Wormhole Pirates on Orbis (2 page)

The leader struck the pirate on the head with the butt of his plasma rifle. The smaller alien stumbled against the wall but never took his eyes off the portal.

“You know the plan!” spat the big alien.

“They’re not going about it very fast, are they?” Theodore whispered.

Max turned to me and said, “Why
aren’t
any Space Jumpers showing up? Now would be better than any time I can think of.”

“They’re too many . . . Oh, forget it,” I told her. I was finished arguing about Space Jumpers.

Three more wormhole pirates clambered onto our shuttle. None were as big as their leader, but each was as nervous as the little one, glancing out the portal and whispering to the others. They poked at the Citizens with their plasma rifles and demanded their crystals and jewelry.

“Is it just me, or do they look distracted?” I asked Theodore.

“It’s like they’re worried about something,” he said.

Before we could move away, the small alien was at the top of our steps. “What about these?” he shouted when he spotted us.

“They’re knudniks; they have nothing. Leave them be,” the leader shouted back.

But then the little alien caught sight of Ketheria. He shuffled down the steps toward her, and I knew instantly what he was after. On my sister’s forehead was a large amber crystal set in a silver band that encompassed her head. The Keepers had attached it to her after Madame Lee exposed her telepathic abilities on Orbis 1.

I stepped in front of my sister when I saw him reach for the crystal. “You can’t take it,” I told the alien.

The alien spun around and shoved the nose of his weapon against my throat. “Who’s going to stop me?” he snarled, curling back his lips to expose four rows of yellowed, pointed teeth.

“It’s attached to her head,” I said. “It can’t come off.”

“Anything that sparkles is coming with me, even if I have to cut a little knudnik flesh in the process,” he threatened me, and turned toward my sister.

Without thinking, I grabbed the alien by the shoulder. He swung around and buried the butt of his rifle in my stomach. I slumped to my knees, gasping for air, but I was glad the alien’s attention was concentrated on me now and not my sister.

“JT!” Max screamed.

There were twenty-one other kids on the shuttle with me, linked together by the debt our dead parents owed the Trading Council. When I fell to the floor, they circled the wormhole pirate. The plasma rifle clattered in his grip as he spun from kid to kid, unable to decide where to hold his aim.

“Enough!” shouted the leader.

“Why is it taking so long?” my attacker shouted back.

Theylor stepped forward and ordered the leader, “Take your trinkets and be gone.”

“I was hoping for a Space Jumper or two,” the big pirate said, feigning disappointment.

One of the Citizens cried, “They are banished. Orbis does not need those barbarians.”

“Banished?” the pirate said, and laughed.

Under his breath, I heard the nervous little pirate say, “Foolish Citizens.”

It was then that the shuttle shivered and the cabin glowed blue. Some sort of ectoplasm was seeping through the walls.

“It’s about time,” the leader scoffed under his breath.

As the transparent blue gel thickened, the security force took shape from the substance leaking into our ship. A host of security-bots, armed with their own weapons, focused on the offenders. Most of the pirates immediately laid their guns down before a single shot was fired.

“Not very brave,” Max said.

“Just not stupid,” I replied. “Look at all those security-bots.”

“Sixty-four of them,” Theodore counted quickly. He had a habit of counting things. He counted the fastest when he was nervous.

“Why aren’t they fighting back, though?” Max asked.

My sister stood next to me as a security-bot bubbled the nervous little alien in front of me. “I don’t think that was their intention,” she said.

But then the big pirate lifted his rifle, smiled, and shouted, “Oh, why not?” He squeezed several rounds at the security-bots, striking them with precision. One of the Citizens screamed and cowered under a table. The pirate was now laughing out loud, picking off the robots as they flew closer. He strolled across the Citizens’ area as pieces of the shattered machines showered down upon us. Finally the remaining bots tackled the pirate. He hit the floor less than two meters from my face and whispered to me, “Tell him we put on a good show, all right, Softwire?”

I was starving by the time the Council officials finished questioning us. Our rendezvous with the wormhole pirates delayed our shuttle trip by a whole spoke as the investigators interrogated everyone.

“He acted like . . . he knew me,” I told the official who questioned me inside the spaceport. She was a flimsy alien without a strand of hair on her head.

The passenger who had spilled his drink inside the cabin paraded toward me and shouted at the official, “What did this knudnik just tell you?”

“I didn’t —” I tried to interject, but the Citizen would have none of it.

“Silence,” he ordered, glancing over his shoulder. “You must confine this creature. You must confine him
now.
He may be in collaboration with these bandits. If he claims to know them, then he is a suspect. In fact, I
saw
him communicating with the leader when we brought him down. Yes! I saw that.”

“That’s ridiculous,” exclaimed another passenger, who shoved in front of me. “What’s a knudnik going to do?” Then he launched into his own dramatic story depicting his heroic efforts to foil the “vicious” wormhole pirates.

I was glad the attention was off me, and I slipped over to Theylor and the other kids as the two Citizens argued over the accounts of the attack. Standing next to Theodore, I watched more passengers jabbering in small groups — family members, I assumed. A few even waved their arms around, dramatizing their stories for flying camera-bots.

“What are those, Theylor?” I asked him.

“Citizens enjoy a good story,” he replied. “They often record or broadcast their adventures for others’ amusement.”

“But why all the commotion?” Max asked.

“No one has ever seen a wormhole pirate on the rings before this. Most Citizens thought they were a myth, an excuse for disreputable operators who claimed their cargo was confiscated inside the wormhole.” Theylor nudged Max forward. “But we need to go now. Everyone over here, please.”

