The Girl Who Stole A Planet (Amy Armstrong Book 1)

by Stephen Colegrove

  “One of you is correct, and it’s not the ugly one called Philip.”

  “Hey!”

  “Don’t be offended,” said Sunflower. “I’m certain that the dogs on Kapteyn would be pleased to see you.”

  Amy held up her hands, which now appeared as two white blobs in the darkness.

  “Hold on. What’s this have to do with milk?”

  “The bodies of cats from Tau Ceti and Gliese 667 have been biologically altered over a thousand years. During that thousand years we endured exposure to radiation, alien bacteria, and poona scat but absolutely none of us drank bovine milk. When the Lady began to recruit cats as property operators, we discovered that milk causes a reaction in our bodies similar to activated TNT. It was an ice cream social. It wasn’t pretty.”

  Amy laughed. “That’s a joke, right? You get a little gassy.”

  “If by gassy you mean the milk would kill me and a ball of fire would vaporize everything in a hundred meters, then yes––I get gassy. Preserved lactose is even worse. Have you heard of the Tunguska event of 1908?”

  “The huge meteor that exploded over Siberia?”

  Sunflower shook his head. “Operator Cindy Williams. Poor cat skipped his nutro-break before the mission and ate a ball of mozzarella. Poof! No more Cindy Williams. Also, no more Tunguska.”

  “How did he get a ball of mozzarella cheese in Siberia?”

  “He was probably wearing it as a hat. Williams was a strange dude.”

  “I can see my fingers,” said Philip excitedly. “I can see again!”

  Amy bit into the hunk of bread. It had been covered or soaked in some kind of meat drippings, which gave it the flavor of roast beef. The blurry shapes of carriages rattled across her field of vision, and coins dropped into her hat.

  “Thank you!”

  The vague shadow of the benefactor walked away and Amy saw a pointed white tower across the street. Dark shapes moved from left to right at the base of the pale structure.

  “Is that a church in front of us?”

  “Maybe,” said Sunflower. “A group of human females are walking a circle around the building. The sign next to the entrance says ‘Saint Botolph’s,’ whatever that is. I find ‘The Dog and Pony’ much more appealing, mainly because the sign has a dog pulling a wagon.”

  Philip stirred. “The Dog and Pony?”

  “That’s the name of the human ReCarb center we’re currently sitting outside.”

  “Tell us about this Lady of yours,” said Amy. “Is she a cat?”

  “She is neither a cat, dog, or a sprite,” said Sunflower sadly. “The Lady might have been human a long time ago, but that’s like saying a cat who ate cheese used to be a cat. She doesn’t care about anything except stealing things and making piles of cash.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong with a poona who crosses the road? Absolutely nothing until he’s smashed under a speeding eight-wheeler. The Lady is absolutely fine, until she’s not. If you go up against her she’ll crush you into dust.”

  “Why did you take a job with her?”

  The cat sighed. “The Lady is the wealthiest being in the galaxy. To set foot on her asteroid is the dream of billions on the civilized planets and to work for her is beyond imagining. We travel across dimensions, see things that no other cat or dog has ever seen, have our bodies uplifted with technology beyond belief … I was the number two student from Tau Ceti that year. The second best of ten billion.”

  “Who was number one?”

  Sunflower was quiet for a moment. “She’s gone now. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Was it your wife?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Amy’s vision shifted in and out of clarity. Across a slate-gray cobbled street stood a brick church. The moon gleamed on a white bell tower and a line of women in dark dresses who walked slowly around the building. Her eyesight dropped to fuzziness again.

  “I never thought bread could be this delicious,” said Philip, as he chewed on the crust.

  Amy glanced down at the green-eyed cat. “Uplifted with technology? Does that mean you have implants?”

  Sunflower laughed. “Of course! You think I could survive all those demats without bone-strengthening and cellular mapping? The germs I’m exposed to on Old Earth would kill a normal cat. There’s also no way I could return to the Lady without a Thor in my chest.”

  “A what?”

