Space Hostages

by Sophia McDougall

  I hadn’t read either of those, but I was glad Helen had had something to do. On the command bridge, there were control banks a bit like you’d get on a Flarehawk, but much shinier, and there were big comfy leather chairs. Christa was huddled up in one, hugging herself and staring into the distance and twitching like this rabbit me and Carl had that was scared of the washing machine. And Mr. Trommler was in the big captain’s chair, and there was Thsaaa, wrapped in a new cooling cape, arguing with him.

  “We muuuuust go nooooow,” Thsaaa was urging, all long vowels because they were so stressed and tired. “Lenaaaaa—Lena told us to return to Aushalawa-Moraaa.”

  “We can’t leave those kids,” said Mr. Trommler. And I felt this kind of jolt in my chest. “I can’t leave those kids stranded.”

  “You want to rescue them?” I asked. “Could . . . could we even find them?”

  Mr. Trommler turned to me. “Of course I want to rescue them, Noel. What do you take me for? The Goldfish robot had Häxeri technology, didn’t it? Helen should be able to trace it. If it’s with them, then yes, we could find them.”

  “Noel,” warned Thsaaa, “we muuuuust make for Aushalawa-Moraaa.”

  Thsaaa still didn’t look well at all; their colors were all wrong, sort of faded like they’d been left in the sun, flickering feverishly. They needed to go and rest in their cooling chamber, but how could they when we were maybe only a minute away from being hauled back onto the Krakkiluk ship?

  “Lena said we’d only make it all worse . . . that the Krakkiluks would capture us again,” I said.

  Mr. Trommler looked horrified. “Is that where this comes from? Lena wanted us to abandon her own sister?” he asked. “She’s a brilliant young woman, but emotionally stunted. That poor kid deserves better.”

  I hadn’t thought about Lena and Josephine like that before. I didn’t know if it was true. Lena had sounded so sure of what to do.

  “Helen, search for Häxeri technology,” Mr. Trommler said, and Thsaaa grabbed my arm with three tentacles and basically dragged me back into the lift and shut the doors.

  “What are you doing?” I said crossly. Oh, I was tired, now I thought about it. I am tired.

  “We haaaaaaave . . . we have to stop him!” they said wheezily.

  “What?” I said. “How?”

  “You know I want to save the others too! But if the Krakkiluks catch us again, all Lena’s wooooork will be wasted!” Thsaaa said. “And we must take Mr. Trommler . . . ouuuut of their reach. For the Earth’s sake.”

  “But it’s not like we can do anything, even if—” I said. Even if we wanted to, I was thinking.

  “Helen,” Thsaaa said. “She would listen.”

  “I can’t do anything my Captain doesn’t want,” Helen announced.

  “But you caaaaaan,” Thsaaa said. “You know that you can. Helen? Helen?”

  But Helen said nothing.

  “Noel, talk to her!” Thsaaa urged.

  I don’t reckon it would’ve worked anyway. And even if it would, I didn’t want to.

  “No, Thsaaa,” I said.

  Helen opened the doors, and I went back onto the bridge.

  “Come here, Noel,” said Mr. Trommler. “We’re going to find your brother.”

  “I believe I have located the Goldfish,” said Helen. “Preparing for atmosphere entry.”

  And there, I thought. It would have been awful if we’d run off when it only takes like a minute to find them, and we’ll grab them real quick and get out of here.

  And that’s everything, I guess. I get why Thsaaa’s worried, but we’re going to do it, I know we are. Mr. Trommler says we’re only a few minutes away from the place the Goldfish’s signal is coming from.

  Carl, Alice, Josephine—hang on. We’re coming.

  20

  The missile sliced across the dark-green sky like a blade of gold. We watched from the clifftop as the air rippled behind it, and all the hooting, whistling things of the forest lifted into the air, bursting into a panicky chorus.

  Uwaelee strove up into the missile’s wake, chasing after it as it sped away, as if she would follow it all the way into orbit. And after a moment, Hoolinyae and Eenyo soared after her.

  “Please, come on, please,” Josephine was muttering.

  The missile shrank until it was a golden star in the evening sky, and then vanished. Hoolinyae, Eenyo, and the others remained circling like eagles on a thermal.

  And then there was an awful scream.

