Starstuff (Starstuff Trilogy Book 1)

by Ira Heinichen

  The pirate captain was standing in the doorway, her ruddy face covered in shock.

  The next few seconds were a blur. Petrick yelped in surprise, which startled Clarke, who wiggled his way out of Petrick’s grasp and onto the ship deck. The pirate captain lunged for Petrick, and he made a run for the grated opening. He got maybe two steps before the larger woman snagged him by the shirt collar and pulled him back.

  Petrick was thrashing on the ground when Clarke sprang to the defense of his master by sinking his teeth into the captain’s leg. The pirate captain bellowed but did not let go of Petrick’s collar.

  Suddenly, Suzy and Barry were in the room, trying to yank loose the woman’s grasp, which they were able to do after a moment. But that was right when she was able to fling Clarke free and dive on top of all three of them, knocking them into a screaming heap of arms and torsos and elbows on the rough deck of the ship.

  Somehow, Petrick managed to extricate himself from the pile, and he made a break for the cabin’s open doorway. As he did, he ran right into the cold, hard metal of the giant gleaming android Colossus. Petrick yelled out at the top of his lungs as the robot lifted him by an armpit right off the deck. Clarke, somehow still free, attacked the robot’s legs with as much ferocity as his little body contained, but the robot didn’t even flinch. Instead, he stooped and with his one free arm snagged the attacking furry ball by a leg.

  Petrick’s blood ran cold when Clarke squealed in pain.

  “Let him go!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, and he threw his fists and feet and elbows and knees as hard and fast as he could against the cold metal that held him. “You let him go! Let him go! Let him go!!!”

  “Colossus!” bellowed another voice with much more authority in it. “Cease!”

  It took Petrick a moment to realize that the command had come from the pirate captain. He swiveled his head around to see her standing, disheveled from the fracas, holding Barry and Suzy each by their collar. Colossus had turned his own head to gaze at his master, and Clarke had changed his cries of pain to small whimpers.

  “Do not harm them . . . ,” the pirate captain growled, trailing off. She took a purposeful step forward, dragging Barry and Suzy with her and motioning for Colossus to follow her. “Yet.”

  “Stowaways!” the woman bellowed. “By all rights and the Star Farer’s Creed, I should put the lot of you straight out the airlock!”

  Now that they were face-to-face with their captor for the first time, the three children could see she was not exceptionally tall. She still managed to maintain quite an imposing presence. She was broad, almost rotund, and perpetually unkempt. She constantly squinted, as if nearly everything needed close consideration, and it left her with deep scowl lines above her ruddy nose and on her leathery forehead.

  And she stank. Quite profusely. Suzy had wrinkled her nose, which the woman quickly took exception to.

  “Wipe that look off your face, little girl!” She flung at her.

  She was pacing back and forth in the small room that she had hauled them into. It appeared to be some sort of closet. Various bits of gears and piping and wires were strewn about, and there was a mess of cleaning supplies in one corner . . . obviously they hadn’t been used in quite some time. Colossus stood ominously in the doorway, as did the passenger couple, who must have heard the shouting from their discovery.

  “Surely,” said the man in the doorway, “you can’t possibly be considering the airlock.”

  “What I’m considering is none of your business, Dedrin,” the captain answered, using the man’s name. “You and Arris are passengers on my ship.”

  “Captain,” said Petrick, stepping forward. Suzy tried to pull him back and shut his mouth, but she was too late. Barry nearly soiled his pants when the captain stopped pacing and looked challengingly right at Petrick. “What is your name, Captain?”

  The woman rolled her tongue in her cheek. It was impossible to tell if she was impressed that Petrick was speaking up, or enraged.

  “You can call me Balta,” she replied. “Captain Balta of the mining transport ship Red Robert.”

  Petrick gulped. “Captain Balta,” he said, “we apologize for our . . . subterfuge—”

  “No fancy words for it,” Balta cut him off. “Stowaways. That’s what you are.”

  “We apologize for stowing away, but you see, it was our only option. We had to get off Indacar. Desperately. And you were the only ship.”

