Wormhole Pirates on Orbis (9 page)

“That’s cheating,” Max shouted, and the crowd seemed to agree. Athooyi stood up, clutched his chest with his speaking box, and screeched raspy insults toward the glass.

“Doesn’t do much at this level,” Charlie told her. “Only a little sting, but it can disorient the player. There are very few rules. He will not be penalized.”

All four aliens fought their way back through the maze. Their plasma rifles obliterated their holographic opponents even though they didn’t do much to the other players. The arena transformed below me. The walls faded away, and a purple light chute sprang up from the center of the floor. The room rotated on its axis.

“First team through wins,” Charlie said.

“We know, Charlie,” one of the kids said, snickering.

I watched on the O-dat as the bait in black covered his tracker from attack. The tracker was much larger than the alien, at least a whole head bigger. They made it through the doors first, but just barely. As they launched themselves into the chute, the crowd behind us roared in disapproval. Instantly, the arena went dark.

The O-dats now displayed the victorious team landing in the winner’s chambers. The crowd of spectators mostly jeered and shook different appendages toward the displays. A booming voice announced that this was the team’s first victory.

“They beat the favorites,” Charlie said.

“They were good,” I said.

“Especially the tracker,” Max added.

The bait removed his helmet and held it up in victory. I stared at his face.

I knew that face.

I had seen it before, behind the Illuminate, stealing the stridling just the other cycle. There was no mistaking it. Standing with his arms in the air, smiling like a madman, was the thief.

“Look,” I whispered to Max, pointing at his enormous image.

“It’s him,” Max exclaimed.

Charlie turned and asked, “Who is it?”

I blurted it out before thinking. “That alien. The bait. That’s the person we saw stealing the stridling the other cycle.”

“What!”

I turned to Charlie as the pit of my stomach hit the floor. I didn’t say anything, but I’m sure my eyes told him a thing or two.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“I . . . I tried,” I said weakly. “Then I forgot.”

Charlie raised his eyebrows and looked at Theodore and then at Max. “Did you forget, too?” he questioned them.

Max nodded slowly.

“Let’s try and remember these things a little more, everyone,” Charlie announced. “If you want to be Citizens one day, it’s important to fit in and act as if this place is your own. You wouldn’t want anyone stealing from
you,
would you?”

“We don’t have anything to steal,” Dalton spoke up.

“You will, eventually. You won’t always be . . .”

“Knudniks?” I said.

“I don’t like that word either, but yes — knudniks.”

“What are you gonna do?” I asked.

“I’ll have to report this,” he said. “You should feel proud of yourselves for helping to catch a thief.”

But I didn’t. Acting like I belonged on Orbis had never done much for my popularity. In fact, it only aggravated Citizens like Dop. Things were better when I kept to myself. I turned to the O-dats and watched the thief celebrate with his tracker. I knew there was more to that thieving alien than just the stolen stridling. The marking I had seen on his arm told me that. He was a wormhole pirate; I was certain of it.

Ketheria, however, wasn’t worried about it. “When do we eat?” she asked.

“Right now,” Charlie said, and grabbed the portable O-dat. “What are you hungry for?” Charlie looked up from the O-dat, straight at me. I could feel his disappointment in me. I could see it in his eyes. I didn’t like feeling this way.

“I want to be surprised,” Ketheria said, relishing the coming meal. “But surprised in a good way.”

“Coming right up, young lady.”

While we waited for Charlie’s surprise, Max and I huddled at the opposite end of the table with Theodore. Dalton, surprisingly, was already there.

“How come you didn’t tell
us
about the stridling, Dumbwire?” Dalton hissed, trying his best to act like Switzer.

“Don’t call me that,” I told him. “I never did anything to you.”

“Switzer’s gone,” Max added. “You don’t have to be like him anymore.”

No one spoke. We stared at Dalton for an uncomfortably long time.

“You can join us if you want,” I said.

Dalton huffed as if he were going to turn and walk away, but instead he sat next to Max.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“Forget about it,” I replied.

“How could a wormhole pirate be playing Quest-Nest?” Max whispered.

“A wormhole pirate?” Dalton exclaimed.

“Shhh! We don’t know that,” Theodore argued.

“I saw the marking,” I reminded him.

Dalton seemed confused. “On who?”

Theodore shook his head. “What if you’re wrong?”

“I don’t think so. I just want to know how he got here.”

“Or
why
he’s here,” Max added.

“Who?” Dalton pleaded, a little too loudly.

“Shhh,” Max hushed him. “The alien that stole the stridling is a wormhole pirate. We saw the marking on his arm.”

“The skull thing?” he said.

Max cringed. “Yes, but keep it down.”

I wasn’t listening anymore. Max had asked a good question. Why
was
he here? I couldn’t imagine he was here only to play Quest-Nest.

“We should find out,” I said.

“How?” Theodore asked.

“I’m gonna join the conclave,” I announced.

Dalton almost choked. “Ha! This league?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Theodore protested, but that was normal.

“I’m gonna need a partner,” I said, looking to Max.

“Wait, you can’t be serious.” Dalton took Theodore’s side.

“I make good bait,” Max said, and then she winked at me.
What does that mean?
I felt my face get hot, and I had to look away.

“No, stop. You can’t do this.” Theodore pleaded. “You don’t know how to play the game.”

“We’re better than these guys,” I assured him, recovering myself.

“But you don’t know how to play the sort,” Dalton argued.

“Vairocina can help him figure it out,” Max said.

Our food arrived while we were still talking. Actually, Theodore wasn’t saying anything anymore. He just sat there staring at the table and shaking his head. The aliens surrounded our table, carrying four large trays.

“What is it?” Ketheria said with obvious excitement in her voice.