  Eenyo, clutching at his neck, was plummeting from the sky. Hoolinyae and Uwaelee uttered shrieks of alarm and darted to catch him, but I could see him still spasming in Hoolinyae’s arms.

  “It didn’t work!” I said, horrified. “We missed, or . . .”

  The satellite was still working. And it knew what had happened, and it was punishing Eenyo for the attempt.

  “OON, OON,” keened Uwaelee.

  “Oh, god,” I said. “If it’s happening to him . . .”

  “It’s happening to every Eemala who wears a collar,” said Josephine, sounding sick.

  Hoolinyae had lowered Eenyo down to the golden carpet of moss on the plateau, where he lay bundled up in his wings. Little gasps of pain came from between his clenched teeth.

  Ningleenill pounced on the Goldfish in a rage, landing on its back and pummeling it with both pairs of fists: “I was a fool to listen! See what you have done!”

  “It’s okay!” said the Goldfish in WOya, which might not have been tactful. “Sir, I believe we overcorrected a touch for wind drag, we have better data now! In fact—” It broke off for a moment, its eyes flashing as it processed information. “We got a glancing hit! This is totally fixable!”

  Eenyo parted his wings a little and looked up. There was a tiny red light on the collar which I’d never seen before, flashing on and off. He struggled to stand, leaning on Hoolinyae.

  “Try again,” he said hoarsely. “Please, try again. It would be worth it—to never feel that again.”

  “We have no choice,” said Ningleenill grimly. “There is no turning back now.”

  “How long will it take to reload and calculate the satellite’s new position?” Josephine asked.

  It took about forty minutes, I guess. We helped as best we could. We went back down to the chasm that held the launcher, and Kat-li-Yaka and Qualt-zu-Quo, useful for once, loaded the second missile, and we helped strap it into place while Ningleenill and the Goldfish pored through the data.

  At last the second missile rose in its cradle and swiveled on its mount, nosing the sky.

  Eenyo’s collar had stopped flashing and he could stand by himself, and even fly a little. “Do it, then,” he said weakly.

  “It has to be right this time, Goldfish,” said Josephine.

  “Wait a sec,” said the Goldfish. “There’s something . . . something’s got a lock on me, kids, something’s . . . incoming . . .”

  There was a huge sound like the sky tearing apart.

  I clutched my ears. It’s the Krakkiluks, I thought. They know where we are and they’re doing something awful and it’s all our fault. I looked up and saw a new speck of white in the green sky.

  “Wait,” whispered Josephine. “That’s . . . that’s not a Krakkiluk ship, that’s . . . !”

  “Helen!” I screamed, as the Helen of Troy swept down to the plateau like a descending angel.

  “Noel, oh my god, NOEL,” boomed Carl, because practically before the ship had touched the ground, Noel came stumbling down the Helen’s ramp. He was dirty and disheveled and for some reason wearing only one boot, and he rushed into Carl’s arms and almost knocked him over.

  “Carl! We did it! We found you!” he crowed.

  “You’re okay? You’re really okay?” Carl demanded, holding him back and looking him over as if there might be gaping wounds on him he somehow hadn’t seen the first time.

  “Thsaaa!” I shouted, because Thsaaa too was shuffling down the ramp. They looked wobbly and their colors were sickly a
nd pale. I wanted to hug them, but they looked so overheated and fragile, I didn’t quite dare.

  But it was going to be okay. All these days of starving and struggling and fighting each other because we all thought we were probably never going home again, and now we were.

  “Aleece. Huuuuurrrreeee,” Thsaaa said weakly, “They will fiiiiind us. We must go now.”

  “Lena—is Lena with you?” Josephine was saying, a rough edge in her voice, staring desperately up the ramp into the Helen’s interior.

  But Lena didn’t come out.

  “She’s okay; I mean, she’s going to be okay,” said Noel. “She was amazing; she hacked the ship with her spider-computer things and got us out. Come on, we’ve got to go.” He dragged at Carl’s arm. “I’ll tell you everything, just get on the ship, although—oh, wow,” he added, noticing the Eemala, who were clustering around, wary but curious.

  “Yalu, humans!” exclaimed Uwaelee.

  “This is my brother Noel—Noel, this is Uwaelee.”

  Noel held out a hand in a polite daze, which Uwaelee looked at, nonplussed, and then kindly patted.

