Authors: Elliott Kay
“And then you don’t say shit about it to anyone,”
Casey said. “All anybody needs to know is you’re doing safety shutdown stuff.”
“Okay,” Darren nodded.
“Crawl into the sublights and the FTL and change out a few things, but don’t make it
look
like you’ve done anything,” Wilson explained. “Switch out some fittings with the wrong resistances. Pick a couple power tubes and push them out of tolerance, but just a little. You know, the delicate stuff. Use your
imagination
.” His eyebrows floated up as if he said something profound. Really, it just made the engineer look a little bent. “We want the ship to look ready to go, but anyone who tries ought’a have a terrible time finding out why she won’t get a move on. By the time it’s all been figured out, she’ll already have pursuit.”
“Got it,” Darren nodded.
“I’ll be up to check on your work in a day or so,” said Wilson.
“Any questions?”
Casey asked.
Darren pondered for a moment. “Uh, yeah. I’m the new guy, right? Why would you trust me with this?”
The captain and engineer looked at one another with a smirk. “Darren,” Casey said, “anyone who’d turn his back on two different ship’s crews in less than a week is either a master schemer or a complete moron. Either way, he isn’t fit for anything but a swim out the airlock soon as he’s outlived his usefulness. Anyone who’d try to steal this ship would know that. And so would you.”
Casey
lingered a moment as Wilson left. “You all right, son?” he asked.
“Yeah, just… nightmares.”
“Marcos. That stupid kid with the earrings, right? Heard about that. You did the right thing.”
Darren looked away and just shrugged a bit.
“Listen,” Casey continued. “First couple times things get rough like that will always shake you up. But you made the right call. You joined up with this crew, and we’re your family now, right? You don’t hold out on family.” Darren nodded a bit. The captain put his hand on Darren’s shoulder. “What happened out there was just natural selection, and that isn’t often pretty.”
***
Twenty disappointed men and women remained aboard
Aphrodite
for its first twenty-four hours in orbit over Paradise. They observed few duties beyond a fire watch and presenting an obvious deterrent to anyone who’d steal the ship. Most amused themselves in the liner’s spacious casino, staying well fed and at least slightly inebriated. Much of the ship’s fine food and alcohol had already either been consumed by her captors or transferred to
Vengeance
, but
Aphrodite
could accommodate over two thousand of the Union’s economically privileged. Even after days of plunder by a few hundred pirates, she had provisions to spare.
Darren found he enjoyed the company. For a band of cutthroats and deviants, many were remarkably sociable amongst their own.
Eventually, Darren walked off a shuttle from
Aphrodite
with a full belly, a good night’s sleep, and a mild alcoholic buzz. He stepped into warm morning sunlight tempered by a cool ocean breeze.
The pirates called the planet Paradise.
Paradise City, the only town of significant size, sat on the coastline of a pleasant spot in the planet’s subtropical zone. A handful of settlements elsewhere on the planet were dedicated to providing a few staple agricultural products, but all the real action was here.
Darren
fumbled around for his sunglasses. All of his shipmates had photoreactive contact lenses or implants over their eyes. He decided he’d have to get set with that himself.
Tents, cargo containers, trucks,
shuttles and a few small starships sprawled out before them in an otherwise open field. The most permanent things he could spot were a couple of prefabricated shelters, and even those could be folded up and removed with little effort. Tall grass surrounded the Bazaar, but within the area’s perimeter all that had been long trampled into the dirt.
Bedraggled, tired and hung-over pirates from
Vengeance
waited for the shuttle. One of them was hauled along unconscious by two of his mates. The other half of the incoming watch section had already boarded
Aphrodite
. These were the last, and they were fewer in number than those coming off.
Along with them stood
Lauren, the quartermaster from
Vengeance
. She wore a blue and white sundress that would have given her a bright, innocent look, were it not for her choice of accessories. The machete and heavy pistol hanging from her hips seemed to clash with her outfit, but Lauren was a pirate’s pirate. She could wear whatever the hell she wanted.