  “A Thoracic Transponder,” said the cat. “It’s about the size of a bean, tracks my location in dimensional space, and allows me to call for a remat. A rematerialization, for the lay cat.”

  Amy’s vision sharpened again. The darkness of the city surprised her, since she thought that electricity had been invented by 1889. A gas-powered street lamp gave a dim illumination to the front of the church and the pub. Few other lights shone anywhere, apart from a lantern at the door of the pub and candles in the windows of the church. A chestnut mare clomped by on the cobbles, driven by a cloaked figure who sat behind the small passenger compartment of a black, two-wheeled hansom cab, a lantern swinging from the side. The strong musk of horses trailed after the cab in the breeze. Across the street at the church, a man in a short brown coat with the lapels pulled up around his ears approached the circling women. He walked away with one of the females on his arm, bringing down a storm of squeals and cat-calls from the rest.

  “So you’ve got a tracking device inside you?”

  “Why are you so surprised?”

  The sidewalk rumbled as a porter passed, shoving the handles of a wooden cart loaded down with heavy brown sacks. The cart left a faint trail of white flour.

  “Can the Lady use that to find us?”

  Sunflower snorted. “She’d never do that. You don’t realize the massive amount of energy it took for all three of us to launch to this dimension. The Lady is parsimonious to a fault, and she’d never waste a joule of energy to come after a couple of underdeveloped humans and a runaway operator.”

  “I would.”

  “It’s lucky you’re not the Lady, then.”

  Philip raised his head. “Do either of you smell something?”

  “I smell half a million somethings,” said Sunflower. “Most of them the disgusting product of a human body.”

  “Not that. I smell lavender.”

  “You’re right,” said Amy. “I smell it, too.”

  The air above the street vibrated with an extremely deep, modulating hum. A sphere of blue lightning popped into existence, crackling like a forest of dry twigs and casting a sapphire glow over the cobblestones and the church. The people along the sidewalks looked up with pale expressions of shock.

  Sunflower cleared his throat. “I, uh, may have spoken too soon.”

  The women at the church screamed and ran pell-mell, clutching purses to their chests as they fled in terror. Men poured out of The Dog and Pony, stared at the ball of lightning for a nanosecond, and then followed the example of the women, although with slightly less screaming and slightly more shouting.

  With a final gigantic crack the lightning disappeared and left a cloud of white smoke. Out floated a large chrome ball with dangling metal tentacles tipped in sharp claws. At the end of one particularly thick tentacle glowed a sapphire light.

  Sunflower took a second or two to say a few things that a cat should never say unless an inspector has just appeared in front of him and the cat really, really didn’t want that to happen.

  The final of these choice phrases was:

  “Time to run, kids!”

  Amy grabbed her hat and stuffed the cold money in her pocket, ignoring the few coins that tinkled across the sidewalk. She picked up Sunflower and pulled Philip to his feet.

  “Which way?”

  “Any way!” yelled the cat.

  Amy ran as fast as she could away from the shining blue light of the inspector, holding Sunflower and the waist of her pants with one hand and leading Philip with the other. The lanes were narro
w and black as octopus ink, and in the oversized boots she expected to stumble and fall at any moment. As the sapphire beam of the inspector chased them deeper into the dark warren of desperate women and foul-smelling men with broad yellow grins, Amy wondered if getting caught by the Lady wasn’t the worst that could happen.

  A wave of panicked Londoners fled the floating metal octopus, which hummed a mechanical tune to itself while it scanned the departing humans. It was just as well that all the people were too busy running for their lives or hiding under beds to listen to the melody from the flying machine––the song wouldn’t be written until the next century.

  I come in last night about half past ten

  That baby of mine wouldn’t let me in

  So move it on over. Rock it on over

  Move over little dog, a mean, old dog is movin’ in

  The singing monstrosity followed the crowds around a corner. The street became quiet again, like the eye of a hurricane.

