Stowaway Read online

  He made it three steps before Leo heard the click. The hammer cocked on Captain Saito’s antique pistol. The one now leveled at the pirate’s head. “In that case I demand that you relinquish command of your vessel to me, or I promise to put a bullet straight through your traitorous pirate skull.”

  It happened so fast, too fast for Leo to scream out a warning or for any of the crew to react. Too fast for Captain Saito, the pistol kicked out of her hand by the long black boot, sending it spinning across the floor of the bridge. In another second the girl with the bionic arm had the Beagle’s commander by the throat, lifting her off her feet, legs kicking. Leo felt his brother tense beside him, about to charge.

  “That’s enough, Kat.” Bastian Black nodded and the girl let go. Captain Saito collapsed to her knees, hands to her neck, sucking in ragged breaths. Leo’s hand went to his own throat instinctively.

  The pirate knelt next to Captain Saito, but he continued to speak loud enough for everyone in the bridge to hear. “That was a mistake,” he said, “Don’t make another one.” He stood up and addressed the entire crew. “I will leave what food I can spare in your hangar. But if you make any more attempts to follow us or prevent us from leaving, I will be forced to do something that will double the price on my head.”

  Captain Saito, leaning on one hand, motioned for the crew to stay back with the other. She whispered something to Black that Leo couldn’t hear, though it might have been more of a hiss.

  “I’ve been called worse,” he said.

  Leo watched from the side door as the three pirates disappeared through the main bridge door, leaving the captain on the floor, the remaining crew of the Beagle surrounding her, helping her to her feet, all of them talking at once. Leo felt like he should join them, to try and help somehow, when he felt a tug on his arm.

  “Let’s go,” Gareth said.

  “Go where?” Leo’s brother was pulling so hard it seemed he might rip his arm out of his socket. And unlike that furry beast in the bathrobe, Leo didn’t have extras.

  Gareth flashed him a look. The same look he got when he stood on the starting line back home, waiting for the gun to go off. His race face. Leo knew that whenever his brother got that look, it meant he had a plan for how he was going to win and nothing would stand in his way.

  “Gareth, where are we going?” Leo asked again.

  “We are getting out of here,” his brother said.

  How do you pack an entire life, even a short one, into a suitcase half your size? How do you shove ten years into a bag that, as your father constantly reminds you, you will have to carry yourself?

  You start by leaving most of it behind.

  “You won’t need clothes,” Dr. Fender said to his two sons. “The Coalition will supply uniforms for the duration. And no soap or toothpaste. All of our necessities are provided. Food. Clothing. Medicine. They will take care of us.” Leo wouldn’t even need his old inhaler, the one he’d decorated with Spider-Man stickers. They’d give him a new one. A better one. “Just pack the particulars and the peculiars. The things that matter to you but no one else,” his father said.

  Gareth packed his running shoes and the medal from his first ever cross-country championship, as well as thirty of his most valuable comics, carefully preserved in plastic. They could download any book or vid or game they wanted to their datapads, of course, but there was no way Gareth was leaving his great grandfather’s Avengers number one, close to a century old and still in near mint condition, behind.

  Leo spent hours staring at the inside of his suitcase, imagining everything that might fit. The toys in the plastic bins beside his closet. The wooden trunk full of magic paraphernalia by his bed from back when his wannabe magician of a mother was teaching him sleight of hand. His pillow? They would have pillows on board the ship, obviously, but a head gets used to a certain spot, nestled between familiar lumps formed over time.

  In the end, Leo decided to scrap the suitcase and picked a backpack instead—the blue one he’d used for school. In it he threw some trick cards—his mother’s favorite Svengali deck—a stuffed rabbit named Houdini, and a picture of Amos. He decided to hold on to his old inhaler, just in case. Then he carefully selected a few of the more unusual seashells that lined his bookshelves and wrapped them carefully in a sock. Most of the rest of the stuff in his room he could leave behind, he decided. Finally he grabbed his watch from his dresser and slapped it to his wrist.

