The Good for Nothings

by Danielle Banas

  “I can’t,” he replied. “Blue is my favorite color. It was a lucky guess. I just as easily could have killed us.”

  “I’m loving your optimism, Anders, but we aren’t dying today.” I was starting to get the hang of this. Blue lever and pedal to move up a gear, yellow to move down. Pink spun the ship all the way around in a counterclockwise circle, green put us into a barrel roll. The thruster and the yaw were the same as my pod ship’s. So was the radar display, which was quickly filling up with dozens of tiny blips as more and more ships flew closer to Tunerth—and to us.

  “I’m going to be sick!” Anders clutched his mouth.

  “If you throw up now, I will murder you,” I growled.

  We turned on our side, zipping between two larger charter ships as I raced for the exit hatch. Instantly, they turned and gave chase. Another ship tried cutting us off, but I slammed the yellow lever and pedal, dropping a gear, and ducked underneath it. Then blue again as we accelerated, flying higher, dodging the light from more blasters.

  “I don’t like this,” Anders muttered. “I don’t like this, I don’t like this—”

  “Wimp,” I grumbled as we came up on the exit hatch. I didn’t know if it would open for us, or if it had been locked down. I would crash right through it if I had to.

  But by some miracle it did open. Both the inner and the outer doors. We cleared Tunerth’s dome and hit open space with half an armada trailing behind us.

  “We need to find a wormhole.” My fingers flew over the controls. “If we time it right, it’ll close and no one will be able to follow.”

  Anders studied the blinking radar display while I rolled the ship portside to dodge a screaming missile. Oh, yippee. Somebody brought the big guns.

  “Our best wormhole option opens in forty-five seconds. It closes point-five-one seconds later.”

  Saturn’s rings. I’d never made a jump that fast.

  “Where does it lead?”

  Another missile. Starboard side. It crossed the path of a third one and they exploded. I changed gears, cut the thrusters, and the Starchaser dropped like a rock to avoid the blast.

  Unfortunately, half of the ships following us did the same.

  “Rebrone,” said Anders. “Desert planet. Triangulum Galaxy.”

  “Ugh, I hate that galaxy. But fine, yes, guide me there.”

  Anders swiped the screen in front of his seat, sending coordinates over to my radar display.

  I’d barely had a chance to glance at them when something smashed into our stern, sending us spinning. Nose over tail over nose over—oh great. Andy really was going to barf now.

  As I fought to right the ship, my eyes darted over the monitors on the control panel. It wasn’t a missile that hit us; if it had, we’d be dead. What was it, then? What was it—there! A small, fuzzy monitor above my fuel gauge showed the Andilly combat ship, weapons lining the hull. Trained on us.

  “They won’t shoot, will they?” But just as the words left my lips, blaster fire slammed into the stern. The Starchaser let out a groan, and the lights and screens around us flickered.

  “Shoot back!” said Anders.

  “With what? The imaginary missile launcher that I keep stashed in my pocket? This is a charter ship, Andy, not a fighter jet. It doesn’t have guns!”

  The military craft crashed into our portside wing. I watched on the monitors as more light beams battered the hull. Oh man, Wren was not going to be happy when she woke up.

  Another power surge flashed through the cockpit.

  “I think they hit something vital,” Anders said.

  “You think?”

  “Engine power is dropping!” he yelled, pointing at the screens. “Forty-seven percent and falling on the main engine. The auxiliary isn’t far behind. Can you fix it?”

  “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m a little busy right now.” The monitors were confirming my worst fears. Dodging ships was putting too much pressure on the engines. If they went down, eventually we’d be dragged back into Tunerth’s gravitational pull, and then, with nothing holding us in the air … a crash would be inevitable.

  My hands slipped on the controls.

  Not today. We would not die today.

  I cranked the yaw to starboard just as several more ships and a cluster of asteroids cropped up in the viewport.

  “How much longer until the wormhole opens?” I demanded, willing my voice not to crack.

  A brief expression crossed Anders’s face. Fear, maybe? Without an aura, I couldn’t be sure. “Twenty-nine seconds.”

