Stowaway

by John David Anderson

  But there was a third. One the Aykari had not anticipated.

  Revolt.

  The planet Djar was not quite like Earth, its atmosphere thinner, its water scarcer, its people hardier than humans. But just like Earth, the layers deep within the planet’s crust held riches, and the Djar people had only just begun to realize their own world’s potential by the time the Aykari arrived.

  The Aykari did not expect the Djarik to resist. So many other planets had simply bowed in awe, thankful that the Aykari had come in peace. But the Djarik refused to bow, to accept the sacrifice of their world. Instead, they rose up, expelling the Aykari from their planet. And then from their system and the systems surrounding it.

  And what started as a revolution became a war. One that stretched across the galaxy.

  A war that found its way to a much smaller rock orbiting a yellow dwarf star and hiding its own cache of resources. An unassuming planet lorded over by a nearsighted species that hadn’t even colonized its one and only moon.

  Except this time the Aykari had learned from their mistakes. They had studied humans. Their warlike nature. Their capacity for revenge. They needed the planet’s stores of ventasium, yes, but they needed allies as well, a way to unite the often conflicting peoples of Earth under a common cause. To give them a reason to fight.

  And the Djarik provided it. On one fateful day. Dozens of cities nearly decimated by incoming warheads. Buildings reduced to rubble. An entire species incensed, demanding justice, clamoring for war. A day Leo could never forget.

  But that wasn’t the whole story, his father told him. Yes, the Djarik attacked, carefully choosing their targets. But the Aykari decided which of those targets to defend . . . and which to let be destroyed.

  The attack was a failure in the Djarik’s eyes. Not only did it fail to cripple the planet’s supply of ventasium, it drove that same planet to gather arms against them. Which was what the Aykari wanted all along.

  “They let it happen,” Leo’s father said. “They could have stopped it. They could have saved her. They could have saved so many more.”

  Leo shook his head. It didn’t make sense. The Aykari were their allies. They protected them. Supported them. They would never let such a terrible thing happen.

  They wouldn’t just let his mother die.

  Baz slapped his hands on the table. “No. You’re lying. They’re lying,” he said, pointing at the two robed Djarik. “I was there. I saw it. I watched the city of Chicago go up in smoke. Those were Djarik ships. Djarik warheads.”

  “It’s true,” the Djarik named Chellis said. “We were well aware of the vast resources the planet provided our enemy and we leveled an all-out assault. We hoped by targeting hundreds of sites on Earth we might overwhelm the Aykari’s considerable defenses. As expected, they managed to intercept and destroy the majority of our missiles. What we didn’t anticipate was how they chose which targets to save . . . and which to sacrifice.” Chellis looked at Leo with those contrasting eyes—one a cold and glossy black, the other veiled in white, like opposing squares on a chess board. “They made certain to save most of their mining facilities, of course. The rest were . . . expendable.”

  The words collateral damage flashed through Leo’s brain. His head spun as he tried to sift through what all of this meant. He looked at his father. “You mean they let some of those missiles through on purpose?”

  Dr. Fender frowned. It was a look Leo knew well. The same look everyone gave him at his mother’s funeral. That look of helplessness and resignation. The look that said, I wish it wasn’t so.

  “The Aykari were given a choice and they made it,” Chellis said. “Our hope was to cripple one of their largest supplies of EL-four eight six. They saw an opportunity to secure an ally in the war. Hundreds of thousands of human lives in exchange for the allegiance of billions. To ensure that your species would not rise up against them the same as mine did, even while your planet was slowly dying beneath your feet. They weren’t about to make the same mistake with you that they did with us.”

  Leo gripped the side of his chair, steadying himself, images of digital billboards touting the great Aykari-Human alliance buzzing around his brain. The recruitment drives with lines of young men and women signing up to join the Coalition forces. Posters of an Aykarian foot soldier standing back-to-back with a human pilot: Two Worlds. One Purpose. He thought of all those days sitting in the grass with his father, staring up at the sky, catching glimpses of passing Aykari ships. They are there to protect us, his father had told him. Watching over us. Keeping us safe.

