Trouble in the Stars
Page 16
She gives me a brisk nod.
I give her a nod back. “Electra,” I ask, “what emotion are you feeling when your tintacles are orange?”
She reaches up and pulls a tintacle down so she can see it. “Worry,” she answers. Then she goes on. “Worry that a person I care about is going to get hurt.”
“Me?” I ask. “You’re worried about me?”
“Of course I am,” she snaps. She lets the tintacle go, and it waves at me. “Just be careful, all right?”
Before I can inform her that I’m the most powerful person in the galaxy—General Smag said so!—she turns and hobbles onto the Dart, the outer hatch closing behind her. Before we set out, Shkkka had rigged the Dart to disconnect from the Peacemaker’s clamps. Electra will be fine, and she’ll get safely to the Hindsight and deliver my message to the captain.
And now I can do what I came here to do. I shift.
I am the Hunter, and nobody and nothing can stop me now.
44
The Hunter is in a hurry.
I race down the deserted corridor toward the science area—and the high-security weapons lab. It looks like the StarLeague has figured out that attacking me doesn’t do them much good. Followed by The Knowledge’s eye, I phase-shift through a door and step into the lab.
Once there, I shift into my human form because I want to see it through my human boy eyes, to see if it’s like the bad dream that I had when I was in The Knowledge’s Vault.
The weapons lab is an empty white space and not very big. It’s just a room. It’s quiet. So quiet, it feels like my ears are listening for something that should be there but isn’t. Against the inner wall are machines and metal plates and a long countertop. Above them are screens that are blank. There’s a doorway; I go through it into a similar room—another lab—and then another.
None of it is familiar, and there’s no trace of any other shapeshifters.
The air is cold, so I pause and take a white lab coat from a hook and put it on, rolling up the sleeves as I go through another door into yet another lab. My bare feet make no sound on the metal floor.
I pause. The same white walls, the same cold machinery, the same blank screen . . . and yet it feels familiar.
For some reason little bumps are crawling over my skin, making me shiver.
I have been here before.
For just a flash I get a piece of the bad dream. Me in another form—something with a lot of legs and eyes, something that felt fear and pain very keenly.
Then—a needle. It injected me with cells from another organism—and I was forced to take that shape. And then another shape and another, and through it all I tried as hard as I could to remain myself, holding on to who I am—to me.
Fighting. Resisting. Trying to escape, and failing, over and over again.
Always alone.
Another flash, and I’m back, shivering in the lab, the floor icy cold under my bare feet.
I couldn’t have been alone through all of that, could I? There were other shapeshifters. Weren’t there?
“I knew I would find you here,” comes a deep voice from behind me.
I whirl. It is General Smag. He came so silently through the door and into the lab that I didn’t hear him. Behind him, two of his bodyguards file into the room, wearing black uniforms, their weapons drawn. More soldiers wait outside.
I tense, ready to shift back into the Hunter.
The general raises a broad hand, and his bodyguards lower their weapons. He steps closer. “You came here to destroy the lab. Is that correct?”
I study him carefully. He doesn’t seem afraid.
Well, Trouble isn’t that scary.
And he must be getting continual reports on what I’ve been doing—and he knows that not a single one of his soldiers or cadets has been hurt by the Hunter.
I back away, wary. “No,” I say finally. “I came to save the other shapeshifters.”
His broad face doesn’t react to that, but somehow he seems surprised. Then he holds up both of his hands. It’s a thing humanoids do, to show that they are not holding a weapon—that they are harmless.
General Smag is not harmless, but I nod.
“Come,” he says in his commanding voice. “I will show you the . . . other shapeshifters.” He points to the door leading to the next room.
Ready, in case it’s a trap, I back away from him and then edge through the door; he follows. His bodyguards, smooth and deadly, take their positions behind him. General Smag crosses the lab to a counter. There is a clear box on it. The box is empty. Or . . . no. In the box is . . .
I squint my human eyes to see better. Is it a . . . ?
General Smag picks up the box, brings it to a metal table in the middle of the room, and roughly turns it over.
A blob of goo oozes out of it, then spreads across the tabletop. It looks like a clear, round, slightly shiny puddle.
“Is that a shapeshifter?” I ask, because it looks a little like me in my blob of goo form.
“It is nothing,” the general answers. He pokes the goo with a broad finger. It makes an indentation. “Raw material,” he goes on. “Shapeless. Nameless. An empty thing to be filled. We experimented with this other template, but it didn’t work.” He points at me. “You were the only success.”
I take a shaky breath, realizing something. “You didn’t just want to capture me because I’m the Hunter and I’m a weapon. You also want to know why I became a shapeshifter when you failed with that one.” I point at the blob. Then I realize something else. “You didn’t mean for me to become a person.”
“You are not a person,” the general says calmly. “You are a created monster that was made using bits and pieces of other creatures, other beings. There is no you.”
“I am me,” I tell him. “I am my own self. I am Trouble.”
