It was the last recording anyone had of her and Leo kept it on his wrist and played it every day, just so he’d never forget—her hair streaked with threads of auburn, her butterscotch eyes. Her calming voice tinged with melancholy. I see you.
Leo watched the holo three times until his nerves somewhat settled, his breathing evening out. In normal light the holos appeared lifelike, but here in the darkness the projection gave off a faint glow, enough that Leo could get a better look at his surroundings. Enough for him to realize that there simply wasn’t enough room for two in the compartment, not with the four large containers still housed there.
Though that didn’t make him any less angry at Gareth. So they both couldn’t have fit; that just meant neither of them should have tried.
Leo stood up as well as he was able and looked around for something useful—a release mechanism, an emergency latch. Gareth had said to wait until the ship landed and then make his escape, but what if he couldn’t get out? What if he really was stuck in here forever? Leo cursed his brother’s name again and pounded on the metal panel above him in frustration.
Moments later there came a pounding from the other side.
Leo froze, breath held, listening. The response was followed by another sound—a bolt sliding, a latch undone.
There was a sudden crack of light, and then a flood of it.
Leo shielded his eyes and curled back into a ball as the panel above him slid away. He blinked through the sudden brightness to see something huge and metal leaning over the edge of the compartment looking at him. The thing was covered in colorful stickers, at least three appendages of various sizes jutting from its torso. It was clearly a robot of some kind.
Leo screamed.
The robot screamed.
The compartment door slammed closed again.
Leo crouched there, back in the shadows, his inhaler clutched in his right fist. Had that been his one chance at escape? If so, he’d missed it. What, exactly, was that thing? Leo had some experience with mechanicals—there were two maintenance bots aboard the Beagle—but he’d never heard one shriek like that before. And what were all those stickers plastered across it? All those logos and advertisements. Like a billboard on treads.
Leo didn’t have long to consider his next move before he heard muffled voices coming from above. The hatch slid open again, revealing a slightly more familiar but no less frightening face framed with two horns.
The alien looked down at him with his large ox eyes. Still dressed in his robe, his horns looked less deadly up close, but the rest of him seemed just as dangerous if not more so. Next to him, the steel contraption Leo had gotten only a glimpse of moments before was poking the beast with one of its metal arms, which didn’t seem like a good idea. Leo would never poke something like that with anything.
“See. And you thought I was making it up!”
It was definitely a robot. But where most bots Leo’d seen were sleek and polished, carefully manufactured so as not to show their seams, this thing was a wild conglomeration of spare parts seemingly stacked together at random: a set of three tracks at its base, all different sizes, causing the machine to tilt awkwardly to the left, a round metal drum that served as its body with a dozen compartments, and a head with sensors for eyes and a hole the size of a dime where the scream had originated. It looked to Leo like a clunky metal snowman, an oversized science fair project cobbled together by a ten-year-old in his parents’ garage, each of its parts a slightly different color, sloppily welded together. Now that he wasn’t being screamed at, Leo could read some of the stickers that had been plastered to the robot’s frame: Gone Fishin’, Just Do It, Schwarz 4 Prez, My Zombie Ate Your Honors Student, plus a giant rainbow peace symbol above its center tread. Someone had slapped on a huge black-and-white grin full of painted-on teeth just below the robot’s external speaker. Looking at it made Leo shudder.
“This is what you were screaming about?” the alien said, pointing at Leo pressed into a corner. “You said there was a vicious monster hiding in here.”
“Well, it’s not like I had time to run a scan on him or anything,” the robot protested, its voice tinny and grating. “And how do you know he’s not vicious? Look at him!”
Leo struggled to find his voice. I’m not vicious, he wanted to say, but it only came out as a cough and a wheeze.
Two of the alien’s four hands began to tug on the ends of its curved horns. “Human,” it said. “Must have snuck on board back at that cruiser.”
