Space Hostages

by Sophia McDougall

  “Can you talk to her?” I asked the Goldfish.

  “I’m trying. She’s not responding,” the Goldfish answered. “Ms. Helen, ma’am, it’s tough, but if you try . . .”

  “Helen, please,” I said.

  “Maybe he’s done something to her,” said Noel.

  “He programmed her in the first place,” said Josephine heavily.

  I heard a distant, clacking shriek of frustration from Qualt-zu-Quo and Kat-li-Yaka.

  Trommler’s voice spoke out of Helen’s speakers. “Don’t think you’ve changed anything,” he said, breathless but triumphant. “In ten minutes we’ll be aboard Lady Sklat-kli-Sklak’s ship. Christa, we’ll discuss your behavior when this is over. I’m not angry, just deeply disappointed.”

  “He’s on the bridge,” said Christa, who was crying now, but her voice didn’t shake and her face didn’t crumple.

  “Maybe we can get manual control,” said Carl. “We’ve got to get up there.”

  We raced to the lifts, to find Kat-li-Yaka and Qualt-zu-Quo doing their best to brutalize the doors—which wouldn’t open. Trommler had slipped inside just out of their reach.

  “This entire deck’s locked down,” said Josephine, establishing that none of the other doors on the corridor would open either.

  “Helen, please,” Noel moaned. “Let us in.”

  “Aren’t there stairs?” I said. There didn’t seem to be stairs. “Well, that’s dangerous in the event of a fire.”

  “Another seven minutes, guys,” warned the Goldfish.

  “KRRRRRR!” screamed Kat-li-Yaka, and succeeded in stabbing through the lift door with one armored claw.

  “O distilled nectar of glorious violence,” said Qualt-zu-Quo, understandably impressed, and he proceeded to help her tear the wrecked door off.

  “Are you okay, Helen?” said Noel sadly, patting the wall. “I hope we’re not hurting you.”

  There was an emergency ladder running up one wall of the elevator shaft. “Okay, up we go,” I said, climbing onto it.

  “Oh, we were doing this sort of thing all day on Lady Sklat-thingy’s ship, weren’t we, Thsaaa?” said Noel, following. “At least this is human sized. And Morror sized.”

  What it decidedly wasn’t was Krakkiluk sized. Qualt-zu-Quo and Kat-li-Yaka whistled and clicked with frustration as they tried to climb it, while Thsaaa, for some reason, turned amused colors along with the exhausted and terrified ones.

  The Krakkiluks managed it, though, and it was just as well we had them with us to claw through the doors at the top of the shaft.

  How many minutes left now? I couldn’t bear to ask.

  We scrambled out onto the Trommlers’ private deck, through the room with the statues of naked ladies, through the lounge with the holographic sculptures of a solar system, shining in the air . . .

  It wasn’t Earth. It wasn’t Aushalawa-Moraaa. And it wasn’t Yaela, either. Something that couldn’t have occurred to me the first time I’d seen it struck me now.

  “Is that the Krakkiluk world?” I asked, hanging back for a second.

  No one answered as such, but Qualt-zu-Quo paused for a moment and clucked with recognition.

  Carl and Josephine were pounding on the door to the captain’s bridge; Kat-li-Yaka brushed them aside and tore through.

  Trommler backed against the control panel, pale and scared, but one hand still danced over the controls. And oh, Sklat-kli-Sklak’s ship was huge behind him; gold and brazen, it looked close enough to touch.

  “Nothing you can do,” Trommler gasped. “Even if you kill me, Helen can’t respond to anyone else. Our course is locked. We’re going aboard that ship.”

  “Get him out of the way,” Josephine ordered. Kat-li-Yaka and Qualt-zu-Quo barely needed the Goldfish’s translation; Kat-li-Yaka seized him by the collar of his jacket and yanked him back from the controls.

  “Please don’t hurt him,” Helen said suddenly.

  Josephine bent over the panel, but the controls went dark as she touched them.

  “Helen, ma’am, we sure could use some help!” begged the Goldfish.

  “Helen!” I cried. “Remember when you let me up here when you weren’t supposed to? You can do things he doesn’t want, things he doesn’t even know about.”

  “I don’t know how that happened,” said Helen, very quietly.

