“Target acquired, Goosey,” Cabe said.
“Good,” I told him. “Remember, no improvising. Just hold tight while I figure out what to do next.”
“Affirmative.”
I glanced at the object. Now for the hard part: reeling it in at just the right speed and calculating the precise point where it should strike the ship before I told Cabe to release the tether. I knew the right equation to use. It was simple physics, really. But I wasn’t kidding when I had told Fig there was no room for error. The math had to be flawless.
Lucky for us, I mathed harder than a hurricane.
I licked my lips and studied the cone-shape object, calculating its mass in comparison to the ship’s. The formula played out in my mind, and after a few minutes I saw exactly where, and with what force, the object needed to strike us. Just to be safe, I double-checked my math, but I knew I was right. In that moment, the hair on my forearms stood on end—not from fear, but from a sense of purpose. Almost like destiny. It felt as if every physics class I had ever taken had led me to this moment.
“Fig,” I said through my helmet comm. “You ready?”
“Almost,” she replied. “One more bolt to go, but I can’t reach it.” She tugged the cable securing both of us to the ship, sending a vibration to me along the metal. “My tether’s too tight.”
“Unhook your carabiner,” I told her. “But just for a few seconds, then hook yourself back on. We don’t want you floating away.”
“Roger that.” She went quiet for a moment. Then I heard a metallic thud, and she reported, “All done. I’m ready when you are.”
I switched my comm link over to Cabe. “Okay, buddy, time to reel it in. I want you to start slow, on your lowest power setting, until the thing is twenty yards from the ship. Then crank into high gear and let it ram us. Got it?”
Cabe beeped nervously, but he obeyed. His internal motor whirred, causing the ship to lurch slightly as his line to the object tightened. I watched the metal cone approaching us and eventually realized it was the tip of an old space rocket, the kind early astronauts had traveled in when they’d first explored Mars. What I didn’t know was how the capsule had ended up in New Dakota’s orbit. Though faded by time, its name was still visible in block lettering: the Orion.
“I’ve got that ugly thing in my sights,” Fig said. “Tell me where to blast it.”
I nodded. “See the little dot above the letter i?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you hit it?”
She sniffed a laugh. “Is a duck’s butt watertight?”
I took that as a yes. “Then do it on my mark, but at fifty percent power.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Positive,” I told her. If I knew anything, it was that math and science didn’t lie. That was what made them more reliable than people.
The Orion reached the twenty-yard mark, and the ship lurched again as Cabe increased his towing power to full capacity.
“On my mark…” I said to Fig. “After you fire, brace for impact.”
“Ready,” she answered.
The Orion’s cone raced toward us. I waited for it to rotate another few inches to the left. Then the timing was perfect. The force from Fig’s blaster would skew the capsule enough to strike us in the perfect spot, just below the loading bay. All we would have to do then was hold on to our butts and glide to safety.
I told Fig, “Now!”
She fired a beam of white-hot light that forced me to shield my eyes. I felt heat wash over the front of my thermal suit, and after that, everything happened in a rush.
For the record, I’d like to say my math was correct.
At least based on the data that was available to me.
What I hadn’t counted on was the presence of air trapped inside the Orion’s capsule, or how piercing the capsule’s metal shell would release that air with enough pressure to turn the cone into one of those black-and-white pinwheels that catches the wind and spins so fast it blurs into gray.
A whirligig: that was what I had created.
The air hissing from the capsule sent it rotating faster than Cabe could detach from it. Before I could blink, the cable was wrapped twice around the cone’s midsection and drawing closer to the Whirlwind. The rope pulled taut, jerking the ship out from under my feet.
Next thing I knew, I was falling. Not falling in the usual way of gravity pulling me toward the ground, but rather tumbling with nothing to hold on to. My boots tipped over and over again above my head. I windmilled my arms to anchor myself to something solid, but the cable around my waist had gone slack, giving me no traction. I stopped breathing. My stomach roiled, and I tasted vomit at the back of my throat. Then I opened my eyes and saw swirls of red and green flash alternately with black space as I soared toward New Dakota, and I truly lost it.
Let’s just say there’s no shame in leaking in your shorts at a time like that.
From somewhere over my shoulder, the clatter of metal told me the Orion and the Whirlwind had collided. Air continued to fizz and hiss like a demented snake. I was too dizzy to sense in which direction the impact had sent us, but the glimpses I caught of distant landmass seemed to be getting bigger with each of my flips. I pictured my body as a fireball streaking across the New Dakota sky, and the mental image shocked me into taking a breath.
“Cabe,” I cried. “You have permission to improvise!”
His reply came as static that I couldn’t understand. I called out for Fig, peering for her through my helmet, but all I could see was the constant flip-flopping of land and space.
If I could only steady myself…
My wish came true a little too suddenly as the cable around my waist brought me to a halt. I doubled over with an oof before pinging backward. I glanced over my shoulder while I sailed toward the tangled-up ruin that was my ship. The mass was still spinning, though slower now that the air from the Orion had begun to run out. I spotted Cabe right where I’d left him, fastened to the airlock chamber while he reeled me in.
But wait. Fig had been holding on to my cable, too.
