Wren couldn’t have been less affected. “The ship is fueled, the engines aren’t totally flooded yet, and Andy is grumpier than usual. Everything seems in order. Onward to Cadrolla!”
* * *
Cadrolla was a three-day journey, fueled primarily by Wren’s sass and Anders’s brooding. I didn’t see much of either of them, having sequestered myself in the Starchaser’s laboratory to hammer out a design for oxygen masks. I was enjoying the respite from their arguing, the peace and quiet that came from sitting at a workbench, wrapping wires between my fingers and listening to Elio recite recipes for foods he couldn’t eat. But of course, nothing lasted forever. I shrieked and nearly burned my hand off with a soldering iron when Anders stormed into the room and dropped down on the stool beside me.
“Canned ham is disgusting. Do you agree or disagree?”
“I’m firmly neutral,” I said.
“How can you be neutral? It’s abominable. I can’t stand it being in the same room as me.”
“What a coincidence. Neither can I.” I looked pointedly at him, then internally slapped myself. I was supposed to be nice. But I couldn’t concentrate on my work with the wheezing sound of his breaths permeating the lab. Andy was a mouth-breather, and I was so not having it.
“Can you turn your head the other way? I don’t want your spittle getting lodged in my brand-new oxygen masks, please and thank you.”
Huffing, Anders grudgingly stood and circled the lab while I worked. Frosted glass desks and a cluster of gleaming machinery were surrounded by sterile white walls and built-in shelves jammed full with books—some crammed in vertically, others horizontally and diagonally—filling every available inch. Most were written in languages that I didn’t understand, not that it mattered much. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d even touched a book, let alone read one. The invention of comm links had rendered physical reading material obsolete decades ago.
Studying the shelves, Anders grabbed a book at random and flipped it open. The spine cracked, a puff of dust filled the lab, and the Starchaser’s filtration system hissed manically as it struggled to purify the air around us. Coughing, Anders shoved it back on the shelf and resumed his seat beside me.
“I’ll breathe through my nose this time,” he promised.
Or you could just go away. Whichever.
Stars, I was terrible at this friendship charade.
“Why are you overhauling the oxygen masks?” He rolled the sleeves of his flight suit up to his elbows with sharp, precise folds. A line of symbols crawled across the insides of his wrists, octagonal runes that were just as dark and intricate as the tattoos on his forehead. I might have gone so far as to call them beautiful—you know, if they had been on literally anyone else’s body.
When he caught me staring, Anders quickly pulled his sleeves back down. “They’re Andilly military.” He looked at his hands like they were hideous. “They’re branded into our flesh by our lo’zoka—our general—if we can make it back to base camp after surviving in the mountains for forty days without food or water rations. That’s the last phase of our initiation.”
“I didn’t know you were in the military.”
“Obviously. I didn’t tell you. I was in for a while…” He fingered the edge of his sleeve. “Until I wasn’t.”
More specifically, until he did whatever thing he’d done that landed him trapped in a cell in Ironside, I assumed.
“I’d prefer not to talk about it,” he said.
“Fine. We can talk about the oxygen masks instead. Whoever used these didn’t take care of them at all. They have tears in the lining, the valves are cracking. We won’t last three minutes on Cadrolla with these.”
Anders picked up one of the three masks on the workbench, digging a dirty fingernail into the hose trailing from the front. “You know how to fix them?”
“I want to do more than just fix them. First off, I want to make the face shield larger to cover our eyes. Elio said there are a lot of potential irritants on Cadrolla that might affect our retinas, so I’m trying to add a film to counteract against ultraviolet radiation, and I even thought about a night-vision feature, but I’m seriously lacking in materials and…” I swallowed. “What are you staring at?”
“What do you mean?” He pulled the broken oxygen mask over his head to hide the freaky growing smirk he was giving me. He was fighting to rein it in, but even through the dirty silicone of the mask I could see his sharp teeth glinting.
