A SPACESHIP REPAIR GIRL SUPPOSEDLY NAMED RACHEL

By Richard Roberts

A Mystique Press Production

Mystique Press is an imprint of Crossroad Press

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press

Crossroad Press digital edition 2022

Copyright © 2022 Richard Roberts

Interior art by Nerissa Fuller

ISBN: ePub Digital Edition - 978-1-63789-763-8

ISBN: Trade Paperback - 978-1-63789-762-1

LICENSE NOTES

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Meet the Author

Richard Roberts is drawn to dark, strange fairy tales, which of course is why he got famous for his perky middle-school supervillain stories instead.

That presents the two halves of his work, the fun and crazy, and the dark and weird. In both cases, he does his best to entertain, to look at old ideas to see how strange they are if you think them through, and to make a story where his characters earn their happy endings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Please Don’t Tell My Parents Series

Book 1: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m a Supervillain

Book 2: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon

Book 3: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’ve Got Henchmen

Book 4: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Have a Nemesis

Book 5: Please Don’t Tell My Parents You Believe Her

Book 6: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Work for a Supervillain

Book 7: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m Queen of the Dead

A Rag Doll’s Guide to Here and There

A Spaceship Repair Girl Supposedly Named Rachel

I Did Not Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence!

Quite Contrary

Sweet Dreams are Made of Teeth

Wild Children

You Can Be a Cyborg When You’re Older

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Chapter One

A meteor streaked down out of the evening sky, and I had just enough time to see it was a bus before it plowed into the hilltop in front of me.

Dirt and rocks flew, but mostly landed back on top of the bus. It survived the impact with barely any crumpling, despite a good six feet of the front of it now being buried in the ground, and the back sticking about that far off the ground.

From inside, an old man’s squeaky voice yelled, “Hoo hoo hoo! Calamity and mischief! Is this the end of Peter Pumpernickel’s Pedal-Powered Planetary Perambulator?”

The strangest thing about the bus was it falling from the sky, sure. You couldn’t top that. There was still a lot of competition. The whole length was painted with leaping whales, yellow suns shooting lasers at each other, pictures of candy, and a giant child’s face eating a peanut butter sandwich, all on a background of blue sky and clouds. It also had wings. Dozens of wings, each maybe half as long as a teenage girl—me—was tall, and oval like flapping fans. They ran in a row down this side, and surely down the other side as well. Probably. I didn’t want to take anything for granted here.

Creeping up to the door only partly covered in heaps of dirt, I called out, “Hey, do you need help?” The answer was obvious, but there were formalities, right?

Panicky wailing stopped abruptly. A second later, the folding door snapped open, and an old brass blunderbuss stuck out right at my face. The weapon looked old, scratchy, primitive, and unpleasantly authentic. If the gangly old man holding it pulled the trigger, it would turn me into paste. Or more likely it would blow up and turn us both into paste.

I raised my hands slowly and carefully, my drawing notebook in my left hand, and my right hand empty.

The flared trumpet end of the blunderbuss in my face covered up a lot of the view, but the man holding it looked to be the tallest and skinniest I’d ever seen. He might be seven feet. He had to duck slightly in the doorway of his own bus. His arms and legs were so long, if you put him on a basketball court he could just reach up and drop the ball into the hoop. His pipe cleaner body was clad in a red-on-yellow paisley shirt and flawlessly straight blue plaid pants. As for the old man’s face, he reminded me of pictures of Mark Twain I’d seen. Same offended expression. Same tousled white hair and huge white mustache. The main differences were that this guy’s mustache curled up into points at the ends, and his skin was as dark as a walnut.

“Hand over the book and turn out your pockets, Earthling!” he squeaked at me.

I obeyed the blunderbuss, adding an “Okay, okay!” to reduce my chances of getting shot. Pulling my jeans pockets out produced exactly one house key and nothing else. I’d left my phone at home. The whole point of coming out to the hill at sunset was to be somewhere my parents couldn’t contact me and tell me what to do for my brothers, at least for a little while. There wasn’t enough light to draw or to write for long after the sun went down, but it was time enough.

Except when I was interrupted by orbital reentry public transit occupied by paranoid old men wielding even older firearms.

He snatched my notebook away, keeping the blunderbuss aimed at me with one hand while flipping hurriedly through the pages with the other. What he expected to learn from (bad) drawings of steampunk fighting robots and aimless micro fiction, I couldn’t say. He did frown a little more, and snap, “What’s your name?”

I stared at him while my mind tried to route back to a normal question like that. “Uh…Rachel.”

He sneered. I couldn’t actually see his mouth, but his mustache tilted up at a sharp diagonal. “Well, ‘Rachel’—” he spit out the name with contemptuous skepticism. My delay had been kind of sus. “—it says here that this book is the property of the Witch Queen of Eloquent Verbosity and Grandiose Ornamentation, and you don’t look like a queen to me.”

I was completely lost. I didn’t know what to do, or what was going on, and I had a gun practically engulfing my face. So I did what I do best: I made up a ridiculous story. “Uh, no, of course not. I stole that book so I could use its secrets to cure my partner, but I couldn’t save him and we crashed like you did.”

The old man stared at me with eyes like flint for two seconds. Then those eyes went wide, and he jerked upward, coming half an inch from whacking his skull on the door frame. The mustache turned up in a smile. “Well, why didn’t you say so? Get in here! We have to get off this planet before we’re infected!”

He ducked back into his crashed space bus, and, well…

…this was the kind of offer you can’t possibly refuse.

Right or wrong, smart or stupid, wise or headed for regrets, I climbed in after him.

The place was a mess, like it had just crash landed or something. Pots, pans, books, and clothing were scattered everywhere. A broom stuck out of the glove compartment. The bus had originally been half mass transit, half home, with a now askew bed in back, lots of cabinets, but also half a dozen ragged chairs bolted in rows behind the pilot’s bicycle.

The bicycle. Yes. There was no driver’s seat on this bus, no steering wheel. A bicycle was embedded in the floor near the front, with axles sticking out of the pedals to attach to big wooden gears bolted to the inner walls of the bus. Those gears attached to more gears, which attached to axles, and so on, all rigged to a rail that connected to the row of wings outside.

The old guy—I would assume he was Peter Pumpernickel until somebody said otherwise—climbed up on the bicycle and grasped its handlebars. His long, skinny frame became immediately relevant. He could really push at those pedals!

Not hard enough. The debris on the bus’s right side was piled up enough to block some of the wings. I hopped over the center axle, grabbed the rail, and helped churn it up and down in an oval, like the bar on a train engine’s wheels.

Dirt rolled off with every twist. Finally, the front wing pulled free, and Peter Pumpernickel’s feet on the pedals really took off.

But the bus didn’t. The wings flapped. The metal frame of the vehicle wiggled and groaned, jerking maybe an inch backward, but the whole front end was buried in rubble.

As Peter bent forward, pedaling furiously, he flapped the normal sized hand at the end of a long, long arm at me. “Hoo! We have to knock ourselves free! Go to the back of the bus and jump up and down.”

He had to be kidding. It was a bus. It was huge. I pointed behind me, and argued, “Me? My puny weight is not going to make a difference, no matter how much leverage I had.”

I wasn’t trying to be nasty, but the old man flinched like I’d hit him with the broom. His already high voice went up an octave, or a third, or…it got more shrill and horrified, okay? “Leverage? Math is already getting to you! Start jumping, girl! If we don’t get out of here, we’ll both turn into particle physicists!”

To escape that horrible threat, I ran to the back of the bus, climbing over the bed whose covers had all been dumped on the floor, until I got to the very back. The bus really wasn’t tilted at too sharp an angle. Standing by the rear windows, I jumped, slamming my full weight down on the rug-layered floor underneath me. Then again. And again. And again.

And the bus shot out of its crater backward. It wobbled dangerously as Peter reversed the direction of his pedaling, then kept wobbling but did it while zooming up into the sky. Out of the rear window, I could see the hill receding, and then the woods, and the town, and then the shadowed green around the town, and the town shrank into a little light….

I heard a groan and looked the other way. Peter Pumpernickel hunched forward on his bicycle, trembling with effort as he pumped the pedals. Between gasps, he wheezed, “So much…gravity…on this nightmare…planet. Never fear, girl! We’re still…rising! Math hasn’t…contaminated us…YET!”

The sky faded from blue to black. The bus lurched, shooting forward, and now it was the blue and green ball of the Earth shrinking behind us in the distance.

So, I was in space now. This was a thing.

A magnificent thing! Eeeeee! And wow, were we moving fast!

The wings on the side of the bus flapped in a wave, some going down while others went up. This slowed down from a frenzied blur to a lazy ripple as a panting Peter sat up and looked back at me. “So, where are you from, little miss who doesn’t want to use her real name?”

Oops. Something told me “Earth” would be a bad answer. That something being Peter’s desperation to leave.

But hey, while I cast about for a good lie, he provided one for me. Jerking up in his seat with renewed energy, the old man declared, “Hoo hoo! Don’t tell me! You’re from the Moon, right? Hoo, don’t look at me like that. Anyone could tell how confused you are. Dreadful place, the Moon. I know it’s not quarantined like Earth, but it’s still too close for my tastes.”

The old man hunched down a little, squinting at me and lowering his voice in pity. “The dullness leaks. I bet your parents never told you anything about the solar system. They must not have, if you don’t recognize Peter Pumpernickel’s famous Pedal-Powered Planetary Perambulator!” Like a bobbing bird, Peter jerked upright again and squawked, “But stars forbid I should keep a child from her home! Where on the Moon should I drop you off, before I go far, far away from this awful part of the solar system?”

Okay, again, admitting I was from Earth would be bad. Besides, even if he was willing, how could I go back? I felt bad for disappearing on my parents, and not at all bad for leaving them to take care of my little brothers, but this was a less than once in a lifetime opportunity.

I still didn’t know what to say, and Peter was giving me a fiercely inquisitive stare, so…I made up another ridiculous story. “No, I can’t go back to the Moon. I stole that notebook remember?” It was time to make the story even more ridiculous, so I flapped a hand dismissively. “Besides, I’m not from the Moon. I’m from the Moon’s moon.”

Peter sat upright again so sharply that if he’d had a hat, it would have popped off. His bushy eyebrows climbed until they were almost as noticeable as his mustache. “Gracious! I didn’t even know there was one!”

I pinched my thumb and forefinger close together. “It’s very small.”

Taking a polka dot handkerchief out of the pocket of his paisley shirt, Peter patted his forehead. “Hoo. No wonder you gawk like a tourist.”

Raising my finger now, I added the masterstroke. “And you can’t take me back. It crashed, remember? I told you it crashed.”

The scrawny old man shivered his narrow shoulders. “That’s terrible. Thank all the planets I saved you from Earth. Don’t worry. The Queen is sure to think you’re dead, or worse…” He shuddered again, mustache dipping into a scowl. “…a bank teller.”

Whipping around forward, he extended his arm, bravely pointing at the dirt-smeared front windshield as his enthusiasm grew. “Straight to the Lighthouse, then! I’m not taking a girl your age to Venus, and we don’t dare try to land on Mars after touching down on Earth. I hear even arithmetic causes dangerous reactions down there. Take a seat, and marvel at the solar system’s most magnificent technological wonder! Hoo, yes! Don’t listen to all those fools with their fancy rockets and sails and aetheric drives and what have you! Peter Pumpernickel’s Pedal-Powered Planetary Perambulator is the fastest, most reliable ship in space!”

At which point, and with a series of snapping noises, the wings on the right side of the bus broke off, whirled away into the void, and disappeared.

“AAAAAAAAAH!” wailed Peter, flailing his arms above his head.

I didn’t even notice myself running up to the front of the bus. I must have, because I grabbed Peter by the lapels, dragging him down and shaking him furiously. “Why would you say something that dangerous?!”

He kept flailing his arms, but at least he stopped shouting. Instead, his mustache drooped and he stared at me with pleading eyes. “My Perambulator hardly ever breaks, crashes, or explodes when I brag about it!”

Uh-huh. And what had just happened when I met him?

Moment of half-reason over, Peter yanked himself out of my grip again and alternated clasping his fists to his chin and throwing his long, long arms wide as he babbled, “This is terrible! We’re lost in the cold vastness of space! It could be a week, even two weeks before another ship stumbles over us! Three weeks, out here near Earth! What if it’s four? I don’t have enough peanut butter sandwiches and hot cocoa for this!”

I stood there, watching him panic, and wasn’t afraid. I should have been, but things had gone too far for that. I was lost before we even took off, and this didn’t change much. Anyway, once you’ve called poison control because your parents are out and the two-year-old drank a bottle of cough syrup, you’ve used up your entire life’s supply of panic. So, I looked around, and out through the line of bus windows into space.

That line of little, rippling wings did so look like an airship from a Studio Ghibli movie. I had done a really bad job of drawing a hundred of those.

“Why don’t we fix it ourselves?” I asked out loud.

Peter stopped mid-yammer and stared at me. I couldn’t make out the expression past the mustache this time. Maybe just pure surprise.

I waved a hand at the clutter on the floors and spilling out of cupboards and in the case of one shirt, stuck to the ceiling. “You’ve got some tools. You at least have sewing tools. I see a kit over there. We’ll break that broom handle in half, sew your bedsheets around the end so the sheets stretch between the shafts, and stick the broom handles into whatever holes the wings were attached to.”

His mouth hung open enough to see past the bushy white whiskers. “You’re a spaceship mechanic?”

What was one more ridiculous lie between friends? I put my fists on my hips and puffed out my chest in pride. “Youngest academy graduate ever.”

Peter flapped his arms, but only once this time. “You never said!”

This one was easy. “You never asked. Are we going to fix this spaceship, or not?”

But sewing a pair of sheets onto wooden sticks takes time, and my bravado slipped through my fingers just like the needle kept doing. I had the manual dexterity of a lump of modeling clay. This whole repair plan was a whim based on what would look right in a picture. We were stuck marooned in space, weren’t we?

But then we were done, and I gathered the awkwardly clumped linen and broken broomsticks in my arms. There was a question I really, really should have asked before we started. “Do you even have a spacesuit?”

“Well, not a proper spacesuit, but I’ll only be outside for a minute,” assured Peter, walking like a man on stilts to one of his cupboards and rummaging around in it. He paused after a couple of seconds of that, holding up a fishbowl and looking back over his shoulder at me. Bushy white eyebrows went up like stampeding sheep. “Oh, of course, you wanted to do the repairs! No, I insist. You rescued me from Earth and now you’ve rescued me from Space. I will do the installation myself. Besides, the Pedal-Powered Perambulator is my baby and I simply can’t bear the thought of anyone else laying hands on her like this. I’ll be fine. Here.”

And with that he handed me the end of a clothesline, put the fishbowl over his head, slid open the bus door, and climbed out onto the hood of the bus. Only then did he even bother to tie the clothesline around his waist.

Feeling guilty that his confidence was based entirely on my storytelling, I tied my end of the clothesline around his bed, which wouldn’t fit through the doorway even if something broke. Then I gathered up the makeshift wings again and carried them over to the door. A few seconds later Peter realized he forgot them and climbed back around to me.

A chill did leak in through the open doorway, and Peter did float when he was outside, so there was that. He tucked the wings under one arm, and as he repeated his crawl over the top of the spaceship called out, “Do heat some hot chocolate while I’m out. If this works, we’ll both have earned it.” He had to speak up because the fishbowl muffled his voice.

Resolved to keep an eye on the washing line just in case, I went and messed with the food cupboards. They were a great excuse not to watch the repairs I’d lied about. The cupboards were nice. Thin wood, but wood, and packed so tight with cooking supplies it was hard to identify anything. Supplies, but not ingredients. Two whole shelves of loaves of bread and a shelf of peanut butter jars, but that seemed to be it.

I opened another cupboard and got a pleasant surprise. Milk! Nice, cold milk, thanks to a glowing blue rock in the back of the cupboard. The glass bottle had a paper label with a blue fish printed on it, but I knew I wouldn’t like the answer if I asked Peter why.

And there was a can with a picture of beans on it. That was probably cocoa. It was at the front of a shelf crammed with other cans.

Was the washing line still tied in place? Yes. Good.

I didn’t see a can opener anywhere. Still didn’t see a stove.

Wait, that can was flatter and wider than the rest. Weren’t there camping stoves like that? I just needed to figure out how to open it.

The bus door rattled shut. Standing by his bicycle, Peter lifted off his fishbowl helmet and crowed, “It works! I’m sure it will work! It will get us to port, at least. Is the hot chocolate ready? Hoo hoo, it’s cold out there! Terribly cold, space.”

I held up the cocoa can and what might or might not be a camping stove and tried not to blush. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the white fluttering sheets stretched out where the wings on the right side used to be. Peter had accomplished his job.

But he only smiled and clasped my shoulders with both hands. “No surprise! I can’t expect a technical prodigy to know how to cook, too. You must spend all your time studying mechanics.”

I looked over at my sketchbook. Well, if you meant spending all my time studying pictures of fanciful spaceships while my little brothers screamed…. “Yes.”

Peter clapped his hands together loudly. “We can have a nice, hot meal when we get to Ceres. Let’s look around. Do you see a slowly flashing light? That will be the Lighthouse.”

I looked around, at the breathtakingly beautiful starscape on all sides of the bus. The Milky Way glowed like a purple snake, much like….

I pointed. “I see that.” I couldn’t see it well, but how well do you need to see a huge, wiggly thing that blocked the stars as it swam toward your spaceship?

Peter let out a squeal, his mustache uncurling and sticking out at sharp points. “Great googly mooglies! Planet worm! AAAAAAA!”

He leaped back onto his bicycle and started pedaling. The wings on the bus’s left side and the sheets on the bus’s right side rippled in sync.

“Great googly mooglies,” I whispered because something about Peter Pumpernickel rubbed off on you. The bus started moving. I felt it.

Peter picked up the pedaling pace. The feeling of acceleration grew. So did the silhouette of the thing behind us.

The bus might be moving, but it also shook and dipped enough to make me dizzy. The replacement wings were less than perfect. Less perfect than that because Peter screeched, “The wing is coming loose!”

Okay, now I had something to do. I darted over to the right wall. Yes, the jagged end of the snapped broomstick stuck through the wall and into the rail, but it didn’t fit quite right. I grabbed hold with both hands, and shouted back, “I’ve got it! Get us out of here!”

The broomstick really wanted to slip free with all the shaking the bus was doing. I held on, trying to grip and match the furious weaving of the rail the wings were stuck to.

The bus pulled up and rolled, and I nearly fell over on my butt. Out of the left window I saw a massive, glittering, writhing mass go past. It seemed to go on and on, but eventually it did fly past. The bus bounced and rocked in the wake as a wedge at the end flapped, then left us behind.

And more importantly, it kept going. Either we’d just happened to be in its way, or it didn’t care enough to turn around and chase us again.

I leaned against the window. Peter slumped over his handlebars. We both breathed hard.

His already squeaky voice hoarse, the old man asked, “What is one of those even doing in the inner solar system?”

Lurching suddenly upright, he turned his head and gave me a furiously suspicious stare, followed by furiously suspicious words. “Are you sure you’re not from Saturn, Miss—” and he did air quotes with his fingers, “‘Rachel’???”

Standing up straight like a scout taking an oath, I promised with absolute sincerity, “I am sure I am not from Saturn.”

He slumped again, not in collapse, but just to a more relaxed, slightly slouched posture. He started to pedal, at a relaxed pace this time. I still held onto the makeshift wing strut, just to be sure.

Sulky and officious like no one without a huge mustache can be, Peter said, “Well, as much as I hate to be ungrateful, you seem to be a magnet for adventure, and I think it’s best I drop you off somewhere safe as soon as possible.”

He pulled on the handlebars. The bus turned lazily, lining up on a brilliant white dot that did, indeed, pulse slowly and regularly. Peter extended his freakishly long arm and pointed at that beacon.

“Next stop, the asteroid belt!”

Chapter Two

“That looks hard to navigate,” I said as two giant rocks smashed into each other maybe a dozen yards away.

I wasn’t an astronomy nerd. I was an art and creative writing nerd, which is totally different and more fun. But I was pretty sure that fancy telescope doohickies had taken a look at the asteroid belt and the asteroids were super far apart. You could only see the asteroids rolling around in movies.

And in reality, apparently. An enormous ring of rocks stretched up, down, and off to the sides as far as I could see. It was hardly solid. There was enough space between asteroids that I only saw one ricochet off another every few seconds. Plenty of room for a completely insane person to try to navigate.

I had so much faith in Peter Pumpernickel’s sanity that when he didn’t answer, I prodded again, “How are we supposed to find our way through—stupid question, retracted.”

We’d been following a brilliant, slowly pulsing white light, after all, and asteroids never drifted past it. It sat at the other end of an empty tunnel through the belt.

One good reason Peter didn’t answer was that he was pedaling like mad. He was in a mighty hurry to get somewhere, anywhere, before my makeshift repairs gave out. As it was, I’d had to tie the broomstick halves in place three times, and I spent more time watching them than the asteroids.

When we reached the big one, it got harder to be responsible. As we soared through the tunnel, wings flapping like flags in a tornado, we approached a huge, white, spherical rock. Ceres. An asteroid so big it was almost kinda-sorta a planet. Its only feature except rock and ice was one building, a white lighthouse so big it made Ceres look like an ice cream cone. The lighthouse only loomed bigger and bigger as we got closer, and I already couldn’t look straight at the blazing beacon swinging in its patient circle near the top.

Maybe a third of the way up the slightly conical tower was a big, well lit, open doorway. A spaceship landing bay.

The Pedal-Powered Perambulator wobbled violently, and I spent thirty seconds grabbing hold of the broomstick at the back end, keeping it rotating in smooth circles. By the time I could look up again, we were sliding to a halt next to a white stone jetty in the enormous white stone bay. Only the piers on either end and one in the middle were made of the same massive white bricks as the building. Half a dozen others in-between were made of wood planks and logs, like traditional docks.

We were the only spaceship in the bay, which made it look especially huge and cavernous. It was probably only really honking big.

I could only see two people in the room, and we pulled up right next to them. They were waiting, leaning against a line of hardware type worktables when the bus door folded open.

The instant the door opened, Peter was off his bicycle, charging outside and alternating waving his long arms and grabbing his white-haired head with them. “Oh, woe! Hoo! Calamity has befallen me and my beautiful, unique, magnificent, ingenious Perambulator! Witness how cruelly it has been maimed!”

I managed to squeeze past him and step out into the cool but not chilly air of the dock and take a look at the characters waiting for us.

They were both clearly mechanics. The man wore a brown robe with the hood thrown back, but over it were fastened half a dozen belts at angles that made them more a harness than anything else, all strung with tools and pouches. He had brown hair and that was all I paid attention to because the lizard next to him deserved so much more.

The man leaned casually against the worktable with his elbows propped on it, looking blandly amused. The lizard sat on the edge of the table. She had to because she was much shorter than he was. I’d never met an adult shorter than me, but I was still solidly bigger than the lizard. Of course, you would expect that with a regular lizard, but….

First, and I had to grab desperately for anything to realize first, the lizard was almost certainly a she. Boys hardly ever wore curly blonde wigs fastened askew to their heads by being impaled on four little horns. She was also human rather than lizard shaped, which maybe I should have noticed first. Mostly human shaped. Her legs were human long, and digitigrade, a word I knew meant they zigzagged with an extra backwards knee, and I knew that for totally legitimate and not weird reasons. I couldn’t be completely sure about the shape of her torso because she wore a white shirt sized for a human, which draped over her like a tent, tied at her wrists to keep her thumb-and-three-fingered hands free, and cinched into a skirt by one of those pouch and tool covered belts at her waist. The skirt was just short enough I could spot tight, brown, knee-length pants underneath. She had big, clawed feet, a fat cone tail, a spiky reptilian head with big, curious blue eyes, and every part of her not hidden by the shirt and pants was covered in sleek, shiny grey scales. The scales turned almost ivory pale under her neck.

She was a kobold. I didn’t know what they called them here, but she was a kobold. She looked exactly like kobolds did in computer games, tabletop games, books, and webcomics. There were probably a couple of drawings of them in my sketchbook, even.

She saw me and nudged the guy in the robe with her elbow. They exchanged looks, her intensely excited and him thoughtful. He gave her a tiny nod, and she grinned with lots of stubby fangs.

Pushing himself upright, the brown-haired man stepped up onto the hood of the bus and down onto the wooden pier on the other side. Hands in a couple of belt pouches as if they were pockets, he regarded my broomstick and bedsheet repairs. “Well, you’re lucky. We have one more set of sequential wings, and Wrench can straighten most of those dents. You could probably make it to an actual repair shop. This is quite a jury-rig.”

I grimaced, bunching up my shoulders. “Sorry. I did the best I could.”

The guy raised his hands to hook his thumbs into the belts fitted like bandoliers. Somebody stick a wheat stalk in this guy’s mouth because he was born to be a TV series farmer. That included his constantly bland, friendly tone. “I don’t do a lot of sarcasm. I’ve never seen a makeshift repair like this, and I mean it in the good way. What’s your name, little girl?”

Peter Pumpernickel lifted himself arrogantly up to his full, towering height. Scowling, he declared, “This is—”

“One moment,” called out a woman’s voice.

The woman descended the steps leading from the docks up to doors in the back of the room. She looked tall and stately, also in a brown robe fastened with a much more modest belt at the waist.

She arrived and looked even taller. Absurdly tall. She could look Peter in the eye but was merely elegantly slender rather than stretched and gawky like him. Her ears added another foot, maybe two feet to that height.

Oh, right, the ears. Yeah, she had bunny ears, sticking straight up out of a thick head of wavy grey hair, both in a shining cloud color rather than the white of age. Her face didn’t look old, and only the funny nose, with a triangular pad like a rabbit’s rather than regular nostrils, made her look less than regal. Did she have a fluffy bunny tail sticking out the back of that robe?

She was so tall. The kobold—Wrench?—and I were like kindergarteners next to her and Peter.

Clasping her hands in front of her chest, looking way, way, way down at me with the kind of confident contemplation that must be easy when you can look way, way, way down at someone, she said, “Now you may continue.”

My nose scrunched up as I tried to deal with the fact that one of the people in this conversation had bunny ears, and another was a lizard. Was space going to be like this? Was there a way I could vote in favor of space being like this?

“Rachel. She calls herself Rachel.” Peter’s voice dripped sullen skepticism as he said it. Producing my sketchbook from a pocket hidden by the garishness of his clothing, he held it out to the super tall bunny lady. “I picked her up when she was running away from the Moon because she stole this from the Witch Queen.”

The bunny accepted the sketchbook and proved she did do sarcasm, of a particularly deadpan variety. “Oh, joy. Another dangerous artifact to hide. I’ve never heard of this Witch Queen, but by the time Jane is done she’ll have no chance of ever finding this again.”

Hurrying through the words with a wave at the bus behind him, Peter added, “Oh, and she fixed my Perambulator. She’s a spaceship mechanic.”

To prove I existed and could even take part in conversations about me, I said, “Academy trained spaceship mechanic.” Might as well drive that lie all the way into space. Besides, I could claim it was the Great Martian Academy Of Heroic Boogie Dancing.

Her eyebrows rose, so that was something, but she immediately stepped to the edge of the dock and looked around at the damage, and the repairs. “What happened to your ship? Did you crash again?”

“No!” snapped Peter. He pouted worse, pulling his arms in and standing tense and guilty like a toddler who’d been caught stealing cookies. “Well, yes, but that’s not what happened. We barely escaped from a planet worm!”

Everyone but Peter and I went still. They hadn’t been moving anyway, but this was the frozen, not daring to breathe in horror kind of still. Tall, Grey, And Bunny asked sharply, “What?”

Peter stomped one foot and pointed at me. “It’s her fault. Hoo! Hoo! She says her name is Rachel and she’s from the Moon, but I’ve never seen a more Saturnian girl in my life!”

Rabbit, kobold, and normal human dock worker guy relaxed enough to start reacting, and they were not happy reactions. Wrench hunched up, pulling her feet up on the top of the worktable and peering around the room at exits. The brown-haired guy took a couple of deep breaths and leaned against the table again, but this time because he was so shaky he might fall down. The bunny took the news best, and she took it with whispered horror. “A planet worm in the inner solar system. The best we can hope for is that it destroys Mercury.”

This woman’s photo would be in the dictionary next to ‘Bunnies Of Steel.’ She snapped back into harsh, regal purpose, slashing an arm out and snapping her fingers, then shouting, “Jane! Find those communications orbs now!”

In the distance, a woman with a faintly Southern accent shouted, “Whaaaaat!? Which ones?”

Bunny Of Steel didn’t even fidget. Grimly determined, she shouted back, “The ones that look like fiery eyes! I have to contact all the major powers of Saturn and Jupiter. Maybe with warning someone can—”

Peter Pumpernickel jerked up his hands and waved them in desperate negation, which with arms as long as his was a sight. “Hoo hoo hoo! Calm down, calm down! It was a miniature planet worm. More the asteroid eating kind.”

“Wait a moment, Jane!” called out the bunny. She locked her eyes on Peter as if they could peel him like a spud until the truth came out. “Exactly how big was it?”

Stomping from side to side, flapping his arms, his patterned clothes a garish blur against the relentless white of the docking bay, Peter complained, “It was big enough to swallow my poor Perambulator whole. Look at the damage it did! I barely escaped with my life! Oh, and my passenger. Hoo. Very important, passengers. Even this one.”

I should make up for his complete lack of helpfulness, and also remind everyone I was a person who could speak and had opinions and stuff, so I told the rabbit somewhere above me, “It’s hard to tell when a pitch-black monster passes you at high speed, but maybe the size of this tower? If you said it was a mile long, I wouldn’t be surprised. And it was all tentacle-y.”

Wrench the grey kobold peeked out of the little hood she’d made from her loose shirt. The brown-haired guy sagged a little harder against the table, now staring up at the ceiling in debilitatingly intense relief. The bunny went still again. I couldn’t see under the robe, but I would bet all her muscles had gone tense with fury. She kept her face and voice immaculately calm, and otherwise emotionless. “A giant space squid. You had me panicking over a giant space squid, Peter. You could have asked her for a tow.”

Peter folded his arms and scowled, which made him look like a stretched-out chicken. “I’ll have you know that death defying space piloting—”

The rabbit raised her hand, palm out an inch from his face. “Never mind.” She looked down at me, and this time it was for more than a second. Her expression turned far more emotive, although she could only pull off helpful curiosity with visible strain. “And how can we help you, child?”

“I’m dropping her off here,” declared Peter from behind the rabbit’s hand.

The dock worker guy looked over at the kobold and started to grin. “Nowhere else to go?”

She spoke for the first time, in a high pitched, grade school girl voice that sounded ditzy in her glee. “Nowhere else to go!”

He extended her arm, and they slapped palms.

The rabbit grimaced. She closed her eyes, raised her hand, and pressed her fingertips to her stately, line-free forehead. “Take away our chocolate if I’m the most empathetic person left in the solar system,” she whispered. Forcing her exasperation down, she turned a smile back to me, offering her hand. “It will be alright, Rachel. You were lost, but now you are found. That’s what the Lighthouse of Ceres is all about, and I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”

I took her hand, and she walked me away from the other three, up shallow steps toward a doorway. Still awkward in her attempt to be gentle, she introduced, “My name is Miss Passionfruit.”

Heaven help me, I tried, but I clamped down on my expression a second too late. I didn’t laugh, so go me for that.

Miss Passionfruit took it well. She looked severe, but only in her generally regal way, not angry with me. She actually sounded understanding. “Yes, if you’re from the Moon I suppose I’m the first Venusian Space Bunny you’ve met, or even heard of. My full name is Passionfruit Nectar Ecstasy and it is completely ordinary among my people. I was not, and Miss Passionfruit is the best I can do with that name.”

We reached that doorway. It opened into a merely impressively big room that was almost echoingly empty. Two pallets of mysterious objects twice my height but covered in blankets and tied with ropes couldn’t begin to fill the space. The wooden desk and high chair right in the center, with a brown-haired child sitting at them, couldn’t make a dent.

A woman with gleaming ginger hair met us. She looked short because everyone looked short next to Miss Passionfruit. She’d cut off the hem of her brown robe so high that when she knotted the ends under her bustline, it showed off her whole midriff. That let her wear tight khaki shorts festooned with pockets, and much farther down clunky rubber-soled boots and socks thicker than my thumb. Her age and what her face looked like, I could not guess, because I could only stare at just how much hair she had. It swelled around her head in a huge mane and went halfway down her back. The bangs would have covered her face if they weren’t as puffy as the rest and merely dominated her forehead.

She did have an intense smile and an energetic, friendly voice. “Peter may not want you, but we do.” Her attention switched to my sketchbook as Miss Passionfruit held it out to her. The ginger-haired woman skimmed through the pages, remarking, “Interesting. Disconnected anecdotes, hastily scrawled pictures centering on one important person, place, or thing, but I don’t recognize any of them. Lots of Saturnian airships and spaceships. The people look Plutonian. A manual of occult ship building secrets gained from the Outsiders, I’d guess.” Her smile and chatter turned back to me just as suddenly as it had wandered. “I’m Back-Rooms Jane. I’m trying to bring some order to the storerooms. Actually, I’m still trying to find all the storerooms, then maybe I can try and organize them. Miss Passionfruit will take care of you, Rachel. She’s a big ol’ fuzz-fuzz.”

And with that, Jane zoomed away, chased by a cold stare from the big ol’ fuzz-fuzz, who aside from her ears and tail wasn’t fuzzy. Oh, and walking next to Miss Passionfruit confirmed: Fluffy bunny tail, sticking out of a hole in the robe below her belt. Grey like her ears.

“AHEM.”

The loud, fake, and skeweringly pointed throat clearing came from the little girl sitting at the desk.

“Yes, of course. Check-in.” Miss Passionfruit nodded to the girl, taking my hand and leading me over.

So, I wasn’t the youngest person here. This kid wasn’t even a teenager. I would guess she was ten. She had round cheeks, piercing eyes, and an even more sober expression than Miss Passionfruit. Her dark brown hair was particularly glossy, and she wore…well, it reminded me of one of those goth gowns, if you stripped out all the complexities. Shiny black shoes, red and white striped stockings, one petticoat under the plain blue skirt, that sort of thing. It required a stool tall enough for Miss Passionfruit or Peter Pumpernickel to seat her comfortably in front of the writing desk, on which was set a huge ledger. The cursive writing inside was all perfectly flowing and in neat rows despite the lack of any lines to help keep it in order.

“Name?” demanded the little girl, as if the whole thing was an imposition.

I hesitated for a moment, just so lost about everything, before answering, “Rachel.”

Miss Passionfruit caught the delay, interpreted it exactly wrong, and gave me an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry. Your name is whatever you say it is, here. I wish I could bring myself to lie about mine.”

The little girl wrote my name down, and kept writing, commenting distractedly, “And you’re from America.” She sounded both certain and British.

“The Moon,” corrected Miss Passionfruit firmly.

Miss Passionfruit said it, but it was me that the little girl shook her fat wooden pen at, with a self-importantly offended pout. “Look at how you’re dressed. You belong in a textbook about Americans. I suppose they didn’t find you in a textbook in one of the libraries?”

“Alice,” warned Miss Passionfruit, raising her voice and scowling.

Alice glared back up at her, stubborn as a British mule. “I keep records. It is quite appropriate for me to get upset when people lie to me. I suppose getting caught up in arguing and not taking records at all would be worse, however. Status?”

“Guest, until she decides otherwise,” supplied Miss Passionfruit, back to her queenly calm.

Alice glared at me suspiciously again. “Any items to declare? And by that I mean you’re supposed to declare—that is, tell me—all the objects that will be staying here and not leaving again with Peter Pumpernickel. Why anyone thinks anyone else would get that from the word ‘declare’ I don’t know, but it’s what I’m supposed to ask.”

Cold crept up my spine at the question because the answer was so short. I listed it all anyway. “My clothes. My house key.” Which was now a useless piece of metal. “A pencil and inking pen, but Jane took them with the notebook.”

Before Alice’s pen could get far, Miss Passionfruit warned her, “Don’t write those down. Someone might come looking for them.”

Alice raised one eyebrow and glowered at her sideways. “This again? Why don’t I write them down and cross them out suspiciously?”

Exasperated, Miss Passionfruit offered, “Fine. Put it down as ‘stationary.’”

Alice could compromise and nodded. “Acceptably accurate.”

And so my only real possession was not just taken away but vanished from the record.

The cold climbing my back closed over my heart. I had lost everything. I couldn’t go home, ever. I would never see Earth again, and that meant everything, my parents, my friends, my stuffed animals, my loud and violent brothers, the faded green carpet I knew every knot of, my street, the garish but crumbling orange front wall of my school….

I shivered. I hadn’t meant to run away from home, but I had, and it was a one-way trip.

As the horror of what I had done washed over me, Miss Passionfruit put an arm around my shoulders and led me through more rooms to a large staircase that spiraled up and down around a pillar as big as any regular lighthouse. Her words drifted through my panic. “I’m sorry about Alice. She’s actually from Earth, and older than the rest of us combined. How she got here is a strange story, but all of us have strange stories for how we got here.”

Desperate for something, anything to drag me out of thinking about my situation, I seized on that topic. Besides, I wasn’t the only person out here from Earth after all. “What is hers?”

Miss Passionfruit must like telling stories. She sounded quite pleased as she explained, “Generations ago, a man on Earth found a way to cure just one person of Math and send them off Earth where they would be safe. He chose to save a child he knew rather than himself. The technique involved dreams, and the Oracles say the infected part of Alice stayed behind, which is why she’s stuck at that age. If this is her fanciful half, I can’t imagine what the person who stayed behind steeped in Earth’s cold, cruel numbers must have been like.”

And yet, she said that last sentence with a fond smile.

Still trying not to think, I asked, “Are you in charge?”

“I give orders, but no one has to obey them. People seem to like having someone pretend there’s a plan and tell them how to follow it.” She said it in absolute deadpan.

I couldn’t keep my voice from cracking as I asked, “What’s the plan for me?”

Miss Passionfruit was a rock, her confidence an immovably solid object to cling to for support, and a rush of relief fought with the fear as she answered instantly and easily. “Next, you pick one of those guest rooms.” We had reached the next floor up, and she gestured down a long, curving white hall at the rows of doors. “I’d imagine you’re tired and hungry, so we’ll feed you and let you sleep. Then you stay as our guest and our friend until you find something you want to do here and become a Keeper, or you find somewhere else you want to go and we help you get there. No matter how long that takes.”

That place would not, could not be Earth, the way these people talked about it. But there was a plan, a direction. I had lost everything of my old life but did have a tiny piece of a new life. It was enough to keep me from completely freaking out.

Which was good because all of a sudden banging and roars sounded from down the stairs. Miss Passionfruit indulged her exasperation by looking up at the ceiling and sighing, “Now what?” Down to me, she said firmly, “Listen, you’re our only guest at the moment. Take any of these rooms.”

She abandoned me, striding swiftly down the stairs. Miss Passionfruit might be too dignified to run, but with her height she didn’t have to.

Now I was alone again, in this gigantic building made of blank white bricks as big as me. I walked down the row of doors, which at least were different colors of wood and different styles of door handles. I paused at one, reaching for the squeezable latch….

I couldn’t do it. That would be accepting my fate. No, accepting what I’d done. I’d made one tiny decision, and now my life was out of my control again. That must have happened the first time I’d told my parents I would babysit, but I couldn’t remember when that was.

I was also uncomfortably hungry. I’d gone out to draw before supper.

And I smelled food. Faint, but rich and sharp and meaty, like barbecue. The mess hall, or whatever they had, would be near the living areas, right?

I would rather scrounge an alien meal than face a cold, unlived-in guest room knowing I’d never see my own bedroom—

Cut that off. Food good. Yes. Do a food, Rachel.

I followed the smell of barbecue sauce down the incredibly long circular hallway, until a wide, doorless arch opened into a room full of battered old tables and chairs and hundreds of flowers in jars. The smell came from another doorway on the other side of this dining room, so I wandered through that into the kitchen.

It was the kitcheniest kitchen I had ever had the privilege of standing in. The room wasn’t small but was still packed with food preparation equipment. Cutting tables with racks of knives. Sinks. Black iron pots and pans hanging from hooks. Wooden cabinets. A gigantic refrigerator that went all the way up to the ceiling. And an outrageous number and variety of appliances. Some made sense and I might expect, like the old Franklin stove lying on its side in the corner, with its broken off chimney pipe laid atop its round belly. Squat stoves with lids that opened into fire boxes, and two brown clay hatches on the wall for old time bread ovens. Some kinda made sense, like the device on the table with a grid of sharp points like a pair of jaws you could slam together. Some were just bizarre, like the three antennae beaming yellow lightning into a floating loaf of bread. Those were only the examples my eyes lit on among hundreds of cooking devices.

A gigantic man pointed an arm as thick as a tree trunk at me and bellowed, “You! How dare you set foot into my kitchen!?”

He was so big! More than a head taller than me, but not nearly as tall as Miss Passionfruit. He didn’t have to be. He had bulk. He was built like a barrel, just a little fat and slabs of muscle like a wildebeest. He wasn’t a wildebeest. He looked human, as far as I could tell. A scarlet mask with a golden phoenix painted on the front completely covered his head, but he was bare to the waist and his red tights and boots didn’t show off any tails or hooves or anything.

“Sorry. I was—just—just hungry,” I stammered.

“You what?!” he screamed in rage, raising his hands with his fingers curled like claws. “You insult the Magnificent Mario, former Tri-Universe Wrestling Champion—” Even in my terror I wanted to nod at my complete lack of surprise there. “—by standing in his kitchen and declaring you are hungry?! Do not try to escape! Do not move, even one inch.”

I had started to backpedal, but now I stopped. As big as he was, Magnificent Mario was even faster. His arms whipped around in blurs, from the claws curled pose, to pointing at me, to pointing a finger sternly at the ceiling. They even made faint whooshing sounds.

Now he turned that speed to cooking. One of the broad, low stoves with a firebox had the box glowing red, and a pan already laid atop the stove. Mario raised an egg in his fingers with a magician’s flourish, twisted it precisely in both hands to snap it in half to drop the egg goo into the pan, then did this a second time, and a third. As he snatched up a spatula and stirred with the left hand, the right palmed the eggshells, and squeezed. Harder. Harder, until his massive mitt shivered, smoke drifted up between his fingers, and the eggshells hissed inside his grip. Stopping suddenly, he casually threw a tiny, flickering object at me. I caught it in both hands. Small, transparent, gleaming—looked like a diamond to me.

The cooking proceeded at high speed. Mario whipped open drawers, pulled out vegetables, and squeezed them over the pan until juices leaked out into the eggs. He laid a small onion on a wooden board, smashed it with his palm, and scraped the chunks into the pan as well. Two little peppercorns from a bottle he squashed between his fingertips to gently season the mass as he stirred.

Finally, he grabbed a plate, turned the pan upside down, and dumped a shiny red and yellow mass onto the white china. He tossed the plate to me, and I grabbed it, struggling successfully to keep the eggs from spilling. Two sharp sweeps of his arms threw a knife and a fork to land on either side of the plate.

Lowering his masked face to my level, he snarled, “Sit! Eat! If your mouth is open in my kitchen, it had best be because you are putting food into it.”

Food delivered, he stuck his hands into what looked like a block of ice but was apparently not solid, leaving them sparkling clean, flung his cooking implements into a sink, and scrubbed and replaced them in about five seconds. I sat down on a nearby stool and dished up some eggs in red sauce to eat.

Mmmmm. I loved having someone cook for me, instead of having to cook for my brothers. I had no idea what this was, but it was tart and savory and delicious. I gobbled it down.

I had just lifted the last bite on my fork when chairs in the dining room clattered, banged aside, and Wrench charged into the kitchen. She had to grab the door frame to stop herself from stampeding into me.

Mario flexed his arms, first in front of his stomach, then up at his sides, yelling, “An animal, in my kitchen!?” His hand flew out, grabbing a little brown ball from a plate, and flung it at Wrench. The kobold had just enough time to open her huge, pink-lined mouth before what smelled like an enticingly greasy hushpuppy landed in it.

Chewing hastily, Wrench grabbed my arm in her clawed hands and pulled me off my stool. The little girl was much stronger than she looked! Her plastic-looking wig rustled as she squeaked, “We need you down in the dock!”

Mario raised his fist, shaking with anger. “I will allow no one—” he started to snarl, but I showed him my putting the last bite in my mouth, then setting the plate on a counter. He went “hmmph” and turned his back on us, checking on a mass of meat roasting in one of the bigger ovens.

You know, I didn’t see any flames, or smell any wood smoke, despite the glowing heat of the ovens and lack of electricity.

I stumbled after Wrench as she dragged me across the dining room, and out into the hall toward the stairs. Awkward and confused, I asked, “Did I do something wrong?”

“No. Need real mechanic,” she squeaked.

Freshly fed and with the pleasant suspicion I’d made friends with Mario, I felt better enough to do what I do best: Come up with something ridiculous. “Well, I suppose I can come down and oversee the repairs while I decide if getting involved will interfere with my many sacred oaths.”

Wrench didn’t believe me, didn’t care, or maybe didn’t understand. She hauled me down the stairs and back into the docking bay, giggling all the time like a little kid with an evil scheme. I heard the roaring sound get louder as we approached and voices whose words I couldn’t make out. They didn’t sound happy.

Peter Pumpernickel’s Pedal-Powered Planetary Perambulator was gone. In its spot floated a shiny brass spaceship like a cross between a pompous oversized SUV and a speedboat. It had a windshield, and a projecting front with a hood, a keel underneath, and a blocky but round-edged section projecting back from the cockpit, ending in two cylindrical thrusters on spokes. That hadn’t been impressive enough for someone. Spikes like horns stuck out above and on either side of the windshield, and a logo I couldn’t make out was stamped into the metal of the hood.

More actually impressive was how a plate had been taken off the rear cargo area, and orange and red flame spewed from a pipe in that gap.

The pilot side window was rolled down, and the brown-haired dock guy argued with someone inside, “You should have gone to Callisto. We don’t have the parts!”

I briefly wondered why Peter had left so fast. Was he that eager to be rid of me?

I didn’t have time to ask anyone. Wrench hauled me right up to the dock guy and squeaked, “Got real mechanic!”

“Uh,” I said about that.

The spaceship driver, who had no insecurity problems whatsoever, glared at me through a helmet like a domed bucket with slits cut down the front. The dock guy smiled more encouragingly. “Well, she performed a miracle for Peter.”

They wanted me to fix this fancy ship that was on fire? “I’m really not sure—”

“Try! Try!” begged Wrench, blue eyes pleading.

The brown-haired guy shrugged, affably casual. “If you can’t, we’re no worse off than we were before.”

So, hoping I could get lucky a second time, I walked back to look at the damage from as close as I could without the heat getting painful. Most of what I saw was a broken pipe that should have been floor to ceiling, but had a big chunk ripped out. The fire shot out of the upper section, filling the opening instead of pouring properly into the other end.

The brown-haired guy grimaced, looking it over with me, and muttered in the solar-system wide manner of someone sharing a confidential gripe with a friend. “I hate dealing with Jupiter engines. They can’t even turn off the flame without killing the meteor. If we do find a way to cap the pipe and remove the broken ends, we still don’t have a replacement. I’m Norman, by the way. You’ve met my assistant Wrench.”

I stared at the flaming pipes. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was so much more pleasant a puzzle than what had happened to my life.

We didn’t have a pipe like this and we couldn’t attach it if we did. No, forget that. Do what I did with Peter’s bus. Think about this ship as an illustration. How would I draw a repair? I’d install a whole new shiny extra thruster in the gap. Okay, but what about if I wanted it to look like a crude jury rig? A bad repair that you would draw diagrams of explaining how it worked, even though it obviously didn’t?

I answered that question out loud. “There’s a broken stove in the kitchen. Bring me the stovepipe.”

Wrench took off, giggling and rubbing her clawed hands together. With her dinosaur tail sticking out behind, and those legs that turned saurian below the knees, she could move. She’d bounded up the stairs and was out through the door before I stopped staring.

The guy in the mask growled like any bad customer from Earth. “You’re not letting a little kid and a kobold touch my Golden Sun Sailer, are you?”

Norman wandered up to him again, leaning with an extended arm propped on the side of the spaceship. “Look, do you want us to fix it, or not? We’ll be happy to let you sit here, or just push you back out into space.”

What was I doing? I had just realized I should be worried about that when Wrench sprinted back into the docking bay, a length of ugly grey stovepipe above her head.

There were dozens of reasons why what I was about to do wouldn’t work on Earth, but I didn’t know any of them, so here goes. I held out my hands. “Gloves.” Wrench dropped the pipe on the table, grabbed a pair of heavy leather gloves, and shoved them onto my fingers. I picked up the stovepipe, inched as close as I dared to the fountain of fire, and stuck the end of the pipe over the broken upper half.

The stovepipe was wider than the brass pipe. It shook as the fire now roared through it and out the end.

Keeping that flaming end turned away from me, I lifted the stovepipe way up, and settled it over the other half of the ship’s flame pipe. It clonked into place, long enough to cover the whole gap. Flames flickered around the edges on both ends, but only little wisps. The fire was channeling properly. It looked ugly and ridiculous and as crude a patch as it was, but it did work.

Norman sighed heavily behind me. I looked up to see him sagged and smiling in relief, hands in his belt pouches again. “Finally, a real mechanic.”

I gestured at the pipe, held in place solely by whatever pretended to be gravity around here. “We need something to fasten my patch into place. Got a rivet gun?”

Gleefully, Wrench squealed, “Yes, but these are better!” She yanked open three drawers from the lined-up worktable, and out of the third scooped a pair of metal bands I didn’t recognize. They had clips at the end. She opened one of those clips, and I held the stovepipe up in what would be the best position while she fastened the band near the end and twisted the clasp. The band kept tightening until the pipe itself bent, squeezed against the brass pipe underneath. Oh, cute! Did they have these on Earth? I didn’t need to anymore, but I was delighted to keep holding the stovepipe in my leather gloves while Wrench fastened the bottom end as well.

Happy now, Norman slapped the roof of the little one-man spaceship and told the driver, “We’ll close you up and that should get you home, or to a real shipyard at least.”

“My engine is still going crazy,” griped the driver.

Norman glared at him. “How is that our fault?”

I let them argue, and stepped into the back of the boat, curious about what I’d fixed. Wrench watched me with a huge, toothy grin, and her mouth slightly open like she was about to drool in anticipation.

The engine was just a big stove like the one I’d stolen the stovepipe from. Sure, it was shiny brass and lugubriously rounded and melded into the floor and back wall, but it was still a stove down to the cage style door on the front. I peeked into that and saw a head-sized rock with an angry face surrounded by fire, hopping around and blasting out sharper gouts of flame.

So. The spaceship might look fancy, but it was incredibly simple. I could work with that. Anything I would do to fix it would also have to look fancy. Wait, no, it wouldn’t. I was installing off-brand, semi-legal ship mods. They never matched the style of the original. Out loud, I said, “I need a drill that can punch a hole in this casing, and something that can spray water. Maybe a bellows.”

Norman scooped up a funny little device like a tin can with a nozzle and handle. It reminded me of an old-fashioned blow torch. He squeezed the handle, and it made little “fft fft” noises as it puffed air out the nozzle. “Will this do?”

“Yes, but it won’t hold much water,” I warned. The water supply was going to be the problem. It could be the owner’s problem, but if I fixed his cranky engine I wanted to do a good job.

Norman replied breezily, “We have a whole comet’s worth of core shards, if one of those will do.”

Wrench, twenty times as energetic as her boss, was already wrenching the top off a small barrel. It was filled with water and a crust of ice. She stuck her arm through that, pulled out a finger-sized, gleaming blue gemstone, popped it into the (oil?) sprayer’s can, and gave it a shake. When she squeezed the handle, water spritzed out. Frost was starting to form on the can, as well.

Yes. That would look perfect in an art deco-inspired anime spaceship tech diagram. Trying to ignore the pomposity of the sentence I’d just thought, I held out my hand and said, “Pen.”

Wrench handed me one. I picked a spot on the side of the rattling engine and drew a little cross. “Okay, we need a hole just big enough for the nozzle here.”

The little grey kobold was on it. She pulled a hammer and a particularly spiky screwdriver, or maybe an awl, out of her belt. Looking both eager and apologetic, she nudged herself in front of me, laid the tip of the awl to the metal, and gave the back a couple of good whacks. Sure enough, when she pulled back hot air and licks of flame shot out of the hole. I stuffed the tip of the spray can in and gave the handle a squeeze.

Steam hissed, and the meteor inside let out a squeal. It went still, then a second later started to shake and roar again. A second spritz got the same reaction, but weaker. The third reduced the fit to mere steady grumbling.

“Now we need a brace,” I said.

Wrench held out a curved shard of smashed brass pipe. When I grinned at her and said, “Perfect,” she handed it to me and scampered out, returning with an actual rivet gun.

This time, I made her hold the big of pipe in place, holding the spray can up while I riveted it into the engine casing. Hey, I wanted to try a rivet gun! It was seriously heavy, and it bucked hard when I fired a bolt, but I thought I managed to cover up the effort it took for me to use it.

The kobold and I stood back, admiring our work. She clasped both hands around her long muzzle, giggling and bouncing from foot to foot. More professional—an academy graduate had to be, after all—I snatched one of her hammers from her belt and gave the engine a few loud whacks. The thing inside snarled and bounced, and the whole boat shook as despite being turned off, the thrusters in back leaked flames. Buuuuut, a few spritzes from the water can calmed the meteor down again. Almost perfect.

“All that’s left is a hinge,” I announced.

Wrench scampered out and got me one. Norman, standing on the dock, peered in at us with an amused smile. But look, I was going to do this right, and making the pilot keep a hammer to whack the stove with was just bad form. I riveted the hinge to the middle of the hammer’s handle, and the hinge onto the stove—sorry, engine—opposite the spray can. Now you just had to slap the end sticking up and it would whack the engine casing and stir up the meteor into turbo mode.

But boy, was it dumb looking. Could I really leave it like that? “A casing. I need a casing. And do we have some kind of clamp I can attach to a button? This isn’t really done if the pilot has to get out of his chair—”

“Nope!” declared Norman with cheerful finality. Reaching into the boat, he grabbed the back of my t-shirt and pulled me out onto the stone jetty. “You’ve already done more than anybody asked, and we asked for more than anybody thought possible. You’re done.”

Wrench grabbed the front of my shirt in both clawed hands, blue eyes wide again as she begged, “I’ll find buttons for next time. Please stay. Please. Please? I can be a real mechanic’s assistant!”

The unexpected voice of Miss Passionfruit declared, with just a hint of pleased affection, “You’ve certainly found your place here, if you want it, for as long or as short as you want it.”

She had been waiting by the driver’s window. Taking a few steps forward, the dizzyingly tall bunny woman slid her arm around my shoulder, pulling me away from the ship and toward the steps to the rest of the Lighthouse of Ceres. “But right now, I am certain you are exhausted. Leave the rest to us. You did your job. My job is to take you to the nearest guest room and make sure you get a good night’s sleep.”

Pride and triumph had eased away the pain and fear. I gave her a weak, but sincere smile. “That sounds good.”

Chapter Three

I woke up in absolute darkness.

Panic gripped me. Power must have gone out! What time was it? Did I miss my alarm? I would be late for school! Would there be time to make my brothers’ breakfast?

Why did this bed feel so weird?

Oh.

This wasn’t my bed. I was in a guest room in the lighthouse on the not-quite-a-planet Ceres in the asteroid belt.

I might already be late for school. My brothers might be going without breakfast. It was all moot. There was nothing I could do about any of that now.

Helpless to fix anything I’d broken by running away from Earth, I lay back on this pleasantly firm, fresh mattress in an utterly dark room, listening to silence. The mattress supported me with that marvelous comfort fresh mattresses have, but it did feel odd. I pushed a fist into the padding. Oh, springs! It didn’t have springs. Maybe springs were too Math for space.

There was nothing to see and nothing to hear, but the room did smell faintly like motor oil. Or maybe that smell came from me?

I should get up.

Why?

Seriously, why? I had no reason to. No school. No one needed me to do anything. I had no one to see. I had no responsibilities. For good and bad, I didn’t have to get up.

So I didn’t.

This room was so quiet. No distant voices, sounds of traffic, nothing. No sound filtered in from the rest of the Lighthouse.

Lying in bed with no demands on me felt weird. I should be missing my parents, but no one here cared if I missed anything back on Earth. I felt weird because I felt nothing. Not good. Not bad. Not anything.

Eventually, I did feel hungry.

There had been a lamp next to the bed, hadn’t there? I extended an arm and felt around cautiously. This hard, flat thing would be a bedside table, and here was the fluted glass shape of an old-fashioned oil lamp. I found a little key and twisted.

The lamp lit, or at least a little metal hood lifted off of a piece of rock smaller than my smallest fingernail, which bathed in its own halo of flame. This one didn’t seem to have a face like the one in the engine, or any desire to hop around.

Light revealed a severely plain guest room. White stone brick walls and a small amount of plain but not crummy furniture. The bed, firm and comfortable and dull off-white was a fine example. The big bleached white wooden chest at the foot of the bed gave the room a particularly old-fashioned look. Old fashioned and normal.

I got up, put on my clothes that I’d left on top of the old chest, splashed my face with water from an old porcelain sink, and stepped out into the hallway.

White light stung my darkness-attuned eyes and came out of the walls and ceiling and floor everywhere. Those walls gently curved around the circle of this gigantic building, spotted with doors marked with the occasional symbol or shaped like an arch or with the door frame carved into fish shapes or something.

Normal over. Back to Space.

At least I knew where to get food. I wandered down to the dining room. This time it wasn’t empty. Not that there was a crowd, either, but maybe a dozen people sat reading or chatting, in groups of up to three. Jane, sitting with a woman I didn’t know, waved a hand and forcefully beckoned me over.

The woman wore the generic brown robe. Its shapelessness hinted at plumpness underneath, to match the woman’s plump face with its big brown freckles, thick but chin-length brown hair, and absolutely enormous circular glasses.

Jane waved between us. “Jane, this is our librarian, Wilma. Wilma, this is Rachel, the new kid. Remind me to hand you her insanity causing cursed book, from which she obtained the forbidden knowledge to become a spaceship repair prodigy. I’ll turn it over if you want, but that seems like something to hide rather than catalogue.” She said it with sincerity, even perky interest.

Wilma listened with the same cheerful, huge-eyed…

Actually, her eyes weren’t that big. The glasses were huge, sure, but they didn’t magnify or anything. I could come to only one conclusion. Wilma didn’t feel nerdy enough to be a true librarian without a little extra nerd spice. I could relate. I wouldn’t say “no” to a huge satchel stuffed with art supplies and mechanics’ tools.

Oops. I should say something, shouldn’t I? I tried, “Does Miss Passionfruit not eat with everyone else?” Because I didn’t see her, and a seven-foot-tall rabbit with the poise of a queen and a death stare is hard to miss.

Jane laughed suddenly, waving a hand at the other little groups of brown robed people. “Oh, this isn’t everyone. Norman eats on his own schedule, for example.” She pursed her lips in sudden thought. “Miss Passionfruit usually would be here.”

“Venusian holiday,” said Wilma quietly, with a small, embarrassed smile that didn’t match her alert, constantly moving, interested eyes.

“Ooooooooh,” declared Jane, rolling her head and then nodding. “That explains where Alice went, too.”

Oh, yeah, back in school, listening to the cliques talk over me about people who actually had time to hang out with them. At least I had no doubt Jane and Wilma meant well.

And not speaking of kobolds, Wrench wandered up from wherever kobolds normally sit, still in that white shirt that hung off of her in folds. The little lizard pulled herself up into the chair next to mine, and then spent some time adjusting her plastic wig, which had slipped back to hang off a couple of head spikes.

Jane grinned toothily at me, and past me at Wrench. “Looks like you have a fan.”

Wrench bounced in her seat with little girl glee. “She’s going to be my boss!”

Definitely smirking now, Jane addressed the kobold with friendly adult condescension, “Well, she is slightly older than you.”

I loved where this conversation was going so much, I threw out an emergency subject change. “How many people live here?” I sat up straighter and craned my neck around, too, so the adults would have to take my question seriously.

“Three dozen?” suggested Wilma.

Jane shrugged, still looking amused. “Alice would have an exact count.”

Wilma raised a finger. “Not including whoever is growing and placing the flowers, who we never see, and leaving the dolls lying around.”

This topic got Jane’s attention. She leaned forward toward Wilma and propped her elbows on the table. “I think that’s two different people. The dolls are only on the top floors near the beacon. I’m convinced the doll maker has found the secret way to the floors above the beacon and is living there.” Jutting out her jaw in suddenly ferocious determination, she added, “I will find it someday.”

Wilma had such a shy little smile that it was impossible to tell how she felt about that promise. Instead of answering it, she hunched her head down like she was spilling secrets and addressed me directly. “A lot of those three-dozen people almost never come down this far. People like Kulkur and Minnie, who are on a spiritual pilgrimage.”

My ideas of how this place worked rapidly flying out the window into the merely chilly and uncomfortable void of space, I asked, “So not everyone has responsibilities?”

Wilma giggled, her shoulders twisting. She acted younger than me or Wrench. From the tightness of her grin, she thought that question was the funniest thing ever. “I’m not sure anyone has responsibilities.”

“One person does,” declared Jane. She sat bolt upright, then rose partly from her chair, looking back at the kitchen. “Where’s the food? What does Mario think he’s doing?”

