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“Hey, ‘Hee! Look at this thingy I found!”
Young-Hee snapped her head to look up at the blonde boy, hanging a hundred feet above the sand, holding in his tiny twelve-year-old hands a capacitor about the size of his head.
“Not what we’re looking for, ‘Teo!” Young-Hee cupped her hands to shout back. “Drop it before you hurt yourself!”
Without thinking for even a millisecond, Mateo let go of the capacitor and let it drop to the ruined lower deck of the ship, the crash! booming across the desert sands. Mīmnīkw nearly jumped out of her skin with fright, but Keci, her brother, didn’t make a sound as he studiously studied the ground in front of him. Young-Hee thought he had maybe gone catatonic before he pounced forward, seized the little tail of a spotted lizard from behind the rocks, and carefully placed it in a plastic bin.
“It’s a Steppe-Runner, I think,” Keci announced to the group. “A very healthy specimen! They must like the environments provided by these ship-falls.”
“Glad you’re getting something out of this, Keci,” Young-Hee muttered to herself as she continued scavenging around in the ruins of the Gaian ship. By the obnoxious wolf branding painted on most of these items, she could tell that this had once been a Lycus frigate—probably more than fifty years old. There were no skeletons in the ship’s closets, either literally or metaphorically. It must’ve been abandoned long before it crashed and landed on Tian, flipping over as it fell so that it gave the distinct impression of an old whale’s carcass: all the obvious bits picked clean by prior sets of scavengers, leaving only the sun-bleached bones half-buried in the desert sands.
“We’re not here to collect lizards, bro,” Mīmnīkw said through gritted teeth, still rattled by nearly getting brained by the falling capacitor. “We need money. Anything that we can trade for some Gaian drachmae.”
“Lizards can be sold, although I wouldn’t recommend it,” the younger boy replied absentmindedly, feeding his newly caught lizard with some dried crickets in his pocket. “Most people don’t know how to take care of them properly. They’re sensitive creatures, you know.”
“Then, you can include a pet owner’s guide in the sale, Keci,” Young-Hee said, exasperated. “As long as we can get the money to them by the end of today, I’m sure the masters won’t care about where we got it from.”
“Woagh!” Mateo called out. “There’s a laser gun in here! Nice! Don’t think it works anymore, though.”
“Bring it down, then!” Mīmnīkw called out. “We’ll take it to Master Shi to see if we can scrap it for parts!”
Mateo wasn’t going to come down that easily, Young-Hee knew. She saw as he popped his head out of the window above their heads, put the gun on the sill, and went, “Pew-pew!”
All of them heard as the gun suddenly fired, the sound rattling around in the desert basin around them. Metal screeched, and the upper floor creaked above their heads. Mīmnīkw grabbed her brother and ducked out of the lower deck of the ruins as fast as she could, but Mateo was trapped on the upper layer.
Young-Hee wasted no time. She hauled herself onto a crate and jumped to the overhang parallel to the window where Mateo was standing. She could see him panicking, trying to cram the long gun through the window so that he could save it.
“Grab my hand, ‘Teo!”
“But the gun!” Mateo said, wobbling. “It’s not gonna be worth anything if it’s smashed to bits!”
“Neither will you be,” Young-Hee said with a roll of her eyes. “Now grab my fucking hand before you fall!”
Mateo pouted as he threw the gun behind him, letting it fall into the abyss of the Lycus frigate’s innards, and jumped to grab the girl’s hand. On the ground, Mīmnīkw and Keci had stretched out a canvas to catch them.
“On three, we jump,” said Young-Hee, feeling her grip slipping in his. “One… two… erm…”
“Three!” The little bastard said, almost pulling her arm socket out of place as he jumped before she did, causing them both to tumble awkwardly to the ground. Thankfully, the canvas held, and they bounced before their fellow Falling Petals members let them fall to the ground.
“What is wrong with you, ‘Teo!” Young-Hee hissed. “You could’ve gotten hurt!”
“You were taking too long,” Mateo replied, flashing her his signature mischievous smile. “Look!”
The upper deck of the ship finished collapsing in on itself, leaving the wreck impenetrable to future scavengers.
“Now where are we gonna get money to repair the compound’s roof!” exclaimed Mīmnīkw in despair. “That was the last shipwreck that was on the map!”
“Never fear, my dear Mīmī,” the blonde-haired boy replied as he pulled out something that was squirming underneath his dirty shirt.
It was another lizard.
“A Topaz Lizard!” Keci exclaimed, noting the topaz-looking jewel embedded into the lizard’s head. “Those are rare as fuck!”
“Watch your language, Keci,” Mīmnīkw said, trying and failing to hide a thrill in her voice. “Is this gonna be enough?”
“It’ll be more than enough once we get back home. There's a Lycus shopkeeper in Qūfù who’ll definitely pay good money for it. You did it, Mateo!”
“And you only almost broke every single bone in both of our bodies doing it,” Young-Hee added, but couldn’t resist joining the rest of her friends in hugging the blonde boy and patting him on the head.
Night began to fall over the Pearl Desert as the kids from the Falling Petals piled up on their single rusty hoverbike, the thrusters almost touching the ground as Young-Hee drove, and watched as the strange wreckage of the ship receded into the horizon, a reminder of the corporations who ruled the planet they called home.