“You’re … smiling,” I said. “It’s creepy.”
“You’re an inventor. It’s impressive.”
“I mean, I try…” The first thing I’d done upon entering the lab was dig through every desk drawer and storage crate, searching for materials to rebuild all the gadgets I’d lost when the warden seized my pod ship. I’d managed to collect my weight in screws and scrap metal, but even with a blowtorch it would take much more than those pitiful supplies to re-create my phaser and visual enhancer. Perfecting the oxygen masks was my only project for now.
After giving me another disturbing smile, Anders slipped off the mask and dropped it on my workbench. “Even still,” he said before heading back to the ship’s upper levels. “It’s very impressive.”
I didn’t want his kindness—if that’s what it could be called. For all I knew, he was trying to stroke my ego for his own gain. But I wouldn’t soon forget the nugget of information he’d shared, a fact about himself he’d likely thought insignificant. Anders had received professional combat training from the most violent planet on this side of the universe. He was even tougher than I initially thought.
When the time came, and the keys and the treasure were finally in reach, he wouldn’t be as easily outsmarted as I’d originally hoped.
* * *
Anders joined me in the lab the following two days, his hulking shadow a constant presence in a swivel chair beside the bookcases. At first I thought he’d only come down to read. Maybe I even dared to hope my plan was working, that he was starting to think of me as a friend and he’d come to offer me company. But no. Anders was predictable, though it was in an entirely different manner: he could always be counted upon to complain about Earthans. Loudly.
“Cora, I don’t get it. They all make such strange sounds. Like this morning, Wren expelled a gust of air from her nose at a frighteningly high speed. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe on Earth it is referred to as a sneeze. It was adorable, yet repulsive.”
“Did you have a point? Because all I hear is blah, blah, blah…” Hastily, I shoved an errant lock of hair from my ponytail behind my ear before reaching for a pair of pliers and giving the oxygen masks a few final tweaks. I loosened one of the screws just a bit, which proved to be way too much when it shot across the room, narrowly missing Anders’s head, and struck the window separating the main lab from the auxiliary observation bay.
A spiderweb of cracks spread across the glass.
“Oops.”
Anders didn’t notice I’d almost decapitated him. “Not only that, but I know she ate the plate of beef tips in the refrigeration unit that I specifically labeled with my name—”
Actually, I ate the beef tips. But I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“—and when I left the galley she was pressing her lips together and making this screeching noise—”
“Was it a whistle?”
“A … whiffle?”
“No.” I laughed. “Whistle.” I tried to show him, but it didn’t work very well.
“Yes, but … it doesn’t seem like it serves a purpose.”
“Not really. It’s mostly for entertainment.”
“We don’t have much of that on my planet.” His raspy voice took on a confused edge, and he cocked his head. “So she puts her lips together … and makes random noises … for fun?”
“They’re not random noises,” I said. “They’re supposed to be a tune. Music.”
He grimaced. “She is not very good at it.”
I found my
self laughing again as I hunched over the workbench, giving the masks another twist with my pliers. “Don’t you think you’re obsessing over her a little bit?”
He paced in front of the shelves, tying up his hair with a long string of rubber that he’d dug from the trash can. But he soon tore it out, combing his fingers through the oily strands. “What? Of course not. I do not like her or hate her enough to obsess. The way I feel about Wren is the way I feel about you, for example. I do not particularly want to talk to you, but also your existence does not make me want to paint portraits on the corridor walls using nothing but your blood.”
Saturn’s rings. “Anders, has anyone ever told you that you’re excellent at flattery?”
He frowned. “No?”
“Good. Here, see if this works.” I tossed him the largest of the three oxygen masks I’d modified. He’d only come to the lab to whine, but he might as well make himself useful while he was here.
The face shield hissed as the edges molded to his skin, the hard shell creating a dome from his eyes to his mouth. Anders’s chest heaved with deep inhales, making the front of the mask fog with the heat of his breath.