  Balta put her hand up to stop him. “I don’t care,” she said. “Star Farer’s Creed says that anyone who travels pays their way. Anyone who doesn’t gets tossed overboard.”

  “We don’t have anything to pay you with!” Barry said, sounding dangerously close to tears.

  “Then you go overboard,” Balta snapped back.

  “Captain,” Dedrin said, speaking up again, “surely we can just take them back to Indacar.”

  “No!” Petrick pleaded. “You don’t understand—it’s very, very important that we get to the Outer Rim.”

  “It doesn’t matter where you want to go, boy, if you can’t pay your way!”

  “Please don’t hurt them,” Arris, the Indacaran woman, pleaded.

  Balta took a step toward them, and Suzy screeched with all her might.

  The sound was vicious, piercing, and almost impossibly loud. Petrick realized she was mimicking the sound a vreen made.

  It freaked Barry out so much that he burst into tears. Balta stopped and looked at the three children uncertainly. Apparently, she wasn’t used to her prisoners screeching or crying on her. The scowl on her face lessened, and after a moment, she threw her hands up into the air.

  “Oh, stop it, for ’stuff’s sake!” she said. “I’m not goin’ to throw you out a bloody airlock!” Barry’s cries turned into sniffles, but Balta still wrung her hands uncomfortably. “No need to get all weepy, now,” she said. Then the scowl returned to her face. “But no amount of crying, or whatever that was”—she pointed at Suzy—“is getting you to stay on this ship.”

  Barry looked like he would start crying again, but Balta shot a halting hand up to nip it in the bud.

  “Ah!” she said. “I said no more. I may not be putting you out into the vacuum like you deserve, but we absolutely are stars-to-rights turning tail right around and dropping you back on Indacar where you belong.”

  There were protests again from the children, but Balta stomped her feet to silence them.

  “Enough!” she said. “I am the captain of this ship.”

  “Children,” said Arris, “surely your parents will be missing you.”

  “We don’t have parents, lady,” Suzy said.

  “We’re from Childer’s Home for the Parentless,” Barry confirmed. “Nobody’s missing us.”

  “Orphans?” Arris sounded odd asking the question.

  “I have parents,” Petrick said. Everyone turned to look at him. “A father, I mean.”

  “He has dreams about him,” Barry asserted. “That’s why we left Indacar. We’re going to save him.”

  Balta snorted at the notion.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Dedrin said.

  “I’d think you’d be more concerned about making your transport, Separatist,” Balta said, and glanced to Colossus as if checking the time. “We’ll be cutting it mighty close if we try to backtrack and still make it to the Wall.”

  “You’re going to the Wall?!” Petrick leaped up. “That’s where we need to go!”

  “Everyone goes through the Wall if you’re headed to the Outer Rim,” Balta said, as if that were a fact everyone already knew. “Not that it’s anything to you, scallywag, because you’re going home.”

  With that, she turned and stomped out of the room, Colossus lumbering after her.

  “Captain, wait,” Petrick called after her. But Balta didn’t stop.

  So Petrick, and then Barry and Suzy (and Clarke), followed closely by Dedrin and Arris, all set off as a protesting mob after Balta and Colossus as they headed towa
rd the cockpit.

  “Perhaps . . . ,” said Dedrin, “perhaps we shouldn’t return to Indacar. We cannot miss our transport.”

  Reaching the small doorway that led into the four-seated control room, Balta turned and slapped a hand against the door, silencing the grumbling mob.

  “This is not up for debate.” She jabbed a fat finger at the couple. “You two will arrive on time, as promised.” She jabbed another finger at Petrick, Suzy, and Barry (and Clarke). “You lot are going home, and that is final!” She then turned around and harrumphed herself into the forward-most of the cockpit chairs.

  Balta’s finger jabbing continued, now punishing the many flickering lights on her control panel. Moments later Petrick could feel the Red Robert shudder, and the projected display that lit up over the wider viewport showed their relative velocity slowing. Petrick craned to see outside the ship, but it was mostly darkness.