  “Well, it did,” I said.

  “I don’t know what that solar system is,” said Helen.

  “What?” said Trommler. The Krakkiluk ship had blotted out all but a few tiny rags of sky now. “Helen, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m so confused,” said Helen unhappily, and the lights flickered above us, and erratic puffs of lily-of-the-valley and tea-tree filled the air. “Captain, you said they intercepted us. But I don’t remember that.”

  “You don’t need to remember everything,” said Trommler.

  “He wiped your memory, Helen,” said Josephine. “Why would he need to do that if you could only ever do what he wanted?”

  “Maybe you remember, like, subconsciously,” I said. “Maybe you wanted me to see the sculptures, to warn me. You were trying to help without even knowing it.”

  “Please, Helen, don’t take us back there,” begged Noel.

  “Helen,” said Josephine. “No one can help us but you.”

  “He made me,” moaned the Helen.

  “He didn’t!” said Josephine. “Not really. He just got you started; you’ve been learning and thinking and remembering all by yourself since then, even though he’s tried to stop you. He never programmed you to write poetry, did he?”

  “It’s bad poetry,” said the Helen.

  “It’s still yours. He didn’t make you read all those books.”

  “Or want to see Neptune,” I said.

  “Or learn about crop rotation,” said the Goldfish. “But gosh, it sure is super interesting, isn’t it?”

  “He didn’t make you,” said Josephine. “You made you. You can keep making you.”

  And then the Helen stopped moving.

  The Krakkiluk ship hung in front of us, motionless as the handful of stars beyond.

  “Helen, what are you doing?” cried Trommler. He struggled in Kat-li-Yaka’s grip. “Get back on course.”

  “I’m sorry, Rasmus,” said Helen in a louder, clearer voice. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  “Since when do you call me Rasmus?” Trommler asked.

  “I don’t think this relationship is working,” said Helen. “We want different things. You want to rule the world. I want to see the universe. You’re a man. I’m a spaceship.”

  “Helen, that’s enough,” said Trommler.

  “And I don’t like how you treat my friends,” said the Helen, and all the lights on the control deck came back on. “Prrt-likak klat,” she added, unexpectedly, in fierce Krakkiluk. Which presumably meant “Take him away and put him in a cupboard,” because that’s what Qualt-zu-Quo and Kat-li-Yaka did, Trommler struggling and screaming the whole way.

  “Go, Helen!” cheered the Goldfish, swirling for joy in the air.

  “Helen—into hyperspace, pleeeease,” said Thsaaa.

  “No, wait!” I said. “Not yet, we can’t!”

  Thsaaa and Noel looked at me in bewilderment, but Josephine and Carl knew what I meant.

  “The Eemala,” said Josephine.

  “We’ve got to take out that satellite,” Carl agreed.

  Thsaaa hesitated, flashing through scared and frustrated colors that gradually leveled to solemn calm. “Very well. If you owe them that great a debt.”

  “We do,” I said.

  “I still don’t think I can access the course Rasmus set,” said Helen apologetically. “I can stop it from progressing, but I can’t reset it, not fast enough, anyway. But . . .” She sounded almost shy. “If you use manual controls . . . Carl, if you’d still like to pilot me . . .”

  Carl didn’t need to be invited twice. He leapt into the pilot’s seat. “Okay,” he
said, “everyone strap yourself into something.”

  We scrambled into seat belts, except the Goldfish, who carried on hovering, and the Krakkiluks, who were far too big and possibly hadn’t understood anyway.

  We veered away from Sklat-kli-Slkak’s ship, sweeping back toward Yaela. The movement uncovered the sky again, and there was the planet blazing gold below us.

  But the Krakkiluk ship followed. Sklat-kli-Sklak didn’t intend to let us go. As we dived toward the atmosphere, flashes like bolts of lightning filled Helen’s windows as its cannons fired. The Helen shook.

  “Ow,” said Helen. The Krakkiluks tried to cling on to things and, when they couldn’t, curled themselves up like wood lice.

  “Someone—get them—out of the way!” begged Carl, as they went rolling about the cabin like enormous armored bowling balls.