“A stowaway. Let’s just lock it back in there and pretend we didn’t see it,” the robot suggested, its yellow-bulbed eyes blinking, its hideous smile never changing. “It will die of hunger eventually and then we can just jettison the body.”
“How’s he going to die of hunger? He’s in there with the rest of our food. Sometimes you don’t make any sense.”
“I said eventually.”
The robot started to close the door.
“No!” Leo yelled, finally finding his voice. “No. Please. Don’t leave me in here. I’m not dangerous. I promise.” He stumbled, trying to think of what to say next. The plan—Gareth’s plan—had been to wait until the ship landed and then sneak away without the pirates ever knowing he was on board.
Obviously Leo needed a new plan.
He ransacked his brain for everything he knew about pirates, both the space-faring and sea-faring kind. “I demand . . .” he began, but then corrected himself. “No. Sorry. I request to be taken to see your captain.” After all, wasn’t there some rule about that? A pirate’s code? Honor among thieves? Leo was sure he’d seen it in a movie once.
The robot and the alien looked at each other. The alien named Boo reached over and touched a button on the bot, activating some kind of ship intercom. “Kat? Can you come to the aft storage compartments, please. We have a minor situation,” he said in his soft, purring voice.
“You know I don’t like it when you press my buttons without permission,” the robot said, batting at Boo with its retractable arm.
“Everything presses your buttons.”
“Yes, but you shed and the hair gets in my sockets. It’s annoying.”
“You think everything’s annoying.”
“But you are especially annoying.”
Their bickering was interrupted by the sound of steps along the corridor, a third voice, also already familiar to Leo, calling to them. “Don’t you dare say you accidentally reversed the solid waste ventilation pump again. If so, I’m not helping you clean up the cra . . .” The voice trailed off.
Leo saw the black boots first and then the uniform with its gleaming brass buttons, followed by the sharp features and dark eyes of the young woman, the one named Kat, looking down on him. She stared at Leo for a moment as if she were hoping he was a hologram or just a figment of her imagination, then she turned and gave the other two an icy stare. “Please tell me this wasn’t either of your ideas.”
The robot swiveled its head emphatically.
“We just found him,” Boo said. “Guess he snuck aboard at the last stop.”
The girl in the black uniform crouched, close enough that Leo could see a scar on her chin, starting low and curving upward, reaching her bottom lip, which was turned downward in a look of minor annoyance.
“What’s your name, ship rat?”
“Leo,” he managed to cough out.
“Leo. Terrific. Well, Leo, I’m Katarina Corea. This is Boo and the only one smiling because she can’t do otherwise is Skits. The ship is called the Icarus and you are trespassing on it, which is a crime punishable by death as far as we’re concerned. So before we open that compartment and blow you back out into space, you’ve got one chance to give us one highly convincing reason why we shouldn’t.”
Leo looked at the floor beneath him, the sheath of metal separating him from oblivion. “I didn’t mean to,” he protested, speaking quickly, tongue tumbling over his words. “It was my brother’s idea. I swear. He made me.” Leo couldn’t decid
e what to focus on, the girl’s eerily unblinking eyes or the deadly pistol strapped to her side. He kept jumping from one to the other.
“And which compartment is your brother hiding in?” she asked.
“He’s not. He left me.”
“Jerk move,” the robot said.
“Yeah . . . I mean, no,” Leo stammered. “He said that we should try to get away. He was afraid the ship, the Beagle, that it wasn’t going to make it. And our father . . . I swear it wasn’t my idea. Please.” Leo glanced down at his feet, at the hatch his brother pushed him through. “You have to believe me. I’m not dangerous. I swear. I’m just a kid. I—”
Leo stopped talking when the girl raised her hand, the artificial one with the four cold titanium fingers, each ending in sharp points. “Okay. Got it. Good speech.” She looked up at her companions. “You two go scan the other compartments for more Coalition parasites that may or may not be related to this one. Let me know if you find anything.”
“You’ve got it, boss,” Boo said, giving the girl a salute before turning to follow the hodgepodge robot down the corridor.
