Rocking the Resistance

by Erin Downing

  It took a little convincing and creativity in scheduling, but Chamberlin had managed to book the girls a gig on Kantal-ka. It was only a small auditorium show—not the huge arenas the band preferred to play in now that they had achieved a certain level of fame—but the small gig was enough to secure the band’s clearance to enter Kantal-ka airspace. They had arrived on the fog-covered planet that morning. Moments after they landed, the girls slipped into their rebel gear and left Chamberlin and Rand—the band’s innocent roadie—to prep for their gig that afternoon while they were off on their reconnaissance mission.

  “Another door?” Rhea groaned as the spies made their way down yet another unmarked hallway. “How big is this place?”

  “And where do all these doors lead?” Athena wondered.

  When they hustled through the ninth door, all five girls screeched to a stop … narrowly avoiding plunging off a narrow catwalk into a bottomless black abyss. They were standing at the edge of a huge, cavernous room. A narrow walkway snaked around the perimeter of the room, overlooking inky black nothingness. Suddenly, Luna shrieked and pointed.

  The others followed her finger. There, shivering on a small, floating disc in the center of the room—surrounded on all sides by open air and empty space—were Chamberlin and Captain Hansome.

  CHAPTER 2

  Chamberlin lifted his hand in a timid wave. “Greetings.”

  “Chamberlin?” Athena said, squinting. “Captain Hansome?”

  “It is us!” Captain Hansome said in a blustery voice. “Hello!”

  “Uh, hello?” Luna squeaked. She shook her hair around her shoulders and squeezed her cheeks to give them a little color.

  “What are you doing way out there?” Juno asked. “And how did you get there?”

  “Bit of a situation,” Chamberlin began. “You see, the captain and I were coming to—”

  Hansome cut him off and blurted out, “To rescue you!”

  Rhea snorted. “Mighty fine job you’ve done of it, too.”

  Captain Hansome flexed his muscles and put his arm around Chamberlin in a chummy sort of way. The move nearly knocked the old guy off the narrow platform. The royal butler sunk to his knees, his breath wheezing out in a giant whoosh as he held the edges of the floating disc for dear life. “Yes, well,” Captain Hansome said in a bold voice. “When you didn’t return at the time we were expecting you, I grew concerned for your safety. So I gathered up old Chamberlin here—who insisted he come along, the brave old chap!—and we entered Geela’s facility to help you girls out. Figured you could use a hand.”

  “You came to help us?” Athena put her hands on her hips and said plainly, “Looks like you’re the ones who need the help.”

  Captain Hansome chuckled. “Yes, well, about that…” Hansome lost his footing as the outer edge of the platform he and Chamberlin were standing on broke away and fell—soundlessly—into the bottomless pit. The disc was now much smaller and obviously even harder to balance on. Hansome peered over the edge of his little island and spoke more quickly. “While we were searching for you, we came upon this room. As we were racing across the middle of the floor—toward that door, there—” Captain Hansome cut off and gestured to a small door on the other side of the room. “All of a sudden the floor below us began to fall away. First the far edges broke apart, then more and more. Within seconds, we were left on this small platform … and our resting spot seems to be getting smaller every minute. Perhaps this room is under construction and we weren’t meant to walk here?”

  “I highly doubt the room is under construction,” Athena said, lifting one eyebrow. “But I think you’re right about one thing: we’re not meant to be here.”

  Hera nodded. “This must be Geela’s way of ensuring no one gets past this room. No need for guards when you can trap someone in the middle of a bottomless pit, am I right?” The others stared at her. Hera was sweet, kind, and caring—and had been known to keep the other girls from driving one another crazy, or worse, more than a few times—but she was usually not the member of the group who figured things out first. “What?” Hera asked. “Geela must have had some sort of motion detectors set up in the room so if anyone tried to cross over to the next door, they would be trapped with nowhere to go.”

  “Exactly,” Juno said, nodding. “Well said, Hera.”

  “Thanks!” Hera chirped.