From the doorway to the kitchen boomed the gigantic voice of a gigantic man. “Do I hear someone questioning the Magnificent Mario’s devotion to feeding all who are in need?!”

The gigantic man who owned the gigantic voice swept into the room, his arms covered in big silver dishes covered in big mounds of food. He tossed a couple onto tables with other groups as he marched past, but when he arrived at our table the hulking wrestler chef spun dish after dish into place, covering the tabletop with the vast majority of the food.

Hands as big as my head gently but insistently pressed a fork into my right hand, and a knife into my left. Mario glared at me sulphurously through the eye holes of his mask, growling, “You will eat a bite of all of these and tell me which ones—” He jerked himself upright, raising his arms to flex his cannonball biceps. “NO! I am a master among master cooks! I will learn your tastes as I predict the moves of my opponents in combat, by your body language. EAT!”

Was I absolutely one hundred percent sure Mario wouldn’t get violent if I refused? My answer to that question consisted of scooping up a fork full of the most identifiable food item, fried rice, and taking a bite. It was spicy and filled with little crunchy things, some of them savory with a tart sauce. Giving him a thumb’s up, I moved to the next dish, and the next. I could identify about half of this stuff, in a loose ‘that is beef on a bed of vegetables’ way. The other half was beyond me. There were fruits and maybe meats in here that I was pretty sure did not exist on Earth, like the little red globes with the blunt white spikes. Those were chewy and sweet and sour, by the way. Every time I finished tasting a dish, Jane grabbed it, and someone else grabbed the dish from her.

By the time I got to the last dish, I was so achingly, bulgingly full that I had trouble forcing down that final bite. Everyone else now had plenty of food, and there was a lot more laughing and chatter among these no longer hungry Lighthouse keepers. There was far more food than the attendees could eat, and a guy with a formidable black beard loaded uneaten dishes of food onto a trolley, which he wheeled out into the Lighthouse corridors.

“AND YOU!” snarled Magnificent Mario, making me jump halfway out of my seat. His brawny arm pointed at the tiny, still unfed reptilian shape of Wrench in the chair next to me. Rearing up again, Mario raised his chin and glowered in vast and terrible pride. “I do not feed vermin, but you are already here and it would defile my honor to make a scene in front of a legitimate guest enjoying our hospitality. You will pay for backing me into this corner, scaly attic rat, but for now you may have the waste scraps meant for the compost.”

Mario stomped a booted foot against the floor. The impact boomed, shaking the stones under us, maybe shaking the whole Lighthouse. Another food trolley rolled out of the kitchen, with four steaming, heavily loaded trays of food on it. If anything, the stuff looked fancier than what he’d fed me. He distributed them in front of Wrench and gave her a crude wooden knife and fork.

She went to work eating, and all I could think about was those snakes that can swallow an entire hippo. Wrench could pack it away! She didn’t act fastidious, but she also didn’t make a mess because she let not a speck of food escape as she steadily shoveled it into her mouth, accompanied by singsong little squeaks and flapping of her heavy tail. Halfway through the last dish, she licked her lips free and tapped what was probably a potato with her fork. Smiling up at Mario, she chirped, “Crunchy on the outside, soft all the way through, and just enough sauce. Tear berries?”

Mario’s fists clenched. His whole upper body shook. He sneered, tossing his head in dismissive contempt. “I do not need my cooking skills judged by infant lizards.” Then he turned and stalked proudly back into the kitchen.

Swallowing the very last bite in front of her, Wrench gave me her cheerful smile next. “I like food.”

Jane slapped her hands on the tabletop, pushing her chair back and rising to her feet. “Well, that was fun. Would you like a tour, Rachel? It’s obvious you don’t know anything about the Lighthouse or the Keepers. I’ve heard the Moon is a pretty backwater, reclusive place.”

“But she should be down at the docks!” exclaimed Wrench.

Jane’s usual smile disappeared. Staring hard at Wrench, she said flatly, “Thin ice, shorty.”

Wrench shrunk down into her seat in response, hands clasped in her lap and head sunk low.

Wilma, rising to her own feet, said, “She means well. I’ll head up with you. We can show Rachel one of the libraries first.”

Jane forgot about Wrench, raising an orange eyebrow at Wilma. “Hot springs level?”

Wilma nodded and smiled, sheepishly pleased. “Good idea.”

They walked off, obviously expecting me to follow, so I did. We headed straight for the central stairs and started climbing. As we went up that pretty white spiral, Jane told me brightly, “So, I get the impression they teach you nothing about the solar system on the Moon.”

Wilma walked and climbed steps with her hands clasped in front of her. My years of nerdery let me mentally picture the book that should be held in that grip, although I was more into writing than reading. Book goes in, book goes out. As I judged her literary needs, Wilma murmured, “It’s a quiet and reclusive place.”

Jane put her hands on her hips and gave the shorter, more all-over rounded Lighthouse Keeper a skeptical stare. “Ceres is quiet and reclusive. You mean dull.”

With a full belly, I spotted a chance to regain some slight control of my life by taking part in this conversation the way I did best. Giving them both a tight, wide-eyed stare of horror, I said in the flattest tone I could manage, “Dust farming. That’s what we did. Dust farming.” Letting my face and voice gain energy, I went on, “Until I stole the manual of the witch queen and used it to become the greatest spaceship repair academy graduate ever.” And now a touch of sheepishness. “That didn’t involve a lot of sightseeing, though.”

“You at least know what the planets are?” asked Wilma anxiously, desperately delicate in her attempt to not sound like I was the ignorant bumpkin we all knew I was.

But hey, not super one hundred percent ignorant! I started ticking off on my fingers. “Sure. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Ur—”

Wilma squealed in shock, jumping back against the inner wall of the stairwell. Jane slapped her hand over my mouth, squeezing it into silence. Face scrunched up as tolerance fought with exasperation, she warned me, “We don’t talk about Dragon Planet, okay? Maybe it’s safe if you live next to Earth’s vortex of despair, but not out here in the outer solar system. Skip to Neptune.”

“Neptune,” I finished dutifully. “Unless you count Pluto.”

Jane shuddered, her face scrunched up now in disgust. She waved her hands like shaking off something nasty and growled, “I hated Pluto. All those occupied crypts.”

Wilma scrunched her nose up too, more primly. “I couldn’t handle waking up in the morning wearing makeup I didn’t have on when I went to sleep.”

That got a snort of laughter out of Jane, followed by her jerking a thumb at the doorway we had just reached. “Okay, this floor. You can tell because it has a hall going forward, and there’s those shark pillars on the door next to it.”

Unlike the guest room floor, this level of the Lighthouse did indeed have an intersection right at the stairwell entrance, with a hall not just going around the circle, but down toward the outer wall.

I said what I was expected to say. “What’s in that room? An aquarium?”

That made Jane frown a little. “No, which is weird, because it’s not like we don’t have aquarium rooms. It’s one of my storerooms. I’ll show you.”

We crossed the hall, and she turned the handle latch on the door and pushed it open.

Yes, this was either a storeroom or Victorian England’s most over furnished study. That was most of what it contained: furniture, wooden and fancy with old velvet padding and scroll-carved legs. Tables, chairs, desks, bookshelves, stacked on top of each other or laid on their sides. Furniture wasn’t all it contained. Paintings of people with dramatically sharp noses, huge, framed wall maps, a hat rack, and other furniture-adjacent items were piled onto the actual furniture here and there. I was particularly attracted to an old-fashioned wooden spinning globe, the kind in a clever double ring that let it spin in any direction. Even better, it sat next to a bizarre contraption of brass rings and colored balls that moved in interwoven patterns that would make any stage magician jealous. Oh, right. This crazy thing was a model of the solar system, designed to make you think you were modeling how the planets moved. It was called…an orrery!

Miraculously, the room was not covered in dust, but like the guest rooms its walls didn’t glow. Light came from a crystal ball sitting in a bowl on one of the desks farther back.

Jane wove expertly through the twisty aisles between items, explaining with sudden, giddy enthusiasm and sweeping arm motions, “People dump stuff here from all over the solar system, sometimes from even farther, but this was here when I arrived. I could barely call what I’m doing an inventory. I’m still mapping the building, trying to locate all these storerooms. Check this out!”

She stopped, reaching over to one of the bookshelves standing against the walls. In the worst example of a secret door switch ever, one lone book stood on the shelf. Jane pulled on it, and sure enough the bookshelf swung out, revealing a doorway into another room.

I picked my own way through the mess and looked through the door. On the other side…well, this was not a storeroom. A spherical chamber with indigo walls glittered, because those walls were covered in tiny crystals that looked like the stars in the sky, complete with purple band of Milky Way.

Quietly, because it was the kind of sight that made you want to whisper, Jane said, “I’m having to be careful looking for more secret doors, because I don’t want to damage this.”

As she pushed the bookshelf back into its original place, I asked, “Are there a lot of storerooms and secret doors?”

That got her standing up straight again, smiling with downright feline satisfaction. “Hundreds. You’ve seen how big the Lighthouse is on your way in, right? The two things it has the most of are rooms filled with junk that no one knows where it came from, and libraries.”

“Which I guess is my cue,” giggled Wilma, fluttering the fingers of one hand.

I followed her back through the furniture, reaching out to give the globe a spin as I passed. Back in the big glowing white hallway, Wilma led us through its torturously labyrinthine maze about fifteen feet to the other side of the hall and one door down.

When we reached that door she swiveled sharply, raising a fingertip and shrinking into a flinched posture as she said, “I warn you, it will be messy. I’m working on the libraries from the top floor down.”

I did my best to present an encouraging and completely nonjudgmental smile, and Wilma responded by turning back to the door, twisting the doorknob…and nothing happening.

Next to and kinda above me, Jane flashed a wide grin. “Oh, and mysterious locked rooms. Welcome to the Lighthouse of Ceres. We have all the mysterious locked rooms you could ever want.”

Head tucked down, Wilma scurried to the next door, tried that door, and it opened.

I peeked over her shoulder. This room did have the glowing white stone of the hallway. It was also huge, using at least the next two doors down the hall. It was undeniably a library, with bookshelves lining the walls and arranged in widely spaced rows. Like a library should, it contained oodles of books. If only the books and the bookshelves were having anything to do with each other. No, these books lurked in heaps scattered around the floor, with the smallest of those heaps coming up to my waist. At the sight of us interlopers, dust bunnies scurried away from the piles and into corners behind bookshelves. They had to be dust bunnies. What else could a small grey puff with long ears as its only feature be called?

The room did contain two non-book-related items of furniture. In each of the back corners stood a pretty white vase with fresh flowers sticking out the top.

With a wistful sigh and lingering, longing look at the piled-up books, Wilma shut the door again.

Jane set off farther down the hall, waving a hand in the air merrily. “Not that there aren’t all sorts of other things in the Lighthouse. That’s why I picked this floor. I could find my way here blind, but for you, look for all the scuff marks on the bottom of that door.”

She pointed as she approached a door and, sure enough, the lower edge of the door and the floor space in front of it were heavily scratched and worn. The door didn’t even have a handle, and seconds later she pushed it open and we stood in the doorway admiring the view.

I actually, sincerely admired the view. Dark wood paneled the walls of a room big enough to hold one of those backyard swimming pools, which it kinda did. Water flowed out of three different waterfalls on the walls, down streams that connected four different pools, and must have drained out of the last, smallest pool. One of the waterfalls and the pool it fell into steamed gently. They were all ringed with big white stones, and small groves of bamboo, or maybe just reeds if those weren’t the same thing. The final little pool even had lily pads floating on the surface.

Wistful sighs must be catching, because Jane did her own, leaning against the door frame and looking over the room dreamily. Equal dreaminess softened her voice. “I do all my bathing here. Sometimes I come here just to lie around in the pools and relax.”

Wilma grinned and said, “There’s a room around ten floors below the beacon where I do my bathing. Rain falls from the ceiling. It’s a touch chilly, but the rain smells so nice, and the sound is so peaceful. It’s like a bit of Neptune was brought here. And of course, there’s a lot of privacy that far up.”

Bathing, huh? I looked, and there it was, a small pile of soap bars and towels and jars of who knew what cleanliness goops, all tucked behind some reeds next to the heated waterfall.

The time it took me to spot those personal cleaning supplies was enough silence for my guides. Wilma gave me a friendly, helpful little smile, her hands clasped behind her, and asked, “So, what would you like to see next, Rachel?”

I stared up at her blankly. I not only didn’t have an answer to that, how could I even have an answer to that?

Even a ridiculous story didn’t seem appropriate, so I had to say what honestly came to mind. “I guess I should head back down to the docking bay. I can’t spend all my day just wandering around.”

That made Jane bark a laugh. “Another driven work horse. Can’t take a break.”

Wilma smirked with a tightly pursed mouth and guilty expression, but she definitely did smirk as she poked Jane in the arm. “I’ve seen your bedroom. There are maps next to your bed. I think you draw them in your sleep.”

They started walking even before Wilma was done with the poke, and I tagged along as Jane grinned with easy joy rather than embarrassment. “This place is all I ever wanted in life. No traps, no monsters, no worrying about loot. Endless exploration and discovery, and the things I find won’t get lost again the moment I leave.”

We didn’t have far to go. We barely had to round the corner of that first cross hall to reach a pretty white-painted metal fence railing blocking off a huge rectangular shaft that went as far up and as far down as I could see without trying to climb the fence and fall to my death. Chains went up and down the walls of the empty tube, linked to occasional pullies and assemblies of gears, all painted white and riveted to the white bricks behind them.

Rooms were just naturally big in the Lighthouse, I was quickly learning. This was particularly big. Like, gymnasium big, and the hole went up and up and up, and down and down and down.

Jane slapped the fence with her hand, then prodded a white-painted plate on the wall next to the hole. “Okay, since you want to work in the docking bay, you’ll be using this a lot more than the rest of us. Enjoy the fastest and the slowest way to get around this maze. We’re near the bay, so hopefully we won’t have long to wait.”

Button. Fence. Most importantly, huge vertical shaft with chains. Maybe math was anathema here, but I could still put two and two together. “It’s an elevator?” I asked, failing to hide my surprise. I couldn’t say that I hadn’t expected them to have this kind of technology.

As proud as if she’d made it, Jane smiled, rearing up and pointing down and then up the shaft. “The only elevator in the building. Goes right down to the generator room, and right up to the beacon, but no farther.” Her beaming turned into an intense stare, her words getting steadily more emphatic. “Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve looked for secret buttons or levers, for unlock mechanisms I might have to complete on lower floors, nothing will make it go past the beacon.” In another sudden mood switch, she raised a finger and warned me with friendly seriousness, “Oh, and don’t go to the beacon level. It’s not safe being that close to the light. Going blind is bad enough, but it does things to you, and I’m not sure what.”

Rattling and grinding, the elevator arrived. There wasn’t much to see, just a platform that filled the rectangular hole. Another two added up to seven. It was a freight elevator! I sure wouldn’t want to carry anything heavy up all those stairs.

We shuffled in. There were no numbers, but there was a lever set into a semicircular brace in the front corner, easy to miss because it was painted white. Jane pulled the lever one way, and the elevator grumbled its way down, not moving in any particular hurry past floors as oversized vertically as the rooms were horizontally. Still, we were only a few levels above the docking bay, and when Jane pushed the lever back to center we settled right on the edge of the bay itself. I could only defend my not noticing it when I’d arrived by saying that it was on the opposite side from where Peter docked, everything but the wooden piers was the same blank white, and also I’D JUST BEEN HIJACKED INTO SPACE.

Ahem.

I’d probably missed a few other details on my way in and should be prepared for that.

As the fence gate rattled open, Jane commented dryly, “This is how they get cargo up to the storerooms for me to find lifetimes later.”

That was a prediction ready to be fulfilled. The Lighthouse had another visitor! This time, a wooden sailing ship of the classic pirate ship style filled up at least a third of the bay. I knew this because of the pirates shuffling on and off of it, with their torn shirts, folded-top boots, brightly colored bandanas, and cutlasses, although I might still be wrong because I did not actually see a parrot yet.

Yet.

These badly shaved scallywags and buxom but hard-edged sea-vixens were clearly very bad at their job, because they were taking big piles of lumber and bricks and metal sheeting and furniture and similar building supplies off their boat and depositing them next to a perplexed looking Norman.

Jane grimaced and rolled her eyes. “Speaking of which. Well, I guess I’d better see how much there is and figure out where to place it.”

I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to them before, but Jane’s shorts had pockets. Many pockets. From them, she pulled multiple sheaves of paper, decorated with what might be maps. I was kinda distracted and not paying much attention to her, due to Space Pirate Ship.

Oh, Space Pirate Ship. Be mine forever. It had all the basics of the classic sea variety, with three multi-sailed masts and lots of ropes running everywhere. Two rows of cannon ports decorated each side of the hull. Regular sailing ships did not have an extra mast on each side, currently furled and folded up against the wood. A forest of brass gears at the base of every mast was also not Earth standard. My keen fantasy art appreciating eye recognized the nested brass poles near the bow as retracted grappling arms. There should be a secret super beam weapon hidden behind the figurehead, but space pirates were even less subtle than the sea kind, and that figurehead was sufficiently pornographic I thought it best not to stare. The captain’s wheel on the stern deck stood in front of a red and gold throne, which boasted a number of extra levers on either side, and they might have something to do with the huge, softly glowing white crystals that stuck out of the sides of the ship back there, held in complicated brass loops to allow them to be tilted and repositioned.

Let me see. Those crystals would be lift and a little bit of thrust. There would be emergency lift crystals inside in case the main steering crystals were destroyed.

The thing that bothered me was, this was not a spaceship. Sure, you could sail it in space, because the extra side and keel masts would act like solar sails, but it wouldn’t get great speed and it didn’t have a cover for the deck hands, who no doubt would be uncomfortable and prone to falling overboard, where it would be hard to breathe. This was an airship.

Something inside the ship chugged, just barely loud enough to be heard from up here near the prow. I saw a couple of burly pirates womanhandle an especially brightly glowing crystal up from the stairs in the hold, carrying it toward the stern instead of forward with the other plunder. Ah, and there were two more pirates detaching a dim crystal from the array in back. The whole thing was powered by steam. Very good. Very good indeed.

My attention shifted to Norman, who was arguing with a woman who had to be the ship’s Captain. She wore vertically black and white striped tights, multiple belts with a rapier, knife, two axes, and several more pistols. Her loose red shirt boasted laces on everything, all of them loose and dangling, and a feathered, huge-brimmed black and white hat with an actual gold crown sewn onto the fabric crown perched atop masses of navy-blue curly hair. Her blue lipstick was glaringly visible from here, and her body language was all impatient, and she kept one fist on her hip at any moment it was at all possible.

The pirate turned her head and leveled the non-hip-perched arm with finger pointed at Wilma, so fast it should have been accompanied by a whip crack. Her rich, commanding voice…uh…commanded, “You! Don’t try to run away, book worm. It’s you I’m here for.”

Wilma squeaked. Jane stepped in front of her, approaching the pirate with a stubbornly set jaw and folded arms. “What is this, building supplies? Who did you rob this from?”

The captain’s non-hip arm waved widely out at the starry vista, her fingers spread. “My crew and I boarded a heavily laden scow near Neptune—”

Jane interrupted her, which required raising her voice sharply. “Neptune? Did someone’s navy chase you off Saturn again? That boat really isn’t built for space.”

Ha! Score one for role playing manual illustrations.

The captain did not like being interrupted. Her eyes gleamed blue with ferocity as she glared at Jane. “I am Pirate Queen Bluehair, and I sail and I plunder wherever my whim takes me!” Her arrogant declaration dropped many decibels and added just a touch of wry humor. “It happened to take me out near Pluto and far away from Jupiter and Saturn. I saw a likely prize, heaved to, and boarded her. To my horror, it was a cursed vessel.”

Wilma gasped, her hands clasped to her mouth. “You did not bring zombies here!”

Jane flicked a pointed finger around at the building supplies. “Those did not come from a zombie ship.”

Me, I made myself useful. I couldn’t carry half this junk, but I picked up a couple of the paint cans. They were big. They were heavy. I had to give up on picking up “a couple” and lug just one by the handle with both hands. The label said “I AM GROUT.” Ah. Not paint, then.

The argument went on around me as I grunted and strained to be a helpful part of the staff. Pirate Queen Bluehair flapped her arm up and back, growling, “Nay! Thrice-cursed, with failure, with doom, and with boring ambition. Some blatherskite puking kobold-hugger was trying to build a library on Neptune.”

Wilma inhaled deeply and let out a long, sad sigh. Pirates again not having any subtlety, one of the most colorfully dressed drifted up behind Bluehair to watch that sigh.

Bluehair rolled her weight to the other side, which meant she switched which hand was posed on her hip, and which waving around. “Of course his workers all fell asleep rather than build, and everything got wet, so he had to pack it all up and take it home. He was positively grateful to unload that plunder on us.” She smirked suddenly. On vividly blue lips, it was a dramatically smug expression. “The more fool him. I knew where to take it. The Lighthouse can keep all the cargo that I don’t want in exchange for HER…” She pointed at Wilma again, “…services figuring out which of these books are valuable.”

There was a small pile of old, leather-bound books at Bluehair’s red and gold-booted feet. The fastidiously clean, smooth-shaved pirate who had been standing behind her tugged on the lapels of his blue and gold coat, bowed to Wilma, and purred, “I’ll take care of liaison duties there, my lady. I’m eager to work closely with the famous librarian of the Lighthouse of Ceres.”

Wilma blushed visibly. The dapper pirate scooped up the books in his arms, and walked right up, arms-clutchingly close so he could smile down at her with gleaming white teeth. I swear they actually went ting. “Why don’t you lead me to a quiet room where we can bring all the books and get started?”

I wiped my forehead, having just dragged a big wooden plank to the elevator, and went back for a round wooden disk thing I couldn’t identify. Bluehair did her smirk again, watching Wilma and the oh-so-friendly pirate make their way out into the halls. Her voice turned mild. Mildly sarcastic, but still mild. “I normally don’t go for gentleman rogues in my crew, but he really is a crackerjack navigator. Hardly any of the furniture is pretty enough to keep, but—”

Another figure leaped up on the railing of the ship. This one was shorter than Bluehair and purple. Not just purple of hair, purple of skin. She wore a black ruffled skirt with frilly white petticoats underneath, a red bodice and fluffy white blouse. She also wore a set of weapon belts much like the Pirate Queen. With ferocious relief, she yelled, “Someone my age! Finally! I thought we were going to have to wait until we got back to Saturn before I had anybody to talk to or play with.”

Pirate Queen Bluehair shot a glance at me, and with great amusement corrected, “Almost your age.”

I dropped the wooden thing and put my own fists on my hips. “I’m sixteen. I’m just short,” I half-lied.

I was short.

The purple girl leaped off the rail. Bluehair’s fist left her hip to grab at the teenager, but as fast as she did, the girl still managed to duck under it. Norman tried to step in her way, but she weaved around him so fast and easily it was hard to tell he tried. Jane made a grab with both arms that came nowhere near. Charging across the white stone dock, skirts loudly rustling, the purple teenage pirate whipped her own rapier out of her belt. As it flicked toward me, I backpedaled hard, hitting the wall with my hands raised in desperate surrender.

The girl stopped just as suddenly, with the tip of her blade half an inch from my throat. Her purple face wild with pride, she announced, “I am Pirate Princess Violent Violet, and I hereby kidnap you and force you to be my best friend!”

Chapter Four

“Crew member Violet, release her at once!” barked the Pirate Queen.

Lolling her head back, Violet whined, “But Moooooooooom!”

Bluehair pointed sternly at her daughter with the not-on-her-hip hand. “A pirate queen does not kidnap someone just because they’re lonely, Violet.”

The blade under my chin did not waver a hair as Violet looked over at her mother with accusing petulance. “You do!”

Pirate Queen Bluehair was not super a fan of being accused of hypocrisy. She glared at Pirate Princess Violent Violet even harder, sticking out fingers one at a time as she counted, “First, I also have an official reason, like they have a treasure map, or they’re attractive, or to hold them for ransom. Second, there are legitimate times and places. When I capture a ship in combat, for example, or as part of a larger scheme, or when I’m drunk. Third, I don’t just grab people out of the blue. That’s important, Violet. Even if I’m taking a man captive because he’s handsome, he can’t just be good looking. There has to be a spark between us, and that doesn’t happen at a glance. If it’s a treasure map, the owner has to have discussed it with me unwisely in a dark corner, or suggested they wish they could be a pirate but responsibilities are holding them back. If you want to be a pirate queen and not just a thug you have to have class, and to have class you have to follow professional ethics.”

The purple haired and purple skinned girl grimaced, rolled her eyes, and generally looked unfairly put upon by the cruel dignity of adult life. “Ugh, fine, but while we’re here I can drag her around and bully her into being my best friend, right?”

“If you do it with style,” answered Bluehair. Then her face hardened, and with the flat authority of a pirate queen she ordered, “Now put away your sword.”

My body untensed as Violet’s rapier point left that spot under my chin where I couldn’t see it. Even better, she slid it back into the thin sheathe on one of her belts.

If she’d lunged next, I could have squealed and run away. Instead, I had to stand there in confusion and embarrassment as Violent leaned forward, placed her shoulder against my stomach, and hoisted me into the air. With me draped over her backwards, she set off toward the steps up into the reception gallery, or whatever I should call the room where Alice normally did her self-appointed work.

As she marched away from everyone at the elevator end of the dock, she declared, “Come on, best friend. I’ve never been to the Lighthouse before. You’re going to give me a tour.”

I had a fine view of everyone watching and nobody moving a muscle to help me. The only muscles Norman and Jane moved were around their mouth, as they smiled with amusement watching me depart.

Wrench, at least, did not look happy, following us in little scurries only to pause behind a box or a wooden post from the movable piers.

Me, I didn’t know what to say. I mean, what do you say at a time like this? I tried sarcasm, on the basis that it came naturally. “I can’t give a tour if I can’t see where I’m going.”

Violent Violet whirled around, and my view spun until I could now see forward because Violet was walking backwards.

I looked back over my shoulder. Jane was grinning hugely. Bluehair laughed, and a couple of her pirates clapped.

Message received. I was stuck with this.

We reached the steps, and Violet swerved sharply again, climbing them in a precise marching pace without even stumbling at the top. She carried me right into Alice’s currently abandoned reception gallery.

When we were through the doorway and well inside, Violet whispered up to me, “Can anyone see us? Let’s get out into the halls.”

She turned and aimed for a side doorway, and, well, I was her guide, so I guided. “A little to my left.”

We got around the corner, and a few paces into one of the Lighthouse’s long, long, long circular halls. Her voice back to brash and cheerful normal, Violet asked, “Which door is somewhere private where no one will hear you scream?” So, even facing backwards she’d noticed the “endless rows of doors” theme the Lighthouse had.

I was suddenly vividly reminded of how I could hear absolutely nothing going on outside when the door to my guest bedroom was closed.

My heart rebelled. Violet was so strong and in command. I could be brave, too. I rebelled by obeying, pointing at the nearest door for no reason than because it was right there. “That one.”

Anyway, I was almost positive Wrench was sneaking around behind us and would eavesdrop.

As the person facing forward, it was my job to reach down and twist the door handle open. As soon as it clicked, Violet carried me inside so far I couldn’t possibly reach the door, and it shut behind us.

This was Alice’s office. I knew it instantly. There was a beautiful, dark red wooden desk, two ledgers stacked on one side, neatly arranged inkwells and different kinds of pens, bookshelves along the back filled with rows of increasingly old and crumbling ledgers, and the light came from two glowing balls set into sconces on either side of the room, fully illuminating the desk. A silver and white china tea set sat opposite the books on the other side of the desk, in perfect serious little girl order. Oh, and the extra high seated chair was a clue.

I was alone with this crazy pirate girl in a room where no one could hear me scream. The room should have felt big and spacious, but instead it was like the walls were closing in.

My view whirled again as Violet grabbed me by the waist and shucked me off to land on my feet. With that weight off her shoulders, she leaned back against the wall by the door, ran both hands back through her thick purple hair, and let out a tired groan. “Sorry for all that. I’m normally not that violent. It’s just been sooooo booooring!”

I had my physical balance back, but my mental balance was still flying away into the distance. Again, something about Violet made me run with it. I even grinned, honestly amused. “The Lighthouse of Ceres isn’t going to help. Excitement here is sorting a brand-new library or sneaking a between meal snack. We could do that. Are you hungry?”

Also I would feel much safer next to Mario, who could squeeze eggshells into diamonds and might be dramatic enough to distract my violet captoress.

Violet knocked the back of her head against the stone wall in frustration and stared with aggrieved despair up at the ceiling. “That would be paradise. Long ship journeys are the worst for food. Have you ever had hardtack? It’s nasty.”

Pushing herself back up, she laced her hands together and cracked her knuckles. The moment of quiet was over, and now she was a tall, poised, fierce-eyed pirate like her mother again. Her voice hadn’t quite caught up. “Just pretend you’re only leading me around because I threatened you.”

My amusement refused to fade. “Should I grit my teeth and look for exits?”

Entirely serious about it, Violet proudly tossed her hair back with one hand. She did have a lot of hair. “No, you don’t have to put on a show. Just be prepared to lie if someone asks.”

A laugh snorted up out of me, although I swear I was trying to look serious too. I beckoned with one hand, opened the office door, and led her toward the stairs.

Conversation is easier when you’re not hanging over someone’s shoulder, so I asked, “As your best friend under duress, you have to tell me how it can possibly be boring being a space pirate.”

“It’s easy. The solar system is huge.” She swept her arms sharply all the way out to both sides. Her head gave dramatic little jerks from side to side as she growled, “We’ve been haunting the least occupied parts of it. All because Mom blew up a town by accident.”

I stopped, my foot on the top stair leading into the guest level. Forcing myself to start walking again, I met her frustrated tone with the maximum of roundabout delicacy. “That’s quite an accident.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” she explained as we entered the dining room, “We’re not space pirates. We’re sky pirates from Saturn, which is so, so, so much more fun than space.”

We could see into the kitchen from here and Mario, standing in that doorway, could see us. He pointed a beefy finger at Violet, then jerked his hand up. “You! Serving Girl!”

Ooh, that hit a nerve. Violet puffed up and scowled, pained and outraged. “I’m not—”

Arguing with the Magnificent Mario was two hundred percent useless. He raised his hands like claws, turned sideways to show off his biceps and shoulder muscles, and shouted over her, “Do you think the Magnificent Mario does not know a wench when he sees one?! Our new guest cannot be hungry, not after a meal cooked by the Magnificent Mario…” He snapped into a new position, arm extended up at an angle, fingers out. “…so she must be thirsty! Serve her a drink! My finest foamy water, brewed by myself from sweet cloud tree roots. Here is her mug, and here is a keg for you to refill her mug until she is quenched, and here is a mug for you…”

With each declaration, Mario threw first a heavy, elaborately wooden mug across the dining room, which Violet caught perfectly in her left hand. He threw a barrel slightly larger than my head, which Violet caught with equal ease, tucking it under her right arm. The final mug flew across the room, and this one held a beverage whose bubbles crawled right up to the rim. Violet ducked her head, and the mug landed neatly on it without spilling a drop.

“…because the Magnificent Mario knows that it is Saturnian tradition that the wench drinks with her customer,” he finished, and stalked back into the kitchen.

In stance, Violet was perfect poise, the full mug on her head not wobbling at all as she walked over to the nearest table and set down first my mug, then the barrel, and then her mug last. Ah, but her cheeks burned with a blush, the pink standing out peculiarly against her rich violet skin. Violent Violet was so embarrassed that she was trying and failing to hide it.

Oof. Poor girl. I could feel the shame radiating from her. How to put this delicately, like a pirate would? “I’m your best friend and you have to tell me, or else I’ll suffer the consequences.”

Violet burst out in a laugh, confirming I’d picked just the right level of gentle diplomacy. As her giggles trailed off, white toothed grin (even her tongue was purple) sharply outlined against her colorful face, she said, “I really do like you. Okay, fine. Sit down, and I’ll tell you the medium length exciting story, and then the short, boring story.”

I sat in a wooden chair. Violent Violet, dress audibly swishing, walked around me to my other side, leaned over me, and with the keg tucked under one arm twisted its tap to pour dark golden liquid into my mug. When she finished, the stuff fizzed with carbonation so aggressively it built up a head of foam in seconds. My drink served, she disdained a chair of her own and pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the table, knees crossed.

Violet took a long, multiple swallow pull from her mug, let out a thoroughly quenched sigh, and looked down at me with the kind of exasperation that pleads for sympathy. The story began. “So, Mom wanted a vacation after the whole Theft of the Golden Galleon thing, right? We’re on shore leave at Cabochon with just the one ship and a skeleton crew. I love Cabochon.” She shivered, looking up and away from me with a wistful smile. “Every building is a different color, there’s lots of bridges and ziplines from one spire to another, and it all floats above a permanent lightning shark nest. The cloud is a gorgeous charcoal black with swirling colors like an opal. Since it’s always below the city the weather is great. The people are fun, and the teenagers like a little friendly trouble now and then.”

The purple pirate princess’s smile faded into a glum scowl, and she took another deep drink followed by a sigh before continuing. “So much for all that. Mom is in the tavern playing cards with some cronies and informants, and they’re having such a good time they don’t even hide how they cheat. Then that pinhead,” and her voice spiked with anger at that word, “Scurvy Scuttlebutt lets slip that the Orange Slipstream Navy has made a ropeless magnetic harpoon gun, and they’re storing it in the lift tank powerhouse behind the town hall!”

Violet waved her mug in a furiously sharp flourish, her story now accompanied by a ferocious scowl. “Cabochon doesn’t have a leviathan skeleton to keep it floating, see. The ziplines are power lines. So Mom, so drunk she can barely stand,” and Violet’s head twisted from side to side as she complained, “convinces those idiots to go raid the building and steal it. She was so drunk she couldn’t even tell me exactly what happened. She thinks she disarmed a guard and decided to do it with a fancy flourish, so his lightning sword goes flying through a window into the powerhouse. It turns out, the Navy is storing other weapons there, too.”

Throwing both arms out to either side, Violet shouted, “Boom! The whole place explodes, and everyone is running to the ships to escape before the town falls into the shark nest.”

Her sour expression sipping her drink indicated her story was done. I took a swallow of mine. Good stuff. Tasted a lot like root beer. Very sweet and tingly with bubbles.

My whistle wet, I delivered my review of her story. “I have been bored, and that sounds like the opposite of boring. Depressing, possibly. I could understand depressing. Boring, no. I would even go so far as to suggest that sounds like grand pirate adventure.”

Violet shook her mug at me, the dregs sloshing in the bottom. Seeing that as a good idea, I drank more of mine as she swelled up to deliver an outraged rant. “Oh, but here’s the boring thing. I wasn’t there. My mother, in her infinite pirate queen wisdom, insists that if I want to grow up to be a pirate queen myself someday, I must master every aspect of piracy. Right now, that includes wenching.”

She swept her hands down her body, to indicate the almost exaggeratedly feminine bodice and poofy dress. Her head rolled back in a groan. “Wenching is soooo duuuuull. I’ve learned to identify every drink in the solar system by smell, and they’re all tediously boring to serve to customers.” Her head snapped down to give me the glare of confidential anger necessary for sharing news that will surely outrage the listener as well. “She won’t even let me pull a knife on anyone!” Straightening up, she twisted her face into a goofy mask, and singsonged, “A pirate queen needs to have wit as sharp as her sword.” Slumping down again, Violet growled, “A tavern wench has to come up with a different clever insult every time she hears ‘I like a girl with spirit,’ and believe me, I’ve gotten a lot of practice.”

The purple princess sighed, leaning back with one hand propped on the table and taking another little sip of her foamy water. “So while my mother was breaking into an armory and setting off huge, colorful explosions, I was still back in the tavern pouring drinks. She says I’m still not done wenching. Do you think I would wear this stupid dress willingly?”

From the kitchen, Magnificent Mario shouted, “A pirate wench must also be able to entertain her customers with strange tales of far-off lands, so they cannot help but like her.”

I grinned. A lot. So much. “That part is working.”

Despite her frustration, Violent Violet smirked back.

Flexing an arm that was already as thick as a marble pillar, Mario leaned into the kitchen doorway and boomed, “Magnificent Mario respects food serving done well. As a reward, he will turn his back when you steal food to satisfy that growling belly I hear. Eat! It is your turn to serve yourself.”

Dishes loaded with food whirled across the dining room like frisbees, and Violet caught each one, twirling like a dancer to deposit them in their precise spot on the table before catching another. When the food assault subsided, she refilled our mugs and sat down to eat.

Two bites of delicious smelling meat lump and another swig from her mug later, Violet waved that mug in the air and shouted at the kitchen, “Hey, what’s with this soda pop? Don’t you have a real drink?”

My first instinct was to stand up and applaud Violet’s suicidal disdain for authority from far away. Fortunately, Mario was as friendly as authority capable of squishing your head with his fingers could get, and merely shouted back, “For adults, I dash the sweet cloud root with a bit of filtered Plutonian opal tears, but teenagers get only foamy water.”

Violet banged her fork and mug on the table, mouth agape at the solar system’s cruel injustice. “I’m missing out on opal tears?!”

“Do you want to be missing out on food as well???” roared Mario from out of sight.

The purple pirate princess pouted, slouching low for a second with her lower lip out. “Fine,” she grumbled. Complaint made, she resumed devouring food. Between bites, she shook a fork at me. “But it’s your turn to tell your story, new best friend, or else. How did you get to Ceres?”

I couldn’t let myself be topped by Violent Violet’s story. My creative writing skills whirred into overdrive, and I waved my mug around with airy unconcern. “Well, actually I’m much older than I look, but I’ve been living—in hiding, really—on the Moon’s moon, and the grey dust seeps into you, freezing you from aging. One day a black wiggly thing crashed near our farmhouse. It was a spaceship for strange, tiny aliens no one has ever met before. I couldn’t save it from being petrified by the dust, but I knew I couldn’t live in grey anymore. I swore to work my way up the color scale to white. First, I had to jump high enough to catch the handle of the freight hatch of an indigo blue spaceship passing by,” mental pause to say the ROY-G-BIV color scale in my head, “then I got lost in a lush green asteroid no one has seen before or since, rode my way back into space on a giant golden carp, and a glittering crimson space squid deposited me on the roof of Peter Pumpernickel’s Pedal-Powered Planetary Perambulator, which I rode like a surf board all the way to Ceres.”

Smiling as pleasantly as if I hadn’t just spouted a mile of nonsense, I took a sip of foamy water and said, “Ceres is nice. Quiet, but I can be happy here until I need adventure again.”

Violet’s attentive, purple-eyed stare hadn’t seemed strange while I was telling the story, but it didn’t stop after I finished. She kept staring. So much staring. Pointing a table knife at me in a way she probably didn’t intend to be threatening, she urged, “Go on. Tell another one! There has to be more, right?”

Okay, well, what does a storyteller want more than an attentive audience? Grinning wider, I let my imagination run, grabbing previously told stories to build on and make more ridiculous. Leaning against the back of my chair, I drawled, “Weeeell, I left out the time I spent at the spaceship repair academy, because it wasn’t color themed. There weren’t a lot of students, only the best of the best, so the classes were ferocious. We had one class taught by an intelligent spaceship, that actually started out on Earth but was too cool and awesome for Earth, so when Math blew it up it was catapulted right out into the normal solar system and came alive.”

My audience remained agog and focused, her mouth shoveling in food, but her eyes pointed at me. Possibly also ears, but she was purple, not a cat girl, so that remained a metaphor. Feeling good, I leaned forward and pretended I was describing something intense and dangerous. “It made us run a tournament in one day. We had three hours to build a spaceship to defeat the other kids, and the winner would get to make the losers kiss her feet. I got a big canister of fuel, filled it with squid ink instead, and built a fake spaceship that when activated splattered the ink backwards to make the teacher’s giant robot eye look like it was elegantly mascara’d.”

Doing my storyteller duty, I tucked my head down and mimicked ladylike flirtatious eyelash fluttering. Then I waved a hand in casual dismissal of my own greatness as I finished, “Everyone else laughed so hard that they surrendered. I didn’t make them kiss my feet because that would be gross.”

Violet pointed her spoon at me, which at least was better than her knife. With increasing vehemence, she demanded, “What are you doing wasted on a rock like Ceres? I have to tell Mom. Our crew needs someone who can lie like you. A skill like that would make you a hero on Saturn! I’m getting dizzy just thinking about how we could use you to steal things.”

Wrench leaned in from the hall and chirped, “Rachel, you’re needed!”

In a flash, Violet grabbed her table knife and whirled around, flinging it at wrench. The golden-curled kobold squealed and ducked out of sight, but the knife only clattered off the door frame. Violet snarled, “Rachel is busy, lizard.”

Rachel was busy doing the right thing, and I leaped to my feet, holding a palm out at Violet. “Hey! Be nice to Wrench. She just tries to help.” Looking back at the doorway, I asked loudly, “I guess a spaceship needs repair?”

“Three in two days! It’s like they know you’re here!” squeaked Wrench gleefully, her eyes just visible peeking around the corner.

Duty called.

Heaving myself up from my not actually super comfortable chair, I told my aggressively friendly wench, “They really do need me. You can watch while I work. I don’t know how much I’ll be free to talk. I haven’t seen the job yet.”

As I headed for the stairs, my heart lifted with hope that Violent Violet really would follow me and watch. I wanted to impress her. Violet didn’t have to lie about her adventures. Her life was so exciting that her boredom was cooler than anything I had ever done.

Wrench found this exciting. She hopped down the stairs in front of me bouncing from one foot to the other like she was dancing. Her tail stood straight out, only the tip of it wriggling at high speed. The girl was adorable. I had seen ten-year-olds try to be cute before. Wrench was a twee master.

I had just started wondering for real what I was needed for when I rounded into the docking bay and saw for myself. A new spaceship had docked on the side of the bay I now associated with repair. It was shiny like chrome, tube shaped, with three thruster thingies sticking out at the back. It probably used to have a domed cockpit that ended at a point, but the right half of that cockpit had been ripped open.

That was going to take some fixing. A major problem had just been dropped in my lap, and…I felt a little giddy about it. What could I even do for damage like that? I couldn’t wait to find out.

Moving stuff off of Bluehair’s ship had still barely begun. She and Norman were on this side of the bay now, talking to a guy who must be the broken ship’s pilot. He was on the edge of old but fit and wearing a tight-ish silvery spacesuit with a bubble helmet tucked under one arm.

Bluehair, smiling hugely with predatory enjoyment, told him, “You’re not stranded. I’ll be happy to take you anywhere in the solar system. The Lighthouse can have what’s left of your ship, and I’m sure whatever cargo you brought on this risky journey will be worth my while for rescuing you.”

He didn’t answer, face stiff and troubled as he thought about it. It went beyond depressed. She’d caught him somehow, like his cargo was something he absolutely did not want in a pirate queen’s hands.

Me, Violet, and Wrench walked up a wooden dock to look at the damage. The important things I could see about the ship from outside were that it had a glass window over the cockpit, little round porthole windows down the sides, and the thrusters weren’t just rockets. They were more like rounded off rectangles than tubes, and had blue lights and rings spaced down their length.

As for the hole, the front right side of the ship had been punched through, with the jagged edges leaning in. The captain’s chair of the spacious but single person cockpit still stood, but the console in front of it was crushed and half ripped off the floor. The far side of the cockpit still had banks of little lights and gauges, but on this side they were gone with the wall itself. A lot of little switches and some levers still lined the ceiling, for what good they did. The main controls were mangled like a stomped-on aluminum can. Wires and bulbs and spiraling metal coils leaked out of the ruin, but nothing that looked like computer circuitry. That was a relief for me, because I really didn’t know how I would replace something like that.

Violet looked around and delivered her professional space pirate judgment. “Ran right into an asteroid. That guy is lucky he’s alive. Double lucky the Lighthouse was so close. How he managed to dock, I don’t know. You guys must have a rescue boat, right?”

Her guess was better than mine about that. I didn’t even know what a rescue boat would look like. For all I knew someone swam out with hooks on ropes.

I concentrated on the problem I had to fix. There were all those switches. That was a technological style. Most of them I wouldn’t care about because I wasn’t trying to fix everything, just get the ship mobile. It also had some of those heavy levers that have a handle between two prongs. Three of those of the same size were located right above the captain’s chair. I knew that look.

Pointing up at the levers, I answered Violet’s question. “Raw thrust power controls for the engines. Normally you would turn them all up and use the console controls to steer and moderate speed. These were all he had left, but they were enough for him to aim the ship at the docking bay.”

Violet paused. Her fists perched on her hips like her mother, and she stared at nothing with her lips tight before grudgingly admitting, “Wow. I take back all the vile insults I was thinking about that man. To pull that feat off, he must be a flying ace level pilot.”

I sure couldn’t have done it, but…. “If he’s that good, how did he hit a rock in the first place? I thought the Lighthouse channel was safe?”

Violet laughed with a piratical cruelty she hadn’t shown until now. She slapped her hands together. “What, isn’t it obvious? He saw Mom’s ship pull into dock and was afraid we’d follow and attack him. He thought he was a good enough pilot to handle the asteroid belt, which…okay, fine, he probably was, but his ship wasn’t as good as the pilot. I bet this thing is fast in a straight line, but it must turn worse than Mom’s ship, and that handles like a whale. One of those really fat whales where you can’t tell which end is the front and if you shoot it, it explodes. The glowing green ones.”

I wasn’t sure if Violet was making that up for effect or not, but that wasn’t my problem. My problem was the controls. The console was history. I couldn’t fix it. What could I possibly do to replace something that complex?

Okay, Rachel. Sit down in the captain’s chair. Look at the view in front of you. What would look right as a steering system?

I sat. I looked. I got an idea. I could picture it in my head, the kind of thing you saw in spaceships like this in the old movies where they had spaceships like this.

“Wrench! Did you find some buttons?” I barked, maybe a little more sharply than I should. I had to take care of this little girl’s feelings, too.

Fortunately, she was too eager to be intimidated. “I did, uh huh! Some that have wires, and some without. Look!” From her pouches she pulled two little gold buttons. Holding one in each hand, she pushed the left with her thick, clawed thumb. The button in her right hand glowed until she let go.

Oh, yeah. This would so much not work on Earth. So, so much not work. But we weren’t on Earth, and I didn’t have to care about that. “Get nine of those.” That order given, I stepped out onto the wooden pier and shouted to Jane over by the elevator. “Jane! Get me that globe from the storeroom you showed me! Is there a pedestal? Metal preferably, about this high?” I held my hand around my waist.

Bluehair switched fist-on-hip to hold up a volunteering hand. “I remember one. It was going to be a water dispenser. On Neptune. Isn’t that hilarious?”

“Well, bring it in here!” I called back, then threw my thoughts into the next phase. “And somebody get me a welder. This isn’t a rivets kind of ship. No, better idea. Bring me a bucket of that grout.” This was the kind of ship where everything looked glued on. It wouldn’t be high tech and space-y if you could see why the parts fit together.

Wrench brought me the button pairs. I divided them into threes, a pack in each pocket of my jeans and one in her hand. Then I walked aft to the engines. The ship wasn’t that big, just big enough for a single hallway with rooms on either side, and an engine room at the very back. There wasn’t much to worry about back here. Fuel tanks with hoses attached to bulges that would be the inner projection of the engines themselves.

Perfect. The engines even had glowy, spinny blue gauges, right now barely moving. I put a set of three receiver buttons on each around its spinny gauge. That looked like an activator, and especially would when it glowed.

Returning to the cockpit, I was right in time for Jane to hand me the old wooden globe. The pedestal I’d asked for was already there, and yeah, it looked a lot like a school water fountain. It had a mostly flat top, which is what I needed.

“Wrench, glue that in front of the captain’s chair,” I ordered. Stronger than me, the little kobold dragged the metal block into place. Tilting it up, she slathered grey goop from a big paint can on the underside and set the pedestal back down. It stuck. Grout was basically cement and cement was basically glue, and without access to whatever magnetic seal-o-rizer type doodad whoever built this spaceship used, glue would have to do.

I glued the bottom of the globe, sat in the captain’s chair, and turned the globe stand until it looked just right on top of the pedestal. Then I stuck the buttons to its frame, in three rows of three. One for the upper engine, one for the lower left engine, one for the lower right engine.

Looking aside at Wrench, who stood next to the chair watching in open-mouthed fascination, I explained, “When you spin the ball forward, the top thruster gets activated. The same for the left and right engines. Violet, do you mind going all the way back and telling me what happens when I try it?”

Smirking in cynical amusement, Violet replied, “Yeah, sure. It’s not swashbuckling, but this is cute. Don’t expect me to be impressed until it works.”

I sat back and looked around the room again. Shiny metal, forward focused, almost like a plane but with more of an old space rocket’s controls. I could see turning a ball to make it swoop and turn. That would look good.

From the other end of the ship, Violet yelled, “Okay, I’m ready. What am I supposed to be looking at?”

I laid a hand on the wooden globe and spun it forward. Violet called out, “Well, I’ll be an ice eel in the middle ring. That top engine started whining!”

I spun right. Violet shouted, “The left engine started whining.” I spun left, and she shouted, “Right engine. Can I pick a best friend, or what? You’re a genius, and I swear I’ll make you my genius someday.”

“YES!” I shouted in glee, swiveling in the captain’s chair and slapping palms with an equally excited and giggly Wrench.

From the back of the ship, Violet shouted, “Can you hear me? You can stop it now.”

My excitement bled away, leaving my heart as heavy as led. “It’s still whining?” I called.

“And getting louder,” she shouted back.

I sat still for a moment. Could I hear that whining from up here? I could just barely hear the adults chatting at the end of the pier. Leaping to my feet, I ran down the center corridor, and could certainly hear my tennis shoes thudding on the metal flooring. Skidding into the shiny engine room, I braced for the worst.

It was pretty bad. All the engines were indeed making a clearly audible, high-pitched noise like a plane engine. The blue circles on their inner bulges were spinning in a swift rhythm. And with every second, the whine got slightly higher and the circles spun visibly faster.

I yanked the activator buttons off the top engine. Nothing changed. The engine was still revving faster.

My heart pounded so hard it hurt against my chest. The engines were going to explode. It was obvious what happened. I’d messed around with something I didn’t understand, and set off a feedback loop, or a core inversion, or whatever crazy self-destruct this kind of technology did. I’d killed them all.

As I stood there, panting, two knobby grey hands grabbed the neck of my t-shirt, pulling my head down to look into slit-pupiled but otherwise beautifully deep blue eyes with rich lashes made of thin, feathery scales. Wrench’s voice, as high pitched as usual but hushed and without the usual giddy squeak murmured, “You’re panicking, Rachel. Take control. Start with your breathing. Then your thoughts. Then take control of the situation, and fix this.”

Her calm got to me. She was right, I had a job to do, because nobody else could or would. I did just as she said. Deep breaths. Think. Just think. What could I have done wrong? I was too hasty, too—no, Wrench said be in control. Don’t get distracted blaming yourself, Rachel. Just do what everyone needs you to do.

Moving deliberately, not slowly or in a hurry, I looked over at Violet and asked, “Do you—?”

The pirate princess was leaning back against a fuel tank, her elbows propped on it and smirking. She would look like a teenage punk if it weren’t for the flirty skirt and bodice combination. She cut me off to answer, “I love danger.”

Okay. “Then stay here and tell me what happens.”

I didn’t run. I would panic if I ran. I walked quickly and determinedly back up to the cockpit. “Wrench, sit in the chair and hold on,” I ordered my lizard sidekick. She did, and I wrapped one arm around the chair, and with the other reached up to the three engine control levers, shoving the rightmost forward and hauling it back into place as fast and hard as I could.

The levers had a lot of resistance, but a few inches of push was enough. The rocket lurched, banging against the dock on our left before shuddering still again. I’d figured bumping against a wall of rock we were already touching would be least destructive.

“It’s whining louder now!” Violet yelled.

I gritted my teeth and fought down the panic again. I’d hoped that would reset the engines. Now I was working on a timer and I couldn’t even see the timer because it would have been on the destroyed console.

What went wrong?

I’d used the wrong technology.

But what was wrong about it?

It was too advanced. I looked around at the shiny metal but primitively switch covered room. Rolling a globe, sure, but this wasn’t a “touch a floating control and something over there magically turns on” ship. I couldn’t just do things the easy way and think they’d work because I wanted them to. Every technology had its own rules.

And, thankfully, those rules seemed to be the same as the rules that make something look right in a picture.

So if we put in the right tech, we should be able to take control again. “Wrench, get me wired versions of those buttons. Long wires, long enough to go all the way back! And colored clips we can use to keep track of which are which!”

Wrench bolted out of the smashed-in hole in the ship, then jumped up onto the top and over to her tool tables.

Keep thinking, Rachel. The wires can’t just flap around loose. They really ought to be buried inside the ship, but there’s no time for that. With this spinny console, which would look cutting-edge advanced in a ship like this, wires sleek against the metal would be good enough.

Thank goodness for grout. I grabbed the bucket and its trowel and smeared a line down the sides of the water fountain, circled them around the captain’s chair, and clumped down the hallway putting little smears in the center of the floor. As I got closer to the engine room, I could clearly hear the engine whine, now loud enough to be annoying even if it hadn’t meant disaster.

Violet saw me and spoke over the whine. “I’m happy to report they’re starting to shake.” And she did sound happy, reclining next to a vibrating metal bulge whose rapidly spinning gauge meant it would explode any minute.

“Peel off the old activators,” I ordered her. Might as well have that done by the time I got back. I returned to the cockpit to find Wrench almost finished prying loose the original sets of buttons and replacing them with versions attached to long, long golden wires.

“Is this what you want?” she squeaked, giving me a hopeful puppy look as she fixed the last new button in place.

I fuzzled her scratchy blonde wig. “Perfect.” Because every second might count, and she’d saved me a few. We separated the wires into threes and glued them smoothly down the side of the pedestal, ran them back to the central corridor, and all lined up as a central stripe ran the wires down the hall to the back room.

Should the wires be braided? No, that wasn’t the look of this place. Flat is better. I had no idea how big an effect flat vs braided would have, and right now I was playing it safe. So very safe. Look at how safe what I was doing was. The safest.

We reached the engine room, and I abandoned compulsive neat gluing to separate the wire bundles in threes and fix them right where I’d had the wireless activators minutes ago.

Right next to me, Violet reported, “Engines still whining, captain!” with her amused grin. A slightly strained amused grin. Violet wasn’t completely successful in hiding her fear, now.

But this was what I’d expected, right? So I told her, “We haven’t taken control yet.”

Those engines were loud, and the spinning gauges a blur. The wires were laid right. I abandoned decorum and ran this final trip back up to the control room with Wrench’s clawed feet clacking loudly right behind me.

There had to be a reverse thrust setting. I grabbed the overhead levers and pulled. Yes, they had a little more space to go, past where they’d seemed to lock. A firm pull, and I moved one lever maybe half an inch back, then the other two. Dropping into the captain’s seat, I spun the globe forward, left, right. The ship shook, knocking about, and when I stopped spinning I saw us slowly backing out of the dock.

And blissfully, heard Violet yell, “They’re powering down!”

I pushed the levers until they clicked back into place, and the rocket stopped moving.

Violent Violet arrived, throwing an arm around my shoulders and cackling, “You did it! My best friend is a ship repair genius!” She gave me a stinging but affectionate punch in the nearer shoulder, then picked me up by my waist and carried me out onto the wooden pier, raised in the air like a trophy.

Her triumph was short-lived. The adults were watching us, now with Wilma and Alice as well as Norman, Bluehair, and the rocket pilot. Bluehair scowled and jabbed a finger toward the floor. “Put her down, Violet. We’ll be here several days and I am not ruining my relationship with the Lighthouse Keepers by kidnapping one of them.”

“And she is one of us!” squealed Wrench behind me. I could hear her feet thump as she jumped up and down and clapped her hands.

How near we’d come to cataclysm clearly hadn’t filtered out to the rest of the docking bay. The adults all looked calm and casual, and when Violet lowered my feet to the wooden planks, Bluehair turned back to ask Alice, “How is Miss Passionfruit?”

The solemn ten-year-old held up a heavy iron key, answering, “Locked up and entirely safe. I am much more confident that she will be fine left alone than I am in what would happen if I left you all to bring in stock and visitors willy-nilly. Which may be a silly word but is entirely appropriate to you people.”

That wasn’t my business. Mine was to walk up to the rocket pilot, and tell him, “Here’s what you can expect. I’ve got steering fixed. I can’t fix anything else.” Except that the orrery would make a fantastically cool sensor and navigation system. “Or I can, but I’d have to figure that all out and I don’t know how long it would take. You’re stuck with the overhead thruster controls for speed, sorry, but I bet the new system has improved your maneuverability. Maybe by a lot.” Globes did spin fast and dramatically, after all. “If you decide to keep the new controls, I suggest you replace the gl…” Globe was not a word that sounded high tech, Rachel! “…the core sphere with something metal, or a glowing crystal. Your engineers will have something. It will interface better for the engines.” Totally made that up.

I left the pilot pondering that with a serious expression and turned my attention to Norman. “Do we have metal paint? There has to be something you can use to spray a metal coating onto objects, right? You can’t tell me Space doesn’t have that kind of technology.”

He blinked down at me as if I were an alien, except that he would probably not be surprised by an alien. “I know it exists. I don’t know if we have any.”

So, I turned to Jane instead. “See if we do. I’ll be needing it for a lot of repairs in the future, I’m sure.” After all, you had to cover wires on Earth with rubber. It made just as much sense as this. The reasons were just different and less Math-y.

Norman found his smile again, hooking his thumbs into his belts. “So I guess you are staying and joining the Keepers?”

There was no sense fighting a decision life had made for me. “It looks like this is where I’m needed.”

But if I was staying, I was never going to come that close to blowing myself up again. I needed to be better at this. A lot better. As good as they thought I was. I knew how to do that. It started with me asking Wilma, “Listen, what I learned in the academy is obviously out of date. I need books with pictures of spaceships in them. Ancient and modern, every planet and technology type, inside and outside, as much variety as you can get me. I know there are sales catalogs, and manuals with blueprints of different models.” After all, every tabletop game sells them. “Even illustrated story books will be good, as long as I have references. Oh, and some blank notebooks and pens, pencils, whatever writing stuff you’ve got.”

All the adults were staring down at me with that pleased and amused expression adults got when a teenager does something smart and responsible. Only the pilot guy didn’t look at all condescending. His brown eyes met mine with the seriousness of a professional listening to a professional as I addressed him one final time. “Okay. You still have a great honking big hole in your spaceship, and you’re not going anywhere until that’s fixed. Norman, I bet we can take that aluminum siding over there and pound it into shape as a cover, rivet it on, and seal it with grout. Keep all the grout in the hangar. That stuff is a miracle. I am going to repair so, so many spaceships with grout.”

The pilot nodded to me, solemn and accepting, but then his eyes lifted and he looked around the docking bay. He had a naturally calm but low and hoarse-edged voice. “Then it sounds like I’ll be here a few days. I’m overdue for a vacation anyway, and the Lighthouse has a reputation for peace and relaxation second only to Neptune’s.” He smiled. It was tight on his blocky face, but a smile. “And for libraries second to none. I’ll enjoy a few days exploring their secrets. A lord who is not a scholar doesn’t stay a lord long.”

This guy was more subtle than a pirate. He didn’t leer, or drawl, or even look directly at Wilma. The only reason I was positive he was hitting on her was that she suddenly looked pinch-faced and embarrassed.

I ran my trembling, grout-stained fingers back through my hair, and took another deep breath. The frenetic buzz was fading, but work went on. “Okay. I guess I’d better get to work on the patch for your cockpit.”

Strong hands grabbed my arms from behind. Violet’s hands. She spun me around, grinning down at me and shaking her purple head, which tossed her purple hair. “Nope. No way. Uh-uh. You’re my genius. You leave the grunt work to others. You saved my life, pulled off a brilliant repair on a ship this guy thought he was going to have to scrap, and now we’re going to have a celebration party where I will make that Martian in the kitchen turn loose some Plutonian opal tears.”

I couldn’t see Pirate Queen Bluehair anymore, but I did hear the sudden, excited interest in her voice. “They have opal tears? Here? From Pluto, no less?”

Knowing she wouldn’t get it, I tried to explain, “I can’t make other people do my work, Violet.”

Violent Violet just grinned wider, and tossed her hair in dramatic arrogance, or maybe arrogant drama. “I can because I’m a pirate princess. We’re going to party until you collapse from exhaustion, which from the looks of you will be about five minutes.”

As casually as if I were a sack of flour, Violet turned me in the air and tucked me under one arm, carrying me like that. As I dangled, Violet flicked her thumb across her nose and crowed at the crowd, “Later, adult losers! Make that guy pay through the nose, Mom. My new best friend and personal mechanic here earned it!”

Chapter Five

I woke in the dark again, but this time I knew exactly where I was. On Earth, I never woke up because a pirate named Violent Violet wriggled up closer behind me.

I had felt a touch of awkwardness and anxiety when Violet had taken it for granted that she would be sleeping in my guest room and my bed. Her mother talking about keeping handsome men captive and Violet’s occasional declarations that she owned me made that much worse.

Thankfully, Violet didn’t want me for hanky panky. She was attracted to boys.

Violet wanted me for a teddy bear.