“And you,” the girl said, pointing to Leo, “had better crawl out of there before I change my mind and send you floating. Also, I better not find out that you’ve eaten any of our food while you were down there or, I swear, I will stick my arm down your throat and play the claw game with your stomach.”
She opened and closed the metal digits of her bionic hand, still frowning, and Leo imagined her reaching in and finding the ficken nuggets he’d had earlier, the ones he felt like he was about to lose all over his boots.
“Gareth, what have you done?” Leo whispered to himself.
And what am I supposed to do now?
Leo wished he was back in the storage compartment. It was dark and cramped and uncomfortable and nearly gave him a panic attack, but it was better than being led to see a pirate captain with a bounty on his head by a girl who had just threatened to shove her metal arm down his throat.
At least he wasn’t being led at gunpoint. Apparently, the girl named Kat agreed with Leo that he wasn’t all that dangerous. In fact, she kept her back to him. He shuffled behind her, careful not to get too close, taking everything in, keeping a sharp eye for possible hiding places in case he could somehow slip away. Not that he could hide for long. The robot—Skits—could easily sniff him out with its scanners. There was nowhere for him to go.
Despite its odd shape and yellow paint job, the Icarus was like any other ship in its guts. Any old ship, at least. Tight corridors with metal ladders and overhanging conduits. Blinking lights and hissing jets of steam. Dangling wires that looked like they really should be connected to something. Everything was rusted, bent, or broken. The only things that shone on board were the girl’s buttons and boots.
“I like your ship,” Leo mumbled.
“This ship is trash,” the girl said back. “Black got it from a smuggler who owed him a favor. He sunk most everything he had into repurposing it, and sinks most everything we get into keeping it running. But it flies. Most of the time. That’s something, I guess.”
Leo didn’t know that pirates ever did favors for anyone. “And you call it the Icarus?” He had never heard the word before. Could be alien in origin, he thought, even if its captain is human.
“It’s a myth. A cautionary tale. Something about a boy who tried to fly where he wasn’t supposed to. It got him killed.”
Leo swallowed hard. He was pretty sure she was just making that up to scare him. If so, it worked.
“Are you the first mate?” Leo thought back to the alien’s salute. She evidently outranked Boo. And probably everyone outranked the robot. In the Coalition everyone had a rank except the robots.
“I’m nobody’s mate,” Kat said. “And I really think it’s in your best interest to stop talking.”
Leo stopped talking.
He silently studied the girl instead. Black hair still in its braid. Weapon holstered at her side. Her arm—the artificial one—looked to be top-of-the-line tech, though there were no cosmetics, no skin coverings; she made no attempt to hide the fact that it was made of metal. The girl carried herself with a confidence that made her seem older than she probably was. She was lithe, like Gareth. Gareth’s leanness, Leo knew, came from running. No doubt this girl had been running for part of her life too. She was a pirate, after all.
As they approached the front of Icarus, Leo could hear music playing, could feel it pounding through the metal walls. Rock music. He didn’t recognize the song, just the sound of electric guitar chords being crunched and someone scream-singing about love and pain and death. Leo’d never been into music; that was more Gareth’s thing. His father only listened to the classics—Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Drake. Whatever Bastian Black was listening to, he obviously liked it loud.
The girl activated the door and the music got even louder.
Leo stepped—pushed was more like it—into the ship’s spacious cockpit to find the man from the wanted notice sitting in the pilot’s seat with his back to them, drumming his fingers along the console. The music rattled Leo’s teeth.
“Captain,” the girl said sharply.
The man continued to drum.
“Captain!” she said louder. “Baz! We have company!”
A finger reached out and casually flipped a switch, killing the guitar mid-solo as Bastian Black twisted around in his chair and took Leo in. An initial expression of confusion quickly morphed into a sly smile, as if he knew Leo’s entire story already.
“Captain Black,” the girl began, “allow me to introduce the latest in a string of mishaps caused by your terrible decision-making. This is Leo. Skits found him hiding in one of the storage compartments.”