  “I can’t keep this up. They’re chasing us in circles!”

  “What if…?” He studied the radar. “What if we head for a different wormhole?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He tapped the screens, brow furrowed, one hand clamped over his mouth while I forced the ship to duck and roll. “Ten seconds. Twelve degrees portside. It’s coming up in two kilometers.”

  “Where does it lead?”

  “Monocerotis.”

  A frustrated scream ripped from my throat. “You mean the black hole?”

  “We’ll be fine. Just trust me. Can you do that?”

  Trust him. Could I? A week ago, I would have said without a shred of doubt that I absolutely could not. And yet now … after everything …

  Either I risked the black hole, or the engines failed and we died anyway. Trust or no trust, we were out of options and short on time.

  Off in the distance, the wormhole shimmered into view.

  Two more missiles soared past the viewport. One connected with another ship, exploding in a ball of fire. The second flew off into oblivion.

  Trust me.

  “This isn’t some elaborate plan to kill me, is it?”

  Anders snorted. “If that were the case, I would have let the porci eat you back on Cadrolla.” He reached over and took hold of the throttle. “I’ll take care of this. You just pull up on my command. I believe this is called teamwork, yes? Ready?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Good. Let’s do it.”

  I was squeezing the controls so tightly I felt they would be permanently etched into my skin. The ball of the wormhole grew brighter. The ships behind us roared louder.

  “Three!” Anders slammed the throttle forward. “Two!”

  But we were getting too close. The light emanating from the wormhole had taken over the entire viewport. There was no way we could dodge it. We would get sucked inside. Me and Anders … Wren and Elio, who wouldn’t even be awake to see the end …

  “One!” Anders shouted. “Now, Cora! Now!”

  Screaming my throat raw, I jammed the gears three notches, pitching the Starchaser up at a vertical angle. We arched above the wormhole, just centimeters away from entering its grasp. The string of ships behind us hadn’t anticipated a change in direction so suddenly. They zipped inside, one by one. Freighters and private cruisers, never to be seen again. Only the Andilly combat ship had the sense to pull up, veering into the path of an asteroid belt. Though instead of circling back to attack again, the ship righted itself and quickly soared off into the blue-black depths of space.

  Beneath us, the wormhole snapped shut.

  My hands shook against the controls. My heartbeat drummed heavily in my ears.

  Anders broke the silence. “Did … you … see that?” A smile cut across his face as he leaned forward to look at me over the console. I couldn’t answer him. I was in shock. Every time I blinked, I saw the flash of light obliterating the ships.

  There was no way any of them could have escaped a black hole. We doomed them. And I knew I shouldn’t have cared; they were doing the same to us. But still. We doomed them.

  Slowly, I spun the ship around and headed for the wormhole to Rebrone and the Triangulum Galaxy.

  Anders wouldn’t shut up. How unlike him. “Cora, did you see that? Did you? For once I’m almost sad Wren is indisposed. She would have loved that!”

  “Do you think?�
� I managed a quick glance over my shoulder, then wished I hadn’t. Elio was still glitching. Wren was still unconscious, her chest moving with quick pants, hair sodden with blood. “What we just did was horrifying and reckless and … stars. You’re right. She would have loved it.”

  “As I stated.” He extended his hand, palm facing outward. “Hey. Is this called a five high?”

  “High five.” Hand still twitching with residual terror, I slapped mine against his. “But I applaud your eff—”

  An alarm blared from the control panel, a deafening reminder that the engines were still failing.

  Oh. Right.

  We were coming up on the new wormhole fast. A turquoise swirl of light the size of a pinprick, bulging larger in preparation to open. We only had a few seconds left before making the jump.

  If the engines could even handle a jump.

  We both swore as the control panel lit up red with a string of warning messages. The alarm grew louder, followed by a disturbingly pleasant automated voice.

