Leo screamed and leaped backward, banging into the wall. “Hey! Watch it!”
The appendage holding the blowtorch retreated, folding up and back into Skits’s metal middle. “What. The actual. Hell,” she said. “Why did you sneak up on me like that? I could have burned your whole ugly human face off.”
“Skits, please—”
“And where’s Baz?” she continued, head spinning. “Did something happen? Did you do something to him?” Skits let out an electronic gasp. “Did you kill him? Because if you did, I will have no choice but to annihilate you.” The robot advanced a couple of feet.
“What? No. Would you just shut up and listen?” Leo sputtered. “Baz is in trouble. He’s been trying to contact you. He says it’s a code fourteen!”
Those, apparently, were the magic words. No sooner had Leo finished his sentence than something flashed in the robot’s oval eyes and she went tearing down the corridor, knocking Leo into the wall, bouncing on her three uneven treads all the way to the cockpit. Leo recovered his balance and ran after her, catching her hovering over the ship’s controls.
“Are you powering up the ship? Because Baz said something about powering up the ship.”
As if in answer, two different claws emerged from the bot’s body and danced along the console. He could hear the Icarus’s systems coming to life. The cockpit lit up in yellows and blues. In three seconds, the robot whirred around and started back down the length of the freighter, headed toward the boarding ramp, knocking even more things over on her way, including Leo again.
“Wait, where are you going? There are armed security bots down there!”
“I don’t care! Bastian’s in trouble!” Skits yelled. Leo stared after her. Robots were loyal—they were programmed to be—but he’d never seen any bot act like this before.
Skits careened down the ramp. Leo followed, making it halfway before skidding to a stop.
The situation had gotten worse. The two security bots were now four, and they had Skits surrounded, their lasers trained on her. “Where’s Bastian Black?” one of them demanded.
In response, Skits turned her music back on, cranking it up even louder than before.
Then she exploded.
Maybe exploded wasn’t the right word, though there was definitely fire and smoke. Skits’s ever-smiling head spun wildly as every little hatch and compartment in her body opened at once, revealing at least a dozen arms and extensions of various sizes and types. The blowtorch returned, spouting torrents of flame. Pointy appendages shot out like torpedoes, impaling one of the security bots through its exposed mechanical joints. Thick white plumes of smoke poured from Skits’s backside like a never-ending stream of foggy flatulence. One clawed arm gripped a rifle and wrenched it out of the security bot’s hands before it had a chance to fire, while flares shot out of Skits’s head, bursting against the roof of the hangar in a shower of red sparks that sent the other traders, merchants, and pilots running for cover.
It was instant chaos.
And through all of it, the music continued to blare—something oddly appropriate about living in a powder keg—as Skits bellowed like some wounded animal. “I hate you! I hate you all! Die, you hunks of rusty tin!” Within a matter of seconds she somehow had all four of the security bots disabled. Her head swiveled back to Leo. “See. Now that’s how it’s d—”
The energy blast came out of the smoke, hitting the robot square in the chest.
“Skits!” Leo yelled as another blast followed, tearing into her treads. The music stuttered, flared once, then vanished. A thick black plume billowed from her torso.
Leo peered through the haze to see six more security bots advancing on the Icarus, weapons at the ready. Grimsley must have sent everything he had, maybe even borrowed some mechanical muscle from someone else.
One of the sentries raised its rifle, advancing toward Leo, who stood paralyzed on the ramp, his legs refusing to work. Move, he told himself, but he couldn’t. He found himself back on the beach, staring up at the sky, at another black cloud of smoke. Frozen. Even as the foremost guard trained the muzzle of its weapon on him, ready to pull the trigger.
But not before its own head shattered, bursting into a thousand little metal shards. Another blast sent a second robot spinning. The remaining four turned just in time to see a giant Queleti emerge from the smoke, hair rippling, robe flapping. With all four hands he grabbed the nearest robot, lifting it clear off the ground before spinning and smashing it into two of its friends. The fourth turned to fire but didn’t get a shot off before its head was struck by a mechanical fist attached to a mechanical arm attached to a very determined-looking pirate in a smart black uniform.