  “What I still don’t get,” said Rhea, “is why you thought we needed your help getting out of here. We’ve proved ourselves to be capable, resourceful, and safe in every one of our missions for … the Resistance…” Rhea said the word Resistance the way Captain Hansome always did—with emphasis. None of the girls tired of making fun of him behind his back for the way he accentuated Resistance. It was the band’s little inside joke.

  Athena jumped in. “Might I remind you, we are the team that secured clearance to enter the Kantal-ka airspace and we were perfectly comfortable executing this mission on our own.”

  “With no ‘help’ from you,” Juno added, putting the word help in little quotation marks.

  “Perhaps we could talk more about the hows and whys of this, uh, little situation after we’ve found a way to get ol’ Chamberlin to more solid ground?” Hansome suggested.

  “Fair enough,” Rhea said, smirking. “Can you say the magic words?”

  “M-m-magic words?” Captain Hansome stuttered as more of the platform broke away. The tiny island that was keeping Chamberlin and Hansome from certain doom was now just barely large enough to fit the two men. “What are the magic words?” It was the first time any of the girls had seen Captain Hansome ruffled. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out that soon there would be room left for only one of them on the disc.

  “Pretty please,” Rhea began slowly. While she spoke, she scanned the perimeter of the room. Her face split into a smile when she spotted a control panel directly across from where the girls were standing. Rhea had a knack for programming that came in handy at times like this. She glanced at Captain Hansome again and, in a deep voice that sounded nothing like the strapping captain’s, said, “Pretty please, Resistance rock stars, will you rescue us?”

  “Rescue me?!” Captain Hansome said, chortling. “Might I remind you, I am here to rescue you girls—not the other way around!” But the arrogant captain stopped laughing when yet another chunk of the platform broke away. His foot slipped off the edge of the platform, and Hansome screamed like a crater eel. “Pretty please!” he shrieked. “Pretty please, help us out of here!”

  “Attaboy,” Juno said. “Nicely done.”

  As Rhea raced around the edge of the room toward the control panel, Luna pulled out a plain-looking can of hair spray. She shook it and then sprayed the aerosol can into the empty space between the perimeter walkway and the floating disc. The misty spray illuminated a web of red laser beams, crisscrossing the space between the walkway and the floating disc. “Motion sensors,” she said, glancing at Athena. “You were absolutely right, Hera.”

  “Yippee!” Hera cheered. Her dark curls bounced around her face as she fumbled around in the slim pocket of her black spy suit. Gleefully, she pulled out a tube of lipstick, held it up to her lips, and called out, “Come in, Athena. Athena, do you copy?”

  Juno snatched the lipstick out of Hera’s hand. “Not the right time, Hera. Save your lipstick communicator for sometime when you’re not standing right at Athena’s side. You’re supposed to use it for communicating from afar, remember?”

  Hera pouted and glanced from Juno to Athena. “But Luna got to use the cool laser-detector hair spray Athena made for her. I want to use some of my spy gadgets, too! The only thing I have on me is my lipstick communicator…”

  “Here.” Athena tossed her what looked like an ordinary pair of reading glasses. “Put these on—if anyone from Geela’s team shows up while we’re trying to free these two, you can look them in the eye and hypnotize them. The effects will wear off after just a minute—I’m still working on that part—but it will buy us s
ome time. The hypno-glasses are still in early development, so I’m not sure if they’ll work quite like they’re supposed to.”

  “Ooh!” Hera said, bouncing happily. “Fun!” She put the glasses on and looked at Juno. “How do they look?”

  “Hera!” Athena snapped. “Don’t look at any of us. You don’t want to hypnotize anyone on your own team.”

  Hera nodded solemnly and looked down at the ground. “Right! Sorry!”

  “We need to figure out some way to deactivate the sensors before we get them off the platform,” Athena said, thinking aloud. She tugged a length of rope out of her suit, tying one end into a secure knot. “If we can deactivate the sensors, we can swing this rope over and pull them both to safety.”

