Ghost Fleet

by Isaac Stone

  “Why in seven hells would they do that?” Arn demanded. “Haven’t we seen enough by our virtue of being inside it?”

  “We haven’t seen that much,” I countered. “Not when you consider how big it is. I think they want us to know there’s no one on the inside.”

  “So, this whole exercise was one big show-off?"

  “Pretty much. I’m surprised they allowed us to get this far.”

  I walked over the instrument panels and looked down. There were no wires, cables or any other direct connections to them. I supposed it was possible to operate the banks of panels in front of me by radio waves or from connections built into the rear, but I doubted it. I was certain that if we pulled one of the panels off, nothing would be behind it. Likewise, an EMF sweep would show noting unusual. Who would be so stupid as to allow their ship to run on radio transmissions that could be jammed or interfered with.

  “So, what do we do?” Arn spoke to me again. “Sit here and wait for the ship to kill us?”

  “No," I replied. “Once the master of this ship wants us to leave, it will find a way to get us out. Just hang tight and stay in this room. Take pictures, send back videos, all of it will be useful in the future. The ship wants us to know we can be crushed the first time it wants to do it.”

  “Not a comforting thought.”

  “But a realistic one.”

  "You're one of those psychic witches that Goat Squad looks for aren't you?"

  "Is it that obvious?"

  The marine snorted out a gruff laugh.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but Captain spent the previous evening with Sherwood and Adri. She’d sensed the same intelligence I’d felt the moment I entered the ship. She’d wanted those two to make a baby in the future. However, Captain had to be certain that they were compatible enough before going ahead.

  It’s one thing to tell two people to have a child, another thing to make sure they’ll step up and be the parents. Even with the entire crew acting as one extended family, it was important for any future child to know he or she had a set of parents they could turn to at any moment. Over the centuries, the Starwing Order had perfected this system and stuck to it. The last thing Captain wanted was to see a couple drift apart after the birth of a child.

  To that end, she’d had them report to her quarters and spent the evening supervising their lovemaking. And not that alone. She wanted to make sure they bonded together afterwards.

  She was in the process of teaching Sherwood the need for aftercare when something reached out and touched her mind. Captain had the same ability as me, but not at my level. It was enough for her to realize it was there. She told me later that the thing stayed in her mind long enough for her to realize it was tied in with the ghost ship we’d “captured”.

  The presence soon vanished, and she returned to normal. It took Sherwood a few seconds to bring Captain around. He’d told her she stopped in the middle of a lecture while he cuddled with Adri at one end of the bed. Both turned to look back and saw Captain silent.

  She was seated cross-legged on the other end of her bed with the sheet still wrapped around her waist. They knew something was wrong. Captain stared forward and didn’t say a word. Adri wanted to summon Vienna, one of the medics, who was on duty that night, but Sherwood crawled over and managed to bring Captain back to the moment.

  “I faded back into reality with his hands on my back and Adri on the other end of my bed,” Captain told me later. “All I could think of now was how easy Adri could nurse with those breasts and wondering why was someone feeling me up. I had Sherwood in a hammerlock by the time I remembered where I was.”

  “Listen," Arn spoke to me, snapping me back to the immediate situation, “Do you hear anything out of the ordinary?”

  “There isn’t much in the way of ordinary on this ship,” I replied, as I tried to figure out the function of a panel in front of me. “You’ll have to be specific.” I turned around to see if anyone else responded to his comment.

  My crew was starring off in several different directions. I didn’t like this. What could they see that I didn’t? I was supposed to be the one with paranormal abilities. However, it appeared they were in the middle of a trance.

  I looked over at the marine squad that boarded the ghost ship before us. They were also starring off into the air, as if something held their attention. An entire group of men frozen into place. What the hell was this?

  “You don’t see them?” The officer spoke to me, his attention now directed at point three feet to his left.

  “I'm afraid I can’t see a thing,” I replied. “You think this might be something in the air? I’ll shut my visor and return to internal oxygen.”

  I reached up and started to seal the faceplate. It took a few seconds, which I felt was too long.

  Then I saw them as well. My hand stopped short of the switch that would bring the visor down.

  I didn’t see them myself. I saw them through the images sent by way of my crew and the marine squad. My paranormal ability gave me the power to shield my senses from what was inside the ship. It was what the masters of the ghost ship wanted us to witness. I felt the visual sensations of all the men around me. I couldn't delve too deep in most cases, but, for some reason, the upper impressions of what entered the mind were easy enough to tap. I done it in the past to see how I looked to other people. It was the only way I could take advantage the ability. I could use it to see what an opponent looked at in a card game, but not much more. And, right now, it allowed me to see the same images that the rest of the men on this dead ship witnessed.

  I saw ghosts.

  “Ow!" Sherwood said while Captain held him down. “I was only trying to help you! Captain, would you please not lean so hard on me?”

  Sherwood eased up as Captain released his arm and lay back in the bed. Adri was quick to check him over and comfort her lover as Captain sat there and watched. She sensed a heightened level of lust for him, but also felt an increased level of care for Sherwood. Part of her mind tried to sort out what touched it and another part was thrilled to see the bond between these two. It was what she needed to see if they were going to make a good set of parents. All of this fought with her attempt to analyze the sensations still in her mind from the contact with that thing.

