Off Planet

by Aileen Erin

  “I know.”

  “So what’s a little thing like you doing even trying?” I didn’t care for the dismissive tone in his voice and the words he chose, but then again, I didn’t like the man at all.

  “Does it matter?” Just give me the stupid test already.

  He didn’t say anything.

  I gritted my teeth to keep myself from saying anything rude, but my patience had run out a few minutes ago. “May I just take the test?”

  “And you’ll finish thirty early?”

  This time I rolled my eyes. “Yes. I’ll finish early, and you’ll get your desserts, but only if we get this rolling now.”

  He finally pushed away from the desk, limping over to a door behind him.

  Now I felt guilty for wanting him to hurry up. The table had blocked the poorly fitted prosthetic that stuck out from his shorts. I wondered how he’d gotten it, but that was none of my business. As long as I took the test, the man would get his dessert, and we’d both be happy.

  The next room wasn’t as big as one of the bays, but it was still pretty sizable. Little ten-foot-in-diameter flight simulation pods took up the room. There were twenty in all.

  The man lumbered to the closest one. “In you go.”

  I didn’t hesitate to step into the pod.

  He swiped a finger over a panel next to the door. “I’m taking the thirty off the test. You finish before, fine. You don’t, lights will come on. That means you’re done. Got it.”

  “Got it. Anything else I should know.”

  “SpaceTech only allows this test once for workers. You fail, there ain’t no second chances.”

  He started to swing the door shut, and I stopped it with my hand. “What?” Ahiga hadn’t said anything about that.

  “New rule. Made it about a month ago.”

  “Why?”

  The man looked like he sucked on something sour. “SpaceTech makes the rules. Ask them if you want to know so bad. Time’s ticking.”

  I turned to the pilot’s seat and quickly sat as he swung the door shut, sealing me into the pitch-black pod.

  A second later the screen lit up. Harness straps came down from the tops of the seat, locking me into place. A keyboard and controls came up from the ground.

  “Good morning, Maité Martinez,” the AI’s voice sounded like a perfectly pleasant English woman. “Today’s Mining Proficiency Test will take approximately one hour, thirty minutes. The test covers a variety of subjects and ends with simulation. To pass, you will need to achieve eighty-five percent or better.”

  I took a breath as the first question popped onto the display. A simple physics question. No problem. There were a few more after that along the same line. Then it switched to music. I had to listen to a sample and find patterns in tones. Each question was timed, and I had to give a quick answer. I went with my gut, and with every answer, felt more and more like a failure. I wasn’t sure I’d gotten a single one of them correct.

  What the hell did tones have to do with flying a ship? This was so iced. Nothing in the practice tests Ahiga had given me said anything about music or tones or pitch, but I remember him mentioning it in the med bay. I should’ve asked him more about it.

  I kept answering the questions as best I could. Some of them were easy. Others took me a while, and even then, I was sure I got them wrong.

  The timer counted down in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. A cold sweat broke out across my skin, and I felt sick as I thought about what would happen if I failed. If I had to put on the suit again…

  This was going worse than I’d thought.

  By the time I got to the simulation, an hour had sped by, and I wasn’t sure that I should’ve agreed to give up the thirty minutes. If the flight simulation took a while, I was going to be screwed. I had to at least nail that part of it.

  The pod fired up, rocking as it simulated flight. It was much nicer than the ones I’d used on Earth, but it freaked me out a little. There were so many more buttons and features.

  I tried to feel prepared for what might come, but there was too much riding on this to be anything but nervous. I had to go through an asteroid field, land on some tricky terrain, take off again—calculating for added weight—but that was it. As the light came on in the pod, the timer still showed I had an extra twenty minutes. Adding in the thirty minutes I’d given up, I was finishing way early. It made me wonder if I’d missed something. Or maybe I bombed it so hard that the test ended early?

  Roan was right. I could pass the simulation portion no problem, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about the first part of the test. There was no chance I’d passed overall.

  The door swung open, and the harness unhooked automatically, releasing back into the seat. “How’d I do?” I asked as I stepped out of the pod.

  The old man handed me a piece of paper as he stared at me with furrowed eyebrows. “We don’t print much out on paper anymore, but I thought you might want to keep this somewhere you could see it. Maybe in your bunk.”

  I wiped my hands on my shorts before taking it. “Did I pass?” I asked as I fumbled with it. Stupid shaking hands. I needed this. It was my only shot.

  There were some lines and question numbers and a bar graph and percentages for each question on the paper, but none of it was making any sense. I flipped it over, but there was nothing on the back. I couldn’t find a total score or percentage. I was exhausted physically from my morning on the job and mentally from the test, and clearly my brain was now kaput.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either.” He looked confused as he glanced from the paper back to me.

  What? “I meant that I can’t tell where my score is.”

  “Judging from your score, I’d think you could figure it out.”

  Was he being frustrating on purpose or was that his natural state? “Does that mean I passed?”

  He took the paper from me. “See these numbers here?”

  I nodded.

  “Those are the questions. Overall point values you got are to the right. There’d be marks over here if you didn’t get something right. This one here?” He tapped a row on the left. “This is your total marks per question.”

