Once Upon a Star

by Anthea Sharp

  I forced myself to stand straighter. Stay on task. I keyed in the launch sequence. A barrage spaced out over thirty seconds would do it.

  Soon enough, I was done. My fingers hovered over the begin sequence key. It flashed red—the same hue when Spence expressed a negative.

  No. No. No.

  Spence used to say that often. In the beginning, when his mind connected with his cybernetic body, the surgeon said he was screaming in his head but no one could hear him cry out.

  My head began to ache, yet I pushed the conflicting thought aside right as the ship’s gravity vanished and, whoosh, I shot upward. The gravity came back just as fast and slammed me headfirst to the floor. Woozy but conscious, I grabbed the console’s sides, barely managing to yell, “Damn it, Banks, what’s going on up there?”

  “There’s been a breach.” The comm went in and out with static.

  Of course, they hit us. I shouldn’t have hesitated. Now I slammed my fist on the button.

  A great roar filled the room. Metal gears churned and groaned as the missile bay flared to life. The mechanical arms pushed the missiles into place and loaded them into the bays. One after one, they disappeared.

  I’d always wanted to watch the assault, but now that the time came, I was too busy running back to the bridge. I had a feeling we had a big problem. As I returned, I found Banks strapped in, our prisoner clinging to another seat, and Spence—the lucky robot—adhered to the floor through his magnetic boots.

  “Report in,” I ordered. “What’s the damage?”

  Spence lit up and beeped, “Damage on Deck Five. Critical damage to the oxygen supply.”

  I smacked my face. Hitting the back of my head earlier wasn’t as bad.

  “This is their ship...” Banks looked at me evenly. “They knew right where to hit us. They weakened the force field and—”

  “Time remaining until we deplete all the air.” I tried to sound calm.

  Spence replied, “Fifty-nine minutes.”

  We exacted the first part of our revenge but took a horrible hit. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve crippled the food supply for the inner system planets and our current trajectory will push the evacuation ships away from the home planet. We can still win.”

  “In fifty-nine, make that fifty-eight minutes, no one will be blowing up any planets. We’ll be dead piggies on an airless ship,” Banks griped.

  I paced the bridge, a plan forming in my head. “Any idea how big the breach is, Spence?”

  “Two meters,” he began.

  Well, that wasn’t so bad.

  “—out of the air supply recycling system,” he finished.

  Make that really, really bad. “Fine, Banks I’m going to need you to repair—”

  “No can do.” He shook his head. “Most of our systems are down. When the attack took out the force field, they overloaded the navigational drive, the fusion engine—”

  “Fine, I’ll fix it,” I said. “Spence, I’ll need you to walk me through the repair.”

  The wolverine’s mouth dropped. “You’re talking about a Malachi Air Supply system. You don’t just replace a few bolts here and there.”

  Of course, he’d have something to say. I ignored him and headed out. He cut me off at the door. “You can’t do this alone.”

  “As if I’d let you help me, Captain. The minute you’re released from those bounds, you’ll undermine the whole operation.”

  He smirked. “In less than an hour, what good would that do me?”

  I wanted to wipe that smirk off his face. “Well, I say you’re staying—”

  He turned away from me. “Banks, unlock Cargo Bay Four and send a mobile cart unit to—”

  “Hey, who are you to make orders?” I tried to add an inch to my height.

  Unfortunately, Banks was already ahead of me. “We’re lucky. That cargo bay has minimal power, but you’re right, the parts we need are in that section. The cart should be waiting if you leave now.”

  I scowled at both of them.

  That Wolverine had the nerve to present his bound arms.

  “The clock is ticking, lady,” he added.

  I freed him, but I wasn’t nice about it on principle.

  From the bridge, we dashed to Deck Five. The air there was so thin, almost as if we climbed through the mountains back home.

  “Take it slow,” the wolverine advised. “The air will only get thinner closer to the breach.”