  “Pull?” Chamberlin moaned, his face pale. “Swing?” He closed his eyes and took deep breaths. “Might I remind you, I am far too old for this nonsense. I don’t do ropes. Period.”

  Across the way, Rhea had bashed open the front of the control panel, and she was expertly twisting at wires and cords inside. She snipped a length of wire, and another half of the floating disc broke away. “Oopsie,” she said, cringing as the two men huddled more closely together. “Wrong wire. But we’re almost there,” she called. “The lasers should be deactivated in a minute. Just give me a second … I think I figured out which wire controls the platform, at least. It shouldn’t get any smaller, so you guys are safe there for now.” She gave Hansome and Chamberlin a thumbs-up sign.

  While they waited for Rhea to work her programming magic, Juno stared out over the web of red lasers, furrowing her brow. She cocked her head to one side and said, “Does anyone else see a pattern in the lasers?”

  Athena, Luna, and Hera all gazed out at the crisscrossing red lines, trying to figure out what Juno was talking about. Juno had an artist’s eye, a flair for graphic design and the way lines and shapes worked together, so she often noticed things the other girls didn’t.

  “It’s Geela’s face,” Juno said, pointing. “There’s her eye, and her chin, and right there—her hair, all swept up in a crazy bun. She turned her own laser motion detectors into a sort of art, honoring herself.”

  The other three girls gasped. “You’re right!” Just as soon as the laser outline of Geela’s face was burned into each of their minds, the red lines flickered and went out.

  “Ta-da!” Rhea said, pumping her fist on the other side of the room. “Motion detectors off. Commence rescue mission.”

  “I’d like the record to show,” began Captain Hansome in a blustery voice, “that we would have figured out a way out of here without your help. Things were going according to plan. I was just about to save Chamberlin when you breezed into the room.”

  “Is that so? Shall we leave you there to figure it out, then?” Rhea asked. “I wouldn’t want to damage your hero card by helping you out of a sticky situation. We need to get back to the space bus to prepare for our gig tonight, so if you think you’re all set here, then we’ll just leave you to it!”

  Captain Hansome smiled. “Now, now. As long as you’re here, we might as well all leave together. No sense in you girls getting lost on the way out.”

  Athena looked at her bandmates. Without their exchanging a single word, she could tell they were all in agreement. “Here’s the deal, Captain Hansome,” she said in her serious, clipped voice. “If we get you out of here, you promise to start treating us as important members of this team. No more following us to make sure we’re safe. If we rescue you from that platform, from now on you give us your full respect and nothing less. Do we have a deal?”

  The Resistance captain cocked his head to one side. One corner of his mouth quirked up into a half smile. “Let’s not be silly…” he began.

  On the other side of the cavernous room, Rhea fiddled with a wire. Another chunk of the floating disc broke away and left Hansome clinging to Chamberlin for support. “Oops,” she said, shrugging.

  Captain Hansome gritted his teeth. “It’s a deal. Pretty please rescue me, and you’ll have my undying respect.”

  Athena beamed. “Good boy.”

  CHAPTER 3

  As soon as Hansome and Chamberlin were back on solid ground, they all raced around the catwalk and made their way toward the closed door on the far side of the cavernous room. If Geela had gone to so much trouble to protect whatever she was hiding with that series of doors, corridors, and a breakaway floor, there must be something good tucked away.

  The band, Chamberlin, and Captain Hansome had only a few minutes left to explore the rest of the facility, for any minute now, the Android Soldiers would return from their training session. None of them wanted to be around for that. Geela’s henchmen were huge, metal beasts with no conscience whatsoever, and their only hope of survival was avoiding an encounter with the soldiers altogether. They had timed their exploration to coincide with the army’s daily training session and oil dip (a design flaw required the Android Soldiers to take an oil bath daily to keep their metal shells from rusting).

  Rhea, who had already made it to the other side of the bottomless pit to mess around with the wires inside the control panel, got to the mystery door first. She pressed a button to open it. Unlike all the other doors they had encountered in their exploration of Kantal-ka, this one didn’t budge. “Locked,” she said.