“Where’s Fig?” I asked, glancing all around and finding nothing. The Whirlwind made another rotation, showing me her blaster mounted to the top of the ship, but she was no longer with it.
“Fig!” I shouted.
I didn’t hear her voice, but a sensation of being watched prompted me to look west. That was when I found her: arms outstretched, eyes wide, mouth agape in a silent scream, sailing away from me with the kind of velocity that could only mean one thing. She hadn’t refastened her carabiner. She had fallen off the ship, and now she was caught in New Dakota’s atmosphere.
My heart stuttered. My gloved hands reached out to her, but deep down I knew there was nothing I could do. The closest person I had to a friend was about to die right in front of me.
And it was all my fault.
Heat.
That was all I could think about. Not the fact that I was free-falling. Not the sensation of gravity pulling my spine into my navel. Not the ground rising up to meet me from somewhere I couldn’t see. The only thing that mattered was the burn. It pierced my thermal suit and screamed across my nerves, growing hotter with each second. My face felt swollen, like I had held my breath for too long. And maybe I had, because the oxygen in my tank was thicker than soup. Sweat dripped into my lashes, blurring my vision. I wanted to take off my helmet, to wipe my eyes and to feel the wind cooling my hair, but I couldn’t unclench my fingers long enough to work the latch.
So hot.
I knew I should do something—scream or flail my arms or say a prayer to whoever the patron saint of mutants was—but in the moments before my death, I had a weird realization about the power of suffering. It made me think of all the action movies I’d seen, the ones where the hero was tortured for information, but in the end, he gritted his teeth or muttered a cool one-liner or spat in the bad guy’s face or something equally savage like that. I had always thought I was savage, too
, but now I knew better. Pain took me down a notch. It showed me how weak I was. I would give anything to make it stop. I was going to die in a blaze of shame, not glory.
That wasn’t how I’d pictured it.
My muscles jerked, and I blinked hard. I must’ve passed out for a second. I didn’t stay awake for much longer after that. I kept drifting in and out of awareness in rapid spurts until I finally let my neck go slack, and my eyes rolled back in my head. I didn’t care anymore. Let the universe take me to wherever my parents were. At least we’d be together again. I wouldn’t have to strain to remember which tune my father whistled when he was in a good mood. Or the direction my mother had braided my hair: under or over. I had forgotten those details. The years without my parents had been a thief, eroding my image of their faces, the curves and lines that had made them distinct. Sometimes I pictured my father’s face as more round than oval, and then I wondered if his jawline had been square. And what had been the exact shade of my mother’s eyes? True blue, or more of a bluish gray?
Soon I would know. That was some small comfort.
I had just begun to dream of my mother’s irises—pale blue with flecks of amber—when I flinched awake again. But this time something was different. Several things were different, actually. I felt the hard press of metal beneath my body. A reverse tugging in my stomach told me I was falling up instead of down. I squinted through the moisture fogging my helmet and noticed a shadow looming above me, wide enough to block out the sun. A burst of air blew over me. It felt so good that I groaned out loud. As the air continued flowing over my suit, my senses returned one at a time.
I heard the low roar of an engine, and I realized the shadow above me was a ship, a cruiser roughly the same size as the one my parents had owned. A set of cables rose from my position into an open port in the ship, towing me quickly upward. That explained the backward falling—the ship’s crew was bringing me on board. My focus sharpened, and I made out several pockmarks in the craft’s underbelly. Something about the dents seemed familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why.
Until the blood flow returned to my brain and I noticed the stenciled markings on the underside of the ship’s hull. In neon-purple paint it spelled Wanderlust.
My hands turned cold in a way that had nothing to do with the breeze.
I knew this ship.
I don’t mean I recognized it. I mean I knew it, the way my right hand knew my left. I knew the Wanderlust had a creaky third step leading to the main floor. I knew the galley smelled like onions, no matter what time of day it was. I knew the pockmarks on the underside of the hull had been caused by an asteroid demolition gone wrong. I knew the bookshelves in the common room were empty, because all of the books had been burned…on purpose. I knew the ship’s robot was named Kirk, and that he needed to charge for at least two hours before he could punish me with a level-two electric shock. And most important, I knew the best way to escape any locked room on board was through the air ducts.
I knew this ship because I had been a “guest” here for a month after my parents had died. And by “guest” I mean indentured servant. When I’d ditched the Wanderlust crew, it hadn’t been on friendly terms. I might have broken a jaw or two…maybe three, tops.
They had deserved it.
But still, they had to hate me. So why had they saved my life?
My body tensed as I entered the port and glanced at the rust flakes on the loading-bay walls. When I was part of the crew here, one of my jobs had been to sand down and paint over those rusty patches. I hadn’t made it far before I’d run away. Maybe the captain had saved my life because he needed someone to finish the job in the loading bay, and a hundred more chores after that. Free labor, not much different than Quasar’s prison farms. Or maybe he wanted a deeper level of revenge.
Peeking over my shoulder at the distant ground below, I had one final thought before the hatch closed.
