Blastaway

by Melissa Landers

  She was right. The Whirlwind’s security package made it nearly impossible to steal…unless you were a Centaurus who fell asleep at the wheel. Anyone in my family could use the ship because our fingerprints and voices had been uploaded into the system. In order for an outsider to pilot the ship, one of us had to turn off the security lock. That would give the guest one hour of flight time before a crew member had to give approval again.

  “Computer,” I said to the ship while I strapped into the copilot’s seat. “Disable the flight lock.”

  “Flight lock disabled.”

  Fig didn’t waste a moment. She fired up the engines with one hand and gripped the wheel with the other. Next thing I knew, we were rocketing off the ground so fast my stomach tried to make an exit through my butt. Then she hooked the wheel to the left and sent us spiraling like a top as we rose higher into the atmosphere.

  The spinning made me vurp (vomit-burp). I gritted my teeth and tried to say, “I’m gonna hurl,” but it came out “Grrrrrr,” like a drunken bear.

  “Hold on,” Fig told me. “I’m just trying to make sure Officer Whosey-Whatsit can’t read our ship’s name on the bottom of the hull. The last thing we want is for him to send out a BOL for the Whirlwind.”

  “Wh-what’s a BOL?”

  “Be On the Lookout,” she explained.

  That made sense, but it brought a bigger problem to mind. Our ship could easily outrun an air bike, but there was no escaping the Galaxy Guard’s comm network. The officer on the ground must have reported us by now, which meant other Guard ships were on their way…faster ships, armed with electric nets and surge guns to disable our engines. So unless Fig could spin us into another dimension, we were as good as busted.

  I was about to get arrested. At age thirteen.

  My parents would ground me into the afterlife.

  I noticed movement from the navigation screen and glanced down to find two beacons zooming toward our position. A whimper rose in my throat. The Guard ships were here.

  “Hey, plug this in, will you?” Fig asked. She handed me a cord, which was attached to something that looked like a tube of my mom’s lipstick. “Today, please,” she pressed when I didn’t move fast enough.

  The cord was old tech, so it took me a second to find a charging port. I plugged it in. Only then did it occur to me that we had stopped spinning. In fact, we’d stopped moving altogether. We were just floating on the other side of the planet, waiting for the Guard to scoop us up.

  Too bad my stomach didn’t get the message. I clapped a palm over my mouth and willed myself not to puke. “Why aren’t we running?” I asked from between my fingers. I nodded at the lipstick. “And what is that thing?”

  Fig pointed out the front windshield. “Watch and see.”

  I followed her gaze into the distance, where two Galaxy Guard cruisers were speeding toward each other from opposite directions. It was clear they meant to trap us in between them. But just as I held my breath and prepared for the worst, the cruisers flew past us and kept going.

  I tipped my head. “Huh?”

  Fig chuckled. “Keep watching.”

  So I did. The Guard cruisers flew all the way around planet Fasti—three times—before they descended into the atmosphere and eventually landed on the ground. I still didn’t understand. Here we were, sitting (well, floating), in plain sight. Why hadn’t the Guard disabled our engines and boarded us?

  Fig lifted the tube for show, then gave it a kiss. “Personal cloaking device. Nifty little contraption. Last of its kind.”

  A smile broke out on my face. “You mean they couldn’t see us?”

  “They still can’t.” She frowned at the tube, which had begun to crackle and fizz. “Well, not yet, anyway. But it looks like our invisibility cloak is about to wear out. We should get as far away from here as we can.”

  I wasn’t about to argue. “Computer, set a course for Earth. Top speed.”

  “Confirmed,” the ship responded.

  I had just started to ask if Fig wanted a tour of the ship when I paused. Something she’d said had caught my attention. “Wait. Did you say invisibility cloak?”

  “Yeah. Like in the Harry Potter series.”

  My eyes went so wide they almost fell out of my head. “You’ve read the Harry Potter books?”