Nodding, he released the suction with the press of a button. “It’s possible that this won’t be a complete disaster after all.”
“Such a glowing compliment of Cora’s craftsmanship,” Elio’s voice chimed from the door. He tottered into the lab, unable to help himself from cleaning up the mess of hoses and valves that I’d left strewn across the floor. But in a minute he’d picked up more than he could carry, and the bundle in his arms toppled to the ground. “Never mind. I’ll get those later. In more important news, Wren said we’re about to land.”
11
From the skies above, Cadrolla looked like the perfect tropical paradise: acres of lush jungles, leaves speckled in shades of green and purple and blue, crystalline water lapping at miles of deserted coastline. But on the ground, I knew it was a different story.
“If anything tries to attack you, scream that you have diarrhea,” Elio told us while we secured our oxygen masks in the corner of the cargo hold. “No one messes with someone who has diarrhea.”
“How would you know?” Wren asked.
“I watch a lot of net programs.”
Oxygen in place, the four of us crossed the air lock, and Wren entered the code to open the exterior doors. They slid apart with a hiss, revealing a white sun shining through a neon blue sky. Sweat beaded along my neck. It was nearly as humid here as on Andilly.
Wren looked back longingly at the ship as we traipsed across Cadrolla’s pink sand beaches. “She’ll be safe, won’t she? Like … you think it’s okay that we’re just leaving her here?”
“Odds are she’ll be fine,” said Elio. “Of course there are also odds that something will creep onboard, commandeer her, fly her away, and then we’ll all be stranded here until we die, but … the odds are higher that she’ll be fine.”
“Well, when you put it like that, how could I ever be concerned?”
“I do understand sarcasm, you know. Come on. This way.” He held his comm out in front of him, showing us a well-worn path leading up a steady incline. “This is the quickest trail to the summit.”
“You’re certain?” Anders asked. He held a glowing blaster at his shoulder, another at his hip.
“If you have a better idea,” Wren said, “we’d all love to hear it.”
“I’m just double-checking. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be in and out of here before nightfall.”
“Well, we aren’t making any progress standing around, so…” Wren ushered Elio forward a few steps. She was looking over his shoulder, studying the map on his comm that glowed with four red dots marking our position, and so she didn’t notice the vine slowly snaking out of a shrub on the side of the path. It slithered across the dirt, leaves elongating like fingers as it reached out to wrap around her ankle.
Just before it made contact, I jumped forward and stomped on it with my heel. Wren jolted in surprise, and the vine shot back into its home, hissing angrily.
“What the—?” Wren whirled around, searching for more creeping vines. I joined her, noticing instantly that both sides of the path were covered in identical thorny bushes, each with a cluster of vines undulating at their roots. Upon closer inspection, I realized the soil surrounding every shrub was soaked—dyed ruby red.
Blood. These plants drank blood.
“Vampiris liana,” Elio recited, marking something on his comm. “According to the map I found on the net, the trail is covered with them until halfway up the mountain.”
“Oh goody. All this for a treasure that might not even be real.” Wren kicked a clump of dirt at the nearest man-eating shrub, hopping out of the way when its vines darted forward to attack again.
“Look alive,” Anders said, pushing in front of us to lead. “It would be such a shame if someone were to lose a toe.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” Wren muttered. Her voice sounded muffled behind her face shield, but Anders understood her fine.
“On the contrary, it’s not Andilly nature to make jokes.” He glanced at me. I swore I saw him wink.
Wren ignored him, pointing instead at a wooden sign stuck into the ground on the side of the path. “Look.”
The base of the sign was surrounded by various articles of clothing, from muddy socks, to shoes, to a ripped and bloodied raincoat, which gleamed in the sun. Fresh. Come to think of it, the blood underneath the shrubs looked fresh too.
Someone had come through not long before us, though we hadn’t spotted any other ships on the beach when we landed. But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was that it looked like this person, whoever they had been, didn’t make it very far.
