Stowaway

by John David Anderson

  “Or just get stranded in another part of space.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Gareth snapped. “It’s better than sitting around here doing nothing!”

  Leo stared at his now empty plate. He hadn’t meant to make his brother mad. Gareth was right. It was better than just sitting here, waiting to see if the food or the power supply ran out first, or if the damaged hull would just split at the seams, sucking all the oxygen out into the void. They were barely staying afloat out here, and Leo knew it. They all knew it.

  If only Dad were here, Leo thought. He would know what to do.

  Gareth put his fork down, leaning across the table to get Leo’s attention. “Hey.”

  Leo lifted his chin, just a little.

  “Listen to me. We’re going to get out of this. I’m going to find a way to keep you safe. Do you understand?”

  Gareth reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a silver foil wrapper. Leo instantly recognized it by the shape. “I thought there wasn’t anymore,” he said.

  “I thought so too,” Gareth answered. “But I helped Officer Ridley patch up some ducts this morning and he gave it to me.” He slowly peeled back the silver foil, revealing the precious hunk of chocolate underneath, only slightly discolored around the edges. “It will get the taste of ficken out of our mouths at least.”

  Leo watched Gareth take the chocolate between his fingers, ready to snap it in two when the sound of boots in the corridor outside the mess hall made them both freeze. He followed his brother to the door to see members of the Beagle’s crew running toward the bridge.

  “What’s going on?” Gareth asked.

  “A ship,” a voice called back. “We’ve spotted another ship. It’s coming our way.”

  “Djarik?” Leo guessed, hoping he was wrong.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Coalition?” Gareth called out, but he got no response.

  Leo looked up at his brother. Gareth’s wide eyes were a perfect match for his own. They were both thinking the same thing.

  They were saved.

  The pirates of today are not so different from the romanticized figures from our own sordid human history, the Blackbeards and Captain Kidds. Yes, they pilot spaceships instead of schooners, fire torpedoes instead of cannonballs, wield energy blasters instead of flintlocks, but they are still misfits and miscreants, resorting to thievery and violence in their quest for fame and fortune—or simply as a way to survive.

  —Dr. Geoffrey Harmon, Scurvy Dogs in Outer Space: Piracy in the Modern Age, 2053

  The Ones Left Behind

  LIKE EVERY OTHER TEN-YEAR-OLD KID HE’D EVER met, Leo was fascinated by outer space.

  Right up until the moment his father told him that’s where they were going. Because that’s when Leo realized he wasn’t coming back.

  Back to the house on Briarwood Lane. Redbrick front with a fireplace that still burned actual wood and doors you had to open by hand. An unmotorized swing set in the backyard next to a hydroponic garden that produced plump tomatoes and bloodred strawberries nurtured by a sun that still managed to pierce the polluted haze layered thick by the excavators working around the clock a hundred miles away. The driveway, cracked and colored with chalk. It was the house Leo grew up in. The house where he lost his first tooth, tucking it under his pillow in exchange for a crisp ten-dollar bill. The same house where his mother once burned Thanksgiving dinner so badly it set off the smoke alarm.

  It was the only home he’d ever known.

  Still, Leo might have gone quietly if it weren’t for the cat. A charcoal-colored bundle of fur and mischief named Amos who had more toes than normal. He was still a kitten when Leo had been born, and the two had grown up side by side.

  Dr. Fender waited till the last minute to deliver the news, knowing it would break Leo’s heart. “I’m sorry, Leo. No pets allowed on board.”

  “No. No way,” Leo said, shaking his head for emphasis. “He can come with. He can sleep in my bunk with me. He can eat my leftovers. He won’t be any trouble. I promise.”

  “There are rules. Besides, how’s he going to chase birds on board a star cruiser? He’ll be happier here, don’t you think?”

  “I think we’d all be happier here,” Leo protested. “I don’t see why we even have to go!”

  What followed was pouting. Crying. The slamming of a bedroom door. An hour later, ten-year-old Leo, red-faced, defeated, slipped out in search of Amos, finding the cat happily napping in the backyard. He curled up next to it and scratched its scruff, eliciting a satisfied purr.