  “Primary Engine System: OFFLINE. Secondary Engine System: SHUTTING DOWN in eleven seconds … Ten seconds … Nine…”

  Gulping, I looked over to Anders. His grin had vanished, his face a warrior’s mask of calm. But I noticed his claws had come out, slicing into his armrests.

  “Say, Cora?” His voice started out steady, but then it started to shake. The entire ship started to shake. “I think you might need to fly a little faster.”

  “Right.” My own voice didn’t have the strength to surpass a whisper. “Faster. Right.”

  “Six seconds … Five…”

  I punched down on every single lever, switch, and knob at my disposal. Faster, faster. Please go faster. The thrusters whined. The eye of the wormhole was right in front of us, growing wider, the door to the next galaxy opening with a—

  Something smashed into our auxiliary engine.

  “What in the stars?” Anders yelled. The impact sent us into a screaming tailspin toward the wormhole. Outside the viewport, twin flames flared from the engine columns. Anders tried grabbing the controls to steady the ship, but it was no use. The engines were shot. The light of the wormhole wrapped around us, dragging us backward to the other side.

  Right before we disappeared, I noticed the shadow of a new pod ship hovering just outside the wormhole’s grasp. Whether it had fired something at our engines or simply rammed into us, I didn’t know, but it made no move to chase us now. Unusual. Even more unusual—the pod ship was unmarked except for a crescent-shaped dent on the front bumper.

  My breath turned to ice in my lungs. As much as I tried forgetting about it, I recognized that dent.

  I’d made it, two months ago, while parking the pod in front of a streetlight behind my house. And now it was here.

  Evelina’s ship was here.

  “Keep us out of Rebrone’s gravitational pull!” Anders shouted as the wormhole spit us out.

  Too late. The desert planet hung directly below us, far too close for comfort. We were moving fast, faster than I’d ever jumped galaxies before. With both engines down, there was no stopping us. We were coming in hot.

  We torpedoed through Rebrone’s atmosphere. Even though we were seconds away from a fiery death, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking: Evelina came. Evelina found you.

  I hadn’t heard from her in over a week. But, of course, it only took one announcement of the bounty on our heads for her to finally show.

  And then she attacked us.

  I wished I could say I was shocked.

  All around us, flames engulfed the ship. Next to me, Anders’s head was ducked, hands clasped. He was murmuring something that sounded like a prayer.

  I took one last look back at Wren and Elio. I couldn’t fail them. I couldn’t fail us.

  I studied the altitude gauge above the radar display, needle hovering deep in the red zone. Then I yelled to Anders, “Release the antigravity stabilizer!”

  He just looked at me. “The what?”

  “The parachute!” I screeched. “The yellow valve! Twist the yellow valve!”

  “Oh. Well, next time just say that.”

  He deployed the chute. I yanked up hard on the controls, gears groaning beneath us, but it was useless. Like everything else on this shoddy ship, the parachute was too old to function properly.

  Below us, the planet’s land mass was rising up, eager to crush us in its jaws.

  Just before impact, I felt a sudden weight in the palm of my hand. Anders’s fingers, threading through mine. Squeezing. He sucked in a breath.

  Sand filled the viewport.

  We hit the ground hard.

  19

  I never realized how sticky blood was until I was covered in it.

  I felt it everywhere. Streaked along my neck, crusted in my eyelashes, a few spots stuck to the tip of my nose. Rubbing my hand over my skin, I opened my eyes just a fraction. The fluorescent lights of the Starchaser’s med bay shone down on me. I tried sitting up, but my head swam painfully, and I slumped back down. The med bay was nothing more than a glorified supply closet with a cot shoved in the corner, but it was still here. Still standing. Meaning the ship was standing too.

  We made it.

  “Don’t jump up on my account,” a low voice laughed from the sink beside the door. Anders was there, running a torn strip of cloth underneath the water. He squeezed out the excess and came to kneel at the side of the cot.

  Looking past him, I noticed the cabinets on the walls had been thrown open, supplies strewn across the floor. Scissors and bandages and broken glass vials filled with multicolored pills. They must have been knocked down during the landing. Actually, crash was a more apt term.

