The Good for Nothings

by Danielle Banas

  “Does being friends mean that I can’t insult your stupid ideas ever again?” Anders asked. “Because I’ve never had a friend, so I can’t be sure.”

  “No, no, Andykins. Being friends means you’re allowed to insult each other more.”

  “Oh, really?” He perked up immensely. “Well, in that case, Wren, let me tell you where you can stick your lollipop…”

  I drowned them out, their voices eclipsed by my guilt. Friendship. I had succeeded. I’d won their trust. I should have been grinning from ear to ear, doing a victory dance, screaming so loud that Evelina and Cruz and Blair could hear me all the way on Condor, something. I should have been happy.

  But I wasn’t.

  They trusted me now, but they wouldn’t trust me for much longer.

  This was the only way to save Elio. If we gave the keys to the warden, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t lock us back up—or straight up murder us for fun. Even if he kept his word and released us from his clutches, I doubted he would give us reward money to go along with our freedom, and if we tried hiding the treasure for ourselves and disappearing, he would track us down. We would never be safe.

  No, giving it to Evelina was the best option. She could deal with hiding it or selling it. She could even find someone to remove the tracker from my neck. If I made her happy, she would keep me and Elio safe. Without her protection, without her steady paychecks, what would I have?

  You would have Wren and Anders, a small voice whispered in my head. You would have people who care about you.

  But Elio. He needed a new body more than I needed friends.

  And so it was settled. We needed to get inside Verena’s compound. I knew Evelina would help us, but only if there was something in it for her. When this was over, Wren and Anders would just have to learn what every good felon discovered at one time or another.

  How to fend for themselves.

  21

  While Wren and Anders gathered blasters and other supplies for our first trip into Rebrone’s villages, Elio and I hunkered down in the lab under the guise of making a few tweaks to our VEDs. But before I could even think about doing that, I needed to get something else out of the way.

  I held up my comm link like a mirror, using the glass display to desperately smooth my frizzy hair into a ponytail. I flashed my reflection a smile, checking for errant cheese puff dust in my teeth, before drying the sweat lining my forehead with my shirt collar. I felt like a mess, but I couldn’t look like a mess, not if I wanted to convince my family this was a good idea and not a suicide mission.

  Elio beeped beside me while I dialed in the familiar frequency on the touch screen, then ran away to clean the dusty bookcases once the call started to connect. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t enjoy talking to them either, but I couldn’t exactly ignore them any—

  “Cora?”

  I thought I’d called Evelina’s comm, but it was my cousin Blair who answered, his gaunt face partially obscured by smoke from the pipe of moon dust that rarely left his person. He took a long drag, then gave me a broad, sardonic smile. Stars, he was so stoned. I guess it was good to see that not much had changed in the time that I’d been away.

  “You,” Blair said, blinking slowly, “are not worth as much money as the universe says you are.”

  “I appreciate the compliment, sweet cousin. Where’s Evelina?”

  “Around…” He looked behind him, and I could see our youngest cousin, Mina, swiftly counting a stack of money on the kitchen floor, sorting it into four large envelopes. Nothing like handling a wad of illegal cash to help a four-year-old learn math.

  “Evelina left her comm on the counter,” said Blair. “I’ll bring it to her if you pay me—”

  “Who’s that?” Nana Rae shuffled behind him. Her puff of silver hair was tied up in a spotted headband, a fluffy pink robe hanging on her narrow shoulders. My heart swelled at the sight of her. Senile or not, my grandmother was the only person in the house other than Elio and Mina who marginally cared about my well-being.

  “It’s no one,” Blair said to Nana Rae.

  I scoffed. “It’s Cora, Nana.”

  “Who?” She squinted at the comm from behind a pair of bug-eye glasses.

  Blair smirked. “Exactly.”

  “Shut up, Blair,” I said. “You know she can’t hear. Nana, it’s Cora—”

  But she’d already turned away from the comm and was humming her favorite rendition of Condor’s national anthem.