And bringing up the rear was Baz, both pistols in hand, running and twisting to fire behind him, back at the hangar doors.
“Definitely outstayed our welcome!” Baz shouted.
More energy bolts filled the hangar, reinforcements firing blindly into the smoke that still continued to pour out of Skits’s damaged body.
“What are you doing, Skits? Let’s move!”
“She’s got a busted tread!” Boo shouted back. The Queleti had come up behind the robot, putting all four gorilla-like hands against Skits’s frame, pushing with all of his considerable strength. Her right tread was grinding and sparking, refusing to turn. She started to go in circles.
In a heartbeat, the captain was next to Boo, both of them driving their shoulders into Skits, barely getting her to move forward. Kat dropped in beside them, firing back over her shoulder at the fresh wave of security bots taking cover by the entrance.
Leo looked behind him into the belly of the Icarus, then back at the three pirates pushing their broken companion into the waiting yellow ship.
Find somewhere safe and hunker down. Things could get messy.
Things had definitely gotten messy. Laser fire tore through the hangar. The robot was barely budging. Leo knew what he was told to do. He could hear the voices in his head.
He listened to his gut instead.
“Nurtz!” he hissed again, his boots thudding back down the ramp. Leo squeezed in between the captain and the Queleti, ignoring their questioning looks as he put both hands on Skits’s heated torso, digging in with his heels as best he could.
Finally, something snapped loose or clicked into place because Skits’s right tread started to move again, catapulting her forward and up the ramp. Leo felt a hand on his own back as Baz gave him a push as well. Kat bolted ahead for the cockpit with the captain right behind her, Boo turning and hitting the switch on the ramp just as the posse of robotic guards started to close in.
“Hold on to something,” Baz called over the ship’s coms. “This is going to be rough.”
Leo toppled sideways as the Icarus lifted off. He could feel the slight shudder of rifle shots hitting the hull as he stumbled through the ship to the cockpit, finding Baz in the pilot’s seat, Kat next to him, both of them cursing under their breaths. Outside the cockpit window Leo caught the slight shimmering blue of the electromagnetic field that maintained the artificial atmosphere while allowing solid objects—such as the Icarus—to pass through unharmed.
Just beyond, however, the titanium hangar bay doors were starting to close like a pair of jaws clamping shut. No solid object was getting through those.
“Um,” Leo said.
“I know,” Baz muttered.
“But—”
“I know!”
Leo felt his stomach clench as Baz leaned on the ship’s accelerator, launching the Icarus across the hangar bay toward the ever-narrowing gap, rubbing against a couple of other ships along the way, giving off sparks.
We’re not going to make it, Leo thought. He closed his eyes. He heard the scrape of metal on metal as his head banged hard against the console beside him. He thought of his brother and father. He thought of seashells and snow-covered mountains and the way the pond behind his house would glitter in the sunlight.
He recalled his mother’s smi
le.
And then he heard Captain Bastian Black holler as the Icarus squeezed between the closing metal doors, shooting out into the suddenly beautiful black blanket studded with unknown stars.
And so, in committing this act of terror, the Djarik have left us with no option but to defend ourselves, to defend our planet, and to seek justice for the thousands upon thousands who were lost. So it is that the United Peoples of Earth do hereby join with the Coalition of Planets in declaring war on the Djarik empire and its allies.
—Manan Arya, secretary general of the UPE, 2050
The Ache of Memory
LEO HAD CHEATED DEATH BEFORE.
He thought about it every day. How arbitrary it was, how random. How he’d been spared when so many others hadn’t. How close he’d been when the world went up in flames.
The image was seared into the memory of every human on the planet at the time, branded by melted metal, ingrained through the haunting peal of emergency sirens wailing through the smoke. Across more than fifty major cities scattered all across the globe: Beijing. Osaka. Chicago. Cairo. Lagos and Calcutta. Bangkok and Toronto. Cities packed with office buildings, bridges and museums; cities packed with innocents. In Sydney, Saint Petersburg, São Paulo. Tokyo. Shanghai.