  He stood in the doorway of his bedroom, the only one he’d ever known, taking it in one last time. Through the window on the other side he could see the ships, Aykari and human alike, studding the smoggy sky. Used to be they were all only Aykari ships. But that was before. Before the worst day of his life. Before the war came right to their doorstep. Now the factory right outside town spit out starfighters instead of SUVs.

  “Trust me. This is for the best,” his father told Leo as they got out of the hover car to board the Beagle—a hulking, bulbous behemoth that had been designed for reliability over speed and was depressingly devoid of weapons. It looked massive, though Leo’s dad told him it would only have a crew of forty or so.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Dr. Fender asked. “Darwin would be proud.”

  Leo knew who Charles Darwin was. And if Charles Darwin had suddenly found himself staring at a spaceship capable of jumping between star systems, he’d probably have freaked all the way out.

  “I think it will be good for you,” Dad continued. “I bet the moment we get out there your asthma will start to clear up. Get away from some of this smog. Besides, there’s this whole, huge galaxy for us to explore. We are fortunate really. Not everyone gets this opportunity.”

  Most wouldn’t, Leo knew. Like Amos and Mrs. Tinsley. And billions more humans who couldn’t afford their own ticket into space. Who weren’t famous scientists like Leo’s father. Who didn’t want to join the Coalition military or volunteer to be a colonist on an industrial mining world. There were many ways off the planet, but few of them were easy.

  Staying would be easy, Leo thought. If only his father would let them.

  Dr. Fender crouched down and took his son’s hands.

  “I’m sorry, Leo. We have to do this. We have to think about the future. The Earth isn’t going to be around forever. We did too much damage to it early on and tried to make up for it too late. Even the Aykari—as good as they are—won’t be able to save it. By the time you’re my age it might not even be habitable. Everyone will have to leave eventually.”

  “Not Mrs. Tinsley.”

  “No. Probably not Mrs. Tinsley. Though if there were enough ships, I’d tell her that she should go too. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it’s better to go now, when we have the choice, when we can pick our destiny, than to be forced out later.”

  But this wasn’t Leo’s destiny, it was his father’s. He was the one who had been recruited by the Coalition. There were days Leo looked at his prize-winning astrophysicist father with a choking swell of pride. Today wasn’t one of those days.

  “Trust me. Once we get out there, everything is going to change. You can’t even begin to comprehend the kinds of things you’ll see. Things that I could only dream about at your age. Things that I did dream about at your age.”

  “But where are we going?”

  “Wherever it is, I promise to keep you safe,” his father assured him.

  Leo knew nowhere was completely safe. Not really.

  He looked at the gigantic ship—his home for the foreseeable future. One year. Three years. Five. Ten. He had no idea how long he would be on it. It didn’t look at all like home. Home had curtained windows. Home had a cement sidewalk and grass that tickled the backs of your knees when you laid out in the sun. Home was finite. Fathomable. It was a space you could fill.

  Out there was just emptiness. Cold and black forever and ever.

  Dr. Fender held Leo’s hand and tried to pull him along, but Leo dug in. He tried to think of something, anything that could change his fat
her’s mind, convince him to let their family stay. There was one.

  “What about Mom?”

  Dr. Fender closed his eyes for a moment before letting out a long sigh. Leo hoped it was a sigh of defeat, but it was something else. A memory, maybe. Or a promise made.

  He opened his eyes again and fixed them on his son. “This is what she would have wanted, Leo. She would have wanted us to take care of each other. And that’s just what we are going to do. For her.”

  His father stood and Leo knew it was over. He had no more magic tricks left. He reluctantly shuffled his feet along the path to the boarding ramp and stared at the opening of the Beagle, looking like the mouth of a giant whale, a ramp for its tongue. He took one last look behind him at the only home he’d ever known, past the landing zone and over the rows of buildings to the swatch of trees gleaming emerald green in the distance.

  He felt a hand slip into his own.

  “Don’t worry,” Gareth whispered. “I’ve got your back.” He gave Leo’s hand a squeeze. “It won’t be so bad.”

  But Leo could hear the same doubt in his brother’s voice. Gareth knew, just like Leo. He knew from experience.

