Akira led Sorrel and Gwynn back through the labyrinth hidden inside the walls of the pirates’ starship. But they did not come out the way that they came, and instead popped out of the wall of a different corridor.
“Don’t bother, we’ll be long gone before they discover it,” Akira said when Gwynn tried to lock the panel back into place. “If I’m right, your friends should be. . .’
He trailed off, counting on his fingers. Then he snapped back to attention and nodded. ‘There.”
Indeed, right in the cell where he’d pointed was none other than Delphine, still bound entirely in sickly green chains on the floor.
Sorrel ran up to the cell. To her relief, Coppelius was in the one right next to Delphine. Both of them were still there. His eyes widened when he saw her. He tried to speak—but the door must have been made from some kind of sound-proofed material because she could not hear him or Delphine.
“Hang on, we’re going to get you out of here,” Sorrel announced. She looked back to Akira and Gwynn. “Are we just going to destroy the doors, then, or—“
“Or I can just use the key.” Akira pulled a red keycard out of one of the myriads of pockets in his ragged black jacket. He swiped it first to Delphine’s door, then Coppelius’s, and both of the doors slid open for the party.
Sorrel rushed into the cell and knelt by Coppelius’s side.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she quipped as she helped lift his back up.
“You’re telling me,” he groaned. “You found the boy, then—the one that they mentioned?”
“Yeah.” Sorrel looked up. “Meet Akira. I guess you guys are cousins, or something?”
“Hi.” Akira waved awkwardly—but it wasn’t without enthusiasm.
“We’ll have to talk later.” Coppelius looked back to Sorrel. “You figured out a way around the chains? I’ve never seen anything like this, it’s ancient magic—“
“I did.” Gwynn rolled up her sleeves again as she entered the cell, with Delphine in tow. “Now hold still, I’m still getting the hang of all of this.”
Sorrel backed away. Gwynn moved quicker, with more precision—she was getting remarkably good at the whole exploding things with magic business. Which was a rather useful spell, in Sorrel’s mind.
She helped Coppelius to his feet.
“Thanks, all of you.” He glanced around. “I didn’t exactly get a good lay of the land—“
“Don’t worry, you don’t have to.” Akira grinned. “I’ve been working on the White Dove for longer than Captain Connomar’s been in charge, longer than he’s been alive even.”
“We have to hurry, I don’t know how much longer they’ll be distracted though.” Gwynn glanced over her shoulder.
“Oh, yeah, right!” Akira smacked his forehead. “Follow me, then!”
----------------------------------------
Sorrel had thought maybe they would get away with this. When they arrived in the docking area of the White Dove, there was no one there. Coppelius insisted that they stop a moment, to do a scan of the East Sun, and it was empty, just as they’d hoped for.
But of course it couldn’t be that easy.
Just as Coppelius had declared the all-clear, that was when Sorrel heard footsteps. The loud, ominous boot-falls of the pirates.
The group turned to see Captain Connomar and a handful of pirates by his side, closing in all of the exits except for one.
The one back into the East Sun.
“Well, well, look what we have here,” sneered Captain Connomar. “Some escaped prisoners.”
“Good thing you decided to keep those alarms up as soon as you figured out they were fakes,” one of the pirates snarled beside Connomar. “Looks like they won’t be able to get far.”
“You don’t want to do this,” Coppelius warned.
“Did you forget how we stopped you the first time?” Captain Connomar stepped forward. “We have more of where that came from. We can bring back star-freaks like you any time we please.”
“No, you won’t.” Sorrel surprised herself, with the strength of her own voice.
“And what are you going to do, sweetheart, that you didn’t do before?” He stepped towards her, close enough that he could touch her, if he wanted.
Sorrel did not retreat.
Instead, in a movement as fast as lightning, she reached for the end of his plasma-rifle and thrust it up before he could fire it off. The white-hot bolt seared through the ceiling, maybe even a few levels in the ship above their heads.
It was the distraction needed for all hell to break loose.
Shields sprang up around them, shining as golden as the sun. More plasma bolts ricocheted off of them. Sorrel stomped on Connomar’s toes as she pushed the plasma rifle back, jabbing its butt into Connomar’s abdomen.
