Stowaway

by John David Anderson

  She flexed the three digits on her arm that worked, making an almost fist and Leo realized what she meant.

  “That doesn’t seem right,” Leo said. “Wasn’t there somewhere you could go? Someone you could talk to? Aykari? Coalition? The mining corporation?”

  “Right. I’m not sure what all you’ve been through or what you’ve seen, Leo, but I can tell you it isn’t that easy. There’s not a lot of law and order on some of these mining worlds, especially after the ventasium starts to dry up. Doesn’t matter who controls them, you dig down deep enough and you find people take matters into their own hands. And sometimes . . .” She held up her artificial arm and flexed her mechanical fingers again, the one still refusing to budge. “After that, I was damaged goods. Nero kicked me out to the street. For the next two years, I did what I had to to survive. And then I met Baz. He joked that no pirate crew was complete without somebody missing an arm or a leg, and since he wasn’t willing to part with any of his, he took me on, and I’ve been floating on this yellow piss bucket ever since, swiping V and making sure Baz doesn’t get his head blown off.”

  Sort of like Boo, Leo thought. Kicked out. Rejected. Ending up here.

  “And what happened to Nero?” he asked.

  “Funny story,” Kat said. “Two weeks after he took my arm, old Nero broke his neck falling off a balcony.”

  “Wait . . . he just fell?”

  “He didn’t just fall,” Kat said. “He landed too. It’s the landing that gets you.”

  Leo could tell by her tone that was the end of the story. He focused harder on Kat’s titanium hand, poking around the tiny servos and springs, plates and hinges. “There,” he said, pointing to a slightly bent rod half concealed by other pieces. “See right there where it’s just a little out of shape? A pair of needle-nose pliers and we can straighten it out.”

  Kat leaned in to see and her forehead nearly touched Leo’s. “You’ve got good eyes, stowaway,” she said.

  “My dad says I got my mother’s eyes. I don’t quite remember.”

  “Why is that?” Kat asked.

  Leo didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The silence was enough.

  “I’m sorry, Leo,” she said. “I’d like to say it stops hurting after a while, but that’s not true, is it?”

  Leo shook his head.

  The girl opened her mouth to say something else, but snapped it shut when she heard the captain coming through the door. Baz’s face was streaked with sweat and black grease.

  “You two are both still too young to get married,” he said.

  Leo, realizing he was still on his knees and holding Kat’s artificial hand, stood up and took a step back.

  “He was helping me with my hand, for your information,” Kat explained. “Can’t bend my middle finger. It just sticks straight up. See?” She showed him, bringing it right up in his face. Baz raised an eyebrow. Leo wanted to smile but was afraid to. “How’s Skits?”

  Captain Black shook his head. “We had to shut her down to make the repairs. Her tread’s mangled and the shot to her torso damaged her power capacitor so she’s getting these surges, fritzing her neural network. Boo’s working on her now. I’ll go back and help him in a sec.”

  “You know, while she’s out, you should just reprogram her,” Kat suggested. “I’m not saying a complete reboot. Just scale it back a bit. Adjust the personality matrix. At least cut down on some of the drama.”

  Baz shook his head. “She’s growing, Kat. It’s an adaptive algorithm. I don’t want a robot who only does what she’s told. I want one who thinks for herself.”

  Kat rolled her eyes. “How progressive of you. You could have at least fast-forwarded her through the teenage years.”

  “Yeah—some days I’ve wished the same thing about you.”

  Kat showed him the problem she was having with her finger again. This time, Leo did smile. “I’m going to go make my own repairs and try to find something to eat, provided you haven’t given it all away.”

  “Great. You do that,” Baz replied. “Ninja turtle and I need to talk anyway.”

  The captain looked at Leo.

  “Don’t we?”

  Leo’s smile disappeared.

  It was a Saturday afternoon when Earth shook.