  Oh, no. The key. I gripped my chest, faking a coughing fit. Thank the stars. It was still there, the metal chain and Teolia’s key still pressed into my skin. Still safe. Relief surged through me, and I let my body relax into the cot.

  “We’re alive.” I winced when Anders applied the cloth to my forehead, wiping away the blood. “Are we all alive?”

  “Barely, but yes,” he muttered. “Stop twitching. You’re going to aggravate that concussion of yours.”

  “Concussion?” Oh, right. Achy head. That made sense.

  “I’m assuming that’s what happened. You hit your head hard on the control panel when we landed. And then you puked.” His eyes narrowed. “All over my boots.”

  Heat filled my cheeks. “Sorry? I don’t remember any of that.”

  “I thought not. Just don’t do it again.” He winked. “I’m quite fond of these boots.”

  When he stood to rinse out the rag, it became apparent that I wasn’t the only one who was injured. His gait leaned to the side, right foot dragging as he limped across the med bay. He had removed his jacket and only wore a thin undershirt that had been ripped in several places, spots of dried blood staining the white fabric brown.

  He crouched back down beside me. His face and neck were covered with scrapes. I shuddered when I saw that a large patch of scales along his jaw had been pulled up and were now dangling by just a hairbreadth of skin.

  Before he could protest, I snatched the rag from him and started mopping up the blood that had dribbled down to his chin. Two leathery red scales fell to the floor.

  “How … How did we not die?”

  “We hit a particularly fluffy sand dune,” he said. “You should see the outside of the ship. She’s a mess, the engines are a mess, but the fires went out. The electricity stayed on. Divine intervention, if you believe in that sort of thing.”

  “Do you?”

  Anders shrugged. “We’re mildly religious on Andilly.”

  “What does ‘mildly religious’ mean?”

  “A lot of talk about the importance of treating others with mercy, but that usually manifests in ways like … oh I don’t know, murdering citizens quickly as opposed to torturing them. You’ve seen what my planet is like.” He took my hand in a gentle grip, pulling the cloth away.

  Oh no.
With the rag in my hand, I’d felt like I was fulfilling a duty. If I was helping him clean up, then I was too preoccupied to notice how close his face had gotten to mine. Or the sweat on his skin, or the stray eyelash that had fallen and was stuck to his cheek. Until now, I hadn’t noticed that the ship’s usual humming had ceased. There was just the sound of our breaths, and the overwhelming joy of still finding ourselves alive after being so certain we were about to die.

  It was funny, actually. On Tunerth, I’d thought I preferred Anders’s true face over his Earthan disguise. I was wrong.

  I hated them both.

  I hated them both, because … no matter his appearance, I liked him.

  I was completely sober this time, and I could still confidently say that … I liked him.

  Stars above, this was bad.

  Anders wet the rag again and started cleaning off a stripe of blood on the palm of my hand. He kneaded the pads of my fingers, scraped underneath the nails, until all evidence from the crash had washed away. Something about the intensity and care with which he worked felt more intimate than if he had grabbed my face and planted a kiss on me.

  This was horrible.

  When he finished, he looked up and gave me a smile and a goofy little shrug. For the first time since I woke, I noticed something strange.

  “You’re not holding back your aura anymore.”

  Relief, a frothy minty green, spilled off his shoulders. He tossed the dirty rag in the sink, then sank back on his haunches.

  “It was just a stupid military tactic they taught me. Good for stealth, bad for … I don’t know. Life, I suppose. I’ve been thinking that maybe keeping everything bottled up all the time isn’t worth it anymore.”

  “Funny. I’ve been thinking the same.” Only it didn’t matter if my secrets and lies were worth it or not. I would keep doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons—or my right reasons. It was the Saros family way. “Is it bad to admit that I kind of like that you’re finally going soft?”

  The swirl of colors around him vanished. “I’m not—Cora, I’m not soft.”

  I laughed. “You have a gentle soul. Deep down inside, you’re a giant teddy bear.”

  “Silence! I … I’m not—”