  “Yalu laweema!” said Hoolinyae, fascinated by Thsaaa’s changing colors.

  “Lena hacked the ship?” said Josephine, and a small furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “That . . . that doesn’t make sense.”

  And behind Noel and Thsaaa was Rasmus Trommler. However he’d escaped the Krakkiluk ship, at some point afterward he must have found time to change his clothes, because I was sure the exquisite cream-colored suit he was wearing was fresh on. He wandered down the ramp onto the golden surface of the new world, looked around, and checked his cuffs.

  “Hurry onto the ship, children,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

  “The missile . . . I’m still . . . recalculating . . . the trajectory . . .” said the Goldfish, slow with the effort of all the things it was doing at once.

  “We can’t leave,” I said. “Not yet.”

  “Alice, come on,” begged Noel.

  “Noel, she’s right, listen,” Carl said.

  “We can’t just leave these people,” said Josephine. “They’ve helped us. And they’re trying to get free of the Krakkiluks too—”

  “Ahh, the Free Eemala,” said Rasmus Trommler idly.

  And suddenly a cold, flat feeling settled over me. Because how could he have known about that? Everyone stopped talking.

  “Yes,” said Josephine, her eyes narrowing.

  A cloud of those Archangel Planetary doves drifted out of the Helen to surround Rasmus Trommler.

  “A perverse enterprise. Yaela has been much better off as part of the Grand Expanse,” he said, drawing a little silver device from his pocket. “And so will Earth be.”

  And before we could do more than take in a shocked breath, he gestured with the little silver thing, and a terrible beam of flaming destruction poured out of the sky into the chasm which held the missile launcher, and left only a smoking hole behind.

  The Eemala screamed in horror. I took a step back and nearly fell; I couldn’t seem to feel the ground beneath my feet. Josephine froze, eyes huge. Thsaaa turned colorless gray.

  Uwaelee flew at Trommler in fury—and Qualt-zu-Quo and Kat-li-Yaka came scuttling up from the cliffside in righteous anger—but Trommler gestured again with the little silver device and Eenyo collapsed, spasming and crying out. Uwaelee turned to him with a moan of despair.

  “Be careful,” Trommler said, taking a Krakkiluk translator box from his pocket and slinging it around his neck. “If you don’t want to make this worse for yourselves. And ah—traitors to the Expanse”—the device had switched to Krakkiluk. “You must have known there’d be consequences for that.”

  Qualt-zu-Quo had scooped up Eenyo with more tenderness than I’d thought any Krakkiluk was capable of toward someone not their spouse.

  “Why are you doing this?” Noel wailed.

  “He’s been an agent for the Krakkiluks the entire time,” said Josephine loudly. Her fists were clenched by her sides, but I could see she was forcing herself not to look frightened. “And I’d bet Häxeri is Krakkiluk technology they gave him. Or that he stole.” She smiled joylessly. “That’s how Lena was able to hack the ship. That’s how the Goldfish could program the missile computers. We should have known.” She turned to Trommler. “You never invented anything.”

  Trommler snarled. “You,” he said, “have caused me inconvenience enough.”

  I would never have thought what happened next could be so fast. The doves swept in on us, a panel opening in each one’s belly and something unfolding from inside. And something closed, tight and cold around my neck.

  “We want everything to be perfect for you,” the doves cooed in unison.

  I put up my hands and felt the thing around my neck in disbelief. The collar was too tight for me to see, but I could feel its smooth, seamless surface and see the neat silver band on Josephine; on Carl; on Thsaaa; on Noel. A little smaller and lighter, perhaps a generation or two more advanced than the ones the Eemala wore. But it was the same thing, I knew, designed to do the same job. Designed never to come off.

  “Now, perhaps, you’ll all behave yourselves,” Trommler said.

  “What?” said Noel. “What’s this?” Because he’d never seen one of the collars before; he had no idea what had just happened to him.

  “Don’t—” began Carl, but Noel pulled at it, trying to get it off.

  A tiny light on the collar flashed, and Noel gave a shocked gasp. By instinct the rest of us moved toward him, as if we could shield him, somehow drag the horrible thing off him. Even though we knew, I guess, what would happen.