  “Keep quiet. I know this.” My frown, though, was hard to maintain as my chest grew heavier. Deck Five was full of life support machinery. I had no idea where we needed to go so I was forced to let him take the lead as we weaved around tubes and past gigantic rubber-covered wires.

  Deck Five seemed to swallow us whole. The emergency lights overhead flickered, and my heart began to race. What would we find? Would the repair be too much?

  My mouth moved before I considered to whom I spoke, “What kind of captain knows how to repair air supply systems? Couldn’t hack it as an engineer?”

  He didn’t pause as he walked for a bit. Then he replied, “What kind of pirate doesn’t study what they’re about to commandeer? I just happen to know enough to get by.”

  As I followed him, I found myself straining to keep up. Each breath barely filled my lungs. I hurried to reach out and keep pace with him, closer and closer until my hand grazed his back. Even with the fur under his uniform, I caught the hard muscles along his broad shoulders. He was stronger than he appeared. I drew back as if burned.

  He glanced over his shoulder. “You’re breathing too fast. Slow down.”

  A retort circled my mouth, but I took a deep breath instead.

  “I can run ahead,” he offered.

  “No.”

  “Thirty minutes, Cressida,” Banks belted out through the portable comm strapped to my uniform.

  Before I could stop him, the wolverine darted ahead. By the time I caught up with him, he had already reached the breach point. A cluster of pipes and machinery had a jagged hole blown through it. The ship’s force field had sealed the entry point.

  I swiftly pulled out my laser handgun to order him to work, but he was already shifting through the mobile cart unit for parts. My vision briefly swam.

  “How are you still so alert?” I asked.

  “I spent a year working in the Arcassian mines on Ryx,” he explained as he scrambled to assemble pipes. “The deeper shafts have great veins of silver. After you’ve toiled with little air, free air tastes like honeyed wine.”

  What was a captain doing working in a mine on their home world? I thought. Guess these wolverines all had shifty pasts.

  A handheld blowtorch flared brightly in the dimly lit space. It flickered in the low oxygen room, but the wolverine kept working. My vision blurred again and I almost dropped the gun.

  When I blinked, he was still furiously hammering at the pipes, and in the next moment, he already installed his handiwork. He was fast. How much time had I lost? I still had the gun. Why hadn’t he taken it from me?

  “Hey, Captain?” I sounded out of breath.

  “Yeah?”

  “You done?”

  “Don’t know yet,” he wheezed.

  A hum vibrated through the floor into my feet. Not far from me, the wolverine slumped against the air supply system.

  “Got it,” he whispered.

  The warm breeze against my face was heavenly. If it didn’t carry a heavy odor of ozone, you would’ve thought it was wind off an ocean.

  “Not bad. You got a name?” I was tired of calling him “Captain.”

  “Maybe.” He relaxed and smiled, breathing more easily. “So far I’ve only worked with planet-bound HVAC units. Nothing like this.” He tapped the pipes and assessed his work. “If only my school teachers could see me now. And they said I’d never amount to anything.”

  I snorted. “This was no mere challenge for a captain.”

  “No, it wasn’t, and I’m not the captain of this ship.”

  I f
orced myself to stand. My head still struggled with vertigo and gray at the edges of my sight. “But you came—”

  “You assumed I was the captain, but I’m nothing more than an indentured cleaning guy.”

  A custodian just saved our lives? He could’ve sabotaged the repair and sacrificed himself. I holstered my gun. This not-a-captain wasn’t going anywhere.

  He said, “For the last five years, the Wolverine Horde used me as a slave to pay my family’s debts.”

  I nodded. I enjoyed digging deep and uncovering secrets, yet with this wolverine, I realized I’d barely nicked the surface. For the first time, I took him in. He had quiet, gray eyes on a face framed with a stripe of soft, honey-yellow fur. The rest of his pelt was midnight black. He had large hands with sharp talons on his fingertips, but he’d used them deftly to repair the breach. His black uniform clung to his wide back down to his lean hips. My eyes followed the path to a place a refined pig shouldn’t look. I’d never examined a wolverine this closely. A strange feeling tingled up my spine, and I jettisoned the errant thought through an escape hatch. Pleasantries would be safer. Much safer.

