The Good for Nothings

by Danielle Banas

  “How do you feel, Elio?” I asked gently.

  He beeped. “I’m … sleepy.”

  “Don’t close your eyes.” I threw a glare at Mieku. “Didn’t you take enough?”

  “Not yet.” She curled her fingers into a fist. The cloud of mist, which I suspected was the power from Elio’s memory core, intensified.

  “Anders?” I called. “What’s in the cube?”

  He grunted from across the bunker. “Wren and I are looking at it.”

  “It’s a poem,” Wren answered. “And not a very good one.”

  “A poem?” I stripped two yellow wires before twisting them and cutting off the ends. “How quaint.”

  I worked through the night. I didn’t stop to eat, I didn’t stop to sleep, I barely stopped to breathe. I had tunnel vision for Elio, who grew weaker as the minutes ticked into hours. He had fallen to the floor, lying on his side, his eyes flickering in slow, blue pulses that lit up the bunker. Every so often I would catch his eye, and he would offer up a weak smile. But then his gaze would slide out of focus and the only response I could come up with was to grab my blowtorch and light a damn piece of metal on fire, not caring how many burns I accrued on my hands in the process.

  Time felt stagnant. But as Elio grew more lethargic, it was also moving entirely too fast.

  When dawn started to creep over the streets outside the cellar door, I was delirious from exhaustion and had managed to craft two VEDs, one halfway decent phaser, and about a dozen grenades and minor bombs. I pushed myself to my feet, my hands covered with burns and nicks, just as the final bit of the mist cloud was sucked from Elio’s body into Mieku. Rushing across the bunker, I helped Elio up. He was still sentient, but he couldn’t stand on his own.

  “Safe travels.” Mieku ran her tongue over her jagged teeth before transforming once again into the tiny Earthan girl. I wasn’t imagining it when I noticed her eyes looked brighter this time around, her cheeks filled with a rosy tint of energy stolen from Elio’s memory core.

  “I have one thing to say to you,” Wren told Mieku. She raised her fist and, with a glare, saluted the creature with her middle finger. “That’s it.”

  Wren and I strapped the enhancers to our chests, taking on the appearance of two slouching, elderly Martians, while Anders once again adopted his Earthan disguise. I pushed Mieku and the hellish bunker from my mind as we traversed the mostly empty streets, passing food carts and shops not yet open for the day, back to the landing bays. The faceless alien had been vile, but she had given us the means we needed to craft a plan and escape. Once we got back to the Starchaser, I would hook Elio up to the control panel to recharge, and all would be well again.

  “This is either madness or absolute genius,” Anders said as he met back up with us, now two grenades lighter than he’d been ten minutes ago.

  “Since when is there a difference?” Wren asked. She shepherded Elio, his head and shoulders hidden by a blanket that I’d stolen from the cellar, down the sidewalk. “Cora, is this really going to work?”

  I’d given them a run-through of the plan I’d devised while in the throes of sleep deprivation, but I made no guarantees it was a good one. “If these leeches are still hunting us, then they’ll be waiting at the landing bays. We need to make them run back into town.”

  “And so your solution is to blow up the landing bays? I swear, if you destroy my ship—”

  “Stun grenades aren’t destructive. But the initial blast will make the mob think they are. The ones who don’t fall down disoriented will run back into town, away from the bays. That’s when we make our move.”

  “And it’s also when I make mine.” Anders patted a small lump in his jacket pocket. The quickest and most colorful explosive I’d ever crafted. At the next intersection, he veered off toward a cobbled side street leading to the water tower at the edge of town. “Wish me luck?”

  “Don’t die,” I told him.

  He shrugged. “Good enough.”

  Wren and I hurried on, propping Elio’s tiny but heavy body between us. Every minute or so he would beep, but he was otherwise silent.

  “Did you and Anders figure out the clue in the cube?” I whispered to Wren, averting my eyes as a group with corkscrew horns passed us in the opposite direction. But they didn’t spare us a glance. Our disguises were solid.

  Wren snorted. “Hardly. It’s a nursery rhyme. I’ll show you when we get back to the ship.”

