“But you have to do what I say, right?”
“Only within my programming guidelines.”
“Does that include turning off the comm?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then. Let’s—”
The beeping interrupted me, but this time the computer announced, “Incoming message. Raptor vessel.”
“Raptor vessel?” I said. What kind of ship was that? And why was it calling me?
“Pirates,” Cabe hollered as the cable reel inside him began whirring. “Mortal danger! We must defend the ship!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I reached out a hand to stop him before he covered the pilothouse in cable. “You’re glitching again. Mom and Dad probably sent this ship to—”
“Message override,” the ship’s computer announced. Then a woman’s voice came over the speakers, so cold and raspy that it made my scalp prickle. “Prepare to be boarded,” she said. “And surrender your ship…if you want to live.”
“Oh, fudge,” I breathed.
They really were pirates.
Space pirates were no joke. Forget the yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-of-rum nonsense you’ve read about in storybooks. Real pirates weren’t jolly at all. They slunk around the galaxy stealing stuff—engine parts, tools, metal, fuel—whatever was easy to carry and worth a few credits on the black market. If a ship was nice enough, the pirates would jack the whole thing and leave the crew floating in space with nothing but the air in their emergency helmets. My ship definitely qualified as “nice enough.” It was no yacht, but my parents had sprung for some serious upgrades, including a triple-reinforced hull to protect against asteroids.
Cabe was right. We had to defend the ship.
“Computer, disable the main speakers,” I ordered, making sure the pirates couldn’t listen in on me.
“Speakers disabled,” she chimed.
I turned to Cabe. “Can we outrun a Raptor-class vessel?”
“Negative, Goosey.”
“Okay,” I said. “So we need a plan B.”
I glanced at Cabe’s chest, still whirring with indestructible rope. If he covered all of the ship’s doors with cable, the pirates would never get inside. I had just opened my mouth to tell him so when a clang rang out, and the ship lurched, sending me to the floor. The engine revved once and shut down. The pirates had already latched on to our hull. Next they would ram the doors until they found a way inside.
My fingertips tingled as panic set in. Hammering noises from below told me the pirates were trying to force open the main boarding dock, the one near the utility closet where I had just found Cabe.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember the ship’s best hiding places. But then I realized hiding wouldn’t work. Ships didn’t fly themselves, at least not without a pilot to set the course, so the pirates had to know there was at least one person on board. If they stormed the ship and found it empty, they would just tear the place apart until they found me.
I thought harder.
I had heard rumors that pirates didn’t like taking risks, that they were cowards who would turn tail and run at the first sign of a fair fight. If I couldn’t keep them out, maybe I could wreak enough havoc to send them packing.
I acted fast and grabbed an armload of supplies. “Come on, Cabe,” I called as I jogged down the stairs. “You’re gonna help me make some mayhem.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, the loading-bay door gave way.
I held my breath, afraid to make a sound as I stretched out, facedown, on a plumbing pipe near the ceiling. Below me, a tall redheaded woman wearing a glass helmet strutted on board my ship like she owned it. She didn’t carry a blaster in her hands, and I didn’t see any weapons hooked to her thermal suit. That was a good sign. But just as I released a sigh of relief, she pulled off her helmet and gave me a glimpse of her skeleton face.
What was up with that?
Then I saw the monstrous muscles straining her shirt sleeve, and my sigh turned to a lump in my throat. This lady didn’t need a blaster. She could put me in a headlock and crush my noggin with an armpit fart.
“Yes,” she purred, gazing around the loading bay. “This will do nicely.”
A tall man skipped up behind her, making me rethink the whole pirates-not-being-jolly thing. When he pulled off his helmet, all I saw was a handsome face. No freaky skull hologram like the lady’s. He wore a chest strap full of gadgets that clanked and jangled with his movements, which seemed to annoy the redheaded woman.
She frowned at him. “Can’t you stand still for one second?”
He froze in place and counted, “One one-thousand.” Then he bounced on his toes as a grin broke out on his mouth. His chest belt jangled again. “Nailed it!”