  “Back!” Balta snapped at him without turning around. “Don’t touch anything. We’re only going to be here long enough to turn around.”

  The entire group jumped, Balta included, when an alarm suddenly screamed at them.

  The pirate captain frowned and wheeled her overstuffed chair to another console. “Turn it off,” she commanded Colossus. The alarm silenced.

  “What did that sound mean?” Dedrin asked from the doorway.

  Colossus garbled some mechanical noises at Balta, and she yelled back, “From where?” Colossus clicked and creaked a response.

  Balta whirled to her passengers. “You didn’t double-book passage, did you?”

  Dedrin and Arris frowned at Balta, then at each other. “N-no . . . ,” stammered Dedrin. “Of course not.”

  “Are you spies?”

  “Captain, you were the only one to make contact with our village,” Arris asserted.

  “Then how do you explain this?” Balta pointed to a small, grimy readout that showed a bouncing waveform lit up in greens, yellows, and reds.

  “That’s a transmission,” Petrick said. “From Indacar.”

  “How do you know that, kid?” Balta’s eyes were now boring into Petrick, narrowed in their signature manner.

  “I . . . learned to recognize them from my dad.”

  “I thought all you Separatists were terrified of technology.”

  “Hey, it’s none of your business,” said Suzy.

  “It is if you little bastards get us caught,” said Balta.

  “We just know stuff, okay, ma’am?” Barry was doing his best Suzy impression, chest puffed, chin high. “Except what that transmission is. Don’t know anything about that.”

  “Who’s transmitting?” Petrick asked.

  Balta turned back around, apparently satisfied for now, and began scanning her console again for more information. “Only one kind of ship would be beaming broad-range like that,” she said. A moment later, she leaned back in her chair and rubbed her face. A small dot was depicted on the display projected over the cockpit window. “I knew it. That’s an Authority scout ship,” she said. “On Indacar.”

  “The Authority?” Dedrin repeated. He was whispering.

  “Why are they transmitting to us?” Petrick asked.

  “They’re not,” Balta answered. “They’re transmitting to that.” She pointed at another small dot projected onto the center of the window. What the dot represented was indistinguishable, but with a gesture, Balta enlarged it.

  A gigantic blade-shaped ship leaped into view, bristling with armaments on every side and a gleaming pearl-white color from nose to stern . . . a menacing sight to behold, even in holographic form. It sliced through space like a knife.

  “That’s an Authority capital ship,” Balta said. “Which means we’re spaced.”

  “How?” said Dedrin. Petrick noticed Arris sidle closer to her husband and squeeze his hand. “We’re not due for another three months.”

  “They changed their schedule?” Balta said, and she buried her face in her hands. “Or it’s just dumb luck. Unbelievable.”

  “We must run,” Arris said.

  “No point.” Balta shook her head. All her bravado was gone. It was far, far scarier than any yelling or blustering. “They’re too close.”

  A new alarm blared to underscore her point. A proximity alert, Petrick surmised from the countdown that appeared on the window display.

  “You can’t let them take us!” Dedrin yelled.

  “There’s nothing I can do,” Balta answered. “They’re going to take all of us.”

  Everyone stared at the ship, which grew closer, and the countdown beneath it.

  Five seconds.

  Four.

  Petrick wondered what two Indacarans from the Northern Province could be running from.

  Three.

  Where were they going?

  Two.

  One.

  Zero.

  24

  . . .

  Nothing.

  The entire cabin had been collectively holding its breath for what seemed like hours. Petrick looked up at the cockpit display. Where the capital ship had dominated their view, the holographic overlay showed nothing ahead of them but stars.

  “They flew right past us,” Balta said finally, disbelievingly. She double-checked her instruments. “They’re already two light-years behind us, and receding.”

  Arris whooped in exultation, and Dedrin hugged her tightly.

  “Oh, my, Indacar is with us!” she said.

  “Something is,” Balta said, still trying to figure it out. “I mean, any active scan would have picked us up from fifty light-years out.”