  While I watched Nana prance around the kitchen and Blair puff on his pipe, I felt like I had never left home, had never dragged Elio to Vaotis, had never gotten thrown into Ironside, had never met Wren and Anders. Earlier, the thought of everything going back to the way it was had filled me with a sense of anticipation. Only now I realized maybe not all kinds of anticipation were good.

  “Blair! I hear voices! I thought I told you to shut up!”

  Stars, no. Definitely not happy anticipation. The sound of Evelina’s voice, growing closer to the comm with each dissatisfied word, sent an icy blast of wind into the Starchaser’s stifling laboratory. I glanced behind me to the main corridor, tilting my comm down in case somebody heard my mother’s angry voice and came to investigate. But the halls were still.

  The patter of Evelina’s heels on the kitchen floor snapped me back to attention. “Blair, why do you have my comm? If you don’t want your father chucking you off the roof of this house, then you better—oh, hello there.” She’d finally spotted me. Evelina grabbed the comm, casting Blair back to the table beside Nana Rae, and smiled like a predator who was two seconds away from ripping into its latest meal. “You’ve caused quite the intergalactic stir, haven’t you, dearest daughter?”

  I pushed aside the intimidation and tilted my chin up. I had something she wanted. Or I would. For once, I had the upper hand.

  “You crashed into my ship, Evelina.” I raised an eyebrow, clenching my jaw to hide my nerves.

  “I was simply curious to see if the rumors were true. You were right where they said you were; however, I didn’t expect you to be flying something so … vintage.” She smirked.

  I frowned. The Starchaser was a mess, but it was our mess. Only we were allowed to insult it.

  “Enlighten me, Cora,” she continued, grin widening. “Where are you now?”

  “Not on the same planet I’ll be on in three days, so I don’t see how that information is pertinent.”

  “Oh, sweetheart. You do have a backbone. I’m so proud,” she drawled. Patronizingly.

  “Tell me something, Evelina.” I leaned closer to the screen of my comm. I was holding all the cards here—I had to remember that. “How would you like a second chance at robbing Empress Verena’s compound?”

  Her eyes glittered. Blair sat up in his chair, and in the doorway behind them, I noticed Cruz appear, head tilted in his trademark silent curiosity. Here in the laboratory, Elio dropped his dust cloth to the ground.

  “What you are suggesting,” Evelina hissed, “is not possible.”

  “Maybe not before. But now I have a crew, and you have a crew. Once we get inside, we have double the chance for success.”

  “But what’s stopping me from following you to Verena’s compound and capturing you there? I can turn you all in, collect the bounty. It’s a far easier payday. Far less messy too. You know, the four of you are all anyone is talking about on the net screens.”

  “We’re taking bets on which of you is going to die first,” Blair stated, thumping his chest. “I’m the head bookie.”

  “Charming,” I told him. “Put that on your résumé.” I forced myself to stay calm, willed my breathing to even out.

  Evelina directed the comm back to her face. “I admit I’ve placed a few bets myself. Your father and I agree that the Andillian’s head is going to look lovely mounted above the mantelpiece.”

  Don’t flinch. Don’t react. It’s what she wants. You are in control.

  “So I should take it that you don’t want in
on the job?”

  “No, Cora, I do not. We’re already behind on our monthly shipments. We have a case of taaffeite to retrieve and sell to a jeweler on Venus in four days. Then we’re giving the treasury job at Vaotis another go, and—”

  “And you’re so occupied with all of those small jobs,” I interrupted, “which, don’t get me wrong, have their uses and their payouts, albeit very minor. You’re so wrapped up in ferrying illegal shipments and going after the minuscule fifty-thousand-ritle bounty on my head that you don’t have time for anything larger, such as, oh I don’t know, the endless riches that you’ll acquire after finding the Four Keys of Teolia, for example. But of course, if you’d rather make nice with another jeweler—”

  Evelina cut me off. “What?” Spit hit the lens of her comm. “What did you say?”

  “The Four Keys of Teolia. You’re familiar with them? I thought you mi—”

  “Shut up, you insufferable child! I’m thinking.” She paced the kitchen, muttering to herself. I could see Cruz rubbing his hands together, smiling. It was a look so rare on him that I caught myself smiling back. With a beep, Elio abandoned his attempt to clean the shelves and came to sit beside me.