The attack was massive. Dozens of Djarik cruisers jumping to within striking distance, unleashing their barrage, raining missile after missile into Earth’s atmosphere, taking the Aykarian defense forces off guard. The Aykari scrambled their fighters, stopped as many of the incoming warheads as they could, but it wasn’t enough. Those that sneaked through found their targets. Some military installations. A few mining facilities. But mostly urban civilian centers. The idea being to render Earth helpless. To disrupt its steady flow of ventasium. And to send its citizens a message:
Humanity had picked the wrong side.
The friend of my enemy is also my enemy. Never mind that the Aykari had gotten to Earth first, that they had shared their seemingly limitless technology, offering humanity an olive branch in exchange for its precious resources. The people of Earth had made a choice. And they paid steeply for it.
But the Djarik obviously hadn’t studied human history. They didn’t know how resilient humans were as a species. Resilient and with a firm—often bloody—sense of justice. Shock gave way to grief, but it didn’t take long for grief to turn to anger; and a planet that was still trying to find its place in the galaxy suddenly found itself readying to defend it. In the weeks after the attack, every country voted unanimously to join the Aykari-led Coalition, vowing to help rid the galaxy of the Djarik menace.
It wasn’t the first time the whole world had been at war, just the first time it wasn’t fighting with itself.
Leo was standing in the sand when it happened, looking for that perfect shell to bring back to his mother. When the missile struck, there was no sound at first, just the blinding light and the break of the surf against the shore. When the sound did come, its roar drowned out the ocean. It blackened the sky and stole his father’s cries.
But it left Leo. Standing there, looking toward the thick coil of smoke rising up and up, reaching to the atmosphere of an Earth that had been turned to ash and would have to be rebuilt.
Leo Fender cheated death that day, he knew. And not a day went by that he didn’t feel guilty about it.
The moment they were out of range and Baz was certain no ships were in pursuit, the captain set a course and went to the back to help with Skits. Leo could hear the mechanical screaming from the rear of the ship—the robot hollering at Boo to get his paws off her and the Queleti hollering at Skits to stop fidgeting so much. “Try not to crash into anything,” Black said, leaving Leo alone in the cockpit with Kat.
“Close one, huh?” he ventured, not sure if the no-talking rule was still in effect after what had just happened.
“I’ve seen closer.” Kat didn’t even look over at Leo; she was busy inspecting her mechanical arm, working the four-pronged claw open and closed, face pinched with concentration. It seemed as if one of the digits was sticking, refusing to bend. He watched her for a moment. She had beyond Gareth-level focus. Leo wasn’t sure he’d ever met anyone quite so intense.
“I wanted to thank you,” he said. “For sticking up for me back there. With the captain, I mean.”
“I wasn’t sticking up for you. I was calling Baz out on his BS. Besides, I wasn’t lying. You wouldn’t have survived the night on Kaber.” She paused, glanced at Leo. “Though I have to admit, you do have some guts, sneaking past those guards, coming to help with Skits. You’re not entirely worthless. For a stowaway.”
“Thanks,” Leo muttered.
“Sure,” she said, then she tilted her head back and let out a frustrated growl. Leo wondered if it was because of him.
“Everything okay?”
Kat shot him a dirty look. “Why do people always ask if everything’s okay when it’s obviously not?”
“I don’t know. The same reason people say everything’s okay when it’s obviously not, I guess,” Leo murmured.
Kat grunted. It was close to a laugh. Leo slunk down farther in his chair. Outside the cockpit he could see legions of distant stars but no planets. He had no idea where they were going. He was afraid to ask.
“I think I damaged it when I clotheslined that security bot back there,” Kat said gruffly. “The middle finger won’t close.”
“Want me to look at it?”
“You have experience repairing bionic arms?”
Leo shook his head. “Not really. But I sometimes helped the engineers with repairs on the Beagle. Tex—he’s the head engineer—he said I had a knack for fixing things.” Mostly, Leo knew, he had a knack for handing people the tools they asked for, but you could learn a lot just by watching.