I’d gotten much less sleep than Violet, having been clung to, used as a pillow, draped over her, been allowed to sleep on my side of the bed but with her hand clutching my wrist in fierce unconscious need, or with the bigger girl curled up against my back like she was doing now.

One of her arms went over me. Another burrowed under my waist. Her face rubbed up against my back, like she was trying to burrow in.

Sleep fog vanished, and my eyes went wide. Oh, no.

Violet squeezed, compressing my middle, crushing the breath out of me. She didn’t look bulky, but piracy training had given her muscles like steel. Her hugs only lasted a couple of seconds, but they left me gasping.

What a fantastic night of blissfully restful sleep… for her.

But the night hadn’t actually been torture, just weird and uncomfortable, and the day before that…also weird, but weird and beautiful.

Magnificent Mario had been delighted to shower us in delicious desserts, glazed and powdered and creamy, cold and hot, and a couple even identifiable. Cheesecake and donuts, it turned out, were cheesecake and donuts even in space. Violet could pack food away like Wrench, who made sure there were no leftovers.

We’d gone exploring. Jane had been right; this place was full of storerooms. Who had left a room full of rowboats and miniature sailboats ranging from fit-in-your-palm to not quite big enough for one adult? We found a room full of windows that looked out on other worlds. Not windows set into the walls but stacked up against each other in frames on the floor. Violet had identified the yellow sky with blue and purple clouds as Saturn, the giant metal factory city where I saw no people as Callisto, the brick-red wasteland of sand, mesas, and huge machines that looked like oil rigs as Mercury, and guessed the nest in a tree with odd little creatures like babies covered in twigs and feathers was from the dragon moon Mab.

Some of the rooms that weren’t storerooms were even more mysterious. Why was there a hall where each room had different types of stone as walls, covered in ancient writing like Egyptian hieroglyphics, Chinese pictograms, and Sumerian cuneiform?

We’d taken a bath in Jane’s pool room, and yes, it was wonderful, like being outside in a natural hot spring.

We’d sat on the edge of the docks for hours, staring out at space and the asteroids and telling each other stories. Hers had been simpler than mine but had the advantage that they were probably true and she really had bitten something called a skate when she was a toddler, and it had flown away with her forcing her mother to steal a boat and charge through a city breaking things to catch up. The more absurd and nonsensical my stories, the more she seemed to love them.

Wrench had tagged along the whole time but stayed far in the background.

I had oh, so much of no idea at all how long we’d been asleep or awake before that. It had seemed like a short day, but days seemed to be defined solely by periods of waking and sleeping here.

Violet sat up, going from asleep to awake like a shot. I couldn’t see anything, but I’d have heard a yawn. Instead she asked sharply, “Did I oversleep? Is it the middle of the night?”

I pushed myself up on my elbows. “How would I know? I don’t even know what counts as day or night here.” Hadn’t I just had this conversation with myself?

Violet’s voice sounded cheerful in the impenetrable darkness. “You really did spend all your life on the Moon and this is your first time out in space, huh? It’s the middle of the night. I’m sure of it. It’s time to launch our secret plan.”

Uh-oh. “What secret plan?” I asked cautiously.

Sheets rustled. The bed mattress got lighter by one person, and I heard Violet’s feet hit the stone floor. “Lesson one of keeping secrets: Look like you can’t keep a secret. Where’s the light?”

Finally, a question I knew the answer to. A couple of seconds of groping, and I found and turned on the lamp.

That allowed Violet to march around the bed to where I’d left my clothes, pick up my jeans, and start sliding them on.

“Hey! Those are mine!” I protested in an unoriginal but heartfelt way.

Arguing with Violent Violet had a predictable effect: None. “I’m the pirate princess and you are my talented but fractious crew. I get the pants, you get the skirt,” she gloated. Grabbing said skirt off the sink, she flung it at me to land on my head.

Sensing I was stuck with this, I put on the wench costume, and she put on my clothes. Violet was several inches taller than me, but thinner in shape, so it almost worked. My jeans rode high on her ankles and low on her hips, and my t-shirt didn’t reach the waistband, but she had her sword belts to cover her midriff. I did not get the sword belts. I got a bodice that scrunched up and a shirt that felt too big and hung off me. At least she let me keep my shoes.

Violet watched me finish awkwardly and incorrectly tying the bodice behind my back, with a critical squint. She gestured toward me with the hilt of her sword. “That doesn’t suit you at all, which is a compliment! It didn’t suit me, either. Go on, make up a fantastic lie about why you’re wearing it.”

I gave her a skeptical glare. “And encourage you?”

Her face turned hard and proud. “I would pin your arm behind your back and force you to….” The frown suddenly disappeared, replaced by a playful grin and a slow, insincerely exasperated roll of her head. “Buuuuut, I need your cooperation for my plan and Mom says to never make your cook, your shipwright, or your bosun hate you. Come on!”

Violet shocked me by not throwing open my bedroom door. She pushed it open gently and silently, slipping out into the glaringly lit hall with equal stealth.

I tried to sneak along behind her as she headed for the stairs, or the kitchen—no, it turned out to be stairs. Her boots didn’t make a sound. My rubber-soled sneakers thumped audibly.

It was when she turned to go down those stairs that the stealth broke. Violet let out a squeal, whipping her rapier out of her belt and pointing it behind me. “What are you doing here?!”

I looked. Wrench, bright-eyed, lost in her baggy white shirt, tail off the floor and wig so askew it was nearly sideways, was standing right behind me. She waved a knobby finger between herself and me. “Where she goes, I go.”

Violet’s face hardened slowly in anger, and then the anger faded just as slowly. Her frown settled on “graceful loser” and she lay her blade on her shoulder. “Yeah, okay. I mean, so be it! My sidekick having a sidekick has a certain glamour to it. Besides, Mom always tells me to be nice to kobolds and rats. She won’t tell me why. She insists it’s better I think I’m doing it to be nice than for a reason.”

Cheerful complaint over, she raised her blade to her lips like a finger and whispered, “Now, shhh! We’re sneaking!”

“You’re doing all the talking,” I reminded her, and wished I still had pockets to stick my hands into.

“Shhh!” she repeated, as if I hadn’t caught her.

So we resumed tiptoeing down the stairs, now with two people making no noise and me squeaking and scratching and clunking my way along.

I only had a vague idea of what was on this floor and didn’t find out now. Violet led us right out into the docking bay. Norman wasn’t there. Alice wasn’t at her desk. The only person we’d seen was one pirate standing on the deck of Pirate Queen Bluehair’s ship. He waved to Violet, and she waved back, but that was all he did about us.

We approached the smashed-up rocket. Repairs had continued in my absence. A crinkly metal sheet had been fitted over the hole as I’d asked. I leaned over the cockpit window, peering into the gaps to see mud-colored dry grout.

The official entrance for that rocket was a hatch with a wheel like on a boat. Violet twisted it open, and Wrench and I followed her in. Going straight to the more than man-sized hole in the wall opposite the door, I laid my fingers on the aluminum and peeked around the edges some more. Yes, totally sealed with grout. I gave Wrench a thumbs up because she must have been involved in that. “Good job, girl. I think this thing is space worthy.” Turning around to Violet, I added, “But what are we doing here?”

With brassy enthusiasm, she laid her hand atop the globe I’d rigged up as a steering mechanism. “We’re trying out your repairs. Giving them—” My expression must have worked. She switched to mild exasperation, faint hints of guilt, and a blunt stare back. “We’re stealing it. This ship. We are stealing this ship.”

“We can’t do that!” I squeaked, in the face of all evidence.

Violet’s face laid out the evidence, and she drawled with satisfaction like she’d been waiting for the chance. “I’m a pirate. It’s what we do. As a pirate princess, I am fully justified in stealing this vessel just for my own amusement, but I also demand to be the first to try out my best friend and personal mechanic’s creation.”

Her hands leaped up, grabbing the three levers and yanking them all back together as far as they would go. The cockpit lurched, sending me grabbing at the walls and Wrench grabbing at my waist. Violet had her legs braced against the captain’s seat and was completely stable as the rocket shot backwards out of the docking bay, engines whining.

Violet spun the globe, and I decided that sitting on the floor with Wrench in my lap would be the best way to not go flying around the room as the rocket spun around like a car doing an exciting “drift” action shot in a movie. When we were pointed away from the dock, she took hold of the levers and slammed them forward again.

There was a big, noticeable hole in the cloud of drifting asteroids all around us, and Violet pointed the ship down that tunnel. Flapping a hand behind us, she said, “Sun is that way, so the outer solar system is this way.”

She left the thrust levers pushed all the way forward, and I felt the pull as we accelerated, and accelerated some more, and kept accelerating. Asteroids flew past us. The aluminum patch over the cockpit started rattling, then rattled harder, getting more alarming in sync with the rocket getting faster.

It wasn’t just the patch wobbling. The asteroid field jiggled, or rather it looked like it jiggled because we were jiggling. Violet kept a hand on the globe, swiveling it in quick, tiny, but constant movements to keep us straight. Over the whine of the engines, she shouted gleefully, “You were right. Great turning on this baby, but she wobbles.”

We kept speeding up, and the wobbling increased to where the view through the windshield jerked around. I desperately wanted to tell Violet to slow down, but she was so locked in concentration keeping us from swerving out into the asteroids that I didn’t dare disturb her.

But finally we shot out of the tunnel into open space, so fast that it looked like the asteroids vanishing. Her intense frown turning into a gigantic grin, Violet crowed, “This baby is fast! Mom’s ship was forever getting through that lane.”

The stars swung and darted around and the cockpit floor shook underneath me as the ship still wobbled, but there wasn’t anything even close to in front of us to hit anymore.

Climbing cautiously and clumsily to my feet, I felt my panic recede, leaving room for anxious suspicion. Keeping my voice carefully even, I said, “Wrench, go check how much fuel we have.”

She paused, demonstrating that kobolds have lips by nibbling on hers with her jagged teeth. Guiltily apologetic for not leaping to make me happy, she said, “I’m not sure how to find out.”

“Neither am I, so maybe we shouldn’t use it all up,” I replied, and gave the purple-skinned, purple-haired pirate princess who stole my clothes a long, hard look.

Reaching up to grab the three levers between two hands again, Violet pulled them back to barely above neutral. The engine whine dropped until I couldn’t hear it. The aluminum patch on the side of the cockpit rattled less. I was proud to see that the grout still kept it sealed all the way around.

Violet let go of the globe, shaking her hands out as she walked back to us. I had to concede, even with how different space was from how it looked from Earth, there were still vast and empty enough gulfs that we wouldn’t need a pilot any time soon. She grinned like a pirate princess. “I accept your advice, but only because step one of my plan is now complete, and it’s time for step two.”

Oh, she wanted a cue line so much. I didn’t give it to her. I just folded my arms and waited. After a second of that, Wrench mimicked me.

Violet could not be shaken from her smugness. Raising a fist, she declared, “Loot the ship!”

I wanted to argue. I wanted to argue so bad. But, facts were facts, and I spread my hands helplessly before them. “Okay, that is a very pirate plan.”

Violent Violet swept past us into the hallway. It was only a so-so sweep. She would sweep so much better if she were wearing skirts instead of stealing my pants.

No, I was not going to let go of that.

She did do a good job of distracting me by explaining with all purple earnestness, “There’s something funny about this guy. This isn’t a pleasure cruiser, it’s a blockade runner. He’s not one of the lazy, self-absorbed Jupiter aristos, either. Plus, he’s crossing from the outer solar system to the inner. Doesn’t that strike either of you as weird?”

Wrench smiled up at her, wide blue eyes adorably blank. I just had to hope my blank stare was also adorable.

Violet was in serious pirate mode, not admiring our cuteness mode, her voice unnecessarily hushed and conspiratorial. “It’ll be in a hidden compartment somewhere, bet on it. We’ll have to turn this place upside down. But hey, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

The ship wasn’t huge. The hallway between the cockpit and the engine room had three doors on either side.

We tried the first on the left, and it looked like nothing so much as a bedroom on a train. Narrow, very flat bed on a shelf resting on cabinets, more shelves for storage, a little table melded to the wall by the porthole. Little handles here and there gave anyone in the room something to hold onto if the rocket jerked suddenly. Everything was either wood or covered with wood so it didn’t look too austere. At the back end of the room, a door looked into a tiny bathroom.

Opening the door across the hall revealed a little metal kitchen, with everything locked down and no open flames. So, the solar system was big enough that it took more than one day to cross in a pretty fast rocket.

What had my life become that I just thought that sentence?

Violet put her hands on her hips, resembling her mother for a moment as she frowned in serious thought. “This guy gets weirder by the minute. This place is tidy. He even made the bed. Guys like this don’t make their own beds. They’re used to servants picking up for them. Clawing your way up to that level is the whole point of living on Jupiter.”

With an evil smirk, she added, “It won’t be tidy after we come back for a thorough search.”

But right now, we had four more rooms to check out. Because pirates are known for their systematic approach, we moved on to the middle door on the left.

Just a storage room, too big to be a closet, too small to be a cargo hold. The shelves on the wall were a solid hint of its purpose. The piled-up boxes wrapped in tarpaulins and ropes helped, too.

Violet yanked a knife out of her belts so fast it looked more like it flew into her hand. She ripped it through the ropes holding down the nearest pile, and the tarpaulin underneath. That revealed the boxes themselves, which were rectangular and made of wood, but a little too small to be called crates. The knife also did good work as a crowbar, prying up the thin lid from one of the top crates.

“Interesting. Very interesting,” she commented mysteriously. Before I could press her for details, she obliged her co-conspirators by tossing me and Wrench each a block like an inch-thin brick wrapped in tin foil.

It felt just a little squishy in my hand, and a sweet aroma was already sparking suspicions. I ripped open the foil on one end, to reveal soft, richly brown stuff.

Chocolate. Space chocolate.

“Venusian chocolate!” squealed Wrench, yanking the foil cover off hers completely and shoving the whole chocolate bar in her big saurian mouth.

Space chocolate, Venus chocolate, close enough. I took a bite.

My knees nearly folded underneath me. So good. The rush of rich, creamy taste was brain-blasting. I wasn’t sure I could handle a second bite.

My uncharacteristically all-business pirate hoisted that box in her arms and dropped it on the floor so she could get to more crates. They held more chocolate, jugs of amber goop that must have been honey, and glass wine bottles both green and purple.

Violet finally scooped up a chocolate bar for herself and took a bite. Chewing it in one cheek, she demonstrated her pirate power by not fainting like I nearly did or being reduced to a wiggling mass of tail-wagging ecstasy like Wrench. Violet even managed to frown and talk, which had to take superhuman self-control. “He had the willpower to land on Venus and leave again deliberately. The mystery thickens. This still can’t be his real reason for flying a ship like this. Let’s move on, loyal crew.”

I left the rest of the chocolate bar behind, exactly because I wanted it so badly. It would be irresponsible to give in.

Violet grabbed the handle of the middle door on the right next—and it didn’t open.

The smirk she’d given the kitchen was nothing compared to the joyous grin that parted her purple lips now. At least she had white teeth. Had I noticed that before? Maybe I was just slow getting used to having a friendly monochrome best friend bully me around in a so, so friendly and also purple way. I bet it happened to everybody in space.

I could ask her why she was purple. Would that spoil some exciting future surprise, maybe involving explosions?

I should also face facts. If I was getting this sarcastic, the best friend thing was starting to go both ways.

Violet kicked the door with her boot, which it stoically ignored. Being flimsy was not this space boat’s flaw. Her smile turned abruptly into a scowl. “I’d pick the lock, but Mom won’t let me carry my lockpicks in my wench costume, which is completely unfair because sneaking and spying and stealing are classic wench things! And so is assassination! Hey, uh, Wrench….” It only took her a second to remember the kobold’s name.

That second had been enough for the little grey lizard child, who held out in both cupped hands three screwdrivers, a claw hammer, and a bundle of metal twigs tied together with string. Hey, how many people had ever actually seen lockpicks before? How many Earth people, I mean.

Violet grabbed the hammer first, then let it and her eagerly violent smile go. She picked up the lockpicks instead, commenting, “We just might want to look innocent rather than gloat after we steal the treasure.”

Fiddle fiddle, click click, twist bits of metal around. Violet gave the door handle another twist, and the door swung open.

This room didn’t even contain shelves, or pretty wood lining. Just blank metal walls, a porthole on the far wall, and a huge green crate at least six feet long and three feet tall and wide. Its corrugated green plastic surface and the heavy metal buckles holding the lid closed looked disturbingly military. Earth military.

Violet was not disturbed. Violet rubbed her hands together in glee and crept up to the box in reverent silence. She carefully unfastened the buckles, holding them in both hands as she threw the lid up and off to bang against the far wall and fall to the floor with more loud clatter.

A teenage girl in a metal armored bodysuit lay with her arms folded and her eyes closed inside, nestled into grey foam padding. The noise hadn’t woken her.

She was pretty, I suppose? Not a single pimple, which must be nice. Her face was nothing fancy, and her chin-length red hair was mostly bangs and unkempt, but coffin bedhead had to be the worst kind. The armor was a mess, scratched and dusted with rust patches. The whole thing was divided into segments, lots of segments to fit precisely over the contours of her body, with a few extra plates that looked like hatches on the arms, and rows of shallow grooves adding decoration to her waist, her lower stomach, her thighs, and a few other spots that all looked random to me. There was just barely room between some of the plates to see hints of more metal rather than padding, in cables around the torso and ball shapes around the major—

My stupidity came to an abrupt end. This wasn’t a girl; it was a robot. The face and hair looked very, very real and human, admittedly.

“Great maw of Dragon Planet. This is Mars tech,” Violet whispered.

What could I say that wouldn’t make me feel even dumber?

Violet gave me a glance, then braced her hands on the edge of the coffin, leaning forward to look the robot over. Too awed to sound very angry, she complained, “Mom won’t let me go to Mars. She won’t even go to Mars herself. She says to avoid anywhere that it doesn’t matter how smart or skilled you are.”

Did that all seem a little forced and awkward and un-Violet-y? Aw. She was trying to explain without mocking me!

I felt just barely comfortable enough for a revelation to sideswipe me. “Wait. So do you think Mario really is wrestling champion of three universes?”

Twisting around to perch her butt—which was still clad in my jeans, thank you very much—on the edge of the crate, Violet scrunched up her face in the awkwardness of not being the perfect jaded solar system traveler she wanted me to admire her as. “I don’t know. Probably? And the next guy might be wrestling champion of six universes? Mars is broken. So broken that it’s not rare for someone to split the planet in half, and five minutes later it’s back together and nobody thinks that’s weird. Everybody is fighting and none of their reasons fit together or make sense and even time doesn’t work right, and it sounds absolutely cool but Mom won’t even consider it.”

After a few seconds of pouting at the injustice of having a pirate mother, Violet turned around to look over the robot some more as she continued her explanation. “You don’t see much Martian technology anywhere but Mars. Martians hate to leave Mars. It’s the same problem the wizards from the dragon moons have. They’re a hundred times stronger on their world than anywhere else in the solar system. But for Martians it’s worse, because they can’t understand people or a universe that has rules and consistency and stuff.”

I thought about Mario, who could squeeze eggshells into diamonds and throw fully loaded plates exactly where he wanted without spilling a crumb. “But a Martian robot with one percent of the strength it would have on Mars is still an awesome and terrifying death machine.”

Pirate Princess Violent Violet’s face split in an unholy grin of buccaneer triumph. “EXACTLY. And she is ours if we can wake her up.”

Silence reigned for several seconds. Violet kept looking at me. Once again, understanding hit me like a rocket powered space mallet. I held up my hands to ward off her misplaced faith in my skills. “Nope, sorry. Spaceships. I do spaceships, and I almost got us killed with that. I might be able to fix her jetpack, which is probably jet boots on a model like this, but I can’t help you with the robot herself.”

Silently, Wrench rummaged around in her pouches and held up two pairs of those wireless buttons that had gotten us in trouble fixing this spaceship.

I considered that. It was an appropriate tech level, but I wouldn’t be sure what I was activating, and I very much wanted to know what I was activating with a super powerful war robot.

“Can we find a power button?” I asked out loud. There ought to be one. If Mars was as insane as Violet described, it would exist and be obvious even though that was a blatant flaw in a fighting robot’s design.

The back of the neck would look right. I tried to roll the robot over. I couldn’t even lift her head. She was as stiff and heavy as, well, a human-sized block of steel.

I thought some more. “Or maybe we’re trying too hard. Um. Hey, girl. You’re a robot. Power on. Initiate boot cycle. Wake and register your new owner.”

The robot dinged, and I went stiff with shock. It worked! Her eyes opened, green and human, focusing on me. In a brisk near-monotone, she recited, “Weapon ID code found, ARF-80 the Blue Eyes of Death. Attempting system crash recovery. Ten percent. Twenty percent.”

Violet’s hands gripped the coffin savagely, and she whispered through a grimace, “Numbers from a Martian. That is not good.”

The robot ignored her. “Thirty percent. Forty percent.” The words stopped, replaced by a grinding noise from somewhere inside her body. Her eyes turned royal blue, without irises or pupils, just blue. Maybe with tiny golden writing, in letters so small I couldn’t be sure I was seeing them? The grinding stopped after two seconds, and she recited, “Boot failure, corrupt data. Abort, retry, fail?”

That was obvious. “Retry.”

The girl’s eyes turned back to human and green. Her voice went back to the countdown. “Forty-two percent. Fifty percent. Sixty percent. Sixty-three percent.” Another grinding noise, and her eyes turned blue again. “Boot failure, corrupt data. Abort, retry, fail?”

“Retry,” I repeated.

“Sixty-four percent. Sixty-five percent.” Grinding again. “Boot failure, corrupt data. Abort, retry, fail?”

“Retry.”

Grinding noise. “Boot failure, corrupt data. Abort, retry, fail?”

“Retry.”

Grinding noise. “Boot failure, corrupt data. Abort, retry, fail?”

I winced and sighed and hung my head. I should have known it wouldn’t be so simple. I was painfully aware of Violet and Wrench watching me, expecting some miracle of genius. Like all my responsibilities, I hadn’t asked for this, but it was mine now.

Think, Rachel, if that is your real name. That touch of humor helped. Abort meant not trying. That would put her back where she started. Retrying until she finished the process was the obvious choice that wasn’t working. So, why not try the third option? “Fail.”

Her eyes stayed blue and staring. She said, “Cyborg weapon ARF-80 the Blue Eyes of Death has failed to boot.” Then she lay still.

Wait, wait, wait. “Cyborg?” There was an actual human in there! “Boot in biological mode!”

Would that—?

ARF-80s bland computerized voice interrupted my hopes. “Switching to wetware control. Twenty percent. Fifty percent. Seventy percent.” I flinched as she made another grinding noise, this one weird and kind of gurgly.

I didn’t wait for her to say it, I just shouted, “Retry!”

For several long seconds, ARF-80 didn’t do or say anything. Then her eyes turned green and her eyelids dropped shut. She squirmed in the padding, rolling onto her side and tucking her metal hands under her flesh and blood looking head. Sullenly, she mumbled, “Just ten more minutes, Mom.”

Oh, yeah, that was a deadly war robot startup noise if I’d ever heard one.

Chapter Six

Suddenly the cyborg sat bolt upright, eyes wide. “I’m going to be late for school! Where’s my toast!?” she squealed in panic I knew from miserable experience.

Grabbing the edge of the crate, she rolled up into a handstand, and stopped, body extended straight up and not wobbling an inch. It continued not wobbling an inch as she let go with one hand, lifting it up to her face to examine her jointed metal fingers. Blank of any emotion except slow epiphany, she said, “Oh, right. I’m dead. No school.” Her face softened into a beatific smile, and she sighed, “Back to sleep, then!” and fell right back into the foam.

At least, she tried to fall back into the foam. I shouted, “No, wait!” and she stopped, her body sticking out not quite horizontal, held up only by the grip of one hand on the rim of her plastic shipping crate.

The cyborg girl blinked in surprise, and then groaned in a mix of exasperation and despair. “Oh, no. You’re registered as my new owner, aren’t you?”

Now I felt guilty. Spreading my hands, I made my excuses. “I didn’t think it would work. I don’t want to own anybody. I transfer all authority and permissions to you.”

“Regis— Abort, retry, fail?” Back to the blue eyes, body still stiff.

“Retry,” I answered.

“Abort, retry, fail?” Not even an error code.

“Retry,” I growled, experiencing some frustration and despair myself.

“Abort, retry, fail?”

So much guilt. Who blew it? You blew it, Rachel. My supposed genius had run completely dry. “Abort,” I said, pretty sure that fail would do nothing good.

ARF-80s eyes went back to green. “Oh, no. You’re registered as my new owner, aren’t you?” she groaned, exactly like before.

Shiny tinsel lining to this cloud: Abort did about what I’d expected. I still felt like a slave-owning heel as I told her, “Sorry. I don’t think I can fix it. Oh, and you can stand up, or lie down, or whatever you want.”

The mostly metal girl twisted around and dropped into the impressively resilient foam but sitting up with her legs crossed this time. She rubbed both hands over her face and understandably tried the groan a third time. “Oh, well, at least I get to be me. What’s the mission, or war, or tournament, or whoever you need me to defeat?”

Seizing the chance to reduce my guilt, I told the truth. “Nobody. Want to come back with me to the Lighthouse of Ceres and not fight anybody?”

“Does it matter what I want?” ARF-80 asked, cynical and tired.

“I mean…yes?” I answered.

“Oh.” She looked puzzled for a few seconds. Then she looked a different kind of puzzled, looking around at her bare and awful little cargo chamber. “Why is it so quiet? Why is—?”

Music blared, loud but distant, a deep throbbing of trumpets.

ARF-80 nodded in the satisfaction of familiarity. She flipped out of the box again, this time getting all the way through it and landing with a clang on her feet. Similarly bland, she told us, “I have been programmed with every known fighting technique.”

She froze. Her voice switched to computer monotone. “Error. Data corruption. Two percent combat data successfully recovered. Entering battle mode. Error, data corruption. Abort, retry, fail?”

I sighed. “Fail,” and at least got to see ARF-80’s eyes turn from blue back to green.

Shocking me a huge amount of not at all, Violet was not grimly guilty about this. Violet was grinning that demon eagerness grin again. She rubbed her palms together so hard they made hissing sounds. “Finally! I’ve missed this since we left Saturn. Let’s go see what adventure lies in store for my merry band of pirates!”

“I’m a pirate now?” ARF-80 asked curiously, looking over at the purple princess.

“Only if you want to be,” I insisted.

The cyborg folded her arms and lifted her chin, defying my kindness. “I want toast.”

“We’ll get you toast. It might have to wait,” I both promised and apologized.

“It sure will. Get over here and check this out!” Violet yelled. She had already abandoned us and was in the cockpit looking out the big front window. Her outstretched hand beckoned urgently.

Wrench, ARF-80, and I obediently followed her, and took a good look out the window ourselves.

My mouth fell open. Wow. So much wow. “Is that as big as it looks?”

It looked like a cross between a church, a train engine, and a sailing ship. Lots of stone bricks piled up in a basically rectangle shape, with buttresses and a sharply pointed prow, low like a train’s peak rather than high like a boat’s. Where I would have expected crosses were really big books. Huge books. One of them, nearly as big as the rest of the ship, stuck up from the top like a sail. Letters of purple light formed ahead of it and drifted back through the book and out behind the ship, clearly as important a means of travel as the slightly more conventional engines flickering purple fire behind it.

Oh, and the thing blared music, a slow chorus of deep trumpets in a style that I thought of as medieval.

Violet had her face and hands pressed right up against the window, and her words came in an awed whisper. “It’s a battleship from Charon. I never thought I would see one. Mom never has. Nobody I’ve ever met has. They’re something you hear rumors about, not actually see. What’s it doing this far into the solar system?”

“Coming after us,” Wrench said, solemnly and without a trace of squeak.

Violet scrunched up her nose and made a dismissive pfft noise. “Absurd. Why would they care about a little smuggler ship like this?”

Wrench shrugged, although the gesture was almost lost in her baggy white shirt. “Who knows why Charon people do anything? But they’re headed right for us.”

Violet watched the church ship get bigger for a few seconds, declared, “She’s right,” then leaped away from the glass to the captain’s chair. She grabbed the thrust levers above her head with one hand, pushing them forward as her other hand took hold of the globe, spinning our ship away from our pursuer.

The rocket lurched forward as the engines spun up. Then it lurched backwards as black chains crackling with purple lightning and covered in runes lashed out of the Charon ship, wrapping ours up. Our engines went suddenly silent.

Wrench and I grabbed each other to not fall over. Violet gritted her teeth and hunched up her shoulders, sounding guilty for the first time I could remember. “Mom is going to kill me. I stood around complaining instead of running away when I had the chance.”

Fear tickled me with cold, but only a little. I didn’t understand what was going on well enough to panic. The book-covered church ship looked ominous, but not in a murder-y way. It had grabbed us in the most exotic tractor beam I could—correction, one of the more exotic tractor beams I could imagine. It hadn’t fired missiles or cannonballs or explosive letters at us.

“Can we find out what they want?” I squeaked like an anxious teenager.

Violet still looked grim and ashamed, uselessly gripping the globe in both hands. “I don’t know. Nobody understands Charon. It’s supposed to be almost as weird as Outsiders, all buildings made of shadows and gardens made of blood and people with crystal hearts and stuff like that. I don’t even know if any of that is true, or just what people say.”

Taking a deep breath, Violet went calm and serious. Stepping over by the door, she pulled out both her pistols. When Wrench held out her hands, the purple pirate princess hesitated, but handed one over and drew her sword with her right hand while holding a pistol in her left.

I didn’t have a weapon and wouldn’t know how to use it.

The chains were towing us up next to the Charon ship. I’d been wrong about one thing. It wasn’t a church. It was made of churches, stacked up like a small city. This battleship was at least as big as the Lighthouse.

Was it too late to have never stolen this rocket and left the Lighthouse at all? Just asking.

The music got louder as the church ship got closer. Now I could hear a chorus chanting.

Metal clunked against stone as our rocket bumped against the Charon battleship, one protruding church door nestled right up against our cockpit’s hatch.

An angry, scratchy man’s voice boomed from the other side. “Delinquent offenders. You are offered one ultimately final chance to engage in discourse rather than be subsumed into the void. We speak with redundancy now the words that inflexibly request this door be opened. Deny us yet again and we speak instead the words that force it open.”

Violet and Wrench tensed up. I said, “We’d better do it.”

Whatever they had been about to do, now they nodded at me. I stepped up and turned the wheel on the hatch, pulling it open.

A wide, tall, vaulted grey hallway waited on the other side. In the center, maybe ten feet away from me, stood…squatted…blobbed….

I wasn’t sure I knew a word for a vaguely bipedal thing that I could just barely tell was made of black slime but covered so completely in human mouths that their lips bumped up against each other and they couldn’t all talk at once. Behind it loomed tall, brawny guards with hook-pointed spears, except both guards and spears were slightly transparent, featureless blue-black.

The mouth thing only had one voice, at least, and launched into a speech like an actor on stage. “I was written into being by the Witch Queen of Words Beautiful and Terrible. I speak her will and weapons of metal and force cannot harm me. The power of my queen extends everywhere that words are spoken or written, everywhere that language has power, and her patience is already on the imminent verge of catastrophic exhaustion.”

I blinked. This thing was literally speaking my language. I responded in kind. “We are both innocent and benign, or at least unconcerned in our corrupt shenanigans with the affairs of Charon or its Witch Queen. Nor have we refused aught in the manner of negotiations.”

The thing drew itself up a few inches pompously. It was great at pomposity. “Our messages went unanswered. The Witch Queen tolerates no spurning, no rejection of the words that are her exquisite blessing.”

Off to my side and only a step behind me, Wrench squeaked desperately, “Our communicator is busted. See?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her wave a hand at the crushed console.

“Brevity is eloquence,” I told the thing. I would call it a royal mouthpiece. Yes.

Its various mouths gnashed and grumbled for a moment, but it didn’t sound any more irritable than its general bombast when it replied. “Your foray into the blaspheme of silence is excused if you will now concede to our sacred mission of interrogation. Will you confirm that your vessel has only just escaped the asteroid belt’s embrace, having enjoyed all-too-brief sanctuary on Ceres?”

I couldn’t afford to look at Wrench or Violet for advice. Besides, even in peripheral vision I could tell Violet just looked confused. So I met self-important oration with self-important oration. “We rose from Ceres like a chick exploring the universe of possibility outside her mother’s wings. Like a chick we are returning, unready for more than a peek at its grandeur.”

This was fun. Seriously, I was getting into this absurd purple prose contest. Charon increasingly sounded like my kind of planet.

The royal mouthpiece lobbed his next language bomb. “Word, that most magical of phenomena, has reached the Witch Queen that an unidentified grimoire of power, perhaps penned by her own hand, has been smuggled into the Lighthouse to be hidden with its thieving possessor among Ceres’s secrets. She will take both book and thief, each rightfully hers, and requires you to speak of them.”

And suddenly this had stopped being fun and become a mine field. It was still my area of expertise, and I was not going to be beaten in a verbal duel by a mere creation. I spread my arms in helplessness, openness, and benefaction. “You have spoken the word that is the core of truth, emissary: Secrets. The secrets of Ceres are beyond three children. We can give the Witch Queen nothing, because we have nothing to give. Upon our return to Ceres, we will spread word to the Keepers, but that is the limit of how we can help the ruler of words. Three children also have no power over the Keepers and their decisions.”

It thought about that, or communed with its creator, or did something that involved remaining still except for rippling lips and gooey pulsing just long enough to feel awkward. Finally, it said, “No.”

Eek. Cold panic seized my muscles, and I had to fight it down. One word from this thing was BAD. That meant it cared enough to stop playing with words and just make its point.

I shoved my panic down further. I was still the best at this, or at least better than this thing could be. I answered with all the simple, blank sincerity I could. “Explicate. The truth is the truth, and our powerlessness must be evident.”

The mouths went back into oration mode, but sounded a little harder, a little more emphatic now. “The Martian, the Saturnian, and the Jupiter pet will be allowed their release. Your eloquence marks you as beyond whatever meaningless origin you claim. Your true home is Charon. The Witch Queen will not allow such potential as yours to be squandered. Whether apprentice, prize, or rival to be crushed aborning, you belong to her now and we will take you immediately to Charon and to her personal presence.”

I’d walked right into this. I had. One look at that ship was enough—

Even my thoughts only got that far before Violet pointed her gun at the royal mouthpiece. With absolute determination she said, “Nope. My property, my crew member, and most importantly my friend.”

“Your promise of resistance is ephemeral.” The thing dripped condescension, contempt, and black goo around the puddle where a human’s feet would be.

Violet smiled a grim smile more arrogant than the royal mouthpiece could hope to match. “Mine is, but I have a Martian weapon. Say goodbye to your battleship. Feel free to take an hour saying it. I’ll enjoy the anticipation.”

Nothing happened. I turned enough to look back over my shoulder at ARF-80, who stood an arm’s length behind me, eyes closed, snoring at a whisper volume with her head lolled to one side.

Violet was fantastic at not showing panic, and her mouth turned up on one side. “The only power your words have is to bore her.”

Me, I was alarmed, and desperately jabbed ARF-80 in the middle of her metal plate chest, possibly bruising my finger.

It worked. She lifted her head, blinking groggily. Then she abruptly went stiffly to attention. “Cyborg weapon activated. Awaiting orders.”

I pointed at the blob of mouths now. “They want to kidnap me!”

ARF-80 blinked. Her expression turned aghast, and then angry. In a completely unrobotic voice she declared, “What? No. You treat me like people. I’d defend you even if I didn’t have to.”

The cyborg’s body whirred. White plates slid out of the cracks between metal plates, covering them in an armor shell that looked a lot like the armor shell underneath, but shinier and cleaner. A helmet extended from the back of her neck, curving over her head to hide her face behind a curved white plate. Lifting her hands, she cracked her knuckles. Instead of popping sounds, when she twisted them together the plates around her hands and forearms tilted up, offering brief peeks at sharp things and glowing things and gun barrels underneath.

“Foolishness and folderol,” the royal mouthpiece proclaimed. “We are manifestations of the Witch Queen’s words. The talent we have discovered will be seized now, bound and shielded against the—”

Violet shot it in the face. Her pistol looked like a flintlock, but when the hammer clicked down lights rippled along the barrel and it made a high-pitched pew noise. A metal ball shot out of the barrel exactly like a flintlock, slamming into and through the royal mouthpiece’s gooey body with a gross splut. In the moment of silence after, gears on either side of the pistol turned far enough to click once, declaring it had reloaded.

Except having a little metal ball splat right through it hadn’t actually hurt the mouth-covered abomination at all, and it sounded decidedly smug as it told us, “You were warned of your ineffectuality.”

With that, two shadow soldiers behind it marched forward, passing through it as if they were ghosts. With their spears in their right hands, they lashed out their left hands and grabbed my forearms. Their grip was entirely solid.

ARF-80 didn’t like that. She grabbed one by the head and twisted. With a faint, wet sploosh her hands passed through the shadow, leaving it unharmed. She tried again with the other soldier’s arm, but after a heartbeat’s worth of resistance, her hand closed on nothing.

The cyborg shuddered, dancing backwards a step and wiping her hands on her white plated armor. Her helmet hid her expression, but not her whiny tone. “Ew! I can’t touch them, and they feel so icky!”

“Words can touch them,” Wrench said quietly.

Purpose flared in me, and I barked, “ARF-80, try again!”

She lurched forward, driven by both her mistress’s command and her desire to save me. She grabbed the first soldier’s head exactly like last time. Except this time, as she twisted I declared with cold and vicious intent, “Sever.”

The shadow’s head popped off. The rest of it dissolved.

ARF-80 lashed out like a snake to grab the other soldier’s arm under its elbow. She squeezed, and I snapped, “Disjoint.”

Half the shadow soldier’s arm ripped off. It staggered back, then like its fellow melted into the air.

The royal mouthpiece was not impressed, or at least not intimidated. He sounded more official than ever. “By this demonstration of power you confirm the judgment of true possession. Obtaining you is now a priority as necessary in our being as the reclamation of Her Verbose Majesty’s tome of unidentified knowledge.”

I tilted my head in surprise. “Wait, unidentified?”

Now the mouthy blob’s speech turned to religious reverence. “Vast is the Witch Queen’s creativity, and the writings that spawn her creations, construct her kingdom, turn the stars in the heavens and enliven the spirits that populate her streets are a library and beyond. Along with such wealth is the burden that she only learned of the disappearance of one volume when gossip reached her ears.”

A weight I hadn’t known I was carrying lifted. In my heart, I’d started to wonder if I had somehow created the Witch Queen with my notebook signature. No. Like the spaceships, I had just found the place where my talents belonged. Except in this case, that wasn’t the place the owner of those talents belonged.

The royal mouthpiece launched into another monologue. “One defender is insufficient against the forces of our vessel, but violence is unnecessary. Preparations are begun to enter word-warp to Charon. The prodigy’s talent is sufficient that the mind tearing will not be beyond recovery.”

That intimidated me, but not Violet. She jerked a thumb at ARF-80, who stood alertly at my side and hopefully hadn’t fallen asleep again. Violet’s words dripped acid sarcasm. “Maybe this is a Charon thing, but you seriously underestimate the usefulness of physical force. You and your ghosts may be made of words, but your ship is made of stone and paper and metal. Blue Eyes of Death, blow it up.”

ARF-80’s voice went computery. “Sorting remaining martial techniques. Plasma-augmented chi eruption chosen. Gathering power.”

Like when she cracked her knuckles but more so, ARF-80’s armor plates tilted up a fraction at every joint. Blue light wriggled and arced in those gaps. Something inside her whirred threateningly, getting louder and higher. Her palms started to glow.

Violet grinned with ferocious pirate glee. “And you can’t stop her any more than she could stop you, right?”

ARF-80 flickered. A bell noise echoed out of her. The blue lights all turned off. A higher pitched bell noise followed the first, and they turned back on. They just weren’t growing now, and she’d gone stiff. Inevitably, her computer voice said, “Charge disconnect error. Abort, retry, fail?”

“Retry!” I barked in a hurry.

The whining resumed getting higher pitched, and the cyborg teenager’s hands glowed brighter. Then all the lights began flickering on and off out of sync with each other. Staticky noises hissed. She recited, “Interface overflow error. Abort, retry, fail?”

Violet slapped her hands over her face, which must have hurt since she was holding a pistol in one and a rapier in the other. Behind them, she moaned, “I loot an unstoppable Martian killing machine, and it’s broken.”

“Abort,” I ordered. I just couldn’t risk what those errors might do to ARF-80 if I kept trying. At the command, the power-up whine powered down, in less than a second. The sputtering lights sputtered out. ARF-80 went still.

Well. Here went nothing.

Glaring at the royal mouthpiece, I told it with cold, threatening finality, “Release the chains on our ship, you meaningless messenger scribble, or by the power of my words I swear I will rip every sentence they are made of into meaningless gibberish and throw them in the trash heap abyss of incomprehensibility, to stew as worthless sounds invoked by no one for communication evermore.”

The chains holding our ship snapped, links bursting in multiple places. Wrench slammed the cockpit door shut. Violet didn’t hesitate this time. She leaped over to the pilot seat and spun the globe with a snap, lurching our rocket away from the gigantic gothic battleship.

The thrust levers were already all the way forward. Free of the chains, our ship thrummed into life and bolted forward. The view through the windshield swerved around until I saw a bright, slowly pulsing white star ahead of us: the Lighthouse of Ceres. Behind it and off to the side loomed a bigger, brighter yellow star, which must be the sun. We headed straight for the Lighthouse beacon.

Staring fixedly at the beacon as her hands constantly adjusted the globe to keep our wobbling ship stable, Violet told us, “We only have to get into the tunnel. They’re too big to follow. We’ll get there. Running away from big ships like that is what this rocket was designed for. Can you stop them from grabbing us again?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t. “I think so. They work by words, and the Witch Queen isn’t here. That mouthy thing just talks a lot. It’s not actually a writer.”

Wrench crossed her knobby, clawed fingers, hands lifted in front of her. I patted her wig and murmured over the engine whine and the aluminum rattle, “It’s okay. We’ll make it.”

If we didn’t crash into the asteroids. Violet’s arms had to move so fast they looked like they were spasming to keep us straight.

“I’m hoping that something else that the thing said is true,” Wrench answered me, too softly for anyone else to hear.

The asteroid belt grew in front of us, then the asteroids themselves, from specks to huge rocks. We shot into the one empty circle with the pulsing white light in its center.

The trumpet music behind us changed tone, becoming a single long, vibrating blare. I rushed to the window and peeked back as best I could. The cockpit wasn’t really designed for that.

We had left the battleship way behind us, but it was so big I could still make it out. As I watched, a gigantic book materialized, and snapped shut over the battleship, engulfing it completely. The book shrank until it disappeared.

Violet pulled the thrust levers back with one hand, while struggling with the other to keep the jerking spaceship from leaping into the rocks. She seemed to be winning. We were slowing down, getting more stable. She must have seen something, because she said, “A warp system. I should have guessed. That’s the only way they could have gotten here from Charon in two days. I’m glad Saturn doesn’t have that. How can you raid a ship that just goes poof from one place to another?”

We seemed to be safe. With that knowledge, relief and exhaustion dropped onto me like a lead blanket. “I’m sorry this turned into such a mess,” I said quietly.

Violet crowed, “I stole a spaceship, looted a war robot, and barely escaped a Charon battlecruiser. I’m coming back with the beginnings of my own crew, an actual for real best friend I admire, and a story I can tell all over Saturn. This was a glorious mess and I can’t wait to lord it over Mom. All I need is for you to teach me how to do that and I’ll be the greatest pirate ever.”

Waving my hands, more tiredly than urgently, I denied, “I don’t think that sort of magic, if it is magic, works on anybody who isn’t already made out of words, and if making people out of words was that easy I would know by now.”

Violet barked a laugh, although she was still focused on the window and had both hands on the steering globe. “No, not that. The threats! That was so dramatic! It’s a skill fit for a pirate queen!”

“Oh.” I reshuffled my thoughts. They were a little slow after all that adrenaline. “I doubt you need me to teach you that. You must have all kinds of crazy Saturn gods to swear by, legendary punishments, dark vortexes or monsters to feed people to, stuff like that. Just string them together.”

That simple a process wouldn’t have worked on the Charon ship. Mere purple prose wasn’t strong enough. I’d had to add sharper, briefer edges, then build up into the kind of excess the Witch Queen’s creations had shown they live by.

It should do just fine for pirate bombast, though. Violet neither needed nor wanted subtlety.

She gave it a go, growling at the floor of the rocket, “Obey me, you mud-sealed battered tube of rust, or I’ll drive you through the asteroid belt, hitting every rock on the way until I find a Callisto mangler cube to drive you down the throat of, and I’ll laugh as we’re ripped to shreds because I took your disobedient…uh…okay, but I can do this. Practice, Violet. Just like every other pirate skill. Practice.”

I remembered ARF-80 and looked over at her. The white plates had all withdrawn and disappeared. She stood still with her head tilted over, asleep again.

It really was over.

Except Wrench’s hands took the floofy sleeve of the wench shirt I’d been forced to wear and tugged twice. Stretching up on her toes and lifting her muzzle, she whispered, “We need to talk. In private. Please. While she’s busy taking us home. Please?”

I had no other responsibilities now. I let Wrench pull me down the hall and into the room where ARF-80 had been stored. While she locked the door, I walked around and lifted the lid of the shipping box back into place, then sat on it. Looking down at the little, blonde-wigged kobold, I asked, “Is this going to be about how you’re sometimes a lot smarter than a little kid should be?”

Wrench let out a long, gusty sigh. Her elongated mouth made her expression a little hard to read, but she looked a bit tired but mostly sad as she sank down to sit against the wall. With no squeak in her voice, just unhurried calm, she said, “Yes, and that’s why we have to talk now. You’re already figuring it out, and if I’m going to be your assistant…” Her face hardened in determination suddenly, and she raised a clenched fist, “…and I will be your assistant, you would find out soon.”

I clasped my hands over my knees and kept my tone gentle. This was not the time for sarcasm or word play. “Okay. I’m listening. I like you being smart.”

Wrench picked up handfuls of the tent-like white blouse she wore. “Do you know why I wear this baggy thing?”

“I thought maybe it belonged to someone you liked, or it’s hard to find clothes in kobold sizes,” I said.

She wriggled away from the wall enough to reach behind herself. Her little hands gathered up fistfuls of white fabric, then bigger fistfuls, until she finally pulled the front of the shirt tight around her torso.

It was not shaped the way I’d expected. At all. With that saurian face and feet and tail, I’d assumed she was a dinosaur pear shape under there, if maybe a sleek one. No, she had a waist, and a bustline bigger than mine.

“I’m not a child,” she said solemnly, in case I’d still had any doubts. Her voice might be naturally high, but it was also completely adult.

I didn’t get it, but this was plainly serious for Wrench. Life-definingly serious. So I asked, still quiet and sympathetic, “Why pretend to be a dumb kid?”

Wrench let go of her shirt, which fell over her in a shapeless mass again. Leaning back against the wall, she looked up at me with a tired but warm smile. “The fact that you even need to ask, and that you think the child part is the issue, is why I can tell you this. It’s safer to be a cute, ditzy little lizard girl than a threateningly intelligent adult kobold woman.”

I had already gotten the impression Wrench was smarter than me, yes, and maybe most of the people I’d known on Earth or in space. I asked, “Ceres seems like the last place you would need to keep that secret. Do people really hate kobolds so much you have to pretend to be someone you’re not?”

Wrench giggled at that, sharp little squeaks that forced their way out of her. It was so, so adorable. When she looked up at me again, it was with a cynically amused, lopsided smile. “Did no one tell you? Ceres is the planet of secrets. Everyone at the Lighthouse has secrets. I don’t know your secret yet, but you have one. You know my secret, now. Miss Passionfruit is a beast chained down by willpower. Wilma’s secret is that she’s not even a little bit shy. She likes how people treat a shy librarian. Norman is unhappy with a wound that never heals, and the Lighthouse is a bandage holding that wound closed. Mario is clever. He tells everyone his secret, so nobody thinks it’s important. That wouldn’t work for me.” She finished with a sigh.

I tilted my head to the side and didn’t hide my grimace. “I’m going to feel bad treating you like you’re dumb, but if that’s what you need from me, I won’t betray you.”

Wrench’s smile and her tone settled into mild, friendly conversation. “What I need from you is to teach me how to repair spaceships.”

My head sank down an inch and my shoulders pushed up another inch as awkwardness tickled me. “I’m not sure I can.”

The little kobold’s smile didn’t waver. “If you can’t, I’ll watch until I learn. You said you need materials to study. Let me study them too. I’ll make myself so valuable that nobody can afford to waste me on anything else.”

I raised a hand, and said solemnly, “I promise to protect you until then, and listen to you when you need to be smarter than me. I just hate that you have to lie.”

Wrench’s smile widened, not quite a playful grin. “Well, look at it like this. I like being a ditzy kid. It’s fun. I’m getting to be the person I want to be. Just like Miss Passionfruit, and Mario, and Wilma, and probably everyone else in Ceres. Maybe that’s really who I am, the goofy child I didn’t get a chance to indulge the first time around.”

Her expression hardened, not any less happy, just determined. “Except now that I’ve seen you repair spaceships, I want to be something new. Help me become that, and I will be the most loyal and hardworking assistant in the solar system.”

I flashed her a wide grin. “Throw in ‘friend’ and you’ve got a deal.”

Wrench let out one more sigh, this time of relief and accompanied by a smile. She rolled up to her feet, lifting both hands to straighten her curly blonde wig over her multiple horns. “We’d better get going before Violet suspects. I’m not ready for her to know. Maybe someday.”

I slid off the box. Wrench’s grin widened. When I opened the cargo room’s door, she grabbed my wrist in both hands, and dragged me up the hall to the cargo room squeaking, “Come ooooon! We have to be almost back by now, right?”

Friends. I looked up at Violet, now casually piloting us toward a barely visible planetoid and Lighthouse. Then Wrench, and the delighted, playful gleam in her blue eyes. Finally over at ARF-80, who was mumbling in her sleep. I caught the word “Cake.”

So, this was what having friends was like.

Now I just had to keep them when we got back to the Lighthouse and everyone found out that there was an actual Witch Queen and she wanted my head.

Chapter Seven

They were all waiting for us as Violet guided us into the dock. Through the windshield I could see the looming Miss Passionfruit, the regal buccaneer Bluehair, Norman, Jane with her almost mocking tied off version of the Keeper’s robe, the solemn and straight-backed pilot from Jupiter, and even little Alice. Nobody looked happy, although Alice was the only one actually scowling.

Had we really been out long enough to be caught like this? Maybe traveling the asteroid belt took a lot more time than it felt like when you were frozen in terror or sagging in relief. I could have lost a few hours to Violet’s adventurous driving style.

Oh, I did not want to face this music. Why had I let Violet drag me into this?

Because she would have physically dragged me into it if I hadn’t.

That still didn’t make this less awful to face.

I opened the hatch and shuffled reluctantly out onto the pier. ARF-80 followed, looking around with a puzzled expression and ignoring the crowd. Wrench hid behind my skirts.

Violent Violet strutted out of the ship and met the crowd like a conquering hero. Chin high, hand on her hip like her mother even as she walked, the purple pirate princess declared, “By the wriggling swarm, you will all witness this! I stole a spaceship, flew it all the way out of the asteroid belt, stole a Martian superweapon from him…” and she pointed at the Jupiter pilot, “…which he can’t get back because it has registered my personal mechanic as its new owner, was captured and boarded by an actual battlecruiser from actual Charon, fought free in glorious hand to hand combat, and escaped unharmed.”

Pirate Queen Bluehair’s head tilted askew, and her blue eyebrows raised as she regarded her daughter. “Actual Charon?”

If Violet got any more gleeful, she would explode. “Actual Charon! Shadow monsters and everything. Only one thing could have made my new best friend more perfect, and that was being hunted by a Witch Queen.”

Oh, no. She couldn’t possibly be telling everyone.

Yes of course she was telling everyone. Enthusiastically. “She’s being hunted by a Witch Queen. Now you have to let me kidnap her, Mom. Long term, I mean. A few hours barely count.”

I cringed, but…nothing seemed to be happening. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Anger. Fear. Miss Passionfruit immediately throwing me out the airlock for purely practical reasons.

I couldn’t tell what anyone except Bluehair was thinking. Was it my responsibility to prevent this from happening?

Something changed, because ARF-80 stopped looking confused and stepped around in front of me with her arms raised in a dramatic, claw-splayed, one arm forward fighting pose.

The Jupiter pilot said with sober disappointment, “Well, that is that. The weapon is unrecoverable.”

Miss Passionfruit stopped staring at us and looked down at him. She sounded like she always did, calm and in charge, but also friendly. “Consider it your payment for the repairs. The alternatives would have lost you the ship and cargo both.”

The pilot nodded, silent and thoughtful, apparently willing to accept that.

Now Bluehair’s smile faded into serious queenly authority. “Crew member Violent Violet, come here.”

Violet would not be cowed. She marched up to smile up at her mother with a self-satisfied pride that merely added a touch of defiance.

Her mother’s queenly severity turned to, well, motherly amusement. Hands on both her hips, Bluehair smiled back down at Violet. “I am perfectly happy with what you stole, who you stole it from, and how you stole it. In fact, I congratulate you and look forward to hearing your story in full. What I am not happy with is where you stole it. I need the Keepers to see me as safe and trustworthy, at least to them. You are confined to the ship until we leave.”

Arrogance erased, Violet’s jaw dropped in shock instead. “But I was about to go back to bed.”

“We have hammocks,” said Bluehair.

The purple pirate princess waved an arm back at me. “But….”

Bluehair raised a hand, waving it to the side and meeting the objection with aplomb. “She’s allowed to join you if she wants.”

Me, I raised both hands, and I raised them fast. So, so emphatically, I said, “Being a teddy bear is one responsibility I don’t think I’m obligated to. I’m going to stick with the comfy mattress, thanks.” Switching to a glare, I finished, “But I do want my clothes back.”

Without a word, Violet hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her (my!) jeans and pushed them down.

She got about an inch before her mother snapped, “Absolutely not, Violet.”

Violet smirked. She had me, and she knew it. Worse, she had my pants.

Wrench leaned up, about the right height to whisper into my ear if she stood on tiptoes and raised her muzzle. “There are clothes. We’ll help you find something.”

Fine. I put on my best smirk, and called out sweetly, “Enjoy wearing pants in your hammock, best friend.”

Without another word, I walked away, into the Lighthouse halls.

My attempt at snide didn’t work. VV’s glare was only the pleased kind you gave a friend.

Chapter Eight

I woke up in darkness, alone.

I still didn’t have to get up. No one had given me any kind of schedule for spaceship repair duty.

How were my parents dealing with getting my brothers up in the morning? Those kids were a giant pain, pure chaos and stubborn as mules, and our folks didn’t have the time.

Okay, apparently I had to get up to stop myself from brooding. My heart was starting to ache and my spine crawl thinking about things I couldn’t change.

I still only had the wench dress to put on, so I put it on, but I gave it a few hard, resentful glares first. When I pushed my door open far enough to peek my head out, Wrench was not sleeping in front of it this time.

No, this time ARF-80 was sleeping in front of my door, while standing perfectly upright except for her slumped head. She snored, very softly. I guess cyborgs needed to breathe.

Should I leave her and let her sleep, or not? What would be nicest?

ARF-80 opened her eyes, rendering the question moot. In a cheerfully human, teenage girl voice, she said, “ARF-80 the Blue Eyes of Death guard shift report. No attacks by yellow flaming Outsiders, giant robots, mercenaries in hand-made armored vehicles, rabbit wereminks, mink wererabbits, giant spinning clown hallucinations, or gender-ambivalent swordfighters with sentient blood.”

I had to giggle, then laid a hand on her metal shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze. “This is Ceres, not Mars. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen here. You don’t have to guard me. You can have your own bedroom and everything.”

She gave me a stubborn glare worthy of my brothers. “Oh, a pirate has threatened to kidnap you. You are my owner. I will protect you. It is my purpose.”

I lifted my face to hers and looked her straight in her currently green, human eyes. “You’re a person. Even if you’re forced to obey me, I won’t give you any orders. You can live your own life.”

“Oh, I’m not alive,” she answered, stiff and a touch haunted.

Oh, hey, who wouldn’t want to discuss that? I wanted to so much I said, “Well, I smell food, I’m hungry, and I promised you toast,” instead.

Her face lit up in anticipation and hope. “Toast? Oh, I’m going to be late for—wait, I’m dead.”

She didn’t sound unhappy saying it this time. She just looked confused, eyebrows scrunched together and staring at nothing.

So I prodded her, metaphorically, “But you still want toast, right?”

That got her bouncing into wide-eyed eagerness again. She rubbed her hands together, producing an unpleasant metal scraping noise. “Yes! Oh, can I get it with an egg?”

I guess I had two people to take care of again. At least Wrench was fun and ARF-80 was trying to take care of me back.

I led my cyborg ward down to the dining room. Norman was the only person there, eating at a table way in the back. Before I could reach the kitchen itself, Wrench bolted into the room, skidding through a turn to scramble up to me and whisper urgently, “Violet is on the way. Her mother said she could eat a meal with you.”

My heart suddenly lightened, tension lifting with a relief I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt before. I wasn’t sure who was taking care of who now, and I liked it.

Resuming my trek to the kitchen, I called out, “Sorry I overslept, Mario. Things were crazy last night. Is there still anything to eat?”

Mario stepped into the doorway, drying his huge hands on what would be a regular towel for anyone else.

ARF-80 shoved past me, falling into that same ready pose as last night, but now with her armor plates starting to tip up and glow blue at the back edges.

Violet skipped brazenly into the room, smile huge with both pride and anticipation.

ARF-80 swiveled again, now pointing an outstretched arm at Violet and the other at Mario. Instead of a martial arts pose, now the armor plates tipped up in front, with the barrels of tiny weapons peeking out. Disks in the center of her palms began to glow blue.

Violet jerked to a halt, her own hands on her pistol and rapier.

Magnificent Mario, bulky and threatening just by existing, was the only person who did not get excited. He drew himself up, yes, but with his arms by his side, puffing his chest out with pride and glaring at ARF-80 with disapproval through the eyeholes of his mask.

Gruff but not loud, Mario scolded ARF-80, “We do not battle in the Lighthouse of Ceres, baby warrior. It is a sacred place. If a battle did happen, I would be fighting beside you to protect your mistress, because I see in her a child worth protecting and an adult who will do great things.”

“And you’re not allowed to fight Violent Violet, even if she kidnaps me,” I added.

It all worked. With faint zips and clicks, ARF-80s arms closed up and she let them drop, looking spaced out instead. “Oh,” was all she said.

The immediate threat of a fight gone, Violet launched straight back into skipping up to me, propping her hands on her hips as she leaned forward to shout at Mario, “Hey, old man! Have you got any more—I mean, great razor winds, my belly gnaws like a deep sky lamprey. Give me something so that I can remember good food when I am forced to subsist on hardtack again.”

I gave a little golf clap at Violet’s fine pirate dialog. She beamed with satisfaction.

Magnificent Mario scowled at her next. The holes in his mask only showed his eyes and mouth, but that’s all they needed to show. On the edge but not quite growling in anger, he said, “I hear you have subjected this pure maiden to unnecessary dangers, but no matter how much you deserve punishment, I cannot let you suffer…” and he shuddered, mouth twisting up in disgust, “…that.”

Reaching up over ARF-80’s head to point down at her, I asked, “Could she have toast?”

That snapped ARF-80 out of her blankness. Face and voice alight with hope, she added, “With an egg?”

Mario threw up his brawny arms. “Sit! All of you!”

We sat, all around one table. ARF-80 was the second to last to sit down, inserting herself protectively between me and Violet. Wrench was the last, climbing up into a chair too big for her.

Mario glared murderously at the little kobold. She gave him a sunny smile back. Muttering under his breath, he turned and stomped back into the kitchen.

I propped my elbows on the table and leaned over it to address Violet who, no matter how hard I’d tried to fight, was now my best friend. “So is your mom mad at you, or what?”

She rolled her eyes, half smirking, half grimacing. “You know moms.”

I wasn’t sure I did. My mother was too busy for whatever supposedly universal experience Violet meant. Too busy, and now I’d left her without the only help she could rely on.

Violet looked between the three blank faces watching her and flapped a hand back and forth as she explained, “She’s proud of all the great pirate stuff I did, but everything has to be a teachable moment. No matter how happy she is with what kind of pirate I am today, I have to be a better pirate tomorrow or I’ll never achieve my dream of being a pirate queen. So, it’s all about not doing stuff that might make the Lighthouse Keepers not like her. If she were actually mad she wouldn’t have let me come eat with you, and she super wouldn’t have insisted I tell the whole crew about my adventure. Twice. Everybody thinks the cargo being an actual Martian war robot but it’s broken is hilarious.”

This was my turn to scowl in disapproval. “Violet, she’s right here.”

Looking over at ARF-80, I took the girls’ metal wrist and squeezed reassuringly. If ARF-80 had been listening at all, I couldn’t tell. She was just staring into space until the squeeze, when she snapped into focus, if baffled focus, and asked, “What’s going on?”

The question hadn’t been anxious, just uncertain, so I gave a basic answer in a gentle tone. “We’re talking. Enjoying each other’s company. You don’t have to be a robot. You can be the girl you were before all the cybernetics.”