  Nothing good ever comes from leaving the ones you love.

  The threats presented by the Djarik and their allies to our country, our planet, our entire civilization are unlike any we have ever seen before. At no point in human history has our fate hung so precipitously in the balance. But at no point in human history have we come together as a species the way we have in this moment. We will fight back. Together. United by a single purpose: to protect our planet and ensure the survival of humanity, taking our rightful place among the peace-loving races of the galaxy.

  —Gabriella Jackson-Hale, president of the United States of America, State of the Union Address, 2051

  The Worst Pirate in the Universe

  LEO’S WORLD HAD ALWAYS BEEN A LITTLE ALIEN.

  He was only two when the Aykari made first contact. He had no memory of being huddled around the television watching their arrival like his brother did. He had no recollection of a world without spaceships and jump drives and translator chips. He had no idea what coal was used for or how paper was made, but by age eight he knew how an artificial gravity generator worked (sort of) and could list the steps required to terraform a hostile planet. He couldn’t imagine a world without aliens because his world had always been filled with them.

  He could remember his father reading his favorite picture book, Hello, Humans! over and over though. A pop-up book that told about the day the Aykari first came to Earth, the cardboard pictures of New York and Beijing high-rises snapping to life tickled Leo almost as much as pulling the tab and watching the glittering Aykarian cruiser whip across the page like a silver bullet. The comical-looking alien at the end, spindly arms extended for a welcoming embrace, was a little startling, but the smile on its face suggested everything would be just fine.

  Of course the real Aykari didn’t smile. Their mouths didn’t work that way. They were tiny circles that opened and closed like irises, letting out words the way our eyes let in more light. The only way to know if an Aykari was pleased was if its diamond-shaped eyes turned blue. If they turned orange—well, that was a different story.

  In the year 2044, the book began, someone came knocking on Earth’s door.

  It was one of three years every school-aged kid had memorized, counting their birthday. Everything before that was BC, before contact. Before Earth’s polluted sky filled with ships of radiant silver. There had been hints of their arrival, Leo would learn in galactic history class. SETI had been issuing reports of increased feedback, potential messages they didn’t have the technology to translate. Hubble Five had caught glimpses of strange objects entering the solar system. But nothing was conclusive. Nothing that could prepare them for what—or who—was about to come knocking.

  And then, on the one-year anniversary of the first Mars landing—with humans still marveling at their own ingenuity and their baby steps into a larger world—they appeared. A hundred ships hovering over a hundred cities. Leo had seen the vids a thousand times, had heard his father recount the day in excruciating detail. The military response. The scream of sirens. The flooded streets. The panic fed by too many movies where flying saucers fried national monuments with blasts of nuclear energy and bug-like xenomorphs fed on the brains of fleeing Earthlings.

  But it was nothing like that. The Aykari broadcast their message in every Earthly language so that no one would misunderstand.

  Do not fear, they said. We are friends.

  That was it, at first. Those two proclamations, though many more followed in the days and weeks to come. Revelations to a shocked and anxious planet.

  That we humans were only one of hundreds of civilized species in the galaxy.

  That all our wildest dreams about interstellar travel were about to come true overnight.

  And that our planet, the lovely blue-and-green marble called Earth, contained a treasure more precious than we ever dreamed of.

  Ventasium. Loads of it. Heaps of it. Deep in the planet’s crust. And they, the Aykari, would show us how to use it.

  And with it all came the stark realization that humans were once again Neanderthals, fashioning axes out of flint. With their ships capable of traveling from star to star and weapons that seemed lifted straight out of pulp paperbacks and summer blockbusters, the Aykari were technologically superior in every way. The one thing the people of Earth had to offer them, that the planet itself had to offer, the visitors could have easily taken by force.

  But they didn’t. They asked nicely. Share your ventasium, they said, and we will be your personal escorts into this great big universe.

  And humanity did the only thing it could do in that situation.

  It said, Okay.