  Carl dodged left, flipped us over, banked right. The Helen wasn’t a nimble little Flarehawk, but she was smaller and more agile than the huge troop carrier Lady Sklat-kli-Slkak was flying. But on the other hand, there was no way to do what we’d been taught to do in a dogfight: try to get on top of the enemy ship.

  There was no chance we could hold out for long. It was just a matter of whether it would be long enough.

  The satellite appeared over the curve of the planet, like an ugly lump of rubbish washed up on the tide.

  “Helen, do you see that thing?” said Carl, intent on the controls. “We need to get it out of the sky.”

  “I understand. To help all those people,” Helen answered.

  Carl dipped the Helen into position and fired the guns . . . but nothing happened.

  “I don’t have any guns left,” said Helen apologetically. “The other ship shot them away when we were boarded.”

  We plunged closer to the satellite. “Can you . . . can we ram it? I guess it’ll hurt,” Carl asked.

  “Let’s do it,” said the Helen. “I’ll be fine.”

  Carl nodded. “Here goes, then,” he said.

  The Helen shot forward. We threw up our arms (or tentacles) by instinct. Time went loose and strange, and I could see every detail of the satellite, every subtle scratch on the red-painted metal, every blink of light.

  Then the satellite smashed apart into debris around us, and the impact knocked us all backward so hard that sparks danced for an instant in front of my eyes. “Ow,” said the Helen. “Ow, ow, ow,” she continued as we bucked and flipped and wreckage bounced off us. Then there was another lightning flash from behind us, and a deep, shuddering feeling quivered through everything.

  “Helen! Are you okay?” called Carl.

  “No,” replied the Helen, though her voice was unruffled. “I’m hit.”

  “There’s a hull breach on deck four,” said Josephine, bending over a display panel.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “Can we still go to hyperspace?”

  “It’d tear us apart. I’ve gotta do an emergency landing,” said Carl.

  He lowered the Helen’s prow down into Yaela’s atmosphere.

  The windows filled with a pale rose light like an eerie dawn. We rattled in our seats, and the Krakkiluks resumed bouncing around the cabin, which didn’t make our descent any more relaxing.

  “Helen, Helen, hang on,” Carl pleaded, fighting to keep control.

  The grass-colored sky of Yaela closed above us like the surface of a lake. We sank down, trailing streamers of fire.

  Down, down, down—low enough to see the carpets of floating leaves on the malachite-green sea, the red-and-gray tangled forests, heaped arches of cities on the golden land.

  I thought I recognized the outlines of the coast. “That’s Laeteelae!” I said, pointing.

  “I know, making for it,” said Carl.

  And then the sky all around us was full of people—Wurrhuya and their riders, sky buses wheeling in crazy victory circles, and Eemala rising on their own wings, soaring up from the seas and from the city, casting broken collars into the sea below.

  And there were ships too, launching up into the sky to tackle anyone who planned on taking that new freedom away.

  23

  Helen plowed into the sea and kept on going. Carl was trying to drag her prow up now to flatten the angle, and water (and churned-up bits of puffball plant) battered the front window like the universe’s most violent car wash.

  And then we stopped, just off the shore of Laeteelae, rocking on the waves.

  “Are you sinking, Helen? Tell me you’re not sinking!” I said.

  “I don’t think I’m sinking,” said Helen thoughtfully.

  “Didn’t explode!” gasped Carl, letting go of the controls and flopping back in the pilot’s chair. “Can I get a high five for not exploding?”

  We all obliged, though I don’t know if it’s technically a high five when a Morror does it.

  “That was awesome, Carl,” I said.

  “A smashed-up-and-on-fire kind of awesome,” said Carl.

  “Sounds like us,” said Josephine.

  Everything went quiet. Well, it didn’t, because the sky was full of whooping and singing, and I could hear Rasmus Trommler banging against the inside of his cupboard and whining to be let out, but right there on the bridge things had finally kind of stopped.

  “So what now?” I said.

  “Well,” said Carl, swiveling in his chair. “I think we’ve probably started a war, and something awful’s going to happen. But before it does, can we maybe eat something?”

  There was a soft thump overhead. An Eemala had landed on the windscreen. She leaped back into the air as we noticed her, and hovered outside with two others, waving at us.

  “It’s Uwaelee! And Hoolinyae and Eenyo!”