She nodded her head maybe an inch. “No, I understand that, but why are we still sitting here?”

Now I really wasn’t sure what she was asking, so I tried, “We’re waiting for food?”

“No one waits long to be fed in the dining room of the Magnificent Mario!” thundered the wrestler. He emerged from the kitchen with plates and dishes arrayed up and down his arms, tossing them into place as he stormed over to our table. Violet, Wrench, and I each got a plate with an egg the size of two clenched fists, green shelled and standing straight up. Between us he set down pans holding strips of something fried, butter, a richly sweet-smelling pale goo, dark red jam, and round balls that looked like unglazed doughnut holes. He glared again right into Wrench’s eyes and she smiled back as he laid out on her plate a sliced tube, with each slice a different color of meat, and a stack of bar-shaped pastries. That done he seemed to forget about her, taking the final tray off his head and setting a fat pink cake in the middle of the table. With a triangular cake spatula, he cut a neat slice and set it on a small plate in front of ARF-80.

“I know the hunger of my fellow Martians. Is this not even better than toast?” he asked her in an uncharacteristically soft tone.

She responded with glee. “Cake!” As I cracked open the shell on my egg and tried a spoonful of the spicy yellow and red dusted mass inside, ARF-80 shoveled forkfuls of cake one after the other into her mouth, so fast her arm was almost a blur.

She quickly got two thirds of the way through the cake slice, then stopped abruptly with a pink-frosted chocolate brown lump on her fork. She stared at it, frowning ferociously.

Was she angry? I wasn’t even sure of that, so I asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t eat this,” she answered, still frowning like she faced a frustrating puzzle.

I sniffed. “It smells delicious.” It did, even sweeter than the rest of the meal. I hoped I would have room for a little after my egg.

Worry tilted up ARF-80’s puzzled eyebrows. She sounded lost now as she repeated, “I can’t eat this.”

“You are full.” Mario’s gruff voice right behind and above me nearly sent me leaping out of my chair in surprise.

ARF-80 squinted at the cake at the center of the table. She sounded if anything more baffled. “There’s more cake, but I can’t eat it.”

Mario’s bulky mass leaned over me, to bring his face down closer to ARF-80. His tone downright soft now, he explained to her, “You are full. You have reached the limit of how much you can eat.”

She looked up at him, so disbelieving her face and voice were almost blank. “But there’s cake left.”

Violet, with the sensitivity pirates are legendary for, said, “She’s full already? I bet I could eat that whole cake.”

Mario nodded slowly, as gentle as his normally irritable voice. “Yes, but everyone has a limit to how much they can eat. For you it is high. For Rachel here, it is not so high. For you, steel warrior girl, the limit is small.”

“But there’s cake left,” she insisted, staring up at him defiantly as if she were the one giving the lecture.

Magnificent Mario just continued the quiet explanations. “We are not on Mars anymore. You have limits in everything now, and they will mostly stay the same.”

She scrunched up her nose, shocked and skeptical. “Stay the same? How…what?”

Mario’s voice firmed up a little. With a touch of the wrestler drama and looking her sharply in the eyes, he said, “You can only train one thing at a time. Now you are practicing learning that you have limits.”

The red-headed cyborg nodded slowly, determination rising in her voice. “Okay. That makes sense. I will master not being on Mars.”

She seemed to be okay now, so I looked straight up at Mario looming above me. He put his hand on my shoulder, engulfing it, but the squeeze was as harmlessly delicate as anyone’s. He met my gaze, and gave me a small, grim smile. “Be kind to this brave little one, Rachel. It will take her time to adjust. She will get lost doing the most normal of things. Waiting is particularly hard to understand for a Martian. Leaving Mars is bad enough, but her mind was already broken by what was done to create her, which Magnificent Mario does not approve of.”

That got ARF-80s attention, and she gave him a sharp look, arguing, “But dying and being put into a robot is why I’m a warrior.”

“There are other things to be besides a warrior. Good things,” he answered.

ARF-80s eyes abruptly turned blue. “Abort, retry, fail?”

Mario went still and silent for just a moment. Then he murmured, “Fail.” When her eyes flipped back to green, he stroked her unevenly cut hair. “You will understand eventually.”

And with that, Mario drew himself up, his fists clenching and held out to the sides, barrel chest puffing out with his normal barely restrained anger. “The rest of you, eat! Am I not shamed enough without empty bellies at my table!?”

Not waiting for an anger, he swiveled and stomped back into his kitchen.

I tried. I managed to finish the egg, just barely, my stomach aching from being overstuffed. Violet finished her egg, half the cake, and some of the other stuff on the table. With an anguished sigh, she told me, “I’ve got to go. Mom will know if I don’t return immediately. She won’t tell me how she knows.”

As Violet ran off, I looked down at Wrench, who had eaten as much as Violet but was still going at a steady pace. I asked her, “Can you eat the rest?”

Without any childish squeak, she answered, “I think so. I’ll try. It will hurt Mario’s feelings if I don’t.”

Then I would be nice and responsible to repay Mario’s kindness, and maybe just because it was responsible. I scooped the remaining food onto Wrench’s plate and gathered the rest of the dishes and dishware. Leaving a dozing ARF-80 and a devouring Wrench at the table, I carried it all back to the kitchen.

Meals had been distracting, but I had a few seconds to pay attention to the plates and silverware themselves. The plates had a neat blue print of squids chasing each other in circles around the outer thirds. The handles of the silverware were much more ornate than that, little reliefs of strange, mostly inhuman people. One had angular robes and a star head. One seemed to be a doll or robot of an artistically nude girl with cat features and her arms behind her head. One was a hunched angel with both horns and a halo wrapped up in his wrings, which blurred together into liquid. Stuff like that. Super elaborate. They had that dull grey of actual silver, but whether anybody cared about that in space I had no idea. Silver might be as cheap as tin foil.

I found Mario bashing fruits with his fists and tipping them into a bowl of flour. The stove nearest him was hot, with little round orange things cooking on a tray. He jerked his head toward the sink past it, and said curtly, “Put them there.”

My expression must have been odd, because he stared at me for half a second and then reared up imperiously, although his growl was still soft and his hands kept working. “Food does not happen instantly, little girl. Not even for me. I have learned to plan ahead. She will eventually.”

I asked the question actually on my mind. “Is there art on all the dishes? I saw there were carvings on the mugs yesterday but didn’t get a good look.”

Mario went completely still, even his hands no longer kneading dough. He stared down at me, but other than a frown his mask hid his expression. His voice was just as masked and unreadable. “Yes.”

I refused to back off now, even if I risked offending him by implying he had a fantastic aesthetic and creative virtuoso. But I did keep my tone to merely curious. ‘Did you decorate them yourself?”

Suddenly he laughed, a booming “Ha ha!” with his mouth wide and his huge chest bouncing. When he finished, he was still smiling. “No, little girl. Food is the only art the Magnificent Mario has any talent for. I have tried and failed many times. Instead, I must collect and fill my kitchen with the art of others, which is, perhaps, more rewarding.”

Setting the dishes in the sink, I pulled out the silverware so I could set them down separate from the plates themselves. As I did, I nodded cheerfully. “Trust me, I get it. I was told once that learning to draw would help me write. It does. It helps me see things, to know what I’m describing, and to imagine how it could be different. My drawings are still pretty bad.”

I peered at the handles of the forks, spoons, and knives in my hand. All those strange characters, wearing constellations or book pages instead of clothing, or with features as weird as a mouth splitting their whole body in half. I had the nagging feeling these were supposed to go in some kind of order but I couldn’t possibly guess what. There was meaning to this madness.

Mario turned back to his cooking, now wrapping dough around tubes of aquamarine stuff that looked like sausage.

The message from that silence was obvious. Putting the silverware down, I headed for the door, apologizing sincerely, “Sorry. I’ll get out.”

“You have permission to come look at my collection. Beauty is useless if no one sees it,” Mario grumbled behind me.

Whoa, beautiful! I swiveled around sharply, then darted back to tap the silverware handles with a finger. “Thanks! Where did you get these? Are they people I should know about?”

The growl in Mario’s voice sounded more like a purr, and while he did not leave off laying out his little blue-things-in-dough on pans and sliding them into the oven, he did it with comfortable ease now. “Those are from Charon. It is a whole planet of art, but the style is not for everyone. I loved that world, but only in small doses.” He sighed, then turned his head to smirk down at me. “A limit to everything, yes?”

Rocked to Violet’s socks, since she’d stolen mine, I gasped. “You’ve been to Charon? I thought no one goes to Charon!”

His eyebrows raised in amusement. I was pretty sure. He was wearing a mask, and all. “It is one of the less visited worlds. Its simpler twin, Pluto, is already too different for most to appreciate. If any of the other Keepers have been to Charon I have not heard, but it would not surprise me. Most of us traveled far and wide to many worlds looking for our place before we found it here.”

Listening to myself try and fail to sound casual, I asked, “Did you meet the Witch Queen?”

Mario let go of his food and laughed again. He got a kick out of laughing itself. You could tell. With gentle condescension he corrected me, “It is a planet, little artist of machines and words. Do not let Ceres’s smallness fool you. Most planets are so big that you could never explore one completely in the longest lifetime. Witch queens are popular on both Pluto and Charon, and the dragon moons as well. You are in trouble with Charon, so I hear?”

“Someone told you?” I was heading for a championship in that trying and failing to sound casual thing.

Fortunately, I’d gotten on Mario’s very good side by appreciating art. He rumbled happily. “Miss Passionfruit trusts me, but in truth, word spreads in a dining room and it is not a secret, is it?”

“I guess not.” And the question I’d been trying not to think about burst out of me. “Am I going to be kicked out?”

“No!” The word thundered with furious emphasis. Mario slapped the fruits now in his hands onto the countertop, squashing them into pulp without noticing. He was too busy giving me a look both fierce and reassuring. “Some keepers are fugitives. Like the scaly rat that will not leave you alone, yes? She thought she was better than a pretty pet with a pedigree. On Jupiter, you are either master or slave. She could not be a master and would not be a slave. The vermin is brave, I cannot deny it.”

Deny it? You hulking, muscle-bound softy, Mario. There was nothing but affection in the voice delivering those harsh-sounding words. You knew Wrench wasn’t a child too, I’m sure of it.

That left me not sure what to say, because I was pretty sure saying any of that out loud would be rude, and maybe spoil something between him and Wrench.

When I didn’t reply, Mario relaxed into a smile almost as gentle as he’d given ARF-80. “Charon will not reach you here. No other planet can extend its dominion to the Lighthouse. Ceres’s way is a way of peace. The dangers here are personal, of revelation and finding or losing purpose.”

And with that, the unguarded Mario disappeared, replaced by the usual raging force of nature. Stiffening up, he lifted one fist and pointed the other index finger out the door, bellowing, “Go! The art will be here when you get back. If you do not leave now, the scaly thing will invade my kitchen again.”

Sure. His purpose was keeping Wrench out, yep. That Wrench might get lonely and Mario cared about that was definitely not the reason.

I left as instructed, finding Wrench just climbing down from the table and toddling toward the kitchen with her own empty dish. I met her halfway. When I did, before I could say anything she gave me a wink and flung her plate, silverware, and mug all into the air and toward the kitchen door with one heave. Grabbing my wrist, Wrench bolted for the dining room exit, dragging me along.

I had just enough time to see Mario’s hands snatch every piece of dishware out of the air as they passed through the doorway, and hear him bellow, “LIZARD!!!”

We were already at the top of the stairs when I protested, “ARF-80—oh.” My guard cyborg was right behind us, trying to peer into shadows and failing to find any because the light in the Lighthouse came from everywhere.

By the time I realized Wrench had hustled me, she was dragging me into the docking bay. When she saw me realize she had lured me here, she squeaked, “Guess what arrived? Guess guess guess guess guess!”

Not another spaceship to repair, at least. We still only had the rocket tube and the pirate galleon.

Letting go of me at last, Wrench ran across the white stones of the encircling dock, leaped up onto the row of workbenches along the nearer wall, and scooped up an armful of books. “Wilma brought them!”

“There will be more. Um. A lot more. If that’s okay,” said Wilma off to my other side.

I looked. There she was, standing with Pirate Queen Bluehair, Miss Passionfruit, and the Jupiter pilot whose name I should ask.

“Can you come here for a moment, please, Rachel?” asked Miss Passionfruit.

You’re not in trouble, Rachel. She already said you’re not in trouble. Everything is fine.

Except it was very hard to feel like everything was fine as I shuffled up to the towering, soberly composed figure of Miss Passionfruit, whose long grey bunny ears did nothing to reduce the way she loomed. My head didn’t even come up to her shoulders!

“Is that your name? I should have asked long ago,” said the pilot, with a smile and apparently the ability to read my mind.

“In the Lighthouse, we call each other by whatever name we say is ours,” said Miss Passionfruit firmly, just in case he might possibly have believed I was telling the truth.

He nodded, in thoughtful approval. “If Charon is after you, you’re better off with them not knowing your real name. Names have strange powers in the outermost planets.”

“Am I in trouble?” I asked because I just couldn’t believe myself.

“Not with me,” answered Miss Passionfruit. Her bland, practical tone was more convincing than any gentle reassurance.

The Jupiter guy was even smiling. “Not with me. Older and wiser heads than yours have fallen in with pirates.”

Looking down at me with a slight smile, Miss Passionfruit said, “I have suggested he consider the robot payment for repairing his ship.”

The Jupiter guy only looked happier, hoisting up his glass fishbowl helmet higher under one arm. “Which you did admirably. I’ll take it to Callisto for the rest of my repairs but tell them to keep the controls you built. I took the ship out an hour ago and gave the maneuvering a try. You’re a genius, Rachel.” Was there a subtle extra emphasis on my name? Nobody was ever going to believe it was actually my name, would they?

Awkwardness at being complimented for just doing what I felt was my responsibility clubbed down resentment about the whole name thing. I scratched the back of my head and stared at my sneakers, the pilot’s clunky grey space boots, Bluehair’s exciting button-up high heeled boots, and the trailing edges of Wilma and Miss Passionfruit’s brown robes. “Oh. Um. Thank you, but it was the simplest thing to repair on the ship. If one of your engines had been broken, I couldn’t possibly have put it back together.”

“No, you’d have replaced it with something that worked even better,” he corrected dryly.

I managed a small smirk. “I hope I’m as good as you think.”

I looked up to find him beating my smirk with one of his own. “I hope so too, because when the adult mechanics on Callisto see what you’ve created, I’m sure they’ll be talking about you to every interplanetary pilot in the solar system. Now that we’ve scrounged up enough fuel, I’m headed there. The only downside of your repairs is that the engines use twice as much fuel.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. It did make sense. There were rules, right? They weren’t the same ‘it all depends on generating thrust’ rules as on Earth, but there were rules. That you’d have to give something like fuel efficiency up to get better maneuverability was no surprise. I would have to keep in mind that my repairs were going to have unpredictable side effects.

The smirk went back to a grateful smile. Warm, but there was something always controlled about this guy. “Don’t be. The visit has been magnificent serendipity. My stay was a brief but fulfilling and much needed vacation.” Wilma put her hands over her face, stiff with mortification, but we all pretended we didn’t see and the pilot went on talking. “I don’t even mind losing the cargo. I had grave doubts about who it was meant for and being able to honestly say it was stolen by pirates and broken besides will ease my mind. Goodbye, everyone, and thank you again, Rachel.”

Somewhere up above us, Miss Passionfruit inclined her head a couple of inches. “I’m glad you are happy. You were a perfect guest.”

Screwing his helmet into place, the pilot boarded his rocket, and through the windshield I saw him take his place at the piloting globe. He adjusted the thrust levers, his engines lit up blue, and they emitted blue rings instead of fire as he backed slowly out of the bay. When he was completely clear, the ship spun like a rolling ball, and took off into the tunnel between the asteroids.

Her hands folded behind her, Miss Passionfruit said mildly, “Aside from the shipjacking, a very normal visit. We get guests frequently and from all over, Rachel. You’ll be used to that soon, now that you’ve decided to stay.”

Thumping sounded from inside Pirate Queen Bluehair’s ship. Struggling with her boots, Violent Violet ran up on deck, rushed over to the railing, and leaned over it with her curly purple hair hanging. She smacked the railing with her fist and whined, “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! Guns of the green rock fortress, I knew it but figured it out too late!”

Nobody else said anything, so I raised my hand. “If they’re not interested, I am. What are you so upset about?”

Grabbing her hair in equally purple fists, Violet yanked it twice and then let go to flail her hands wildly. “Don’t you get it? Mom does. He wasn’t upset at all about losing the robot. That means she wasn’t the real cargo! He had something secret and much more valuable hidden on his ship and we got distracted and missed it! He’s flying off smug because like a chump I went for the decoy!”

Pushing herself back up, well, violently, Violent Violet stomped back to the raised rear of the pirate ship, standing right at the back and shaking her fist as she yelled into space, “Colliding comets! You squid-chewing whale fondler! I hope you get sucked into a feeding frenzy of zombified skates! On fire!”

As she went on and on and on, Bluehair smiled down at me with motherly pride. “You’ve been a good influence on her.”

Again, no one seemed to have anything to say. Well, except Violet screaming imprecations into the asteroid-haunted abyss, but that didn’t count. Wrench took advantage of that to grab my wrist and pull again, and it was a relief to get away from the grown-ups and back to the company of someone who at least pretended not to be one.

Besides, there was nothing I was more comfortable with than books full of art. I opened a couple to huge charts of ships with huge wings and elaborate cog assemblies. Oh, yes. So much yes. This was the stuff. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the rest.

Wrench pulled herself up to kneel on the tabletop, her hands on her knees as she leaned over to look at the same illustration. Grand and pompous, I asked her, “Did Wilma bring pens and paper? Your first lesson, my new student, is that drawing is as important as studying.”

Chapter Nine

Back to school, except now I was teacher and student both.

Days, weeks, perhaps a month had passed since Violet returned to Saturn. Ceres defied calendars. Whatever day it was now, I tapped my finger on an absurdly complicated illustration of a ship made completely out of clockwork. “We are in so much trouble if one of these shows up. I can’t make heads or tails of these gears. Unless you’re hiding a genius for cogs, we can’t put it back together. You’re not, are you? I wouldn’t put it past you.”

Wrench shook her head. The gesture was supposed to be apologetic but crouched birdlike on the table next to my books, wide-eyed and tail wagging where it projected stiff and low off the table’s edge, she just looked excited.

I did like the way the whole contraption centered around a key that it could wind by itself. On Earth that would make engineers throw themselves out of windows in horror, but if you took math out of the equation it made perfect sense.

“You’ll do what you always do, substitute something!” squeaked Wrench with the joy of a little girl talking to her personal hero.

Leaning up against the table with my elbows propped on it, I gave her a grimace. “I wish I could be better prepared than that. At least now I won’t freak out when one of these pulls into the dock. It’s getting ridiculous how many people are showing up at the Lighthouse now just for my repair skills.”

Sitting on the floor next to our workbench, knees pulled up and back against the wall, ARF-80 complained, “Would you hold it down? I’m just getting to the good part.”

Scowling in concentration, the cyborg girl leaned her head forward, squinting determinedly at the book held open in front of her. Yes, the third student at this strange and makeshift school was the unexpected combination jock and bookworm. ARF-80 would read anything that had pictures in it, even if that was only a couple of technical illustrations. She read manuals on interplanetary vegetable shipping as if they were action-adventure stories.

Wrench tapped me on the shoulder and pointed behind us. Ah, yes, speaking of people showing up just for my repair skills….

An old man stood in front of his spaceship, rubbing his horrible beard. He might not be that old. He had grey hair and skin like leather, but so what? His frayed clothing seemed to be made of burlap and more leather. Everything about him except his hideous porcupine-on-a-bad-hair-day beard might be made of leather.

As for his spaceship, it was more like the biggest tin can I had ever seen. In fact, it was exactly like the biggest tin can I had ever seen. It was a tin can, the size of a house. A small house, but a house. The tipped-up lid revealed no engines, no power source, just a badly cluttered and grubby living space.

Why would anyone make a tin can that big? For whatever reason, someone had, and now someone else was using it as a spaceship.

Stepping from the dock into the floating can, I told the crusty old-timer, “I had to dig to find the parts, but I think I’ve built a working navigation system for you. Let me show you.”

Despite the size of the tin can, the level of clutter inside was mind boggling. Cured meat hung from ropes. Barrels were stacked up on a wooden plank floor wedged into the bottom of the can so there would be something to walk on. Tools and clothing were scattered or hung up everywhere. More food was packed into nets. The only clear area of floor was the trapdoor that gave access to the stuff stored under the floorboards. Stuff like a solar sail that was really just a huge bedsheet with ropes tied to the corners. It looked like the wagon of a frontier nomad because it was.

On the table nearest the door, I patted the heavy wooden turntable I had fixed in place with simple hooks. On the turntable I’d attached with grout a Y shaped stick. Not just any old stick, a divining rod from the thirtieth storeroom I’d searched.

Next to the turntable lurked a long wooden block with cup-shaped depressions cut into the top. From one of those I picked up a chalky-feeling model of Jupiter, red eye and all. I set that in the depression right in front of the divining rod’s point.

Slowly, clattering and grumbling, the wooden wheel turned and pointed out the docking bay entrance. Taking out the Jupiter model, I replaced it with the swirling green Venus model. Again slowly and noisily, the divining rod and wheel turned to face a different direction, not quite opposite of Jupiter.

I held up a finger, warning the old man, “You’ll have to add your own moons, but here’s the good part.” Returning Venus to its cup, I picked up a heavy gold nugget that I’d found in the tin can and placed that in front of the divining rod. Yet again the rod turned, pointing somewhere entirely new. Just to make the point, and to show off because I was proud of this, I switched it for a chunk of comet ice, which turned the divining rod once more.

With the fierce, hot joy of a job well done, I said, “I figure that will be mighty useful for a deep space miner.”

Taking off his beat-up hat, the old guy held it to his chest. “Missy, you’re a salvation. Them fancy folks at their fancy spaceports turn up their nose at the likes of Comet Cletus, for all they need what I dig up to build their fancy high tek-no-logee-kill ships.”

For this part, I could only shrug. “It’s my job. The Keepers accept and help everyone, and I’m their spaceship mechanic.”

Cletus rubbed his beard of six-inch bristles some more as he stared down at his new navigation equipment. “Well, I reckon the Keepers can keep all the fancy stuff I found in that old shack afore the spider ruined my star seein’ net. This here replacement contraption you made is already better’n it ever was.”

His voice dropping to a whisper, Cletus leaned as much closer as he could without being obvious and said, “Ain’t no ordinary girl got a talent like yours. Where’d you get it? You can tell old Cletus.”

I was getting used to that question. Time yet again to do the only thing I did better than repair spaceships. My own voice a whisper, I answered, “You know how Venus sucks the minds out of everyone who lands there, right? All those smarts are packed into crystals orbiting the planet. I was out where I shouldn’t be, riding a vehicle I didn’t have a right to, and crashed smack dab into the one that had all the repair smarts. Rachel is the name you get from packing all those bits of people together. My original name before the accident was Plimby Tarnation.”

Smiling with tight satisfaction, he said, “Your secret’s safe with old Cletus. I thank you, and Daisy Mae thanks you.”

I stepped back out onto the dock, which let me see the huge orange squid clinging to the back of the tin can and just about the same size. It waved a floppy tentacle at me. I swear under the spaghetti tangle of its other tentacles I saw the elbow of an oversized human arm.

Standing on the edge of the can, Cletus spit on his hand, and held it out. “Put her there.”

Every inch of my skin crawling in disgust, I nevertheless spat in my own palm, gripped his, and we shook. When we let go, a happy Cletus pulled the lid of the tin can closed and sat on the little bench that stuck out of the front. He pulled on a sack cut with two eye holes and with a hat stitched to the top over his head. As Daisy Mae dragged the tin can out of the docking bay he waved, and I waved back with honest friendliness.

Check off ”repair a squid-drawn space wagon” from the bucket list, Rachel.

I watched Daisy Mae squirm around to the front of the can and pull it completely out of sight of the docking bay, then ran to the wash basin on one of our worktables and scrubbed my hands with soap. I added a good whine on top of that. So, so much gross!

Oops. Never mind. Here came another ship.

Pill shaped, with a sharp prow and yellow and blue lengthwise stripes, the new ship was propelled by eight fan motors on swivels, mounted in two rings, a third and then two thirds of the way down. They showed no sign of electrical parts, or any other power source. Unusual, but not actually weird. The really distinctive thing about this ship was how it bulged, like the hull was just plates laid between long, curved struts. As the ship pulled up next to the pier, the rear fans swung around to face the front fans, canceling each other out. So, they were automatic and hard to shut off. Had I seen any pictures of this?

I had. This was a Saturn design, and those struts would be the bones of some floating Saturn animal, probably a whale.

To confirm my guess, an extremely Saturnian woman lifted up the front of the ship and hopped out. She was stocky and middle-aged, with white flecks in her black hair, which bushed out past a red and white bandana. Boots, striped socks, tight knee-length pants, button blouse and vest, she wore the whole Saturn pirate regalia. Long, pointy ears poking through her hair were not part of the usual pirate look, and neither was the purple gemstone instead of her right eye, or the complicated red magical circle tattooed around that eye.

Miss Passionfruit, in her serene, sober tallness, drifted down the steps from the entrance hall to meet her. Norman had already stepped up to wait for her as the ship pulled in.

I dried my hands hurriedly on a towel, and wished I had time to wash them again. I was still a bit astonished that Cletus wasn’t just one guy. There were whole clans of people like him living out there completely planetless.

Miss Passionfruit reached the amethyst-eyed woman just as I finished with the towel and started my way over. Fortunately, the Saturnian was not quiet. “Lo, for with the produce and whatnot herein, I be wonderin’ if ye may perform for me a trice of a favor, arrr.”

The Saturnian was shorter than Norman, so Miss Passionfruit looked way, way down at her. “That favor being you want us to store one particular item that you guarantee is not stolen, illegal, or dangerous, in a place no one will find until a personal friend of yours comes to pick it up.”

I did so much admire Miss Passionfruit’s ability to be deadpan sarcasm.

Not that it discouraged the Saturnian. She grinned like a wolf. “I sees thou gets my drift.”

Norman folded his own arms, giving the visitor a perplex half-smile, half-frown. “I hope your friends pay you up front, because they never pick up their goods.”

The visitor turned her smile on Norman, now sly and self-satisfied. “Verily be that me problem and not thine, arrr?”

By this point I was standing next to Norman, and I’d paid attention to nothing but the conversation. As a result I was very surprised when a door lifted in the center of the ship, and ARF-80 walked out holding a lunchbox-sized block of amber.

I cringed, and jogged down the pier, waving my outstretched hands sharply at her. “No! Put that back where you found it! I’ve told you before, you can’t walk into people’s rooms and take things.”

My robotic bodyguard furrowed her brow under her ragged red bangs, staring at me with dubious puzzlement. Carefully, firmly, she told me, “But it might be useful.”

I waved my hands again, this time in vague circles rather than across my chest. “They’re all useful. You have a genius for going straight to the drawer where there’s a wheel I’ll need in three hours. It doesn’t matter if I’ll need it, it’s not my drawer or my wheel.”

Shutting my eyes tightly for a second, I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for yelling. I know you’re trying to help and this doesn’t make sense to you, but someday it will. For right now, just put it back.”

The visiting smuggler had watched our exchange with grinning amusement, and now she jumped in. “Aye, that be having a rightful owner in sooth, for I agreed as a personal favor to a maiden bold that I’d deliver it to the Lighthouse. The description she gave was vague, methinks. ‘Tis for someone who usually goes by the name Rachel.”

Beaming in innocent joy, ARF-80 thrust the chunk of amber out at me. “See?”

I took the warm, rough, heavy block, telling the visitor, “That’s me. My name actually is Rachel. It’s the name everyone here knows me as.”

Yes, that sounded super convincing and not like I was hiding anything.

I held the block up and examined it. It was more like half a block. On the top, bottom, and right sides the corners were properly cut and the surface mostly chiseled flat. Even the front and back. The left side ended in a jagged mess, like it had originally been a bigger block broken in two.

“Try smacking it!” Wrench urged me gleefully. Finding her suddenly standing next to me had stopped being any kind of surprise.

I gave the right surface a whack with the palm of my hand, and the amber glowed like I’d switched on a light. The front facet flickered into a picture as distinct and lifelike as a photo, although I wasn’t sure I knew what I was seeing. Something sharp and metal, and back a ways a purple hand holding it, and with a backdrop of yellow sky and blue, pink, and orange clouds.

The smuggler’s amusement turned sneering. “And I be Dragon Diyana, lady—”

Maybe she finished. Maybe she didn’t. My attention was now completely on the amber block, because it had started talking in Violent Violet’s eager voice. “Does that mean it’s recording? Rachel! I made Mom steal one of these for us. It records pictures and sounds, but both halves keep the record so we can leave each other messages! Look, this is me pointing a harpoon gun at you! It was so booooring at the Lighthouse, but it’s so lonely here. None of the other pirate kids and pickpockets and stuff can lie like you, or repair spaceships. Look, I put a bunch of pictures in to show you how great Saturn is so you’ll want to come here and build pirate ships for me. That’s a whale, and that’s—nest of flesh foals, I can’t—I mean, I don’t have a picture of a nest of flesh foals, but there are lots of good pictures in here. Let me try and figure out if I can make it play pictures while I talk.”

She must have failed, because the one photo of half a harpoon gun with Violet on the wrong side of the picture out of my sight was all the block showed. Violet’s recording had ceased. I turned the block over in my hands, looking for any more hints as to how to operate it. Violet hadn’t included instructions. Maybe she thought it would be obvious for a genius mechanic.

Instructions or not, this was wonderful! Looking up at the docking bay manager and the Venusian Space Bunny, I asked eagerly, “If I don’t have any repair duties to do…?”

Dragon Diyana’s smile showed no sign she understood the question was actually directed at her. Miss Passionfruit’s solemn nod was as mild as usual. “None that I’m aware.”

Wheeling toward the stairs, I shouted, “I should go take some photos to show Violet how my room is coming along!”

“You said we could go for a hike!” complained ARF-80.

My first running step fumbled to a halt. I stared at ARF-80 and trawled my memory. “I did? Oh. That was—”

The confused combat cyborg did not let me explain just how long ago I’d made that offer. She whooped, “Come on! Catch me if you can!” and sprinted down the length of a wooden pier, leaping off at the end to fall far, far down to the icy surface of Ceres below. From there she only picked up speed, and I saw her tiny figure racing out across the grey and white terrain away toward the horizon.

“I can’t. I very definitely can’t catch you,” I told the spot where she’d just been standing.

Wrench clapped her hands together, twining her fingers and extending her arms as she rocked forward and back. “She’s finding her personality!”

And that was Wrench, saying something that sounded goofy in her little girl voice, but was actually wise and correct. ARF-80 was slowly stitching herself into being a full person.

Letting the heavy amber block hang in one hand, I used my other hand to scratch my head in sad confusion. “I’d like to go hiking with her. I’d love to wander around the frozen surface of Ceres for a little while. I’ll need to find a spacesuit that fits me, and I can’t do it at that speed.”

“Sooooooo?” wheedled Wrench, grinning irregularly placed fangs.

I waved the recording device vaguely. “I can’t just leave her out there. She’s my responsibility.”

Wrench’s plastic blonde curls rustled as she flicked her head up and to the side. “Nope!”

I gaped down at the kobold, horrified by her implied advice. “Come on, she’s….”

When I fumbled for the right word, Wrench supplied, “Indestructible?”

“She could get lost!” I tried, because I just couldn’t not look after ARF-80, could I?

Wrench giggled, fists pulled up under her chin, shaking her head and stomping her feet in uncontrollable amusement. “Lost on Ceres?”

She had a point. She had a giant harpoon gun type point. The only place you couldn’t actually see the Lighthouse on this miniature planetoid was the exact opposite side of Ceres. If you somehow got lost, you couldn’t stay lost for long.

I did not like Dragon Diyana’s amused expression watching me lose an argument with a kobold child. Pretending I hadn’t seen it, I grumped, “Come on, Wrench. I’ll go with my first plan: Showing Violet my new room.”

Boxes and bags a lot like the ones I’d seen hung up in Comet Cletus’s wagon were even now being carried by Keepers I only dimly knew into the elevator, so I would have to take the stairs. My legs were certainly getting good exercise living here.

Wrench and I went up for a while, until I spotted a landmark I knew, a set of double doors within view of the staircase landing. Those doors had nothing to do with me except being on the right floor.

My room was on the outer of the floor’s two rings. In fact, I believed most floors had a hidden third ring, and my apartment was part of that belief. It was conveniently opposite the freight elevator. At least, that was convenient when the elevator wasn’t busy. It was extra convenient for reasons I was looking forward to telling Violet.

Standing outside my door, I held up the amber block to examine again, wondering how to make it record. I lucked out. Holding it up meant squeezing the jagged inner side and the outer side simultaneously. That cleared the side that worked as a screen and started those ends glowing faintly.

Wrench held open the door. I stepped inside, waving the block around and narrating.

“Hey, Violet! You’ve missed a lot. I moved out of the guest rooms. I’m still setting up my room. There’s my art table. As you can see, I put up those windows we found. They were too beautiful to leave lying in a storeroom. Maybe you can find the spot on Saturn this one looks out at! You see those other doors? I’ve got a whole set of rooms. That one is ARF-80’s room. Yes, it’s just a bed. All she does in here is sleep and guard my door. From herself, I guess. You see that wardrobe with all the clothes in it? I’ve replaced the pants you stole from me.”

I had to put a little extra venom on that. Maybe I forgave her, but she stole my only pair of pants! Someone had mentioned me dressing like I lived on Mercury, so Jane had helped me find a box of Mercury clothes. Sure enough, they went in for denim. Mostly overalls, but I’d gotten a Keeper who was a good tailor to help out and now I had a bunch of loose sort-of-jeans and different kinds of shirts. The Lighthouse was chilly enough I mostly cut the bottom half off a robe and wore the top half like a hoodie.

Grinning hugely, I got to the good part. The great part. “Oh, that piece of wall wedged open? Isn’t that funny looking? That leads to—thank you, Wrench—my own private spaceship hangar! I saw it from the outside and me and Wrench and ARF-80 hunted down where it was inside. And this is the shell of my own private spaceship!”

Compared to the main docking bay, this one was barely more than an open doorway farther up the tower. The hangar itself was tiny compared to the big bay, but stupid big compared to my bedroom. It contained all the junk ARF-80 and Wrench had helped me carry up on my quest to build a spaceship from scratch. Right now, I had the bottom half of a brass egg maybe twenty feet long, and some chairs and flooring I hadn’t installed yet.

I hoped this thing was recording pictures. I hoped it was recording at all. Scanning the amber block up and down the ship and then stepping onto the outside ledge for a look at Ceres, I crowed, “I’m still deciding what kind of engine to put in, but I just realized I need a backup solar sail. Try to remember that, Wrench. Now, take a look at this view—whoa. What is that?”

Chapter Ten

I let the recorder dangle in one hand and stared out into the eternal asteroid belt night. Something writhed out there. When it descended low and crossed over Ceres’s terrain, I made out the shape, like a jet-black sea star waggling its limbs as it gently flew into the Lighthouse’s docking bay. This was a spaceship, crazy even by spaceship standards.

I was not going to miss a second more of this than I had to. Without another word, I bolted through the secret door back into my bedroom, out into the hall, and slowed down just enough to peek into the elevator shaft. The elevator was nowhere near, or I’d have tried to jump the fence. Nope, down the central stairwell I galloped, with Wrench close behind.

We didn’t make it to the bay itself. For the first time I ran into the admitting hall, and found it crowded. Every Keeper in the Lighthouse and a couple of guests I didn’t know we had must be here.

They didn’t have repair crew privileges. Ducking and weaving, I threaded that labyrinth of humanity at high speed, and reached the stairs down into the bay when a hand grabbed the hood of my hoodie, yanking me up short.

The hand belonged to Miss Passionfruit and being seven feet tall gave her the strength and mass to act as an effective anchor. I still got a clear look at the action, such as it was.

Dragon Diyana and her smuggling ship were gone. The only ship in the bay was the new visitor, not especially big by spaceship standards, glistening black and lumpy. It was irregularly oval shaped, I thought. The tentacles made it hard to tell. They were thick, maybe ten or fifteen feet long, with flat ends. The thing looked a lot like an anemone, and the tentacles waved like they were stirred by an aquarium’s slow current.

Only Norman was left on the docks facing the new ship, and he looked stiff and terrified. He looked slightly less terrified as Wrench ran down the steps to stand next to him.

The lumpiness, the pulsation…that ship didn’t just look organic. A little awed, a little intimidated, and mostly grossed out, I said, “It really is made of flesh. I can’t repair that. I don’t want to touch it.”

“You are not getting anywhere near it. Wait,” ordered Miss Passionfruit, a colder calm than usual.

Something oozed out of the front of the ship. Exuded. Or maybe it just passed through the wall like mist, and that looked like being squirted out. It didn’t help that what emerged never stood still, and had no limbs, no way to tell what it was doing.

The new guest was…geometry. Shapes like I would see in a textbook, although complicated ones. Some ludicrously complicated, with surfaces like stars joined together which I would never have thought you could make with regular geometry. Each shape would last at most a minute, then soften and pulse out into a new form. Not all were hard and faceted. I recognized a klein bottle, and didn’t recognize a couple of other soft, dimpled things that must make math teachers excited. One looked a lot like a dandelion puffball, but in an obviously regular, repeating shape.

The glaring red, yellow, and blue colors did not improve the strangeness any. I got the impression the colors were not random and meant something about the facets they labeled. I was a creative writing nerd, not a math nerd.

Holding onto my hoodie like a metal clamp, Miss Passionfruit swept her gaze over the throng of her Keepers. Their murmuring went quiet as she instructed, “Alright. Most of you know this already. An Outsider is here to trade. Do not bring any math, any math at all, near it. Do not say and try not to think any numbers. Don’t say ‘more’ or ‘less.’ Don’t haggle. Try not to speak at all. Hold out an object that has emotional significance. It doesn’t matter what kind. The Outsider can’t tell the difference between love, hate, sadness, or anything else. If the object is taken out of your hands, the Outsider will give you nothing in return. Whether or not it does, you leave immediately.”

I patted my pants. I’d left my work belt on the table down there. I had nothing in my pockets. Out loud, I mumbled, “I left everything I care about behind. Do I have anything I’ve built up strong feelings about yet? I don’t think a bucket of grout counts.”

Much harder than usual, Miss Passionfruit said, “I told you, and I meant it. You are never going anywhere near a negative probability.”

What? Why me? There were only three things that set me apart. My ability to lie. They thought I’d stolen that book from the Witch Queen. And I was from Earth.

Alice went first. She walked calmly and silently down the steps on the opposite side of the bay, and stopped in front of the thing Miss Passionfruit called a negative probability. In her flat, upraised hands she held out a pen. That was a mighty small detail to see from this range, so I couldn’t be sure of exactly how the process went. The pen was there, then it was gone, and Alice walked down to the steps I stood at the top of, with nothing held in her cupped hands.

That’s all I could describe it as. Nothing. Trying to look at her hands, I couldn’t see them, just an impression of them, but I couldn’t see any holes in my vision either. Was something shimmering? It was a strange, uncomfortable sensation.

As she passed me and Miss Passionfruit, the nothing became something, a big bag of tea with a brand label on it. The bag was so big it weighed down her little arms.

So very serious, Alice answered my stare with, “Sometimes my mother would make the tea herself rather than let Cook do it, and she made this type. I am quite confident it no longer exists on Earth, and it never existed in space.”

Alice disappeared into the crowd, maybe to put her prize away safely. A slow procession with big gaps between Keepers followed Alice’s path, trading something, collecting nothing.

The fourth was Norman, who had gone to fetch an item before inserting himself in the queue. He held out a bottle to the Outsider.

It ignored him.

Slumping a little, Norman stepped back and turned toward the exit steps.

The Outsider went first, drifting at a casual walking pace toward the stairs.

This was not how it was supposed to go. Even if I hadn’t guessed that, it became clear in the next few seconds as everyone fled. No one screamed. No one actually ran. The crowd wasn’t big enough to jam. Everyone got out of the bay, out of the hall, and out of sight quickly and silently.

That left me, Miss Passionfruit, a cowering Norman, and Wrench who stood on the stone docks looking helpless. Miss Passionfruit’s face went tight and pale with fear, but she pushed me behind her as the geometry reached the foot of the stairs.

Which was when another spaceship pulled up to the pier. I was sure I’d never seen this one’s design, a long metal tube with cogs at the ends and a few pipes stuck out and paralleling it down the length. It turned, clicked a times, and let out a bell ring as the end popped open.

A photo negative of a goth girl leaped out.

That was the best way I could describe her. She was a teenager with the blackest skin I’d ever seen. Not a weird, inhuman color like Violet’s violet. This was an Earth skin color, a brown so deep it didn’t just look black, but slightly blue. She had shaved the left side of her head, and her snow-white hair was definitely not a color found on Earth, tied in thin braids and waterfalling down the right side of her head past her shoulders. She had on a white dress with ruffles, ribbons, poufs, and a fluffy miniskirt. White fishnet decorated black skin between the skirt and white boots with shiny steel caps and heels barely high enough to qualify as “high.” Black trimming around her short sleeves and the rim of her dress, a black eye of Horus on the center of her chest and a black ankh on either side of the skirt broke up the white a little.

The dress had seen better days, but they were long ago and hard to remember. It was ragged at the edges, torn in multiple places, and resewn badly in more. It had enough layers; nothing was actually revealed through the slashes.

“KEY!” shouted the goth. Something silver and fluid bounced out of the spaceship hatch, landing in the teenager’s outstretched right hand. The silvery blob changed into a key big enough to hold in a fist. Not running, but walking swiftly and with purpose, the goth caught up with the geometric monster starting to climb the stairs, stuck out the arm holding that key, and stepped into the pulsing shape.

Something inside clicked hollowly, like a lock unlocking. The Outsider pulsed backward, sucked into the silver key.

Other than that click, the teenager’s heels tapping on stone, and her one shout, none of this had made any sound at all.

The goth made a sound now, swiping the key in front of herself like a blade and snarling, “You idiots! The slightest mistake and that thing would have detonated. Instead of keeping away, you encouraged it so you could enjoy its gifts. I was looking forward to being sent here. I wanted to experience the wisdom of the Keepers. Instead you’re a bunch of selfish fools like any other adults.”

Miss Passionfruit descended the steps now to meet her, slowly and gracefully, one at a time. She neither looked nor sounded offended. Maybe even very slightly pleased. “I don’t think any of us claims our mystical wisdom reputation is deserved, and most of us would agree that we’re selfish fools. I am Miss Passionfruit, as close to a representative for the Lighthouse as exists. May I ask your name, and will you be staying as a guest?”

The key turned back into a silvery blob, which turned into a silvery squid about the size of a parrot which, like a parrot, scurried up the goth’s arm to cling to her shoulder. Behind her, the black, fleshy tentacle ship was steadily turning to dust and blowing away into space. It was half gone already.

The goth girl glared up at Miss Passionfruit defiantly, fists clenched in fingerless white lace gloves. “I am Ribbon, a bounty hunter of Charon.”

I had to correct myself. The hair and dress had made me define this person as a goth girl. Goth, definitely, but I’d jumped the gun at “girl.” The sleek, athletic figure in that dress showed no clear sign of being a boy or girl. The voice could be either.

Standing in front of and looming over the goth now, Miss Passionfruit nodded. “I am grateful for Pluto and Charon’s protection from the Outsiders, although you are free to see that as hypocritical. Now that you have dealt with your quarry, will you be staying with us awhile? We get very few visitors from the edges of the solar system. You may have arrived on a jarring note, but I’m sure we would love to have you as a guest.”

Ribbon didn’t budge an inch, physically, emotionally, or metaphorically. “My quarry is a girl using the pseudonym ‘Rachel.’ The Witch Queen has hired me to bring her back to Charon alive. What?”

That last word came confused, not angry. Wrench had crept up silently during this conversation, and now stood between Miss Passionfruit and Ribbon, reaching up a clumsy looking grey hand toward the silvery thing on Ribbon’s shoulder.

Ribbon’s frown turned unsure, worried, and the teenage bounty hunter took an awkward half step back. Still, Ribbon no longer sounded angry or made any move to actually stop Wrench. Ribbon only warned, “Key is pretty, but she’s dangerous. Be careful and don’t spook her.”

The squid reached out a couple of tentacles and pulled itself off Ribbon’s shoulder and onto Wrench’s wrist. Wrench took two slow steps out of the way, smiling at the wriggling little metallic creature.

Miss Passionfruit smiled fondly at the kobold and squid, then turned that smile to the goth. “We come to the Lighthouse to find who we are and where we belong. If you can convince her that she wants to go back to Charon with you, that will be her decision. In the meantime, you look like you could use some rest yourself. I suspect neutralizing an Outsider isn’t as easy as you make it look.”

Ribbon’s braids had started slipping over the teen’s androgynously oval face. Pushing them back, the bounty hunter smirked, and begrudgingly confessed, “You are hard to pick a fight with, rabbit.”

Miss Passionfruit shrugged just slightly, amicably amused. “Thank you. Please, come in. I will suggest Rachel meet you and talk to you about her future plans, but that is not up to me.”

Oh, right. My future plans. My future plans involving a bounty hunter from Charon began with getting very far away very quickly. I turned and ran for the stairwell as fast as I could.

Unfortunately, I’d been visible peeking around the doorway. I heard Ribbon shout, “Key!” again, and heels clacking on stone behind me. Very fast behind me. I got one flight of stairs up before a strong hand grabbed my wrist and yanked. The two of us went spinning to a stop out in the long, curved inner hallway of the guest floor.

Scared, confused, I acted on reflex, and did what comes most naturally. I told a ridiculous story. “Yes, you caught me. My actual name is Elizabeth Cursed. But I didn’t steal that book. I don’t even know where it came from. My family name isn’t an accident. We offended a completely different witch-queen centuries back, and now we absorb other people’s misfortune. Some guy with an eyepatch and a whip stole the book, or at least he was carrying the book when I was stowing away on a spaceship to get away from those Jupiter guys with no faces who…I don’t even know why they were after me. This thing comes swooping out of space to grab him, the whip guy, and all I can tell you about it is that it had a lot of wings. He dropped the book onto me as they flew away fighting, and I had it when I got here. The Witch-Queen can have it back if it’s hers. It means nothing to me.”

Ribbon stared at me expressionlessly through that long, nonsensical babble, and I got a good look at Ribbon back. Up close, I still couldn’t see even any good hints about whether Ribbon was a boy or a girl. What I could add to the description were piercings, a ridiculous number of piercings. Eyebrows, multiple ear piercings in studs and rings, a lip stud, two visible studs on the tongue when Ribbon talked—everything that could have a piercing did. Dull steel didn’t do much to break up the monochrome scheme, but Ribbon did have one splash of color. The bounty hunter’s irises were a deep, bloody crimson.

Ribbon slowly let go of my wrist, still staring at me with a stunned expression. I nervously gripped the broken amber block I was still carrying in both hands.

Agog, Ribbon whispered, “King in Yellow. I thought that stupid mouth golem she uses was exaggerating. There is no way I’m leaving you here.”

I backpedaled, hard, until my back hit one of the Lighthouse’s chilly stone walls. Clutching the block tighter and holding it up like a shield, I squeaked, “You can’t do violence on Ceres!”

“Key,” snarled Ribbon, barely above a whisper. The goth held up a hand, and the silvery squid lashed out with a telescoping whiplike tentacle, slicing over Ribbon’s fingertips. Blood as black as ink welled out, then darted up into long claws. As I stared at that, Ribbon stalked across the floor to me, reached up, and dragged those claws down the stone by my shoulder. They left furrows stained with black blood.

Red eyes stared fiercely into mine, and Ribbon said, almost hissed, “I can do whatever I set my mind to. I want you to come back with me willingly.”

The disconnect between those two sentences was so jarring, I stopped cowering, or at least cowered less as I raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “Not doing a solar system class job of that.”

The claws disappeared. Ribbon spun around, and like me, collapsed back against the wall. The goth dragged a hand down that sleek face, leaving a smear of blood that quickly disappeared, absorbed or evaporated. Ribbon was still glaring, but no longer at me, just up at the ceiling. The goth snarled in frustration. “I’ve been set up. That manipulative old hag. I hate when she does this.”

I just shook my head. “Getting more and more lost, here.”

The other teen pushed up off the wall again, mostly facing me now with a pained grimace and a tone whose exasperation was thankfully no longer at me. “You don’t know the Witch-Queen like I do. This isn’t the task she let me think she was sending me on.” A hand waved in awkward jerks. “Can we go for a walk outside? Do you have baths, or a sauna? I’m having a lot of revelations I need to process, and we need to talk.”

Eek. The idea of Ribbon and ARF-80 meeting out there scared me. The idea of Ribbon taking off that dress scared me more. Weakly, I suggested, “How about food? We have a magnificent cook.”

Besides, as scary as Ribbon was, I bet Magnificent Mario could fold, spindle, and mutilate the kid.

Ribbon nodded in relief. “That works. Lead on.”

Lacking in other options, I led on. We were almost there already.

Chapter Eleven

Every step toward the kitchen should have made me feel safer, but cold nervousness clenched my spine as we entered the dining room. So close. Violet had been unpredictable, but the one thing I’d been sure she wanted was to be my friend. Ribbon could do anything at any time, and if those claws made of blood came back and cut my head off, it would be no comfort to me what Mario did to Ribbon afterwards.

But despite my watching the goth out of the corner of my eye for the slightest extra twitch, we reached the doorway of the kitchen without violence. Mario was inside, stirring things frying in a big pan of oil. He jabbed them delicately and expertly with a big wooden spoon, surrounded by the smell of grease and onions. Did he ever leave, ever do anything else? Right now I was so, so glad he didn’t.

“Uh….” I said, showing off my natural genius with words.

Mario grabbed something off a plate next to him and flung it at us. The fist-sized brown ball flew through the air, to be skewered on one of Ribbon’s claws. Yes, those could come back at a moment’s notice.

Staring at the lump of fried food with a puzzled expression, Ribbon asked, “Hush puppies?” The teenager in the ragged white dress took a small bite, chewed, and swallowed. Red eyes turned back to Mario in cautious confusion. “I know this recipe. You’ve been to Dysnomia. This is how that goofy old man cooks them, and I smell the fish he fries.”

Quiet and still except for the hand stirring the pot, Mario regarded the goth with no identifiable expression under his mask. “Where are you from?”

“Charon,” answered Ribbon.

Mario’s lips pursed in disgust. “Pfui. I could see that with my eyes closed. Where were you born?”

Ribbon’s face hardened in defiance, but with no anger behind it. “Once Charon claims you, where you began no longer matters.”

Ribbon’s red eyes slid away from Mario’s face to the carved wooden stirring spoon, then down to the plates stacked up by the stove. The teen lifted a plate, drawing a fingertip over the blue silhouettes of squid running around the edge.

Face drifting into blankness, Ribbon left me behind and circled the kitchen. Mario and I just watched as the teen picked up pots and spoons, opened cupboards, finding and studying the engravings and inlays and painted decorations everywhere. This calm was another disturbingly sudden change of tone, for me, but the depth of Ribbon’s quiet pushed down my discomfort.

The far wall of the kitchen didn’t have the same cupboards as the front wall. When Ribbon passed the last refrigerator and pantry door to reach it, the goth held up a hand in front of Key wordlessly. The squid slashed that hand again, deeper this time. Blood ran down Ribbon’s hand, but the goth reached up and smeared that blood over the blank space of wall. Not randomly. Ribbon’s features traced out an arc, detailed scales, wings, feathers. The blood dripped, leaving behind blue and scarlet and gold, a picture far more detailed than Ribbon’s fingers painted. A twisty, serpentine blue dragon and golden phoenix held each other’s claws, fangs bared and beak open. At the back of the phoenix, the wings melded into another phoenix, or the same phoenix the other way, scratching at the dragon’s face. The body of the dragon ended in another head, with the phoenix and dragon locked tightly together. The story looped like this, until the fighting became an embrace, a kiss, heads pressed lovingly together, and finally the phoenix turned and flew away.

When Ribbon finished painting, Mario nodded. His normal gruff voice subdued, he gestured at the door and said, “Thank you. Go. Sit. I will show you true art, with food. It is the purpose of Ceres that we find ourselves, who we are and where we belong.”

Ribbon stalked proudly out of the kitchen, grabbing my wrist on the way past. The goth dragged me over to a table, yanked me down into a chair, then sat down opposite me.

“This is the part where you’re charming,” I told Ribbon suicidally. It just slipped out!

And yet I scored a hit. Ribbon stiffened, scowling not at me, but with self-reproach. White-poufed shoulders scrunched up, and white-braided head scrunched down. Not a lot, but discomfort stood out on that normally ferocious figure. “Charming isn’t what I’m good at. That devious old biddy set me up. I thought you were an enemy. She sends me to kill….” Ribbon propped elbows on table, and hands over a frustrated face. “I’m not doing this right. Let me start over.”

“Good plan.” I couldn’t control my sarcasm when I felt this lost.

Mario showed up, quiet as a ghost, and set down plates, a tray of yellow things that looked and smelled like fat yellow fish sticks surrounded by more hush puppies, several bowls of dipping sauces, two of what had to be his most elaborately engraved metal steins, and a pitcher of that frothy water stuff.

Ribbon was so all over the place, so unpredictable, so dangerous. If Mario weren’t here, I would be in a screaming panic. With him here, I was just skin crawlingly nervous.

“Do you know what Charon does?” Ribbon asked, sounding tired now.

“Art.” There. I’d restrained my sarcasm.

The face behind the hands shook, waggling just an inch from side to side. “No, that’s what we are. What we do is protect the rest of the solar system from Outsiders.”

Yet again caught off balance, I squeaked in disbelief. “Artists protect everyone else from monsters?”

Ribbon sat up again, face composed now. Composed, and growing intense, passionate about this. “Who better? We are blood, death, and rebirth. Darkness and light. Beauty and fashion. Pain and love. We take those things and make the universe better with them. We are vengeance and anger and protect innocence because we lost ours. Outsiders don’t understand any of the weapons we use against them.”

Leaning forward, Ribbon’s red eyes looked straight into mine again. “Weapons that you can wield. The solar system needs you.”

I gawked and ticked off two fingers. “Me? I’m good at telling stories and repairing spaceships.”

Ribbon kept staring, and red eyes are intimidating. Everything about Ribbon was intimidating, and even calm, Ribbon was passionately emphatic. “Do you know what that thing that attacked you was?”

I rocked back in my chair. “Attacked me? Isn’t that going a little far?”

“It was after you. That’s why it came here. Not to trade. For you.” Ribbon kept staring, and Key nodded in agreement with that unpleasant news.

Lost and scared again, I scrambled for something I knew. “Someone called it a negative probability, I think?”

Ribbon nodded solemnly. The aggressive glare stopped. Now Ribbon sounded almost sympathetic, or maybe that passion was just turned at the thought of the real enemy. “Yes. They are the worst kind of Outsider. They’re not just from outside the solar system. They’re from outside everything. Outsiders are evil like a solar flare is evil. They’re not cruel. Negative probabilities don’t think at all. They distort and corrupt thought. They eat space. They’re pulled to their death like magnets, and spray math when it happens, making what they touch never have existed at all.”

Impressed despite my confusion, I asked, “You stop those from getting into the solar system?”

Ribbon pointed a finger at the flat chest under the white bodice. “I’m learning to hunt down the ones that sneak in. People like the Witch-Queen stop them from getting in. People like you. That’s why she sent me to get you. She’s a powerful storyteller, but she’s human. She sees us as the next generation.”

Sighing, finally looking a little human too, Ribbon added, “And she’s right. Every time you speak it’s obvious that she’s right. We were meant for each other.”

I blinked, and said automatically, “Okay, that’s some solar system championship flirting, but I’m going to take a hard pass on that pass.”

Ribbon threw up white-gloved my hands, on defense for once. “Not like that! I’m not attracted to you, either. Although….” Ribbon’s expression changed. Lips pursed moodily. Red eyes looked past me in sour thought. Ribbon’s quiet voice matched both sourness and thought. “I can see it. Spending our adolescence fighting together, creating together, growing together, that changes relationships. When we’re adults and you come into your power and take your throne, we’ll be lovers for a while. I’ll be the father of your only child, but only as far as conception. She’ll be your daughter, your heir. That’s what witch queens do.”

Okay. Well. As a storyteller, I had to admit, Ribbon was right. That’s how a witch-queen’s story goes. It was still wildly creepy to hear that used to predict my own romantic future.

Also, had Ribbon just admitted being a boy? No. For someone with Ribbon’s abilities, on a world of art, that didn’t mean anything. It’s not like I could ask, either.

My stare snapped Ribbon back, and the goth threw up those gloved hands in discomfort again. “This isn’t about us! Or it is, but not like that. We have talent. We’re the next generation. The solar system needs protecting, and it’s our responsibility to protect it.”

In all this chaos, I knew one thing. “I can’t possibly be that important.”

Ribbon glared at me stubbornly, but at least it was normal teenager stubborn. One of those gloved fists smacked the tabletop. “You can. What can you do with your talents elsewhere? Here you fix people’s spaceships. You could be a bard on the dragon moons, a con artist on Saturn, write books about how great some lord is on Jupiter. On Charon you can be the power that creates and drives armies and navies against the evil trying to destroy all those people. My responsibility is to protect you, to be the sharp point of the planet-sized scythe you swing to cut down the Outsiders and save us all.”

Shuddering, Ribbon stuck out a twice studded tongue and rubbed the heels of their palms over their eyes. “And now I know the witch set me up. I don’t talk like that. Those have to be her words.” Scowling, the goth grabbed a hush puppy and stuffed the whole thing into their mouth.

As the conversation went on, Ribbon became less a warrior of light and darkness and more a human teenager, and it got easier for me to be honest back. “I can’t. I have friends. I have people who need me here, too.” I had parents and brothers I’d abandoned back on Earth.

Steel started to creep back into Ribbon’s stare. “You don’t have a choice.”

I’d recovered enough to meet that stare with one of my own. “You can’t make me want something.”

Ribbon’s hands pressed flat to the tabletop, and the goth rose a few inches, telling me, “I can’t. I know someone who can. We’re talented. Someday we’ll be the best. Right now, the Witch-Queen is a better storyteller than you are, and when I bring you to her she’ll rewrite your story and you won’t even know she’s doing it.”

As the terrified person in danger, I had to point out, “Assuming that’s what she wants me for. Are you sure? Are you really, really sure?”

That caught Ribbon. “I’m almost sure,” the goth answered, but that uncertain tone gave way immediately to a guilty expression. Ribbon didn’t want to hand me over to be executed.

To Ribbon and to that thought both, I said, “That’s so, so comforting.”

The silver squid on Ribbon’s shoulder leaned up to Ribbon’s ear and squeaked. Ribbon grimaced unhappily and stood the rest of the way up. Definitely haunted now, Ribbon looked down at the table in front of me and said, “You really don’t have a choice. There are more Outsiders on their way. You’re drawing them to you.”

“Why would they be after me!?” said the girl from Earth, who probably carried a little of the math plague with her.

Ribbon paused at that question, lips pursed, thinking about it. Eventually, Red eyes turned quizzically back to me. “A book. This all started over a book. You have talents you can’t explain. Is there something wrong with your memory? The history you think you have makes no sense? Things you think you know, important, basic things, everyone else acts like are wrong for no reason?”

“Like my name?” I squeaked.

“Exactly like that, ‘Rachel’.” The emphasis around my name wasn’t mocking, but grimly sympathetic.

And in another lightning shift, Ribbon leaned forward over the table. Surprisingly soft hands in rough lace clasped my cheeks, and Ribbon’s red eyes looked into mine with a touch of guilt that accompanied a pleading tone. “Look. Listen. I’m easier to get along with than this. When we’re partners it will be great, I promise. I just…I don’t fail when I’m given a task. I can’t let myself fail a responsibility, and my responsibility is to bring you back to Charon.”

“I understand what that’s like.” Really, really well.

Key squeaked again. Ribbon let go of my cheeks, fists clenching and face tight and unhappy as they stood up straight again. The bounty hunter goth’s voice regained that implacable determination it had started this conversation with. “But right this very moment, my responsibility is to keep you alive. Maybe the Outsiders created the weapon that will destroy them. They do that. For whatever reason, they’re pulled to you, and I am going to hunt them down and destroy them first. When you’re safe, I will come back, and I’m taking you to Charon.”

Braids flying, Ribbon spun around and marched out the door, taking with them the neat, safe little life and neat, safe little responsibilities I thought I’d found.

Chapter Twelve

A kobold, a malfunctioning cyborg teenager, and I held a jet engine in place on the back end of an oval spacecraft shell, while the cyborg used a glowing blue index finger to weld the engine in place. For all that Wrench and I heaved and strained, with one arm ARF-80 carried more of the weight than both of us.

What was different and important about this ship was that it was mine and we were building it from scratch. When ARF finished welding, we let go of the engine and I walked around to the hole in the side of the ship where a hatch would eventually be.

There wasn’t much inside. The only controls I’d built were the navigation system, and that wasn’t done. I had a star-studded plastic globe around the orrery I’d found the first day but hadn’t figured out how to hook them up yet. When I did, I was confident they would point me anywhere in the solar system.

