Space Hostages (26 page)

“Christa!” I called.

For the first time, she noticed Josephine, Carl, and me. “Oh my god,” she breathed, stepping a little closer. I think somehow she'd realized that the Krakkiluks weren't a threat. “You're alive.”

“Christa,” I said. “Help us.”

And then Trommler
did
come into the room, and he took her arm.
“Christa, kom med mig,”
he said. The Goldfish translated:
“Come with me.”

“What's going on?”
asked Christa, which you
had to agree was a pretty fair question.

“Everything's going to be all right now
,” Trommler told her.
“When you get back to Earth, you'll be a princess.”

“Christa, listen!” I called, but she was letting her father steer her away.

Then Josephine grimaced and leaned through the invisible line in the air. She gasped and dropped to the ground, teeth locked.

“Is she having a seizure?” cried Christa in English, and darted back into the room. She stood there, dithering uselessly, a few feet away from us. “Helen! We need a medical dove.”

“She's perfectly fine,”
said Trommler.

“She's
not
,” said Christa. Because it was very obvious Josephine wasn't. She had rolled back inside the circle now, gasping.

“
He's
doing it,” Noel said. “He's taking us back to the Krakkiluks! He's put these horrible things on us!”

“The collars induce pain,” wheezed Josephine, “whenever we resist or disobey.”

“Papa, why are they wearing those things?”
Christa said in Swedish.
“Where are we going? Why aren't we in hyperspace yet?”

“He's handing Earth and Aushalawa-Mo
raaa
to
the Grand Expanse,” I said.

Scowling, Trommler took the little silver wand from his pocket and triggered my collar.

Christa cried out at the same moment I did, in shock. Then she turned, slowly, from me to Trommler, eyes very wide.

“Christa, come with me now,”
Trommler cajoled.
“The EDF, the EEC, they took my ships and my weapons for their war, and what do I get in return? Lies and threats—they want me in court, they want me in prison!”

Christa was still staring at him, and yet she didn't seem to be hearing him.
“I want to go home,”
she whimpered.

“We will, sweetheart, we will,”
promised Trommler.

“I thought those things were going to throw me into space,”
Christa said, jerking her head at the two Krakkiluks.

“No, no, darling. You were safe all along. You see now why I had to take you with me? You don't want to be on Earth when the Grand Expanse comes. But when it's all over, no one will be able to touch you. You'll be able to snap your fingers and have everything you want. We'll delete that book from every server in the world.”

“What about Mama?”
said Christa.
“And you said . . . you said Archangel Planetary was about humans taking their place in the universe. You said the stars belong to us.”

“They belong to
me
and
you
,”
said Trommler.
“Of course
you
will have all those things. You and I will be citizens not just of Earth, but of the Grand Expanse. You'll be able to travel anywhere you want. Everything will be perfect.”

“You'll be a puppet king of ten billion people who hate you,” said Josephine.

“Will you be
quiet
,” Trommler said, and pointed the controller at her.

And Christa reached up and plucked it out of his hand.

There was a moment when Trommler was too surprised to understand and Christa looked almost as surprised herself. She held the controller loosely between her fingertips. Then Trommler said, in a reasonable, grown-up voice, “Christa,” and reached to take it back, and Christa tightened her grip and stepped away.

Then he grabbed for her wrist and Christa struggled and pulled the controller tight against her chest, gripping it so hard she must have set it off, because a jolt of pain kicked through all of us, knocking us off
balance so we stumbled and clutched at each other. I think that was the moment the Trommlers stopped being scared of actually hurting each other.

Trommler wrenched at Christa's wrists, and Christa kicked at his shin and twisted so he was behind her, his arms still wrapped around her. And she screamed something incoherent and threw the controller forward, through the invisible barrier holding us in.

It bounced. Rolled across the floor.

It stopped at my feet.

I stamped on it as hard as I could.

I felt a dying buzz of sensation prickle through my nerves like a nettle being dragged down my spine, and then there was a
click
and the collar slipped down onto my collarbone. I reached up and touched it, a tiny gap had opened, where before there had been seamless metal. I pulled, and it came apart in my hands.

Th
saaa
wrenched their collar free with one tentacle and, with another, slapped the tiny device from the Goldfish's forehead.

The Goldfish dropped a foot in the air before catching itself, the light behind its eyes blinking rapidly.

“Hey, what's going on, did I malfunction?” it
asked dizzily. But then its lights steadied. “Oh . . . boy. That sure was a lousy thing to do, Rasmus Trommler.”

Eight accusing sets of eyes turned to Trommler, who hadn't let go of Christa but had switched to using her as a human shield. He backed away a few steps, then shoved Christa away and ran from the room.

“Clk-clk-clk!”
uttered Kat-li-Yaka and Qualt-zu-Quo, a furious clucking war cry, and surged after him.

“D
on't kill him!” called Noel, because Noel is an incredibly nice person.

“Helen!” Carl shouted, yanking off Noel's collar and then his own. “We have to get out of here!”

But there was only silence. And up ahead, the huge doors of the Krakkiluk ship were opening to swallow us.

“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, Th
saaa
?” 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 Th
saaa
, 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-Mo
raaa
. 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 Th
saaa
.

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

Th
saaa
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.

Th
saaa
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
c
ontinued 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.