Chapter 11
She was done with him. Her worst fears had been confirmed: Josh was cruel. She could forgive his history – she understood some people came from troubled backgrounds, and you had to cut them slack. But she could never forgive cruelty – that little glint of satisfaction in his eyes whenever he insulted or belittled her.
She didn’t want to travel with him, even if he was the only “friendly” face in this crowd. She’d have to head out on her own and try to find a transport off this planet.
Though she was apprehensive of the task ahead, she wasn’t scared. She’d always been taught that fear hid the best things in life. To succeed, you had to leverage loss against gain. If that meant striking out on her own on an unfamiliar and potentially hostile alien planet, so be it. But if she was lucky and diligent, she could turn this into an opportunity: a planet like this would be full of stories just waiting to be told.
She wasn’t about to walk up to the first dodgy looking dude she saw to ask him if he had any juicy goss; she wasn’t that stupid. Though she hated to admit it, Josh was right: if any more people found out who she was, she would be a target. But he was forgetting something – she’d lived with that fact her whole life. She knew how to handle herself. She knew how to keep a low profile. Okay, so Hogart had been a bit of a surprise, but she hadn’t had Klutzo with her then.
You see, in a pinch, Klutzo could turn into a security drone. Not many people knew that – her father had designed the orb himself, and had ensured it had enough shielding in place to pass as an ordinary journo ball. But the point was, now Klutzo was back with her, she was safe again.
So as she walked forward, she was sure to keep him close.
She didn’t need a guy like Josh; she could do this herself.
…
It took him too long to realize she wasn’t following anymore. It took him even longer to realize she hadn’t tripped over or lagged behind.
She’d wandered off.
When he realized that, he flipped out. In that single instant, Mimi managed to confirm every suspicion he had about her; only an arrogant idiot who relied on other people to fix her problems would do something like this.
His very first instinct was to leave her. She deserved whatever was coming. If she was foolish enough to think she could make it alone on a planet like this, she might as well be taken out of the gene pool. Okay, that sounded kind of harsh. And as soon as he thought it, Josh realized it was the old him thinking. Still, the very fact she could nick off on her own meant she either wildly overestimated her own abilities or underestimated the enthusiasm of criminals to kidnap high fliers. Every two-bit pirate on this planet would give his left arm for the daughter of Theodore Chester. And they’d gladly lop off both her arms if required.
Back when Josh had been a smuggler and pirate himself, he would have given anything for a target like Mimi. She could be ransomed for a fortune. Then again, now that he knew how annoying she was, maybe she wouldn’t be worth the effort.
The goons in the throng around him wouldn’t share his same compunctions. If Mimi got too rowdy for them, they’d knock her out. If she talked too much and started asking inconvenient questions, they’d just cut her tongue off.
So, despite the fact he really wanted to leave her so she’d learn her lesson, he knew he couldn’t. He had a duty as a Coalition officer. Chester Enterprises, or CE for short, was one of the Academy’s biggest contractors. Their R and D division was responsible for all the coolest new tech. To get Theodore Chester offside would be suicide for Josh’s career.
“You owe me, Mimi,” he muttered to himself as he turned around, searching for her through the crowd. He was glad of her plain clothes – she’d stick out like a daisy in an oilfield. Everyone around him was dressed in the usual mashed up style of pirates, drifters, and vagabonds. From stained leather vests adorned with broken devices, to necklaces made out of salvaged pulse fuses – there wasn’t a simple tunic and pants in sight.
Drawing his hands into fists and setting his jaw into a hard line, he pushed through the crowd.
She’d be sorry if he couldn’t get to her in time. Then again, she’d be sorry when he did find her; he was going to give her hell.
…
The secret of fitting into a place like this was to get the right set of clothes. She stuck out like a sore thumb in her tunic and pants. So the very first thing she did was grab a whole bunch of junk she saw on the side of the street and cobble together a costume. Under Klutzo’s instruction, she managed to make an outfit fitting of a planet like this: a vest fashioned from a piece of stinky leather ripped off an old flight seat, pants sewn together from scraps of flexi-metal, and a necklace of discarded gun batteries.
It was very cool but very smelly.
She also changed her hair. With liberal use of engine grease, she made a mohawk on one side, and let it lie loosely on the other. It looked like a frozen wave ready to crash on her scalp.
Now she was dressed, she was getting fewer and fewer stares, and with Klutzo’s help, managed to navigate to the less seedy areas of town.
“Right,” she mumbled under her breath, “Time to get out of here.”
She’d already figured out that the best and only way off this rust bucket of a planet was to assume a false identity. One more mention of her real name and things could get messy.
To get a false identity, she’d have to get somewhere quiet enough so Klutzo could reprogram her chip. Embedded in her sternum from birth, her identity microchip could be used by anyone with the correct scanner to ascertain her name and other pertinent information. But given time, Klutzo would be able to alter it so it told the galaxy she was someone else.