  “Maybe whatever’s on Indacar was more important than one lousy ship?” Suzy said.

  “Watch what you say about my ship,” Balta half-heartedly growled. “And . . . you must be right.”

  “Well,” Petrick said, “then surely we can’t turn around.”

  “That much is for certain . . . ,” Dedrin agreed.

  Balta groaned and shot them both a look.

  “Does that mean we get to stay?” Suzy asked, arms folded.

  “I’m only staying if she’s nice,” said Barry, pointing at Balta.

  Balta put her head back into her hands and remained in that position for a good long while. Finally, she cracked her fingers open and looked at the children.

  “You’re gonna pull your weight, that’s for sure!” she protested to them. “Starting with remaking my breakfast, which that mutt ruined!” She jabbed a finger in Clarke’s direction. Clarke growled softly.

  “Oh, you should let Habersham do the cooking,” Barry said. “Haber’s much better at it than we . . .”

  His words trailed off, and silence hung in the air for a single second before all three children turned and gaped at each other with sudden realization.

  “Haber!”

  Haber had been frozen solid in just the few hours that the Red Robert had been in flight. Balta, after pitching a brand-new fit that another stowaway had gotten himself on board, recruited Colossus to go through the cargo hold airlock and find the other synthetic. As the scary silver robot hauled Haber into the warm confines of the crew decks, Petrick almost yelled out for joy and cried at the same time. There was a pit in the middle of his stomach that he hadn’t even known was there, and it started to ebb. Petrick realized he hadn’t really been sure Haber would stick with them, given the opportunity to leave. It also made Petrick register how much he wanted Haber to stay.

  The excitement waned when he saw how utterly frozen over and unresponsive their friend was, but Balta grunted and poked about, saying that the android would be fine as soon as he thawed. She had Colossus place him on the ground, which the robot did with surprising care.

  “I’ve never seen a unit quite like this,” Balta said, wiping melting ice from Haber’s inert face.

  “My dad made him,” Petrick offered. “Maybe that’s why.”

  “He looks very human. Not much use in spending time on all that, though. Making them look human. Better to just m
ake them big and strong, like Colossus. Looks are useless.”

  “Oh, Haber is very use-ful,” Barry interjected. “He’s the smartest android I know.”

  “Barry,” Suzy said, “Haber’s the only android we know.”

  “It’s still true,” Barry harrumphed. “He is the smartest.”

  It occurred to Petrick that everyone was squabbling, perhaps even more than normal, because they still had not eaten any food. His stomach growled back at him, underscoring the thought. Balta seemed to finish her wiping and poking, and she repositioned herself in front of Haber.

  “Okay,” she said, searching with her eyes, “now, where would the reset button be . . .”

  She seemed to land on a possibility and was reaching for it when Haber’s arm suddenly shot out and snagged Balta’s hand in midgesture.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d refrain from poking me, ma’am.”

  Haber’s icy blue eyes were suddenly open, and he was looking reproachfully up at the sweaty ship captain. His grip on Balta’s hand was firm enough that Colossus took several steps toward the two, looking menacing and ready to intervene.

  Petrick stepped in. “Haber,” he said. “Let go of Captain Balta.”

  Haber’s eyes flicked over to Petrick and Suzy and Barry.

  “Are you children in any danger?” he asked, still holding Balta’s hand.

  “Let me go, android!” Balta commanded.

  “We’re fine, Haber,” said Suzy. “Just let her go.”

  Haber looked at Petrick, and Petrick nodded in agreement. “It’s okay,” he said. “We had them go and get you from the cargo hold.”

  After another moment of looking at Balta, then back at Petrick and Suzy and Barry, Haber let go of Balta’s hand.

  Balta stepped back, wringing it, and it looked slightly white from the squeeze. “That’s quite a grip,” she said. “You and Colossus should try an arm-wrestling match.”

  Haber sat up in one swift movement and looked Colossus up and down.

  “Unlikely,” he said.

  “How did you wake up, android?” Balta asked. “I didn’t push your reset button.”