  “Psh,” she said, as if the answer should be obvious. Never mind that hardly anyone read old books, let alone ancient books. Meeting a fellow Potterhead was like finding a diamond on the sidewalk. Except more valuable. “All seven of them, at least a dozen times. Anyone who doesn’t love that series can’t be trusted.”

  “Good answer,” I told her. “Fifty points to Ravenclaw.”

  “Ravenclaw?” She laughed, shaking her head. “Make that Slytherin. And I think I deserve a hundred points for the magic I just pulled off.”

  “Uh-oh, a Slytherin,” I teased. “Everyone knows they can’t be trusted. But I guess I can overlook it, seeing as how you saved my bacon and all.”

  “Yeah, well, Ravenclaws are stuffy brainiacs, but I guess you’re welcome, seeing as how you’re giving me a ride to Earth and all.”

  We eyed each other for a moment or two, until we couldn’t keep a straight face anymore. Then we both snickered and said, “Better than Hufflepuff.”

  All I could do was smile. This girl was cool.

  Maybe I did have a tribe.

  Have you ever been someplace so perfect it fit you like a warm sweater, and all of a sudden you just knew you were home? It’s a rare thing for me. My people don’t stay in one spot for long, hence the name Wanderers, but I can honestly say I’ve felt at home in two places—first on my parents’ ship, because it was my home, and again when Kyler led me on a tour of the Whirlwind.

  Mine, I thought.

  Even though Kyler didn’t know it, this magnificent beauty was all mine. Of course, first I would have to trick him into giving me the ship. That was something I’d never done before, and I didn’t feel particularly good about it. But if a kid like Kyler could steal a ship in his sleep, then how hard could it be?

  I would worry about the details later.

  Right now I wanted to study the loading bay. I gazed at the titanium hardware that bound the seams of the interior walls. The bolts might not look impressive to the untrained eye, but most ships were welded at the seams, not welded and double bound with eighteen-inch titanium screws. Hardware like that was only used on ships with reinforced hulls, a sign of quality craftsmanship that I didn’t take for granted. This ship was built like a tank. The engine had plenty of giddyup as well; I could tell from the whirring of the turbines as they propelled us through space.

  I poked my head into the engine room and admired the poetry of moving parts. I didn’t know much about engines, but I wanted to learn. That way I could do my own repairs and not have to rely on anyone. I had just knelt down to study how the chrome pieces fit together into a frenzied puzzle when Kyler crouched down by my side. He tilted his head and watched me watching the engine.

  “Not much to look at,” he said.

  I snorted a dry laugh. Oh, how wrong he was.

  I could work and scrimp and save for my entire lifetime and never afford a ship like this. Most Wanderers had to band together into multifamily groups and pool their money to buy a blasting cruiser. The Whirlwind was a passenger vessel, but I could fix that by attaching my cannon to the hull with a good welding kit. And after Corpse and Cadaver paid me for the rest of the job, I would have enough money to afford a decade of fuel and supplies. This ship was my ticket to an easy life, all on my own, without anybody telling me what to do.

  And I had the chump next to me to thank for it.

  Don’t get me wrong—Kyler was a nice kid. But “nice” only took you so far in space. To survive out here in the cold, surrounded by asteroids and black holes and pirates and worse than pirates, “nice” was about as useful as a chocolate teapot. But even though I could tell that Ky was a pampered prince, I didn’t hate him for it. He was
n’t a jerk. He didn’t hold his nose in the air as he led me up the stairs to give me a tour of the ship. And he didn’t talk down to me. He was just sort of…clueless.

  “I still can’t believe what you did back there,” Ky told me as he strode into the common room. He had a bounce in his step, his eyes still bright from the thrill of escape. I knew that feeling. There was nothing better than blowing up stuff and living to brag about it. He waggled his eyebrows. “If I believed in fate, I’d say the universe put us together.”

  “Hey, maybe it did,” I told him.

  But that was a lie.

  Because what my new friend didn’t know was the whole pirate-showdown thing had been staged like a traveling theater show.

  As if I would double-cross my bosses…before they paid me.