  After a minute, Evelina turned back to me. Her eyes narrowed, and for the first time in so many years she looked at me not as if I were a nuisance, but as if I mattered. As if I wasn’t just one of her workers, but part of her family.

  “Cora,” she said sweetly, “what exactly are you after?”

  I wrapped an arm around Elio’s shoulders and prepared to tell her the whole sordid tale. “Something I’m hoping is going to make both of us very, very rich.”

  * * *

  “Okay. It has to be this village. We’ve gone to six already.” Wren cupped her hand over her eyes to block the rays of Rebrone’s dual suns as we trudged across the desert. She’d found a floppy straw hat somewhere—stolen from the last set of huts we’d visited, most likely—and used it to fan herself.

  “Actually, we’ve only gone to five,” Anders corrected her, consulting the map on my comm. With the Starchaser out of commission, we only had so many options for villages to visit. An hour’s walk in each direction of the ship was as far as we could manage without dying of heatstroke.

  “Five?” Wren groaned. “Only five? It’s official. I’m hallucinating. I’m probably dehydrated, and now I’m going to have to drink my own urine to revive myself.”

  “That’s a myth,” said Anders. He helped us over the crest of a dune as the sand turned to gravel and then to stone. Village number six appeared in the distance, in the valley of four sloping mountain ranges. It was larger than the others, a central marketplace filled with tents, surrounded by supply ships, civilian spacecraft, and several clusters of clay houses leaning so far to the side that they looked like a strong wind might topple them right over.

  “What about drinking blood?” Wren asked as we made our way down a cart path that descended into the village. Our disguises flickered to life. Plain Earthan holograms from the visual enhancers for me and Wren, a robotic hologram from a third VED I’d quickly built for Elio, and a generic blond-haired, blue-eyed Earthan face for Anders, which he donned like a second skin.

  He gave Wren a startled look. “Yes, that’s a myth too. Why would you suggest something so vile?”

  “Vile.” She snorted. “The Andillian wants to talk about vile? Just kidding, you sweet little nugget, you.”

  “What about sucking on a rock?” I interrupted. “Isn’t that supposed to help?”

  “Indeed, if your goal is to choke to death.” Anders shook his head. “Honestly, what kind of survival tactics were you two raised on?”

  “Um…” Wren scratched her head. “We weren’t?”

  “That’s absurd. Once we’re done fighting for our lives I’m going to teach you everything that I know.”

  Wren smacked my arm. “Did you hear that, Cora? He’s going to teach you everything he knows. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.”

  “You’re so juvenile.” And yet I caught myself blushing. Because … heatstroke. Definitely heatstroke. I couldn’t be thinking about him—about either of them, really. We were due on Condor in two days. Evelina had agreed to get the family together and meet us at Verena’s home. The plan was in motion. The final key was in sight.

  I couldn’t ruin this by suffering from humanity’s greatest weakness: emotions.

  Beep!

  Anders turned. “Yeah? What do you think, Elio? Up for a survival lesson too?”

  Beep-beep!

  I patted Elio on the back, wincing at the high whine of the fan in his processor that was struggling to cool his body down in the heat. The VED I’d built for him had changed his appearance to that of a shinier, cleaner servant bot—one without his floppy ears and wire patches—but he still needed some shade so his frame wouldn’t melt.

  “How about in here?” Wren led us into the market, where an auction was underway, the tents filled with laughter and heated bartering. She plopped Elio down on a couch made from the blue hide of some type of scaly animal.

  The woman tending the stall stood and shook a finger at us. “Pay! You pay for that!” Her Isolat was heavily accented, all round vowels and jumbled consonants. Anders muttered something in Rebrone’s native language, holding out his hands to placate her.

  After frying us with her gaze for a few moments longer, she relented, resuming her seat at the other side of her tent. “Fine. You borrow. But me”—she stabbed her finger into her chest—“is watching you.” She stabbed her finger at the four of us, then picked up her comm and quickly became absorbed in something flashing on the screen.