“No,” Smag insists, absolutely sure of what he is saying. “There is only the weapon—and even if the weapon escapes again from here, the StarLeague military will track it to the ends of the galaxy. It will be recaptured, the Hindsight will be destroyed, and its crew will go to prison.”
Relentless, Electra called him. It’s true.
I can only see two solutions to this problem.
One, the Hunter kills General Smag, and kills or injures a whole lot of people on the Peacemaker, and blasts out of here.
The Hunter is a weapon. But even though I was made for hunting and killing, I get to decide what I really am. I am not going to kill General Smag, or anybody else.
There’s only one other thing I can do.
I hop up to sit on the table next to the puddle of blob and offer General Smag a deal that he’d never make if I really was a weapon. “What if I agree to let you recapture me now?”
The general is huge and looming; his black eyes glitter. He nods. “That would serve my purpose,” he says. “You will remain here, in the lab, so that our weapons specialists can study you and replicate their success in creating the shapeshifter as a weapon.”
A shiver runs through me. I think he’s saying that they want to take me apart to figure out how I work. But I am what I am: a person who will let the general take me apart if it means saving the people I love.
“You’ll have to let them go if I stay here,” I say. “Captain Astra and the rest. And Electra, too.”
“They will not be charged with a crime for hiding you from the StarLeague,” he says. Four of his bodyguards have lined up behind him; they have their weapons trained on me.
With a tip of my finger, I touch the surface of the blob of goo spread over the table. It feels warm. I look up at Smag. “That’s not enough,” I tell him. “You have to let them go free, completely.”
Smag’s beady black eyes are fixed on me. “Very well. The weapon stays here, in the lab, and the Hindsight and its crew go free. Agreed?”
And then The Knowledge’s eye drops down from where it was hovering near the ceiling and goes completely haywire.
45
The eye makes a high-pitched squealing noise. Slowly, it starts to spin; it picks up speed until it is whirling around and around, flinging off sparks and sprouting antennae like silvery spines.
General Smag stares at it, his all-black eyes narrowed. He’d been so busy with me that he hadn’t even noticed the eye lurking near the ceiling.
His bodyguards tense, and other soldiers pile into the room, weapons drawn.
I stay where I am, sitting on the table next to the blob of goo.
The eye emits another high shriek and slowly spins to a halt.
Then, vibrating from every surface in the lab, the deep, echoing voice of The Knowledge rings out.
All people in every part of the galaxy, it says, are seeing this broadcast. All are seeing what you are about to see and hearing what you can hear.
And then all the screens in the lab flicker to brilliant, colorful life. All the screens on Peacemaker are showing this—no, every screen on every station and every ship and every planet in the entire galaxy, broadcast by The Knowledge.
A series of images flash across the screen. Captain Astra with me in the galley, drinking kaff and talking. Me handing Shkkka tools while she works on the Dart. Telly showing me a flower that bloomed on one of his plants. Reetha trying to teach me to be a better player of the strategy game. Me and Amby carefully becoming friends again. Electra showing me how to stand like a cadet, and scolding me for laughing. Electra, who was taken from her family and never got to be a kid. And always the ship, Hindsight, with its warmth and color and safety. Home.
Then the images slow down, and change. Now the screens all over the galaxy show The Knowledge’s room on the asteroid, the moment when my captain stepped out of the wall made of light, crossed the room, and stopped to open her arms. Then it shows human boy Trouble running to her, and the captain enfolding him in a hug. Kissing the top of his head.
You’re all right? the captain on the screen asks.
Yes, Trouble answers. Are you all right?
From here I can see what I couldn’t see when the captain was hugging me. Her face is full of worry and fear—and then it smooths out. I am now, I hear her say.
Then the screens shift again. Now they show this place—the weapons lab five minutes ago, as The Knowledge’s eye saw it. On the screen a hulking General Smag stands on one side of a table with a puddle of goo on it. Sitting on the table is much smaller Trouble wearing a white lab coat.
You’ll have to let them go if I stay here, Trouble says. Captain Astra and the rest. And Electra too.
They will not be charged with a crime for hiding you from the StarLeague, General Smag answers.
On the screen, Trouble touches a finger to the puddle of goo, and it shimmers in the bright lights of the lab.
That’s not enough, Trouble says. You’ll have to let them go free, completely.
Very well, General Smag says, up there on the screen. The weapon stays here in the lab, and the Hindsight and its crew go free. Agreed?
On the screen, the Trouble sitting on the table looks down at the puddle of goo. Yes, he says, and his voice sounds quiet and sad. I agree.
I realize that the captain has been watching all along on the Hindsight.
She’s probably not very happy with me right now.
But then my captain’s dry, drawling voice, broadcast by The Knowledge’s eye, booms out, echoing through the lab and, I guess, through every ship and station and planet in the entire galaxy:
Hello there, General Smag. Captain Astra of the Hindsight here. Maybe you have forgotten that according to the laws of the StarLeague, a being is considered a person when it is self-aware and conscious and has an identity. Whether somebody is a person is not determined by their gender identity or place of origin or species.