He yelled out in pain and Sorrel wrestled the rifle out of his hands. She stepped back towards her friends. She raised it, an implied threat. But Connomar just laughed.
“I know you don’t have the guts to fire that, lass.” Before he could reach for it again, however, there was a flash of green light.
It shook the docking area, and Sorrel couldn’t see as the green turned to white.
When her vision cleared again, the pirates all had green chains around their wrists and ankles. They resembled figures in a ghost story nearly every child had heard. It told of ghost pirates bound to a ship that had run out of fuel and oxygen, lost in Undiscovered Space somewhere.
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And the pirates were often depicted looking just like the ones before them.
The situation of their new chains was enough for them to stop firing their weapons. They looked on at one another in horror and confusion.
Sorrel turned to Coppelius or Gwynn—but they were were looking to Akira in shock. And once her own brown eyes fell upon him, she understood exactly why.
The boy’s expression was fiercely stoic, except for his eyes. His indigo eyes blazed like pulsars, flaring with a rage that she had not thought possible from him. Just moments before, he’d been awkwardly cheerful, endearingly so. But now his hands were curled into fists by his side and that was when she spotted the ring on his finger, with a stone that gleamed that same sinister sickly green.
“You’re not going to hurt my new friends.” His voice was low and hoarse and shook with barely-restrained rage. “You’re never going to hurt anyone again.”
“Boy, what is this—“
Before Captain Connomar could finish his question, Akira flicked his fingers. The chains that had come from the devices in the pirates’ pockets, they obeyed their true creator and master, Sorrel realized. The chains dragged the pirates back into the corridors they’d come from, and the doors slammed shut.
Then all was quiet.
Akira let his hands fall limply to his sides, and the glow in his ring died. He looked tired now, with dark rings under his eyes and his shining white hair falling into his face. Seeing that all eyes were upon him, he smiled weakly.
“That should take care of them. We should probably leave, shouldn’t we?”
“Yes.” Sorrel managed to smile and took his hand. “We should.”
----------------------------------------
The pirates did not breach the doors. They did not fire and they did not return. In fact, nothing happened at all when the party returned to their cargo bay and closed off the airlock doors. They were able to break away and head up to the control center with no trouble. Then they set off once more for Otso, and leapt into fast-travel.
Everyone reconvened in the lounge once all had been said and done.
“Will the White Dove come after us?” Gwynn wrapped her jacket around herself tightly.
“No, I did my little trick up on the bridge.” Akira plopped onto the couch, only to draw his knees up to his chest. “They won’t be able to detect us, so we should be safe from any kind of enemy radar.”
Delphine and Coppelius shared a knowing look.
“It might not shield us from all of our enemies, as not all of them are finding us through mechanical methods.” Delphine spoke softly, as if it might soften the harshness of her words.
“But it should go a long way in helping us.” Coppelius reached out to clap a hand on Akira’s shoulder. Akira jumped, but managed a smile nonetheless. “Thank you for helping us.”
“Of course, I just wish I’d done that sooner, I just never figured out. . . “ He trailed off, tugging at his sleeves where the chains around his wrists used to be.
“It was nothing.” Gwynn smiled. “I’m just glad we could help.”
“I just wish I’d known you were out there.” Coppelius sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I would have helped you sooner.”
Akira shrugged and pulled a small robot out of his duffel bag. He began to tinker with it right there, as if he were playing with his own hair or bouncing his knee. There was the same thoughtless energy behind it as he adjusted knobs and tightened bolts. “You couldn’t have known I was there. I was a secret. Hard to stay a powerful fleet if everyone knows why.”
He then glanced back up at Coppelius and Delphine. “Besides, I didn’t know that there was anyone else out there like me.”
“You said that you were with the pirate fleet for generations,” Sorrel recalled. “They’ve been out there all this time?”
“Oh, yes!” Akira looked to her with wide, bright eyes. “In fact, the Jade Fleet’s been around since long before I was left with Captain Usagi.”
Coppelius frowned and leaned forward. “Who’s Captain Usagi?”
Akira froze. His shoulders hunched and he looked down quickly. “My guardian. My first one, that is. She died a long time ago. When the White Dove was the White Rabbit. Like I said, it was a long time ago.”
Coppelius and Sorrel exchanged a look. It wasn’t worth pressing him any further.