  We stopped in the shadow of a run-down consignment shop a block from the landing bays. Just as I suspected, a crowd now dominated the tarmac. It looked like the patrons from the Fuzzy Lizard had gathered their friends—and their friends’ friends—all desperate to collect the bounty. Ships were parked this way and that, squeezed two or three deep in the stalls. Waiting for us.

  As intended, the warden’s message had reached every corner of the universe. Well, that was fine. More people to witness the show we were about to give them.

  Across the tarmac, a man with flaming red hair—their leader, it seemed—weaved through the masses, firing them up. He screamed that we needed to be brought to justice, and the crowd was all too happy to echo his cries. The horde of bodies rippled like a wave across the bays, the dented hull of the Starchaser looming in the center.

  If the mob wanted to be authentic, then they should have dug up some torches and pitchforks to greet us with. You know, really make the effort to appear hospitable.

  “Whazgoinon?” Elio garbled, leaning heavily against me.

  I stroked his ears. “Don’t worry. We’re safe. Just trust me.”

  He snuggled closer. “’Course I trust you … Carla.”

  Carla. My heart hammered. We needed to move. Now.

  The shouts across the tarmac grew fiercer, the crowd spewing a number of derogatory comments about us as they called for our demise. Anders, the barbarian. Wren, a thief, a liar, a traitor to her planet. Elio, just a pile of wires, not even worthy of a name. And me, a con artist, a gutter rat.

  A distraction. Evelina’s voice filled my head. I pushed it away, spinning my new phaser in the palm of my free hand. “I really hope this thing works.”

  Wren raised an eyebrow. “And if it doesn’t?”

  “We run like hell.” I pulled out my comm, tapped the screen once, twice, and …

  BOOM!

  Somewhere in the throng, the first grenade that Anders had planted went off. The ground vibrated. A blast of light and a plume of smoke filled the air at the northern end of the bays, five ships down from ours.

  “Move!” I shoved Wren in the back. Operation Escape-Tunerth-Without-Dying was a go.

  We shuffled out of the shadows, dodging dozens of bodies as we dragged Elio across the tarmac. Some had collapsed, knocked unconscious. Others were dazed and wavering, their gazes vacant after the sudden exposure to such a bright flare of light. My enhancer pulled sharply against my chest as I yanked Elio around the port of a bullet-shaped pod ship, out of the path of a man stumbling toward us with his eyes shut tight. He tripped over another man’s legs and sprawled across the ground.

  Those who hadn’t been rendered incapacitated from the blast sprinted for town, egged on by Wren. “The bad guys are coming! The bad guys are coming!” she shrieked as a group ran past us. “Save yourselves!”

  “You’re enjoying this way too much,” I said. We shoved plugs into our ears right before I tapped my comm again, and then …

  BOOM!

  More shrieks rent the air as the mob ran for cover. Wren and I jerked Elio out of their path, and we rolled across the tarmac, kicking up gravel. My chin hit the ground with a crack. Wren groaned beside me, clutching her wrist.

  Looking up, I noticed the small black eye of a security monitor shining from the pole of a nearby floodlight. I gave the tech a sneer, paired with my best attempt at the stink eye, just in case the warden was watching on the other side.

  There. How’s that for entertainment?

  Around us, ships whirred to life and took off for the e
xit hatch in Tunerth’s outer dome. We rolled back the other way, narrowly missing a spurt of flames as an engine backfired beside us. As planned, the landing bays were emptying out, leaving our path to the Starchaser clearer than before, but there were still a handful of people scattered across the tarmac, sheltered beneath hulls of ships and inside the doors of the fueling station.

  Their frightened auras rumbled across the outpost in clouds of citrine, leaving the air crackling with spikes of electricity. The force of it was so strong, seeping into my skin as it dribbled out of theirs, that I doubled over, my breath stolen. Wren grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. The Starchaser was so close now that I could count the cracks lining each porthole.

  Great fissures spread across the cement at the sound of another explosion. At the end of the landing bay, a cargo ship detonated. We hit the tarmac, covering our heads as flaming debris rained through the air. Rainbows of oil ran like rivers over the slick ground, beautiful but terrifying in the midst of the chaos.