  The Fenders were visiting Leo’s aunt for the weekend. His mom’s sister Rebecca lived near Los Angeles, running a small community theater in Pasadena. It was a gorgeous March day minus the spreading gray haze settling across the sky from the offshore platforms—you could find them everywhere now, sucking out ventasium. In mountains, oceans, rain forests, plunging deeper and deeper into Earth, milking it dry. But the California hills were still studded with trees and the breeze coming off the water was delicious.

  Leo remembered the day being unusually balmy for early spring. They were supposed to walk around downtown all afternoon, Leo and his brother, his parents and Aunt Becca, but Leo’s father insisted on taking the boys to the beach instead.

  “What eight-year-old boy wants to go shopping when it’s this gorgeous outside?” he said, kissing Leo’s mom on the cheek and saying that the sisters would have more fun without three grumpy guys tagging along. Leo’s father loved the ocean and wasn’t overly fond of his sister-in-law. And maybe he was right: the ladies would have more fun catching up on their own. His mother wasn’t much of a swimmer, though she could have spent hours spotting hermit crabs with Leo, sifting through handfuls of broken shells and turning to see their steps vanishing behind them. There was a kind of magic in the ocean as well, in how it could make your footprints disappear.

  Leo could still picture the look on his brother’s face that morning, waiting impatiently by the door, so eager to get away that he squirmed out of his mother’s hug. Leo didn’t have a choice. He was too little to wriggle free. His mom kissed the top of his head and made her request—the prettiest one on the beach, she insisted. He begged her not to get ice cream without him. She smiled and said she would never.

  His father drove them to a dark brown stretch of sand studded with rocks and lorded over by seagulls. Leo spent the first hour hurdling waves and the next burying Gareth up to his neck. The plan was to stay half the afternoon and then to meet up with Mom and Aunt Becca for an early dinner, but Dr. Calvin Fender looked to be in no hurry, camped out underneath a rainbow umbrella with his beach hat tipped down to his nose, only his sandy feet sticking out in the sun. All fine by Leo, who didn’t feel the pinking of his shoulders or the wrinkling of his fingertips. He could have stayed on that beach forever.

  Leo had just finished adding seaweed tapestries to the bucket castle he’d built when the warhead bound for the city pierced the clouds. He didn’t see it at first because his head was turned the other way, watching a pelican dip into the water, angling for a catch.

  At that very moment somewhere in the city, Grace Fender was thinking about where she would take the boys for dessert.

  “Wait, who was Shredder?”

  Leo sat in the copilot’s seat across from Black, who had changed shoes again, his flip-flopped feet resting on the console. Leo assumed that the thing they had to talk about was Leo himself, but instead, Baz spent the first five minutes trying to explain the concept of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Leo was having a hard time following it.

  “Shredder was the villain,” Baz repeated. “He was like this evil samurai warlord bent on taking over the world. But then in the thirties’ remake he turned out to be a good guy. And Splinter—he’s the rat, remember, the sensei who raised the turtles—well, his son Thorn became the new bad guy, taking over the Foot Clan and killing his father. It was a good twist. You didn’t see it coming.”

  The third rule of magic, Leo thought. Leo never watched old cartoons. Or the even older cartoons that the old cartoons were based on. He couldn’t understand why the turtles all had Italian names. Or what cowabunga meant. “And how did the turtles learn kung fu, again?”

  “Ninjutsu,” Baz corrected. “And it was radioactivity, obvious
ly. Seriously, I can’t believe you haven’t at least heard of these guys. You are Earthborn, aren’t you?”

  Leo nodded. Earth was still what he thought of when he thought of home. He wondered if Kat felt the same. Maybe to her, home was this ship. Or maybe she didn’t think of herself as belonging anywhere. “I’m from Denver,” Leo said. “Originally.”

  “Brooklyn,” Baz said. “But only for a bit. My father was a pilot. Jets, not starships. We relocated a lot. Never stayed anywhere more than a couple of years. Guess that’s why I can’t sit still now. Always on the move.”

  Probably also has something to do with being wanted for piracy, Leo thought, but he didn’t say it.