  He knew why. His father had explained it. How his ship had literally come in. How the Aykari recognized his contributions to advancing the practical applications of ventasium and offered him a commission as a science officer aboard a vessel bound for other planets suspected of having significant deposits of the precious stuff. How this was his chance—their chance—to contribute to the Coalition’s mission: the promise of peace and stability, not just on Earth but across the entire galaxy.

  And Leo understood, sort of. But that didn’t mean he had to like it. In fact, he swore not to.

  That evening, Amos was deposited into the wrinkled hands of Mrs. Tinsley, the next-door neighbor, who already had two cats of her own and was “too old to be shootin’ off into outer space anyhow.” Instead, she and Amos would just curl up in that rocking chair and wait for the sky to fall, she said.

  Leo told her he’d rather stay and watch the sky fall too.

  His father told him to go and pack his suitcase.

  They bolted toward the bridge, Leo doing his best to keep stride with his brother, heart hammering, already wheezing from the effort, until he saw Gareth pull up just outside one of the three entrances to the bridge, peering in. Leo squeezed his head in beside his brother’s to get a better view.

  There stood Captain Saito and most of the crew, each member wielding whatever they could find to use as a weapon: pipes, knives, wrenches. Tex held a blowtorch in his giant blue fists. Lieutenant Berg held a length of chain. They looked like one of those Earth gangs from a hundred years ago, the kind that would rumble in parking lots. The Djarik raiding party had stripped them of their real weapons, taking them along with the ventasium cores. Only Captain Saito still had a gun, an old-fashioned pistol—bullets, not energy bolts. An artifact from another age.

  The crew made a wall, shoulder to shoulder with their captain at the fore. Leo was about to join them when Gareth grabbed a fistful of shirt, pulling him back.

  “Stay right here. Out of sight.”

  “But we should—”

  “No. Stay put.”

  That’s when it hit him—what his brother already knew: this wasn’t a rescue ship. This wasn’t his father, somehow escaped from his Djarik captors, returning with help. If so, Captain Saito wouldn’t be guarding the bridge with an antique handgun and a wrench-wielding posse of desperate crewmates. “You sure it’s not the Djarik?” Leo fretted.

  Gareth didn’t have an answer, but one came in the form of a booming voice, echoing down the halls. “Look at this. A welcome party.”

  Definitely not Djarik. The translator chip implanted just behind Leo’s ear did a fair job of turning alien speech to English, but you could always tell when it was filtered through the translator. No, the voice Leo heard was a human speaking Leo’s own tongue.

  What he saw stepping through the main corridor onto the bridge was, in fact, two humans, walking side by side. And just behind them . . .

  “What is that?” Leo whispered.

  Leo had come face-to-face with Aykari and Djariks. Terratrins, Jorl, and the Edirin. He’d seen holos and vids of dozens of other alien species. But the thing towering behind the two human intruders wasn’t part of Leo’s year-long unit on alien cultures. He surely would’ve remembered reading about this: a beast with a short snout on an ox-shaped head with two curled, ram-like horns on either side. A thick neck led to a hulking body, gorillian in bulk and covered in a thick coat o
f mottled gray and brown fur. The creature walked slightly hunched on massive legs, and had shrewd yellow eyes too small for its face.

  At the very least, Leo would have remembered the arms. All four of them.

  The creature was covered in a robe, a dingy white, with sleeves for its many appendages. The robe almost made the hulking creature comical, and the way the alien scratched the back of its head with its lower left hand gave the impression that it had little interest in being there.

  Leo’s eyes darted back to the two humans, dressed much differently from their four-armed companion. The dark-skinned female, who couldn’t have been too much older than Gareth, wore a stiff black tunic that stretched up to her chin, brass buttons snapping it together, black trousers, and knee-high boots that clicked along the floor. A holster on her belt held a sleek-looking silver pistol, matching the silver of the cape that came down over only one shoulder, concealing most of her right arm. But it was the girl’s left arm that caught Leo’s attention. Whereas the creature behind her had limbs to spare, half the girl’s left arm was missing, replaced by a titanium prosthesis that started at her elbow and ended in a wicked-looking four-pronged claw, all metal, no skin. Her glossy black hair was pulled into a complicated braid that pendulated as she walked.