  “But it’s empty. Except for these three.”

  “Yes.”

  I skimmed down the paper again. “So you’re saying I only got three wrong?”

  “Yes. Ninety-two percent.”

  I felt the grin start from inside me, filling me up. It was like I was suddenly weightless, floating through space, on my way to someplace better.

  I wasn’t sure how this was possible—I’d guessed on so many of the questions—but this was it. I’d saved myself. I’d bought time. This was everything.

  “You said no one ever passes, so how did I score so high?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never even seen anyone pass it. Been here for two years. And you did it fast, too. Time to spare, even with the time I took off the top. I don’t know where you got your education, but it’s a good one.”

  I closed my eyes. I’d been homeschooled since I got to Albuquerque. It’d been too dangerous to let me go to school. Jorge helped Mom get the books that she requested, and she pushed me to go beyond the minimum. To learn everything I could.

  Thank you, Jorge. Thank you, Mom. You guys just saved my ass big time.

  I gave the man a hug, nearly toppling him over. “Thank you!”

  He laughed awkwardly and patted me on the back. “I didn’t do anything, kid.”

  I stepped back, holding his shoulders as he got his balance. “You let me take the test even though I was late.”

  “You’ll still need approval from Carl Millander before you can officially transfer. He says no, I still get my dessert.”

  “Mister, you can have all the dessert you want. I’ll even put in a good word with Della for more.” Right then that frustrating old fart could ask me for anything, and I’d probably give it to him.

  “You’d really—”


  A throat cleared, and I turned to find a red-haired SpaceTech officer next to a back entrance to the simulation room. His medals glinted in the light, and the way he was pinching his lips together and narrowing his eyes meant that he was pissed. I didn’t recognize him, but I knew this had to be one of Jason’s guys.

  I spun on my heel and started running. Nothing and no one was going to take this away from me. I might be stuck on this godawful planet for now, but I was fixing this completely shitty situation.

  My eyes burned and the smile made my cheeks ache. I wanted to cry because I had real hope.

  This was it. This was my break. My big win.

  For the first time in what felt like eons, I had hope. I had a real, shiny hope burning deep in my soul, and I wasn’t about to let anything or anyone mess that up.

  Chapter Thirty

  I raced through the hallways to the med unit so fast that it felt like I was floating in Zero-G. My heart pounded, and it wasn’t because I was running. It was because I had hope. Shiny, sparkly, golden hope. Almost enough to wash away the horror of that stupid suit.

  The door slammed against the wall as I burst into the med unit. I bent over with my hands on my thighs as I tried to catch my breath. “Audrey?” I said when I had enough air.

  “I’m in here!” She poked her head out of an exam room, and I hurried down the hall to her.

  “You okay? I heard that your suit…” She paused as I entered the room and closed the door behind me, taking in the way I was breathing and the grin across my face. “Your skin is a little red, but you look fine, aside from that crazy grin. It’s kind of freaking me out.”

  “I did it.” I wanted to yell the words but held back. Instead, I held out the paper to her. “I took the test.”

  She snatched the test results from my hand, scanning it from top to bottom. “I can’t… From the way you’re practically dancing with joy and that grin, I know you passed, but I have no idea what this says. My medical degree isn’t helping me at all right now.” She leaned back against the exam table and held the paper out. “Explain.”

  “That makes me feel better. I couldn’t figure it out either.” I grabbed it back and explained the scoring system.

  “Wait. Are you telling me that you only missed three?”

  I nodded, still trying to catch my breath. “Yes.” I knew that I could pass the test, but I didn’t think I could score this well on it, especially once I was taking the test. That part when I had to pick out the right tone was impossible. The tones played so fast with no option to repeat them. And some of the questions didn’t even made sense to me.

  She huffed. “Now I’m a little disappointed that you got three wrong. I mean, why not the full hundred percent?”

  A surprised laugh slipped past my lips. The giddy was fully bubbling over. “I don’t care. All I know is that this is a real shot at me not putting on one of those suits again.” This was honestly the best thing that had happened to me in a really long time. Years. I couldn’t even remember being this excited about something. Even Declan showing up had been a wash of mixed emotions. Hope that maybe we would get away without ever being caught, disappointment that my father wasn’t there, and the anxiety of waiting until we left…

  Passing this test was something that I’d achieved on my own. I earned this result. The pride grew inside of me, making me feel like I was about to explode.

  Being saved by someone was nice, but being able to save myself, that was a rush.

  My skin started to glow, and I didn’t care. There were no cameras in here. No one else but me and Audrey. I was giving myself this moment to really feel happy for once.

  Acing this test was the first step in truly earning my freedom.

  “Congratulations.” Audrey pulled me in for a hug for a second before letting me go. “Okay. Okay. You said you’d do it and you did.” She let out a breath, trying to calm down. “We gotta get you in to see Carl as soon as possible. He’s the one to make it happen for real, and we gotta get it done before Jason finds out about any of this. That means tonight.”