  It took me a moment to realize what was happening as I propped myself up on my elbows, my thoughts muddled. What was that? The plan I engineered only involved two blasts. And the grenades I detonated created light and noise only, not destruction. Which meant …

  That hadn’t been one of my grenades.

  “Duck!” Wren leaped on top of Elio at the sound of three more ships going up in smoke. Whoever had come armed with their own bombs was getting closer.

  Okay. It was way past time to get off this rock.

  I slapped the phaser on the underside of the Starchaser’s cargo hold. We couldn’t risk opening the ramp. It would take too long and provide too much opportunity for someone to stow away inside.

  I powered on the phaser, quietly cheering as a row of red lights lit up along the top. A rusty panel on the underside of the hull blurred and gave way to the inside of the cargo hold just as a volley of blaster fire lit up the air.

  “Elio first.” I lifted the left side of his sluggish body toward the gap the phaser had created. The panel rippled, like a mirror turned liquid. Wren rushed to grab Elio’s other side.

  “Oh stars,” she grunted under his weight. “What is this little guy made of? Lead?”

  Sweating and swearing, we raised him above our heads. We had him halfway into the hole when the light from a dozen blasters soared over us. With a resounding bang, they connected with the side of our ship, punching holes in the wings and the hull, sending sharp hunks of metal flying at our heads. Wren and I lost our footing. We crashed down hard, Elio landing on top of us.

  Sitting up, I rubbed at my head. Where was Anders? He should have been back by now. I was shocked and embarrassed to find my chest tight with something that felt a lot like worry.

  “Wren!” I pulled at her sleeve. She had been hit, though I didn’t know with what. Ships were going up in flames left and right across the bays, so there was an awful lot to choose from. She was unconscious, but still breathing.

  Her VED had detached from her chest and deactivated in the fall. So had mine. Grabbing both, I chucked them up into the cargo hold. Our true faces were visible now, but ideally not for much longer. Wren’s purple hair was streaked with blood from a cut near her temple. Between us, Elio’s eyes flickered like strobe lights. Glitching. Again.

  How would I lift all of us into the ship?

  Behind us, a column of smoke and fire twisted, engulfing the entirety of Tunerth, turning it to ash. Anders was in there somewhere. I couldn’t get us all into the ship without his help, but if I stayed and waited for him …

  He might never come out.

  Muscles burning, I dragged Elio toward the cargo hold. I balanced him against my hip, but that was as far as I could lift him.

  Tears stung my eyes. We were trapped here, doomed. The warden had won.

  “Cora!”

  I spun around. Skies above, I hadn’t been so happy to see the big red jerk in, well … ever.

  Anders vaulted over a pile of smoldering metal and rubber, arms pumping as he charged across the landing bay. He tackled me just as a round of blaster fire glanced off the side of the ship, not three feet from the top of my head.

  “Nice to see you’re not dead,” I wheezed, his elbow digging into my sternum.

  He stood, pulling me up. “It’s nice to see that I’m not dead too.”

  “No, this is the part where you say, ‘It’s splendid that you’re still alive, Cora. For whatever would I do without you?’”

  “Mmmph.” He fiddled with his comm, and then the hulking water tower across the outpost released four blasts of shimmery gold sparks. Fireworks that I’d crafted and that he had set up around the base. The first burst formed a perfect outline of Anders’s head. The next three formed Elio, Wren, and finally, me.

  Not to brag, but it was the best dynamite artwork I’d ever done.

  The fireworks were meant to be another distraction, a grand finale while we escaped the outpost, but now, with the fire and fiasco surrounding us, I doubted anyone even noticed.

  Until a fifth, surprise blast rocked the water tower.

  Slack-jawed, Anders and I turned to each other.

  “That … wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said. “Was it?”

  I shook my head, breathless, fearful. “Nope.”

  18

  The tower creaked, quaking on the horizon. All at once, the top erupted. A geyser shot into the air, rushing into town, flooding the streets as people ran for cover. The deluge put out the fires, but not even the roar of the water could eclipse the screams.