“Boys,” she said cordially.
Joey Chang, the off-going watch section’s chief, waved but scowled. “Hey, where the hell’s the rest of the watch?” he asked.
“Wally and Hangnail got in the ring last night and fucked themselves up pretty bad,”
explained Lauren. “Nobody’s seen Yuan since we got here.”
“Assholes,” Chang grumbled.
Though a scruffy, longhaired pirate like the rest, Chang was a former Union fleet corpsman. That effectively made him the ship’s surgeon, and also one of the few to take watchstanding very seriously. Darren didn’t envy the missing men when he thought about what Chang would do when he caught up to them.
As the groups passed through one another, Darren caught the eye of Crewman Hong—now just Sheng Hong to everyone—and waved. “How are you doing?” Darren asked.
Hong blinked at him with bleary eyes and smiled. He wobbled more than walked. An expensive silk shirt, trousers and apparently genuine leather boots replaced his uniform. He wore glittering necklaces, a golden cuff on his ear and other bits of shining jewelry. Matching laser pistols hung prominently from holsters on each hip of his shiny new gun belt.
“This town’s the greatest fuckin’ planet in the universe,” Hong slurred at Darren after clapping him on the shoulder—or, perhaps, steadying himself upon it. Hong giggled and wobbled on up the shuttle ramp.
Darren marveled at the transformation. Hong had always been reserved, humble and self-controlled as a crewman on
Aphrodite
. Darren couldn’t even remember the guy drinking. He mostly spent his off-hours in his bunk reading or watching movies.
“So, before you all go off, I brought you all something,”
Lauren smiled. She held up a stylish, expensive-looking purse. “We’ve already got the bulk of the loot fenced and shares allocated. Anyone feel like being paid?”
“Hell, yes,” said Jerry, a husky, older pirate who’d taken Darren under his wing. He pushed forward in the crowd.
Lauren sorted through the cards in her purse, found Jerry’s and handed it off. Jerry activated the card’s holographic datascreen to check its balance and hooted with delight as Lauren moved on to the next happy recipient.
Being last
only heightened Darren’s anticipation. He would get only half the shares of a regular pirate like Jerry, whereas pirates with positions of particular responsibilities like Chang and Lauren received two or more. Even so, the liquid cash taken from
Aphrodite
’s passengers and crew, shared out before they made port, put a nineteen thousand dollar card in Darren’s pocket before they even got to Paradise. That nearly beat his annual salary.
“Hey, new guy,”
Lauren smiled at him. “These assholes treating you alright? Showing you the ropes?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Darren nodded.
She handed off his card with a grin. “There you go. Forty-nine thousand.”
Darren almost choked. He checked the screen and could only blink.
“Money from repatriating our ‘guests’ is still coming, of course, along with the ship itself… but no telling how many days all that’ll take, so don’t go spending it all in one place, ‘kay?”
“Wow,” Darren breathed. She had to be joking. How could he spend that much that fast?
“Hey, Jerry, Chang, you guys wanna get Darren here set with a gun before you go off to drinkin’ and whorin’?”
“First thing,
Lauren,” Chang nodded.
Jerry grabbed Darren by the back of his shirt to push him along.
Lauren swatted his butt playfully with her purse as he left, but Jerry hustled him along before he could respond. “Let’s get geared up,” the older pirate said.
Darren followed Jerry and Chang
through the Bazaar. The makeshift lanes weren’t crowded, nor were they as deserted as Darren expected from everyone’s stories. At this hour, he figured most of the pirates in town would still be passed out, and had wondered if any of the merchants would even be open for business. It dawned on him, however, that the pirates were much like
Aphrodite
’s passengers. They were people with lots of money to burn and few obligations dictating their schedules. It was up to the merchants to keep up.
Salesmen hawked and beckoned to passersby like a scene out of movies about Old Earth. Pretty women and more than a few men, all scantily clad, did their best to tempt and entice, casting hungry glances
and calling out to anyone who didn’t look like they were here working.