  He thought of his mother on the porch, catching him as he tried to sneak up on her. Her little lion.

  “I’m sorry, Leo,” Dr. Fender said. “Since they brought me here I’ve seen things. It’s not just what happened that day. I’ve seen what the Aykari did to their planet. To the Djar people. I’ve seen what happens when the ventasium runs out, the shells of worlds they leave behind. I’m afraid Earth will be no different. I ignored the signs before; I truly believed the Aykari were our friends. Until now.”

  There seemed to be little doubt in his father’s voice, but Leo could see a question in his bloodshot eyes. There was something else, something his father wasn’t saying.

  “Listen to him. The Aykari are parasites,” Chellis said, his voice laden with scorn and disgust. “Spreading from world to world, system to system, sucking the lifeblood from planets, forcing their inhabitants to flee or to watch their worlds crumble. We never wanted war with your species. You were not the ones who invaded our home. But we also cannot let you stand in our way.”

  “Yeah, you made that pretty clear when you attacked us,” Baz said.

  “And when you torpedoed Leo’s ship,” Kat added.

  “We needed Dr. Fender. His knowledge of and research into EL-four eight six and its properties is essential to our efforts. Understand the Djarik empire will do whatever it must in order to end this war.”

  “Win this war, you mean,” Baz said.

  “That is the only way it will end,” Chellis said defiantly. “We will not rest until the Aykari are no more. What happens afterward—to your species, to your planet—is up to you.”

  Baz laughed, a surprising sound coming from a man being held at gunpoint. But Leo knew this wasn’t Black’s first time focused in a rifle’s sights.

  “Right. Like you give a crap what happens to us. You or those two-faced, blue-eyed bastards you’re at war with. If you ask me, you and the Aykari deserve to wipe each other out. Frankly I wish you’d hurry up and get it over with so the rest of us can get on with our lives.”

  Director Chellis smiled, revealing rows of sharp teeth. “Good news for you then, Captain. With Dr. Fender’s help, it should not take long.”

  Leo turned back to his father, a question in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Leo. If it means keeping you safe, does it really matter what side we’re on?”

  Before Leo could answer, a sound like a thunderclap stilled the room. The lights embedded in the walls flickered as the ground trembled, knocking Leo off-balance.

  “Skits?” Kat said, echoing Leo’s own thoughts: that she and Boo had somehow managed to get free and disable the Djarik security system after all. The first explosion was followed by a second. Chellis looked at the device on his wrist and shook his head.

  “It’s not your companions,” he hissed, his eyes narrowing to crescents. “It’s the Aykari.

  “The base is under attack.”

  Alarms pealed from unseen speakers. A Djarik voice emanated from the walls. “Soldiers, to your stations. Aykarian forces incoming.”

  Director Chellis sneered, pointing a finger across the table at Black. “You! You led them here!”

  “Me?” Baz protested. “Are you out of your blitzen alien brain? The Aykari want me dead almost as much as you!”

  Chellis ignored him, madly tapping on the device attached to his wrist. “We don’t have the resources to fend off a full-scale assault. We will
need to evacuate.” He looked at Tadrik. “Get Dr. Fender and his son to my ship. I will gather our research and destroy any remaining records. We can’t leave anything behind for the Aykari to find.”

  Leo reached out for his dad’s hand. “What’s going on?”

  “We are getting out of here.”

  “All of us?”

  Leo’s father didn’t answer. A door behind the Djarik director opened and two more soldiers entered, doubling the number of armed guards. Chellis pointed to the pirates. “Take these two and the ones you caught earlier to a prisoner transport and have them branded and secured. They are potential Aykarian spies and will need to be interrogated once we’ve escaped.”

  Leo looked from the two pirates to the four soldiers surrounding them. “Wait!” he yelled. “You can’t do that. They brought me here.” He turned to his father. “They risked their lives for me . . . to come get you. Can’t you do something?”