“Ugh.” The woman waved at his face. “And why aren’t you wearing your mask? You’re supposed to put it on before every mission.”
She snapped her fingers twice, and the image of a skull covered the man’s face. The two of them must’ve had holographic chips implanted in their skin. Pretty clever for anyone who wanted to hide their identity at a moment’s notice.
The guy jutted out his bottom lip, which looked weird poking through the bones. Like a skeleton sticking out its tongue. “I can’t see as good with this thing on.”
“Well, too bad,” she said. “Your face is easy to identify.”
She was right about that. The guy could rock a career in modeling if the space-pirate gig didn’t work out for him.
“No easier than your hair,” he argued. But then he flinched away at the look she gave him. “It’s nice hair,” he added with a weak smile. “Color of nosebleeds. Really brings out your eyes.”
“Oh, shut up and seal the door,” she said, pointing behind him. “We can’t let the crew get away. You heard what the boss said. No witnesses.”
No witnesses.
I gulped. That meant the pirates wouldn’t leave me floating in space with the air in my emergency helmet. They would just leave me…floating. I had to get them off my ship, preferably before the dancy man closed the door. The pirates would leave a lot easier if the exit wasn’t blocked.
As quietly as I could, I fastened my glass helmet over my head and whispered a message to Cabe, who was hiding at the top of the stairs and linked to my mic.
“It’s go time,” I told him.
“Warning,” Cabe blasted loud enough to make the pirates jump. “This ship is under quarantine for the vortex stomach influenza. Leave at once or suffer deadly force.”
Now it was my turn to act. I had read about quarantined ships in the Encyclopedia Universica. If a space traveler picked up an unknown virus, the whole ship had to go on lockdown to stop the virus from spreading to other planets. There was no such thing as the vortex stomach flu, but if there were, I imagined the crew would get sick from both ends, creating an epic stink. So I twisted the release valve on the sewer pipe, just enough to let off some of the gas trapped inside. Safe within my helmet, I couldn’t smell anything except my own gummy bear–scented breath, but the look on the pirates’ faces told me their noses were fully operational.
“Aaaaaah!” The man recoiled, slinging an arm over his nostrils. “It smells like a hundred skunks threw up in a broccoli sewer!”
I nodded in respect for his analogy. That was a pretty good description for the poop of five Centaurus boys.
The redheaded woman dry-heaved a few times before choking out, “I’ve never heard of the vortex flu. Use your air inspector to check”—she paused to retch—“for viruses.”
Her partner nodded while squeezing his head into his space helmet. He switched on his oxygen supply and drew a long breath of relief. “Oh my Google,” he said through his suit comm. “That’s so much better.” He pulled a device resembling a Magic Marker from his chest and waved it around a few times. It must have read the microparticles in the air, because he glanced at the object and told the woman, “No trace of any known viruses. The crew could be lying. Or they might have a new kind of flu that my
inspector doesn’t recognize.”
The woman had refastened her helmet, too. She thought for a moment, tapping a finger against her face shield, before she called up the stairs, “We’re here to help you. The Galaxy Guard sent us with medicine. Let us up, and we’ll give it to you.”
“Bull hockey,” I whispered to Cabe. “Repeat the warning.”
He did as I asked.
“What if it’s real?” the guy pirate asked his partner. “I don’t wanna get sick.”
The lady shook her head. “Even if there is a new kind of flu, we can still take the ship. We’ll float the crew and set off a germ fogger.” She pointed toward the upper level. “Come on. Let’s get rid of them.”
Uh-oh. The stink had lost its bite. Time to deploy phase two.
“Light ’em up, buddy,” I whispered to Cabe.
“Final warning,” Cabe called. “Use of deadly force in three…two…one.”
And then from the stairs, “bullets” rained down on the pirates in a firestorm that sent them covering their helmeted heads and running in circles. Pasta rockets zoomed through the air, each one popping like gunfire as its candy-core fuel exploded.
Both pirates ran for the exit, where they collided in the doorway and got stuck. I expected the redheaded woman to shove the man behind her and race out of sight, but instead, she reached for his chest strap and pulled free two flat metal disks the size of hamburgers.