The captain leaned forward to get a better look, still smiling. Leo didn’t like that smile. There was way too much hidden behind it.
“Leo. Like Leonardo?”
“I guess,” Leo said.
“The painter or the ninja turtle?”
Leo had at least heard of the painter. “Ninja turtle?” he questioned.
“Heroes in a half shell? Turtle power? Are you serious? You are human, aren’t you?”
Leo nodded.
“Know what—just forget it.” The captain continued to drum his fingers against his leg, the music still playing in his head. He didn’t look anything like a ship’s commander, though admittedly Leo had gotten used to Captain Saito’s straitlaced, tight-cuffed Coalition uniform and stiff-shouldered poise. Black still wore his blue jeans and Dr Pepper T-shirt, but he’d removed his holsters and traded in his sneakers for flip-flops—blue ones with little yellow flowers on the thong. They made him look less intimidating, but Leo knew better: this man was wanted. He was an enemy of the Coalition. Nothing he said could be trusted.
“So you’re from the ship we just boarded?” Captain Black asked. “The Basset?”
“Beagle,” Leo mumbled. He looked out the cockpit, hoping faintly to catch a glimpse of something familiar, a planet, another ship, anything. But there was only emptiness. He had no idea how far they’d already gone, how much distance was already between him and Gareth. Any amount was too much.
“Beagle. And before that, what? Mining colony? Outpost? Military base?”
“Earth,” Leo answered.
“Ah. The motherland. No place like home, am I right, Kat?” Bastian Black clicked his heels together three times for no apparent reason. At least, not apparent to Leo.
“If you say so,” the girl replied. “I don’t really remember.”
“Right. Any weapons?”
“No weapons. Just an annoying habit of asking questions,” she replied. “And going where he’s not wanted, obviously.”
“Please, Captain Black,” Leo interjected. “It wasn’t my idea. My brother . . .” Leo paused, picturing Gareth standing below him, a meter away, just out of reach, closing the door on him. “He put me on here. He told me to wait until the ship landed and then sneak out and go g
et help. That’s all.”
“Help. You mean someone from the Coalition?” Kat asked.
“Well . . . yeah,” Leo said. Who else would he possibly go to for help?
“So you could turn us in?” she pressed.
“No! Nothing like that. Just for a rescue. I swear. It has nothing to do with you. You weren’t even supposed to know I was there!”
Leo watched the captain’s face. He looked like maybe he believed it.
The girl, clearly, did not. “Or maybe,” she said, “you thought you’d be a Coalition hero. Sneak on board. Gain our trust. Wait till we were all asleep, then take our weapons and use them to hold us prisoner so you could turn us in yourself.”
“What? No!” Leo said, recoiling. “I’m just a kid. I don’t even know how to fly a ship. And I’ve never shot anyone.”
Kat and Baz exchanged a look. “You were twelve the first time?” he asked her.
“Ten, actually,” Kat said. “But it was only in the leg. Just to slow him down enough to pick his pockets. And just for the record, this? This right here?” She waved a titanium hand at Leo. “This just proves my point. It proves all my points, actually.”
Bastian Black shrugged. “You’re the one who said we should take things.”
“I meant we should take something of value. Besides, we didn’t take him. He snuck on. So, what now? You want me to . . . you know?” Kat made a motion with her head. A little backward jerk. Bastian Black raised an eyebrow, clearly not getting it. “You know . . . ,” she said, making a lot more motions now, her hands twisting something imaginary, then opening something, like an airlock, then pushing something—or somebody—through that airlock into deep space.
Black got it finally.
So did Leo.
He shook his head, spitting out words as fast as he could. “Please. I’m not dangerous, I swear. Just take me with you. Let me get help. You can drop me somewhere and take off. I won’t tell anyone about you, I promise. The Djarik took my father. Gareth is the only family I have left. I need to rescue him. To rescue all of them.” Leo could feel the tears forming and blinked them away.
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