  A brown and white Jack Russell terrier trotted down the center of the deserted cobblestone street. Not a soul was left on the street or in a window, but any that might have peered outside would have laughed out loud at the sight of a small dog with a strange leather pack on his back and a series of metal strips around his head. He sang the same little tune as the inspector, humming the chorus while he trotted along the street. A microphone sprouted from the dog’s headset and bounced in front of his nose. A glass rectangle on a metal stalk hung over his left eye and glimmered with a tiny video feed.

  “Go straight,” said the dog. “Left a little. Faster! No, the other left! Blast these stupid machines.”

  “Identify target for blasting,” said a metallic voice near the dog’s ear.

  “Cancel order.” Betsy sighed. “I hate this thing so much.”

  “Identify target for hating,” said the voice.

  “Great gobs of goofy gumdrops,” snarled Betsy. His claws scrabbled on the gray stone as he leapt into a gallop.

  Chapter Nine

  Amy stopped and gasped for breath against a dark and slimy wall. She wondered if the whole city smelled like wet garbage.

  “Did we lose them?” asked Philip.

  “Lose who?”

  “The men with the blue torches. Did we outrun them? I’m sorry, but I still can’t see clearly.”

  Sunflower peered over Amy’s shoulder. “We’re not running from any humans. We’re running from an inspector.”

  “I see,” said the teenager, and his jaw dropped. “Wait––that can’t be right!”

  “Don’t even go there,” said Sunflower. “I know better than you that inspectors don’t launch into another dimension. It’s never happened.”

  Amy wiped sweat from her nose. “Why couldn’t it? There’s a little sprite driving it around, right?”

  “What a silly idea! Inspectors are floating cameras, not a joyride for drunken sprites. Don’t you remember what happened back at the ship? They’re remotely controlled by cats and dogs at a special command center. Pretty boring, actually, and not my style.”

  “What IS your style, then? Rolling around in trash and being sarcastic?”

  “I don’t roll around in trash!”

  “I say, will the two of you please keep your voices down,” whispered Philip.

  Sunflower rolled his eyes. “Even if somehow it’s being controlled across dimensions––a scientifically impossible feat––sending an inspector is a violation of the Lady’s rules on the highest level. We’re not supposed to attract attention by flying around with silver waving tentacles. The Lady never wants us to break cover!”

  “Obviously she’s changed her mind,” said Amy.

  Philip laughed. “The right of every woman!”

  “I hear you, brother,” said Sunflower. “Females be craaazy, right?”

  Amy crossed her arms. “Could the two of you please stop acting like interdimensional morons and focus on what’s happening?”

  Sunflower rubbed an ear with his paw and watched a beam of sapphire light flash above the buildings at the end of the alley.

  “The inspector has got a bead on my thoracic transponder,” he said. “It’s on a high-band radio frequency. Surround me in something thick and the signal won’t connect.”

  “It can follow you through dimensions but not brick walls?”

  “The portable module isn’t as powerful as the huge detector coils on the ship.”

  “How about a lead box? Does that work?”

  “Very funny. I know what happens to the cat in that story.”

  “It’s been a pleasure knowing you, Mister Sunflower,” said Philip. “Fare thee well, and may angels watch over you.”

  Amy stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  Philip shrugged. “The inspector is following the cat, not us. If he gives himself up we’re scot free.”

  “How could you do that? He’s the reason you’re in England and not throwing up fossilized Twinkies in Junktown!”

  “Steady on there, Miss Armstrong. If someone’s for the chop, it’s got to be him. He’s only a cat after all.”

  “I can’t believe I thought you were a nice guy. You know what? If that’s how you think, you can leave now. Find your own way back to Binketee-boo or whatever stupid tree house your family lives in.”

  Philip hesitated. “Miss Armstrong, I’m not going to abandon you. I am a ‘nice guy,’ as you put it, and I want to get us out of this sticky situation as quickly as possible.”

  “The boy is smelly and stupid, but has a point,” said Sunflower. “You two are free to escape. I’ll distract the inspector.”

  Amy held the cat tighter in her arms. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “In that case,” mused Sunflower. “Are there any tunnels or caves nearby? That might block the signal even more than these brick walls and narrow alleyways.”