  I had finally heard from Corpse and Cadaver after I’d left the marketplace on Fasti. They’d told me to steal a ship and fly it to Earth, which had been a stupid idea because it would’ve had the Galaxy Guard chasing me through multiple solar systems. And I had no intention of spending the rest of my life on a prison farm, thank you very much. So when I noticed the Whirlwind in the docking lot, I ran her registration numbers and researched who she belonged to, along with a picture of the owner’s family. As it turned out, Corpse and Cadaver had already tried to take the ship by force—small galaxy, right?—and Ky had fooled them into thinking it was quarantined, then dumped them out the garbage chute.

  I had to give him credit for that. The way he’d punked the pirates was brilliant—and hilarious. It also told me not to underestimate him. Kyler was clueless, but he was crafty, too.

  Anyway, after I figured out Ky was traveling alone, the plan couldn’t have been any easier. My dad used to say a lie was only as strong as a person’s will to believe it. And Kyler really wanted to believe I was his hero.

  So I let him.

  And whenever little pangs of guilt tugged at my ribs, I reminded myself that the lie was good for both of us. We had a symbiotic relationship, like those tiny fish that ate the algae off shark butts. Ky would get a safe ride home, and I’d score a ship.

  Win-win.

  Heck, maybe the universe really had put us together.

  “Cozy,” I said to myself, admiring an L-shaped sofa large enough to sleep two grown-ups. The fabric was velvet, not leather, and it felt warm and soft when I skimmed my hand over the cushions. I noticed a set of bookshelves built into the wall, with clear sliding doors to hold the volumes in place if the flight became bumpy. There were even real books inside! My heart fluttered. I hadn’t seen a paperbound book since the accident that took out my family’s ship. Printed books were rare, even among Wanderers. While our ancestors had taken their home libraries into space, five hundred years was a long time for paper to survive.

  I slid aside the shelf door and skimmed my fingertips over the spines, reading the titles laid out before me. The Hunger Games, Comets of Glass, The Hobbit, Magna Fury, Starflight, The Lightning Thief…

  I gasped and pulled out the last title. I’d been dying to read The Lightning Thief ever since my father told me it was his favorite. Basically, the story was about a kid named Percy Jackson who learned he was the son of a Greek god. Then Percy had to go to a special camp to fit in with other Olympians and fight monsters and rescue his mom and stuff like that. The book had sounded like so much fun that I’d decided to save it for last. I wish I hadn’t done that. Because now it was too late. I’d waited too long, and I would never get to talk to my dad about our favorite parts, or argue over which character we liked best. I had missed out on sharing that with him.

  A small voice inside my head whispered, Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe this book could make me feel close to my father, like he was still with me. I could easily imagine which characters he would love and which ones he would love to hate. Maybe we could still share this.

  I opened the book and buried my nose inside for a deep whiff. “Oh yeah, that’s the stuff,” I said, tipping back my head. “I miss that smell.”

  I glanced at Kyler and found him watching me with the same curiosity as before, like he couldn’t understand what I was thinking. Since I was in a good mood, I explained, “I used to have a lot of books, growing up. Tons of them, enough to start a small library. This smell is one of the first things I remember.”

  “Used to?” he repeated. “Where are your books now?”

  Somewhere in space, scorched and blasted to bits, I thought. An image flashed in my mind of orange flames. The ghost of smoke filled my nostrils. I blinked and saw the panic on my mother’s face as she shoved me into the escape pod and ejected it right before the explosion that blew apart our ship.

  I cleared my throat and told Kyler, “They’re gone.”

  Everything was gone. I had lost more than my parents that day. I had lost all of our heirlooms from Earth—the books, photographs, and music my ancestors had taken with them when they’d set off to explore the galaxy. The only thing that had survived the wreck was the necklace I’d worn when I escaped. It was a ruby pendant on a silver chain, both mined from Earth. One of my ancestors had brought it with her to space as a reminder of where she’d come from. Then my mom had given it to me on my tenth birthday. I touched my throat out of habit, but I knew the pendant wasn’t there. It had been taken from me, too.