  She had to be the one in charge. It couldn’t possibly be the man standing beside her, wearing raggedy blue jeans with patched knees and a pair of filthy high-top sneakers. He was older—close to Leo’s father’s age. His burnt-orange hair was cropped short and tight. He wore a light leather jacket over a maroon-colored T-shirt that said Dr Pepper in slanted script. The name sounded familiar. Something from an old song maybe? Like the girl next to him, he was packing heat, two pistols riding in holsters on his hips. Only the monster in the bathrobe was unarmed, though Leo realized that wasn’t the best choice of words.

  Leo knew immediately who they were. Or at least what they were.

  Carrying weapons but wearing no uniforms or insignias. Clearly not Djarik and definitely not Coalition. Boarding a ship without permission. And sauntering right onto the bridge like they owned the place.

  They could only be pirates.

  Leo started to say as much to Gareth, got out the “Pi—” before his brother’s hand clamped over his mouth.

  Captain Saito kept her weapon pointed at the floor, her finger resting beside the trigger. Against a fully armored Djarik marauder, bullets were a distraction at best, but a human in a tattered old T-shirt was a different story. Apparently the three intruders thought so too because they paused just inside the entry, the alien still scratching its head, its fur rippling.

  The commander of the Beagle got right to the point. “I am Captain Saito of the Coalition Expeditionary Forces; this is my ship and you are intruders. I order you to set down your weapons immediately.”

  The woman with the shoulder cape grunted. The man made a face as if he was considering the request before shrugging.

  “I have a counteroffer, Captain Saito of the Coalition Expeditionary Forces. How about you put down that fossil of yours before you blow another hole in your hull and we have a friendly conversation like civilized human beings.” The man’s voice was cool and composed, any threat concealed in the holsters at his sides and the still-bored-looking giant standing behind him. “Well, most of us, anyways,” he added.

  Leo studied all three of them, trying to gauge who was the most dangerous. Not the sloppily dressed man with the crooked smile. It was either the claw-handed girl with the annoyed look on her face or the hulking apelike bruiser in the bathrobe. Regardless, there were only three of them—against a crew of nearly forty. The Beagle had strength in numbers, but pirates were pirates, and if everything Leo had heard was true, they would sooner just take what they wanted rather than ask for it. Just like the Djarik. Leo knew the captain wouldn’t want to risk the lives of any more of her crew. She would talk her way out of this if possible.

  “Who are you? What are your intentions?” Saito asked, her voice as steady as the hand holding her gun.

  The man in the sneakers scratched his chin. “If we’re being perfectly honest, I could really go for an ice-cold beer right about now, but I’m guessing by the state of your ship, that you’re probably all out, so—”

  “We want your V,” the girl with the robotic arm interrupted, earning her a dirty look from the man beside her.

  “I was getting to that,” he hissed.

  “No, you weren’t. You were trying to be charming and witty and failing.”

  “I wasn’t failing.” The man turned and looked at the alien in the robe. “You think I’m charming and witty, don’t you?”

  The creature shrugged its massive shoulders. It appeared to have only two of them. Two shoulders, four armpits, lots of fur and teeth.

  The girl focused her dark eyes on Captain Saito. “Ventasium,” she repeated even more firmly.

  “You’re too late,” Captain Saito replied. “The Djarik attacked us four days ago. Took every core we had. They crippled the ship, injured several members of our crew, took one of us captive, and left the rest stranded.”

  “See? I told you,” the girl hissed at the man.

  “Yes, but I didn’t listen to you,” he retorted. “Because at some point . . . eventually . . . I know you’re going to be wrong, and I want to take advantage of it. Besides, she could be lying.” He looked back at Captain Saito. “Do you know who I am, Captain?”