In fact, the only thing properly installed inside was a jagged, brightly glowing crystal as big as me pierced by thin brass rods that held it in a ring frame near the back of the ship. Very careful not to touch the crystal or the rods, I reached back behind them and plugged wires one by one into the three jets we’d welded on.

Beside me, Wrench clasped her hands behind her back and rocked forward and backward on her big, triangular dino feet. With far too much sweetness to be believable, she asked, “So why the redesign?”

Withdrawing my arms to safety, I stared down at the shiny grey lizard with a perplexed frown. “Redesign? I’d barely started.”

She just grinned lots of short, blunt, unevenly spaced fangs. “You scammed that guy out of his whole engine so you could use it in your ship!”

Stung, I straightened up and shook a finger at her. “He’s happier with the paddlewheels. They’re slow, steady, and steam powered. Piloting a racing boat got him into an accident.”

Rocking forward and back even more dramatically, Wrench fixed her blue eyes on me and singsonged, “Ducking the question!”

Okay, yeah, but I hadn’t needed to. I looked around the RV-sized, pill-shaped ship, although there wasn’t much else to see yet but grey metal walls and floor. “I had an inspiration. Reliability. All these spaceship designs we’re studying are so different. I don’t think a ship from Mars would work on the Dragon Moons, or that a ship from the Dragon Moons could land on Callisto.”

Wrench slowed down the rocking, frowning in thought now. Discussing the serious business of spaceship repair, she barely squeaked at all. “Land, but not take off. It takes time for a planet’s nature to take hold.”

…which was how I got off Earth, by not stopping to decide if it was a good idea. At that, we’d escaped just barely ahead of vengeful math-driven physics.

Reaching up, I patted the ceiling of the ship, listening to the very faint metallic clonk. “Between rotors, jets, and wings, my ship will have everything covered. The metal of this shell should be spacecraft-worthy on Mars or Mab. Everybody has something like a power crystal. What kind of energy it produces may change, but anywhere I go it will work.”

Twisting to one side, whole body bent in an arc and eyes turned up to me again, Wrench chirped, “You’re in a big hurry to leave all of a sudden.”

Suddenly I understood why Wrench was safer when people thought she was a dumb kid. I felt skewered, especially since she deserved a direct answer and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead I said quietly, “Everybody seems to think Ribbon can’t hurt me on Ceres.”

Wrench clasped her hands behind her head, still looking up at me with that coy, girlish posture, while the farther half of her tail twitched from side to side. When she spoke, she sounded like a little girl, but also calm and detached. “That human isn’t cruel.”

I couldn’t argue. Wrench would be an expert about that.

Smiling and bouncing on her toes again, Wrench squeaked, “But I think this is the wrong conversation. ARF-80, would you like to practice some self-determination?”

The red-headed cyborg peeked in through the open door, smiling with eagerness. “Ooh, yes!”

Wrench grinned at her. “Pick up your master and carry her outside.”

“What!? Hey!” I shouted uselessly. ARF took hold of me by the biceps, lifted me three inches off the floor, and marched me out of the ship and out of my private docking bay, to the little ledge that stuck out of the side of the Lighthouse. I didn’t try to run, dodge, or fight because they all would have been useless.

Wrench stepped out with us and sat down on the edge of that ledge, her feet dangling over it. She patted the spot next to her, and ARF-80 set me down there.

The kobold propped her arms behind her. I folded mine under my chest but couldn’t sound anything but amused. “That wasn’t very far to kidnap me.”

“It’s not the distance, it’s that we did it. You work too hard. You need to take a break,” said Wrench.

Well…. “For a minute. It’s cold out here, but it’s pretty.”

It was cold out here, and it was pretty. Space might not be the deadly frozen vacuum we had all thought it was back on Earth, but it still felt like sitting out on the porch on a snowy winter day, with the chill slowly seeping into me. Beneath us stretched the grey rock and white ice sheets of Ceres’s surface, and ahead and above a gloriously multicolored wash of stars broken up by the dark shadows of asteroids.

As I admired the view, Wrench corrected me, “No, I mean a vacation.”

I shook my head hurriedly. “I can’t just walk away from my ship repair responsibilities. People come from all over now for my help.”

Wrench dropped the little-girl smile and the little-girl chirp entirely, replacing them with solemn concern and a searching stare. Not just concern. A little bit of anger, and not at me. “People from all over try to decide for you what you’re going to do. If they’re wrong, that’s their fault.”

Lost that she would even argue this, I tried to explain. “People need help. I can’t be selfish and do nothing.”

Sitting up straight, the little grey lizard woman pointed a stubby, claw-tipped finger at me. “You help plenty. All you do is repair ships, study repairing ships, teach me to repair ships, and build your own ship. I have a responsibility to take care of you, because I wanted that responsibility and chose it, not because you forced it on me. So, ARF-80 and I are going to force you to take a vacation.”

I looked out at the stars again, where Outsiders or Ribbon might be lurking, might even be on their way now, and mumbled noncommittally, “I’m not feeling vacationy.”

Wrench tilted her head, blue eyes staring up at me with both sympathy and a touch of scolding. “You’re not feeling safe. We’ll take you on a vacation where no one can find you.”

Knowing this was a set-up line, I asked, “Where?”

Wrench’s ditzy little girl enthusiasm returned as suddenly as it had gone, and she kicked her feet and squeaked excitedly, “Here! The Lighthouse is bigger than it looks.”

I looked up and down the white walls that went on and on and on like the tallest of skyscrapers. “It looks huge.”

Leaning back again, smiling, Wrench stared up at the sky and the pulsing glow of the slow-circling beacon just out of sight. “We’ll go exploring the upper levels. We’ll find the hidden rooms. We’ll find out what kind of places you like being, and let you do what relaxes you, which I bet involves drawing and stories, but at your own pace. I know how to get you food. An army can come looking for you if they want. They’ll never find you. You’ll be as safe as anyone in the solar system can be and take some time to relax.”

“I can’t—” I started but didn’t know how to finish. I sounded like I was begging, and maybe I was, for Wrench to find the words for me.

I was barking up the wrong tree there. She just replied smugly, “You can! We’ll force you to. While we’re at it, I’ll work out how that recording stone works, and send a message to your pirate friend. She wouldn’t be a good friend for me, but she takes you out of yourself like nothing else I’ve seen.”

ARF-80 had been standing above and behind us this whole time, and how much her broken partly computerized brain even understood I couldn’t guess. Now she extended an arm and pointed out into space.

I followed her finger with my gaze. I hadn’t been sure what to say, and ARF-80 had given me an excuse not to say anything. She was pointing at the tunnel out of the asteroid field, and for a second I got tense and nervous, but she also wasn’t going into combat mode. She didn’t think I was threatened.

Was that star moving? Was another spaceship headed to the Lighthouse?

Wrench looked up at ARF-80 and giggled her most girlish giggle. “Isn’t that just like an air pirate? Speak of her and she shows up. I guess we’re lucky she didn’t crash right into your bedroom. We should go downstairs so she doesn’t have the excuse.”

That was Violet’s ship? Wrench must have better eyes than me, and ARF-80 certainly did. Violet was on her way! I laughed, suddenly giddy. “Yes, Violet would love to do that.”

Wrench scowled sourly for a moment. “This is another reason to take you on vacation. This landing bay is super convenient, but it also means you see everyone arrive who wants you to work for them. They might as well put a servant’s bell next to your bed.”

I ignored that, leaping to my feet to race back to my bedroom and out into the hall. Violet was here, and in Violent Violet’s presence Violent Violet was the worst danger I had to worry about.

Wrench caught up with me at the stairs. ARF-80 could match my best sprint in her sleep, literally. We scrambled down and down and down the spiraling steps to what I thought of as the main level and rushed out to the docking bay. The only people we passed on the way were Alice in her chair, and Wilma holding up a book and talking animatedly to a guest, a young man who watched her with the dizzy eyes and smile of a major crush.

As we raced across the dock toward the familiar pirate frigate (I’d found a list of boat-shaped Saturn airships), a woman with vibrant blue hair under a huge triangular hat hopped off the boat. Pirate Queen Bluehair greeted me with her right hand on her hip and her left waving in a wide arc. “Greetings, youngsters. My apologies, but this is purely a business visit. Violet wore me down and convinced me to seek you out to upgrade my vessel.”

“Where is she?” I asked, stretching up on my tiptoes to see better over the railing of the ship.

Bluehair moved both hands on her hips, tilted those hips far to one side, and smiled down at me in bittersweet apology, “Practicing her knots. I’m hoping. I did not bring her here to play with you. You’ll see each other soon enough, be sure. If she was right about what you can do for me, you’ll see her even sooner.”

Next to me and about chest level, Wrench scowled. I put a hand on her scratchy plastic wig and gave it a ruffle. Barely above a whisper, quiet enough that squeak or adult voice was moot, she murmured, “A vacation you put off until later is a vacation you never have.”

As if she hadn’t said it, I instructed my little girl kobold assistant, “Get the paper and pencils. Let’s start sketching.”

Disapprove or not, she headed for the workbench with a skip in her step. She loved this job more than I did.

Bluehair frowned down at us in puzzlement. Fortunately, the question she asked was, “Why do you want to draw my ship? It’s right in front of you.”

I told a boring lie. “It helps us plan.” Was that even technically a lie? It did help us plan, but that had nothing to do with why we drew sketches of the ships we worked on before and after repairs. I didn’t want to explain that I was positive art was the secret to my talents, because I knew what a functioning ship should look like. Art was all about learning to see what was important, much more than the dexterity to copy that down. The way people expected me to be a genius, I needed to constantly practice and grow my skills. Wrench needed to learn from scratch.

Admittedly, I hardly needed it here. Looking over the ship that was faithfully boat-shaped except for the sails on the side and underneath and the assembly of glowing lift tanks on movable arms at the back, I asked, “Do you have small, fast, one-man fighter planes on Saturn?” Those weren’t in my spaceship books, but they had to exist. They were so air pirate-y.

“We do, and they’d be useful, but there is no room on or in the ship,” said Bluehair skeptically.

I pointed at the keel. “There’s room underneath. Your ship floats. We could attach up to four little planes with trapdoors to access them. The downside would be drag. Each plane makes you slower and less maneuverable.” That wouldn’t be due to the same drag as on Earth, but I was confident it was true.

The Pirate Queen scrunched up her nose in disgust. “Then definitely not. I need my speed, and maneuverability is my worst problem already.”

“That’s right. Violet said you turn slowly. That’s a big deal with side mounted weapons.” Tapping my chin, I regarded the huge, sailing ship type sails on multiple masts. They did look clumsy.

Bluehair still looked down on me, literally and metaphorically, entirely unconvinced. “And you think you can do something about it?”

Hmmm. The rudder at the back and whatever side thrust the lift tanks gave were probably at their limits already.

Side thrust….

Hot glee bubbled up in me. I had it! “Wrench, come here!” I shouted, racing around to the gang plank, and then racing some more up the ship’s stairs to the captain’s wheel on the poop deck.

Arms full of drawing supplies, Wrench still caught up with me in seconds. Tilting this way and that, I studied the wheel. Yeeeees. Oh, yes. The ship was so very much like old sailing ships back on Earth, or at least the way I imagined them. Shiny wooden floors, ropes tied to things everywhere, and this wheel, a classic wagon wheel except its spokes poked out of the rim as handles. The wooden stand it connected to showed off the gears but was otherwise normal.

Rotary whatever probably meant nothing on Saturn, but Saturn tech was exciting and dramatic, right? And cannons push. I asked out loud, “These are projectile firing cannons?”

Bluehair had also caught up with me, and now less skeptical and more curious answered, “The ones below deck. The guns on deck are harpoons. I would rather board ships than sink them, but when a real fight comes to me, I need to be ready to win.”

That was what I needed to know. Looking down again, I explained to Wrench, “Like in that Jupiter guy’s rocket, we’ll put detectors here. When the wheel turns all the way, they’ll go off, and fire a front cannon on one side, and a rear cannon on the other. The ship will spin right around, and when an enemy ship thinks they’ve outmaneuvered her, she’ll have them back where she wants them again.”

“Wired or unwired?” squeaked my earnest assistant.

Always an important question when matching technology. I rolled the question around in my head and out loud. “Wires don’t seem very Saturn. Swing the wheel hard enough and something happens elsewhere looks right. Oh, wait! I have an even better idea!”

I took off down the stairs, and then down the next set of stairs, down into the first level under the main deck. As I expected, all the cannons were lined up against the walls. They looked very classic, black and round, but a complicated system of steam pipes and gears in the back that would arm them, and most importantly an obvious flintlock style trigger on top. “Perfect!” I squealed, as childlike as Wrench.

Running back up to the wheel, I asked Bluehair in a rush, “I need four pistols!” Then to Wrench, “Brass tubes. Lots of brass tubes. We’ll rig the buttons to the pistols. The pistols fire down the tubes. The tubes run to the ignition of the cannons. That is Saturn tech in all its glory.” Up at Bluehair again. “As a bonus, you’ll be able to fire those cannons by yourself while steering just by reaching down and pulling the trigger. That’s the kind of surprise a pirate likes to have available.”

Skepticism replaced by a stunned stare and raised blue eyebrows, Bluehair admitted, “Indeed it is.” Even she could see this plan would work.

It didn’t take terribly long. Wrench and I worked with the speed of passion, and we had plenty of pipe to stretch down the wheel shaft and along the walls of the cannon deck to the front and back cannons. ARF-80 was useful for welding pipes together and could push bolts into the wood of the outer hole with her finger. There weren’t any crewmen to get in our way. The ship was nearly abandoned this time, without even the skeleton crew Bluehair had brought before.

Scampering back upstairs, we lined up in front of Bluehair and I pushed my hair back along my head. It had grown mussed and a touch matted with sweat. We’d worked in a joyous frenzy. Dutifully, I reported, “Your upgrade should be complete. We’ll have to pull out of the docking bay to test it, what with the firing cannons into the walls thing.”

Bluehair nodded, took hold of the wheel, and pulled a couple of levers. Wrench and I hurried over to the railing to lean over and watch how the lift tanks worked. The sails were all furled, and wouldn’t back us up, after all. Down along the sides of the ship, the gantry arms swiveled the tanks sideways, and lined them up like stairsteps. Was that part important? I’d better remember it just in case. For all everyone thought I was a genius and believed my “academy graduate” story, there was still so much to learn.

Soon we were out in chilly space. The deck of the ship gave us protection enough to breathe easily and my hoodie was enough to handle the cold, but a coat would have been nice.

A shiver ran up my spine as we got farther from the towering white Lighthouse, and farther. When I was absolutely sure we wouldn’t hit the building, I gave in to my excitement and shouted, “Okay, try it!”

Bluehair spun the captain’s wheel hard. For a second the ship began to creep around to the right, and then the wheel hit the limit of how far it would turn.

Boom!

I had to grab the railing in both arms, laughing and watching the stars spin around as the ship flipped around to face away from the Lighthouse. I liked repairing spacecraft, but I was particularly proud of this job.

Staggering back upright, I grabbed Wrench under her armpits with both hands, hoisted her up into the air, tossed her up a few inches and caught her again. Only a few inches, and I strained to do it. Wrench was pretty heavy! “It works!” I crowed.

And then a sack went over my head, and over the rest of me. A big, rough, burlap sack. I yelped and looked down in reflex. As the sack went down my legs I saw purple hands holding the edges, and legs clad in my familiar stolen jeans.

Chapter Thirteen

Being cooped up in a sack is not a lot of fun, and it went on for what felt like forever. I tried some struggling at first. Like a fool I’d left Wrench carrying all my tools, and I couldn’t cut the sack open. No amount of kicking or twisting opened the knot. Lurching around inside the sack I found walls so close that I was probably in a closet, and a wall that had slightly more give and must be a door. Bashing my shoulder against it produced no result.

Neither did yelling, “Violet, you—” because the only thing I could think to end with was “pirate,” and she was proud of that.

Exhausted, irritated, and increasingly bored, I curled up on a hard wooden floor and fell asleep.

I woke up when someone grabbed the sack and dragged it across the floor and out of the closet. When that stopped, the same person—or someone else, who knows?—fiddled with the knot. Then abruptly, even violently, the sack was yanked off over my head.

Violent Violet grinned down at me in a purple way. Flinging her arms out to either side, she trilled, “Ta-daaaaa!”

We were in a long, wide, but low room filled with pipes, boilers, clockwork, and cannons. After a groggy second I identified that as the gun deck of Pirate Queen Bluehair’s ship, where I’d made alterations. Violet was still wearing my jeans, but with one of those loose pirate blouses and a tri-pointed hat. And her gun and sword belts, of course.

Wrench and ARF-80 stood next to her. The former swooped down on me, fussing with my hair, checking me for bruises, but not saying anything. Yes, Wrench, I knew you didn’t try to save me because you couldn’t.

ARF-80 just stared at the ceiling with a vaguely confused expression, poor thing.

The rest of me had woken up, but my legs had gone to sleep. I climbed slowly to my feet to make sure the pins and needles effect didn’t trip me up. As I did, I asked Violet, “Are you expecting me to be grateful? Look at you. You are actually expecting me to be grateful. I’m giving you the look that I’m giving you right now and you still expect me to be grateful.”

Propping her fists on her hips, chest puffed out with pride, smile wide and smug and chin raised, Violet answered, “I saved your life!”

My sarcasm only thickened. “Saved—” A sudden, more important question diverted me. “Wait, where are we?”

“Come look!” crowed Violet, dancing gleefully over to the upward stairs.

I followed her up to the main deck, where rigging creaked and a vast expanse of emptiness decorated with uncountable stars ringed the lonely ship. It was cold up here, too. This was just not a ship designed for space.

One hand on her hip, still beaming with pride, Violet flung out an arm ahead of us. “We’re getting near Jupiter!”

I could see that. Jupiter hung in the sky ahead of us and off to the left. It looked like the moon did from Earth, but with brownish stripes instead of craters. Looking back, I spotted the tiny, pulsing light of the Lighthouse.

Everywhere in-between was a wash of stars, and the purple and crimson stripe of the Milky Way. The beauty of the view struck me all over again. On a boat out in the middle of it was even more breathtaking than looking through the docking bay doors, or the windows of Peter Pumpernickle’s makeshift spaceship.

But I had a lot of anger to deal with before I could really enjoy the view. I glared ferociously at Violet and snarled, “I was safe on Ceres!”

Violet gave me her own skeptical smirk. Strolling past me with a stiff, theatrical hurry, she went to the back of the ship, and through one of the little doors under the raised rear deck. Up on top of that, Bluehair stood at the ship’s wheel, one fist on her hip and the other controlling our course. A couple of seconds later, Violet returned, storming up to me and holding up her half of the amber recording block. With an entirely smug smile, the teenage pirate poked it with her finger.

“You can’t do violence on Ceres!” it squealed in my voice, which definitely did not sound like it believed what it was saying.

“I can do whatever I set my mind—” it growled in Ribbon’s voice.

It skipped, to fragments of Ribbon’s voice. “…she sent me to kill…when I bring you to her she’ll rewrite your story and you won’t even know she’s doing it. You really don’t have a choice. There are more Outsiders on their way.”

And my voice again. “Why would they be after me?” in a squeak of terror.

Ah, right. The block recorded when I squeezed it, which I’d done every time Ribbon particularly scared me.

Still, that left out the important point. I folded my arms and resumed glaring at Violet. “But as long as I stayed on Ceres, I was safe.”

Violet looked a little less smug, but only so she could look honestly concerned instead. She tapped herself in the middle of her chest. “You weren’t safe from me. You’re better off relying on a crew full of pirates to protect you than any planet’s mystical reputation.”

I was so overloaded. I’d been bored for hours, and now I had so much to say, I couldn’t get enough of it out at once.

Wrench and ARF-80 had followed us up to the deck, of course. Grabbing one of the things on my mind at random, I asked the cyborg, “First, why did you let her kidnap me?”

“You told me to,” she answered simply, eyebrows lifted in surprise I didn’t remember.

And she was right. I had told her to let Violet kidnap me. Sort of. That question mostly answered, I switched tracks and my attention back to Violet. “Second, I don’t see any pirate crew. Where is everyone? It’s just you and your mother.”

The door Violet had just used opened, and out walked a rat. A human sized rat. Maybe a little short for a human, but not super short. Definitely over five feet. It had longer legs than a rat, and shorter legs than a human, and enough human shape to wear pirate breeches and blouse. No shoes even tried to cover its splayed pink rat feet, or the long, fat tail dragging behind it, so unlike Wrench’s perky, mobile tail. Its knife and one pistol looked practically pacifistic compared to Violet and Bluehair, but it did carry a sextant and a bunch of maps.

As it climbed the steep stairs up to the steering deck, Violet pointed a finger at it. “And him. That’s Cheese, our navigator. Yeah, I know, he’s a rat. I told you, Mom says to treat rats and kobolds like people, and she’s right. He’s good.”

Standing next to Bluehair now, the rat peered at Jupiter through his sextant, then pointed. The ship swayed as Bluehair changed course slightly.

Grinning back at me again, Violet explained, “The rest of the crew is on Leda, and we’re on our way to pick them up.”

“Why…?” I asked, hoping my vagueness would cover everything.

Violet shrugged. “Mom thought you’d be scared and it would be harder to kidnap you if we arrived with a real crew, and also, they were all arrested.”

Chapter Fourteen

We set down on a little moon, about the size of Ceres but with dark and pretty rock formations and little conifers instead of ice. As we lowered onto a waiting landing pad, I pulled a handle way down its notched wooden board, then turned a crank. A very stiff crank, but I was strong enough to manage. Outside the boat, crystals slowly were dragged close by scaffolding and turned vertical.

Violet did the same on the opposite side of the rear deck, but with a lot less effort. Bluehair stood at the wheel and out on the main deck, Cheese and ARF-80 messed with sails.

This was one of those times that reminded me I didn’t know how these ships worked. I only knew how to usefully fake it for repairs. Also, this ship was meant for way more crew.

Around the pad, walling it in, stood a shiny golden wall, with several other shiny gold buildings outside it. Those were mostly domed, pointed, or arched, with lots of columns and bas-reliefs that reminded me of temples of every religion you could name. Mixed among them were completely different buildings mostly made of logs, but with carved shutters, engraved posts, that sort of thing. It was a lovely, comfortable little world, except for the lovely, cold metal additions.

Violet crossed the wooden deck to me. I held out a hand to stop her, demanding, “Tell me where we are, and what’s going on. Not just the name of the moon. What is this place?”

Bluehair answered me instead, in the classic tones of a mother instructing a child. “It’s more about what it was. The last time we visited, this was a charming little hot springs moon, with good inns and great drinks and a perfect place for the crew to wait while Violet proved to me that you’re as good as she thinks and worth kidnapping. Now, it is a fort owned by some tinpot emperor from Jupiter who wishes to claim his dominion is interplanetary—or whatever it is makes him feel big when he waxes his beard in the mirror.”

Uh, an emperor?

Violet saw my expression and smirked back at Bluehair. “By the many moons, she’s never been to Jupiter.” We were sort of in public now, so she was drifting back to pirate princess speech.

Bluehair understood. One hand on her hip, one on a spoke of the steering wheel, she tossed her blue hair and sneered. “There are a hundred emperors on Jupiter, Rachel, all of them convinced they’re the most powerful man in the solar system.”

Switching to maternal good cheer, she walked up, took us each by the shoulder, and pushed us down the stairs. “Good luck, kids!”

Not just down the stairs, but all the way to the gang plank and down that to the gravel surface of the moon.

Even less certain than before, I looked around at the gaudy and, yes, imperious wall around the landing pad, with its one gate leading to a cluster of temple-ish metal imperial buildings. The gate went right through one of those buildings, with a guard watching from either side. The guards wore red bodysuits with round gold helmets and shoulder plates and a few other gold ornaments, like thigh guards. Their uniforms looked like football costumes more than armor. Their shiny black staffs with the glowing blue blades on the end looked more than dangerous enough to make up for their outfits.

So, um. Was having the right look still important? “Combat armor, ARF-80,” I whispered.

As I’d hoped, she murmured robotically, “Entering guard mode,” and the white, plastic-looking armor plates closed over her normal rusty green metal, completely hiding her face and hair.

Okay, that looked right, and if Violet’s mysterious plan messed up, hopefully ARF-80 could save me before her system crashed.

I turned my head to ask Violet what that plan was. Before I could, she planted both hands in the middle of my back and pushed me up to the window where one of the guards watched us. “Do your thing!” she told me with no small amount of glee.

Having only two things to choose from, I made up a ridiculous story. “Oh, hi. Are all of you standing under roofs? Because we sent a message on the sacred solar beam ahead, that you might prepare offerings for our arrival. He Who Orbits Closest, emperor of emperors, sent us from the blazing palace closer even than Mercury to the pure fires of the sun. By his order, we are to retrieve the prisoners you have collected here. Praise be to his purpose, more wise than we can know!”

The guard wasn’t buying it. His friend on the other side of the gate wasn’t buying it. They just stared at me, baffled.

So, I made up another ridiculous story. “Your reverent silence is pleasing to his perfection, but you should kneel before me. I am the Envoy of Nooks and Crannies, who handles He Who Orbits Closest’s pirate-related affairs. Both law and crime are servants of his omnipresent rule. Bring me the prisoners immediately, and with them the sacrifices you had better have prepared. The solar beam we sent ordered you to prepare a fine white bullock, and snow-angels from the solitary Mountain of Joy on Pluto.”

They stared some more. Hesitantly, the guard on the opposite side stammered, “I don’t….”

I didn’t let him finish. Slapping both hands over my eyes, I thundered, “Cretins! Did you not prepare? Move swiftly! Bring out your prisoners, because the Solar Phoenix even now wings through the void, turning black space to a burning lane that reduces all that is less than pure to molecular ash. Without sacrifices, he will annihilate this world, which includes your prison, your little guard shacks, and you personally. Your only hope is my intercession, and I don’t feel like it unless you hurry up and bring me those pirates the emperor of emperors desires!”

The guards shuffled a little. Maybe one of them pressed a button, because at least a dozen more guards showed up behind the gate, and six of them stuffed themselves into the same tiny gatehouse room as the first guard so they could all give me the same bewildered stare.

I growled, and stomped around in a circle, flailing my arms. “Do you not get this? Hello? Solar Phoenix! You know, the one Dragon Planet itself is afraid of? The reason why we have an asteroid belt? It lives in its own palace within the sun, and He Who Orbits Closest controls it with peaches from the one perfect tree that all others are a crude reflection of? Don’t they tell you the story about how he won it from the Eclipse Beast in Jupiter School, or whatever your lesser emperor makes Jupiter children attend? His merest word telling me to fetch these pirates fills it with joy, and it flies here itself. At least three comets and their miniature civilization of Outsiders in funny red hats have been annihilated already. Do you want the Bubbling Curse to spill out of the sun, creeping its way planet by planet and wiping out all life from Mercury to Eris? You do, don’t you? That’s what I’m seeing in your face. Not that you’ll be alive to see it, thanks to the whole Solar Phoenix thing. Look, just go get the prisoners, okay? This is clearly above your pay grade. No wonder your emperor didn’t bother to tell you we were coming.”

That was a particularly long speech, but it had to be, because toward the end Bluehair and a whole crowd of half-dressed pirates came sneaking up behind the gate guards, many of them holding the same staffs the guards had. The pirates were more than happy to apply glowing spearheads to guards by surprise. Each stab resulted in a rhythmic buzz and blue light flashing around the victim, who first went stiff and contorted, then collapsed.

In a few seconds, all the guards were on the ground. The ones in the shack had been so tightly packed they shocked each other when they tried to fight.

I stared at the carnage as Bluehair unlocked the gate and her pirates swarmed to freedom. Some of them were pulling more clothes on. All of them carried some kind of loot, boxes and statues and weapons and stuff I couldn’t identify.

Unable to stop staring at a prostrate guard, I asked weakly, “Did that really work?”

Bluehair gave my and Rachel’s heads both a pat, and me an amused smirk. “Where are you from that they don’t respect good storytelling? Although I’m not sure what I heard counts.”

Beaming as if she’d saved the day herself, fists on her hips and chest thrust forward in pride again, Violet declared, “Wet beard of Titan’s titans, it’s more like a bomb made out of storytelling.”

Bouncing on her tiptoes, Wrench tugged on Bluehair’s sleeve and squeaked, “She’s from the Moon.”

The pirate queen’s smirk turned into a troubled frown. “Oh. I do hear just being near the Earth makes that place depressing. I keep myself and my crew far away.”

Everyone flooded onto the ship, and I was caught up in the rush like a stick in a white-water river. The pirates knew what they were doing and there were many more of them, so the several minutes of struggling to land became at most thirty seconds of preparations before the ship rose into space and sailed away from Leda.

There were also enough pirates for one of them to be leaning over the railing and shout, “Ya missed one of the guns!”

From below the ship I heard a distant, wobbly whistle. Suddenly, ARF-80 lurched in front of me, hands outstretched. A shiny, hexagonal force field formed in front of her, held in that direction and tilted down.

Up at the captain’s wheel, Bluehair crouched forward, grabbing the pistols fixed to its sides. As the whistle turned into a single, sharp blast, she pulled two.

The ship lurched, and I didn’t fall only because Wrench grabbed me on one side, and Violet on the other. None of my friends had any problem staying upright, even though half the pirates were thrown to the deck as the ship jolted sideways.

A blue beam flashed past the boat, missing us completely.

Bluehair laughed, her voice ringing out. “You only get one shot, lads!”

She was right. Leda was rapidly turning into a distant, tiny ball behind us. When another blue beam struck out from the moon, it got nowhere near our ship.

That seemed to be a signal. A cheer broke out among the pirates, followed by laughter. They ran around, clapping each other on the back and talking in a babble. One got out a harmonica, and two more pulled up a crate and a barrel to sit on, then an accordion and a theremin to play. Wheezy, wobbly, but undeniably jolly music broke over the conversation. Two men even started dancing, hopping about opposite each other with drawn daggers that slapped against each other in ducking, darting rhythm. They were clearly showing off and got some appreciative whistles and claps.

A short pirate with a gigantic mustache clapped Violet on the shoulder, and asked her, “Be this your friend who provided the distraction?”

Again, Violet trembled with glee as if she were bragging about her own success. She definitely bragged. “Mercury’s roasting sands, you should have heard her. It was like listening to someone touched by Outsiders. She went on and on, dragging you into a penumbral vortex of words that made sense and no sense at the same time, and the fool guards were frozen like they were trapped in elephant bee saliva. All they could do was listen. She was amazing!”

Maybe Violet should ease up on the pirate oaths? But the mustache man seemed to like it and slapped her shoulder jovially again. “Well, thank you both, for if you’d been an hour later, I’d have been shipped to the thulium mines.”

A woman with leathery skin and a bent nose probably related to the huge scar across her face stopped next to us and leered. “I saw the schedule. Lie Jie was to be a palace slave in a loincloth.”

The youngest and certainly most slenderly handsome pirate I could see smirked back at her. “And you were scheduled to be sacrificed to the gods of Europa.”

Pirates all around us laughed as if this was the funniest thing they’d heard in a year.

“Food up!” shouted someone.

“Woo!” shouted someone.

“Arrr!” shouted one pirate.

“ARRR!” broke out the entire crew in chorus.

“What be we eatin’?” called out the scar faced woman.

On the other side of the crowd, the voice shouted back, “This be a celebration, so I’m breaking out something special. Hard tack!”

The pirate grew laughed hysterically again.

Which reminded me. I put a hand to my stomach. “I am starving. Someone who stole my pants also didn’t feed me while she kept me tied up in a bag.”

Violent Violet screwed up her button nose. Now that I knew her enough to see past the purple, she had a more “adorable child” face than anything else. It so much did not match her aggressive personality. Right now, that spat disgust with every word. “You’d be better off waiting until we got to Saturn, but here you go.”

Grabbing me by the collar of my hoodie, Violet dragged me through the crowd. No one objected to us cutting in line as we marched up to three pirates stationed by a crate, a barrel, and a bubbling pot.

Not waiting for the server, Violet pulled three square, white blocks out of the crate and handed one each to me, Wrench, and ARF-80.

“Finally, toast!” ARF-80 sighed in ecstasy, stuffed the block into her mouth, and chewed away at it with an audible grinding noise.

I took a bite out of mine cautiously. When that failed, I took a bite out of mine aggressively. My teeth wouldn’t go through it. The block was about half the size of my hand, and a little thicker, and only a floury taste and slightly more give on the surface told me it wasn’t a brick. It was both that hard and that heavy.

Wrench wasn’t having a lot of success biting off bits either, but she chewed at it anyway with childish enthusiasm and flashing fangs.

This was a trick, of course. I had barely had the thought when a glance told me the solution. Pirates were lined up at the cauldron, dunking their hard tack into something that smelled rich and greasy. Well, I was a VIP, apparently. I took two steps and dipped my block deep.

Cheese. The pot contained wet, gooey, melted cheese, and the oils seeped visibly into the hard tack, swelling and softening it.

I gave that a few more seconds to do its job and took a bite. Not bad! Still pretty chewy, but tasty enough. Not bad at all, really.

Violet watched me with her evil grin, hand on her hip, other hip tilted out, in the pose she copied from her mother. Slyly, she asked, “So, how many meals of this in a row until you never want to eat it ever again?”

I considered that, and answered honestly, “About five.”

The three serving pirates lost their patience with Violet’s games, and pushed a hard brown fruit and a mug of purple orange juice into my hand. The smell of orange juice was unmistakable, no matter the color. A squeeze of the fruit cracked it open to reveal white pulp inside.

I ate and drank, and while I did I let Violet grab my elbow and drag me out of the crowd. As soon as we could see clearly, Violet crowed, “Hey, is that a giant space squid?” and swerved, pulling me up to the ship’s prow.

She was telling the truth. This squid was a vivid, pastel green, and we sat at the railing with our legs dangling off the edge of the ship watching it swim past through the void. That took a couple of minutes. It was regularly squid shaped, but enormous, maybe as long as the moon we’d just left.

ARF-80 and Wrench followed us up, of course. While Violet and I admired the huge, writhing column of tentacles swimming past, ARF-80 asked with perplexed impatience, “So, now what?”

Violet kicked one leg out at space. “Next stop, Saturn, where my best friend Rachel will be safe from everyone but me!”

ARF-80 turned her head, then twisted her shoulders, looking around. “I don’t see it.”

I winced, and told her gently, “We have to sail there. It takes time. Sit down and watch the squid with us.”

Inside my head, I sighed. Magnificent Mario had been right. The idea of travel time, of anything happening between fights and meals still confused ARF-80. Mars must be so, so much chaos.

The squid was cool, but a quiet cool. Space was physically, unpleasantly cool. I put up with the chill, even the shivers. It was pretty out there, and who knew what else we might see? The solar system was full of beautiful oddities like that squid, and like the ship I was on.

Eventually I yawned. Violent Violet pounced on that, and on me. Before the yawn was done she had leaped to her feet and grabbed me under my arms, barking eagerly, “Bedtime!”

Oh, no. Nope. So much no. The teddy bear treatment was not happening again. I had a way to ensure that. As we reached the stairs down into the hold, I shouted, “ARF-80, help!”

She had fallen asleep, but at my call ran, turned a cartwheel, leaped into the air, did two flips over the crowd, and landed next to me and Violet. “Defending owner,” she announced robotically. She grabbed each of us by the neck and pulled us apart. Violet she lifted a couple of inches into the air.

Violet barely grimaced. Calmly pulling a dagger out of her belt, she stabbed it into one of the plate joints at ARF-80’s elbow. It stuck, and ARF-80’s arm shivered, dropping Violet to the floor.

That was all the good that attack did. A second later the knife snapped, and ARF-80 flexed her hand experimentally, watching it to make sure it was okay. But Violet was on her feet again, at least.

With airy and downright piratical smugness, I declared, “By the authority vested in me by having a Martian cyborg war machine bodyguard, I hereby declare I’ll be sleeping alone.”

Violet shrugged, undaunted. “You can have a hammock if you want, but I’ve got an actual bed, as comfortable as the eternally fresh grass of Neptune.”

There weren’t just cabins below the steering deck on the surface level. The wall extended down into the cannon level and had its own pair of doors. Teasingly, Violet opened one, and sure enough I saw a pleasantly cluttered room and a small but thickly mattressed and pillow-covered bed.

Yes, I was so super tempted to share that tiny bed with Violet and be twisted into a pretzel. Uh-huh. Totally going to happen never.

But the bed by itself….

Prancing down the stairs and into her room, I gave Violet a sweet smile. “That does sound good. ARF-80, keep her out.”

ARF-80 shouldered past Violet, not roughly but just with the unstoppability of several hundred pounds of Martian steel. Standing in the doorway, she faced out, body at attention but face watching Violet alertly.

Pirates had drifted up. Some had been hanging around sitting on cannons and eating anyway. They all laughed.

Violet’s lazy, evil smile never wavered. On the contrary, she sounded so, so evilly satisfied as she said, “Sweet dreams, ‘Rachel.’”

Pirate Queen Bluehair stomped down the stairs into the hold, barking at her daughter, “Pirate Princess Violent Violet! Whatever you are planning, don’t. I think she has earned this.”

Violet’s shoulders bunched up, and her mouth twisted into a scowl. Or rather, started to. Before the smirk completely disappeared she relaxed, settling into a wry smile. “Yeah, she did.”

Looking past the still watchful ARF-80, Violet held her hand out to me.

I took it, shook, and leaned over ARF-80’s shoulder to whisper nose-to-nose with Violet, “I want my pants back.”

She took a step back, hooking her thumbs into the waistband of the jeans. “Nnnnnnope!”

I flashed her a grin, slammed the door on her, and jumped into bed.

Chapter Fifteen

Mmmm, beautiful, uninterrupted sleep on a fluffy mattress under a mountain of pillows. Violet’s cabin had a soft lantern hanging from the ceiling I hadn’t bothered trying to turn off, so I didn’t wake up in darkness this time.

Fresh and re-energized, I hopped out of bed and threw open Violet’s closet. She had all kinds of clothes hung up. With any luck I could find my t-shirt.

What I found instead, to my great surprise, was a sack on the floor filled with the denim and thick brown wool of the clothes I’d jury-rigged back in the Lighthouse.

Wood scraped. I looked back to see Wrench crawling out from under the bed. Before she was completely free, she raised a paw. Well, a stubby hand. “She let me bring them!”

Well, they might not be Earth clothes, but I was able to change into a decently fresh pair of pants and another hoodie. As I did, I mused, “I wonder what her evil plan was that her mom stopped?”

Wrench answered immediately, “Crawling around the outside of the ship and sneaking in through the windows.”

I paused in tying a rope belt, and looked first at the smiling grey lizard woman, then at the fancy glass-paned windows lining the back of the bedroom. “You think?”

Wrench shrugged, hands spread at shoulder level and grinning wider.

ARF-80 leaned sideways to peer into the closet herself but didn’t say anything. I wasn’t surprised she was awake. Guarding for three seconds or three years was an action, right? I was getting the hang of how Martians thought. At least slightly more than wild guessing.

I wandered out and up to the main deck, which would be the weather deck if space had weather. Which it might. Studying spaceship diagrams was teaching me tiny scraps of sailing terminology, which had to be at least as accurate as my knowledge of Martian thought.

Everyone was acting like space had weather. An absolutely ferocious amount of work was going on up in the sails, with pirates rearranging rigging all over the place. Cheese and Bluehair were up by the wheel again, with the rodent navigator pointing at various stars while Bluehair kept peeking through the sextant. Violet was way, way up near the top of the central mast unwinding some ropes. She was out of range of what air clung to the deck and had a fishbowl over her head. It must still be miserable, dangerous, and gruelingly physical labor up there.

I had to admire her sometimes. She knew what she wanted to be and nothing would stop her. Nothing.

“Is something wrong? What’s going on?” I asked out loud, not really to anyone specific.

I’d asked no one, so no one answered. When it became clear they wouldn’t, Wrench suggested, “I think we’ve passed Jupiter’s influence and entered Saturn’s. The solar winds don’t work the same.”

The woman with the scar on her face was at that moment striding past us with her arms full of metal hooks. She stopped and looked down at Wrench with raised eyebrows and a surprised tone. “That thing be smarter than the average bilge lizard. Quite the scale pattern, too. You could sell it for a bucket of gold, methinks. Two, if you wait until it’s grown.”

SO. MUCH. CREEPY. Solid reminder that pirates were rarely good people.

Wrench didn’t just take it in stride. She beamed up at the pirate with an open-mouthed smile of delight as if she’d received the biggest compliment ever. “Nope! I drool.” she squeaked with childish glee. She wasn’t actually drooling but the way her grin pulled her lips way, way back off her snaggle teeth, I only didn’t believe her because I had known her since the day I left Earth.

How long had I been gone? My parents had to have found some way to take care of my brothers, right? My family hadn’t been kicked out of—

Ugh. Those thoughts could come out of nowhere sometimes. Unless I found a way to go back to Earth, I had to try not to think them.

Her sudden horror at the prospect of a drooling kobold distracted the pirate from my little moment. She shuddered, sighed, “Bargain rack kobold. Might have known,” and ran off on her hook-related errand.

There was a lot of babble already but grumbling and snarling picked up around the mid-deck. Half a dozen pirates were pulling on a line, and whatever they wanted it to do, it wasn’t cooperating. To my great surprise, ARF-80 left my side, walked over to the pirate at the front of the line, took the rope in both metal hands, and pulled.

Something groaned. Nothing changed that I could see, or rather sails were adjusting everywhere and I didn’t know what to blame on this rope. She took a slow step back, and then another. Whatever the thing was, she had accomplished it. Pirates burst into happy jabber around her, patting her on the armored back. One tied a bandana over her red hair.

Anxiously, ARF-80 looked back at me. She was too far away to talk to now, so I gave her a thumb’s up. Her face lit up with the fragile joy of someone getting praise rather than trouble. Leaving the pirates messing with the rope, she headed up toward the bow and some of the crew awkwardly trying to climb down the side of the boat. She hopped over the side and went down like a spider, while they passed her tools.

That left me and Wrench. I didn’t know what to do and was pretty sure I wasn’t strong enough to do it.

The stairs into the hold were near the raised rear deck. Cheese the rat descended halfway down those stairs, regarding me with an unreadable rodent expression. Rat faces weren’t nearly as mobile as kobolds, apparently.

“G’ eat. Can’t help if’r hungry,” he grumbled, as if every word was a chore he wanted to hurry through rather than get right.

Grumpy sound or not, this was an act of kindness. Besides, I could spot an interesting person when I saw one. Looking up at that furry, whiskery face, I asked, “What are you doing?”

“Eat,” he muttered again, turned, and climbed back up the stairs, which left me watching his dusty coat that nearly dragged the floor, its many pockets bulging with rolled up papers.

Wrench tugged on my shirt eagerly, and when I bent down to bring my ear to her mouth she pointed an excited finger at Cheese’s coat, while telling me in a merely cheerful whisper, “He’s figuring out which of those stars are moons. He has a map of Saturn, so we must also be headed to a specific spot.”

I ate and spent an hour or so feeling guiltily useless until the fuss died down. Later still, after my third meal of it, I had to admit Violet was right. Hard tack gets old so, so fast.

But Violet could make walking the plank fun. In fact, she got out the plank and set it up for her to practice balancing on. Then we spent a couple of hours with her digging up ridiculous Saturnian oaths to be more piratical with. Saturn went from a little yellow ball in the sky to a huge, looming, striped ball, with white rings stretching tantalizingly near.

“Let’s see, um…Murder Kelp!” she barked, shaking her fist at the stars as we sat by the railing, legs sticking through and feet dangling over nothing.

I raised an eyebrow and leaned away from her. “Is that real?”

She shrugged, spreading her hands and grinning shamelessly. You know, like a pirate. “Who’s going to know if it is or isn’t?”

I snorted at that. Violet went back to frowning in concentration, dredging her memory.

“You’re putting a lot of work into something as trivial as pirate oaths,” I told her with a touch of teasing sharpness.

“Don’t you ever stop?” I probed. Violet was so…nonstop with the pirate princess thing.

“Do you?” she shot back, which made me jump. Her smile was entirely affectionate, but that one had hit a bit close to home.

“People depend on me?” I squeaked meekly.

The white-toothed grin on her purple face widened, and Violet leaned back, propping her hands on the deck. Her eyes tilted up to the stars. “I want what Mom has. You would think it’s easier to become a Pirate Queen if you’re born a Pirate Princess, but that just means I have to be absolutely certain I deserve it. There is no room to fail. Mom knows it and doesn’t go easy on me, but I push myself harder than she does. I need to be the best of the best. Shooting. Swashbuckling. Swinging from ropes. Wit and flair. All the little touches of style that inspire a crew and force enemies to respect you. I love every bit of it, and the faster I become the best at everything, the faster I become a glorious adventurer who bathes in rubies and breathes adventure.”

I blinked at the hunger in her voice. “Wow. You are so, so into this pirate thing, huh?”

“It’s the best, and I will be the best,” she hissed through clenched teeth, staring at images of glory only she could see.

Then to my surprise, her head lolled to the side and she gave me a much gentler, lopsided smile. “You’re the only thing that I take a break for. I don’t know what it is about you. I’ve been in love, and it’s not that. It’s a friendly thing. You distract me, in good ways, just enough but not too much.”

“Thanks. I am almost positive that’s a compliment. You are just exactly the limit of danger I can enjoy,” I returned, warm and whimsical.

She sat up abruptly, raising a fist and cooing, “Ooh! By the beating heart of pure and noble friendship!”

I giggled. “Back to the oaths?”

“Are you kidding? You inspire me, the Muse that drives me forward like the Pluto-cursed frigate whose unholy, unsleeping corpse-crew chases Captain Carnage from pole to pole eternally!”

We hadn’t quite exhausted that when Bluehair whistled and beckoned to us. Violet ran to her mother faster than I could keep up, but at least jogged and tried not to be left far behind. I could leap up the steps to the raised rear deck the same as Violet could!

Both hands on her hips, Pirate Queen Bluehair regarded her even more vividly colored daughter and daughter’s friends. With the happy kind of seriousness, she said, “Crew member Violent Violet, you have proven you’re ready to move on from wenching. I’ve decided it is time to teach you how to pilot a ship.”

Clenching her fists, Violet leaned her head back and howled, “Woooooooo!”

Still in her bandana and now with a useless sash belt as well, ARF-80 copied her. “Woooooo!”

I kind of wanted to copy her, but it wasn’t my moment. The responsible friend thing was to let this be as much about Violet as possible.

Patting the wheel with the hand not on her own hip, Bluehair lectured, “Now, the bigger the vessel, the more complicated it is to fly. You could handle a one-man boat with a single sail, although I wouldn’t want to take it into space.”

I nodded at that. Confirmation of things I’d suspected was good.

“And of course, in an atmosphere—”

Bluehair didn’t get to finish. A pirate up in the rigging yelled, “Thar she blows! Vessel off the starboard stern!”

Lesson forgotten, Bluehair scanned the star field behind us. “Another ship? What’s the nearest moon?”

Cheese, hovering nearby as usual, grumbled, “Mimas.”

Bluehair’s mouth set tightly. “Hmmm.” Looking back up at the pirate in the rigging, she shouted, “What does it look like?”

“Never seen anything like it, Cap’n, and it’s moving fast!” he yelled back.

There hadn’t been many pirates on the upper deck, and now they all watched Bluehair. Faces appeared in the stairway down to the deeper decks as well. She extended a hand, taking the telescope Cheese was already passing to her. With Cheese, myself, Violet, ARF-80, and Wrench trailing behind, she walked back to the rear railing, extended the telescope, and looked around.

I knew she’d found the ship when she stopped waving it. Frowning darkly, she watched for a few seconds, and then lowered the telescope. “Outsiders.” Her tone was as cold as anything I’d heard from her yet.

“Cold” was a good word, because I felt iciness creeping over me, beyond the chill of the edge of space.

Violet held out both hands. “By the ring of flame, I must see this.”

The mustache pirate, peeking over the edge of the rear deck, growled, “That be absurd. We’re spitting distance from the planet herself!”

Stiff and controlled, Bluehair strode back to the wheel, first answering him, “It’s a mushroom bug ship. I’ve seen one before.” Then much louder yelled, “Emergency sails! Stoke the boiler! Full speed to Saturn! Gunners to your posts!”

Everyone got busy except me and my friends. Bluehair pulled on some of the levers next to the wheel. Pirates turned cranks adjusting the lift tank crystals. More pirates unfurled small extra sails on the masts. Down in the lower decks the normally quiet steam engine chugged loudly, and the crystals on the side of the ship shone with a ferocious light.

Lowering the telescope, Violet said, “They’ll be able to see us from Titan.”

“The only ship we have to worry about can see us already,” replied her mother.

Giving in to anxiety, or maybe defying it, I took the telescope from Violet and looked in the direction she and Bluehair had.

The alien ship wasn’t hard to find. I’d expected something black and tentacular like last time. What I got this time was a collection of balls connected by pipes, with nothing even approaching symmetry and in a freakish array of muddy colors. I got the impression it was big, but that might have been an illusion because it was visibly getting closer.

Sparkles fluttered across my view. Confused, I lowered the telescope, and discovered we had entered the rings of Saturn, and were sailing now over a sea of glittering dust. At the speed we were going, it sprayed out and behind us in a violent wake.

I didn’t need the telescope to spot the little dot of the Outsider ship now, and it was still getting bigger.

Violet agreed with me. She stood next to Bluehair now, clutching the pirate queen’s coat. “Mom, we’re not going to outrun it.” Did she sound a little nervous? Which meant any sane person should be terrified.

“Then we’ll slow it down,” answered her mother, flatly determined.

Orange beams strobed and wandered past us from the irregular, growing shape of the ship behind us. Bluehair turned the ship’s wheel hard. Everything creaked and tilted, and the pirate vessel turned, scattering an even bigger wake.

I didn’t get a good look at what happened next, because that orange light washed over us. I couldn’t move, not even to turn my eyes. Neither could Violet, or Bluehair stuck in the middle of turning the wheel. Since I was looking that way I could make out three frozen pirates on a section of the deck caught in the orange beam.

We kept turning. The Outsider ship crept into my peripheral vision on the right.

Not everyone was frozen. Cheese’s voice, loud for once, rang out. “FIRE AT WILL!”

For two more seconds nothing happened except the ship continued to turn. Then it shook to a series of booms as cannons fired.

They must have hit something, because the orange lights winked out, and I could move again.

So could Violet, who pointed at the alien ship. It was now clear and easy to make out, and the cannons had stopped because it was drifting right in front of us.

Pirate Princess Violent Violet gave us the full benefit of her professional advice. “That’s not good.”

Bluehair smirked. She reached down and grabbed two of the pistols below the wheel, pulling their triggers. I was thrown off my feet as the pirate ship spun around, and so was everyone else I could see except Bluehair herself—who was lucky enough to have the ship’s wheel to hold onto.

Suddenly the left side of the pirate ship faced the huge blob-and-stick construction, and with another series of booms the pirates fired cannonballs into it from nearly point-blank range. Pipework broke, and smaller blobs were cast away from bigger ones.

Plus, we were now turning back toward Saturn.

The steam engine belowdecks chugged. Our ship sped faster and faster.

“Mom, it’s moving again,” called out Violet.

“We’re safe when we hit atmosphere,” she answered, staring hard over the wheel at the planet Saturn, which grew and grew and grew. It filled the view in front of us and kept growing.

I looked back. The Outsider ship, bits of it jaggedly broken open, lurched from side to side. But was it catching up?

Something else, something shining, streaked into view. Violet ran up next to me and pointed, asking the obvious and necessary question. “Crushing depths, what is that?”

It was a little tube of a spaceship, and it crashed point-first into the Outsider ship like an arrow into a victim’s heart. The Outsider ship went still and started falling behind.

Ribbon. That was Ribbon, fighting to save me. She(he?)’d been right about everything.

I had…a lot of mixed feelings about that, too many to understand, but right now what I cared about most was that we were definitely pulling away from the Outsiders.

And then something crawled up the side of the boat onto the railing.

It was…Bluehair had said “mushroom bugs,” and it was accurate. The thing was about my size, with four buzzy fly wings about my height. It was squishy, lumpy, mostly pale, with a distended shape not broken clearly into regions except the red dotted mushroom cap head and a bunch of stubby legs that ended in waggling filaments.

Violet pulled out her pistol and fired a bullet straight through its head.

Did that kill it? Did that even hurt it? The shot made the Outsider let go, which was all that really mattered. Its wings kept buzzing but it, too, fell quickly behind, disappearing in the sparkling ring spray.

No other aliens showed themselves.

The dust spray stopped. We were past Saturn’s rings, and they, too, retreated behind us.

With ferocious, impatient authority, Bluehair barked, “Everyone below deck now! Cut the engine!”

Violet grabbed me around my waist, lifted me off the deck, and ran for the stairs. She just might have been faster carrying me than I was alone. She jumped down to the main deck in one heavy thump and charged down those stairs until we collapsed against the door of her cabin. Wrench fell on top of me, clinging for comfort.

Most of the pirates had retreated to the next deck down, but half a dozen wrestled with the big steam engine, dumping buckets of water into it, turning valves to release just enough steam not to kill us, and then sealing it up as its thumping and puffing slowed.

And then the ship bounced hard enough to toss me maybe an inch into the air. It rocked from side to side, forcing me to grab the door frame as the floor tilted wildly underneath me. I felt the waves hitting the sides of the boat, slapping us around. Up above, Bluehair laughed maniacally, and Violet stared up at the hatch to the main deck with balled fists and a fierce, unhappy mask of pure jealousy.

Something was missing. “Where is ARF-80?” I asked.

“She’s the one person we don’t have to worry about,” Violet answered, undeniably correct.

“She’s holdin’ onto a rail outside,” said one of the pirates, who was holding onto the steam engine now. “When the paralysis beam hit her, she stopped movin’ and started mumbling gibberish.”

The waves slowed, and eventually stopped. And yet, something was different.

The pirates began to cheer. They charged up out of the hold, stampeding out onto the deck. I was nearly the first out, thanks to Violet grabbing my wrist and hauling me up the stairs.

Sure enough, ARF-80 was gripping one of the ship’s rails, frozen in a system crash. She would be fine like that for now. I could enjoy the sunlight.

That’s what was different. The air was warm, like a tropical breeze. It smelled like the ocean, and I hadn’t realized how much effort I’d been putting into breathing at all until we returned to a planet with a real, rich atmosphere. The skies above and around us were yellow and streaked with clouds of every imaginable color. Overhead, the sun burned white, not as big as on Earth but much bigger than it would be if math had more power here than as a way to count your loot.

Violet, Wrench, and I wandered unhurriedly over to ARF-80 as everyone else celebrated. We had almost reached the rail when something roared. Not quite a roar. Too high pitched, more like an elephant trumpeting.

From below us and way off to the side, a gigantic flat fish with a long tail several times the size of our boat, flew up out of the depths. It leveled off, spiny tail rippling. I squinted and shaded my eyes with my hand, because I could just barely make out two tiny human figures on its warty grey back. They looked like they were sword fighting.

My focus was broken by Violet grabbing my shoulders, spinning me around, and squealing in glee. “Welcome to the Seven Skies of Saturn, the best planet in the solar system!”

Chapter Sixteen

Everyone was busy. The pirates all seemed to know what was going on and where we were going. At least, they never asked any questions or discussed it. Saturn itself sailed by in multicolored clouds for hours, beautiful and empty. Well, mostly empty. We passed a cloud with orbiting streaks of lightning, and an enormous, opaque blue jellyfish with trees growing on it, and a flock of squabbling flying stingrays, and a giant skull-shaped crystal that I found it hard to believe everyone ignored. But between those things was lots and lots of open sky.

Bluehair was also being as slow as humanly possible showing Violet how to pilot an airship, which was driving both Violet and I nuts. Surely it did not require an hour to explain how one lever shifted a set of lift tanks.

As Pirate Queen Bluehair dispensed the shocking revelation that pulling those lift tanks in all the way created greater stability at maintaining altitude, a red-haired cyborg leaped up from the deck below, did a flip in mid-air, and landed in front of us. Around her swirled white fabric from a long, loose, button-fronted shirt. It looked a bit like Wrench’s, except on ARF-80 it merely draped over and around her like a tent.

“Look, look! Bloody Nose Binky and Scraps gave it to me!” she crowed, arms wide with gleeful pride.

“This trip has you really active and involved,” I said, and I was happy to say it.

“It needs a skirt,” the cyborg babbled enthusiastically, twisting from side to side to look down at herself. Actually, the shirt concealed a lot of the “cyborg” aspect, since it showed her human head, and only her metal hands and legs.

Violent Violet sneered in pirate-dignity inspired disgust. “I can give you a closet full of skirts I never want to see again.”

Up in the rigging, a pirate shouted, “Thar she blows! Vessel to the starboard second sky!”

My head jerked around. Sensing my alarm, Violet patted my shoulder roughly with her hand. “It’s not Outsiders. Their ships don’t fly in Saturn’s atmosphere. They plummet through the Seven Skies into the depths from which nothing returns.”

Pirate Queen Bluehair took a step to the side, one outstretched arm still holding onto the wheel.

“Yesssssss!” hissed Violet, grabbing two of the wheel’s spokes and standing dramatically with her feet apart. It would have been a lot more dramatic if she wasn’t just holding the wheel steady.

Was someone getting to drive her mom’s car for the first time? Was I the only person on this planet who would understand that description? Yes, and yes.

With Violet at the literal helm, Bluehair pulled Cheese’s brass telescope out of a waist sash, strolled regally over to the edge of the deck, and peered down below us. After a few seconds of staring, she waved a hand at her daughter. “Bring us down to the edge of the Second Sky.”

Squealing eagerly, Violet grabbed a series of levers by the wheel and yanked on them. The boat lurched, the scaffolding holding its lift crystals creaked, and the pirate ship descended in a series of bounces until it hit water.

At least, that’s what it was like. Through the deck, I felt that particular pressure and upright bob and then settling of something hitting water and floating. Around us I just saw more sky. The boat moved differently now, as well. Like when we were in Saturn’s rings, the motion felt more smooth, horizontal, and boat-y. We were sailing, not flying.

Bluehair walked back to us, holding the telescope out to Violet, who grabbed it and ran over to the edge of the deck so fast she hit the rail with her stomach and leaned way over to stare down through the telescope.

I mean, yes, I was excited and I ran too, just not so fast that I was in any danger of going overboard on an airship on a planet where there was no ground. No, I held onto the railing in a firm, safe way and looked over the edge.

I didn’t ask for the telescope. I didn’t need it. Clearly visible, below us and off to the ship’s right, flew a big black steam train engine. Of course, train engines couldn’t fly, which is why this one had two pairs of flapping, fanlike wings on the sides and two rows of helicopter rotors running along the roof.

“Weird design,” commented Violet.

Her mother heard her, and called over, “We are a long way from the clouds you are used to. If we were leaving Saturn to pick up a new mechanic anyway, it was time to seek fresh skies and fresh adventure, I thought.”

“Are we going to board her, Captain?” shouted a pirate sitting on one of the masts.

Loud and gay, Bluehair called out to the crew, “I am thinking not. We need a base of operations before we start making enemies, and I do want to know who those enemies are.”

“Troop ship,” muttered Cheese in his garbled voice. I hadn’t even noticed him standing between us and Bluehair.

The pirate queen called out again, “And as our navigator is pointing out, it looks military. High risk, low reward. We will find it again when we’re flush with gold and looking for action.”

A cheer went up among the crew. Pirates liked this kind of thinking.

Bluehair’s airship was faster than the train. We passed it and left it behind. When that became undeniably clear, Violet told me with amusement, “They must have seen us. They don’t want trouble either.”

We pulled farther ahead. The train fell farther behind. Eventually, Bluehair called out, “Is it gone?”

“It’s gone, Mom!” Violet shouted.

Bluehair pulled levers, much more smoothly than Violet. The ship dropped, until it shuddered like a diver breaking through the surface and descending underwater. Except for a complete lack of water.

A few things had changed. The Second Sky was more orange, less yellow, and now many of the clouds were overhead as well as around or beneath us. The warm, fresh wind felt exactly the same, and the boat flew the same as it had a few hundred feet farther up, now that we had passed the barrier.

A blue, red, and yellow parrot the size of a Labrador flew up from beneath the boat and perched on the rail. A dozen more followed, peered at us with twisting bird head poses, broke into raucous laughter, and flew away.

Not long after, the pirate way up in the rigging shouted again, “Thar she blows! Port dead ahead!”

And sure enough, we were pulling up on a floating city. Shiny buildings with peaked roofs or conical turrets crowded together on plates as big as multiple city blocks, held up by arrays of helicopter fans both above and below. Lights flashed. Little boats chugged around. Bridges connected plates, and people thronged in streets. Out at the edges, boat piers and railroad tracks stuck out for docking.

One hand on her hip, the other thrown out to sweep across the view, Bluehair declared, “Welcome to Gyro City, kids. Fabled for its wealth, its engineers, for being a center of trade all across Saturn, and from the moment we dock, for its pirates.”

Chapter Seventeen

Violent Violet, ARF-80, Wrench, and I tromped down the gangplank onto a pier. Violet looked through the gap at the spinning rotors under the city. I was working hard and mostly succeeding in not looking down, ever, at the endless distance available to fall beneath us.

The pirate princess pursed her lips in discombobulated thought. “Strange way to keep a city afloat. We saw an eclipse fish on the way in. There have to be leviathan bones available.”