A couple of women noticed Darren’s appraising looks and
approached, but Chang waved them off. “They can’t tell you’re a pirate yet,” he frowned. “Wait for it.”
“What, we all wear signs or something?” Darren asked. “Can’t assume every person with a gun here is a pirate. Look at the merchants, half of them are armed, too.”
“You noticed most of us have pretty long hair?”
Darren blinked. “Huh? Yeah, I guess I did, but… is that a sign?”
“Long hair and a gun is pretty much the uniform,” said the admittedly bald Jerry. “It’s not like we keep grooming standards. As long as you don’t stink, nobody gives a damn.”
“It’s not a grooming standard,” Darren said, shaking his head. “The hair gets in the way of putting on the helmet in a vac suit. It’s a safety standard.”
“Right,” Jerry said dryly. “Darren, we’re not a navy boat. You see anyone from
Vengeance
wearing a vac suit? Hell, how many people on
Aphrodite
wore theirs besides the guys on the shuttle deck?”
“Well, no, that’d freak out the passengers.
But a ship like
Aphrodite
isn’t normally going into battle. I figured you guys changed into suits when you’re about to attack a ship?”
“Did you see anyone in a vac suit when we boarded?” Chang asked, then shrugged. “Ship to ship fights are pretty rare.
Aphrodite
was a fluke. We’ve hit ships, yes, but most of them are hardly armed. If someone who can really give us trouble shows up, we’re gone. Just because
Vengeance
is a destroyer doesn’t mean we’re out to pick serious fights. Mostly we hit small settlements and mining camps. Dirtside work. ”
“Huh. Guess I hadn’t thought about that yet.”
“Look, if you want to buy a vac suit, go ahead,” Chang shrugged. “We’ve got a few dozen on board. They’re useful. If you want to wear one around all the time while onboard, though, that’s your choice… but you’ll look like an asshole.”
The three drifted to the eastern end of the Bazaar, where between the tents and vehicles they could see the open fields beyond. Jerry led them to a pair of rectangular cargo units sitting underneath the boxy bow of a light freight hauler. Outside the opened doors of the conjoined cargo units sat a shirtless man of Asian descent lounging in the rising sun. A woman dressed mostly in scarves rubbed and washed his bare feet. The merchant’s chest bore a tattoo of a serpent-like
Matuskeyn encircling a star. In his lap sat a gun that Darren didn’t recognize, something like a rifle with each end chopped off.
“Morning, Jerry,” the merchant smiled. “Have you brought me another baby pirate? Seems like a lot of them coming through this week.” He didn’t get up.
Given the man’s sunglasses, Darren wasn’t even sure he had opened his eyes. The woman at his feet continued her work.
“Sure have. Say hello to Tenzing, Darren.”
“Baby?” Darren asked with a raised brow.
Tenzing waved his hand dismissively. “Think nothing of it,” he said. He had a voice and diction suitable for hosting a sports broadcast. “Congratulations on your newfound freedom, Darren.” Tenzing offered his hand, which Darren shook. “I’d get up, but then my girl here would have to start all over
again. Feel free to look around. Ask away if you’ve got any questions.”
As if that were her cue, a lithe young woman stepped up to Darren and the other pirates carrying a tray of drinks. Darren hesitated, only taking one after he saw his compatriots claim theirs without a second thought.
Racks of firearms of every practical size lined the containers. Darren spotted a couple of guys seated at the ends of the racks with guns in hand. It seemed perfectly reasonable. He’d never shopped anyplace with armed attendants before.
In fact, he’d never shopped for guns at all. He only knew guns from popular entertainment, which
wasn’t to be trusted. Yet just like in a movie, he stood amid row upon row of laser pistols, laser rifles, pulse weapons, solid projectile guns of every sort, air bursters and even plasma guns. Grenades sat in boxes in the corners. He found a whole shelf of beam weapons disguised to look like common tools and toys. Another rack held the sort of heavy stuff used against armored units and aerial bombardments. Two racks bore rifles with intricate etchings depicting Matuskeyns and snakes.