  Bastian Black’s fingers tapped on the Icarus’s console, mashing buttons or maybe just playing out some beat that was stuck in his head. “Boo told me what you said about your father. You’ve had a helluva week, kid. Attacked by the Djarik. Dad taken prisoner. Brother shoved you in the cargo hold and sent you into space with us. Then you meet a black-market V dealer and get caught in a shoot-out with a posse of security bots and barely make it out the back door. Probably not what you imagined when you signed up.”

  “Signed up for what?”

  Black pointed to Leo’s shirt. More specifically to the hole where his patch used to be.

  “I didn’t really sign up,” Leo said. “I mean, I did, I guess. But it was mostly my dad.”

  “Tough call, packing up your kids and sticking ’em on a Coalition vessel during the middle of war.”

  “He said it was the right thing to do,” Leo said, rehashing his father’s lines. “He thought he could keep us safe.”

  “Mm. And how’d that work out for you?”

  Leo felt himself shrink, curling up in the chair, arms lassoing his legs, chin buried between his knees. It was as small as he could make himself, but he still couldn’t get away from Bastian Black’s burrowing blue eyes.

  “Forget it. I’m sure he had his reasons. We all have our reasons.” The captain turned back to his controls, this time definitely keying something in. “I’m taking you back to your ship,” he said.

  Leo was sure he’d misheard. “The Beagle?”

  Black nodded. “I’m pawning you back off on your brother. It’s what he gets for trying to pawn you off on me. And I know what you are going to say, so I’ll save you the breath: this isn’t a death sentence. Once you’re back on board, I’ll find a way to notify the Coalition and give them your coordinates, then they can come pick you up.”

  The tone of Baz’s voice suggested he wasn’t sure about the very last part. But Leo was. The Coalition wouldn’t leave one of their own ships with almost a full crew stranded in the void.

  “But you said your have tos and my have tos . . .” Leo began. “I mean, I thought you just wanted to get rid of me.”

  “I am getting rid of you,” Black said. “You belong with your brother. He should have never left you to begin with. Besides, you helped us out of a scrape back there. And then with Skits. That was a sijan.”

  “A what?” Leo asked.

  “It’s a Queleti word. It means a selfless act. I’m not a huge proponent of them myself, but I know one when I see one. I told you to stay on the ship. You didn’t. I get the impression you’re lousy at following orders, which is one thing we have in common at least.”

  Leo didn’t bother to tell him that he almost always followed the rules; only when his orders came from pirates did he feel free to disobey them. Maybe he just didn’t want to think that he really had anything in common with the man sitting across from him, outside of the fact that they were from the same planet.

  “Thank you,” Leo said softly.

  “Don’t thank me. This isn’t a favor, I’m just making us even. And so we are clear: I’m not doing this for your Coalition, your ship, your crew, or your dad. I don’t owe them anything. And after this I won’t owe you anything either. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Leo said. He still wasn’t sure what had changed Black’s mind—if he really was paying Leo back or not—but it didn’t matter. Soon he would be back on board the Beagle, back with Gareth where he belonged. And hopefully not long after that—if Black was true to his word—they would be rescued. Then the Coalition could set about finding and rescuing their father.

  And after that? Leo didn’t allow himself to even imagine what “after that” would look like, but deep down he hoped it meant finding somewhere to settle down. To stay put. Somewhere safe. In other words, finding a home.

  “It’s still going to be a while. That sublight still isn’t fixed so we aren’t at full speed, so why don’t you make yourself useful and go see if Kat found anything worth eating.”

  Leo nodded and turned to go when Baz’s voice stopped him.

  “What was your father’s name again?”

  “Calvin Fender,” Leo said. “Dr. Calvin Fender.”

  “Doctor?”

  “He’s a scientist,” Leo said. “He’s sort of an expert on ventasium.” You know, the stuff you steal from other people. The stuff you tried to steal from us, Leo thought. The whole reason you had to shoot your way out of that hangar to begin with.

  Leo thought he saw a glint of recognition spark in Bastian Black’s eyes at the mention of his father’s name, but one second later the captain shrugged and said, “Never heard of him.”