“Use your shield,” she told the man, handing him one of the discs. The device expanded into some kind of superthin umbrella that covered her upper body. The pasta rockets zinged off the metallic barrier, protecting her from impact. She used the shield to guard her partner while he expanded his own device. Then they advanced together toward the stairs and began a slow but steady climb.
I bit back a curse. Whatever happened to pirates being cowards?
“Looks like we’re going to have to deploy phase three,” I whispered while shaking my head in regret. I had hoped to avoid phase three, because the cleanup was going to be a total bear. But scrubbing the stairs for a week was better than certain death, so I gave Cabe the go-ahead and told him, “Use the Mega Über Lube.”
(In case you didn’t know, Mega Über Lube is the most slippery substance known to man. It’s used on ships to keep engine parts moving freely in subzero temperatures. And if one drop of it gets on your shoes, you’ll feel like you’re skiing down the side of an ice-covered mountain with a jet pack strapped to your back.…Something I discovered a few years ago when my twin brothers, Devin and Rylan, coated my boots in the lube as a practical joke. The joke wasn’t funny. I ended up with a broken arm, and the twins got off with a warning from our parents. Typical neglect. Thanks for nothing, Mom and Dad.)
Anyway, Cabe replied in the affirmative and squirted two jets of neon-purple goo onto the stairs. That goo reacted to the oxygen in the air, just as it was supposed to, and instantly thinned into a pink-hued oil that spread out all over the steps. What happened next was so hilarious that I wished I’d recorded it.
The redheaded woman’s boot made contact with the next step, and she went horizontal so fast she kicked the other pirate in the gut. No sooner had the man doubled over with an oof than the woman tried to right herself, and her other boot shot out and landed right in the poor guy’s beanbags.
I cringed in sympathy while my shoulders shook with laughter. Watching the two of them slip and slide was like something out of a goofy game show. The pirates scrambled to stay upright as their feet disappeared from beneath them, over and over again, eventually landing them at the base of the stairs.
But the stubborn buggers still didn’t quit.
“Use your grappling hook,” the woman shouted.
The guy snagged another gadget from his vest, this time a metallic ball that turned into a massive hook when he threw it. The hook caught the railing at the top of the stairs and then produced a silvery rope, which came sailing toward the man. He caught it in one hand and wrapped it twice around his wrist for a better grip.
“Hold on to me,” he told his partner. “We’ll scale the steps together.”
It took three tries before the woman could climb onto his back without sliding off. She finally managed it by wrapping her long arms around his neck and hooking them at the elbows.
“Can’t…breathe,” the guy sputtered.
“Quit whining! You can breathe when we reach the top!”
After a cough, he croaked, “Retract,” and the hook reeled in the pirates like a pair of giant slimy fish.
Seriously? I had to admire their dedication, but this was getting old.
“Cabe,” I said, “we need to dislodge that hook. Can you do it?”
“Affirmative, Goosey,” he answered.
From out of sight, one of his metal cables snaked into view. It caught the pointed end of the hook and bent the whole thing into a straight line. At once, both pirates went careening down the stairs again, where the guy landed on top of his partner, crushing her like a bug.
“Cabe, hold on to something,” I said while I wrapped my arms and legs tighter around the plumbing pipe in the ceiling. Then I gave the ship a direct command. “Computer, remove artificial gravity.”
A sense of weightlessness settled over me as I watched the pirates drift up from the floor, covered in pink goo and windmilling their arms for balance. I waited for them to rise another few feet into the air before I grinned and said, “Computer, restore Earth gravity levels.”
The pirates clattered to the floor.
“Computer, remove artificial gravity,” I said, barely able to hold in my laughter while the pirates floated up again. “Now restore Earth gravity levels.”
They clunked to the floor with an oof! and an ow!
That was when I realized how wrong my mom had been. The gravity drive totally was there for my banana shenanigans. I repeated my commands to the ship…three more times…just for the fun of it. (Don’t judge me. It really was hilarious, especially when the pirate dude turned a cartwheel and landed on his helmet.) But eventually I knew playtime was over, and I deployed the final phase of my plan.