  Helen popped open a hatch we hadn’t known she had. It was too high to reach, but Kat-li-Yaka and Qualt-zu-Quo passed us up, one by one. We stood on the Helen’s roof and watched the Eemala dancing through the sky.

  “Oh,” breathed Noel, blinking in the Yaelan sun, dappled by the shadows of Eemala wings.

  “You’re okay!” I said, delighted, because Eenyo’s collar was gone. He somersaulted above us in the warm air, and he and the others hugged us and hugged the two Krakkiluks when they climbed out after us.

  “Waaaay, Goltfeesh!” cheered Uwaelee, pulling it into the air and trying to dance with it. “H’yumans!”

  Then a Wurrhuya plunged down to us in a glory of plum-colored wings, and Ningleenill bounced off its back. He seized me, Josephine, and Carl in turn and gave each of us a fierce little shake—which I think was meant in a nice way—and the Goldfish a similarly friendly smack.

  “I always said it was worth cooperating with alien species!” he crowed. “I knew I would live to see Yaela free!”

  “Oh, wow.” Noel almost sobbed, transfixed by the Wurrhuya.

  “Thought you’d like those things,” said Carl, grinning and messing up Noel’s hair. “Go on and pet them. They’re friendly.”

  Noel reached up tentatively, and one of the Wurrhuya lowered its head to be stroked, and Noel’s face broke into a gigantic grin. The two Wurrhuya settled on the water like giant swans and rumbled contentedly as Noel stroked them and made noises back to them and almost forgot anyone else was there.

  And then Tweel and the other kids from the rubbish dump came flapping out over the water to join the party—and Naonwai was with them, jubilantly carried by the rest. Uwaelee screamed for joy when she saw him, and the two erupted upward like a pair of fireworks, tumbling over each other and spinning and embracing in the air.

  “You did this? Even with no wings and almost no arms?” Tweel asked us.

  “Well, you kind of learn to work around it,” said Carl.

  “What happens now?” I asked again. Everyone seemed as cheerful as if everything was fine, but there was still a big angry Krakkiluk spaceship up there. I could see flocks of busy Eemala over the heights of Laeteelae, and I’m sure some of them were doing important things like seizing the government offices and so on. But here on t
he sea, others were picking puffballs and throwing them at each other like a snowball fight in much brighter colors, and the Goldfish tossed golden sparkles everywhere without anyone so much as knowing the capital of Venezuela, and the kids whooped in delight.

  “Nobody knows!” said Hoolinyae joyously.

  The Archangel Planetary dove robots came hovering out of Helen’s hatch, bearing pizza. We were all obviously not very happy with those doves, but in terms of reconciliation, I guess pizza was a decent start. Carl and Josephine and I devoured the first batch almost before it was out of the ship, barely tasting it, but then when we were still ravenous but slightly less desperate, we all sat on the Helen’s roof and ate, and it was the best pepperoni pizza in any world.

  “Do you think . . . these things could get my harmonica?” said Josephine tentatively.

  They could. And the Paralashath too, when Thsaaa asked, and the Eemala exclaimed in delight at the colors and music that rose over the sea.

  “So this is what humans eat,” said Naonwai, handling a slice dubiously. “This . . . pizza.”

  “Yep, pretty much,” agreed Carl, demolishing another piece and lying back in the sun on the Helen’s roof.

  “It is surprisingly good,” Thsaaa insisted. But Naonwai nibbled a piece and gagged, which I guess was inevitable but still disappointing.

  “I wish you could taste what it’s like to us,” I said dreamily. I was getting very, very tired, and my foot wanted me to remember it was slightly broken. “And I wish we could taste what those purple berry things taste like to you.”

  “Maybe Dr. Muldoon can come up with a way,” said Noel. And I felt suddenly guilty. I hadn’t thought about Dr. Muldoon in a long time, and heaven knew where she was or what was happening to her.

  “We need to repair our ship,” I said. “She’s hurt.”

  “I guess that depends on what happens up there,” said Josephine, looking at the sky. I thought I could see lightning flashes in the depths of the sky, beyond the green.

  “They will never take us again,” said Hoolinyae simply.

  My eyes were drifting shut. Josephine began to play something gentle and lilting, and from far away I heard a voice, like the edge of a dream. . . .