“Funny. I have a knack for breaking them,” Kat replied. Then, to Leo’s surprise, she shrugged. “Fine. Just don’t make it any worse.” She held out her claw, resting her arm across her knee. Leo slid out of his chair and knelt down next to her to get a closer look. The girl smelled like smoke and sweat. He peered at the artificial arm, taking in the delicate network of pistons and rods, the little gears and transistors buried underneath. They made robotic limbs with artificial skin, of course—humans had at least perfected that technology before the Aykari showed up—but Kat obviously didn’t care to hide her mechanical side. It made repairs easier, at least; you didn’t have to cut away a layer of fake flesh to get at the inner workings.
Leo inspected the four-fingered claw and the metal forearm it attached to, the whole contraption meeting at Kat’s elbow where he could just make out the thin tendrils of pinkish-white scar tissue fused with her brown skin. Above that, he could see a tattoo of a snake’s head peeking from under her rolled-up sleeve.
“How’d you get it?” he asked.
“The arm or the tattoo?”
“The arm, I guess,” Leo said, though the snake seemed interesting too. His mother had had a tattoo. A flower, just above her ankle. It was blue. She said if he touched it and made a wish it might come true. It never worked.
“I’ve been a thief since I was your age. A pretty good one. Right up until the one time I got caught.” Kat stared at the arm, at the point of connection between metal and flesh. “I was an orphan living in a colony on Andural, this piece of crap mining world in the Mhyrist system. Though I’m not sure you’d really call it living.”
“Never heard of it,” Leo said. If Andural had been in Mrs. Dolson’s hat, nobody pulled it.
“Not a place you’d care to visit. Trust me,” Kat said. “My parents were some of the first colonists to volunteer after the Aykari arrived. They were migrant workers on Earth, farmers, but work was getting harder and harder to come by, so when the recruiters for the mining company came around promising a new life off-world they jumped at the chance to start over.”
Leo had heard this before. Stories of the people Earth had no room or no need for. Those who left more by circumstance than by choice. Co
lonists. Miners. Soldiers who joined the Coalition for the paycheck as much as the chance at getting payback for what the Djarik had done. Not everyone left just because their father made them, though this was at least one thing he and Kat had in common: neither of them had much of a say when it came to leaving home.
“They didn’t get to start that new life, though,” Kat continued. “My parents died in a fire on board the ship before we even got where we were going. Engine malfunction. I was twelve at the time. Hardly old enough to be on my own. Somehow I ended up on Andural in the hands of some whack job caretaker named Nero. Just like the crazy Roman emperor. You know. The one with the fiddle?”
Leo shook his head. He only knew one Roman emperor. The one who got stabbed by all his friends. Talk about your bad days. He gently prodded one of the rods with his finger and Kat winced.
“Sorry,” he said.
The corners of Kat’s mouth hinted at a smile. “I’m just playing with you, ship rat. It’s all metal. I can’t feel a thing.”
Leo went back to his prodding. “So Nero . . .”
“Was drunk half the time. Hungover the other half. But he fed me. Clothed me. Protected me. Made sure I had a bed and a roof. And I earned my keep through stealing whatever I could from the other colonists. Money. Weapons. Food. If we couldn’t use it ourselves, we turned around and sold it. I learned to pick pockets, locks, easy targets. Nero taught me to fend for myself . . . and where to kick someone to make sure they go down and don’t come back up.”
“You mean the—” Leo self-consciously looked down.
“Yeah, it’s not the same for every species, just so you know,” Kat said. “For the Zendaru, for example, it’s actually their armpits.”
“Armpits? But how does that even . . . I mean, how do they . . .” Leo couldn’t remember ever having seen a Zendaru before, but he started to get an image in his head regardless. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”
“Suit yourself,” Kat continued. “Anyway, Nero knew how to find someone’s weakness and exploit it. Eventually, I realized he was doing the same to me, just using me for his own personal gain. So I decided I’d take back everything I earned for him. Unfortunately, everything I knew, he taught me. He saw me coming and caught me stealing from him. And then I paid for that too.”
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