It does not matter that Trouble was raised in a StarLeague lab, created to be a weapon. What he is, without any doubt, and according to the laws of the StarLeague, is a person. The scenes you just saw prove it. As a person, Trouble has certain rights and a claim on galactic citizenship, and he cannot be imprisoned against his will if he has not been convicted of a crime.
Ohhh. My captain planned all of this—with The Knowledge. This is how she figured out how to deal with the aftermath.
Silly Trouble, I tell myself. You forgot that the captain is way more devious than you are.
Captain Astra is still speaking. She says something about how I wasn’t issued an ID chip when I was born, which means the StarLeague has broken its own laws, and she says that the StarLeague has no authority to separate a child from its family and that I must be returned at once to the Hindsight, blah blah blah.
General Smag is listening to this with his mouth pinched in fury and his eyes glittering and a vein on his forehead pulsing and his big hands clenched at his sides. But there’s nothing he can do. The entire galaxy knows that he’s done something wrong. He’s beaten and he knows it—by his own laws! His soldiers are staring at the screens with their mouths open, their weapons drooping at their sides.
I’m not paying much attention to any of it.
Because I am looking down at the puddle of goo on the table next to me. It was warm when I first touched it, and then it went cold when I felt the most sad and alone. It glimmers in the lights of the lab. As I look at it, the tiniest pseudopod extends from its surface. When I reach out to it, the pseudopod wraps around the tip of my finger and holds on.
“Don’t worry, little shifter,” I whisper to it. “I’m getting out of here. And when I go, I’m not going to leave you behind.”
46
Captain Astra has stopped speaking and the screens have gone dim again. The lab echoes with silence. The soldiers are still standing around, looking shocked. Then relentless General Smag decides to do something very stupid.
He pulls a weapon from his belt, aims it at The Knowledge’s eye—
—and fires.
The energy bolt slams into the eye, which explodes like a tiny supernova in the middle of the lab.
At the same moment, General Smag starts shouting orders—something about shapeshifter containment protocols—and his bodyguards go on full alert, weapons out. An alarm blares and lights flash.
I shift into my Hunter form.
One of the guards charges at me. I blur out of her way, and she slams face-first into a wall. Ignoring the shouting and the energy bolts whizzing past me, I scoop the puddle of goo into its clear box, protecting it in the crook of my arm.
I pause to examine the shards of the eye, scattered over the floor. I feel a pang of sadness—poor little eye!—but I know The Knowledge will be all right, even without it. I have the strongest feeling that it found what it was looking for. The Knowledge must have suspected that it was created in a lab a lot like this one. It’s like me—and that means it will keep thinking of ways to operate outside the control of the StarLeague. It is devious, after all.
I’ve realized, of course, that devious really means very good at surviving.
On my way out of the lab I see General Smag, who looks furious and has a weapon in each big hand. I wave at him. Byeeee!
He responds by shooting at me. I catch each bolt in my claw. He shoots again and I deflect the bolt so that it zings back toward him, sizzling right past his jutting jaw. He screams out something that sounds like a profanity.
General Smag.
Who is relentless.
The Hunter carefully sets the shapeshifter on the floor and then time-shifts. I dart from one soldier to the next, seizing each weapon, crumpling it, and dropping it to the floor. I don’t like it when
people shoot at each other.
When all the guards—and Smag—are disarmed, I shift back into my human form.
The soldiers gape at me. One of them reaches for a weapon in her belt that I missed.
“Don’t even bother,” I warn, and as the soldier raises her hands to show that she won’t draw the weapon, I turn to face General Smag.
He is panting, and beads of black-tinted sweat are oozing from his bulgy forehead.
“You,” I tell him, “will not bother me or the Hindsight or its crew or this baby shapeshifter ever again.”
From where I’m standing I can hear his teeth grinding together.
“If you do,” I go on, “the Hunter will come onto this ship and take it apart from the inside.” I point at the room. “Starting from here.” I step closer and lower my voice. “No more experiments. No more weapons.”
Smag just glares at me.
Carefully, I raise one eyebrow. “Got it?”
“Yes,” Smag grinds out. “Understood.”
“Thank you,” I say politely, and shift into the Hunter form.
As Smag and the soldiers watch, I pick up the shapeshifter in its box and head out the door. Quickly, I go through one empty lab, then another; then I race down a long, empty corridor—I remember from the schematics that there should be . . .
Ah, here. An airlock.
You remember how those work, right? The little room with an inner hatch door and an outer hatch door?
With a claw, I open the inner hatch and I step into the airlock, still carrying the shapeshifter blob.
I hit the button; as soon as the inner hatch door is closed, I pause to consider.
The Hindsight is coming, I know that much, but it may not be near enough. I can’t risk shifting into my blob of goo form and forgetting everything.
The Hunter, after all, is the most powerful person in the galaxy. Surely ebullism isn’t something I have to worry about.