  But when it did, it was utterly surprising, as if we had no warning at all. I felt the shock burn down my spine and wring my muscles, and I couldn’t make a sound because I couldn’t breathe. And then it was gone, as fast as it had come, except for lingering little sparks in my arms and feet. Each of us had crumpled onto hands and knees, gasping.

  Thsaaa was swearing softly at Trommler in Thlywaaa-lay.

  “He’s a little kid!” roared Carl, his arms around Noel again. “You can’t—”

  “I’m not hurting you,” said Trommler. “You’re hurting yourselves.”

  “Brrrk-tlok klalak-pruk—sssss!” roared Kat-li-Yaka, clawing at her neck. She and Qualt-zu-Quo were wearing collars now too.

  The Goldfish charged toward Trommler, apparently planning to simply cannon into him. I tried to brace for another blast of pain, but it didn’t come. Trommler sidestepped, and as he did so, he clapped a little metal disc to the Goldfish’s forehead, where it stuck.

  There was a faint buzzing sound. The Goldfish hung, frozen in midair, its eyes flashing rapidly.

  “That’s better,” Trommler said.

  “Goldfish,” I whispered.

  There was a tiny pause. “It’s okay, kids!” said the Goldfish. And the worst thing was, it still sounded like itself. “Everything’s perfect. Let’s fly away with Archangel Planetary.”

  And because it thought everything was perfect, it bustled cheerfully away into the Helen.

  “Into the ship, now,” said Trommler, and turned his back and walked away. He didn’t even need to wait to see us obey him.

  At first we just stood there looking at each other. I don’t think any of us thought we had a hope in hell of actually resisting, and there was nothing left for us on Yaela but the awfulness of what we’d done, anyway. But we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to hurry after him just because he told us to.

  Noel was sobbing. “I’m so sorry. I thought I was saving you. We should have made him go back to Aushalawa-Moraaa like Lena said; she told us not to come here, and I didn’t listen.”

  Behind us, the Free Eemala were gathered in despairing huddles on the ground. I couldn’t bear to look at them—especially not at Uwaelee. We’d ruined their rebellion just by turning up and trying to help. I wanted to apologize, but how? How do you start?

  Then the collars started to work a
gain, first as a buzz under the skin, then rapid pulses of jolts along the nerves, then suddenly it was huge and burning and everywhere, and it took control of my body and moved me a step forward somehow without my being involved. The pain subsided a little bit, then flared up again when I stopped moving. Soon I was stumbling forward in graceless little jerks like a puppet, and the same thing was happening to the others; we were all jolting into the ship, away from the pain, and I couldn’t stop, even when I tried.

  “Kat-li-Yaka! Qualt-zu-Quo!” Hoolinyae cried desolately.

  The two Krakkiluks were coming with us too, whimpering and trying to hold each other’s claws. “You’ll be my little present to Lady Sklat-kli-Sklak,” said Trommler. He hadn’t put collars on any of the Free Eemala; I suppose he felt he’d done enough to them to satisfy Lady Sklat-kli-Sklak. I couldn’t look back, at the golden planet, at the defeated rebels; the collar wouldn’t let me. We walked up the ramp as if we weren’t leaving a whole world behind.

  “Helen,” I said under my breath as we stepped on board. “Help.”

  But the Helen said nothing.

  21

  “What’s going to happen to us?” asked Josephine.

  We were in the lounge where Trommler had greeted us that first day on the Helen. Trommler was sitting in a big leather chair, sipping a drink one of his doves had brought to him. We were on the floor. Trommler had knocked us down with a whisk of the silver device as soon as we came in, and we’d none of us dared to move since. The Krakkiluks looked ridiculously large in a room built for humans and Morrors, forlornly holding claws by the pool table. It seemed so long since we had been here before.

  The Goldfish, oddly, was still translating everything, though it didn’t seem to realize it was doing it now.

  “O stolen treasure,” Qualt-zu-Quo was saying miserably.

  “O flower in the storm,” said Kat-li-Yaka.

  “It’s okay, we’ll be okay,” Carl was telling Noel.

  But Noel was inconsolable, and Carl and Josephine and I were all coughing—we’d been breathing oxygen and nitrogen at the Free Eemala camp, but the collars had kicked us when we were down, and my already strained lungs felt as bruised as the rest of me. At least we had nontoxic air now, I thought dully.