  “I think now would be a good time to leave,” I said. The water was slowing as it reached the landing bays, but there was still enough to cause some damage. Great. Because that last explosion had been paired with the outlines of our faces, the entire universe was going to think we were responsible. I’d meant for the fireworks to be funny. Now someone would use them to frame us for all the destruction that had been caused, and I had a hunch who it would be: the same man who had sent a group of guards to track us and bomb the landing bays.

  We were going to be blamed for all of this. More people would be hunting us. More would want us dead. And the warden would be even more entertained.

  I located the nearest security monitor and flashed a very crude hand gesture, hoping he was watching.

  As the water continued to flow, Anders hoisted Wren and Elio into the cargo hold. He offered me a leg up before climbing in after me. I deactivated the phaser, solidifying the metal panels and returning the ship to its former state.

  We crammed into the lift and rushed to the cockpit. Anders tenderly placed Elio and Wren on the floor, strapping them both down. Elio was still glitching, and Wren was still unconscious.

  I tapped the side of her face, hoping to wake her. Even if I could, she was probably concussed. Not in any shape to operate a spacecraft. Then again, neither was I. The Starchaser wasn’t my pod ship. The size of the control panel alone could eat my pod ship’s for breakfast.

  “We need to move. Now. You need to fly this thing.” Anders hopped into the co-pilot’s chair. More blaster fire lit up the tarmac, slamming into the front viewport.

  “Excuse me?” Maybe I hadn’t heard him right over the crackling flames and rumbling engines. I couldn’t fly a charter ship.

  “You’ll have to fly it,” he repeated.

  “I don’t know how to fly this thing!” I yelled, hysterical. “When did I ever say I knew how to fly this thing?”

  His eyes went wide with terror. “I just assumed—”

  “Why can’t you fly it? You were in the military!”

  “Yes. But I shot things. It was someone else’s job to fly!”

  “Oh, Saturn’s rings.” I took in the dozens of holes speckled along the hull. Would this thing even fly? I didn’t have time to make any repairs, but what was the worst that could happen? Death? We were already close enough to that.

  I glanced out the viewport. Dozens of ships that had escaped the bombing hovered in Tunert
h’s atmosphere directly above us, attempting to barricade us in. To collect the bounty on our heads.

  Not going to happen.

  “Well. It’s worth a try,” I muttered, approaching Wren’s buttery leather captain’s chair. I hadn’t noticed it before, but she had doodled on the armrests in purple ink, random shapes and names of people that I didn’t recognize. One said Marcus in looping script. A boyfriend? Not that it mattered. But I was nervous, and I was stalling.

  Sitting in her seat without permission felt like crossing an invisible line. Of all the ways that I’d planned on betraying her, somehow this seemed like the worst.

  I sat anyway.

  My sweaty hands formed a death grip on the controls. Left hand on the yaw, right hand on the thrusters, feet on the rudder pedals. Just like I’d seen Wren do.

  The engines fired. We jerked off the ground way too fast, tilting to our starboard side without meaning to. We shot directly into the crowd of ships above us, which scattered as we catapulted toward the exit hatch.

  “Oh stars, oh stars, oh stars…” Anders clenched his armrests.

  “Put your harness on, Andy!” I tried to right the ship, but I overcompensated and sent us soaring in the opposite direction, through a cloud of smoke above the center of the outpost.

  “The exit hatch is the other way,” Anders pointed out unhelpfully.

  “Don’t be a backseat driver!”

  “Well, this is a bit of a dire situation…” Outside the viewport, the ships had formed a cluster. They realized I was a poor flyer. They were going to force us back to the ground. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the tail of a sleek silver ship painted with a twelve-pointed star. Anders sucked in a breath.

  “That’s an Andilly military ship. The warden is taking no chances.”

  “Well, neither are we. How do I get this thing in a higher gear?”

  “Blue lever?” he suggested.

  “I thought you couldn’t fly.” I pulled the lever and jammed my feet down on the corresponding blue pedal. We shot forward, toward the exit. Inertia slammed me into my seat. I released a giddy yelp.