  The giddy feeling started to drain away along with the glow. “There was some SpaceTech guy that showed up wearing a lot of medals after my test, and it freaked me out.”

  “Shit.”

  “I know.” It wasn’t a done deal. Not yet. But I was determined to make this happen. “Can you message Ahiga?”

  She went to the control panel in her wall in the main area. “Done.” She turned back to me. “Might as well get you an IV. Tyler told me your suit failed again, which I can see from the rose tint on your skin.” She pulled a fluid packet from a drawer under the bed and started placing out her supplies.

  “Those suits…” God. I really didn’t ever want to put one on again. Just the idea of it made me want to crawl under the exam table and hide. “Thankfully, I wasn’t far from Bay Four.”

  Audrey placed the IV patch on my arm, and I got up to pace.

  “The happy smile is gone. You okay?” she asked after a minute.

  “Yeah. Just anxious. Every time something good has happened to me recently, something bad follows it. I guess I’m realizing that even if I passed this test, it doesn’t mean that anything will change. It doesn’t mean that mining won’t be hard or just as deadly.” My mind started thinking through every possibility, but even if mining was terrible, I honestly didn’t think it could be worse than icing down the surface.

  But what if it was?

  “Don’t think that way.” Sometimes Audrey surprised me by how well she could read me, but the last couple of weeks had been intense, and she’d been by my side for all of it.

  “I’m trying. I want to believe that—”

  A knock came at the door, and Audrey opened it. “Thanks for coming so quickly,” she said.

  Ahiga stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. “How’d it go?” He looked almost as nervous as I’d felt this morning.

  I handed him my test results.

  “Hmmm…” He said as he read them.

  “You don’t understand the results either?”

  “No, I understand them fine.” He gave me a look with a raised eyebrow. “I just didn’t think you’d be able to pull this off.”

  “Ahiga!” Audrey slapped Ahiga’s arm, but her outrage wasn’t necessary.

  “I wasn’t sure I was going to pass either, especially while I was taking it.”

  Audrey laughed. “Well, you did more than pass. I’ll let you two talk while I go tell Tyler the news.” She pushed the rolling stool to Ahiga on her way out of the room.

  He sat down on the stool and waited for me to talk.

  I thought about sitting on the bed, but I was too anxious to be still. “My next step is convincing Carl,” I said as soon as the door was shut.

  He handed the paper to me. “Come to the officers’ bar around twenty-two hundred. He’s usually had a few by then, but not too many. I’ll leave and swing the door wide. All you have to do is walk in.”

  “Okay. Any tips on how to convince him?”

  Ahiga pressed his lips together for a second. “I bought him a beer couple nights ago, trying to see if I could get him to open up, but he never said a word. He was reading on his implant or playing a game or who knows what. He never even spared me a glance.”

  That didn’t give me a lot of hope for what was coming next. “Thanks for trying.” I wondered if I was going to have any better luck getting Carl’s attention, but all I could do was try.

  “There was an officer—one star, tons of medals, SpaceTech-issue short-cut red hair—that came in after I finished. If Jason doesn’t know about it already, he’ll know soon enough.”

  Ahiga’s face didn’t show any surprise. “We knew this would happen.”

  “I know. I know.” I nervously wrung my hands together as I paced. “But now that I actually passed the test, I need to know that Jason isn’t going to mess this up for me.”

  “There are no guarantees. He could absolutely mess t
his up.”

  I finally sat down on the bed. The last of the hope drained out of me. “Don’t bother pulling your punches.”

  “My being overly optimistic won’t do you any good.” Ahiga crossed his arms as he stared at me. “The guy you described isn’t that high up. I don’t think he could be the one messing with the suit. He doesn’t have the clearance or the knowledge to hack in. There has to be someone else on this base who’s working for Jason, but it does give me a few ideas.”

  I snorted. “Everyone on this base is working for Jason.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He was right. I knew what he meant, but Ahiga’s dose of reality was feeling a little too harsh right now. I wanted to stay in my blissful, happy, I-passed-the-test mood, but it’d soured too much. All that was left was nervous energy. I hopped down off the bed and paced over to the wall, resting my head back as I leaned against it.

  “I think he’s going to be as okay with you doing the mining runs as he was with that mindless lava job.”

  I tilted my head enough to stare at Ahiga sitting on the stool.

  “If killing you in some sort of horrific accident is what he wants, then you’ve just switched the venue to one you can tolerate a little more.”

  “Fantastic.” But that didn’t answer my question. “If anyone can put a stop to this, it’s Jason. One word and I’m back out there, icing down the stupid lava when it’s a job for bots. So what do I do if that happens?”

  “Nothing. You can’t do anything about Jason.”

  That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

  “I haven’t heard word back from any of your father’s people, but I don’t expect to until tomorrow or the next day. Once I do, everything will happen fast. Not much longer to wait when you think about it. So stay calm. Focus on getting Carl to approve you for mining. He does that, it buys you two days at least. It might time out perfectly so you don’t need to ever step foot on Apollyon or mine a single crystal.”

  There was a knock on the door, and Audrey slipped back in. “That was fast,” I said. “What happened?”