Wren read the writing on the sign. Two words spelled out in blocky letters, painted with smears of blood that had long since turned brown and flaky: STAY AWAY!
“Well. That’s lovely.” She stepped back. “I think we should listen to it.”
“If only we had that choice,” I said.
Anders didn’t look the least bit frightened. He noted our position, then drew a large X in the dirt with his blaster before continuing onward. “Follow me.” He drew another X a few yards up. Our breadcrumb trail to find our way back. “Stay quiet and keep up. I’m not a slow walker.”
I headed after him, listening to Elio and Wren’s footsteps as they fell behind us. The plants along the dusty path writhed as we passed them, almost like they were whispering to each other—warning whatever existed farther up the mountain that we were coming.
Unhooking my blaster from my belt, I powered it up and let it rest comfortably against my shoulder. I had a feeling I was going to need it.
* * *
It turned out the vampiris liana was the friendliest shrub we encountered on our way up the mountain. A similar-looking plant, which Elio identified as orchastris hemitomon, sang hypnotic notes as we hurried past it. We tried plugging our ears, but the music pervaded the air anyway, sinking into our brains despite our attempts to avoid it. Drowsiness spread through my limbs as we rounded a bend near a stream, and without even realizing what I was doing, I found myself on the ground, struggling to keep my eyes open while Wren and Anders collapsed beside me.
The ground was so soft; a clump of moss formed a pillow beneath my cheek as the music relaxed every inch of my body. I was so tired. The stream bubbled nearby, the perfect harmony to the song spreading over the mountain. Maybe I could take a dip in it. Even a single drop of water would surely feel refreshing. And after all, I was so tired …
The light of a blaster shot over my head, burning the cluster of orchastris hemitomon instantly. Elio stood behind the blaster’s barrel, the only one out of the four of us who was immune to the plant’s effects.
A burst of anger sizzled through me as we dusted ourselves off and continued up the mountain. If I had touched that water, I would have drowned. Elio had told me ahead of time what Cadrolla was capable of, an
d I’d still nearly let myself fall victim. Without his help, we would all be dead before this treasure hunt even began.
After passing through a field sprouting wispy orange feathers (which didn’t try to kill us but released some kind of perfume that left Wren sneezing for half an hour), we reached a stone wall stretching into the jungle canopy, covered with pink and yellow fruits shaped like teardrops. Unable to hold himself back from anything edible, Elio reached for one of the lowest hanging ones, eyes gleaming with childlike glee.
“Elio, don’t!” Wren and I yelled at the same time. He couldn’t be poisoned, but I had a hunch poison wasn’t the worst that could happen on this planet.
“Why not?” Elio asked. Thick brown goop dripped from a crack in the fruit’s hard shell, puddling at his feet.
“Because—if it’s not already obvious—it might devour you,” said Anders, pointing out a row of jagged teeth peeking through a seam in the shell. Beeping, Elio hopped back. The fruit growled like it was sorry to see him go.
“Oh!” he gasped. “My mistake! I just get so excited around food.”
“Same,” Wren agreed.
I took a tentative step toward the wall of mysterious fruit, making sure to keep well out of reach of their teeth. Maybe there was a way to capture them for use as a weapon. The pod Elio had tried to touch growled again. Then it split open along the vine, spilling a few more drops of brown goo. They bubbled upon hitting the jungle floor, and then, to my astonishment, they started to grow. In less than a minute, half a dozen new fruits were rolling along the ground, vines flailing, teeth gnashing.
Elio beeped. “I saw a net drama once about people-eating plants. Trust me, it didn’t end well for the people.”
“Good to know,” I said. The four of us backed into each other, forming a tight circle as more fruits hit the ground. One splattered on impact, the brown stuff inside hitting the knees of Wren’s pants. She shrieked behind her oxygen mask as the material fell away, leaving an angry red blotch on her dark skin.
The Good for Nothings Page 12