The Keeper motioned us away from the crowds. I looked at the Citizens over my shoulder and thought,
Why did that wormhole pirate act like he knew me?
I was just a knudnik. Yes, I was a softwire, but it had served me no good on the Rings of Orbis. The only people who mattered here were Citizens, and they went to great lengths to make sure you knew that. There was no reason in this universe why that wormhole pirate should know me. But I still couldn’t get his face out of my mind.
Tell him
. . . His order kept repeating in my head. Tell
who
? I answered back.

Theylor guided us into the thick of the spaceport. Orbis 3, he told us, was the ring where most of the Citizens lived. While Orbis 1 was home to the Keepers’ city, Magna, and housed most of the government buildings, Orbis 2 handled all of the crystal refineries. But Orbis 3 was exclusive to the Citizens and their powerful Trading Council. Theylor said that the Keepers had little control over the Citizens on Orbis 3.

“That’s comforting,” Theodore whispered to me.

“Wow, look at that,” one of the kids cried out, standing under a crystal sculpture that must have been more than seven meters tall. It was one of eight sculptures posed with outstretched arms and laboring to support the expansive glass ceiling.

“One for each of the First Families,” Max pointed out.

“How do you know that?” I said.

“Everyone does,” she replied.

“I don’t!” Theodore complained.

Theylor saw us gawking at the alien sculptures and said, “The Citizens and their Trading Council profit immensely from the crystal moons.”

It was obvious to me that they had spent a fortune on those sculptures, and everything else, too.

“This is unbelievable,” Theodore said, staring up through the glass ceiling that framed a spectacular view of the moon Ki, where the Citizens harvested so much of their wealth. Orbis 3 curved up and over our heads, revealing an unending sparkle of lights from more and more buildings.

“There must be a lot of people on this ring,” Max exclaimed.

We followed Theylor across tiles laced with metal that seemed to sparkle from some unknown energy source. In the middle of the open foyer, one Citizen stopped abruptly in front of me, glaring. He made a snorting sound and flicked his wrists toward the ground. Another Citizen practically walked over Dalton, unwilling to acknowledge his existence. I straightened my tattered vest, even though I knew the skin was the mark of a knudnik. It was the only thing that visibly separated us from them.

“They certainly have a way of making you feel wanted,” Max whispered to me.

“We should just take these things off,” Theodore told Max, tugging at his skin.

“Forget the Citizens,” she said.

“But I hate being invisible,” he replied under his breath.

“I see you,” Ketheria said.

I smiled at my sister.

The Citizens on the Rings of Orbis may have been ignorant and self-absorbed, but boy, could they build things. When we stepped out of the spaceport, we were besieged by curving towers of metal and glass, gigantic floating cylinders, and sleek sparkling spires that crowded the sloped horizon. I stood on the steps with Theodore, pointing at objects I’d never seen before, not even in my imagination.

“The Citizens take great pride in their cities. Maybe too much,” Theylor announced as he stopped in front of a long transport at the bottom of the metal steps. “It is a shame that they left no sign of the Ancients’ buildings.” Theylor stared out toward the glimmering buildings with his left head while his right head drooped, looking away.

After a moment, Theylor turned back toward us. “Come, it is time to meet your new Guarantor,” he said, and swept his long hand over the shimmering transport. We all piled in.

“Who is it this time?” one of the children asked anxiously.

“Are there any nice Guarantors?” Grace asked. “Will we ever get one of them?”

“We don’t need a Guarantor,” Dalton grumbled, eerily reminiscent of his friend Switzer, who had died on Orbis 2.

But Theylor only smiled and connected with the craft’s navigational computer using his neural implant. He attached the clear cable securely behind the left ear of his right head while his other head turned and said, “Please take any seat. The ride will not be very long. All your questions will be answered when we arrive.”

Max and Ketheria sat in front of Theodore and me. Ketheria steadied herself as the transport lifted off the ground and turned 180 degrees in front of the spaceport.

“Whoa!” Max gushed as the craft floated through the city about four meters off the ground. Other crafts sped past, most with only a single passenger.

I hung out the side, looking down at the ground. Only a small metallic rail prevented me from me falling out.

“Theodore, look at that!” I shouted, pointing to small round shuttles scurrying along the precise streets beneath us.

“No, look over there,” another kid shouted, and we all strained our necks to catch a glimpse of a huge floating cylinder. The edges were rounded, as if someone had punched the middle out of a security bubble. Inside sat about a hundred aliens watching some sort of performance in the middle of the oddly shaped building. I could not even begin to imagine what job we would have to do on Orbis 3.

“What are we going to do here?” I asked Theylor.

“That will be up to your new Guarantor,” he replied.

“Why won’t you tell us about him?” Max asked.

Theylor would only say, “Everything will be revealed to you shortly.”

My chest tightened with a mix of fear and excitement whenever I thought about our new owner. Our first Guarantor, Joca Krig Weegin, forced us to work on an assembly line sorting his junk. The smell from the radiation gel we used to protect our bodies would be forever burned into my senses. After he tried to sell us in an underground slave ring, we were traded to a far more evil creature on Orbis 2, named Odran.
He
profited from knudniks by selling them illegal passage off the Rings of Orbis. My experience with Guarantors was horrible, to say the least. It frightened me even more to guess why Theylor wasn’t telling us anything. Who would we belong to now? I could only wonder.

The glass and metal structures gave way to rolling hills and trees whose branches hung down and rooted into the ground. Immense compounds dotted the greenery and weaved between small forests. Some buildings were contained in clear domes while others were open-air structures. I saw elaborate fountains, manicured gardens, and stone sculptures. Everything appeared crafted by artistic hands — I was certain they were the hands of knudniks.

“What are these buildings?” I asked Theylor.

“They are the dwellings of Citizens,” the Keeper replied.