  “So, if you’re not the captain, what’s your name, Wolverine?”

  He considered his reply and then spoke. “I’m Graham.”

  Chapter 3

  Graham

  * * *

  When my shift started this morning, I expected a dull day. This wasn’t supposed to be eventful work, day in and day out, all to fulfill my debt. As I sat yet again tied up on the bridge, I considered what could’ve happened to me while I completed my last days.

  I could’ve broken a leg. Maybe lose what few credits I had by gambling on the Horde Network. Getting sucked into a ventilation shaft out and hurled into space came to mind too. However, none of these misfortunes topped the list compared to imprisonment with pig pirates.

  To make things even more delightful, moments ago, I helped repair a hole in the ship they’d stolen. And based on the viewport, our trajectory headed straight for the home world of the Wolverine Horde.

  “Cressida, most of the subsystems are back up.” Banks chuckled deep in his barrel chest. “And I just uncovered how to activate OUCH.”

  Nope. My day could, in fact, get worse.

  “Excellent.” Cressida smiled, but her eyes appeared tired. “About time.”

  “Don’t celebrate yet,” Banks advised. “Our fusion reactor is at twenty percent capacity.”

  She hummed. “That’s way too low.”

  “We need ninety percent minimum.”

  She crossed her arms and stood. “Once a fusion drive is activated, you can’t service it. We’re talking radiation levels at fifty thousand and up. At that rate, we’ll walk in pigs and come out baked ham.”

  The two exchanged a long look. Cressida’s eyes formed slits while Banks avoided her stern gaze.

  “We have no choice,” Banks said in a lowered voice. “We’ve come this far. It’s what we planned.”

  “No,” she said sharply. “I need to think. There has to be another way.”

  Spence interrupted with a cacophony of beeps and flashing dark-violet lights.

  “Not happening. The numbers don’t matter. Screw logic.” She sighed and slumped back into the seat. “You’ve sacrificed enough.”

  Relief coursed through me, yet a part of me felt sorry for them. They’d planned to sacrifice their lives to bring down the Horde. Taking out Ryx’s defensive structures would change everything for countless indentured workers and slaves. Except now, Cressida had a change of heart.

  “This is for the best, Cressida,” I said. “I was born on Ryx. Not once has it fallen. It’s impenetrable.”

  “No one wants your opinion, Wolverine,” she grumbled.

  “You might not want it, but Namara knows you should hear it,” I replied.

  Cressida shot to her feet again, but Banks spoke. “The way it is now, our systems are compromised. Our shields are paper-thin. Even if we have OUCH, we must attack from a distance.”

  “So that’s it?” she asked him. “We’ll fail if we try?”

  Banks rested his large forearms on the console. “Our chances of survival are slim. But we can still try to reboot the system and increase the capacity. From there, we can arm the fusion cannon, collect the energy, and dispel it.”

  The two argued for a bit until Spence interjected with something.

  “Good idea, Spence,” Banks said. “We should enter the fusion bay with high temperature suits from Engineering Bay Six.”

  “The shielding is insufficient,” she replied and shook her head. “We’ll die before we can finish the job.”

  Spence beeped and flashed dark red. Did that mean he disagreed with her?

  She frowned at him.

  Yep, apparently so.

  “I really don’t like this idea, but yes, you’re the only one of us who could withstand it. All things considered, I want to see the suits first. If they don’t work out, I’ll consider your alternate plan,” she said to him. “Got it?”

  He beeped and flashed green. I think I was figuring him out.

  Things seemed to settle down. The pigs fell into silence, their choices made, but there was still a journey to reach the target. For a while, I dozed off.

  Until Banks returned to the bridge in a huff.

  “The Engineering Bays are secured with a bioscan,” he grumbled.