  “You’re unnaturally good at languages,” I told Anders while he scanned the market. “Is that another thing we can thank the Andilly military for?” Although what I really wanted was to clobber them with my blaster after what they had forced him to do.

  He thought for a moment. “No thanks necessary. It’s natural skill. As I told you before, I’m multitalented.” He flashed me a mischievous grin before picking up a pointed contraption for sale on the woman’s table. It looked like a cross between scissors and a blowtorch, decorated with two yellow puffballs on the handles. My mind instantly started running through dozens of ways to attach it to my blaster and weaponize it.

  “Aw, cute!” Wren flicked one of the puffballs. She lowered her voice. “Andykins, ask your new friend if she knows anything about Teolia’s keys.”

  “Odds are she does not.” Every village we’d visited so far had given us, at best, confused frowns when we mentioned the keys.

  “Ask anyway. We’re running out of daylight and I’m running out of self-control. Do you know how many things I want to steal in this place? Target one: these puffballs.”

  Anders pointed across the tent. “There’s a sign right over there that explicitly says ‘Thieves will be prosecuted.’”

  “So? I can’t read that language.”

  “I just told you what it said!”

  “I still can’t read it. Why should I listen?”

  As usual, it was time for me to play the part of mediator. “You”—I shoved Anders—“go make a friend. And you”—I turned Wren toward the thriving center of the market—“I don’t care what you do. Just don’t get caught.”

  “What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll get thrown in Ironside?” She laughed. “I’m going to get you something. Any requests? A new blaster? A sense of humor?”

  “Hey! I have a sense of humor!” I called after her as she weaved through a group of ranchers and vanished into the crowd. I flashed Elio a look. “I have a great sense of humor.”

  Beep!

  “Oh, whatever.” I sat down next to him, watching Anders communicate with the grumpy merchant. She was shaking her head. More of the same. I pulled out my comm to research the next closest village while she attempted to shoo him away. But then Anders pulled out a handful of ritles, and the old woman stilled.

  Behold. The eternal power of money.
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br />   The woman cupped the coins in her hands like they were water and she was parched with thirst. Slowly, she counted out the ritles, dropping each into her cashbox with a ping. She raised one crooked finger and pointed, not at the mountain path we had descended to reach the market, but at the one directly across from us. The northern mountain.

  She waved Anders closer and started talking. I could only recognize one word, said with a shiver and then a sneer: Andilly.

  “Oh no.” I ducked out of her tent and hurried up the market’s central path, the crowd thickening the closer I got to the auction block. I could hear Elio beeping, following me, but all I could see was the massive ship perched above the valley at the top of the mountain, its tail stamped with a crest of a twelve-pointed star.

  The last time we saw that ship, it had been shooting at us.

  “That’s not good.” Wren appeared at my shoulder.

  I whirled around. I hadn’t even heard her approach. “Where did you come from?”

  “Where do any of us come from? Here, I got you some spoons.” She pressed a metal bundle into my hands.

  “Why do I need these?”

  “Why not? They’re engraved with little sunbursts. They’re cute.”

  “Did you pay for them?”

  “Of course not.”

  Anders ran up the path toward us, the blond hair of his disguise flopping into his eyes. “We’re outnumbered. We need to stay out of sight, wait them out.”

  “What’s the point?” I brushed my fingers over my tracking chip. “If they’re here, they already know where we are.” Hiding in one of the tents would be useless, and we were an hour away from the Starchaser. Not that it mattered when we still couldn’t fly.

  “We can’t just stand here,” Wren said, jumping when the auction crowd erupted in cheers.

  Just beyond the edge of the market, along the northern mountain’s cart path, a cluster of the warden’s guards was making their way toward us. Was it wishful thinking, or did they look less menacing than all the other guards we had encountered in Ironside? Anders said they were ex-military, like him, but they were pushing each other along the path like children, smacking each other jovially and whooping loud enough that I could hear them over the crowd around us. Maybe they were just really excited to kill us.