“Computer,” I said, “tilt the ship thirty degrees to the starboard side.”
The Whirlwind tipped hard to the right.
“Now open the door to the lower-level garbage chute,” I ordered.
The pirates slid across the loading-bay floor at the exact time the garbage door opened in the lower wall. One after the other, the redheaded woman and her partner skidded into the trash chute and out of sight.
“Computer,” I said, “close the garbage door and empty the chute.”
The ship carried out my command, closing the inside hatch. Then, from somewhere on the outer hull, another door opened, and the pirates were ejected into space, along with a week’s worth of melon rinds, snotty tissues, and banana peels.
I jumped down from my pipe and closed the loading-bay door so the pirates couldn’t make their way back inside. Using an electromagnetic surge device from my mom’s tool kit, I sent a bolt of energy through the Whirlwind’s hull to forcibly detach the pirates’ ship from mine. A loud buzz-click told me when the ships separated. Seconds later, I ordered the computer to rev up the engines, and just like that, I left the pirates behind, floating with the rest of the stinky garbage.
I stood in the loading bay for a beat or two, too stunned to move. A soft laugh escaped my lips, and then all of the breath whooshed out of my lungs in a chortle so deep it fogged my helmet. I had done it! I’d actually pulled it off! I had saved the Whirlwind all by myself, using nothing but the science that my jock brothers had always said was useless and dorky.
“Who’s the dork now?” I said, puffing out my chest.
“Goosey,” Cabe called. He poked his head through the upper doorway. “Are you free from mortal danger?”
I smiled at my robotic partner in crime. Okay, maybe I hadn’t defeated the pirates all by myself. “I’m safe, thanks to you,” I told him. “We made a great team, Cabe
. Now all that’s left is to clean up the mess.”
He beeped happily, his version of a giggle.
“Computer,” I called to the ship. “Resume our course to Fasti. That’s the last we’ll see of those pirates.”
“Course resumed,” she chimed.
As the ship changed direction, I gripped my hips, superhero-style, and imagined a cape flapping behind me. “Cabe,” I said, “I’m issuing you a program override. Instead of Goosey, I want you to call me Ky the Magnificent, Champion of Science, Master of the Galaxy, and Destroyer of Scalawags.”
“Error, Goosey. Unauthorized request.”
I shrugged. “Oh, well. Can’t win ’em all.”
If you blast an asteroid correctly, which I always do, there’s one short, beautiful moment when you can actually see it come apart from the inside, like a ruby bursting from cold gray stone. The rock ignites at its core and glows white hot, right before it explodes into dust particles. I call it the birth of destruction. It’s almost as satisfying as getting paid.
Almost.
Anyway, my parents had always told me not to look directly at the laser—it’s bad for the eyes—but I could never resist peeking through my fingers after firing a shot, because it gave me such a thrill. And if blowing up an asteroid could make my blood rush like a geyser, I wondered how destroying a star would feel.
My heart might actually explode.
I tingled with anticipation as I stepped off the shuttle and shielded my eyes from the man-made sun looming on the horizon. The big reveal hadn’t happened yet, so the star was hidden behind a planet-size ship, which seemed backward considering suns were supposed to be something like a thousand times larger than planets. I’d heard that Fasti scientists had ways of keeping a star tiny until delivery to its new home was complete. Then the engineers would activate something with the press of a button, and kablow! Full-size sun, just like that.
But even in its shrunken state, the sun refused to hide its warmth. Radiance leaked around the ship’s edges like a solar eclipse, heating the blotches on my face until my skin went tight and tingly. The sun was wrapped in an invisible force field that contained most of its radiation, but not all of it. Luckily, my body was equipped for that sort of thing. I could feel my cells absorbing and neutralizing the radiation that touched me, almost as if my mutated DNA were armed with tiny lasers. Like microscopic versions of myself. Maybe that was why I loved blasting things so much—it was practically in my blood.
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