Stellar Objects

Chapter 26: Trouble on Planet Earth

Shakes followed Andra through the steaming piles of rubbish.

He couldn't believe that she and her little brother had once called such a foul place home. Still, he'd been on the road so long - town to town, and planet to planet - that he could see the appeal of having a patch of ground; even if that ground was pure garbage.

"C'mon," Andra beckoned. "This way."

They ran between two stacks of trash. Suddenly, the pile on their right exploded. The blast knocked them sideways, into the opposite stack. Luckily, the refuse was a squidgy pile of foodstuffs. It absorbed their impact.

With the remains of the rubbish pile aflame, Shakes spotted Kraylx's attack ship. It was still stationary, but he noticed the laser cannon mounted on its hull.

"Where's our shuttle?" Shakes wondered aloud.

Andra pulled him out of the burning crevice as the second stack burst apart. They weaved across the wretched landscape, hiding amongst Indian North America's collective waste. They stopped behind a white, metal box with knobs on it. The door was open and he noticed a round drum inside, like a cauldron. Shakes stared at the box and figured it was a sleeping chamber for a pet.

"It's a called a clothes dryer," said Andra, with authority. "People used to put themselves inside and it would dry their clothes."

They crouched behind the magical machine as another blast exploded behind them. Shakes marveled at the wastefulness of the people who'd come before.

"Andra!" called Simmo's voice. "Over here."

Shakes looked over towards a nearby stack and saw the Heap scavenger beckoning them over.

"Can we trust him?" asked Shakes.

"No," said Andra. "But we can't trust that laser cannon either."

With that, they raced towards Simmo. He guided them into a secret opening in the rubbish pile.

Like Aliss in the story, Andra didn't know where this hole would take her. But she dived in, suddenly tumbling down through sticky tunnel and into an uncertain adventure.

*

Judson couldn't connect to the shuttle; he was completely locked out.

"The signal's blocked," he shouted to the captain and the cop. "I can't move it an inch."

"I should've never let them go," said Captain Nayar.

"We're all in this together," said Shelly. "They knew the—"

"We're not together!" he shouted back. "We're up here, safe from that jaṅgalī while they're down there in the line of fire."

Judson decided this was no time for semantics. They needed a way to contact the shuttle and get it moving again. That was all that mattered. The captain and the lieutenant seemed to have conflicting views on risk, duty, and sacrifice, but that wasn't going to get Andra and Shakes back.

"How do we talk to that shuttle to get it to do what we want?" he asked aloud.

"Legs," said the captain. Judson didn't know if he was joking or mourning his own broken body. Either way, he was talking nonsense.

"I'm serious," Nayar said. "There's these ecto-suits, walking suits; you know them?"

Shelly nodded.

"I've seen them advertised," said Judson. "Cyborg chic, if you ask me."

"They get hacked," said Nayar. "Kids on glass pads find them because they're always connected to the uniweb and hack into them, forcing their occupants to do stuff."

When Judson was at the Front, one of the main passtimes was sharing funny viseos on RajTube. There was one featuring a paraplegic guy in an ecto-suit who'd been hacked to dance involuntarily. At the time, Judson found it hilarious. But now, he not only realized how stupid he'd been, but also how brilliant the captain clearly was.

If troublemakers could hack an ecto-suit from across the universe, then surely they could hack into the shuttle.

Judson tapped the comms and called the engine room. "Hey Grungy," he asked. "How are you with hacking into stuff?"

"Is the police woman listening?" the kid replied, tentatively.

Shelly laughed. "I am, George, but I'm granting you immunity. If you can hack into the shuttle from here, you can save your sister."

There was no reply. Judson looked at Shelly. "Maybe he didn't believe you," he said.

The captain turned his chair to face both of them. "I thought that kid would do anything for his sister but maybe—"

Grunge raced onto the bridge. "Anything," he panted. "Now give me access to the glass pad!"

Rough translation: barbarian