  “I know what you are,” Saito spat, her eyes narrowing. “You’re pirates. Worse still, human pirates. Parasites feeding off your own kind, though you’re obviously not very good ones if you have to pick an already crippled ship to steal from.”

  “Not very good ones—” The man shook his head and looked at the other two members of his crew. He reached for one of the pockets of his jacket and Captain Saito raised her weapon level with the man’s chest. In a flash the girl with one arm had one of her own pistols unholstered, pointed back at the captain.

  The man put his hands up. “It’s all right. I just want to show you something.” He slowly removed a chip from the pocket and pushed a button. Instantly the space between the pirates and the Beagle’s crew was filled with a hologram of a man’s face. Wry smile. Gaunt, stubbled cheeks. Thinning ginger hair. It was a Coalition bounty notice. Leo had seen them flashed on the news feeds. The text underneath offered a reward of eight thousand pentars for the capture of someone named Bastian Daedalus Black—wanted for piracy and treason. Eight thousand pentars was a freighter full of money.

  Captain Saito’s eyebrows cinched. She looked at the holo again and then back at the man holding it.

  Bastian Black grinned. “I must not be too terrible a pirate if my head’s worth eight k’s. And that’s just what your precious Coalition is offering. There are others who would probably pay more.” The girl beside him coughed. Bastian Black ignored her. “I don’t think you would want to test someone with such a dangerous reputation. So I’m going to ask you one more time: Where’s the V?”

  Captain Saito returned the pirate’s stare. “If we had any ventasium, do you really think we’d be sitting here waiting for some scudlicker like you to waltz in and take it?”

  The girl in the black uniform snickered.

  “Oh, so she’s funny?”

  The girl holstered her weapon with a sigh. “Are we finished here?”

  Bastian Daedalus Black hung his head for a moment, looking like a kid who’s just been told he can’t have dessert. He looked back at the captain of the Beagle, arms spread. “Fine. Obviously you’ve got a lot you’re dealing with already, so we’ll just get out of your hair and let you get back to it.”

  The man from the wanted notice turned his back on Captain Saito and her pistol, his two companions following his lead. Leo shivered with relief. His first ever encounter with pirates and the whole crew had come out unscathed. Maybe all the stories he’d heard about bands of cutthroat brigands from worlds that had rebelled against the Coalition, ravaging its ships and
terrorizing their crews, had been exaggerated. These three seemed content to leave empty-handed.

  Leave.

  It hit Leo suddenly what was happening. It must have hit Captain Saito at the same time because she hollered “Wait!” and stepped quickly after them, her weapon falling to her side. “Wait! Please!”

  The three intruders stopped and turned.

  “Please,” she repeated. “We need your assistance. We’ve been stranded. We have no engines. No communications. No defenses. We have injured crew. Limited supplies. If you could just take some of us, any of us. To go get help. To arrange for rescue—”

  Bastian Black raised his hand, cutting her off.

  “You must have missed the part where I introduced myself. I am Bastian Black, wanted pirate. We are not in the rescuing business; we are in the taking whatever we want business. You were just fortunate enough not to have anything worthwhile. Unfortunately.”

  “But we could find some way to repay you,” Captain Saito offered, stepping closer, her voice thick with desperation. “The Coalition would compensate you for our safe passage, I’m certain of it.”

  Bastian Black laughed. “And I’m certain that the moment I dropped you in Coalition hands my own hands would be bound behind my back and I’d be escorted to my own tidy little cell. Don’t worry, Captain, if you’re really that important to them, they will come find you themselves. And if not, well then . . . welcome to the universe. It mostly sucks.”

  Captain Saito continued to plead. “Fine. Forget passage. Fuel. Spare parts. Supplies. If we could just get our communications fixed—”

  Bastian Black’s head dropped, cutting her off again. And in that moment, Leo thought maybe they were saved. The man was human, after all. Surely he wouldn’t turn his back on others from his own planet. Not when their situation was so desperate.

  Leo was wrong.

  “Sorry, Captain,” Bastian Black said, pointing to the patch on her uniform. “You picked your side.” He turned his back to her once more.