  For a moment there was nothing, no response but a blank stare, so remote, reminding Leo of all those times he caught his father staring up at the stars. Then Leo saw something click, a spark of recognition in his father’s eyes, the final step in the equation when the last variable is solved.

  “Chellis, please,” Dr. Fender pressed. “Just let them go. They aren’t important. You have me. What difference could a handful of outlaws make?”

  “The agreement was for your sons, Dr. Fender, not for these pirates. They are wanted criminals and will be treated as such.” Chellis made a clicking sound and Leo watched as the four soldiers circled around the captain and his first officer. Baz had shed his shackles as requested, but there was still little he and Kat could do, unarmed and outnumbered. Kat glanced at Leo—Now what, ship rat?—but what could he do?

  What would a pirate do? The kind of person who would rescue someone just to hold them for ransom. Who could use another person as leverage to get what they want.

  Leo patted his pocket. He hadn’t had much with him when he stowed away aboard the Icarus: his watch, still snug on his wrist; the clothes on his back, including the Coalition shirt of which only the patch remained; and the hope of seeing his father and brother again.

  Those, plus the thing that—every once in a while, at least—kept him alive.

  In three steps Leo was right beside Chellis, his fast-acting inhaler in hand, his finger on the trigger.

  “Don’t take another step,” he commanded, “or I’ll shoot!”

  The four soldiers paused.

  Chellis took an uncertain cross-eyed look at the strange device pointed at his reptilian nose. He waved a leathery hand and the guards took a step back. “You were supposed to have been disarmed,” he hissed.

  Leo’s own hand shook and he took a deep breath to steady it. “This is a high-velocity biotoxin dispersalizer,” he continued, stringing dangerous-sounding words together, hoping that the Djarik’s translators found equally dangerous-sounding equivalents for them, hoping they had never seen an actual human inhaler before. “It releases a poisonous gas that is fatal to your kind. All I have to do is press this button and this guy’s face melts clean off.”

  Leo hoped he sounded convincing. A jack of hearts can appear to vanish into thin air so long as you don’t look up the magician’s sleeve, and a Zylar-brand, Coalition-issued fast-acting inhaler can be a deadly biotoxin dispersalizer as long as those who know otherwise keep their mouths shut. Leo glanced at his father, but Dr. Fender gave away nothing, playing along.

  “Tell them to put down their weapons,” Leo said.

  “You are making a mistake.” Chellis spoke to Leo but kept his eyes on the biotoxin dispersalizer pointed at his face. “We do not have to be enemies. And these pirates are certainly not your allies. They do not care what happens to you any more than the Aykari.”

  Leo hesitated, his resolve wavering. Maybe he was making a mistake. All the wires in his brain were crossed and tangled. He wasn’t sure who to trust or who to blame—for the start of the war, for the death of his mother, for everything that had happened since. Everything he thought he knew a few days ago had been scrambled. He didn’t know anything for sure, anymore.

  But there were two things that he believed at least.

  That his universe didn’t need to be any bigger than what was in his head and his heart.

  And that if it came down to it, the crew of the Icarus wouldn’t leave him stranded. Not even its cutthroat captain.

  Leo pressed the mouthpiece of his inhaler right up against the Djarik’s cheek and spoke through clenched teeth. “Order them to drop their weapons. Now!”

  “Do as he says,” Chellis commanded, his neck gills fluttering.

  To Leo’s surprise, the four guards’ rifles clattered to the floor. In a blink, Kat had one in her grip, giving another to Baz and kicking the rest out of reach. The alarms continued to screech. The table in the center of the room shuddered again. The voice from out of nowhere crackled back to life, this time accompanied by background bursts of laser fire. “Aykari troops have breached our outer defenses. All nonmilitary personnel should begin evacuation immediately.”