“It’s called
pizza,
” Charlie told her proudly.

“Why is it round?” Grace asked.

Charlie smiled. “I don’t know why exactly. I never thought about that before.”

The servers placed the four pizzas on our table. They smelled great.

“What planet are they from?” Max asked.

“Earth,” Charlie replied.

“What a crazy place,” Ketheria cried. Charlie put a piece of the pizza on her plate, and she picked it up to bite into it.

“Careful, it’s hot.”

We watched two more matches of Quest-Nest while we ate the earthly concoctions. Ketheria made Charlie order two more pizzas once he explained to her that she could select any type of ingredients she wanted. Anything except toonbas, that is. The restriction gave Ketheria a slight pause before she reordered.

I couldn’t eat any more. I was stuffed, and my mind was full of questions. What was the wormhole pirate doing here? Was he the one the bandit on the shuttle was talking about when he said,
“Tell him”
? Watching Ketheria devour the pizzas, I also couldn’t help but wonder what other things I’ve missed from Earth. Things I’d never know about because I hadn’t set one foot on my own home planet. Charlie was right. Whether I liked it or not, Orbis was my home now. It’s the only home I ever had besides the
Renaissance,
and
that
was only a spaceship.

Ketheria offered Max a bite of her pizza.

“It has pineapple!” Ketheria cried.

I watched Max lean over and take a bite of the pizza. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, and I quickly looked away. What was the matter with me? Weird.

Even though I felt like my stomach would burst, I absentmindedly took another chunk of the pizza, or a slice, as Charlie called it, and watched a new tracker select
WATER
from the sort. The labyrinth filled with liquid. The other tracker selected
WEAPONS
, and now they fought on boats.

“We never did
that
on the
Renaissance,
” Max said.

She was right. I was definitely going to have to brush up on the Orbisian rules of Quest-Nest before my match with Dop.

The next cycle, I was dragged out of my sleeper by Nugget.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“Ketheria. Ketheria’s not good,” he said, grabbing my feet and swinging them around.

Ketheria was in the corner of the room, curled up in a ball. Her hair was soaking wet, and she was shaking.

“Charlie!” I screamed as I bolted to her side.

Charlie said Ketheria was sick because she had eaten too much pizza. I wasn’t so sure. I had never seen her sick before. In fact, I couldn’t recall any of us ever being sick. I needed to be patched up a few times, especially when I lost my arm, but none of us ever woke up feeling unwell. Even on the
Renaissance.

“She’ll stay home with me this cycle,” Charlie said.

“I stay too!” Nugget yelped, and sat next to her. She was sitting up with a glass of water Charlie had given her. “She’ll be fine by the time you get home.”

Ketheria didn’t smile when we left; she just leaned against the wall, in the corner of the room, curled up in a blanket. Charlie tried to get her into the sleeper, but she wouldn’t budge.

“Do you want me to stay?” Grace offered, but Charlie shook his head and nudged us toward the light chute.

“Really, she’ll be fine.”

“Charlie has his hands full,” Theodore said as we emerged from the chute and strolled across the plaza.

“I think he can handle it,” I said.

“Handle what?” Riis asked, waiting for us outside the Illuminate.

“Ketheria’s at home with Charlie,” Max informed her. “She’s not feeling well.”

“Your Guarantor is looking after her?” she asked, somewhat surprised.

There was that attitude again. Not quite insulting, but passively implying that we were not worth the attention.

“Not big on compassion around here, are you?” Dalton said, walking past Riis and into the Illuminate.

I looked at Max. “Never saw that before,” I said.

“Come, we get the placement results this cycle,” Riis informed us.

“Don’t be disappointed,” Theodore said to her as he walked inside. “I think I did really well.”

Riis couldn’t help but smile. Once inside, I could feel the anticipation in the air. I walked past more than one student projecting sample questions from the exam using their neural port add-ons. They circled the images, frantically debating the answers.

“It’s really important to some of these people,” I said.

“A lot more than it should be,” Riis remarked.

Each of us grabbed a tap and headed for the lockers.

“We went to the Quest-Nest matches last night,” I told her.

“The what?” I guessed that the central computer did not translate my word for the game.

“You know, the game in the Labyrinth with the trackers and the baits?”

“You mean
Wor’an’ain,
” she said. This time the computer did not translate
her
language.

We stopped in front of the storage lockers, and I called Vairocina.

“Yes?” she said, gathering the light around me and appearing in holographic form.

“The central computer is not translating a word for us,” I informed her.

“I could add it to the memory base if you want,” she said.

I still wasn’t used to Vairocina’s “older” form. I missed the little girl I met on Orbis 1.

“Who’s that?” Riis wanted to know.

“That’s Vairocina,” Max told her.

“JT rescued her from the central computer,” Theodore added.

Riis was staring. “I thought Vairocina was a program.”

“I am a real life force. If I could generate a physical form, you would not say that,” Vairocina said defiantly.

Riis ignored her and asked me, “You can talk to her whenever you want?”

I tapped my head and said, “Softwire, remember?”

Riis didn’t have a response. She just gawked at Vairocina. It was the usual response.

“What do you call the game?” I asked Riis.

“Wor’an’ian,” she said, never taking her eyes off Vairocina.

“We call it Quest-Nest,” I told Vairocina. “Could you add that to the translator?”

“Absolutely,” she replied. “Done.”

I looked at Riis. “What do you call the game again?”

“Quest-Nest,” she said. The computer translated it perfectly.

“Thanks, Vairocina. I’ll see you later.”

Vairocina scattered, sending the light back into the environment. Riis waved her hand through the air where Vairocina had stood.

“Nice pixels, huh?” Theodore remarked.

Max’s chin dropped. “She’s a hologram!” Max exclaimed.