You weren’t meant to be able to reprogram identity chips – in fact, it was very, very illegal. It was also technically tricky. Klutzo could do it, though – just another feature her father had built into its operating system. If the Academy ever realized what Klutzo could do, she’d be in serious trouble. Then again, they’d probably turn right around and order a bunch for themselves. An undetectable security drone always had its uses.
While Klutzo was – as the name suggested – a total klutz most of the time, his security program was unaffected. If he needed to, he’d transform from a cutey always banging into walls and muttering an electronic sorry, to a top class armored drone ready to chase down even the agilest of enemies.
If she’d had him inside the driller, things would have gone differently. Then again, it was probably a good idea that Josh hadn’t seen Klutzo’s true abilities; Josh would have ratted on her to the Academy for sure. Despite the fact he clearly had a litany of crimes hiding in his closet, he struck her as the kind of guy to take glee in getting someone else in trouble.
Now Mimi was ready, she needed to find a ticket out of here. Even with her identity chip reprogramed and her disguise in place, she couldn’t be confident she wouldn’t be recognized. She could run into some of the other passengers on the ship. Or, for all she knew, the inhabitants of this god awful planet could deliberately keep astride of all matters relating to the richest folk in the galaxy, including the exact identities of their kids.
She had to be careful.
So, with that mantra playing on her lips, she traveled to the very edge of town. This far out, the cramped buildings of the inner city thinned. The rusted metal towers got shorter and shorter until only a few squat buildings remained right on the edge of the city.
In the distance, the desert was a strike of yellow-gold along the horizon. Even as she walked through the streets, she could feel the crunch of sand under her feet. It was hotter too, though a chill late-evening breeze was starting to make her cheeks tingle and her arms shiver.
“If we continue on for two more blocks, we will reach the very edge of the populace,” Klutzo informed her.
He was speaking in full sentences, which was a good sign. His ordinary operating system had been wiped so many times it was a wonder he didn’t slur and dribble. It was also an
indication that, in part, his security program had kicked in. In fact, it had likely initiated back when the transport had crashed. While Klutzo could technically have easily gotten her and Josh out of the belly of that broken ship, he would have only done it if absolutely necessary. To reveal his true identity prematurely could get Mimi in a lot of trouble.
“Why would we want to get all the way to the edge of the city?” Mimi asked, careful to keep her voice low so she didn’t disturb any of the few people she passed. Then again, her soft voice was unlikely to disturb anyone in these parts – a hit to the head with a sledgehammer likely wouldn’t disturb these guys.
“So we can find transportation to cross it,” Klutzo now informed her.
“Wait… what? When were you going to tell me this? I thought the plan was to find transport off this planet, not around it?”
“I have altered my plan.”
“Why?”
“… I do not believe it is safe to procure interstellar transport in this city. Having observed everyone I have passed, I can confirm they are all unsavory characters.”
“… Yeah. But how is it safer to travel across the freaking desert? I mean, we were just out there. It’s not a nice place. And apparently temperatures can get as high as 100 degrees during the day, and as low as minus 50 at night,” she pointed out with a frightened squeak.
“Though the terrain may be extreme, I have calculated it is less likely to kill us.”
“You might be able to survive that, buddy, but I sure as hell can’t.”
“I will procure us a shielded sand slider. If it fails, I’ll fix it,” he stated flatly.
Though her mouth was open as she readied another protest, her lips slowly pressed together.
She was forgetting something, wasn’t she? Klutzo would be better at reading this situation than she was; her father had programmed him to be one of the best security drones on the market. Even if technically he wasn’t on the market, and he was a one-off piece. Still, the point stood: she shouldn’t second-guess him. She should do exactly as he said, even if, on the face of it, going into the desert sounded like suicide.
Though it was hard, she took a breath, squeezed her lips and cheeks together in a wince, and nodded. “Okay, say I believe you, and going into the desert really is our best option – how the heck are we going to procure a sand slider?”
“We will procure one,” he answered.
“Yeah, that doesn’t answer my question. You mean steal, don’t you?”
Klutzo became conspicuously silent.
Mimi blew a frustrated breath of air through her puckered lips and winced once more.
So much for finding a story on this planet; soon, she was going to become the story.
The galactic headlines would read: daughter of renowned inventor and businessman, Theodore Francis Chester III, steals sand slider off pirates while dressed as a punk.
Yeah, that would be a great way to start her career, or rather end it before it had even begun.
“Trust me, Mimi; I’m programmed to do this.”
Again she winced, though it was a lighter move. Trust him? Could she do that? Yeah, she could. Because there was no one else. For a long time now, it had just been him and her. Her so-called friends had abandoned her years ago, and even if they hadn’t, they weren’t on this planet. The only person she knew here was Josh Cook, and she’d rather stab herself in the eye with a fuse than trust that guy.
So Mimi nodded. “I trust you.”
“Then follow me.”
With dusk giving way to a dark night, the desert beyond the city looked like so many piles of shadows. Above, a swathe of glittering stars sparkled, but their light could not penetrate the murk. With that much darkness, who knew what secrets lay hidden amongst the dunes and lonely rocky ranges.