridge as Paris left to go check on his beloved engines.
“You mind if I send a private message?” Dodger looked to Ollie, who smiled and shook her head.
“You go on.”
“Thanks. And Ollie?”
“Yeah?”
“That was a great plan.”
The Hope of Astraea
Wendy Lambert
Wendy Lambert writes speculative fiction and is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. Her stories appear in Necrology Shorts, In the Shimmering, and the 2015 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide. She works as a school librarian and lives in Utah with her husband and children.
“Is that the graveyard?” Cordelia pointed at the dots scattered across the navigation screen.
“Yes,” Cordelia’s dad replied. “We’ll reach it within the hour.” He tapped on the control panel, redirecting the massive solar sail by less than half a degree to avoid the drifting wreckage of ships from a long forgotten war. “Now, I need to concentrate – did you finish your schoolwork?”
“Yes.” Cordelia squirmed her way onto his knee. “How close will we get to the graveyard?”
“Too close, if you don’t leave your dad alone.” Captain Alex stood up from her console and arched her back in a stretch.
“Captain’s right. I need to concentrate. Besides,” he shifted Cordelia off his knee, “at eleven, you’re far too old to be sitting on my knee, don’t you think? Why don’t you go help Gran in the garden? I hear the strawberries are ready.”
Cordelia scowled. She didn’t want to pick strawberries. Her place was on the bridge of the Hope of Astraea – the starship she’d command when Captain Alex, her aunt, retired someday. She’d carry on the tradition of the past eighty years, bringing precious food and water, medicine and supplies to the farthest reaches of the system – a mining colony on the ship’s namesake, the moon of Astraea.
When she was captain, she’d be able boss everyone about, keeping the Hope of Astraea running smoothly. But she wasn’t captain yet, and it had been a very long time since she’d had fresh strawberries. Besides, Gran could tell her more about the ship graveyard. It’d been nearly four years since they’d last looped past it, and she didn’t remember it very well.
“Okay, I’ll help Gran,” Cordelia said.
“What, no argument? You must not be feeling well.” Cordelia’s dad pressed the back of his hand to her forehead.
Cordelia batted his hand away. “Dad.”
“That ship wasn’t there last time. It’s not on any of the charts,” Captain Alex said, point
ing at a dot in the upper right quadrant of the screen.
Cordelia moved in for a peek, but her Dad shooed her towards the bridge door. She slapped her hand against the button. The door opened with a whoosh. Milo, her very annoying little cousin, sat in the corridor. He’d been banned from the bridge since he’d let his silvery cyborg hand loose, and it’d caused all sorts of mischief before shorting out a console.
“Well?” Milo said.
“Well, what?”
“The graveyard. Are we almost there?”
“That’s my business. And the captain’s!”
“Is not.”
Cordelia sighed and rolled her eyes. She edged past Milo and broke into a run down the hall, her bare feet slapping against the worn wood planks. She couldn’t help but slow to look out the porthole as she passed.
“We are close,” Milo said in knowing satisfaction.
“I never said –”
“But you’re looking out like you’re going to see something.”
If she ran fast enough and took a detour through engineering, maybe she’d lose him, at least for a while. She rounded a corner, glancing back to see if she’d lost Milo when she ran smack into Uncle Joe.
“Whoa, slow down there,” Uncle Joe said. He was dressed in his spacesuit, his helmet clamped under one arm and a deactivated fixer-bot under the other.
Cordelia grinned sheepishly. “Hi, how is she?”
“She’s in tip-top shape, Captain Cordelia.” He saluted her just like he did the real captain. “At least after I caught this malfunctioning fixer-bot that was punching more holes in the sail than it was fixing.”
“Very good. Carry on, sir.” Cordelia scrambled around him, expecting to see Milo at any second. Cordelia thundered down the steps into engineering. She zig-zagged around humming machines and computers.
A greasy hand shot up from above a machine and waved. “Slow down, Cordelia.”
She skidded to a fast walk. “Good morning, Aunt Syrina. How’s everything running today?”
“Output’s a little low. I’m making a few adjustments.”
“Very good,” she said.
Cordelia raced up the stairs on the opposite end of engineering, taking them all the way to the top of the ship, to the garden. Its massive windowed dome gave the best views of inky space and distant stars. The heavy aroma of dirt mingled with the sweet scent of strawberries. She hadn’t outsmarted Milo at all. He knelt next to Gran over the strawberry patch.
“Gently now,” Gran said to Milo.
Milo moved his cyborg hand towards the tiny stem of a strawberry.
“That’s it . . . hello, Cordelia,” Gran said without taking her eyes off Milo.
Milo lifted the strawberry and dangled it above the basket. “Can I eat it?”
Gran smiled. “Sure, just this one.” She plucked a strawberry and held it out to Cordelia. “For you, my dear.”
Cordelia took the strawberry and bit into it, savoring the sweetness.
“Now that we’ve satisfied our taste buds, shall we?” Gran handed Cordelia a small basket. Gran had outdone herself this year. The plants bowed with all the berries. “How’s the Hope of Astraea today?” Gran asked.
“Fine. We’re approaching the graveyard, and Uncle Joe brought in a broken fixer-bot. Engineering reports a slight decrease in output, but they’re making the necessary adjustments.”
“And our course?”
“On schedule for the drop.”
Milo cleared his throat. “I heard there are dead bodies floating around in the graveyard.” His eyes were wide, and he crushed a strawberry in his cyborg fingers. Cordelia shook her head and frowned.