“Well, you’re free now.” Coppelius touched Akira’s shoulder again, but Akira slid away from the contact and refused to look at him. “Wherever you want to go, we can take you.”
This did cause Akira to look up with confused blue eyes. “No, I want to stay with you.”
Coppelius tilted his head. “We’re on a mission. We’ve got the Annwynese Empire on our trails. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to go somewhere more peaceful, in Society space.”
“You say that like he’s not going to get dragged into this anyway.” Delphine crossed one leg over the other, tilting her nose up in the air. “Heaven knows I’ve tried to keep myself out of this.”
Sorrel bit back a disgusted retort. Delphine might have been on their side now, but she still remembered how the starry girl had tried to run away, how she’d told Sorrel to leave Coppelius behind. Sorrel was still uneasy around her, even if she could admit that having another descendant of the House of Ondrina on their side was useful.
“No, you saved me and I want to help you out,” Akira insisted.
“Honestly, you helped us more than we’ve helped you,” Sorrel pointed out.
Coppelius nodded. “She’s right, and no one would blame you, after all you’ve probably been through, if you just wanted to live somewhere in peace.”
“Do you not want me around?” Akira looked like he was about to cry.
“That’s not it,” Coppelius assured him. “It’s just that what we’re doing is dangerous.”
“Then tell me about it, maybe I can help.”
Coppelius looked to Sorrel, and she understood what he was asking through his eyes alone.
Do we trust him? Should we tell him?
Sorrel nodded without hesitation.
“What do you know about our family?” Coppelius asked.
“Captain Usagi told me that I was a part of a greater clan that once ruled over the entire star system and all of the planets surrounding it.” Akira wiped at his face. “That there was a great evil that made it all fall, and that someday one of my cousins would save us. But until then I was a secret, and I needed to stay there.”
“That was my father, the one who was supposed to stop the great evil.” Coppelius fiddled with a ring around his finger, with a crest shaped like a rose. “He’s still out there, and we’re going to find him to get his help to stop the Spider-Queen. She’s starting to attack the Society of Worlds and if we let her, the entire star will fall.”
“The Spider-Queen?” Akira tilted his head. “I’ve heard the name—and I’ve dreamed sometimes, of a dark lady. . . “
“That’s probably her.” Sorrel thought of her own vision. “Her soldiers burned down my homeworld.”
“Not Perrault!” Akira looked to her with wide eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“We’ve seen what she does first-hand,” Gwynn added.
“And we’re going to Otso to meet with witches who might know where my father is,” Coppelius continued.
“Witches. . . “ Akira frowned. “Like Corinne?”
Delphine blinked. “You know Corinne?”
“I think so, maybe they’re different.” Akira tilted his head. “Long brown hair with the big bow, uses the World of Wonder?”
“That’s her, she’s part of the coven.” Delphine nodded. “She didn’t help you?”
“Couldn’t, she only traded with the pirates every few decades.” Akira shook his head. “She also said it was safer to be with the White Dove until one of my own came for me.”
Sorrel’s stomach churned. Who exactly was it, that they were consulting with, if they were the type of people to leave Akira in his situation?
“Doesn’t really matter anyway, what’s done is done.” Akira shrugged. “But if it makes no difference to you, I’d rather travel with family anyway. I’ve been alone for a long time. Even if I was surrounded by people—but you know what I mean, don’t you?”
“I do.” Coppelius was quiet.
He moved to stand quickly. “Shouldn’t be too much longer before we reach Otso.”
With that, he left the lounge. Sorrel excused herself, and chased after him, even as she felt her twin sister’s eyes linger on her back.
She followed him down the lonely corridor he’d taken, to where he hesitated by his own door. She could see it, Akira’s discovery had weighed on him heavily, or perhaps it was the encounter with the Jade Fleet to begin with. She didn’t know for sure. But what she did know was that she didn’t want to leave him to his burdens.
She’d decided that the moment that he’d come crashing through the stars and skies into her world.
He looked up before he could open his door, and his expression softened, his shoulders dropped and his body visibly relaxed as their gazes connected.
“Hey,” she said softly.
“Hey.”
“Can I keep you company?” She outstretched her hand.
He accepted it and smiled. “As long as you want to.”