I wonder if it’s too late to jump.…
I’m not a touchy-feely kind of guy. Never have been. I think it’s a side effect of growing up in a house full of dudes. If a situation called for physical contact—like Christmas or birthdays or whatever—my brothers and I traded manly pats on the shoulder. Or light punches. Those were even better. My mom was the only person in the family who wanted cuddles, so I threw her a bone every once in a while and rested my head on her shoulder when we were on the sofa watching a movie. But that was for her, not for me. Generally speaking, I didn’t feel the need to hug people.
Except for Captain Holyoake.
After what he had done for Fig and me—saving our lives and towing our ship—I wanted to hold him like a stuffed bear. Heck, I would’ve planted a big, juicy, wet one right on his kisser if I didn’t think he would punch me into next week for it.
The captain wasn’t the affectionate type, either. I could tell by his rough, beefy hands, which hadn’t stopped gripping his hips since he’d towed Fig into the cargo hold and docked the Whirlwind to his spare port. Then there was his mouth, which had yet to crack anything resembling a smile. Combined with the fact that his biceps were bigger than my head, I decided to hug myself instead of him, crossing both arms over my rib cage and cupping my elbows as I gazed up at the captain.
He stood at least two heads taller than me, with a wide brow and an even wider jaw. His skin was covered in the reddish purple patches of all Wanderers, but the way his scars were arranged, forming downward slashes at the corners of his eyes and mouth, made him look even tougher than he already was. But most striking of all were his eyes, dark and piercing, and at the moment, laser fixed on Figerella.
I could tell the two of them knew each other from the way she glared back at him with her chin defiantly lifted. I almost wondered if he was her father or some other relative, because the charged silence between them reminded me of the times I had stared down my parents, waiting for a punishment to be given.
Fig broke eye contact and swung both legs over the side of the excavator the captain had just used to pluck her out of the sky like a toy in a claw machine. But she didn’t seem to know where to go from there, so she just sat in place and sulked.
“Thanks again,” I told the captain, because clearly Fig wasn’t going to show him any gratitude. He ignored me. I used my eyes to send Fig a silent what’s-your-problem? glare, but she ignored me, too.
Their silent showdown continued until the captain finally asked her, “You have nothing to say to me?” His gritty, pack-a-day voice made Fig flinch, but she tried to play it off by rubbing her upper arms like she was cold. “Nothing at all, Figerella Moonbeam?”
“Moonbeam?” I repeated. Despite the tension in the room, I couldn’t help snorting. I guess cheating death had made me giddy. I raised my eyebrows at her and chuckled. “Your middle name is Moonbeam?”
“Shut up,” she and the captain said at the same time.
I lifted an apologetic hand and made a zipper motion across my lips.
“After everything we’ve done for you?” he went on. Then his mouth pulled into the same frown my mom had always used on me when she wanted to inflict maximum guilt. At that point I really began to think he was her dad. Until he added, “What would your father say?”
All right, so the captain wasn’t her father. But whoa, did that question make Fig angry. Like full-on, nuclear, hot-under-the-collar furious. She balled her fists while her face turned the color of strawberries in June.
“Don’t talk about my father,” she ground out between her teeth.
The captain opened his mouth, but he didn’t have a chance to respond before the clatter of boots sounded from the stairs, and a pair of teenage boys came jogging into the loading bay. They stopped short at the sight of Fig. Judging by the pinch of their brows, they weren’t happy to see her. A woman roughly the captain’s age followed the boys, but in the slow, uneven steps of someone in pain. She wore a cool smile that didn’t reach her eyes, so I supposed she wasn’t thrilled with the company, either. Two more teenagers came skipping
down the steps behind her, this time girls, followed by a little boy who butt-slid down the handrail. All of the kids’ facial markings resembled the captain’s, so I assumed this was his family. I leaned aside and peeked through the upper doorway to see if anyone else was coming, but that appeared to be it.
Seven people in all, just like my family—a big crew for such a small ship. I wondered how they got along without killing each other. Or maybe they didn’t. One of the older boys rubbed his jaw and stared murder at Fig.
“Figerella,” the motherly woman greeted with a nod. “Welcome home.”
Fig’s reaction caught me by surprise. If I had blinked, I would’ve missed it. But I didn’t blink, and when Mrs. Holyoake said home, I saw Fig’s shoulders tense. Like she’d been slapped. A cold feeling settled in my chest. Despite what the captain had done for us, something wasn’t right here. I felt inside my pocket for Cabe’s remote-control fob to make sure I still had it. Cabe was my only defense, though not a very good one. Right now he was powered down and charging on the Whirlwind.
The teenager who’d been rubbing his jaw pointed at Fig and said, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what I owe you.” His mom silenced him with a lifted finger, but when she wasn’t looking, he mouthed, I’ll tag you back.
Either that or I’ll take your bag. I’m not good at lip-reading.
That same boy noticed me, and his jaw dropped. “A human,” he said. “What’s Fig doing with him?”
One of his sisters wrinkled her nose. “He’s Earth-born. I can tell. He reeks of that nasty planet.”
“Hey,” I objected. Then I discreetly sniffed my armpits, which SO didn’t stink, by the way.
“Enough,” the captain snapped at his kids. “You know better than that. We don’t sink to their level.”
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