  Only later did the people of Earth realize that the Aykari weren’t the only ones interested in its resources. That ventasium was the hottest commodity in the galaxy. Some, like the Djarik, started wars over it. Others simply stole it and traded it on the black market.

  Those others were called pirates.

  Leo had heard stories of pirates growing up. Not Captain Kidd and Jack Sparrow, though he’d heard of them too, but actual pirates. A disorganized mob of criminals from every corner and crevice of the galaxy who trolled through trading routes, disabling freighters with ion cannons and blasting their way through airlocks, brandishing pistols in both hands as they made their demands. They never said “argh” or flew the skull and bones, but they lived by the same basic code as the pirates from the books: take what you can get wherever you can get it—the devil take the rest.

  The Aykari mostly considered pirates to be a nuisance, Leo knew. Outcasts and outlaws who, for one reason or another, refused to be a part of the Aykari-led Coalition of Planets. Occasionally the Aykari would report on the execution of a band of buccaneers who had been caught attempting to raid one of their supply ships, but in comparison to the war with the Djarik, the occasional rogue swiping a few cores of ventasium was little more than a pest. Why bother swatting mosquitoes when you’re dealing with a hornet’s nest?

  Except the mosquitoes were multiplying. If the stories Leo heard were to be trusted, more and more creatures of every stripe were turning to piracy. For some, the cost of ventasium was too dear to acquire it through honest means. For others, it was a chance to make a tidy profit, playing one side against the other and selling the universe’s most precious commodity to the highest bidder. Some, Leo suspected, just wanted to watch the universe burn.

  Whatever the reason, Leo knew that pirates were not to be trusted. At best they were outsiders, turning their back on the Coalition and everything it stood for: peace and order and cooperation. At worst they were thugs, thieves, and murderers.

  Either way, they weren’t the kind of people Leo ever wanted to meet.

  Leo skidded to a stop just inside one of the hangar doors, his sweaty hand still clutching his brother’s. His eyeballs
popped.

  “What the heck is that thing?”

  Leo had encountered many different starships over the years. Hulking cruisers. Sleek skiffs. Solar yachts. The massive box-shaped barges that the Aykari used to transport its shipments of excavated ventasium from Earth. He’d seen military fighters and civilian pleasure boats, but he’d never seen anything quite like the ship sitting in front of him.

  It was shaped funny, for starters, like a giant eggplant, or maybe a pear, tapered at the front but spreading out in the rear, perhaps to make room for more cargo. Twin foils jutted from either side and extended past the center cockpit like walrus tusks, an unusual modification for what appeared to be a freighter, and a small freighter at that.

  But not a helpless one. Unlike the Beagle, this pirate ship carried plenty of firepower. Torpedo bays, front-mounted cannons, a turret in its belly. It also sported three standard propulsion engines in addition to an FTL drive ring, which meant it could probably move when it needed to. The ship looked like it had been through some tight scrapes judging by the scorch marks etched along its hull. It was easily four times the size of the damaged shuttle and filled up half the Beagle’s hangar.

  “It’s so . . .”

  “Yellow,” Gareth finished for him.

  True, Leo had never seen a yellow ship before, though the paint was stripped in places, revealing dingy grays and rusted reds underneath. Of course Leo had never seen a pirate ship before either. Not up close. Maybe this is what they all looked like. Leo’s initial impression of pirates came from the official Coalition information vids he saw growing up. The message was always delivered in the same monotone, mechanical voice: Piracy is a crime. The Coalition is dedicated to the safety and security of all of its member planets. Any pirate caught attacking a Coalition ship will be prosecuted to the full extent of Aykari law.

  Those public service announcements only hinted at the horrors pirates committed. Worse were the tales Leo heard, traded among the Beagle’s crew: that pirates took no prisoners. That they were blood-hungry murderers who forced captured crew out of airlocks to suffocate in the cold grip of space or sold them to work as slaves on distant mining planets. That they were all criminals of one kind or another before they even became pirates and therefore accustomed to working on the wrong side of the law. Tex said they were actually worse than the enemy because at least the Djarik were committed to the Djarik empire. Pirates had no such allegiances. They were outlaws. With ships.