  “Well,” Kyler said, pointing at the book in my hands. “You should read it, if you haven’t already. It’s good. One of my favorites.”

  I grinned at him. Hearing that made me feel better. “Thanks. I will.”

  “By the way, how did you end up with so many books?” he asked. “They’re not easy to find. The only reason we have so many is because my grandpa left his collection to my dad after he died.” He shrugged. “My dad could’ve sold them for a fortune, but instead he gave them to my mom. She’s a freak for classic lit. It would have broken her heart if he’d gotten rid of a single copy. Anyway, I wouldn’t expect there to be a whole lot of antiques in space.”

  “To us, they’re not antiques,” I pointed out. “They’re our culture.”

  “Huh?”

  “Think about it. When the first Wanderers left Earth five hundred years ago, they took their favorite things with them, right?”

  “Oh.” Kyler’s eyes brightened with understanding. “And then they weren’t allowed to come back.”

  “Exactly. We were cut off from the rest of mankind. So even though music and movies and fashion changed on Earth, for us, things mostly stayed the same. I mean, once in a while I hear a new song in a space station, or watch a new movie on a shuttle, but for the most part my life is a time capsule.” I lifted a shoulder. “Anyway, they stopped making good music after 2020.”

  “That’s what my mom says about stories.”

  “At least you and I have one thing in common. We love old books.”

  “Two things, actually,” he said, and pointed to a small black box on the floor. “We both like holographic games.” He used his hand like a pistol. “I saw you popping those sparkly bubbles back on Fasti.”

  I nodded. “It’s an old game, but it’s fun.”

  “Well, if you like that, then this is going to blow your mind.”

  He put on a glove studded with tiny silver electrodes and handed me one. As soon as I slid it over my hand, the fabric hummed against my skin. Kyler explained that the electrodes would read my muscle movements—even the slightest twitch—and react for me, so there was no delay between my thoughts and my actions in the game. He turned off the lights and switched on the virtual-reality box. In an instant, the room was transformed into an asteroid field set against the backdrop of a swirling purple nebula. I gazed all around me with my mouth hanging open. The view seemed so real, each asteroid so textured and vivid I had to resist the urge to reach out and touch them.

  Kyler was right. It blew my mind.

  “I assume we’re gonna blast rocks?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he said. A sinister noise bwooped from the projector box, and dozens of di
sk-shaped spaceships appeared in between the asteroids. “We’re gonna blast evil aliens.”

  “Awesome.”

  The game began in demo mode to teach me the object of level one. But the alien ships and their laser beam rockets were so lifelike that my heart raced, and my trigger finger begged to be set free. I got the basic gist of the game. My job was to blast aliens, and Ky’s job was to guide our ship through the asteroid field. That was all I needed to know.

  “Hit play,” I told him, bouncing on my toes. “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

  I was ready when level one began, firing lasers so fast that all the aliens in the first round exploded practically at the same time. Our points soared. The next fleet of ships appeared, and I destroyed them even faster than before. A rush surged through my veins. I noticed that Kyler was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear him over the loud booms erupting all around us. Probably he was amazed by my score, so I said, “Thanks,” and prepared for the next wave.

  I crushed that one, too.

  But when I glanced at our score, it had dropped to nearly nothing. “What the…”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Ky said as he paused the game. “We lose points if the alien ships hit us after they explode. You have to give me time to move out of the way before you blast—”

  “Oh, okay, got it,” I said. “Hit play.”

  He started level two, and more alien craft flew into view, plus a giant mother ship that spat out two flying saucers for every one I destroyed. I tried to talk to Kyler as I took aim, but my trigger finger didn’t want to obey. It fired in a glorious blur of movement. I took out the entire fleet, but our score went into the red and announced GAME OVER.

  “Sorry.” I grimaced. “I’m not used to working with a partner.”

  Ky didn’t seem upset. He grinned while pulling off his glove. “No worries. You’ll get there. But that was fun, right?”

  “The best!”

  “Then you should keep playing,” he said. “I’ll set it to single-player mode so you can blast your heart out.”