Us kids were forgotten. Her mother was busy being a pirate queen, barking orders to her pirates as they came off the boat. “Spread out, crew. This is reconnaissance in a friendly port. No fights, not much carousing. Find me the finest disreputable taverns, shady markets where we can sell our loot from Jupiter, which shipyard is quiet and reliable, rumors of treasure and political gossip. You know the drill.”

She swiveled around suddenly, and it turned out we were not forgotten after all, because she leaned over Violet now, staring seriously into her purple daughter’s purple eyes. “One reason I put you through wench training is that you know how to do this better than anyone. Go start collecting information a pirate princess needs to know. Maybe your littlest friend can get us access to the kobold underbelly.”

Behind Bluehair, the rat navigator Cheese snorted a laugh. Little silvery lizard girl Wrench lifted her face to glare at him. He bowed to her, and I couldn’t tell with what expression.

Violet, driven as always, grabbed my arm and Wrench’s, and pulled us up the long wooden pier toward the city. Wrench took advantage of her long neck to twist her head around, stick out her tongue at Cheese, and pull one of her eyelids down with a finger.

Violet dragged us up off the docks onto a big street. It tilted gently upward, paved with what looked and felt like well smoothed cement. Shops on either side sported big glass windows, lots of bright lights, and brass trimming on everything. Men and women walked past in striped suits and striped gowns, often in garish colors like lime and maroon. There were hats. There were so many hats. Top hats, bonnets, wide brimmed hats that swooped or stuck out straight, decorated with flowers and fish and gears and birds and spikes.

I had kind of expected all that. What I hadn’t expected is that this was only the beginning. I should have expected it. Hardly any of Gyro City’s wealthy and dapper citizens drifted serenely through the streets. They had sharp eyes, and conducted quiet, urgent conversations with each other. Some wore flight goggles and clutched mysterious packages. Brass, mechanical cats and birds clung to shoulders. Partly hidden under a coat and wide brimmed hat, a robot made of gears and pistons hobbled down the street leaning on a cane with a skull handle.

Stopping to smirk at a lamp post by the bridge to the next plate, Violet told me, “Rich. Advanced. I like this city. All we need to do is find its seamy dark side and we’re in business.”

“You know that mushroom bug ship was after me, right?” I blurted out because I was the solar system’s best keeper of guilty secrets.

Maybe I’d come out with it because I knew Violet wouldn’t be afraid. Relief gushed through me when she just smiled back at me, clasping her hands behind her neck to look extra unconcerned and casual in her smugness. “I know that the only way Outsiders get to Saturn is if they’re summoned. I know that Pluto and Charon have almost no power on Saturn. I’ve heard of necromancers from Pluto cursing ghost ships, and the occasional zombie outbreak, but no vampires, dark angels, any of that. I know that you and I together are a recipe for adventure, and I know that you are going to love it. Oh, and I know that I hear arguing and badly played music. Come on!”

We had crossed the bridge by the time she finished saying all that. In between buildings on this side, she found a staircase that went down to a little maze of tight alleys, then another, more plain and worn wooden bridge that led over to yet another island. This one was a grid of regular tenements, cubical apartments stacked on cubical apartments, all the same design. Or at least, they had obviously started out that way. Makeshift bridges across little streets, walls broken down so crude brick walls could join buildings, the locals had renovated heavily in however long this slum had been flying.

The inhabitants wore fewer colors than the rich folk on the fancy streets, limited to merely accents like scarves and shawls and the occasional fancy pair of pants. Their shirts and pants and loose, practical-ish dresses were mostly off-white or brown. Dirt stains were not rare, and almost everyone had a ragged edge to something they wore.

What they shared with the dwellers above was attitude. Burly guys lurked hunched over and picked their teeth with knives. A grinning urchin dashed through a battered fruit stall, leaving a little box tucked under the counter, and after yelling at him the teenage girl running the stall slipped the box to a customer hidden in a box of melons. An old man with a hook instead of a hand whispered to a shiny clean boy who had obviously snuck down from the higher rent districts, and his hook was a curved, saber-like tooth. A kobold lurched through the crowd with a tied-up package bigger than him on his back, and another kobold sold something from another stall way down the street. A small band played while a stunningly beautiful woman danced, her layers of skirts flowing and snapping, and something whirled around her too fast for me to know anything except it was on fire.

Oh, and absolutely everyone wore a hat, although they leaned a lot more to floppy caps and bandannas than top hats and bonnets. No one besides Violet had a three-cornered ornate monstrosity, but she still looked right at home.

ARF-80 drifted immediately over to what would have been a market stall, except there was no stall. A plump old woman with a dark, wrinkly face sat cross-legged amid heaps of clothing. She smiled so wide her eyes disappeared under her brows and took frequent puffs from a long-handled ivory pipe. She would have been the friendliest looking person I’d ever seen if not for the massive, three-barreled brass rifle slung over her back.

ARF-80 picked upbeat-up dresses one after another, holding them up against herself thoughtfully and with a beaming smile. Happy to see her so alive, I sidled up behind her and asked, “So you like clothing now?”

The red-haired girl swiveled to chatter at me joyously, “Yes! But it’s not the clothes. I think it’s not the clothes? It’s —” Her increasingly puzzled expression froze, and her eyes turned blue. “Error, override of wetware incomplete. Abort, retry, fail?”

I sighed. Apparently clothing was a dangerous topic now. “Abort.”

ARF-80’s eyes turned back to green and she resumed picking through the clothing piles, blissfully unaware I’d ever asked a question.

From the other side of a small crowd, Violent Violet shouted, “Fooooound it. Come on!”

I took ARF-80 by the wrist, and dragged her over to Violet, who grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me into a little alley, which ended abruptly. Not in a wall. Walls on Saturn? No, not dangerous enough. Here the flying plate that held up the neighborhood had cracked in half, leaving the backs of apartment buildings open. Heavy cables and scaffolding were visible through the gap, but not nearly enough to make me feel safe even looking at it or crossing the homemade plank bridge that stretched to the other end of the gap.

I crossed anyway, due to Violet being determined and much stronger than me. I barely even had time to squeak like a cowardly mouse.

On the opposite end, the calamity that caused the break left a flat cement yard as big as a basketball court, and teens and a few smaller kids were indeed playing ball. Not basketball, of course. No, they had whirring, clacking balls made of clockwork that the teens would kick against each other, making the balls knock each other around. I definitely saw one of the balls flash a spike.

The biggest teenage boy, with the ragged beginnings of a dark beard and bandages around his forearms, looked Violet up and down as we stepped onto the grounds. He stuck out his square jaw and demanded gruffly, “What do you—?”

Violet yanked out her pistol and shot his gear ball, which exploded into brass bits.

In the stunned, ringing silence that followed, Violet declared, “I am recruiting for my first pirate crew. I swear by the planet worm that struck Jupiter that any who defeats me in a blade duel can be Captain instead.” Looking around the gathered children, she added, “Well?”

A boy about Violet’s age slid out from an alley at the edge of the court, grabbed a battered lamp post in one hand, swung around it once, and jumped lightly down onto the pavement. Unlike the bruiser, he was sleek, hard muscled under his badly ripped shirt rather than bulky, and had a gleaming playful smile on an angular face.

Amused, Violet whispered over to me, “Gentleman rogue. Just don’t let him persuade you to do anything whatsoever.”

The boy whistled and someone on the third floor of the apartment building behind him tossed a sparkling rapier out of a window. Holding up his arm, he caught it easily, and held it point-first out at Violet. I knew a grand total of zip diddly squat nothing about sword fighting, but the blade looked well taken care of and he stood with balanced poise.

Violet drew her own rapier, or saber, or whatever kind of fancy metal pointy stick it was. She took a step, then a faster step, then hopped swiftly three more steps to close with the boy and their swords swung into action.

Again, not a sword fighting expert, but they moved around a lot, and their swords swung in wide, glittery arcs and sharp stabs. Violet somersaulted and rolled under his blade once, and once he fell back against the big boy in the crowd, climbed partly up that guy’s body, and jumped back into the fight. Their movements were confident, smooth, and fast, and I had a sneaking suspicion that on Saturn this was skill, and straightforward Earth sword fighting would get you skewered.

It didn’t actually last long. Maybe ten seconds in, right after the jump-off-a-bystander move, Violet slapped her blade down on the boy’s, forcing the point to the ground. She grabbed his sword wrist, jammed her boot on his foot, and yanked him toward her.

Her pull stopped abruptly, with her purple forehead just touching his nose.

Violet held them there for two seconds more, then asked with diabolical satisfaction, “I spared your pretty face. What do you say?”

The teenage gentleman rogue hopeful took a step back, and Violet let him go. He pulled off his playfully askew cap and flourished it as he bowed low. He sounded almost as satisfied as Violet. “I will follow you to the depths.”

Violet grinned hugely. Sliding her sword back into her belt, she extended her arms and cracked her knuckles, looking over the crowd she now owned. With a lilt, she told her audience, “Now we need a ship.”

A girl with sharp but pretty features and lean, hard muscles under the slashed sleeves of her blouse gave Violet a challenging stare. “You don’t have one already?” She had a clear, confident voice as well. She could be the twin sister of the rogue, and maybe she was.

Violet of course was unruffled. One hand on her hip and that hip tilted out just like her mother, she whipped off her own hat, spun it on its point on her finger, then slapped it back onto her wavy purple hair. “Your pirate princess has something better: Someone who can build them. We need a wreck and somewhere to steal parts.”

The girl smirked and turned her head to look at Wrench. “Ask the kobold.”

All the kids on the court laughed, except for me, ARF-80, and Violet. Good for her.

Now Wrench had everyone’s attention, and the gentleman rogue looked her over with a curiously raised eyebrow. “I’ve never seen one like that before. It looks expensive.”

Wrench slunk in close behind me, gripping my hoodie in both hands. I raised a warning finger at the crowd and snapped, “Mine. No touch.”

Now the boy’s attention turned to me, and he looked me up and down with such pleased curiosity that I felt a blush starting up. His dark eyes turning to mine, he asked, “And who is this?”

For some reason I had honestly expected Violet to defend me. Instead, she clapped me on the shoulder and pushed me two steps forward. “Do your thing.”

What, again? Fine. I told a ridiculous story. “Does it matter? The heart of Saturn is a single tremendous diamond, and yesterday a black serpent hatched within that diamond. Now it slithers over the surface, biting off chunks and spitting them upwards like beautiful, glittering cannonballs. When one of those hits Gyro City—and it will—you will all be knocked into the Second Sky, and winged crabs will leap off of the diamond cannonball to grab you by your heads, carrying you away to Pluto to be frozen into dolls. Black serpents, you see, are spawned on Pluto, and Pluto’s doll makers have long planned Saturn’s demise.”

I finished. Everyone stared at me. Before I could figure out if that was good or bad, the whole crowd burst into an excited cheer and swarmed around Violet. Amidst the babble, I caught a few sentences.

“This is the kind of crew I want to join!”

“I’ve always wanted to be a pirate!”

“Can you teach me to say arrr?”

Wrench, ARF-80, and I had been completely forgotten. I looked down at my kobold assistant, and pointed a finger at her, then back at me. She nodded silently and pointed toward the crack in the island.

Leaning up on my tiptoes, because that would definitely help, I shouted over the crowd, “Captain Violet! I think I’ll check if the kobolds do know where to find parts!”

“May you find riches in junk equal to the lost graveyard of the glutton fish!” Violet shouted back, in full piratical splendor.

I followed Wrench, who led me to that uncomfortable gap, and a metal staircase like a fire escape that spiraled down under the floating city plate. I shuddered a little as I descended but managed to avoid ever looking straight down.

Underneath the plate hung a second city. Much smaller and simpler, yes. More rickety and makeshift. Still, the rotors that kept the city afloat all emerged from fat, fez-shaped, upside-down buildings, and more buildings made of wood and scrap metal had been attached to the doorways of those, supported with wires and scaffolds attached to the plates above.

Thankfully, we were practically standing next to one of the rotor buildings, and only had to travel a few terrifying yards on a metal catwalk to reach its doorway. Saturn’s pleasant tropical breeze was a lot less pleasant when only a sheet of metal and a chain railing were between you and an infinite fall.

My heart definitely beat more easily when we ducked into the dark interior of the building. Well, dark compared to the sunny outdoors. There was plenty of light to see that we weren’t alone. In fact, I heard laughter even before I’d stepped inside and my eyes started to adjust.

Unsurprisingly, we seemed to be in a very large engine room. Mysterious machinery churned against the inner wall. Pipes led here and there. Part of me wished I had my sketchbook, so I could draw all of this and figure out what it did.

However, distractions distracted me. Around the curving outer wall of the building, chattering kobolds carried boxes filled with fish, or carried chunks of fish to boxes, or lifted them out of boxes. I couldn’t make out a word, but they sounded happy and busy.

That is, until we entered. One by one, they noticed us and went silent, turning to stare.

Not at me. At Wrench.

Only one kobold looked merely curious rather than wide-eyed, and gave me, Wrench, and ARF-80 equal consideration. She sat on a wooden crate taller than her, and had dull red and black markings, a much sharper, more beak-like face than Wrench, and wore typical Saturn blouse and tight pants fashions on a body that was plump and womanly.

Actually, she and Wrench might be the only female kobolds in the room. It was hard to tell. I hadn’t anticipated what a variety kobolds would come in. Some stood completely upright without back-kinked legs. Some had the fat, pear-shaped, saurian bodies I’d originally imagined. Most were brown, but greens, blues, and yellows were common. A few had hair. Not wigs, actual head hair. The one woman sitting on the box had luxurious black hair sweeping down behind her horns. Other kobolds were actually furry and looked more doglike than lizardlike.

Wrench slapped both her stubby hands over her eyes, and gritted her irregular, fangy teeth. The impact made her blonde plastic curls rustle.

“What’s going on?” I asked, because I was so, so lost.

“I hope I won’t have to hurt anyone,” whispered ARF-80 anxiously.

Her voice raspy and groaning, Wrench answered, “I can fool humans about my age, but not other kobolds.”

Yes, that explained absolutely everything except anything whatsoever.

Prompted by my clueless silence, Wrench dragged her hands down her face, and looked up at me to explain with tired exasperation, “I’m pretty. I was bred to be pretty. But I’m not this pretty. Men are just stupid, whether they have scales, fur, or skin.”

The kobold woman leaned her head back and laughed, with long jaws that opened very, very wide when she did. At her laugh, the male kobolds shook themselves out of their worshipful trance and went back to work. I didn’t know why, but Saturn’s sky fish clearly needed a lot of carrying around.

The kobold woman jumped off her crate and padded up to us. She had heavily digitigrade legs like Wrench, with wide black straps buckled onto her feet like shoes that covered everything but the claws on her toes and heel. Ignoring me, she asked my assistant, “Oi, Jupiter. Wotcher name, and why’n’ya cartin’ a human anna auto’ton around?”

Oof. So, so much accent. The kobold had a pleasantly feminine voice, but I could barely understand the words.

My assistant wrestled her wig into place, maybe because it looked so obviously fake compared to this kobold’s hair, and answered, “Scales Of Obsidian, but I prefer Wrench.”

The kobold grinned, and she was at least as snaggle toothed as Wrench. “Wrench works j’s fine ‘ere. Oi’m Oil Can.”

Laying a hand on my bicep, Wrench looked up at me with a friendly smile and a warm tone as she introduced, “And this is my friend Rachel, and her bodyguard ARF-80.”

Oil Can folded her arms under her chest, and raised an eyebrow made of little spikes. “Rachel? Be ‘er name, or wachee prefers’a be called?”

I tried and failed not to grimace. Not more of this.

My grimace hiding failed. Oil Can smirked at my expression, and said slyly, “Roight. We call’r Rachel.”

I grimaced more, because hey, that first grimace had worked great in convincing all the kobolds on Saturn that my name was a fake and now anything I did would make that worse anyway.

Wrench’s tail lashed behind her, and she smiled with some of her usual childish joy as she bragged, “She’s one of the best spaceship mechanics in the solar system, and she’s teaching me everything.”

Oil Can pulled her head back in surprise, and with their long necks kobolds were very good at that. “Wha’, really? Respect! Wha’kinni do f’r ya?”

Wrench waved her little hands to either side. Having other kobolds to compare her to did drive home how glittering and shiny her scales were, silver on the back of her hands and soft and pale on the palms. She was pretty, that couldn’t be denied. When she wasn’t trying to hide her age, she had the smooth, intelligent voice to go with it. “Officially, we’re here to find out where we can get our hands on wrecked airships and parts. We’re actually here because Rachel wanted to talk somewhere that no humans would overhear.”

Oil Can nodded at this, spun around, and padded back toward the other kobolds. She held up her own stubby hand and waggled her fingers in a casual wave goodbye. “Well, you two ‘ve fun while oi ask ‘roun. Hope’r stayin’ in Gyro City. Knowin’a spaceship ‘chanic sounds useful.”

Which left us alone. Not quite alone as I liked, so I wandered away from the working kobolds into a shadowy part of the huge, curved room. Sitting on a not quite unpleasantly hot pipe, I pulled my feet up and wrapped my arms around my knees.

Wrench pulled herself up next to me, propping just one foot on the pipe, while letting the other and her tail dangle. In the dark, her big blue eyes seemed to glow, and she sounded soft and worried. “You don’t have to be a pirate.”

“Violet is my friend, just as much as you are,” I answered, stung. I wasn’t sure why, exactly. Wrench’s words had tickled me with guilt I didn’t know I was feeling.

She disarmed that by suddenly giving me her most goofy, childish grin, a ditzy giggle, and leaned one hand back on the pipe while the other twined her wig curls around a finger. Only a trace of squeak leaked into her voice as she said, “I love it when you say that. So what did you want to talk about, huh?”

Her happiness relaxed me a little, but only a little. In a hush, my head lowered, I said, “The same question you ducked last time, I guess. Violet thinks I’m safe here just because it’s Saturn. Is that true?”

Wrench’s smile faltered, but only a little. She kept toying with her curls as she turned her eyes up to the slanted wall. The squeak disappeared entirely again, replaced by serious but not grim thoughtfulness. “That’s a big question. You’re lucky. I’ve traveled, and I guess I know the answer as well as anyone. Every moon, every planet, everywhere in the solar system is different. The power of a planet is strong, but there are people on Saturn who never have adventures. There are those who visit Venus and leave again of their own free will. There are fairies from the Dragon Moons who have no magic. There are even people who escape Earth.”

I jumped, banging my head on that sloping wall, but thankfully only painfully enough to make me wince. “Really?”

Wrench nodded, still all calm and thoughtful. I suppose to someone not worried about being chased by monsters and bounty hunters, it was a legitimately interesting topic. “Maybe half a dozen in a lifetime. But it’s not smart to underestimate a planet’s power, either. Violet will find adventure no matter where she goes. No matter where I go or what I do, a little bit of Jupiter follows me. People look at me and see property.”

I sighed, propping my chin back on my knees. “I lean on you so much. You should be able to lean on me back.”

That got one of Wrench’s squeakiest, little-girliest giggles. Leaning back with both hands propped on the pipe now, she gave me a whimsical half-grin. “Wow. I don’t even know where to start with that. You’re a child. You shouldn’t have to support adults. You’re already helping me escape Jupiter by teaching me. There isn’t anything bigger anyone could give me. You help people so much without asking for anything back, you don’t even notice you’re doing it.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, and Wrench obviously knew I wouldn’t have a response, because she immediately hopped down off the pipe and rearranged her wig again. “Now, come on. I want to play the building an airship game with my best friend. Then you can give the airship to your best friend.”

ARF-80, who had been standing next to us in one of her unfortunately usual dazes, stiffened in sudden alert. With a hopeful grin, she asked, “Can I stand at the front holding the telescope while my shirt flaps in the breeze?”

Sliding down more sedately to my feet, I assured ARF-80, “We’ll build that into the design.”

“YES!” shouted ARF-80 gleefully, pumping a fist in the air. At the top of that thrust it hissed, and her fist shot off her wrist trailing a cloud of hissing smoke, slammed into the wall so hard it left knuckle dents, then retracted into ARF-80’s wrist again like it was on a wire.

All the kobolds stared at her. The cyborg hunched forward, blushing.

Gaily, Wrench skipped ahead of us toward a far doorway, her little kid voice singsonging, “Let’s go find Oil Can!” She thrust an arm out, pointing a claw at one of the kobolds whose stare had dropped from ARF-80 to Wrench. “And you, put your eyes back into your head.” Leaning her neck way, way back, she grinned up at me and rolled her eyes. “Boys!”

Chapter Eighteen

The boat was horrible, but it worked.

Nothing I had learned about spaceships so far said they had to look good, only that tech that works follows certain styles. Half a dozen rowboats hooked together with metal rods and driven by more than a dozen little motors running fans that back on Earth would sit on the floor in summer had that style. The motors at least were cute, little metal hearts that were super fanciful steampunk. The chains and rods running under the boats to turn and control the fans were ugly, but ugly in exactly the right mechanical style.

“I hope these parts really were junk rather than stolen,” I muttered.

Wrench gave me a grin and shrugged, with her hands spread wide.

“This would have taken a lot longer than an afternoon to put together if ARF-80 didn’t have a welding torch in her finger,” I grumped next.

Wrench grinned even more. She loved ship building, even this awful little raft we’d put together with barely any available parts.

And maybe, just maybe, I loved it too. I was trying to resist the urge to be proud of this hideous piece of junk, because we really had put it together blazingly fast with pathetically limited resources. It flew! It wouldn’t win any races against anything, ever, but it was stable and controllable and carried us far out from Gyro City.

Just as she’d asked for, we put a little dais right at the bow of the makeshift boat, and ARF-80 stood in it, with the Saturn breeze blowing her shirt around. She didn’t have a telescope, though. Instead she had a map, which she kept turning in different directions.

That filled me with so, so much confidence. I was already not super comfortable in tight spaces with a dozen kids I didn’t know, almost all of them bigger than me and armed with weapons varying wildly in style and quality. I climbed awkwardly over to the front boat, holding tightly to seats as I crabbed over the gap between boats. It might fly okay, but this barge was still a death trap.

I expressed these very thoughts to Captain Violet by saying, “We can’t be going pirating with this thing. I wouldn’t try to attack a fishing boat with it. Especially after seeing the fish here.”

Violet was unflapped, unfazed, and untrammeled, although that meant something completely different from the first two words. She did keep her voice low so she wouldn’t have to spend five minutes making up pirate oaths with every sentence. “Raiding would interfere with Mom’s building a base of operations. We’re going treasure hunting.”

I sat down next to Violet and crossed my arms. “I refuse to believe there is unlooted treasure anywhere near Gyro City.”

Violet gave her luxurious purple hair a toss. I really had to ask why she was purple sometime. As soon as I stole my pants back. Right now I listened to her say, “That depends on what you’re really after. We’re sailing to…” and she hesitated dramatically, “…the Haunted Spaceship Factory.”

I stiffened and gave her an accusing look. Accusing her of being smart, admittedly. “A better boat. That’s what you’re really after. This thing is just to get you where I can build you a real pirate ship.”

“Being attacked by ghosts or solving a mystery would be just as good,” Violet assured me airily.

Up at the bow, ARF-80 asked, “Uh, Captain?”

“Yes, Navigator?” Violet answered, and the uncharacteristic gentleness in her tone tickled my heart. ARF-80’s mind was as fragile as her body was indestructible, and despite her bravado, Violet cared.

In the soft but constant wind, ARF-80 had to hold her map in both hands, so her arms waved around like a tank turret as she explained, “If that purple cloud with the green stripes is Auto-Gnat Mire, which I’m pretty sure it is, then that tiny speck over there is the factory.”

I blinked at that. “We can’t have been gone an hour.”

Violet looked at me sidelong with a deeply amused, in fact downright skeptical smirk, and sounded horrified. “The Moon must be dull. Besides, if it’s a factory, it probably used to be even closer to the city and drifted away.”

ARF-80 jerked upright, face lighting up with even more delight. “Oh! Owner!”

“‘Rachel,’ please,” I insisted.

ARF-80 giggled bashfully, not sounding robotic at all. “Oops. But look what I’ve got! I have attachments that aren’t weapons!” Reaching into one loose pirate blouse sleeve, she rummaged around until something popped and wheezed, and she pulled out a pair of binoculars.

Violent Violet lunged forward and snatched it out of ARF-80’s hand as the cyborg teen started to hold the gift out to me. I saw ARF-80’s eyes flicker blue, but they turned back to green without an error message.

While Violet did that, I desperately grabbed for and held steady the control levers our captain had just abandoned. Having installed those levers, I knew they were loose and could slip in the wind, plunging us down into the abyss. I was in so, so much of a hurry to never experience that.

Violet left me to the controls and stepped up to ARF-80’s navigator perch, peering through the binoculars. “Okay, I’ve never seen that before,” she commented, then when she realized she had confessed to being less than all-knowing, added, “I’ve heard of it.”

The pirate princess stomped the six feet or so back to me and grabbed the control levers, passing me the binoculars instead. As I rose to my feet, Wrench bounced up and down next to me, curls rustling and arms reaching up to make grabby hand motions. I passed her the binoculars, and she leaned way forward, staring ahead of the boat for several seconds, before passing me the binoculars back and I finally got to look.

By now, I could see the speck growing in the sky ahead of us, and in a minute I wouldn’t need the binoculars at all. I set them to my eyes anyway and saw a jumble of little buildings growing out of each other with lots of little towers and connecting pipes. That was just Saturn architecture, nothing weird. The weird part had to be that the building sat on a big, big rock held in the mouth of a gigantic animal skull, with a smaller skeleton wrapped around skull and rock both.

Next to me, Violet shouted lustily, “Hey, crew! Who wants to loot a nugget angler from the Seventh Sky?”

The teenager sky bandits behind us cheered with understandable enthusiasm.

I lowered the binoculars to see Violet grinning now with manic, sinister anticipation. Her voice practically purred. “Oh yes, there shall be treasure, and some wonderful, awful reason this place was abandoned.”

“Drill rampage!” shouted one of the pirates. I had not made any attempt to know who was who, yet.

“Barnacle wasps!” suggested another.

“Mantis shrimp,” said the gentleboy rogue. Him I recognized.

“Mantis shrimp!” squealed the first two together.

The rest of the pirates cheered.

Violet sighed blissfully, taking off her hat to rest it against her chest. “I couldn’t have asked for a likelier crew for my first voyage.”

My crude and ugly little boat carried us obediently toward the factory. Closer up, I could appreciate how it was more like a small collection of tall buildings, with pipes and huge levers connecting them. Big gaps around those levers suggested that if the building were operational, they would be churning up and down. The buildings perched on top of the monster skull, filling that whole side of the floating rock. The walls and visible metal struts were dark, not with dirt or rust, but soot.

A landing pad also stuck out of what looked like the front of the factory. It already had two ships on it, of the railroad engine with rotors variety. They were more sleek, slender, and cylindrical than the fat military monster we passed on the way to Gyro City. The larger of the two had a pair of unmistakable cannon turrets top front, and more protrusions that could be weapons. Both featured holes so large and gaping that it was obvious from a distance neither of these would be flying anytime soon.

We landed with a thump so hard that ARF-80 and Wrench had to grab me to keep me from falling out of the boat. The sad truth was that the only real way to land my barge was to take it down to about a foot above the pavement and turn off all the engines.

Pirate kids swarmed off the boat, weapons in hands, shouting things like, “Arrr!”

I stepped with awkward care off the boat and walked straight over to the nearest of the black train engine ships. For the millionth time, I wished I had my sketchbook. I had no diagrams of ships like this back on Ceres, but I’d seen stuff like it in steampunk art. I wanted to make pictures!

I also wanted to see inside, but as I stepped up to the open hole in the side of the ship, I remembered the words “barnacle wasps.”

Prudent caution and my desire to never find out if those were a thing made me ask, “ARF-80? Can you take a look inside and make sure these are safe?”

Violet draped her arm around my shoulders, making me jump an inch because I hadn’t heard her approach. She gave me a broad, amused, toothy grin from right up close. “You are my best friend and a treasure I shall hoard until we are crushed by Saturn’s depths, but you are no pirate at heart.”

Leaning out of the first ship, ARF-80 gave me a thumbs up to confirm its safety and hopped out through a different hole in the hull to head for the second ship.

In giddy anticipation, I grinned back at Violet. “No, but I am a spaceship mechanic at heart, and that’s what you need.”

ARF-80 stepped out of that second ship, and gave me a sharp salute, calling out, “No monsters, no seemingly innocent abandoned toys, no strange, creeping fungus, no ghosts. Just broken pipes!”

Reassured, I leaned forward and peeked into the closer air train bus military space transport thingy. Yes, plenty of broken pipes, but those would be easy to replace. In fact, I didn’t see much damage at all. What I saw was an incompletely built proto-ship. The difference was that whole plates rather than torn holes were missing from the struts of the superstructure. A door stood open to a cockpit that looked complete, and most of the rotors were in place even, although they hadn’t been hooked up to an engine. A set of braces toward the back of the ship showed where the engine had not yet been installed.

That was as far as my inspection got before Violet grabbed my bicep in both hands and dragged me away.

“But Moooooom!” I whined in my best impression of her as she pulled me across the landing field pavement with my sneakers skidding.

Ragged green grass had taken root around the edges of the factory buildings. From up close on the ground floor, they looked a lot like cathedrals. The same tall, pointy roofs and turrets, huge soot-shrouded windows, and double doors in an arch maybe fifteen feet tall.

Someone had helpfully knocked the doors off their hinges, to lie in the grass in front of the now empty doorway. Whoever had done that left big gouges in the inner surface of the wood, expressing their enthusiasm for getting out of this place quickly. I felt their enthusiasm, but there was no way I could shake Violet’s grip⁠—

⁠—we entered the factory and words deserted me for a moment.

I found a word. Beautiful.

What a beautiful madhouse. Most of the giant building was one cavernous room. Pipes ran everywhere, bending at right angles and weaving among each other. Ladders ran up to platforms. Cogs ranging from hand size to bus size interconnected all around the walls, hooked to pistons in bulky machines and run by absolutely enormous pistons sticking through the rear wall way, way up high. Blue lights in brass cages still worked, but everything else held still, covered in a thin layer of soot. I wondered what it all did.

This time I had to say it out loud. “I wish I had my papers and pens.”

Next to me, ARF-80 jerked her head up in another moment of joyous epiphany. “I think…I think…yes!” Lifting up her shirt, she scrabbled underneath it until a hatch in her belly popped open. She pulled out a fat book and a couple of ballpoint pens and handed them to me. “My instruction manual!”

I flipped through it. The writing was illegible, not even real writing, just blobby, faded symbols that would look like writing from a distance. That was fine. The important thing was that a lot of the pages were partly, mostly, or entirely blank.

Ripping the book down its spine, I handed half to Wrench and squeed, “Maybe if we draw enough of this, we can figure it out!”

She accepted the crude notebook with a smile every bit as enthusiastic as mine, and began pointing the pen all around, following lines of equipment to put together a mental map of where to start. I personally planned to go the opposite way, sketching a few individual machines to get a feel for the look of the place before starting to chart out the overall layout.

Behind us, Pirate Princess Violent Violet barked out orders. “Simon, Petros, and Homare, down to the bedrock. Talib, Diric, Elizabeth, up onto the catwalks. Find the hidden rooms up there. Lucy, you murderous little harpy—”

The only pirate smaller and younger than me, a preteen girl with raggedly cut copper-red pigtails and a pair of serrated knives the size of her forearms, shouted, “YARRR!”

“⁠—you go into the air ducts. You four find the storerooms. My engineer and I will find the factory heart. This place is intact, so I’m expecting some really scary monsters. Scream and back up fighting while we all come running to join you when you see them. Lads and lassies, what do we want?”

“ADVENTURE!” the eleven air pirate teens and their captain shouted together.

As they rushed off, I pointed my pen at the back wall of the main factory room. “The power source is back there, because that’s where all the biggest pistons attach.”

Now alone, Violet, Wrench, ARF-80 and I walked across the vast concrete floor, our footsteps echoing. Leaning close, Violet whispered giddily, “Mom will be so proud.”

Yes, she probably would.

We found the back door, underneath a looming block of machinery and raised control rooms. It opened onto a short, grassy avenue, mere yards separating the main factory from a smaller but still tall and pointy building with complicated side attachments. Its door was right across from us and hanging open, so we wandered inside with Violet’s pistol and sword drawn.

Nothing inside looked particularly scary or monstrous, unless you counted the power source itself, which was obviously meant to be there. A huge, bulgy metal heart stood in a frame, filling the back half of the building and with a good third of it underground, so that the circular glass hatch in front could be reached with a convenient metal ramp. All the enormous pistons stuck out of it.

The heart didn’t beat. The chamber behind the hatch lay dark and unlit. Everything was turned off.

My mouth opened to ask if factory power sources usually looked like this, but of course they did. It was a big version of the little hearts that ran the flying rotors in Gyro City’s technology. Besides, in a factory like this I would absolutely design the engine at its heart to look like a human heart.

So instead I said, “What a mess. Is this a pilgrimage site for artist mechanics?”

Someone had left hundreds of discarded sheets of paper lying around. They mostly formed trails from the big furnace heart into doorways that must lead to the attached side buildings. From the entrance, I had a good angle to peek into one of those, which looked like a workshop. The papers weren’t blank, either. They were covered in little diagrams and clumps of writing.

I walked boldly over them, having no fear of the written word which acknowledged me as its master. Also I was in a hurry to take a look at the heart engine. I’d never actually opened one of the little ones up.

By the time I climbed onto the short, rickety metal ramp in front of it, well…hoo boy, the heart was big! It towered up and up over me. Behind the glass hatch, I could barely make out a dark chamber filled with ash. I took hold of the hatch handle to get a better look⁠—

⁠—and it fell off, its weight yanking it out of my grip until it crashed into the bowl underneath us that held the bottom part of the heart.

I sighed. “Well, we’re not getting the factory running until we replace that.”

Up close, I noticed something: Concentric circles of writing scratched into the metal that framed the round hole. Weeeeeird. I squinted and gave my professional mechanic’s judgment.

“Gibberish.”

Really, gibberish. It was hard to make out the scratchy letters and numbers, but they didn’t form words. Not even words I didn’t understand.

“Crazed murderer,” declared Violet confidently, and continued with increasing glee. “That’s why they abandoned this place. Someone went mad. I wonder if she’s still alive?” Her hands flexed, getting a more secure grip on her weapons.

The ramp creaked at the strain as ARF-80 wandered up behind me to tilt her head and peer at the writing. After a second of that, she seized up and declared, “Reality error. Abort, retry, fail?”

Out in the center of the room Violet tilted her own head to the side, with a puzzled frown. “That’s a weird one.”

In full agreement, I instructed, “Abort. ARF-80, don’t look at any of this writing. If you can block it out of your senses, do it.”

Because what I didn’t want to tell anyone was that I’d finally recognized this gibberish. Algebra. Someone had drawn a double ring of equations around the furnace’s opening. The equations looked like they might mean something, but as Space kept reminding me, I was here because I was a creative writing nerd, not a math nerd.

I looked down at the papers around my feet. The writing part was more math, and the diagrams had lots of arrows that looked like measurements for geometry.

I couldn’t tell anyone that I understood what I was seeing. I just couldn’t. But I couldn’t leave this alone. Horrified, I followed one of the paper trails in quiet steps to a side building.

My guess had been correct. This was obviously a workshop, with lots of machines and tables with parts and tools hanging up. Everything was ornate. Wrenches had oversized gears whose teeth formed the sockets. Hammers had metal handles with screw threads at each end and unnecessary bolts on either side of the hammer head. The machines had the upper half of a robot operating each one, with a skeletal frame and a welding mask for a face, welded into the wall at the hips. Each machine was powered by a little heart motor in the chest of its robot, and a couple more motors lay around on a table and a flat stamping machine, in the midst of a mess of papers.

Standing by the door into the workshop and well out of reach, I whispered hoarsely, “Those look dangerous.”

Violet slipped past me under my arm, and looked around with a rare worried expression of her own. Then she set her jaw. “Mom says you avoid the stupid dangerous so you’re alive to enjoy the smart dangers.” One by one, she leveled her pistol at each of the heart motors and shot it through the middle. The ring of bullet smashing metal was so loud that I could barely hear the clicking of her pistol reloading between shots.

When she was done, ARF-80 slid between both of us, grabbed each shattered heart, ripped it out of the wall, and crushed it in her hand.

Violet’s grin came back. She tapped her hat’s forward point with her pistol and said, “You’re as safe as anyone can be, now. Anyway, automatons didn’t write these loony letters.”

Certainly true, so I stepped up to look at the papers on the table. The papers were all pretty similar. The math wasn’t quite the same. A paragraph or design would be crossed out and replaced here and there. In fact, the papers along the trail were following a progression of replacements.

Furrowing my brow, I said, “Someone was trying to figure something out. Look at these pictures of cogs, and that turbine. And the arrows. They were designing these miniature heart steam engines, but they weren’t working well enough. They’re calculating…the maximum amount of power they can possibly generate? They wanted to make the best.”

There was a lot of math here. Algebra and a little geometry were my limit, and I hadn’t even recognized what a lot of these equations were, and still didn’t. I did spot some trigonometry, which I couldn’t do but at least knew what it looked like. It was all I could manage to read aloud, “Sin of X over the square root of two.”

Whispers flowed out of the wall, too many voices to understand the words, barely audible but getting louder. The fraction of an equation I’d just read flared with blue light, which creeped from equation to equation, from page to page, following the trail like a burning fuse. Interrupt the—no, I watched the spreading light skip a wide gap between papers. Interrupting the trail wouldn’t work.

Metal squealed as the robots on the wall twisted around and ripped their formerly ornamental hands loose from the machines they’d been welded to.

Flat and forcibly calm, Violet said, “Outsiders. Someone summoned Outsiders. That’s what happened to this place. Crew member ARF-80, get her out of here!”

One of the robots reached out its arm to grope toward us, and Violet shot it in the shoulder joint, knocking the arm off.

The welding mask faces all turned toward Violet. The whispering voices became mumbling voices. Grey goo bubbled out of the inner lining of the robots, swelling into threads of grey meat to turn the skeletons into even more grotesque parodies of people.

Clasping her fists to the side of her head, Violet hunched down, shivering and whining. “No. No! I didn’t! You don’t know that!”

I couldn’t do anything, because ARF-80 took her orders seriously. Her arm went around my waist, she hauled me off my feet, and marched out into the main power room toward the exit.

I squirmed, kicking my feet and pushing at her waist. Her hard, steel waist. I couldn’t budge ARF-80 even slightly with force. “Let me go! We have to save her!” With a stiff, determined face and even strides, ARF-80 kept walking.

Ugh. It was kind of repulsive, but I knew what to try next. “I order you to save her instead of me!”

ARF-80 shuddered to a halt, her free will overridden. She let go, dropping me to the hard floor, swung around, and marched back to the workshop where Violet still trembled and argued shrilly against the voices.

Someone had said that even tiny amounts of math was devastating to Martians. ARF-80 had frozen up just looking at an equation. Desperately, I shouted, “And don’t touch those monsters. Shoot them if you have to, but don’t touch them!”

Moving with robotic calm, ARF-80 ripped her right blouse sleeve off, revealing her rusty green metal arm. Plates slid aside, and out popped two nozzles and a number of tubes. Grabbing Violet by the back of her shirt with her left hand, ARF-80 dragged the purple pirate backwards out of the room, extended her right arm⁠—

Ah. Those tubes were a flamethrower. Orange and red fire flooded out of ARF-80’s wrist into the workshop, causing the voices to screech instead of mutter. Metal clanged, and I didn’t want to think too hard about the gross, meaty, crackling noises.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

The huge central factory furnace had turned on. Giant levers sticking out of it swung slowly up and down. The math around the hatch all glowed blue, and inside, instead of a furnace, it held a tunnel lined with stars.

From the direction of the main factory, just barely audible, someone screamed.

That noise snapped Violet out of her shock. Her head jerked up, she reared up onto her own feet, and looked around in confusion.

I grabbed her shoulder and squeezed. “We need a pirate queen,” I told her.

It was a dumb thing to say.

It was the right thing to say.

Violet’s confusion turned instantly to poise, her purple eyes sharp and calculating. She glanced at the furnace, and the workshops. Something half-melted crawled out of the burning workshop, and meat-lined robot skeletons lurched in clumsy steps out of the others.

Because that just couldn’t be enough of a problem, the exit door slammed shut behind us.

I took a step backwards, shivering. I was a coward and knew it. “I did not come to space for adventure. I am not an adventure person,” I stammered.

Violet had dropped her pistol and sword in the workshop, but it’s not like those were the only ones she carried. Drawing another, bulkier gun and a long knife instead, she said with flat, absolute calm, “I am, but my crew comes first. Open it.”

The pirate princess jerked her head at the front door, and ARF-80 understood. The cyborg grabbed the door handle and pulled. The handle snapped off. She tossed it aside, and metal whined as ARF-80 dug her fingers into the door frame and pried it open, ripping the locking mechanism free.

Wrench tugged on my sleeve, and on Violet’s. When we looked down at her, the shiny grey kobold pointed across the room at the furnace and squeaked, “We have a bigger problem.”

Out of the star-lined tunnel in the factory’s heart stepped a lean, black and white figure. Ribbon.

I shivered. Ribbon wanted to take me to her queen, who might or might not kill me. No offense, but that was a chance I wanted to run screaming away from.

Violet’s calm turned into a wide, manic grin of anticipation, which flickered into a grimace, and then into a flat-lipped, hard glower. Coldly, she said, “Pirate queens have responsibilities.” Flicking her head at ARF-80, she ordered, “You deal with that.” To Wrench she ordered, “Get her out of here,” and twitched her knife in my direction.

And that was all. Violet launched out of the broken open door in a dead run, crossing the grassy space into the main factory in less time than one of the factory’s massive heartbeats. As she entered that cavern she shouted, “Crew! Outsider infestation! Retreat to our vessel immediately! This means you, Lucy!”

The power station exit slammed shut again, this time because a silvery mass shoved it into the frame until the metal bent and wedged. Then Key flowed in a lightning-quick stream along the floor back to her owner and leaped into Ribbon’s hand. Even as she jumped up, the metallic squid writhed and lengthened into a gleaming scythe, that most goth of weapons.

White armor flashed out of the gaps between ARF-80’s green armor, and in sleek combat mode she advanced to meet Ribbon.

Ribbon twirled the scythe like a baton. When they were a few paces apart, ARF-80 lunged the remaining distance and the fight started.

They were both so fast. I’d seen Violet fight the Saturn way, with lots of jumping and ducking and rolling and wide swings. Ribbon danced. The goth’s scythe flew all around the goth’s body, constantly spinning, and Ribbon twirled and stood on one foot and leaped and ducked, but all in the fluid, graceful arcs of a ballerina. Key bounced off of ARF-80’s armor again and again.

But Ribbon was losing. Those weren’t hits, they were blocked strikes, or more often attempts to block ARF-80’s swift, relentless punches and kicks. The cyborg steadily advanced, and Ribbon fell back, and back, and back. Not desperately, but despite Ribbon’s grace the bounty hunter’s dodges and blocks did not look easy or casual.

ARF-80 bolted forward, elbow out. Ribbon spun out of the way, and the cyborg slammed into the wall. For a split second I thought Ribbon had lured her into vulnerability, but there was no opening. ARF-80 was already swinging a leg around for a kick that knocked Key out of Ribbon’s hands.

That did ARF-80 no good, either. The silvery space squid just flowed right back up into Ribbon’s hands and became a scythe again.

The Outsider monsters were slow, but they kept advancing. As the constant circling backed Ribbon up near one, her scythe’s spin brought its blade up behind her to slice the abomination vertically in half. When they neared another meaty skeleton on the opposite side of the room, ARF-80 grabbed a discarded barrel and hit the monster so hard it flew upward and smashed into one of the churning factory pistons, shattering into bits.

Despair clawed at me. Neither of the things I was good at were any use here, but I needed to help ARF-80 somehow. In desperate hope, I looked down at Wrench, who was chewing on her claws as she watched the fight with equal anxiety.

I managed to get my thoughts going enough to say, “If we get the door open…”

“…we can all run,” Wrench finished.

I spun around and grabbed the edge of the twisted door, tugging at it. It was metal, jammed tightly into place. It wouldn’t budge. I looked down to ask Wrench, who was slightly stronger than me, to help. The little kobold was busy scooping up an old pipe and throwing it overhand at a monster staggering toward us.

The throw hit the thing right in the forehead. It slipped and fell onto its back on the trail of glowing papers, and when they touched the Outsider’s meat they burst into blue flame.

We watched the Outsider writhe for half a second. Then Wrench scooped up a bunch of papers off the floor and threw them at the next nearest monster. The ones that touched clung like flypaper and went up in flames, sending the abomination staggering, hissing, whining, and bubbling, until it fell down in a disgusting mass of melted metal and charred meat.

Except I had expected that mass to fall apart, or disintegrate, or something. The burning zombie was growing instead.

The first zombie Wrench had knocked over had already climbed to its feet, a mass of sludge and flame nearly ten feet tall.

Ribbon and ARF-80 darted away from their battle simultaneously. The goth charged toward us, body low, scythe still spinning, and when the bounty hunter reached the thing Ribbon chopped its ankles off, then its knees, then its hips, then its arms and sliced those arms in three pieces before they hit the floor. When the body landed, Ribbon slammed Key’s point through the flaming zombie Outsider’s head, and the burning grey muck finally dissolved into ash.

On the other side, ARF-80 leaped high into the air, grabbed one of the enormous levers thudding up and down overhead, and yanked, hard. It broke free of the furnace and fell, uncountable tons of brass, to land on top of the other zombie and crush it flatter than its clinging papers.

The immediate threat to me removed, Ribbon and ARF-80 whirled to face each other. Some of the other cursed diagrams had caught fire, and some burned orange, and some blue. The light played garishly over ARF-80’s white plastic surfacing and sent weird shadows crawling through the slashed ruffles of Ribbon’s dress.

The remaining pistons pounded. Fire crackled. Zombies hissed and clanked and mumbled. But Ribbon talked over that clamor, loud and even. “What’s your real name, Martian? Who are you, inside? What kind of person are you?” The questions came one after another, implacable, while Ribbon crouched low with Key held out to one side. “What did you do yesterday? What will you do tomorrow? Can you name your family? Can you remember their faces? All their faces? Can you hear their voices? What are they like? Why are you fighting? Do you even want to fight? What do you want?”

In a series of clicks, ARF-80’s white combat armor slid back under her green steel shell. She dropped to her knees with a much louder clang. Firelight made tears in the corner of her eyes glitter. “I—”

Those tear-touched eyes turned solid blue, and a robotic voice said calmly, “Unable to override humanity. Abort, retry, fail?”

This was my choice to make. Retry might or might not make ARF-80 keep fighting. Abort would make ARF-80 forget the conversation. But I couldn’t do either. No matter what happened to me, I owed this to ARF-80.

“Fail.”

ARF-80’s blue eyes turned green. Tears flowed down her cheeks. She covered those eyes with her green metal hands, and sobbed, “⁠—don’t want to fight. I want to go to school. I want to be a girl again. Maybe it was a lie. Maybe I never was one. I still want it. That’s still me.”

Ribbon lunged. The goth from Charon raced up to me in four long steps and grabbed me around the waist the way ARF-80 had. Wrench leaped, fangy jaws wide, but Ribbon planted a boot in the middle of Wrench’s chest and shoved her away. It was a push, not a kick, but it sent Wrench tumbling.

And with me hoisted off the ground like a box of hard tack, Ribbon turned and ran for the portal.

“Wrench! ARF-80!” I shrieked, looking back at them in the burning, wrecked, zombie-infested room.

Between steady breaths, Ribbon said, “They’ll be okay. The Outsiders are after you.”

Ribbon was right, as usual. The half a dozen zombies I saw ignored Wrench and ARF-80, lurching toward us instead.

I was the person who was in trouble.

Ribbon’s heeled boots rang on the metal ramp, and the goth from Charon leaped through the factory heart’s hatchway into the star-lined tunnel, carrying me along.

I knew space was flexible away from Earth’s hard numbers, but here I could see and feel it. They were moving toward the grey light at the other end of the tunnel but were also standing still as two crude human shapes made of starry blackness oozed out of the tunnel walls.

One of them screamed. It was my brother Mikey’s voice, scared and in pain. My heart clenched in my chest in anguish.

The other called out in brother Jackey’s voice, with the increasingly shrill panic of a lost child. It was a sound no one who had ever heard it could mistake. “Rachel? Where are you? Rachel!” Jackey started sobbing, his voice hoarse. “Racheeeel!”

“Rachel, it hurts! Help me! It hurts, it hurts!” Mikey begged.

I curled up into a shaking ball.

Agony and guilt and fear blotted out everything except Ribbon’s voice, which snarled, “Leave her alone!”

My eyes were open. Ribbon’s shout drew my attention enough to see the goth swing Key in two vicious arcs. The metal squid was no longer a scythe, just a raw, jagged blade that hacked its way up first one of the starry figures, then down the other. They split and sank back into the walls of the tunnel.

I breathed hard, still curled up. The voices had stopped, but I was still fighting not to hear them in my memory. Ribbon slung me up and cradled me to a flat, ruffle-and-lace-covered chest like a baby and kept running. We had never stopped running.

Grim and final, Ribbon told me, “I will protect you. I will never let anyone or anything hurt you. I swear it.”

Other voices murmured, and I flinched a little tighter, but they weren’t Mikey and Jacky’s. These were dim, mumbling, the tone nebulous and the words either gibberish or too slurred to make out. I managed to look up at Ribbon and see that androgynous face pinched tight. The voices were attacking Ribbon now.

Ribbon leaped out of the far end of the tunnel, and the voices disappeared entirely.

Chapter Nineteen

We landed in a nightmare temple tomb. It was octagonal in shape, vaulted, with irregular walls lined in dark grey chitin. Statues bulged from those walls, humanoid but ropy and chitinous, distended bizarrely, with goat heads in the classic satanic pentagram style set into bellies and wrists. The statues had no heads.

Seven other portals lined the walls, but only the one we had entered stood open. The others were sealed with grey slabs.

The room contained exactly one piece of furniture: a broad pedestal that might be an altar and exuded from the floor in the same chitinous theme. Claws poked up around the rim, and in its center stood an abstract statue of two balls joined by a rod, but there was enough free space for Ribbon to carry me over and sit me on the edge.

We both breathed hard. The air flowed into me, cold and dry, but pleasantly so.

Flooding relief gave me strength to look around at this unholy temple. It was right out of a horror movie. It was the perfect place for Outsiders. I was in the clutches of someone who might be ordered to murder me at any second. So… “Why do I feel so comfortable here?”

My voice might rasp, but the question was hopeful, not labored. Sometimes in life you go somewhere that feels right, for no obvious reason. This place did.

Ribbon, breath under control already thanks to being in vastly better shape, gave me a wide, happy, sincere smile. “We’re on Charon. I knew you would feel at home here.”

I pointed a shaky finger at the star-studded tunnel. “Isn’t that an Outsider portal? And it leads to Charon?”

Gently but firmly, Ribbon took hold of my shoulders and turned me away from the portal and its nightmares and sat down on my other side. The smile tempered, but only a little. Ribbon was as comfortable here as me. “Portals lead to Charon or the Dragon Moons. They may touch other worlds if you corrupt them enough, but portals belong here. Yes, it’s mad and suicidal for Outsiders to use them. Outsiders are mad and suicidal.”

A fact clicked into place, and I glared at Ribbon, hard. “But you were waiting for me.”

Ribbon’s smile fell a little further, but that metal-studded, ink-black face showed no hint of guilt, only concern. “You are stained by the Outsiders, Rachel, worse than anyone I’ve ever heard of who still had any sanity left. It’s like you’ve spent a lifetime drowning in math and managed to shake it off. On Charon, we can cleanse you. Until that happens, you are drawn to Outsiders as much as they are drawn to you. I didn’t have to try to find you on Saturn. I just had to find the nearest place the Outsiders had touched and wait.”

Rather than think about that terrifying and clearly true fact, I whined, “Why does everyone keep kidnapping me!?”

Ribbon’s smile returned, inches from my face. “Because you belong here. Stand up. Look around.”

I did. Sliding to my feet, I stood up straight and looked over the grotesque, theatrical statues and the ominous architecture. It tried so hard to be scary, it became adorable.

“Close your eyes, and drink it in,” murmured Ribbon.

I did, breathing deeply and slowly. The cold air felt good, not too cold and not too dry, just like standing in front of an air conditioner on a hot day.

I couldn’t see Ribbon now, but the goth kept talking. “This is the place where people like you, people like us, belong. People who create. People who hurt.”

Mikey and Jacky’s screaming voices started up in my memory and I shook, grabbing my shoulders and trying not to fall to my knees. I forced the memories away. Some things you learn not to dwell on.

Ribbon’s hand slipped into mine, and squeezed firmly, comfortingly, protectively. With the calm of a concerned and intimate friend, Ribbon murmured, “Tell me about it. Please. I want to know you.”

And that was Ribbon. No small talk.

I opened my eyes, hoping the sensory input and talking over my pain would crush the memory of those voices. “I ran away from home. I didn’t mean to, but now I can’t go back. My brothers are good kids. It’s not their fault. My parents are good people. It’s not their fault. But they don’t have time to take care of us, so I have to take care of my brothers.” My voice started to quaver, but I forced myself to continue. “Except I’m not there, not doing it. Mikey and Jacky needed more love and attention than I could give them, and they were hurting. Without it…. I’ve….” My shoulders twitched. “Jacky drank poison once. I’ve had to stop Mikey from running into busy streets. They could be dead. I know they’re suffering. Have you ever heard a child screaming in pain?”

“Yes,” answered Ribbon.

Startled, I looked down at the seated Ribbon and squeezed my solemn goth’s hand back. “What do the voices say to you?”

Ribbon had seemed quite calm, but this produced a tight cheeked, incompletely suppressed grimace. Staring past me at the wall, Ribbon haltingly answered, “I can’t… tell you that yet. It’s not as bad as yours, but I’m not ready. What I can tell you is that I’m free now, and you don’t know it yet, but so are you. You didn’t run away. You escaped.”

I let my head hang, looking down at my sneakers and the slate grey, weirdly resinous floor. The whole room smelled like bugs, and I didn’t know I knew what bugs smelled like until now. Musty and a touch bitter. “I can’t be selfish like that.”

Passion returned to Ribbon’s voice, and the goth shook their head, sending long white braids waving. “Don’t be selfish. Charon needs you now. The whole solar system needs you. I can’t live for myself, either, but we can live for others in a place where we belong, doing what uplifts us.”

A small smile forced its way up one side of my lips. Flapping a hand at the horror themed walls, I said, “I mean, you have a point, but this? This is not my style.”

Ribbon’s gleaming grin came back. The goth slowly released my hand and leaned back against the altar instead. “Of course not. This is Susan Slither’s style. You’ll get to write your own part of Charon in your style, and it will grow as your style grows as you grow. As we grow together. I will take you to the Witch-Queen now. Don’t worry about the Outsiders. When you accept that Charon is your home, all other claims will let go. Until then, I will protect you. From the Outsiders, and from everyone.”

Looking down at Ribbon, I saw what Ribbon didn’t: A lithe grey figure darted around the base of the altar, and Wrench slammed her snaggle toothed jaws closed on Ribbon’s fishnet-covered calf. Those teeth bit deep, so deep that black blood immediately ran down out of Wrench’s mouth.

Ribbon yelped. Silvery Key leaped into the bounty hunter’s hand, forming a hooked, jagged blade. Ribbon turned…and hesitated rather than slashing Wrench with it.

My kobold friend grabbed my hand and pulled hard, starting us running toward the still open portal.

A thought flicked through my head. I’d done so much spaceship repair now, I was spotting things without realizing it. As I stumbled forward, my free hand grabbed a little crystal tube out of the statue on the altar, with its twin planets Pluto and Charon.

Removing the crystal didn’t change anything. Tucking my head down, I ran with Wrench to the still open portal. The kobold spit out a glob of black blood, but I didn’t look back at Ribbon to see how bad the bite had been. Looking back would slow me down.

We entered the starry tube, where I couldn’t tell how fast we were going, or how long we had left to run. I gritted my teeth, tensing up for the voices, but they spoke only at a quiet babble level, saying nothing I could understand.

They were attacking Wrench. I looked at the kobold, with her eyes scrunched shut and her tail wrapped around her middle. The voices were saying something horrible. What had Wrench been through that the voices could hurt her so badly? And yet Wrench was willing to go through this tunnel twice for me, and despite the pain she was still moving at a flat-out run, pulling me forward because I couldn’t keep pace with those bendy dinosaur legs.

We burst out of the tunnel into the factory’s power plant. Ribbon had been right. The Outsiders were gone, and the robotic shells had collapsed, although the math still glowed on the factory’s heart and the abominable pages of calculations.

The feeling of being on Saturn hit me. It was fine, but for a moment, I missed the comfortableness of Charon. Only for a moment. Finally, I knew what to do.

“ARF-80, break the door down!” I shouted.

My cyborg friend still knelt on the floor, but she wasn’t crying anymore, just rubbing her head. At my words, she leaped to her feet, ran for the door, and ran into it with her shoulder. Wedged or not, the metal sheet went flying out of the gap, through the door opposite, and skidded into the main factory.

“Wrench, grab those!” I shouted next and swerved from my path to yank a couple of the heart motors out of collapsed skeletons. Wrench did the same.

Swerve we might, but we kept running, and the three of us stampeded out of the factory power plant and didn’t stop running when we entered the main factory. Violent Violet stood on a catwalk one floor up, with her clustered crew. Seeing me below, she shouted, “Rachel! Gwen, have you got Lucy? We retreat to the ship, on guard and in order. We’ll have a story to tell when we get home, but we’re not out of the maw of chaos yet.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t stop. I didn’t even slow down. I ran all the way across the factory, lungs and muscles aching, and out on to the landing pad with Wrench and ARF-80 on either side. Ignoring the barge I made for Violet, I leaped up through a hole in the side of the smaller train engine ship, rushed into its cockpit, and the moment ARF-80 and Wrench were inside, slammed the door.

Yes, the cockpit was mostly built, mostly intact. It just had no power. The fully complete train would have lots of rotors, but it had four up front already installed, and the control linkages entered the walls right here. I pulled out a power tube and stuck that into the center of one of the hearts I was carrying, then jabbed the control linkage into a slot on top. Rushing across to the other side of the room, I did the same thing with my other motor.

Two would be enough. I left Wrench hooking up the motors she was carrying to the remaining rotors and leaped to the controls. Turning a key on the board, I heard the fans spin up. I pulled a gear shift down a stage, and the ship lurched, bounced, but rose clumsily into the air and flew off the landing pad.

A lever with a wide handle was the other main control. I pushed it slightly down, and the ship tilted forward. I pulled it way back, until we rocketed almost straight up.

We hit the barrier between the Second and First Skies. The ship lurched, tilted to the side. I twisted the handle of the control lever, which turned us back straight, and pulled us back into heading upward.

By the time we reached the edge of the atmosphere, Wrench had the other two motors hooked up, and we hardly wobbled as we broke free into space.

The windshield view was suddenly full of stars, and aside from the low drone of our engines, everything had gone quiet and still.

ARF-80 filled that quiet with a curious, baffled question. “Where are we going?”

Me, I was breathing hard, and between panting breaths answered, “Where we belong, and none of us belong on Saturn. We’re going where we belong, and where I can hide.”

Twisting the lever firmly, I turned the ship around and pointed us at the pulsing light of the Lighthouse of Ceres.

Chapter Twenty

I stepped aside to let Wrench carry the last chair out of the gigantic spaceship onto the white stone shelf of the Lighthouse dock. Once she toddled past carrying a piece of metal furniture bigger than her, I backed into the entrance hatch so I could explain to the three identical blondes following me, “We’re done. Your spaceship conversion is complete. Let me show you how it works now.”

Okay, so the ship wasn’t gigantic, but it was the biggest thing we’d ever successfully fit in the bay. Weird design, too. Not in the sense that it was elaborately shaped, but it looked so…Earthy. Rockets were mostly a Jupiter thing, but they were shiny metal or otherwise flashy, not this dull, practical white. Between a flattened cockpit and crew quarters at the front and the rocket boosters at the back was a white cylinder with obvious joints at either end, as the original rocket had been chopped in half and an extension added.

Inside was just as odd, with padding and handles on the walls going down that central tube, which had at least been squared off into a hallway. A big hallway, not divided into any side rooms. I gestured at the now mostly blank walls. “As you can see, the chairs are gone. Four hatches, ceiling, floor, and both walls. Then another set of four down there, and a third set near the end. We built clamps and magnets around the outside of each hatch, so you can attach pretty much anything to carry along. Sorry we only had the materials to build two cargo containers ourselves, but it gives you the idea. You’ll be slow, and I take no responsibility for what happens if you don’t keep it balanced…” Taking a deep breath, I looked up at the tall triplets and finished, “…but the point is, you’re a freighter and not a passenger liner now. Congratulations.”

“We are pleased, human child,” the first one told me, with a stiff but emotional voice and a stiff but believable smile.

They weren’t robots. I’d bumped into one and hadn’t felt metal. Three completely identical women, six feet tall with statuesque, almost Amazonian builds. They wore nearly skintight silver spacesuits that were a little too tight and featureless to be of Jupiter design. Apparently natural blonde hair rose up in a poofy curled-back helmet crowning their heads. The only place I could guess they might be from was Venus, and this sure wasn’t a Venusian spaceship.