“Now where did you hear something like that?” Gran asked.
He pointed at Cordelia.
Gran laughed. “She’s just trying to scare you. There’s only the wreckage of ships floating about. Now, tell me Cordelia, what’s the most dangerous part?”
“Making sure the sail doesn’t hit large debris. We need to maintain our speed and course so we make our drop on time.”
Gran’s eyes sparkled with approval. “You’ll make a fine captain someday. It’s important to remember all those details.” She tapped at her head, covered in soft gray curls, edged in black. “And what happens if we are off by even a quarter of degree?”
“We’ll miss our drop, and the miners will starve. And we won’t make our turn in time, and then we risk starving, too,” Cordelia said.
“That’s right,” Gran said.
Cordelia’s basket was nearly full. There would be plenty of strawberries for pies and shortcake.
The peace was shattered as an alarm shrieked in rhythm with a pulsing red light. Cordelia had never heard nor seen that alarm before. Gran’s soft eyes turned hard, and she straightened her back, looking just like the faint memory Cordelia had of her when she was still captain.
The ship jolted suddenly to the right, knocking them all to the floor. A shadow darkened the dome momentarily as a starship passed overhead.
Gran grabbed both their shoulders, pushing them through the flowerbed, past the cherry tree towards a vent. “In there now. No matter what happens, you stay put. You hide. Do you understand?”
“What’s that alarm? Gran, what’s happening?” Cordelia asked.
Milo whimpered.
“Cordelia, you stay hidden. You keep Milo safe. Promise me.”
“I promise.” Cordelia climbed into the vent behind Milo.
The ship pitched hard to the right again, and then she felt it slow down. That wasn’t good. Milo clamped his cyborg hand too tightly around her arm. Cordelia worked her fingers under the hand and pulled it free.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to Milo.
Gran raced from the gardens, leaving Cordelia with the sound of her own thumping heart matching the rhythm of the alarm, continuing even after the sound abruptly stopped. She strained to hear the muffled voices, recognizing some as her aunts, uncles and older cousins. Some were definitely not her family.
The stillness of the garden broke as a man in ragged clothes and unkempt beard barreled into the garden, holding a gun – a pirate! He circled the garden, pushing aside branches, peering into the shadows and stopping for a time right in front of their vent.
Cordelia was certain he could see them between the slits in the vent, could hear her thumping heart. But he didn’t say a word. He paused at the strawberry patch and popped a berry into his mouth. He took her basket of strawberries and left. For a long time they sat there in silence, waiting for Gran to return.
“Do you think it’s safe?” Milo whispered.
“No,” Cordelia said. “If it was, someone would’ve come back for us.”
“What do we do?”
“Well,” Cordelia said, having had all this time to think on it, “we need to see what’s going on.”
“But Gran said not to leave the vent.”
“Who said anything about leaving the vent?”
Milo grinned.
From behind the vent cover and between rows of crates, they could see the entire family – aunts, uncles, cousins, her dad, and Gran – with hands and legs bound, crammed in the corner of the cargo hold. They looked okay, except for Uncle Joe, who sported a nasty bruise and cut on his face.
It hadn’t been easy snaking their way through the ducts. The hardest part proved crawling quietly, and it didn’t help that Milo had a metal hand and an endless number of questions.
“Are you sure they’re pirates? They don’t have eye patches or parrots. I haven’t heard any of them say argh even once,” Milo said.
“They’re not like pirates on water, but they boarded our ship. They’re holding our family hostage and taking our stuff – they’re space pirates,” Cordelia whispered. She then raised her finger to hush any more questions.
The six pirates had carried crate after crate of food and supplies meant for the miners of Astraea out of the cargo hold and loaded them onto their ship. They’d stolen a dozen c
rates before they gave in to their hunger.
Cordelia hadn’t noticed how skinny the pirates were until they cracked open one of the crates and began devouring the food inside. They even ate her juicy strawberries. The pirates had set their weapons on the crate beside the door, just feet away from the vent, where she and Milo gently nudged each other back and forth to see out. The pirates were focused on the food and watching her family, leaving their backs to the two children.
“How’s your hand?” Cordelia whispered to Milo.
“What?”
“Do you think you could get those?”
Milo’s eyes went wide. “What’re you thinking?”
“Those weapons are dangerous. The pirates aren’t watching. We need to get rid of them so that nobody gets hurt.”
Milo grinned and wrenched his cyborg hand free of his arm. Cordelia carefully pushed the hinged vent cover up and gave Milo a nod. His cyborg hand crawled out of the vent and gripped the edge of the wooden crate.
It always amazed Cordelia how a cyborg hand could do what hers couldn’t. The fingers crawled upward, scaling the crate in seconds. Milo was concentrating so hard that his tongue wagged at the corner of his mouth.
Cordelia glanced back and forth between the hand and the pirates wolfing down her strawberries. Milo’s hand gripped the handle of a knife between its thumb and index finger and then skillfully backed down the crate to the vent. Cordelia snatched the knife and set it down beside her.
Milo went to work again. His tongue whipped around his lips as the hand crawled back up the crate and grasped a length of metal pipe. The hand inched back down, the pipe clenched between the thumb and index finger but beginning to wobble. Cordelia stretched out her hand too late. The pipe slipped from his fingers and clanged to the floor. She grabbed Milo’s hand and shut the vent cover tight just as the munching pirates spun around.