  “Nice work, Leo,” Baz said, keeping his stolen rifle aimed at the four Djarik soldiers. “I knew there was a reason I insisted you come along. Okay, crew, we got what we came for. Let’s find Skits and Boo and get out of here before the cavalry arrives.”

  Kat stuck her head out the door, checking their escape. Leo stepped back toward his father, keeping his inhaler pointed at Chellis. With his other hand he tugged on his father’s sleeve. “Come on.”

  But his father didn’t move.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Like hell you can’t!” Kat shouted from the door. “Do you have any idea what we’ve gone through—what Leo has been through—just to get to you? You’re coming with us even if I have to knock you unconscious and drag you out of here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Fender said. “But you don’t understand. There’s more at stake than I was able to tell you, more than you know. I have to see this through.”

  Standing next to his father, Leo felt the tide pulling him under again, taking his breath away, sinking deeper and deeper as he realized what was happening, what his father was saying. He couldn’t lose him. Not again. “In that case I’m coming with you,” he said. “Whatever it is, we’ll do it together.”

  His father smiled, but it was his mother’s smile. The fleeting kind. He took in the two pirates standing anxiously by the door. “They brought you here just to rescue me?”

  Leo nodded. More or less, he thought.

  “Do you trust them?”

  That question was harder. Leo wasn’t sure who to trust anymore, and they were still pirates. But then he thought of the hands stacked one upon the other—human skin and Queleti fur and robot claw. Everybody in.

  He nodded again.

  His father’s voice dropped to a whisper.

  “In that case I need you to do something for me, Leo. I need you to go find your brother. He’s out there somewhere and I’m not sure I can trust anyone else to do it.” His eyes darted momentarily to the two robed Djarik and then back to Leo. “Go and find him and you two stay together, understand? Keep each other safe.” He reached for Leo’s hand, grasping it tight.

  Leo felt something small and cold slip into his palm.

  “Do this for me, Leo. It could mean the world.”

  Leo’s fingers curled around whatever it was his father had given him as he was pulled close, arms that held him so many times wrapping around him once more. “I love you,” he whispered. “And next time I will come and find you. I promise.”

  Dr. Fender stepped away, hands on Leo’s shoulders. He looked at Baz standing by the door. “You can get him out of here?”

  The captain of the Icarus looked confused, but he nodded.

  The voice cut in over the alarm again. “All personnel abandon posts. Transports prepare for immediate evacuation.”

  “We are out of time,” Chellis hissed. “Do
whatever you wish, but if we do not leave now, there will be no chance for any of us.”

  Kat cast a worried glance at the door. Leo could hear the footfalls of Djarik soldiers echoing along the corridors.

  Dr. Fender pressed his forehead to his son’s.

  “Be brave, little lion,” he said.

  And pushed him toward the door.

  We cannot allow these foreign invaders to exploit us any longer. We will not stand aside while they strip our planet of resources they have no claim to. We will not let them silence our protests, curtail our freedoms, and force us from our homes. We will not let them use us for their own selfish purposes, to spread, unchecked, throughout the galaxy. We will rise up. We will take up arms. We will repel the invaders and drive them from our world. We will be free again. And then we will continue to fight, no matter the cost, until we are certain that the Aykari menace has come to an end.

  —Declaration of the Djarik War Council, 56.4072

  The Wail of the Queleti

  THERE HAD BEEN A MOMENT, THAT DAY AT THE BEACH, before Leo saw death rain down from miles away, when he saw it up close. Right at his feet.

  It was a thing he never told anyone about. A secret. Because, compared to everything else that happened that day, it seemed insignificant. And yet Leo kept coming back to it afterward, the image haunting him almost as much as the smoke-filled sky.

  He had wandered off on his own, looking for that shell—the one he promised to bring back. He would know it when he saw it. Pearlescent and perfectly round, no chips or holes, a mixture of pinks and blues and lavenders. The size didn’t matter—it could be as small as a locket or as big as a sand dollar—so long as it was beautiful. Because if he thought so, she would think so too.