“We were uncomfortable in the presence of so many humans,” said the second woman, in her identical voice and identical mannerisms.

“Even though we were also humans,” added the third woman.

“But perhaps three humans are enough,” said the first.

“Because we are humans,” said the third, with a little extra emphasis.

“When we interact with other humans—”

“—which is a thing we do, because we are humans—”

“—we will tell them of the skills of the human child who pretends her name is Rachel.”

Yeah, I’d stopped paying attention to which one was talking.

My work complete, I turned to follow Wrench to the elevator, and plowed face-first into the stomach of an actual Venusian.

Miss Passionfruit smiled way, way down at me, and greeted, “I’m glad you’re finished. I was expecting to have to drag you away from your work. Alice’s piano recital is about to start.”

Norman, who to his credit had hauled some of the chairs himself, now lounged against the wall of the bay grinning at us. “I’m glad she’s done, too. That ship she’s been working on fills the whole dock. There’s been no room for anyone else to visit.”

He was so, so right. No visitors had been able to get in since the trio arrived. No Outsiders, no Ribbon, no nobody. Maybe having the docking bay stuffed end to end wouldn’t completely stop anyone who might come after me, but it would slow them down, and I had taken great comfort from that.

Edging past Miss Passionfruit as politely as I could, I gave her a smile that could have graced our very definitely human visitors. “I’m sorry. I have to skip the recital. I need to see these chairs put away.”

Miss Passionfruit was not fooled by that, and let her bland, blank stare stretch for a silent message to be sure I got the point before switching to a gently concerned frown and hands folded in front of her. “You have been working yourself harder than ever since you got back from Saturn.”

I spread my hands and grimaced, now on the other side of her and trying to back toward the elevator as politely as possible. “We keep getting people arriving for repairs. It’s nonstop.”

She nodded her head, long rabbit ears nodding just a bit further. “And while I do love the extra visitors that’s bringing, you don’t need to wear yourself out agreeing to help all of them.”

I stopped backing away, and my grimace tightened in honest discomfort. “Half of them can’t get anywhere else for repairs.”

She fixed her grey eyes on mine. It was the look you get from your mother or a teacher, and it made my guts squirm. The same with her gentle, concerned, but most importantly disapproving tone. “But the other half can, and half of those who can’t could have if they hadn’t come here. People managed without you. These fine ladies did not need your help at all, they only wanted it. I’m delighted by your generosity and having you as our mechanic, Rachel. I’m just worried you’re working yourself to death. I’ve seen people on a quest to find themselves before, and yours is going in the wrong direction.”

Lifting one hand, I waggled it dismissively and made a ‘psssht’ noise. “Oh, that. You don’t have to worry about that. I have a project that’s driving me a little extra, but I expect to finish it tonight and then I’ll be able to take time off. That’s why I can’t come now.”

She was not convinced, but her expression backed off to “sad and curious,” which I could deal with. “Well, I can’t stop you. As I have to remind people occasionally, I don’t have any power people don’t give me. Besides, if I don’t hurry I’ll be late, and you don’t want to see Alice pout. You’ve only seen her happy so far.”

Wow. Attempt to scare me successful, rabbit lady.

Wrench and I rode the elevator up to my bedroom level. These babies were not destined for any storeroom, oh no. The fence door opened, and I—

ARF-80, in her hoodie, pleated skirt, and ridiculous thick socks, came roller skating down the hallway at high speed. She didn’t need actual skates. She just stuck wheels out of her feet. I was at this point halfway out of the elevator dragging a chair, but ARF-80 veered easily to the side, right up onto the wall, then back down to the floor and kept on her way around the tower’s circle. All that with her nose stuck in a comic book. She hadn’t even looked up.

Hey, where had she found a comic book, anyway? Wouldn’t that have to have come from Earth?

Peering out of the elevator beneath me, brows furrowed, a puzzled Wrench asked in her adult voice, “Where did she find a kobold history painting? Printed on paper, no less?” Sighing, she added, “Rhetorical question.”

Oh, good. I’d gotten my daily getting slapped down for making wrong assumptions over already.

Wrench cleared her throat. “I mean—” Her face breaking into a giddy smile, she hopped up and down and squeaked, “Spaceships, yay!”

I sprayed spit as a laugh burst out of me. So dignified, Rachel. So, so dignified. Wrench just grinned up at me with playful glee, tail tip wiggling, because that had all been a show for me and we both knew it.

Ahem. Back to business. I dragged the chair with the freshest, comfiest padding into my bedroom, through the not very secret door, and into my very own miniature spaceship. Creepy as they were, the hearts I got from Saturn had made great backup motors. Now I glued the command chair to the floor in front of the controls, using a weird little spritzer that worked like if you could weld things with a spray can.

Finished, I gave it a shake, then tossed it back to Wrench. “I hope this thing doesn’t run out of juice soon. I just might love it more than grout.”

“Aaaaand….” It was the moment I’d been waiting for. Pulling the little white crystal I’d taken from that statue on Charon out of my pocket, I slid it through the hole marked for Charon in the star globe around my orrery, and into a carefully carved hole in the little bitty brass ball that represented Charon. As I’d hoped, the whole apparatus swung around, until the model of Charon pointed out into the asteroid belt, past the tunnel to the outer solar system and off to the side a bit. “That’s the navigation system. My spaceship is complete!”

“Nuh-uh. We’ve gotta install the other three chairs!” said Wrench, spraying a chair into place against the wall a little behind mine. She pointed at it, the spot next to it, and across at the other wall. “Me, ARF-80, the pirate, and maybe Ribbon if the crazy Charonian calms down.”

I blinked. “Oh! Right.”

A few minutes of dragging and spray-welding chairs into place, I stood up and dropped the can into Wrench’s hands. Brushing my forearm over my forehead, I declared, “Now my spaceship is complete! Do you think we should go get something to eat to celebrate?”

I looked around at my little ship, electrified with pride. It was small. To be quite honest, it was primitive. It didn’t have beds, or any of the comfort and survival features most ships did. But I could drive it by myself and go anywhere in the solar system.

Slowly, my smile turned to a frown as I looked around and didn’t see something. “Wait. Where is the solar sail?”

Wrench clasped her hands behind her back and opened her blue eyes big and innocent. “Solar sail?” No sooner did she say it, than her expression collapsed, and her childishness drained away. She looked tired as she asked, “Why do you need a solar sail to land on Earth?”

My train of thought derailed so hard I could only tell the truth. “It’s called a parachute. I thought you didn’t know my secret.”

“I didn’t, then,” she said quietly. Stepping over to the chair she’d assigned for herself, curling her tail around her lap to get it out of the way, she sat down and gave me a long, sad, thoughtful stare.

What else could I do? I sat down opposite her. After a couple of seconds of silence, I found words to say. “Are you going to stop me from returning to Earth?”

Laying her hands atop her tail, she said, “I can’t stop you from leaving, but if you go, I’m going with you.”

It was weird when Wrench looked at me like this, when she used her real voice. I’d gotten into the habit of thinking of her as an occasionally unusually mature child, but she was a grown woman. The odds that I would be able to outsmart her and sneak out without her were miniscule.

So, I had to try argument and waved my hands desperately. “Earth is full of Math, Wrench. I’ve been there, and it’s real. All those stories of how it changes things aren’t kidding. I don’t know what will happen to you.”

Her brows furrowed just a touch more. Grimly, she answered, “I’ll age. I’ll get so old, so fast, that it takes the kind of numbers you only get on Earth to describe it. I’ll die of old age so quickly that I won’t even know. My flesh will turn into black goo that melts off my bones, my bones will deform until they look more like an animal than a person, and then they’ll turn to stone.”

My mouth opened, my skin crawled, and I shrank back into my chair’s padding. I could so easily imagine Wrench turning into a dinosaur fossil. A sudden desire to go hug her mixed with my anger that she was getting in my way.

Confusion trumped both of those. “How do you know?”

She propped her elbows on her tail and clasped her hands under her crocodilian chin. “Kobolds tell stories to our children, stories that humans never hear because humans don’t bother to listen. Some of them are stories of the escape, when Math took over Earth, and what happened to those who were caught by Math before they could board a ship.”

“You want to stop me from running away this much?” Now it was me squeaking.

Wrench laughed, one bitter bark. Her face scrunched up in half a grimace, she said, “Me? No. No one knows better than me, sometimes you have to run away. I want to stop you from running back to Earth, because you don’t want to go back to Earth.”

I threw my arm out toward the asteroid belt visible through the cockpit window. My voice turned from squeaky to hoarse. “My family is there. Missing me. Needing me.”

Wrench’s grimace disappeared, replaced by an intent stare and absolute solemnity. “What you didn’t say is that you miss them, because you don’t.”

Words failed me.

I opened my mouth.

Words still failed me.

Wrench did not give me time to find them. Like a teacher giving a grim lesson, she told me, “When you think about your family, about Earth, your only expression is pain. Most of the time you don’t think about them. You work hard not to. Do you know what someone who loves her family acts like? Violet. Run away if you have to, but the only reason you pick Earth to run to is guilt, and I’m not going to let you guilt yourself into a life of misery.”

My words came out not just hoarse, but raw, and tears stung my eyes. “Guilt is important. I have obligations. It may be too late already.”

Wrench’s calm didn’t budge an iota. She kept watching me, talking over her folded, stubby hands, as cold as stone. “You do have obligations. You have an obligation to me. You have an obligation to Violet. You have an obligation to ARF-80. You have an obligation to everyone who comes to Ceres for your help, and everyone who lives here because we’re getting a lot more gifts now. You even think you have an obligation to Ribbon, for some reason. I don’t know why, but I can tell you do. I’m a lying, manipulative person and I’ve survived by making people love me, then using that to control them. If I have to do that to stop you from picking the obligation you want least, the only one that brings you no joy at all, then I’m at peace with it.”

It was my turn to stare at her, slumped back in my seat, as it sunk in. “You would really do it. You would die to stop me.”

And for the first time that hit home. Wrench put her hands over her eyes, turned her face down, and sounded pained. “I’m not good at being close to people, Rachel.” The moment didn’t last. She took a deep breath, dropped her hands and lifted her face, and at least some of the calm came back. “Yes. I can do that for you, so I will.”

I swallowed hard, and a shiver ran through my shoulders. “Now I don’t know what to do.” It was barely more than a whisper.

Wrench definitely had not completely recovered from that moment of weakness. She sounded tired as she said, “And I’m the last person you should ask about that. I do love my mother, and I left her behind. I’m smart. Talk to someone who is wise. Talk to Magnificent Mario. You trust him.”

…

“Okay, yeah, I do. Good idea.”

Chapter Twenty-One

It was so, so weird stepping out into the Lighthouse hallway where everything was calm and normal. That conversation had felt like a cataclysmic lifetime, but installing the chairs hadn’t taken much time, and talking even less. To everyone else, this was just an ordinary day on Ceres.

Which is why ARF-80 came rollerskating around the circle again, now with an entire pile of comic books in her arms. As she headed for us, her wheels suddenly retracted into her feet, and she skidded on her oversized white socks right up next to me.

With a smile as bright and childlike as Wrench’s best, the cyborg declared, “I know that expression. You’re headed to the kitchen. Breakfast time!”

Now was my chance. I peeked at the cover of the comic on top of ARF-80’s stack. It showed a squat, hairy thing holding a pickaxe too small even for it. Big, simple letters read “DIGGER.” The stumpy, cynical looking fluffball did not look like a kobold to me. On the other hand, who knew what the limits were of what kobolds could look like? Especially in a drawing? And that title had a certain folklore resonance.

Wrench, too short to see the top of the stack even if she wanted, squeaked thoughtfully, “I think it’s supper time. Or is it? We’ve been working so much, we’re out of schedule with everyone else.”

ARF-80 hugged her pile of graphic literature a little tighter and put on a confident smile as if she had a whole audience to say this to. “Mario will make me breakfast. He’s nice. He’s fun to throw knives with, too.”

We took the stairs down to the kitchen level. I needed time to think about what to say to Mario. Usually so good with words, now my thoughts just sat there and nothing came out at all.

In the silence, ARF-80 hoisted her comics up a little more securely and groaned. “I told Wilma that I even miss homework, and she gave me all of these to read. Is it possible to get bored of reading? If it is, I’m about to find out.”

Wrench giggled and prodded the cyborg in the hip with her finger. “You’re lucky. My teacher has been making me do extra work from the moment we get up in the morning to the moment I collapse on the floor at the foot of her bed at night, every day since we got back from Saturn.”

“So now I’m the adult in this conversation?” I complained, my voice on autopilot.

“Yup!” Wrench and ARF-80 chorused, then broke into giggles.

We’d reached the doorway to the dining room, and I had an idea. “Then as the adult, I’ll do the responsible thing and warn Mario you want breakfast instead.” I even managed a playful grimace as I strolled across the room and into the kitchen.

Mario was there, and Mario was cooking. It involved a lot of meat and breading, in thicker lumps than usual. Definitely not food for ARF-80.

Not that he needed any telling. His dark eyes glittered as he smiled behind that phoenix mask, and the enormous wall of muscle flipped one slice of bread onto a wooden board. He grabbed a knife, chopped the slice into a bunch of little squares, and slid the knife back into its holder so fast the whole motion was a blur, drizzled goopy golden butter over the squares, and flung them into the air to land in a frying pan.

“Tiny breakfast for the tiny stomach, yes?” he asked me dryly.

When I didn’t immediately respond, Mario peeked out the doorway, and continued, “She is doing well, isn’t she?”

I nodded. “Yeah. It’s like she’s a whole different person.”

Mario whacked the frying pan, and the tiny toast slices flew up and landed on a plate. Then he reached into a basket and pulled out a bunch of little bitty pink berries. He threw them up in the air, and the knife flashed some more. Heart-shaped pink slices landed on each tiny toast. As he worked, he rumbled, “I would say that she found the person who she was inside, but no. That is how it works for the rest of you. For us, it is more like putting together the pieces of a puzzle.”

Twisting my hands together, I looked at the stove just to have something to stare at as I said, “Ribbon did it. They were in a fight, and Ribbon asked a bunch of questions, and ARF-80 collapsed and now she’s like this.”

A thoughtful rumble vibrated through Mario’s blocky form. “Questions about who she really is. Questions that made her ask herself what is real. Questions that forced her to look at how our memories of Mars no longer make sense in the wider solar system.”

I scratched behind my ear. “Um…yeah. Exactly like that.”

Leaning back, Mario folded his brawny arms over his even brawnier bare chest. “This bounty hunter from Charon is good. Yes, that is the most reliable way to defeat a Martian. We all must go through that shock at some point, and either return to Mars or become someone suited to this new world. The cyborg is doing well. Ceres is a perfect home for someone who wants to spend her life learning and playing innocent games.”

I lifted my eyes from the stove to look at Mario curiously. “Did that happen to you?”

“I had that moment on my own, on Mars.” Abruptly, he lifted one arm curled to flex his bicep, and swung the other out to point his palm at me. His rumble became a roar. “But! You did not come back here to ask that, or to talk to Magnificent Mario about breakfast. You are here on a mission.”

My eyes bugged out a little, my cheeks felt a touch hot, and I ran both hands back through my hair. “Feeling reeeeal transparent today.”

Switching to hands on his hips, Mario laughed like a smug bellows. “Ho ho ho! You have been talking to that scheming lizard and the greatest wrestler in three universes!” Arms curling up to flex his biceps again, he twisted to the side and declared, “Knowing your opponent’s moves before they do is the goal of all fighting arts! What is it you wish to ask, that you come to Magnificent Mario of all people to ask it?”

Oof. And here we were. Back to the words I couldn’t figure out. “It’s not exactly a question. It’s more like I need advice.”

In a blur, Mario grabbed a spoon and began stirring a pot that had been quietly simmering since the conversation started. His other hand wielded a spatula to flip chunks of breaded meat out of a skillet and into a little white cardboard box. Every time they landed, the air smelled a little greasier. “Strange. Magnificent Mario knows only cooking and wrestling, and you are interested in neither.”

I wasn’t even going to dignify that sandbagging with a response. I came right out and said, “I’m leaving.”

“If that is your path,” he said, unruffled. Well, unruffled to that point. Suddenly he held up a hand and corrected, “No. First, tell Mario why. How can he provide advice if he does not know the reasons you act?”

“I’m scared.”

He rumbled, crossing his arms and rubbing his stubbly chin with his fingers. “Even stranger. I would have said there is no place safer than here. What do you see that Mario does not?”

I lost it. Flinging my arms out, I yelled, “I’m being hunted! Why does no one understand that? Ribbon is like a stalker that wants to marry me! Monsters are chasing me through space! There’s a witch queen—a WITCH QUEEN—who either wants to control my life or straight up kill me. Isn’t that enough for anyone to be terrified of? To want to run somewhere safe?”

Mario returned to his stirring, and to decorating brown stuff with flakes of green stuff. As close to gentle and noncommittal as he could get, he said, “We think that this is that place. The threats on Ceres come from inside us. Yet, you think there is somewhere safer.”

I grimaced, hard, and looked down at the floor. I felt like I should be crying, but it didn’t happen. “…home. None of them can get me back home. But I can’t go back.”

“Good.”

Mario sounded so approving that my head shot back up, and I gaped at him in surprise. “You too?”

Raising a fist, he shook it like he was making a threat or declaring a triumph, but his words came out still quiet. Almost quiet. “When you said you cannot return, you spoke with relief.”

Relief. Right. Whatever. I wrapped my arms around myself because I was starting to shake. “Well, I’m too scared to stay here. Violet thinks danger is fun. I don’t know where to run now, only that I need to.”

The fist sank slowly, while Mario rumbled, “Mmmm.” Another sudden change of position, and now he rested his chin on that fist, then swept it out with one finger raised. “The only advice Magnificent Mario can give is that if you are running away from Ceres, perhaps it is not physical danger you are scared of.”

Anger streaked through me like acid. Everyone wanted to argue with me about this. I wanted to argue back, but…. Mario was someone it was not smart to dismiss. Maybe I shouldn’t argue when I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about to begin with.

Except that by trying to figure out how to ask him to explain, it clicked home.

Aloud, I told both of us, “I’m scared of Ceres, too. I’m scared of all this hanging over my head. Even if Ribbon and the Outsiders can’t get me here, it’s not finished. I don’t know what’s right. I….”

That was all I had words for right now. There was more, but I knew I’d gotten the central, the most important part.

Mario went back to cooking, mostly moving things from pots and pans into little cardboard boxes. “Everyone should find what is right for their life. You came to Ceres to do that, but that does not mean Ceres is the answer. It sounds like you have a plan that does not torture you now.”

I nodded, solemn, but a little more relaxed. Any more relaxed was a blessing right now. “Terrifies me but does not torture me. It’s a fear I can handle.”

Mario picked up the plate with the stack of tiny toast and set that in my hands. Then he picked up a big brown cardboard box filled with all the smaller white cardboard boxes he’d been preparing and followed me out into the dining room.

ARF-80 had her face in one of her comics. Wrench hopped out of her chair and waddled up to us.

I set the toast plate in front of ARF-80. She didn’t even look up from her comic, just started popping the little squares into her mouth one at a time.

Mario handed the box to Wrench. He could hold it in one hand. She barely got her little arms around enough of the box to keep it supported.

In what I hoped was a casual tone, I told Wrench, “I need to talk to you upstairs.”

It must have worked. ARF-80 didn’t look up from her comics as we wandered out to the stairwell and headed back up toward the floor I lived on. Before anything else, I looked down at the box Wrench was managing to stump along while carrying. “What is that about?”

Cheerfully, Wrench squeaked, “You were going to leave without packing any food. Apparently flying half-starved in a tiny single room barely functional spaceship from Saturn to Ceres didn’t teach you any lessons about that. I’ll want to grab a few things too, but this would have been most of it.”

“You don’t know where I’m going,” I pointed out, not sure if that was actually true.

Wrench even managed to shrug, more by tucking her yellow-wigged reptilian head down than lifting her shoulders up. “Good or bad, I’m going with you. Maybe it’s some kind of weird frustrated maternal instinct. Maybe I want to be allowed to keep one of my children for once.”

I stared, bug-eyed. Wrench started giggling, and kept giggling, and the complete childishness of the sound and her pinched, hysterical grin seemed even weirder after what she’d just said. Like whether Ribbon was a boy or a girl, or why Violet was purple, I couldn’t bring myself to ask if Wrench as telling the truth.

Still in all her little kid perky glory, Wrench turned eager blue eyes up to me and begged, “So come on, tell me! Where are we going? Huh? Huh?”

“Charon.” There. I’d said it.

Wrench was completely unfazed. “Oooooooh. Taking the witch-queen job?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not. But at least I’ll know. At least I’ll have decided.”

The rush that hit me at saying that just about made me fall off my feet. Whoa. I had no idea how badly I’d wanted just that.

“Yay, making your own decisions!” squealed Wrench. Then the little girl grin faded to a warm adult smile, and she added, “Seriously. Welcome to growing up. It’s hard when you’ve been trained to think you have no choices. I’m still coming with you. That’s my decision, for my own reasons, so don’t add that to the list of things you feel guilty about.”

I snorted a laugh. “Not feeling guilty about something? It’s bold. It will be a first. I’ll give it a try.”

Oh, sarcasm. You’re so good at making the fear go away.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Because I still had no idea how time worked in space, it was ‘later’ when Wrench tapped me on the shoulder. My eyes flew open to see a big reptilian smile, blue eyes that gleamed with enthusiasm, and blonde curls that gleamed because they were plastic.

“We’re getting near!” squeaked my assistant.

I squirmed my shoulders and twisted my neck around. “No wonder all the spaceships we work on have bedrooms,” I muttered. Sleeping in a chair left everything stiff and sore. Especially when you had to do it more than once in a row.

The chiropractic formalities out of the way, I took in the view through the sweeping front window of my spaceship. We were, indeed, near. Near enough that Pluto and Charon were no longer little dots, but visible balls floating in space, Pluto on the left, Charon on the right.

My orrery’s little Charon pointed straight at the real Charon. To my swelling glee, the Pluto pointed at the real Pluto. All the other planets had swung around on their rings as we’d passed them and were behind us now. I’d had two ideas how my new navigation system would work, and the answer was “the cooler way.” Ah, the small victories of being a spaceship repair girl.

I didn’t need any navigation equipment to know which planet was which. Pluto was bigger than Charon, yes, but it also had a grey on darker grey skull design. Charon was lumpy, not quite perfectly round, and bore a sullen, dark red pentagram on its mottled greys.

“The two divisions of gothdom,” I said, as if I knew anything about goth except frilly dresses were involved.

At least unlike a plane, I could stand up and stretch. I did that. Wrench did too, and that girl could bend herself practically in a circle.

“Tressspassserrr….” A voice echoed through the ship, feminine and whispery. “Identify yourssself, tressspassserrr….”

I wasted no time, barking out, “Rachel! Rachel and Wrench! We’re here to see the Witch-Queen!”

The voice got slightly louder, edged with growing irritation. “I know you are in there, tressspassserrr. The living cannot hiiide from Maiden Middayyy.”

“Rachel! Rachel and Wrench!” I shouted, louder this time, then grimaced down at Wrench. “We forgot to install communications equipment. It must exist. In general, I mean. I never bothered to look!” Ah, the small and potentially fatal losses of being a spaceship repair girl.

Someone floated through the ship’s wall. Stepped through the wall. No, floated. She was a young woman. Teen? Adult? I couldn’t tell. She was uniform brown—no, sepia tone, and transparent. A ghost, with long hair that floated around her in a constantly swirling spectral wind that I could see as sepia fog and bits of sepia debris that had no physical presence. She had no clothes and was ghostly vague enough to not need them. What she had, and this was much more important, was a honking big scythe of the not fancy, rusty, bigger-than-either-of-us old fashioned agricultural variety. It had passed through the wall just fine. I was confident that if it passed through me, that would only be because it had sliced me in two.

If she had eyes, I couldn’t make them out, just dark spots in that ghostly face. She held her scythe up, threatening but not actually swinging, and sniffed the air. “You reek of Outsssiders, living one. Arrre you a cultissst, here to sabotage our defensesss, and let in your masters?”

I could only blame the fact that I’d just woken up and wasn’t thinking clearly for what I did next. I made up a ridiculous story. “Cultists? No! We’re planet inspectors! I was just inspecting one of the Dragon Moons, a little bitty one called Deedlit, and it turned out the moon itself was a bone dragon curled up tight! Now, I know you’re thinking that an undead dragon is fine, but this one was a fake, operated by these freaky spider things from the Sixth Dimension, and they were so, so gross. We spent days spraying away the infestation. I’m sure I smell like I was dipped in Outsiders and tied to an Outsider to dry, but a good bath will clear that up when we land.”

The ghost’s hostile glare turned stunned as I prattled on, and settled into sour resignation at the end. She lowered the scythe about six inches to a slightly less threatening pose. “Ah. You are immmmmmigrating to Charon. Maiden Midday smellsss the forbidden knowledge on you. You will be watchhhed until you lannnd.”

Maiden Midday, the ghost, was between me and the front window, and now that she did not seem about to immediately kill me, I could look past her at the view again. Giving the ghost a weak smile, I asked, “So your job is to hunt Outsiders and stop them from entering the solar system?”

Her scowl deepened in disgust at the question. “That is my curssse, the purpossse for which this doomed shhhade was yanked from the sweet sssleep of death,” she hissed.

I pointed past her, and my voice turned strangled and squeaky. “Then please save me from that.”

Something was approaching, and it only got more “something” as it got closer. This thing also looked like a woman, but as big as a building, and not a small building either. It needed clothes even less than Maiden Midday, with a pure white surface as featurelessly smooth and contours as flowing as milk. Unlike the famously nonthreatening milk, this thing’s arms ended in sharply pointed hooks instead of hands, like the heads of a pickaxe. Its feet were extended like wrench’s but ending in grasping talons like a bird’s. Glittering fire like the tail of a comet stretched behind its head.

It got closer. The comet fire hair sparkled in a rainbow that blended into static. Its body was a monotone white. Only its eyes really had color, six red spindles arranged in a hexagon around the front of its otherwise faceless head.

Maiden Midday grumbled, and lowered her scythe a few more inches before muttering, “Your confusion is forgivvvabllle. Sometimesss, it is difficult to tell the inhabitants of Charrronnn from their enemiesss.”

A quite normal young woman’s voice sounded from no identifiable spot inside our ship. “I heard that! And whoever is in there—”

“Rachel. Rachel and Wrench,” I wheezed, trying to get a grip on my nerves and really believe that the voice belonged to the thing outside, and that both were friendly.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Rachel and Wrench.” The thing had arrived, and it dwarfed our ship. The head hovered up in front of our window and opened up. A mouth that had been invisible when closed stretched wide in a perfectly round, red-lined maw. Inside that maw hung a slightly more realistic version of the same woman, but still freakishly pale and with her outstretched arms and legs blended into cables that merged into the interior of the giant’s mouth. Her hair sparkled, but it did look like hair. The giant’s hair had curved around into at least a dozen sharp-tipped tentacles pointed threateningly at our craft.

The merely human-sized version of the woman in the giant’s mouth was so close I could see her eyes were just as red, and see her lips move as she continued chatting. “Maiden Midday has checked and you’re not an Outsider, or she would have killed you already. She’s diligent that way. I’ve never met anyone who radiates infection like—ooh, I know.” Her voice dropped into an excited hush. “You’re the child of cultists. You’re mostly sane because you’ve always lived like this, haunted by monsters and voices and with unnatural powers that are hard to use for good. You’ve come to Charon for cleansing. Oh, and absolution! Sometimes you tried to use those powers for good and failed. I’m right, aren’t I?”

I knew a ridiculous story when I heard one, even if this one was only a little ridiculous. Suddenly feeling not threatened at all, I told her, “You’re a writer.”

The merely human-sized body curled up a little, turning her head to the side in embarrassment. “Oh, pfff. You’re sweet. I practice storytelling a little while I’m drifting, but it was never my specialty. I just wanted to be something beautiful. My name is Bonnie.”

Being polite to a hundred-foot-tall thing with hook hands is extremely important, but the best I could manage for that news was, “Uh….”

My confusion just got a good-humored laugh. “Oh, it was Voidlover Starblood when I chose this shape. Something like that. Names are like clothes, just something you wear. You say your name is Rachel, but it could be anything and you would still be you, right? I can’t change clothes anymore, but I can change my name whenever I feel like it.”

Oh, boy. Nobody was going to believe Rachel was my name here, either, but this time because they didn’t believe in real names at all.

Maiden Midday still floated transparently in front of me, her knees bent and feet tucked up a few inches rather than pretending to stand. I gave her a bewildered smile. “So, you chose this look?”

Midday’s scowl deepened. Out in space, the smaller Bonnie grimaced awkwardly, and corrected, “Ah, no. Maiden Midday is from Pluto, not Charon. She really is a ghost. She has never done anything but this, although I try to draw her out of herself a bit. We’re sort of partners.”

The sepia specter grumbled and hissed, although the sound was more sullen than angry.

Bonnie hurried to explain, “Well, I mean, right now. By default. We’re hunting the same area. You get that a lot. I get the big threats, and she hunts down any small fry that try to be stealthy.”

Like Ribbon.

“Oh, but here I am drowning you in babble,” Bonnie babbled, with a touch of giggle. The huge hook hand cocked demurely and bashfully next to the huge open-mawed white head. “I’m sorry. I just spent a long patrol flying around alone, and don’t get me wrong, I love it, but I become a complete blabbermouth when I get back and see people again.”

I nodded. “I heard it’s been busy on the border.”

Smaller-Bonnie’s brow furrowed, and she gave me a confused stare. “Not really? There was that derelict space hulk. Probably harmless, but I crushed it and threw it away to be sure. And those goofy joyriders were back. I sent them home, whichever star that is. Have you seen any action, Midday?”

“As quiet asss my abandoned gravvve,” husked the ghost.

Bonnie’s giant white claw hands, each bigger than my ship, flung up to wave in desperately polite negation as the smaller Bonnie chattered, “Oh, but that’s just this area. It could be a mess somewhere else. There’s a lot of space to cover, and a lot of us out here doing the guardian thing. It’s pretty, and peaceful, and—” The giant swam back half a body length, so I could see her lift her legs and flex her pointed claws. Her voice stayed in the room. “—I’ve always had a bit of a violent streak. These are my people who make me feel at home, including the super-serious Plutonian undead. I wouldn’t trade for any other life or any other body. Oh void, I’m babbling again. How can we help you?”

Almost comfortable with this conversation now, I answered, “I’m here to see your queen.”

Bonnie giggled, and seeing that giant, slightly gooey body twist coquettishly in space was an experience. “My queen? That’s cute, but I wasn’t gay even when I was human. Oh! Like a ruler queen! I’m a free agent. I shaped myself. Do you mean Maiden Midday’s queen?”

The ghost clutched her scythe to her chest, glowering at me. “The living are foolsss who flock to her beauty and glamourrr, but while she revels in sssweet young blood, you are too young, and too contaminated.”

You know, I’d been warned. I had. But I’d still honestly expected this to be easier. I tried, “The Witch-Queen.”

Bonnie just shrugged. “You’re still going to have to be a little more specific.”

I spread my hands and launched into, “The Witch-Queen of Extravagant Words, of Purple Prose and—”

Out in space, the white behemoth crossed her hooks, and inside the ship her voice interrupted, “Oh, right, her! Don’t start, those titles go on forever. I’ll take you to her palace. If we don’t get you out of here soon, we will be busy. Every watcher and Outsider halfway to Eris must know you’re here by now. Get that infection scrubbed, girl, or go live somewhere that’s safe—well, you’re headed to Charon, so I guess I’m not telling you anything new. Off we go!”

And with no further discussion, because there’d been a downright excessive amount of discussion already, she flew up over my ship, and huge white claws took hold of it on either side. Wrench and I stumbled as we were yanked forward, and Maiden Midday…might have floated out, might have gone through the back wall, I hadn’t noticed. She was definitely gone.

Chapter Twenty-Three

We zoomed through the endless night, Charon getting closer at a shocking speed. Bonnie was fast. She stretched out in front of us, almost flat, with her glittery hair extended to either side in multiple long wings.

We flew up to and around the planet, which might or might not be a moon based on Earth rules that nobody out here cared about anyway. Charon and Pluto rotated together around a point in space, not Charon around Pluto, right? Something like that. Did it count for whether or not you were a planet if you had towns? Because I could see the little lights of towns down there.

Not a lot of towns. Charon was a patchwork with no rhyme or reason. I saw black forests, lakes of ice and blood and probably icy blood, a brightly lit savanna where it was clearly daytime, and a quaint town of cottages next to it. Fields and mountains of crystal were pretty common. Sometimes the landscape churned like the sea in a storm, and I couldn’t make out the details of why. Charon sported a fine crop of pictograms, mostly of things with wings.

Myself, I was intrigued by a colorfully lit city winding up a mountain in the middle of a small sea, but we weren’t going there.

Mostly, Charon had castles, far away from each other and usually far away from any other sign of civilization, in the center of their own peculiar wilderness. When we slowed down, we were headed for a castle like that, but it did have its own town attached. The houses mostly looked medieval, and just enough to support industrial buildings like sawmills and mines. Lights glowed in windows and nothing looked abandoned, but I saw no people.

The castle itself was…castle shaped? Tall outer walls, more pyramid-y on the inside, lots of towers? But just in outline. Aside from some stone corners, it was mostly wood, with plenty of windows. Elizabethan mansions. Plural. That’s what it looked like, Elizabethan mansions stuck together until they formed a castle shape. Big, too. The edifice would cover multiple city blocks back home and had to go up at least a dozen stories.

A spaceport nearly as big stretched out next to the castle. Well, it couldn’t be anything else, with the rectangular flat grey field. Near the front stood half a dozen docking cradles in the form of building-sized typewriters without the long cylinder thing, just an open bed of clockwork waiting for a ship to land.

Bonnie set us down in the front-most of those, and as her claws unlaced her disembodied voice chattered, “It was nice meeting you! Maybe the Witch-Queen can help with your infection problem. She’s really hardcore into fighting Outsiders. She builds whole battleships for it and everything.”

Somewhere during that, Bonnie flew away, and I couldn’t see her in the sky by the time her voice stopped.

I looked down at Wrench expectantly. She looked up at me expectantly. Okay, yes, I was technically the leader here. Taking hold of the wheel handle of the ship’s door, I twisted, unsealed, and pushed the door open.

A rabbit hopping and wobbling anxiously up the row of keys forming steps to the ground squealed, “I’m late! I’m late! I’m sorry! I got wrapped up in a book. It was about this nightmare candy factory—”

At that point, the rabbit spotted Wrench, threw up her arms, and squealed, “A kobold! Yay!”

Wrench threw up her own arms and echoed gleefully, “Yay!”

“Yay!”

“Yay!”

While they both cheered each other’s existence with apparently sincere glee, I caught up. So, we’d been greeted by a rabbit. A Venusian Space Bunny, in fact. Deep tan skin, rabbity nose, big bunny ears sticking out of a thick mop of hair. Possibly a tail; I couldn’t see. Otherwise human. I forgave myself for not immediately thinking “Venusian Space Bunny” because I was used to Miss Passionfruit, a towering seven-foot-tall people pillar on the slender side of womanly. This bunny was a few inches shorter than me, and very hourglass in shape. A pink knit sweater down to her knees hid the details of that shape, with baggy sleeves and the knit itself at least an inch thick, maybe two. Oversized round glasses sat on her bunny nose as well. The whole look reminded me of Wilma, although where the lenses in Wilma’s glasses were fake, these magnified the bunny’s amber eyes enormously. Amber eyes that matched her amber hair.

Um. It had also taken an extra second to identify her because I got distracted by the parasite attached to her head between her ears. Fleshy and red, roughly the size and shape of a coke can, it sported one red-irised eye that swiveled suspiciously between me and Wrench. A long tube like a length of intestine trailed off the top of the gross thing and down under the turtleneck of her sweater in back.

Since all that wasn’t disgusting or terrifying enough, it also pulsed occasionally, sending a ripple along the tube like it was drinking out of the rabbit’s brain.

For the sake of my own sanity, I tried to stop staring at it and focus on the rabbit instead, asking her with a complete lack of voice quaking in horror, “How did she know we were coming?”

Better question: Could I launch our ship and get out of here before one of those was stuck to me?

No. Calm down. I’d drawn stuff like this in my sketchbook repeatedly. This was just how things worked on Charon, the same as all the steam engines and flying fish on Saturn.

Still a bit breathless, the pudgy-cheeked bunny enthused, “Oh, her dark and verbose majesty knows many secrets. It’s part of the job, isn’t it?” Suddenly she pinched her eyes shut, clasped her fists under her chin, and let out a squeal. “Eeeee!” Lunging forward, she enveloped me in the most padded hug I had ever experienced. A hug that would be sweeter if it didn’t bring the parasite so close to my face. The rabbit babbled excitedly, “We’ve been waiting for you for so long now. Ever since Peter dropped by for tea and mentioned the book. Come on inside and get settled in!”

Swiftly detaching herself, the Venusian Space Bunny turned and hopped down the keyboard, arms extended to either side to keep balanced on the metal disk keys. The way they sank underneath you as you put your weight on them did make the process unsteady. I picked my way down carefully.

Wrench jumped with both feet from keyboard to keyboard, pushing the keys down so far they clicked, and grinned with little kid glee the whole way.

I had to focus, which meant staring at the back of the rabbit, which meant watching the thing on her head wobble.

This was another thing it was just too uncomfortable to ask about, but this time I would try. When we finally set foot onto the stony surface of the landing field, I raised a finger and attempted, “Your…uh….”

“Oh, right!” squealed the bunny. She threw herself on me for another fierce hug, and when she hopped back again babbled joyfully, “I’m Cuddly Delicious, and you sincerely believe your name is Rachel, which is adorable, isn’t it? And you are—” she looked down at Wrench.

“Wrench!” supplied my kobold assistant, hopping up and down.

That got Cuddly Delicious hopping up and down in sync, fists pumping as she squealed, “Eeee!” again.

With a wet squelch, the thing attached to Cuddly Delicious’s skull pulsed, sucking up several lumps in a row to filter down along its tube. As it did, the rabbit’s hopping stopped, and her eyes zoned out.

Was it time for me to scream? No, but it might be too late.

The sucking stopped, and Cuddly Delicious merely smiled down at Wrench as we straightened up.

I made one more heroic try. “No, I meant…you’re a Venusian Space Bunny aren’t you? Except….” As I trailed off, I flapped a feeble hand toward her head.

With a curious grin, the rabbit woman asked, “I’m taller than the other Space Bunnies you’ve met?” Grinning impishly, she corrected, “No, I know it’s not that. I’m like this because of Harold. This is Harold.” She pointed at the red thing. “Say ‘hi,’ Harold! He can’t say ‘hi,’ but I’m sure he likes you. Harold keeps my giggles down to a coherent level. I’m usually even more calm and intellectual than this. I’m just excited by a new guest. Come on!”

The last request was not entirely necessary. She had already started backing toward the landing field’s gate, and Wrench and I had followed automatically. We weren’t far from the gate to begin with, so it took very little time for things to get wrong.

Two statues flanked the gate. They looked vaguely like anti-aircraft cannons, a similarity that did not occur to me until they started to swivel in my direction. Each one depicted a double-fronted person, or maybe two people glued back-to-back. The head was separate from the torso, sitting in a wire basin sticking out of the neck. On either side, a white drama mask replaced the face. On one side, the statue’s arms held a book up in front of its mask. On the opposite side, the arms held up a crystal.

As I passed within a few yards, the sound of pen scratching signaled words appearing in the otherwise blank pages of the books. The mask on the crystal side’s eyes glowed.

Cuddly Delicious noticed slightly before me and waved her arms frantically at the statues. “Eek! Stop! Shut down! Close your books until we pass!”

The books snapped shut, and the eyes stopped glowing. Cuddly Delicious breathed a deep sigh of relief, then giggled at me apologetically, “I’m so sorry. I was warned, but like I said, excited.”

The seductive allure of highly aesthetic new technology took control of me, making me ask, “Why does it react to me?” The “mask reads, creates laser” part I got.

Pointing in various unhelpful directions, Cuddly Delicious chattered, “They’re empty grimoires. When Outsiders are around, the books fill themselves in, and the source of the corruption gets blasted.”

And a corrupt human had to be much closer than an Outsider to trigger the books, or they wouldn’t be arranged like cannons all over the spires of the castle. I could make a detector out of one of these and worry a lot less about being attacked.

The landing field and castle were side by side, but the path from one to the other still took us through the town’s main street. I looked down the boulevard suspiciously. No monsters. No guards. A few empty carts and empty, open doorways of lit buildings. When I looked away and looked back the carts and which doorways were open had changed, as if they could only move when I wasn’t watching. Should I be scared of this? No. I’d probably make a town like this too, if I could create stuff out of art.

A whole planet where art replaced physics. For a moment, that knowledge ran through me with an electric thrill.

The problem was, artists, and I could speak from personal experience, are nuts. I would not trust me with this power, and someone much less trustworthy was supposedly offering it to me. Someone who could do much worse than stick Harold on my head.

Be cool, Rachel. I was finally about to know the truth, and only then could I start to deal with it instead of hiding. Maybe Ribbon had been completely honest. Okay, I believed she was honest. Maybe she had been completely right. Maybe I’d been brought here to save the solar system.

That got me staring up at the crazy castle built out of already elaborate houses.

Cuddly Delicious caught me doing that, and asked me with a coquettish grin, “You like it, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Couldn’t lie. Not believably, anyway.

The bunny girl giggled and marched us through the wide-open front doors of the castle, which were big and wood and expensive rather than military looking.

Only when I passed through did I notice I hadn’t seen anything past those gates. This was an absolute state change, and there could be no mingling between those two incompatible concepts. What was I doing, if not flinging myself through a very brief hole into an entirely new adventure?

On the other side, hard wood boards squeaked under my feet as I staggered. Breathing hard, drinking in the return of physical sensations like the smell of wood, the browns of bookshelves and dull reds and blues and greens of book covers, I asked, “What was that!?”

The extremely rounded brown bunny girl in her extremely pink sweater turned around and stared at me, amber eyes so wide I could see the edges around her glasses. Putting her fingers to her mouth, she squeaked, “Oh, my sweet suckable sugar drops. You noticed the barrier.”

Wrench hadn’t. She stepped up next to me, her shiny grey hand clasping the rough brown fabric of my hoodie, and her shiny grey face looking up at me in quizzical concern.

I tried to process what I’d just experienced. “It was…text. There’s a place in that doorway where reality is just words.”

Now Wrench’s eyes widened, as she realized I was right. Her hand clenched a little tighter, then let go. This didn’t scare her. It didn’t scare me, but it sure did impress me.

Cuddly Delicious sounded more than a little impressed herself. “Lick my lollipop. Ribbon said you’d be able to identify it. I didn’t want to believe. This is wonderful!” That last came out in another gleeful squeal, and she threw herself on me for another heavy, squishy hug.

I looked back at the doorway with curious, analytical eyes. The town lay beyond it, with villagers going around their bookmaking tasks, but I couldn’t actually see that. I was just reading what was on the other side. What a weird sensation.

“Did the Witch-Queen make that?” I asked.

The bunny woman giggled and flapped a hand at me. “Of course! Look at me. Do you think I could? I’m a reader, not a writer. Even on Charon, Her Sesquipedalian Majesty wields a rare and exotic power. You’re lucky you’ll have her to teach you. It’s a miracle you didn’t release a bunch of Outsiders by stepping through the portal!”

Trying so, so hard to sound casual and not spook the helpfully informative bunny, I probed, “Release Outsiders? I thought the Witch-Queen hated them. I thought it was her job to stop them.”

Grabbing the front of my hoodie in both of the little brown hands I could barely see under the huge, loose pink sweater sleeves, Cuddly Delicious pulled herself close and rolled up her amber eyes. Harold gave another couple of nauseating sucks as Cuddly Delicious sighed, her words barely above a whisper. “I am so glad you asked that now. The mistress is going to be so enthusiastic teaching you, neither of you is going to be thinking about safety. Just remember that when you’re using forbidden knowledge to break the universe and make it more beautiful, of course things leak through the cracks. I’m sure we fix more than we break here, but if all of Charon and Pluto would be more careful—”

Stopping herself, Cuddly Delicious giggled apologetically, and reached up to thump the abomination on her head with a fist. “Oh, listen to me going on like a hypocrite, when I love what you all create so much I devoted my whole life to it. Sometimes I think I let Harold drain too much of my silliness. I mean, warm drizzled honey, look around!”

The Venusian Space Bunny threw her arms wide at the building we now stood inside, and I looked around.

My heart skipped more than a few beats. Why did this building look so odd from the outside? Because it was a library. Bookshelves lined almost every wall, going up floor after floor. Most of the interior was open, vast hallways that split jaggedly around huge pillars that themselves contained rooms. After all, a library needed interior walls to hold more bookshelves. Ladders, stairways, railings, bridges, the building looked like a spiderweb of shiny dark wood. Some platforms held reading spaces, or fountains, or even a rest area with a hanging bed, but mostly it held books literally beyond counting.

Literally. Tee hee.

Cuddly Delicious let out another of her excited squeals and tackled me for another hug. “Eeee! You love it, I can tell! Isn’t it wonderful! Her Most Textual Majesty wrote all of these!” With her pudgy face next to mine, Cuddly Delicious whispered into my ear, “She didn’t, but she’s written at least a room full. She’s really good.”

Taking several hurried steps backward, Cuddly Delicious dusted off her sweater-covered knees, took several deep breaths, and Harold made a few disgusting blort noises. Finally she straightened up with a cheerful but mostly calm smile. “So! You just got off a spaceship. You’ll need a bath. Maybe a nap. Definitely a meal.” Briskly, she clapped her hands twice.

The interior of the castle gave the impression of being one big room, but there were little doors in the walls. Two of them opened, and out minced a total of four mannequins. Or maybe really big dolls. They were human sized, had mobile ball joints instead of stiff mannequin joints, as blankly detail-less as mannequins, and moved with dainty grace. Lining up in front of Cuddly Delicious in an identical line, they all clasped their hands together demurely and waited.

For the first time all business, the Venusian Space Bunny told them, “Show lady Rachel to the purple suite, and lady Wrench to the obsidian suite, and give them the full luxury treatment. They are treasured guests, and hopefully permanent ones.”

Two of them stepped forward to me, both curtseyed, and one held out her arms toward a stair. Wrench got identical treatment.

I smiled awkwardly at mine. “I’m sorry, um….”

Cuddly Delicious giggled, smiling even more widely than usual and flapping one hand. “Oh, they don’t have names! They’re just dolls. My mistress isn’t very social. I’m her only living servant. She makes shadow guards, word wraiths, that gross mouth thing—” from the rabbit with Harold on her head, “—but they’re micro fictions and not, you know…” She tapped the side of her head. “…all there. The dolls aren’t even a little there.”

For the first time, Wrench stepped forward, hands clasped behind her and grinning all those crocodile fangs. “Rachel is the kind of person who treats kobolds and rabbits like people.”

The aforementioned rabbit beamed with delight, and told Wrench, “I can tell, and that’s wonderful, but honest, they’re just dolls! If they could think for themselves, my mistress wouldn’t want them around.”

The curtseying of the dolls had gotten to me. I gave them and Cuddly Delicious a quick bow. “I’d rather just go straight to talking to the Witch-Queen, if you don’t mind. I’ve been hiding from the answers she can give me for too long.”

The little—well, shorter than me—bunny girl gritted her teeth in discomfort, and answered me slowly, “Oooooh, and I sympathize, but it’s not an option. She’s writing right now and cannot be interrupted. Interrupting the creative flow is unpleasant and dangerous.”

Well. I knew what a shock it was to have to stop writing. Imagine if my writing could change the world. “Okay, argument dropped.”

“Wonderful!” crowed Cuddly Delicious, bouncing up and down and clapping her hands. “Eeee, this will be so great. You don’t know now, but it will.” Turning to the dolls, she waved an eager hand. “Okay, take care of them. I’ll make sure everything is ready when Her Communicative Majesty is finished writing.”

The dolls curtseyed in perfect synchronization again, swiveled, and led me first, and then Wrench, up the nearest spiral staircase. There were so many staircases. We could have been in for a long walk, but it wasn’t too bad. We stayed on the second floor and hadn’t even hit the first major turn in the wall when one of my dolls opened a door between two bookshelves and the other bowed and extended its arms to invite me inside.

Wrench’s dolls led her onward, but she looked back at me, winked, and flicked a finger at my bedroom door. Right. I might not know where she was going, but she knew where to find me.

Slightly less anxious, I stepped inside and faced my fate.

My fate was purple velvet and more dark, polished wood. The Witch-Queen didn’t know where to stop decorating. Pillars on the walls had book-shaped caps and inkwell-shaped bases. Flowing, stylized purple sculpted animals held up the corners of the desk in this little den, and frolicked on wallpaper in the bedroom we entered next, and perched on the posts of the four cornered bed. A mirror over a dresser was silver-edged and shaped like a bird’s head. When the dolls finally led me into a bathing chamber, it was a bathing chamber and not a bathroom, with a huge gold tub on four legs, and more dolls standing by with steaming kettles of water, brushes, sponges, towels, trays of creams and soaps, and one I swear carried a bowling pin.

The doll that had followed me in took hold of my hoodie and pulled it up.

Er.

Okay, this was all weird, but I’d never actually tried the full spa pampering treatment. Maybe I could give it a go just once.

It was nice. It was so nice that, soaking in hot water and with ceramic fingers kneading my shoulder muscles, I fell asleep.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I stood before the dread portal, gathering my nerve for a showdown with majesty and sorcery.

My amusement that this was an accurate description of my situation cut down my terror slightly.

Slightly.

The silent dolls had led me to one of the huge, square pillars holding up the ceiling of this mammoth library. It was lined with bookshelves and various levels of balconies, and easily big enough to contain a throne room. My four mannequin guides stood flanking a large wooden door covered in abstract relief and made no other moves.

I would have to do this myself. Before my courage gave out. Because no offense to Ribbon, but the already dangerously crazy bounty hunter had described the queen as even less predictable, far more devious, and with the kind of powers that could turn me into just one more of these faceless white dolls.

Stop stewing. Do it, Rachel.

I pushed on the door, heavy as it was, forcing it aside and marching inside without giving myself a chance for another hesitation.

The throne room was everything I would have imagined from a witch queen of words. The interior of the pillar was a single big, big room, made bigger because it went up and up and up to the roof. More bookshelves lined the interior walls, but these were unevenly spaced around channels of black ink that laughed at gravity as they traced complex patterns on their way down to the floor. On the floor the channels spiraled inward, flowing up a set of steps to disappear under a towering wooden throne, with multiple sliding panels that could turn it into a variety of desks. At the moment, they were all turned aside so that the throne could function solely as a throne, on which the occupant could watch me approach.

The Witch-Queen of Words sprawled, leaning against an arm rest, one knee over the other. She wore what looked like a bodysuit of patchwork leather in different colors all sewn together with stitching so big I could see it from the entrance. A loose coat draped over that, or would if she stood up.

She stood up. Tall. Her unlined face could be any age, but individual white hairs gleamed in long black hair. Glasses perched up on her bangs, and a pointy parchment crown behind that. The crown would look ridiculous and pathetic, if words didn’t constantly type, erase, and replace themselves over the paper.

“My prodigal daughter, welcome home.” Her voice flowed, rich and warm and delighted. “I hope you’re enjoying being back?”

Oh, and I’d left out the most important part of the room. Individual books kept flying across from wall to wall overhead, settling themselves into new positions in new shelves. The constant, gentle movement reminded me of a factory, where language was minted.

There was so much going on here. So, so much I wanted to say, wanted to ask about.

I started with what I knew. “I especially love how you stole my pants. Again. Why are my pants so popular? Is pants stealing just a thing in space and nobody told me?”

For bonus injustice, she got pants, but oh, no, not me. I’d stepped out of the bath, wrinkled as a raisin, to find my clothing had all been stolen. Okay, it did badly need laundering, but rather than let me pick replacements the dolls had stuck me in a black dress and jacket combo. At least it wasn’t poofy like Ribbon’s, and only had bows on the lapels. Black tights were not pants, thank you very much.

I’d flat out refused to wear the corset. I could handle the boots. They’d only had little bitty heels and were more designed for clomping than sashaying.

“When on Charon, wear black,” the Witch-Queen replied dryly, with a certain rhythm that made me think it was a saying. Or maybe she had just made it up and was a blithely confident liar. Which she would be. It was kind of the job.

Okay. Scary part time. Here goes. “I’m not here to stay. I’m here to give you a chance to talk me into staying.” I tried to sound as skeptical of that possibility as, um, possible. “Ribbon…you can’t possibly need me to save the solar system.”

“I only have one daughter,” she answered, amused and affectionate.

Again? I grimaced. “Okay, fine, I’ll bite. What is with this daughter business?”

The Witch Queen clearly liked standing above people with a regally straight posture, but she managed to tilt her head and put on a casual smile. “Why else do you think you’ve been chased from one end of the solar system to the other? Power has its price. The reality eaters, the invaders from other stars, the twisted things that can’t find themselves, they feel us who are closest to them in spirit but implacably against them in purpose.”

I snapped, and it felt so, so good to throw caution away and tell the truth backed by all my sarcasm. “I think they’re chasing me because I’m from Earth, and I’m infected with Math but not quite badly enough to spread it. I always knew my Math teacher was evil. This is some kind of witch-queen game, right? I already have parents, and you’re not one of them.”

Her face hardened, not in anger, but in challenge and skepticism. “Do you? You don’t remember them. Not clearly. You don’t remember Earth. You don’t even know what you look like. You think you know, but you can only bring up a few details that feel convincing.”

Oh, come on. I had years’ worth of memories, right? Right? What were they? My heartbeat sped up and my head swam as I groped for them and failed. My brothers crying, yes, I remembered that, but could I remember their faces? For that matter, when did I last look in a mirror? Had I ever looked in a mirror?

More pained and regretful than skeptical now, the Witch-Queen explained, “You are my daughter, and I wish I could tell you your real name, but even I don’t know it now. Things went badly wrong. You picked up a book I didn’t think I needed to hide from you. You were able to take it in and add to it. You opened yourself to things you couldn’t control, and—” she hesitated one moment, her mouth and voice tightening in anger. “They ripped you apart. Not your body. Not even your mind. They tore out your past and your present and your future, and you ran away from me to find a place they couldn’t reach, and I will never forgive them for that.”

It all fit. It’s not like I hadn’t had doubts before.

The Witch-Queen’s anger subsided, to be replaced by stiff, awkward guilt. “I’m not a good mother. That shred of the past still exists, and you remember it. I still care. I am trying to put you back together and give you a future where you can develop your power and live your passion for it. A future where you can save yourself and everyone else.”

It was all true.…

Was it all true?

No. Remember where you are, Rachel, and who you’re talking to. Oh, and who you are, that would be nice.

I took deep, ragged breaths, clamping down on the panic, and got angry instead. “Ribbon warned me you could do this. I’m from Earth, you demented old hag. We have never met before. I’m an artist and I got lucky. I was avoiding the drudgework of being an ordinary teenager when a goofy scarecrow of a man in a makeshift space bus crashed in front of me. I escaped Earth by accident, but the stain of Math clinging to me leaves me as out of place as any Martian. Where you’re right is that I have a talent, and a scheming witch queen heard about my imagination. She cast spells to make my memory worse, to pull me out of my place of safety. My friends and the power of my refuge fought those spells off, but ultimately I came here anyway, because if I don’t, neither you nor your stupid Outsiders will ever leave me alone.”

Yes. I remembered all that, at least. It felt right. It felt true. Unfortunately, so did everything the Witch-Queen had said.

And the not-particularly-old-looking crone smiled. She practically glowed. Her arms started to rise as if she wanted to hug me, but then fell back by her sides with the awkwardness of someone who doesn’t know how to hug and is also a good twenty feet away up a staircase.

She knew how to sound thrilled to death as she said, “I’m so proud of you, Rachel. Ribbon didn’t warn you of anything, not until your story made it already happen.”

Anger was still helping me get my mental feet, and I demanded, “This was a duel, wasn’t it? I didn’t lose, but I didn’t win. You’ve stopped fighting and you’re letting it stay a draw.”

The poised, black-haired, becrowned, regal but not particularly maternal woman kept smiling like she could pop from joy. “I, we, had to know how strong a writer you are. Your storytelling is rich and imaginative and remarkably coherent for something you make up on the spot. Whether or not you believe it, this was the fastest, most reliable, but also best for you way to test your skills.”

The door creaked behind me. I didn’t look back, but seconds later a thick-fingered, sleek-scaled hand took mine and squeezed in fierce reassurance and apology. Next to me now, Wrench said quietly, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t do anything to help you. I couldn’t even move. You had to do this on your own.”

Now I took my eyes off the Witch-Queen, looked down at Wrench, and… “They stole your pants, too!?”

It was kind of comforting to not be the only person the rest of humanity wanted to force to wear skirts. In Wrench’s case, though…my eyes almost bugged out. The little silver kobold had been dressed in a shimmering gown of gold beads, clingy on the upper half, slit all the way up to her left hip to give the skirt freedom of movement. She looked more human than I’d ever imagined she could look, despite her extended, spiky, reptilian head. I wore my black dress like a burlap sack. Wrench stood and moved in her golden gown with liquid feminine elegance, like she’d been born to wear it.

Slinky. She looked slinky. Movie-star slinky. Good grief. How had she ever disguised this?

She still had a squeaky little-girl laugh, and it echoed alongside the Witch-Queen’s not quite evil chortle.

The break in tension helped me gather a little more strength. I shot the Witch-Queen a calmly challenging glare now. “So that’s it? We can tell stories and they’re real?”

The Witch-Queen laughed some more. “Yeah, I wish.” It was the most unaffected comment from her so far, and I was not comfortable with how much she sounded like me when she let go of the queenly poise. “It worked because of secret knowledge and a lot of preparation, including this room and the building that houses it.” The queenliness came back, along with the composed authority of a teacher. “Telling the story is the last step in wielding our power, but there is no point to the rest if you can’t tell a story so convincing the universe wants to believe it. I’ll teach you everything, eventually.”

I folded my arms under my chest. “Assuming I stay.”

The Witch-Queen sat back down on her throne, crossing her legs and reclining like I’d found her originally. She grinned like a triumphant child. “You love Charon, you want to learn, and you don’t have a choice. You have to stay long enough for me to teach you how to keep the Outsiders away. By then, you may not want to leave.”

“Well…you’re not wrong about any of that.” Drat her.

And drat her big, big smile as she drawled, “So at the risk of cliché and repetition, welcome home.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

My new life was remarkably like my old life, including going to school.

A clicking noise woke me up. A doll standing ready in my room was snapping its fingers.

Love that alarm clock. Oh good, and my first sarcasm of the day.

It was day. I had a window in my room, huge and arched, and could see the sun rise over an irregular, forested island. Yes, the sun was a little bright speck, but it turned night into day. The actual time? I had no clue, or what it would even mean at the edge of the solar system.

Okay, the raw truth: I’d just been really enjoying sleeping in on Ceres.

A few minutes of getting up later, and I was having my daily argument with the dolls about clothing. “Pants. Not dresses. I want pants,” I scolded them uselessly. Today was practically a Halloween witch costume, with pointy trailing ends to the skirt. I refused to acknowledge the accompanying pointy hat. I nearly refused the stockings.

When the dolls got it through their empty resin heads that I had put on all I would endure, they filed silently out. Grumpy and tired, I stumped out and headed for breakfast.

The view helped a little. It was hard to deny that a dining room on a platform suspended in a maze of bridges and stairs several stories above the floor of a cavernous library was cool.

I sat down in an elegant wooden chair at an elegant wooden table, both with a lot of book themed engraved decorations. Humming happily, the eternally perky and energetic Cuddly Delicious bounced down a staircase holding a clattering tray of food from wherever the kitchen was hidden. At one end of the table she set a place for herself, then down at the other end for me, and then off to the side a third for Wrench.

I stared at the food on my plate, a metal egg cup containing a white egg the size of both my fists. Next to that Cuddly Delicious poured a tall cup of milk, so rich it was almost oily. Where she got milk, I did not want to know.

Spiders. Probably spiders.

Wrench groggily climbed up another staircase into view, rubbing her eyes with her sweater sleeve, and suddenly I grinned. The clever little devil had foiled our hollow captors. She’d gotten ahold of one of Cuddly Delicious’s voluminous pink sweaters, and if anything it concealed the kobold’s shape better than her old baggy shirt.

I shot Wrench a thumbs up. She grinned back at me and returned the salute, took her seat, and took a big bite out of her egg, shell and all.

Not ready to go that far, I whacked my egg with a spoon, then whacked it several more times when that wasn’t enough. Peeling away the top half of the shell revealed a fried bread surface instead of actual egg. A spoonful carved out of that revealed a thickly gooey center, which tasted like honey but satisfied like meat.

“You’re no Magnificent Mario, Cuddly, but your simple cuisine tastes exquisite,” I complimented the rabbit.

Down the table, the Space Bunny paused in spooning Not Egg into her mouth to give me her own thumbs up. Her eyes never wavered from the book she’d laid on the table next to her plate.

Just before I finished my last bite, a bell rang in the distance. Pushing back from the table, I grumbled, “Time for class.”

“Be brilliant!” squeaked Wrench.