  “The tube, but it’s a vile, disgusting place,” said Philip. “Full of smoke, rats, and murderers.”

  “Sounds like home,” said Sunflower. “You should put that on the official website.”

  “What’s a website?”

  “All right, you two,” said Amy. “Let’s head for the tube. What’s under the ground of London can’t be filthier than what I’ve seen above. I hope the rest of the country isn’t like this.”

  Philip gritted his teeth. “I resent the implication––”

  “And I resent ever meeting you,” hissed Sunflower. “Lead us to the tunnels, human.”

  The two teenagers and dimension-traveling cat fled from the searching blue light of the inspector drone. They tried their best to follow the darkest alleys and keep to the shadows, away from the panicked clusters of people and growing crowds.

  East Enders continued to pour out of the closely packed rows of brick houses like bees on fire, impelled by the sights and sounds of their more southerly neighbors running pell-mell through the streets. The men were in shirtsleeves, the women in long dresses, and the children wore scraps of everything, but rarely shoes.

  None of the frightened crowd wore pajamas, and Amy wondered how they dressed so quickly. She realized, shamefully, that these were the only clothes they owned.

  Philip had recovered his eyesight faster than Amy, and it became his turn to lead her by the hand through the crowds of fleeing people.

  “Those robots can’t really hurt anyone, can they?” she shouted to Sunflower, who ran beside her on the cobbled street.

  “They’re not robots,” said the cat. “Drones. Remotely controlled machines.”

  “I’m not scared of them,” said Philip. “Should I be scared?”

  “Always,” said Sunflower.

  “Come on,” puffed Amy. “It’s not like they have killer laser beams or anything.”

  The street shook with a massive explosion, throwing all three to their hands and knees. Chunks of brick rained from the sky and smashed or bounced across the gray cobblestone.

  Sunflower blinked his green eyes. “Any other questions abou
t killer laser beams?”

  Amy watched three children taking shelter in a nearby doorway, their eyes wide with fear. She realized that many of the dark houses were filled with children, and weren’t as empty as she’d thought. The two smaller ones––a boy and girl––looked about eight and clutched at the waist of a blonde girl in a patched and worn forest-green dress. Her arms circled the shoulders of the two smaller children, but the hard eyes and grim line of her mouth told Amy she meant business.

  Amy felt a pang of melancholy. The exciting time-travel dream had suddenly ground to a halt, and she saw a reflection of herself in the pale teenage girl whose life was filled with dirt and pain and toil. Amy pushed the feeling away and jumped up with clenched fists.

  “This Lady of yours is crazy!”

  Amy pulled Philip to the side of the street as a huge crowd of panicked East Enders fled from the blue light.

  “She’s a lot of things, but crazy isn’t one of them,” said Sunflower, after he dodged the legs of the people in the crowd.

  “Sending a robot across space and time to burn two teenagers with laser beams isn’t crazy?”

  “There’s so much wrong with that statement, I don’t know where to begin. The Lady always has her reasons and a logical plan of action. I don’t agree with her most of the time and I’d probably blow her to bits if she was in front of me, but even I realize that she doesn’t act on a whim.”

  Philip raised a hand. “Excuse me? If we don’t get moving we’ll be the ones blown to bits.”

  Amy couldn’t help from staring at the three children nearby, and shook her head.

  “Why?”

  Philip tilted his head. “Um … because getting blown to bits is quite painful?”

  “No. Why am I still dreaming about any of this?”

  Amy cinched the huge trousers around her waist and walked toward the three children.

  Sunflower groaned. “Blessed Saint Mittens and his three legs, what is she doing?”

  Amy fished around in her pocket and held out a hand to the children.

  “Please leave us alone,” said the blonde girl. “We haven’t a farthing and not a scrap worth stealing.”

  Amy said nothing, and left a pile of silver and copper coins on the stoop at the feet of the three children. The grimy and quick fingers of the older girl swiped at the money and it instantly disappeared into her pockets.