  “Ah, well,” muttered Chamberlin. “Guess we might as well be on our way, then?”

  “Not a chance,” Rhea grunted, fiddling with the metal plate around the door. “I just need to jimmy this wire and—” She broke off as the door whooshed open. Shaking her head, she said, “Geela’s security is not impressive.” Rhea covered her mouth to hold in a laugh as she stepped into the room. “No. Way.”

  “What is it?” Luna asked, hustling forward for a look. She squeaked with glee when Hansome leaned against her shoulder to gaze past her into the room. The space on the other side of the door was at least a hundred feet high. The walls were curved, making the space feel almost like the turret of an old-fashioned castle from Earth the girls had seen in faded paper photographs. In the center of the room stood an enormous gilded mirror.

  Captain Hansome rubbed his stubbly chin as he studied the contents of the room. Perplexed, he asked the others, “Are those … dead creatures lining the walls?”

  This was enough to send Rhea into a fit of laughter. Hera, on the other hand, broke into sobs. The idea of a room lined with dead critters was enough to crush her spirit for days.

  “They’re not dead critters,” Luna said, stepping forward to touch one of the furry-looking things hanging from the wall. “This room is filled with wigs.”

  “Wigs?!” Athena snapped.

  Beside her, Hera perked up. “Not critters?”

  Luna ran her hands over the mounds and mounds of hair that lined the walls. “Definitely not critters. These are high-quality wigs. Hundreds of them.”

  “Geela’s?” Juno said, snickering. “The Dark Empress of Evil wears wigs?”

  Before they could consider this glorious new information, a high-pitched alarm rang out in the building. A mechanical voice droned, “All units, report for duty!”

  “We’ve got to go,” Juno said, her muscles tensing as she went on high alert. “The guards are coming back.”

  “This way!” Hansome called, beckoning the girls to follow him. “I’ll lead you out.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Athena said, stepping in front of him. “With all due respect, Captain, please follow us this time. This is our mission, and success or failure needs to rest on our shoulders.”

  “Before we go…” Rhea whispered, nudging Luna. She turned back to look into the room full of wigs. “I think I’ll just leave Geela a little parting gift.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out a stink bomb, and let it fly high into the center of all that hair.

  Luna high-fived her, giggling. “Not even Solar Glow can wash away that odor.”

  “Indeed.” Rhea laughed. “Bad hair days begone? Nope. I foresee a few stinky hair days in
Geela’s future.”

  * * *

  Less than a half hour later, the SPACEPOP crew was back in the space bus. As soon as they knew the group was safe and sound and hadn’t been tracked, Hansome excused himself to the bus’s control room, eager to transmit details of the Kantal-ka exploration back to Resistance Headquarters. But before he escaped to gloat about his extreme bravery and stealth, Juno asked him, “Captain Hansome: How, exactly, did you manage to get onto this restricted planet in the first place?”

  “I snuck onto your bus,” he said, shrugging. He wiggled his fingers in front of his face and announced, “Master of disguise!” He bowed, then hustled away.

  The girls headed toward their sleeping quarters and common room.

  “That guy,” Juno grumbled as she crossed the common room to get to her sleeping pod.

  Luna sighed dreamily. “That guy.” She gazed at herself in the giant mirror in the center of the girls’ common room. Smiling, she twisted her hair up, then let it cascade around her shoulders again. “That guy…”

  Hera snuck up behind her and snapped a picture. “Act natural,” she instructed.

  “What are you doing?” Luna demanded, grabbing the camera to inspect the photo. She scowled and deleted it before Hera had a chance to protest.

  “Bradbury suggested we get more candid shots of the band ‘behind-the-scenes’ for the SPACEPOP website,” Hera explained. “He said he talked to you about it.”

  “He did,” Luna said, pushing her lips out into a sweet pout. She squeezed her cheeks to give them a little extra golden color and shook her hair out until it was as big as possible. “Ready!” she said, beaming at Hera.