  Then he pressed a button on the ship’s console and the guitar chords began to rip.

  Our planet. Our fight. Our duty.

  —Coalition Navy Recruitment Center marketing slogan, 2051

  Lost and Found

  SOMETIMES THERE IS NO GOING BACK.

  In the aftermath of the Djarik attack, Leo’s father did what he could to try and make life normal again. The boys went back to school. Gareth started running for his middle school track team, the Westbrook Wildcats, leaving it all on the oval. The hurt and regret, the backward-glancing fear, intensified now by the constant presence of patrol ships—joint forces of human and Aykari both—hovering in the sky. He ran so hard he made himself physically sick. Then he wiped his mouth and got ready for the next event.

  Leo didn’t even try to outrun the pain. He knew he wasn’t fast enough. Instead, he tried to bottle it all, capping it and shelving it indefinitely, hoping to build a wall around it. But everywhere he went, he was reminded of what he’d lost. The war slogans. The news. The discussions in class. The giant vid screens on the sides of the towers replayed footage of that day as part of their military recruitment efforts. It is up to you. Join the Coalition Expeditionary Force and help put an end to the terror that threatens our galaxy. Together we can unite the free planets, defeat the Djarik, and bring a lasting peace.

  Lasting peace. But everywhere you looked, the world was gearing up for war. Factories that had been producing cars and air conditioners began producing transports and torpedoes. Pilots once trained to fly everything from 747s to F-19s were retrained to fly Aykari starfighters and bombers. The number of excavators churning through Earth’s crust seemed to double overnight, extracting the ventasium necessary to power warships across the expanse of space. Leo could look out his bedroom window and see one of those excavators towering in the distance. And when you looked down on Earth from a satellite view, you could zoom in to see the holes they left behind, empty pores in the planet’s skin too deep to fill. Leo passed by one on his way to school, though you couldn’t see it beyond the titanium wall designed to keep people from falling in. If you did, you would probably feel like you were falling forever.

  That’s how Leo felt most of the time anyway.

  Meanwhile his magic paraphernalia gathered dust in his closet, the top hat getting bent under the weight of dirty clothes, the wand that could produce a puff of colorful smoke. Most days he couldn’t even bear to look at it all.

  But his father noticed. One night after dinner, two months after the attack, he asked if Leo would put on a show.

  “Why?” Leo asked.

  “Because I want you to.”


  “But what’s the point?”

  “The point is you’re good at it. And I enjoy watching it. And I think if you try it again, you’ll enjoy it too.”

  “But it’ll still be the same old tricks,” Leo protested. “It’s not as if I’m going to learn any new ones.”

  “And why is that, exactly?”

  Leo didn’t answer. His father knew exactly what he meant.

  Dr. Fender frowned. “I don’t think your mother would have wanted you to just give up on what you love. Now that she’s gone, there’s a lot less magic in the world, which means it’s up to us to fill it. We owe it to her to keep going, Leo. To better ourselves. To better each other. Don’t you think?”

  Leo pictured his mother sitting on the porch, the single blade of grass pressed between her fingers. I see you, my little lion. If she were here, she could teach him the scarf trick. She could show him how to make the ace of diamonds stick to the wall. She could teach him all the rules he hadn’t yet learned. There were magic books, videos, camps, classes—but the truth was, he didn’t want to do it without her. The truth was, he needed her to show him the way.

  Leo’s father sighed. “I know everything seems dark right now. I know you’re angry and sad and confused because I’m all of those things too. But we are going to get through this. And I’m not just talking about your mom, I’m talking about all of it, this whole big mess we’ve been caught up in. We are going to get through it because we are smart, and we are strong, and most important, because we have each other. You, me, and Gareth. We are our own coalition. And you may not feel this way, but I know in my heart that your mother is up there somewhere, watching over us—just like the Aykari watch over us—guiding us, protecting us. But we still have to do our part. And that means using the gifts we’ve been given. Like your talent for pulling quarters out of my ears. So what do you say? Put on a show?”