  “That’s impossible. I deactivated all of them,” she replied.

  “Not all of them.” He glanced at me.

  “Oh, no,” I whispered. I’d helped enough already.

  Cressida was already across the room. She latched onto my upper arm and pulled me to my feet. “Let’s go.”

  “Why not just rip off his arm?” Banks asked.

  “But then I couldn’t fix things for you.” I tried not to smirk. I failed.

  Banks gave an amused chuckle as he removed my handcuffs. As Cressida and I left, he threw orders our way.

  “Get those suits and get your pigtail back here right away. We’re twelve hours from Ryx, and I’ll need every minute to draw power.”

  Cressida marched beside me, not bothering to hold me at gunpoint. I considered slowing my pace, but that would show resistance. I had to act to end this madness, but I had to do it in a way that would take those pigs by surprise.

  I had a plan. Now to see if it’d work…

  Cressida didn’t say a word as we made our way to our destination. If I thought I could change her course of action, if I could convince her not to carry out her revenge, I’d try every trick I could. But how do you change the mind of someone who’s willing to sacrifice their life for what they believed in?

  Soon enough, we stood outside Engineering Bay Six. I reluctantly scanned us inside. The space was familiar to me, filled with storage containers, tools, and spare parts. Broken carts littered one corner. While Cressida perused through the high temperature suits stored in a locker, I backed up against a desk, which I knew to be filled with papers and writing materials. I pretended to slump against the side, all the while striking a jagged sliver of metal I’d snagged from Deck Five against the desk’s metal surface. Each spark bit my skin, but I kept working. Two hard scrapes, then a tiny flame ignited the papers. Thank the goddess the Horde were cheap bastards with extremely flammable taste in stationary.

  “What have you done?” Cressida whispered.

  Alarms blared. Above us, sprinklers sprayed cold water over everything. As expected, the doors to Engineering Bay Six closed.

  Horde protocol dictated they wouldn’t open again for at least twelve hours.

  Chapter 4

  Cressida

  * * *

  After Graham sealed us in Engineering Bay Six, for the first time, I honestly considered owning a wolverine pelt. Ripping it off his backside looked more and more attractive by the minute.

  Once the deluge from the sprinklers ended, I advanced across the room, ready to separate his head from his body. I glanced from the burnt desk
to what he held. His sullen features showed no remorse.

  He’d done this on purpose.

  I withdrew my rifle and pointed it at his chest.

  For a long time, we stared at each other, my glare bouncing off his pensive gaze. I couldn’t take it anymore and turned away. Ending his life wouldn’t change anything anyway. To distract myself, I inspected the door. If it had a lock mechanism, I could bypass it. However, no matter how hard I tried to crack open the door, I failed. The fire protection system was foolproof to keep clever folks like me from messing with it. We couldn’t open it from inside of the room.

  The comm fizzled when I tried using it to reach my brothers. I bet my little tumble when the gravity disappeared hadn’t helped.

  Two hours passed. I’d dried off for the most part, but the dampness from my jumpsuit left me chilled.

  “You’re just like our sire, Cressida,” Spence used to say. “Mad one minute. Still mad in the next.”

  Vengeance was a sweet nectar I sipped at my darkest moments. It kept me from drowning.

  I shivered.

  “Cressida, I found a dry flight suit,” Graham offered. “Do you want to change?”

  I’d stared at the far wall so long I hadn’t heard him moving around.

  “No.”

  “Are you still angry?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Have you given me any reason not to be?”

  The wolverine was closer than I’d prefer, heat radiating from him while he clutched that stupid red and black suit. I hated those colors.

  The room grew silent again, the way I preferred it, until he opened his mouth again.

  “I think you’re wasting a good thing.” His gray eyes were kind. “When were you arming the missiles, I heard Banks talking to Spence. He said you were the best cryptographer in your class, that you saw what others couldn’t see under the surface. Imagine how many people back on your home world you could’ve helped?”