I probably would be, but that would be just too arrogant to say, so I picked up my own book and headed up some more stairs. And then some more stairs. I spiraled to what might be the highest point in the castle and entered one of those rooms the huge support pillars contained. This room actually stuck out above the castle roof like a tower, I was convinced.

Like a lot of rooms, this one was all wood. However, it contained no bookshelves, just a dark chalkboard and a few posters on the walls, and lots of bare floor space in shiny yellow planks. That floor had been painted in black circles, each one edged with words in languages I didn’t know, mostly in symbols I didn’t know. Go me for spotting Greek!

The whole place smelled like varnish and dust, like a school gymnasium.

The Witch Queen stood off to the side of that circle near the blackboard, hands behind her back, stare austere and judgmental. “Your review?” she greeted me without preamble.

I held up the book that had been my homework. “I’m not sure what to think. There are good stories in here. There’s a lot of tedious recitation of lineages in here. It’s absolutely bizarre to read someone admit in their own book that he’s a raging misogynist and is hiding the times a woman won.”

With a faint, contemptuous smile—contempt reserved for Saxo Grammaticus, not me, I was sure—the Witch-Queen replied, “It is rare for a historian to admit he is editing history. Usually, they convince themselves they’re right and the facts are wrong. What about the stories?”

My own smile grudgingly returned. “This guy’s obsession with masculinity actually worked a lot of the time. Starkad is as fun to read as he is unlikable. I mean, the guy is so manly he only eats raw, spoiled fish because enjoying food would tempt him into less manly ways!”

With proper teacherly authority, the Witch-Queen lectured, “There is a lesson there. Extreme personalities make good stories, and main characters don’t have to be good, they just have to be fun to read.”

Peering down at the badly weathered, hardbound copy of the Gesta Danorum in my hands, I said, “It’s hard to believe that this book is from Earth.”

The not-particularly-old lady preened, chin pressed forward and smile downright feline in its smugitude. “Many books made it off world in the centuries between their invention and Earth falling to Math. I collect as many as possible. The problem is that means almost none of the books are new. Time is mercilessly linear on Earth, I’m told.”

“Yep. It sure is,” I agreed.

The Witch-Queen’s smile turned to an equally subtle frown. She hated me claiming I was from Earth, not her daughter. As usual, she decided to change the subject. Waving a hand around the room, she said, “I may ask you more questions about the Gesta Danorum tomorrow. Today is a practical lesson. How would you like to write something into existence?”

“Yessssss…!”

Oops. Hadn’t actually meant to say that aloud. But yeah, I’d been looking forward to this so, so much.

Preening again in delight at my reaction, my faux mother stepped back beyond the outermost circle on the floor and explained with haughty grandeur, “Everything is prepared. All you have to do is tell the story. Step into the middle and make a tool to fight the Outsiders.”

Pulse pounding, giddy, I walked into the center of the room and took up an entirely unnecessary stiffly, straight pose, with my feet slightly apart. I waggled my hands, shaking them into limber looseness, even though I wouldn’t be using them either.

Okay. My brain churned, and I did what I did best: I told a ridiculous story.

“Once upon a time, this very spot was a place for once upon a time. Before the Witch-Queen and her precisely crafted stories was born, raw fairy tales crawled this section of Charon. Fragments never left. One has laid buried beneath this very castle since the castle was built, crushed and torpid but unable to die. Now it smells the taint of Math on me and is climbing the interior of this tower right now. As it gets closer, it picks up a body. The chandelier from the velvet study. The flame from the boiler room, which would make it hard to cook breakfast if Cuddly Delicious hadn’t fed us already. One of the anti-Outsider turrets right outside on the room. That was its mistake and our fortune. Now it will draw those pieces together in front of us, and from the turret it will draw a single-minded purpose: To annihilate alien intruders. Those are the chandelier’s decorative crystals being teleported into place and fusing right now.”

And glory be, it worked. White, thumb-sized, brilliantly faceted crystals blipped into existence in front of me, one by one, until they built into a floating heart shape as big as me. In its hollow core appeared the mask and book laser combination from a turret, but that combination cracked and clattered as it folded in on itself again and again, until it formed a purple crystal that fit neatly into the hole remaining in the white heart. Finally, thumping and roaring flame sprang into a wheel separating the purple inner crystal from the white outer shell.

I giggled. Was this pulse-racing excitement and glee a side effect of the creation process? Or was it the result of how much I had wanted to do this?

And then the whole thing faded away.

I groped after it, arm waving desperately and uselessly. I had been so close! “No! What did I do wrong!?”

The Witch-Queen regarded me solemnly. “Nothing. Your description, adherence to context, and conflict tension could all be improved, but you succeeded. Would you like to see?”

She spun-around, leather coat flapping, and raised a hand like a conductor calling his orchestra to attention. A stick of chalk flew up off the blackboard’s rail and into her grip. With swift, sure strokes and a loud scribbling noise, the Witch-Queen wrote an oval design on the board with the words…um, they were in cursive, and her handwriting was as bad as mine…. I thought it was “Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall, Who’s The Fairest Of Them All?” but I could not guarantee anything but the ”mirror” part.

And a magic mirror appeared on the blackboard, like opening a window except with silver scrollwork around the edges.

It showed blackness and stars. Space, that beautiful view I still wasn’t anywhere near tired of, yet. Against that exquisite background floated my heart-shaped white crystal, with the gradually moving curve of Charon’s surface below.

The endless night was not still. Something flew into view, looping and darting, until it zoomed up and landed on the crystal heart, clinging with four sets of bony claws. A skeleton was attacking my creation, a skeleton with bat style skeletal wings on its back, and a tail roughly as long as its body. Green flame flickered subtly along the bones and burned in its eye sockets.

My brain caught up with what I was seeing a little more. The small size, the double-kinked legs, the distended head—this was the skeleton of a kobold. A winged, undead kobold, and it wasn’t attacking. The skeleton crawled all over the crystal heart, studying and sniffing, or at least pretending to sniff.

The purple crystal at the heart of the heart glowed in a few shy, soft pulses.

Smiling with momentarily free, relaxed warmth, the Witch-Queen said, “Your creation is making friends already.”

“That’s from Pluto, right? It’s undead, and it’s weird, but it’s not weird enough,” I guessed.

The Witch-Queen folded her arms under her chest, then raised one to tap her chin with the stick of chalk. She scowled, and her voice turned thoughtful. “It’s strange how easily the inhabitants of Pluto and Charon make friends.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I thought you were sister planets.”

“We,” she corrected automatically, but then her smile came back, and her dark eyes looked down at me to share candid amusement. “Yes, and like sisters, we look down on each other. We are both born of the darkness at the far end of the universe, beyond technology, beyond magic. Pluto defies the rules of life and death that bind other planets, and Charon defies the rules of form and creation.”

A lovely description. Not so much a lecture as a writer’s natural way of playing with words, and an attempt to find something to talk about with me just for the sake of connecting.

Not that the Witch-Queen was done. “We view them as unimaginative, and they view us as self-indulgent and unfocused. And yet, like family, when we are together the love is easy and automatic.”

The Witch-Queen’s smile widened, and her stare got a little more direct, affectionate but also challenging.

I had no time to argue or to pat myself on the back for being right. It was time for me to point at the mirror and say, “Uh?”

Because something was moving on the surface of Charon. A dot rose and rose, heading for the crystal and…. I would call it a kobolich. Like a dracolich, only smaller. Those thoughts took up the time for the rising thing to grow into a tiny but recognizable humanoid shape with wings. An angel?

But an angel dissolving, turning red, trailing blood. Its wings came apart into multiple disconnected sets. It screamed, in different voices that started and overlapped and faded. Which was weird, since no other sound came through the mirror.

The slowly disintegrating angel zoomed past my creation and its new friend and hit an invisible wall. A wall that probably wasn’t there, except to the poor person now splattered across it. The blood trickled and flowed into patterns, tracing out an array of circles and other geometric shapes linked together. They centered around the precise spot the angel had hit, where it pierced a hole from darkness into darkness.

Segmented legs stuck out through the hole, waving and clawing at it, tearing it wider. The head and limbs of a gigantic, deformed insect slowly forced its way through the gap into our space. Holes opened up in the other geometric shapes, each one spitting out a freaky, mutated wasp thing maybe the size of a dog.

The guardians of Pluto and Charon sprang into action. The kobolich spiraled away from my crystal. The flickers of green fire became a roaring flame in its stomach and head, which seemed to explode. Now a transparent, full-sized bone dragon surrounded the little kobold. Transparent or not, it was entirely solid as it grabbed hold of the geometric design, drew back its head as if inhaling, and sprayed the giant bug head with green fire, a torrent that went on and on and on, sending sparks out like an old-fashioned fuse to burn the outer symbols out of existence.

The smaller bugs closed on the kobolich in a swarm, or tried. Swiveling precisely, my crystal fired a white beam out of its core that vaporized them one by one in rapid succession, protecting the giant undead.

Green flame subsided. The bug head was gone. The jagged hole glowed orange-red, like a welded patch, and faded into regular night sky.

The see-through dragon shrank down into the cute-ish skeletal kobold, which landed on my crystal and spun it around and around, jaw flapping in what might be laughter.

With a scratchy sound like an eraser, the mirror faded back into smudged blackboard.

Smiling downright smugly, and with all her regal grandeur, the Witch-Queen waved her chalk stick at the board. “That is what you have done today. How do you feel?”

How did I feel? Well, I was grinning a lot, and wriggling spontaneously. “Awesome, accomplished, and incredibly cool rather than a nerd who wastes her time daydreaming. Is this what you do?”

She laughed, with practiced majesty. “Not often. I spend most of the time taking advantage of living alone to write as much as I want.”

Cuddly Delicious did not count, of course. I got that. The Venusian Space Bunny spent her time reading or doing quiet chores like making food so that the castle’s owner wouldn’t have to waste good writing time. She didn’t intrude.

Out loud, I said, “I can definitely see the attraction.”

Giving me that direct, affectionate stare again, the Witch-Queen raised her voice in self-correction, “There are some things worth giving up your alone time for. At least some of it. Enough of your training will consist of quiet time writing whatever you want that neither of us will need excuses to sneak off for writing time alone.”

Whoa. Hit me in the memories of how I’d survived until Peter Pumpernickel literally crashed one of those sessions. I squinted up at her suspiciously. “How did you know? You tried to erase that version of my past.”

She smirked. Oh, how the old lady smirked! So, so much smugitude, right there. “There are things I can take for granted my daughter would do.”

I rooooolled my eyes. “I’m not calling you ‘Mom.’”

Her smugitude did not budge an inch. “As long as you crave the life that only I can give you.”

Crossing my own arms, I tilted my head and pursed my lips thoughtfully. “Spontaneous storytelling seems to be wildly popular in space, but I admit nobody else is offering to make my stories real.” I honestly didn’t have to put on a show of ambivalence. I could write elsewhere, but the rush of creation… wow.

The latch on the door clicked, drawing my attention. Ribbon walked into the room, with an elongated silvery Key wrapped in a spiral around the snow-white costumed goth’s left forearm.

Brisk and businesslike, Ribbon said, “Sorry about the delay. Something rose out of the ink well and attacked the micro fictions.”

“An Outsider?” I squeaked, anxiety prickling.

Ribbon shook an incredibly dark-skinned head, framed by swaying white braids. “Just the usual spontaneous abomination of darkness and creativity. The Outsider invasion dried up, which is why I guessed Rachel was here. Did you know that kobold is listening at the door?”

I had never been comfortable in Ribbon’s presence. Ribbon and the Witch-Queen together had me downright twitchy. The latter peered down at the former with dark, speculative eyes and asked, “You don’t like how close she is to Rachel, do you?”

Ribbon stopped walking toward me, halfway across the room. Not tense but eerily still, the bounty hunter spent seconds in frowning thought before admitting, “I guess I don’t. I’m jealous, but I also think she has her own agenda. I don’t like knowing that someone is scheming to pry Rachel away from us.”

A noise like metal hitting glass echoed in the bare wooden room. Next to me, where the crystal had formed, a jagged crack formed in the air. Another breaking glass sound, and the crack opened wide enough to reveal a head-sized pink eye with a barbell shaped pupil. The pupil opened, forming a fanged mouth, and out of it lashed a gross, meaty, slimy tendril with another eye at the tip.

By the time I realized this was an Outsider and the tentacle was headed for me, Ribbon had arrived. Key was already in key shape, and Ribbon slapped the living weapon against the tentacle, wrapping it up like a spaghetti noodle, then thrust the key into the eye’s mouth. Key turned. The crack in the air shrank to nothing around Key’s silvery shaft. The hole clicked like a lock, and Ribbon pulled Key free, leaving the air intact again.

Now I had time to stagger away, hyperventilating. Squeaking in shock, I asked, “Did I do that!?”

The Witch-Queen frowned deeply, but still stood calm with her hands behind her. She hadn’t moved, letting Ribbon do what Ribbon was so good at. The frown wasn’t anger or contempt at least, just concern that went with a gentle lecture. “Creation isn’t as easy as it looks. Your story was not coherent enough, and that combined with how desperately the things outside reality are drawn to you. I promise, once you have truly become a part of Charon that attraction will go away. Accept your new home, and you take on its traits and protections.”

Ribbon stepped closer, shoulder pressed to mine in fierce assertion of comradery, and Key raised in the other hand. “Until then, I’ll defend you. I swear it. This is exactly why big powers like you have lesser powers like me, who are effective on a smaller scale.”

Like the kobolich and my crystal, or Bonnie and Maiden Midday. I’d seen it myself.

The sight of the two of us brought back the Witch-Queen’s tight smile, and her voice turned affectionate. “I’m going to have to clean this up and make sure our barriers are stronger so that there aren’t more of these events. You children go have fun.”

Ribbon slipped an arm into mine, squeezing it with gleeful affection and giving me a sparkly white grin up close. “We’ll be spending a lot of time together from now on. Let’s make a start.”

The Witch-Queen relaxed, arms unfolding and touching up her glasses in a mood change almost as abrupt as Ribbon was prone to. Smirking, she said, “We’re a weird little family, but we’re weird little people.”

Hauling on my arm, Ribbon pulled me out of the room, past an expressionless Wrench and down the spiraling steps. As we descended, the goth teen chattered happily, “Let’s go out into the village. The Witch-Queen will lock us up all day under her eye if you let her, but when our relationship becomes official my first loyalty will be to you, not her. I can protect you around the edges from her quirks until then. She’s probably expecting it.”

Despite that reassurance, Ribbon pulled a little harder, and we skipped down the steps until we reached the second floor.

From there, Ribbon frowned over a wooden railing at the open front doors. “I wonder if we should go through the front door. The Witch-Queen will know. We could use a window. The walls of this place are so ornamental they’re practically a ladder.”

Grimacing in distaste and dizzied by all the mood changes of the last few minutes, I shook my head. “I can’t. I set off the guard guns. They think I’m an Outsider.”

Ribbon gave me an eyebrow-raised, sidelong stare of extreme dubiousness, then shrugged and let it go. We hurried down the nearest staircase, the one near my bedroom in fact, and dragged me through the door.

Transition happened, smoothly and gracefully this time.

On the other side, under bright sunshine that lit up the landscape yet left a black and star-speckled sky, I bathed in the cool breeze and crisp sound of Ribbon’s boots on stone brick and all the other physical sensations that came back after that moment of existing in text. It wasn’t disorienting this time, at least.

Ahead of us, the stone-cobbled main street ran down to the woods, lined mostly with little wooden cottages. They had lots of outbuildings like tiny warehouses between them, and racks holding paper, boxes piled with pens, and barrels of what must be ink. Still, the cottages themselves deserved the word “cottage,” with peaked roofs, lots of little windows with ornate shutters, chairs next to the front doors, and other homey touches.

The whole place was silent. The whisper of the slight breeze and Ribbon’s clicking high heels dominated everything.

Looking around and reveling in that calm, I judged, “I have to confess, I like it. As pretty as a fairy tale, but with the peace of the eye of a storm.”

Ribbon did not like it. Ribbon was not peaceful. Ribbon’s grip grew tighter on my arm as we walked, until Ribbon let go entirely, and flicked a forearm. Key shot out, stretching into a scythe that Ribbon held horizontally, circling around me as if trying to protect me from everything at once.

Time to say something intelligent. “Uh….”

Ribbon explained the tension by asking suspiciously, “Where is everyone?”

Not nearly as worried but still getting anxious again, I said, “There was no one visible when I arrived. Maybe my Math infection suppresses things this fanciful.”

Ribbon lowered Key a few inches, the paranoid stance lessening a little. It was replaced by an exasperated and skeptical grimace shot my way. “You’re not that bad,” chided the unidentifiably androgynous teen.

Equally puzzled and frustrated, I put a fist on my hip pirate style and argued back, “Yeah, I am? You went on about it? And so did the guards out in space?”

Ribbon’s face tucked down an inch, the exasperation and skepticism becoming a touch amused and frustrated as well. “I was exaggerating. They’re exaggerating. Everyone exaggerates here. We’re artists. The only people who don’t exaggerate are exaggerating their quietness. You belong here, so this can’t be a surprise.”

Despite Ribbon’s tension, I had to smile. It just forced its way onto my face. Everything she’d just said felt so, so true. I really should have guessed.

Key still held in guard, but more matter of fact now, Ribbon stated, “You’re obvious at a distance to anyone who can feel Outsiders. You were drawing a dangerous number of extras until you got here, and you’re drawn to them. That is true. It happens to people who have been touched. You’re not dangerous yourself.”

“Then maybe I’m not supposed to see them,” I suggested.

Ribbon’s tension immediately disappeared, and the bounty hunter rested the base of the silvery scythe on the road. We both nodded.

“I bet nobody is supposed to see them. I get to because I work for her,” said Ribbon.

Me, I chuckled. “It’s dramatic and creepy if nothing moves where people can see. Perfect Witch-Queen atmosphere.”

Still, Ribbon kept Key in scythe shape as we walked down the street some more, until Ribbon swerved toward some buildings that weren’t really buildings. Crude wooden tanks on scaffolding, pipes made of wood, a lot of rickety constructs that dripped black goo into open barrels. Big mixing spoons lay in some of the barrels, and boxes of powders around them.

Ribbon smiled fondly at the display. “An ink well. The Witch-Queen needs books and lots of them to perform her magic. She writes constantly. I guarantee you when she’s not around, she’s spending most of that time writing. Partly for power, partly because she’s a writer and she just has to do it.”

Heh. Shades of the conversation I’d just had. I nodded a few times in philosophic sympathy. “I get that. The only reason I wasn’t writing much on Ceres was that spaceship repair scratches the same itch. For me, at least.”

Ribbon leaned back against one of the barrels and looked me and my stupid witch get up over, with a smile that neither approved nor disapproved of the clothing, just approved of me. “I’m sorry I missed your first creation session, but I know I’ll see plenty of them. Once you graduate from being her apprentice, all this will be yours, or maybe you’ll find some uncreated land and make your own kingdom. I’ll be with you either way.”

Me, I looked around with my lips pursed dubiously. “If I’m stuck on Charon, I’d prefer somewhere that was a little more my style.”

Ribbon asked the obvious question. “So what is your style?”

I leaned against the post of a looming ink tank. No doubt behind me, where I couldn’t see, bundles of words were hard at work. My thoughts wandered over the question. “Maybe a small house in the middle of the woods that looks normal except the creepy stuff is in basements and hidden rooms.”

“You’ll need supplies. How will you get them?” Ribbon prompted.

I waved a hand, and smirked. “Oh, that’s easy. Mysterious traders who wear hats so big that you can only see their heads as blackness with white specks of eyes.”

Frowning, I considered that, and corrected myself. “No, that’s not really me either. That’s just my darkest version, not really me. To please me, I’d want something crazier, more colorful and eclectic. I liked Saturn’s style. A big dragon of pipes and gears and steam engines would be a good start.”

Ribbon raised a warning finger that stuck out of a lacy white fingerless glove. “On Saturn you’re just a storyteller, not powerful like you are here.”

I shrugged, smiling at the pictures lining up in my head. “The dragon would only be a start, anyway. I would want layers of different looks inside. Maybe something shiny and Mars tech looking next, but it suddenly gives way to silly plastic, and then a garden.”

Boy (girl?), Ribbon could look at me hard, like trying to memorize me. Ribbon did everything intensely. Ribbon’s voice, on the other hand, was detached and held no judgment at all. “I can see your style is colorful and eclectic.”

Heh. I could look hard right back, and challenged, “What is your style?”

Ribbon pushed up from the crude looking brown barrel, lifted an arm, and Key flowed back into being a silvery little squid sitting on Ribbon’s palm as Ribbon answered, “I’m not an artist, at least not like that.”

Uh-huh. I pointed a finger at the white-on-black goth. “Busted. I saw you paint.”

“That wasn’t me,” answered Ribbon primly. “That was the ink. Maybe it borrows someone else’s skill. I had a good visualization, but painting with your blood requires passion and sacrifice, not skill.”

I raised my eyebrows. Yeah, I’d wanted to ask about that and it was always at the bottom of the question heap. “So that’s why your blood is black and turns into stuff? You replaced your blood with ink?”

“I didn’t do it myself, but I wanted it. My art is movement, and the ink gives me the power to pursue it to the ultimate extent.” Ribbon bent to the side, arms held at an angle, whirled like a smooth and elegant top, and Key slid up to the raised hand only to be passed back to the original during a lazy cartwheel. Ribbon did have grace and agility coming out of his, her, their, or its ears.

When Ribbon rolled back upright, it was with a frown. “We’d better go back. It’s not completely safe out here. I can feel Outsider taint leaking through weaknesses and tiny fractures. That mistake up in the tower must have caused damage to the whole system, and I guess it needs time to heal.” With a heavy sigh, Ribbon took hold of my elbow and guided me gently back to the road to head back to the castle. “I wanted to dance with you, or at least for you.”

I gave Ribbon a reassuring smile. “Someday I’ll be able to make you a place to dance while you’re dancing through it.”

Ribbon smiled widely, liking that image as much as I did.

We re-entered the library castle. On the other side of that barrier of non-physicality, Ribbon let me go, and took hold of Key, who slithered out into scythe shape again. Laying the shaft over a white silk pouf covered shoulder, Ribbon told me, “Stay inside. I’m going to go on patrol. Maybe I just felt one of the local monsters moving around. A wolf that didn’t form right, maybe.”

With no further ado, Ribbon walked out. I watched, trying to get my head around knowing that I could see Ribbon walking away without actually being able to see it. That doorway was the biggest threat to reality I’d ever seen, frankly.

Wrench peered over a railing right above me, engulfed to the chin in pink knit.

“Well, Ribbon is still crazy,” I called up to the silvery lizard. Wrench skipped with childish energy down the stairs, and when she reached the bottom I added, “I like and don’t like Ribbon both, at the same time.”

The skips may have been childish, but Wrench’s frown was entirely serious and her voice adult as she looked past me at the entrance. “The doors wouldn’t let me through. The Witch-Queen and Ribbon are trying to separate us.”

All the fun of the morning lesson and talking to Ribbon drained away. I scowled. I scowled hard. I didn’t get angry much, but now I was.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Supper time arrived, at that same platform dining room and table. This time the Witch Queen and Ribbon joined me, Wrench, and Cuddly Delicious. We ate slices of roast beast, which is the closest I could identify it, with cube-shaped fried potatoes. Cuddly Delicious seemed to think vegetables happen to other people which, while an odd attitude for a rabbit, did not upset me.

The Witch-Queen scowled a lot, her chair tilted back and feet on the table, holding some unbound papers she was reading in her right hand, and a bone covered in meat in her left hand. She took occasional bites out of the meat but was quiet.

Ribbon was similarly quiet, eating daintily with a knife and fork, until looking up to give me a cautious smile. “The pressure quieted down quickly. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. That Outsider break just happened in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not new.”

Cuddly Delicious perked up, ears yanking so straight in the air they vibrated. Gleefully, she chattered, “I read a book yesterday about Outsiders! It was super cool and fun, except it felt silly now that I work here and know what they’re actually like. In the book the Outsiders came in a whole invasion of silvery disks that shot lasers at Earth and burned out the Math, pew pew whoosh! But a heroic rebel from Jupiter and a woman from Venus and a farm kid from the Moon ganged up and invaded the alien spaceships to make them blow each other up instead because saving Earth wasn’t worth killing—”

Scowling harder, the Witch-Queen cut off the Venusian Space Bunny. “Describing a book isn’t interesting.”

The bunny slumped a few inches and pouted. “You like me talking about your books.”

“To me, yes. It’s called literary criticism,” the Witch-Queen told her. As a writer who knew the ego-stroking power of having my work complimented, I believed that reasoning a whopping zero percent.

Swallowing my last tater cube, I pushed my chair back and stood up. With casual cheer I wasn’t going to put effort into sounding sincere, I announced, “I’m done. I’m going to go spend some time with Wrench.”

That got the Witch-Queen’s attention. She straightened up a little in her chair, although not enough to take her feet off the table. “Now is not a good time.”

I shrugged, again pretending to be calm but not working hard at it. “It’s the only time I’ve got.”

“It’s late. You have to get up for school tomorrow,” the Witch-Queen argued.

I scowled, marching around to the stairs down without turning to look back. “A school where I’m the only student and all hours are arbitrary. We could take a week’s break at any time and it wouldn’t matter. I need time with my closest friend.”

Wrench giggled like an embarrassed little girl as she fell in next to me, and the tip of her tail sticking out from under the sweater waggled furiously.

As soon as we were far enough down the stairs to not be visible, I took Wrench’s hand in mine, squeezed, and held it as we walked. I didn’t want to cheapen that gesture by making it a display for the fake mother who wanted to control who I hung out with.

I also didn’t want to let irritation at the Witch-Queen spoil this time with Wrench. I smiled weakly down at my shiny kobold partner and asked, “So, what have you been doing while I’m studying literature all day?”

Wrench raised her eye ridges in amusement and waggled a finger in a circle at the bookshelf covered walls. “Kobolds can read, you know,” she answered dryly.

Oh, little girl. Sarcasm was my game. “Gasp! We have to warn everyone!”

As soon as our giggles settled down, Wrench squeaked, “The reading really is good. Some of the books are from Earth, which is fascinating, disturbing, and sad, all at once. I’ve had a good explore around the castle. I spy on you a lot, of course.”

I squeezed my eyebrows together. “It’s so weird to have to make time to be with you. We spent almost all our time together from the day I arrived at Ceres until we got to Charon. I didn’t even notice that. You’re the most comfortable person I’ve ever been with.”

Wrench hunched up her shoulders, giggling furiously in pleased embarrassment. Her whole tail wagged this time.

We reached the door to my bedroom, and I peeked in. No dolls. Good. Wrench climbed up on the bed and perched on the edge like a bird, and I leaned against a wardrobe, insisting, “It’s true. I talk about Violet as my best friend, but that’s because she’s exciting and noticeable. Being her friend is always an event. You’re just as much my best friend, it’s just such constant sharing it doesn’t need thinking about.”

Wrench’s giggles got even worse, and she had to grab the mattress with her hands as her tail wagging threatened to pitch her off the bed. Sometimes I didn’t know whether “little girl” Wrench or ”grown woman” Wrench was the real her.

I wasn’t going to sweat it. Wrench was Wrench.

The giggles died, and the adult Wrench came back with a deep frown. “I’m not comfortable with the way the Witch-Queen treats you, Rachel.”

I nodded and waited for more.

Wrench obliged, with a haunted scowl and a solemn voice lacking any hint of squeak. “There were humans at the palace who would say they cared about me. Some of them even believed it, but it was because I was property and they were always in control. I’m getting that kind of feeling from the Witch-Queen.”

I grunted and looked around. No dolls, but still…. “I wonder if she’s spying on us now.”

“We could go outside,” Wrench suggested.

I shook my head. “She watches the door. She could be asleep and she’d know if we went through it.”

“A window, then. The walls are easy to climb.” Wrench jerked her long head towards my own bedroom window.

I flashed a grin. “That is a thing you would notice, isn’t it?”

Wrench giggled, the little girl back with her toothy grin. “Yep!”

I looked out at the darkness. “Ribbon mentioned it too, but there’s a gun turret right outside and I can’t go near it.”

Sliding off the bed to the floor, Wrench flapped a hand and squeaked, “Oh, that. That’s not a problem!”

Her stubby hand beckoned, so I followed Wrench over to the window and undid the latches that were too tall for her to reach. She slid the window up and climbed out onto a wide ledge.

I heard words writing themselves now that I was this close. The turret that had been hidden in the darkness, hardly ten feet away, began to glow as the masks did their thing.

Wrench closed the grimoire. With nothing to read, the glow on the masks died. Then just to be sure, Wrench picked up the book and threw it off the wall entirely.

My eyebrows all the way up, I said, “I’m surprised it’s that easy.”

“Oh, it’s even easier!” Wrench squeaked. Taking the double-masked head in her hands, she lifted it right up out of its setting. It had a little wire frame to stand on, and that’s it.

I peered down into the darkness after the book, which had only worked because it was left open. “Man, one decent rain shower would ruin every one of these, and half the kingdom.”

Padding back up to the window, Wrench gave me a blank look. “Rain?” Before I had a chance to answer, memory flickered in her eyes and she brightened up. “Oh, right! I’ve seen rain a few times. I don’t think it happens here. In other parts of the planet, sure, but the Witch-Queen built herself a kingdom where it’s all gloom or stars.”

A craving hit me, and I burst out, “You know what I wish? I wish I could travel the solar system with you. Not all the time, just on vacations. I bet your opinion on everywhere would be cool. It would be fun just sharing our opinions of everywhere we go. Maybe you could even introduce me to kobold culture.”

Some expressions were hard to read on a scaly kobold face, but Wrench’s looked so tight that it mixed pleasure and pain. She sounded cheerfully little girl enough. “Which one? There are several. They do all share certain elements, like histories.”

I made a decision. Taking Wrench’s hand again, I pulled her inside. Determined, I marched us out of my apartment, down the stairs, and out to the open front doors. “We’re going out for a walk, together, and I don’t care if she knows.”

I walked into the doorway but could not pass.

That was it. Again, pure text. A fact, with no sensations involved. I just could not pass.

My voice scratchy with anger, I shouted, “Open it!”

And in the distance the Witch-Queen yelled back, “Absolutely not. It’s dangerous at night.”

“Not in town!” I shouted.

“I’m not—”

That was as far as I let her go. I’d already let this go too far. Looking down at Wrench, I told her, quiet but sharp, “We’re getting out of here.”

She squeezed my hand tightly and nodded.

I stepped forward into the door. I could not pass, but what about a passage? Surely a door frame was a short passage. Leaving wasn’t a crime, and if it was the door had framed me. It was right there in the name. Would the framework of the frame work? I worked that frame. Work it! Cork it! That wasn’t a rhyme. It was in text. Stork, cork, work, clerk, bubblegum, two sticks, four sticks, sixteen sticks—

That’s it. The door had been breaking under the progressive wave of gibberish I subjected it to. Throwing in square numbers did more than just break it.

I yanked Wrench through the now empty doorway, just ahead of the things that started to fill it. Sparkly things, twisty floating wires and spheres that became pyramids that became cubes, growing more and more complicated.

In the distance, I heard Ribbon yell, “Key!” Ribbon could move fast, but those Outsiders should give us enough time.

Turning off the main street, I ran. Wrench understood, and her back-kinked legs sped along beside me. We were headed for the spaceport, and for my spaceship.

Wrench didn’t just keep up. She sped ahead, and at the entrance to the landing field jumped onto one of the turrets, flung aside its book, and then over to do the same to the other. Now I could enter safely.

Except for the black, hunched, four-legged figure that stepped out of the slightly less shadowy night into my way. It was dog shaped, but too big, and a silkily masculine voice teased, “Little girls shouldn’t go wandering around in the dark.”

Wrench, still on the turret pedestal next to me, crouched down and gritted her teeth in worry. I skidded to an alarmed halt, but my mind raced as I did. I grabbed Wrench’s hand again. “It’s a wolf. He’s a side effect of the stories the Witch-Queen tells. He wants to kill us, but he can’t, not if we ignore him.”

I took one step, and the dark mass of the wolf spasmed. It let out a howl, which choked off. Two blood red eyes glowed in the night. Then a third eye on its forehead. Then more eyes, opening up all over its body.

This wasn’t a wolf anymore. An Outsider was spawning inside it. This could, and would, straight-up kill me without needing to talk about it first.

Wrench leaped away, grabbing at the book she’d discarded. She wanted to rearm the turret. I staggered backward, trying to put some distance between me and a monster that didn’t have to follow even the weird physical rules of Charon anymore.

Ribbon, heels loud and fast as castanets, ran up the path with Key held as a scythe. The bounty hunter swung the scythe up, catching the wolf in the chest and flinging it into the air off its feet. Reversing, Ribbon slammed the monster back down to the ground, impaling it. Key wriggled, turning into key shape, and Ribbon twisted sharply.

The wolf whined. The eyes all closed. The body went still.

Panting, with Key slithering back up into squid shape on one shoulder, Ribbon declared to everyone and no one, “This is insane. How can anyone spawn Outsiders like this!?”

At a more sedate, regal, even a bit serpentine pace, the Witch-Queen strolled up the path behind us. Loud enough to carry, she answered, “My teaching is at fault. I made her even more dangerous, assuming it wouldn’t matter until she embraced Charon and remade herself in her own image, wiping away the infection.”

Failing to hide the quaver of fear in my voice, I took a step away from the Witch-Queen toward the typewriter docking cradle that held my little spaceship. “I might risk it anyway, to be away from here.”

For several seconds, the Witch-Queen stood there, the only sound being her deep, heavy, troubled breaths. She lifted a hand to press her fingertips to her forehead, and with a more raw voice than I’d heard until now said, “I was telling you the truth that I’m a bad mother. I get wrapped up in what I want, and I get things wrong even when I try. It’s hard enough becoming part of a family you never knew you had. I know you need friends as well as family. I’ll try and give you and Wrench space to be friends from now on.”

It was so, so weird knowing that on some level, she was right, and it was simultaneously true that she was my mother and not my mother. The power to mess with the past was terrifying. That it wasn’t absolute just made it scarier.

She took another deep breath, and looked up and straight at me, although I couldn’t see her eyes with the only light coming from the castle behind her, holding her in silhouette. “I’m getting carried away. I’m too invested in your training because the solar system needs you. Being the target of these abominations must have shown you how big the danger is, and what we’re trying to save everyone from.”

Ribbon stepped forward, holding out a hand and giving me a lopsided, shy grin. “And you like Charon. You know you do. You’ll find your place here. We’ll find your place here together, and it will be our place. Until then….” Ribbon’s mouth tightened, and tense and poised, the deadly teen went on, “I won’t let you leave. If you try, I’ll find you and bring you back. I’m sorry.” She sounded sorry. “But that’s my duty.”

I had seen the monsters. They were out there, waiting for me. I couldn’t bear the thought that they might attack others. I could spend my life stopping them.

I still didn’t trust the Witch-Queen. But…. “Fine. We can all try again.”

I took Wrench’s hand in mine, though, and squeezed it tight. She needed to know that, metaphorically at least, I would never let her go.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A new day happened. Breakfast happened. Five of us sitting around a table that belonged in a royal castle or a library happened. It was those weird eggs again. Cuddly Delicious wasn’t much for cooking variety, so it was a good thing they tasted just as good today.

Wrench had arrived in a glittery tube dress that showed off her curves and looked like it was sequined with thousands of rubies. The dolls must have stolen the sweater in the night.

Key, perched on Ribbon’s shoulder, slid its lugubrious, wobbly silver way silently down Ribbon’s arm, bit by bit, as if sneaking on tiptoe. One tentacle slid out, extending inch by inch toward the jug of milk.

The Witch-Queen, already scowling at her plate, looked up sharply and snarled, “What have I told you about letting that thing—”

Key flinched, swinging around to hide under Ribbon’s arm. Ribbon looked shocked, red eyes wide. Cuddly Delicious crouched low in her chair, trying to disappear.

The Witch-Queen pushed her glasses up from her nose to her forehead and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her fingers. A touch hoarse, much quieter, and sad rather than angry, she said, “I’m tense. I’ve devoted my life to protecting the solar system from conquering aliens and beings of annihilation trying to break through the veil between worlds, and now I can barely keep my family safe.”

“That’s my job.” Plucking Key out from hiding, Ribbon tossed the little squid up into the air, spinning, and it flowed into the shape of a double-bladed knife until she caught it again and squidness resumed.

Rubbing her nose a little more, the Witch-Queen said, “I spent all night writing new wards. We’re safe here, at least.”

She did look a bit, well, haggard, and her hair wasn’t as neatly in place as usual. Letting myself be a touch worried, I said, “You really are dedicated to this.”

“Yes,” she said, tired but emphatic.

“Yes,” echoed Ribbon emphatically.

Getting a bit of her energy back, the Witch-Queen straightened up, and turned an awkward, guilty smile to me. She still sounded pretty quiet and tired. “Rachel, the more I love someone, the worse I am at showing it.”

“I know what that’s like,” chorused Wrench with undisguised bitterness.

The Witch-Queen talked over her, as if Wrench hadn’t spoken at all. “But I mean it that we are a family. Accept it or not, you are my daughter, which means you must understand responsibility.”

I twitched uncomfortably. This woman was way too good at seeing through me. “Yes.”

Sitting up straight, her vigor steadily returning, the Witch-Queen ran both her hands back through her black hair. The crown bobbed over them like a boat on a wave, unbudged. Fiercely, she said, “We have a huge responsibility. It is glorious. It is fulfilling. We devote ourselves to our passion, to becoming the ultimate of what we are at our core. It is still a responsibility.”

Ribbon grimaced, and carefully put down their spoon. With a haunted, hollow tone, the goth teen said, “I’ve seen a Negative Probability detonate. I’ve seen a farmhouse turn into a patch of rock and ice so cold it burned me just being near. The people who lived there are shadows in my mind, erased by the Math that said they couldn’t have existed. I never want that to happen to anyone again.”

The Witch-Queen scowled harder, more angry than hurt as she dug through her own memories. “When I made my first spaceship, we intercepted a ship of mushroom bugs returning to Eris with one of their…harvests.”

Ribbon, ruthless bounty hunter, shuddered at that thought.

They returned to here and now. In the Witch-Queen’s case, it involved giving me a tight, pained, hopeful smile. “I know I push and I’m difficult, Rachel. I don’t know anything else to be. You are part of a tradition of saving people. We enjoy it, but it’s important. I know it’s rough getting started, and I’m trying to help you through that. I promise that no one can do this job as well as you will one day.”

As usual, Ribbon’s moods flipped like a switch. The red-eyed teen grinned with wolfish satisfaction. “Oh, she’s right. You’re good, Rachel. How many people could break a word gate that badly? Or at all?”

Ribbon was always so sincere. Now that meant radiating admiration. My cheeks felt hot. Was I blushing? “It wasn’t hard.”

“Exactly. For you.” Ribbon just grinned a touch wider.

Waving her own spoon at my tormentor and admirer, the Witch-Queen asked playfully, “And how many people could clean up the Anomalies it spilled fast enough to catch up and save her from a Corruption?”

Heh! Now it was Ribbon’s turn to shrink down in sudden, uncharacteristic shyness, mumbling, “A few.”

The Witch-Queen bobbed her spoon as if tapping the out of reach bounty hunter’s nose. “Who all have decades more experience than you.”

Propping my elbows on the table and my chin on my hands, I grinned challengingly at the embarrassed Ribbon. “I have seen you dance, you know. You are elegant death.”

Ribbon looked away from us, down at Key. Big mistake. Key nodded furiously in agreement with us.

Spreading her hands, the Witch-Queen looked between us and beamed with joy. “I am so proud of both of you. Together, we can and will save everyone.”

And that…ruined it a little, for me. Trying not to judge her hope as an assumption, I chewed and swallowed the last bite of fried bread egg thing. Straining to be fair, I tried hard to sound inoffensively cheerful when I hopped out of my chair and declared, “Now that it’s daytime and safer, I’m going to go out with Wrench again.”

The Witch-Queen blinked at me, convincingly surprised. “It’s time for school. You can spend time with your friend later.”

Staying perfectly calm, I said, “I reiterate: School is only when we say it is. It can wait a couple of hours.”

Leaning forward and smiling, the Witch-Queen replied, “I set up another chance at writing something into existence for you. I know for a fact you love that.”

I did. Turning my writing skills into magic? The tastes I’d gotten of that were magical in every sense of the word. That made the pain and sadness of this moment even sharper. There was always going to be an excuse. The Witch-Queen hadn’t changed. Her promise hadn’t even lasted long enough to backslide. She’d just put a loving smile on separating me from Wrench.

It wasn’t hard to fake sounding like I wanted this, but I was still faking as I said, “Well…okay. It can wait for a creation session.”

Ribbon also slid to that athletic, elaborate-white-bedecked body’s feet, Key ready and clinging to one hand. “I’m coming along to guard. I want to make sure there are no Outsider attacks this time. I swore oaths to both of you.”

So, with one captor in front and another behind, I was marched up to the tallest tower in the castle. The casting chamber, or whatever it should be called, hadn’t changed since yesterday. Same symbols on the floor, same echoey space smelling of varnish, same blackboard that this time had a crude map of the solar system on it. Instead of the little blob of Charon spinning around Pluto, Charon and Pluto were at opposite ends of their own little circle, which was cute.

Today the Witch-Queen folded her hands in front of her and looked down at me with a solemnly concerned expression. She sounded just slightly less stiff than a regular teacher as she said, “I pushed too fast yesterday. I hoped we could get your creations up into the sky, traveling the solar system while you trained. You could join the defense immediately, and just keep getting stronger. These monsters want to destroy everything, and they just keep coming, and we are the only ones who know how to fight them. Even a genius has limits. I can’t just drop you into a war, even if it’s the war to save everything. We’ll start smaller, start safer.”

Ribbon waited in a corner, and the Witch-Queen by the blackboard, both watching me as I took my place in the center of the ritual circle. Somewhere under this floor, was a sacrifice of books and ink burning, pouring power into my words? How did this work?

I didn’t care anymore. It worked. I asked, “What do you want me to make, then?”

“Whatever you like. An ornament for your room would be good. Something I didn’t have available. Describe it carefully and be detailed about how it got here. A little excitement is nice, but not necessary for something like this,” the Witch-Queen answered grandly.

I shivered. This was the moment. Once I started, the story could fail, or turn into a train wreck, but could not be stopped from the outside. The Witch-Queen hadn’t had to tell me that. I’d felt it the first time, the timelessness and inevitability of the moment.

So I took a deep breath and told a very specific story. “The solar system turns. The solar system always turns. While we are wrapped up in our little dramas, everyone else is playing out their own subplots out of our sight. For example, when I made the decision to face my fears and come to Charon, my devious and true friend Wrench the kobold took a little bit of insurance. She packed with our things a chunk of amber, half of a recording device that I share with a pirate princess from Saturn. Every ominous word spoken and incriminating document in this castle has been copied and sent to Saturn, and pirate princesses know duplicity. Violent Violet and her mother Pirate Queen Bluehair decided they had to intervene. Bluehair is a cunning strategist. Pirate ships are powerful on Charon. Now they have pulled up outside—”

An incredibly loud boom blasted my words away. The floor shook, and I nearly fell over. Wooden splinters flew past me in a prickly rush, along with much bigger chunks of debris.

I looked around. A big hole had been knocked in the outer wall of the castle, and in it was wedged the blocky black train shape of one of the spaceships Violet and I had found on Saturn, or at least one like it. Rotors twirled slower and slower as the crashed machine’s power ran down. Steam hissed out of vents.

The door to the engine slammed open, and Violent Violet, in pirate breeches and blouse, sword in one hand and pistol in the other, leaped out onto the rubble and pointed her sword at me. “Time is up! I’ve had enough of your lollygagging. I’m here to take you back to be a pirate, now. You will love my new boyfriend, if he hasn’t escaped yet.”

After her, ARF-80 climbed out, smiling curiously as she looked around, until her eyes fixed hopefully on the blackboard. “I heard there was a school?”

While everyone was catching up with events, footsteps thumped rapidly on the stairs leading up the tower. The door flew open, and Wrench and Cuddly Delicious burst in side by side, looking around at the destroyed room and the tableau of surprised people it contained.

Violet recovered first. Sort of. Her mouth sagged open, and the purple teenage pirate gaped at Wrench in her ruby-bedecked cocktail dress that fit almost luridly well. Eyes still wide, Violet swore, “Beard of Gaia! Since when was Wrench a knockout vamp heartbreaker?”

Okay, this wasn’t exactly what I was trying to make, but the room was thoroughly busted up and I bet the Witch-Queen couldn’t undo what I had written.

As for that Witch-Queen, her frown was steadily hardening, and she drew herself up in leather-clad fury.

Ribbon spoke first, waving a hand holding a jagged silver sword at me. A little pained but still calm, she addressed the Witch-Queen. “We might as well let her go. It’s the safest way. She’s angry. Let her cool down and think about what’s right. I’ll go get her and either convince her to return or drag her back. After she’s had time to think, I’m sure it will be the former.”

Whatever explosion had been building, Ribbon’s plea certainly deflated it. The Witch-Queen, black hair speckled with brown sawdust stared at Ribbon in bafflement. “Do you really believe that?”

As sincere and emphatic as always, Ribbon told her, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder. She feels pushed. It’s bad enough the universe is pushing her without us pushing her. Besides, we can’t keep her unless you throw her in a cage. I can’t stay to guard her. I’ve delayed more than I should already. I have to get out into Space. We all have our responsibilities, and until Rachel accepts this world and remakes herself, I have to protect everyone from the Outsiders she’s drawing.”

The Witch-Queen shook her head. A pebble from the outer wall of the castle fell out of her bouncing hair and clattered on the wood plank floor. “That can wait.”

Impatient, Ribbon slashed her blade-wielding hand in front of her. “You haven’t seen it. They were getting deep into the solar system. With me tied up on Charon, some of those monsters might get as far as Mars. The whole planet could die. Again.”

Both hands on her hips, scowling like an angry mother and with the same scolding tone, the Witch-Queen told her bounty hunter, “You are not leaving. The leak is not a problem anymore, now that you don’t need a trail to follow to find Rachel.”

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. The Outsiders were only there as long as Ribbon needed them to track me? Which meant—

Anger flamed in my stomach so hot that I staggered, thinking I’d choke from it. Wheeling around, I shook a fist at the witch, “A lie! It was all a lie! You manipulative hag! You let those Outsiders in, exactly so they would chase me around half the solar system and force me to come here. I’m not in danger from anyone except you. The solar system doesn’t need me to save it!”

I’d expected her anger to flare back. Instead, she got suddenly calm and reasonable, if emphatic. “Yes, it does. You would not have seen the threat if I hadn’t relaxed my grip, because like the rest of humanity, you don’t see the danger we’re stopping.”

Walking around the circle to stand next to her (his?) patron, Ribbon said equally calmly, but with a hard, bitter sadness, “She’s right, Rachel. Without people like us, the Outsiders would all get in, not just a few she knew I would kill. I don’t agree with how she did it, but she gave you a peek at the real threat we need you to stop.”

Next to and a little above her, the Witch-Queen nodded. “The Outsiders have been attacking since before you were born, and even with the best we do to keep them out, some get through. That’s why we need people like Ribbon. Monsters get through, and people die, or go mad, or are wiped away and never existed.”

Her red eyes on mine, Ribbon told me solemnly, “The Witch-Queen isn’t likely to find anyone as good as you to take her place. The solar system needs you, Rachel.”

I shook my head. Then I shook my head some more. My whole body shook, and I waved my hands past each other in denial. “No, it doesn’t. It just wants me. You said it yourself, just now. This threat isn’t new. If I don’t do it, someone else will. Charon and Pluto are full of people who want to. Maybe I would be better at it, but the solar system won’t be in danger if I do something else with my life.”

Ribbon held out both hands to me, the blade that was Key withdrawing and crawling up to an elbow. The ink black face turned pleading. “You like it here. I know artists. Here, and only here, can you truly get what you want. Your problem isn’t what we’re offering, it’s just that she pushes you too hard. I’ll stay and help smooth things out between you. You know that if I swear it, I will follow through. Your friends can stay while you’re schooling.”

“Yes! I miss school so much!” crowed ARF-80, pumping her fist. Hopping easily and lightly down the debris pile, she trotted over to Cuddly Delicious and scooped up one of Delicious’s books. Even in an emergency, the bunny woman had been carrying around a pile. ARF-80’s expression soured when she flipped through the tome, though. “Are there any pictures in this at all?”

“Will chapter header art do? We have a lot of books!” chirped Cuddly Delicious back to her.

Even amid my anger and betrayal, my heart flashed a moment of warmth. I was barely beginning to know the real ARF-80. She had barely been a person long enough to know. But she was already so, so charming.

Sensing it was time for everyone else’s opinions, Violet spun the tip of her sword in the air and gave me a sly grin. “Forget this place. Even if you like it, piracy is better! You and me, sailing the Seven Skies!”

I loved being with Violet, too.

Far, far away on Earth, my real parents must be missing me, no matter how badly the Witch-Queen had scrambled my memories.

I had a place everywhere. Too many places. I had to pick one.

Which meant it was my right to pick one.

Out loud, so I could hear it, I said, “If I can pick what I want most, I want to go back to Ceres and repair spaceships. I was happy there.”

Violet scowled a ferocious pout and shoved her rapier back into its sheathe in her belt. Then she shrugged, pistol flopping in her other hand. “I tried.” Her grin flashed back playfully, and she added, “I’m still going to keep showing up to regale you with tales of pirate exploits and cross my fingers that you change your mind someday. I have the best adventures with you. I mean, look at this, right here!”

“No,” said the Witch-Queen, quiet but authoritatively flat.

“This is too important. It’s more than what you prefer,” echoed Ribbon, nearly as determined.

The anger flamed back, heat raging through me. I stomped a foot, which banged loudly on the wooden planks. “No it’s not. That’s the point! No doom is going to fall if I don’t become a Witch-Queen.”

“You are my only heir!” the Witch-Queen snapped back, a hint of roughness creeping into her voice.

“Then you don’t have an heir! Maybe words won’t be one of the arts that protect the next generation. Maybe someone will make their own writing tradition to do it. You don’t get to make me into a copy of you!” I shrieked.

“Young lady, I am trying to raise you to do the universe some good!” she shouted back, fists balled at her sides.

My whole body hurt from tension, and my voice cracked with fury. “No you’re not! You’ve decided what you want me to be and you’re forcing me into that role, like a bad parent! You don’t care about me at all!”

“I am trying to stop you from walking away from your family!” yelled the Witch-Queen.

“Maybe you’re pushing me out of my family! Family isn’t always good! Or it can be good, but not good for me. If my past is broken, does that mean I get to choose whose daughter I am? Shouldn’t my choice matter?” I yelled back.

She got a grip on herself first. Her heavy breaths shuddering as she calmed herself down, the leather-clad Witch-Queen flapped her coat to arrange herself with a little more dignity. With pained sincerity I truly believed she meant, she said, “To me, you are my daughter. I am not letting you leave. I have Ribbon. I have an army of dolls.”

Books thumped repeatedly as they fell out of Cuddly Delicious’s arms onto the floor. Wrench gave her an apologetic smile and pushed her through the doorway out onto the staircase landing. From the bunny’s terrified expression and Harold’s ferocious pulsing, the push was entirely welcome.

Wrench closed the door again and turned the knob on the latch until it clicked. The only person who sounded truly calm here, the little kobold looked challengingly over and up at the Witch-Queen, and said, “Dolls who aren’t strong enough to open a locked door.”

Ribbon had stayed out of the yelling, but was breathing hard too, from emotion. Key quivered on one forearm, and the goth’s gloved hands opened and closed in preparation. Ribbon’s voice came out soft and fluttery. “I hate this, but I will do it. You’re staying.”

It was finally my turn to get a grip on myself, and I had to squeeze my heart down tight to stop myself from shaking. Aching acid resentment replaced fury as I patted the curved front of the black iron Saturnian spaceship next to me. “You’re not stopping anything. I doubt ARF-80 can beat you, not here and now, but she can sure hold you off for the thirty seconds it will take us to take off.”

Violent Violet coughed loudly. Everyone in the room looked at her.

“Uh, about that….” she mumbled, waving at the hatch of the train-shaped vessel.

I peeked inside. The place was a wreck. Half the controls had come loose when it crashed. The whole front plate of one of those heart shaped engines had fallen off and shattered in the back. Even if we could find a good enough fuel, there was nowhere to burn it.

As I hesitated, the Witch-Queen ordered, with a bit of rasp still in her stiff voice, “Ribbon. Secure my daughter. That’s an—”

BANG!

Violet moved fast. I hadn’t fully registered the movement before she finished pointing her pistol at the Witch-Queen and pulled the trigger.

The Witch-Queen’s head literally disappeared off her shoulders, exploded into hair and ink and paper that splattered the blackboard behind her.

I stared in horror as the ringing in my ears eased. Violet didn’t smile, but her mouth tightened in grim satisfaction.

Ribbon groaned, long and exasperated. “You did not just do that.”

Sarcasm was the last tone I’d expected to ever hear in Ribbon’s voice. Was this the first time? Maybe we’d influenced each other more than I thought.

My horror at Violet shooting someone had disappeared because I knew what was coming next.

The Witch-Queen’s still upright body twitched. Ink fountained up out of her throat, coalescing into a wet, animal head on a ropy, goopy, tentacular neck. Its eyes burned red behind a pair of oversized spectacles. Her right arm exploded out of her patchy leather sleeve, grown into a gigantic ink length of too many muscles and joints. Ink seeped out of the legs of her pants and around her shoes, fixing her to the floor like a tree.

Yep. This was the power of a true Witch-Queen of Charon, what I’d expected in my secret heart from the beginning, way beyond anything I could match. The old woman had been holding back until now to avoid hurting me.

That was over. My heart knotted in fear as the glutinous arm swung forward with blurring speed, telescoping toward my face.

Ribbon and Key were just as fast. The silvery scythe sliced through the middle of the Witch-Queen’s arm, which landed as a splattery ink mess on the debris.

Everyone stood motionless, even the monstrously deformed Witch-Queen, too surprised to do anything but stare at Ribbon.

Ribbon’s own red eyes, weirdly colored but just a teenager’s eyes full of hurt and determination and acceptance, looked into mine. In that unidentifiably androgynous voice, Ribbon told me, “I swore an oath to protect you, Rachel. Even from her.”

The Witch-Queen growled, a noise half-gurgle, but a touch feminine as well. Her deformed body wobbled. Her original voice was just detectable through the animal gargle. “The ink in your veins obeys me.”

Ribbon spasmed, back arching. Slim arms jerked the scythe back upright. Ribbon crouched, facing me, preparing to spring.

Ribbon still had enough jaw control to grunt, “You’re turning into an Outsider.”

Her body froze. The Witch-Queen paused in her wobbling. Wounded and defensive, with much less snarl and gurgle, she answered, “I am not. I am completely under control.”

The grip on Ribbon’s blood eased, at least enough to speak freely and softly. “Yes, but now you’re listening. You can’t do this to either of us. Rachel is no good to you unwilling.”

“I’ll rewrite her.” The answer was immediate, but the tone was different, the anger no longer confident.

“Can you rewrite her inspiration? Will she be as good a writer?” Ribbon asked.

The Witch-Queen paused for several seconds. The mass of her severed right arm bubbled and withdrew into a perfectly normal human arm. Her giant, fanged head now sounded lost and pleading. “This is important. This is my life. Our lives. I won’t live forever.”

“I hate this too, but she’s right. Someone who wants to will pick up the slack. We only have a choice of which way we want to lose her,” said Ribbon.

Okay, well, they were both crazy, but they were being crazy in their own quiet little world, and I was not going to waste these seconds. I couldn’t outwrite the Witch-Queen, but I had another talent and passion. Scrambling up the pile of wood and stone, I leaned out of the hole in the wall and saw what I expected. Here at the highest point of the castle, the tower had been ringed by anti-Outsider turrets. One had been knocked completely off. The next closest hung at an angle, its grimoire gone.

I yanked the masks out of their socket and hurried back to the spaceship’s open door. My brilliant assistant Wrench understood exactly what I was doing, picked up one of Cuddly Delicious’s dropped books, and threw it to me. I scrambled into the tilted ship, and wedged the twin masks under the broken motor, and slid Cuddly Delicious’s open book in front of the reading mask.

The other mask lit up, light pouring out of its eyes and into the hole that had been a furnace. Machinery all over the ship started to vibrate.

It would work. It was overpowered and would be hard to control, but we could fly.

I stepped out long enough to wave at my friends, who all scrambled into the hatch.

Ribbon and the Witch-Queen had been standing together, the latter human again, glaring sulkily at each other. Now Ribbon turned to look at me, and said, “Go before she changes her mind. I won’t chase you.”

The Witch-Queen twitched, and lowered her face, covering it with a hand. Through her fingers, she whispered, “I am such a bad mother.”

“But you know what a good mother would do right now,” Ribbon told her softly.

I was not going to argue about the mother thing. I shoved Wrench, who’d had the farthest to climb, through the door and into the spaceship.

As I grabbed hold of the door to pull it closed after me, the Witch-Queen growled, hand still over her face, “She’ll be back.”

Ribbon’s shoulders hunched up, and the bounty hunter answered, “No, she won’t.” Turning to face me, a brilliant contrast of black skin and white braids and elaborate white goth dress, Ribbon told me, “I can’t force what I wanted us to be, either. I’ll miss you.”

I slammed the door shut. Half the controls were gone, but half remained. Violet yanked at them. Rotors whined. The spaceship lurched backward out of the rubble and wobbled upward into the sky.

Through the front windshield, we watched all hint of the haze of atmosphere disappear, replaced by the stark speckled glory, purple smears, and pitch-black contrast of space.

I let out a sigh. Wrench collapsed into a chair. ARF-80 stared out a porthole.

“I think we’re safe,” said Wrench, to and for all of us.

Violet worked the remaining levers some more, turning the ship around. Rotors buzzed loudly, but with clicks and skips. The heat from the furnace and a charcoal smell radiated through the compartment. Still, it all worked.

Violet scowled at the ruins of the controls. “The navigation system is wrecked.” Straightening up, she pointed out the window, toward the one star whose light pulsed in a slow rhythm. “But we don’t need it. That’s where you want to go, right?”

I nodded. “Yes. Home.”

Violet smirked. “It’s going to be an uncomfortable trip, but we’ll get there.”

Something hummed, high and musical. Pink and red glittered in front of us, turning into a wall, from which a book as big as a football field—no, bigger, much bigger—emerged. It loomed in front of us, pages open.

“Oops. I’d forgotten she could do that,” I whispered.

The book slammed shut over our ship.

The walls didn’t even shake. Darkness lasted only a moment. It dissolved into more of the rainbow glitter, which disappeared, leaving us in an open field of space surrounded by asteroids. In the middle of this hollow floated an icy little planetoid, and on it, dominating the view, a huge white stone lighthouse.

Which we were headed for at considerable speed.

Violet fought with controls. I grabbed a chair to keep from being thrown around. Wrench was bounced out of hers, but caught by ARF-80, who pushed her into my lap and held us both down.

The view out the front screen lurched around but centered on the friendly white light of an open docking bay. The rectangular opening grew, much too fast.

With a loud metallic scrape, a lot of banging, and walls and floor shaking like an earthquake, we slid into place along the stone pier closest to the work benches and stopped. Wriggling out from under ARF-80, I kicked the masks out of their place to make sure we stayed stopped.

Violet opened the door. I stepped out into the familiar cool air and hard stone floors and bright white light of the Lighthouse of Ceres. Bits of bent metal littered the floor around me. Norman, who’d been leaning against the workbenches, looked at the mess and let out an aggrieved sigh. “I’ll get a broom.”

The sensation hit me. Charon had been nice, but this, truly, felt like home. I was home.

I realized suddenly we weren’t alone. Another ship was lined up at the next pier. A little old woman in a coat and little round hat that had a completely ornamental net veil stood next to it wringing her hands.

Curiosity overwhelmed me. I went and took a look. This was an odd, comfy little ship, roughly the size and shape of an RV. It looked a lot like an RV inside, but with copper walls under padded linen surfacing, and all kinds of levers running forward and back to a complicated mechanical motor.

Well, in theory. A whole bunch of those parts had fallen out and lay scattered across the floor.

Shadow fell over me as the slender, towering Miss Passionfruit rushed up the dock. Bending down, she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and squeezed me in a furious hug. When she let go, it was to gasp, “Rachel, you just got back. You look like you just walked out of a battle. Take a break! Madam Barnhammer can wait. You don’t have to do this now. You don’t have to do it at all.”

I smiled up at her. Past her, through the windshield of the battered black iron steam spaceship, I saw Wrench wriggling into Violet’s pirate blouse and pants, which were way too big, bunching up and making her look like she’d been wrapped in five blankets. Her shape was already unidentifiable, and only got more so as she ripped off strips to tie strategic bands. The very accurately named Violent Violet stood next to her, grinning with piratical delight at an armful of rubies.

Smiling up at Miss Passionfruit, I said, “This is the responsibility I love.”

The baffled, caring Venusian Space Bunny let me go, and I turned away from her to give the wizened Madam Barnhammer my biggest grin. “Don’t worry, ma’am. I’m the mechanic here. All this needs is some grout, and my assistant and I will get you fixed up. Unless you want some improvements? Oh, and….”

Giving her a sly, secretive wink, I whispered, “Call me Rachel.”