  “I'm good,” she told the other two. “Something happened. It’s happened before, don’t concern yourself with me. In fact, it allowed me to see the two of you in crisis mode. Sherwood, I see Adri had the right effect on you. I want the both of you to make love in a position where she straddles you. Yes, that’s right dear, make sure your legs are around him to support yourself; you don’t want to lose balance. No, Sherwood, I want you to sit up on the side of the bed. You’re a strong, virile young man and can support both the weight of you and her in that position. There, that’s what I had in mind. Take your time; I want to see how long it takes him on the second run. You’ve cuddled for ten minutes, by the wall clock, and it should be enough time for Sherwood to be ready again. Good, I see he is, now just let her ease down on you. Excellent, rock back and forth like that for a while and ignore me.”

  As Captain listened to the sounds of pleasure, she tried to sort out the strange symbols she’d seen on the captured pirate ship, still in tow.

  She remembered the images of the lion headed deity that Dredge wore about her neck until the confiscated it. All of the women on board that ship wore the same image. Several of them had it tattooed all over their bodies. One even had it branded on her thigh in a complicated set of strike marks. They refused to talk about what it represented, and she couldn't remember the name of the thing with the lion head.

  At first, she couldn’t recognize what it was supposed to represent, as there hadn’t been a lion in the galaxy in several thousand years. All of them went extinct on old Earth thousands of years ago and no one ever tried to revive them, due to the fear in harboring a real one.

  4

  Later I also found out that Captain went to see
Queen Dredge.

  Dredge and the women presented a big problem for Captain and the pack when they were taken on board. We didn’t have long-term facilities for prisoners. During combat, few people survived as one rupture in a hull tended to kill both attacker and attacked. This new situation meant that the pirates had to be under constant supervision.

  The solution was an elaborate AI the Order had sent to Captain several years ago for testing. Although the AI performed with exception, Captain didn’t want to allow it to take over the basic ship maintenance. She kept it preoccupied with running reports, studies on food consumption, and the number of perishables used on the Hard Rain.

  Putting the AI in charge of the pirates turned out to be the solution on how to use it. The AI suggested keeping the pirates in the same room and provided them with basic exercise equipment. It gave them balanced meals and allowed the women to take walks; one at a time through guarded parts of the ships. The AI felt they could rehabilitate with time and proper therapy. Captain worried they were too damaged from their previous lives to be around civilians of any stripe. There was also the question as to what to do with the many Crimes Against Humanity charges against the women. Once again, they only surrendered to Captain to prevent immediate execution. The UDF Navy had the pirate ship surrounded when it was captured. They were ready to blow it to pieces when the pirates offered to surrender.

  The AI recommended the pirate women be kept nude unless they were taken out of the holding cell for exercise. For some reason, this seemed to calm them. The cell was kept at a warm temperature and they were under constant monitoring for any kind of illness.

  Medical checks were another problem. Given that Dredge recruited from the most abused women in known space, every one of them had scars, broken bones that didn’t heal right, or internal injuries that needed fixed. A roomful of naked pirate women might sound exotic until you saw the damage they’d taken over their lives. Not to mention the sharp teeth some of them had.

  When Captain found them that morning, they were asleep in a pile.

  “I need to see Dredge,” Captain told the AI in the supervision area outside of the holding cell. She’d sat down in a chair to make her request.

  “I can wake her up,” the disembodied voice of the AI told her. “Do you want her to come to the screen? It’s the safest way to talk to her.”

  “Bring her to the visitation room,” Captain instructed. “I want to talk to her in private.” She stood up and walked over to a door. It led to the small room where the medics checked on the health of the pirates, one at a time.

  The door hesitated. “I need to caution you that Dredge is a total psychopath with strong dissociation tendencies. She is currently rated at....”

  “I know how dangerous she is," Captain told the AI. “She won’t touch me because the rest of the crew will kill her and the others if she does. I think she knows it.”

  The AI made a popping sound, which Captain took to indicate a sigh and then opened the connecting door. Captain stepped inside as the door sealed behind her.

  The visitation room was bare, except for two chairs, each cushioned in case one of the pirates wanted to sit down. Most of the time they huddled on the floor.

  Captain didn’t carry any weapons. The years she’d spent in personal combat training and fighting prepped her for anything the pirates might attempt. Besides, the AI could anticipate any threats and had plenty of ways to deal with them. The first week the pirates were in the holding cell, one of the pirate women tried to bite Indigo, but never touched her flesh. The AI zapped the pirate woman with a quick electrical shock that took her down. None of them showed hostility after that happened.

  Captain waited a few minutes. The door on the other side of the room opened. Queen Dredge entered. The door sealed behind her.

  With her head shaved, Queen Dredge was still impressive. The AI implemented the depilation of all the pirate women for health reasons, it claimed, but the effect of losing their hair seemed to take them down a few levels in aggression. Dredge, on the other hand, still looked deadly. Although the AI could’ve removed their tattoos, Captain decided to let them keep them. It made the pirates easier to tell apart and would’ve cost too much anyway. The metal objects they’d used as body piercings, on the other hand, had to go.

  Dredge padded over to the chair on her side of the room and sat down. “Lonely today, Captain?” she said with a grin. “You want to join me and the girls next door. We have a lot of fun together; you could too. Last night we took turns....”

  “That will be all Mistress Dredge,” Captain said to her. “I've watched the video feed and you aren’t as active as the male gaze would like to think you are. So, don’t try your little tricks with me.”

  “Fuck you,” Dredge told her. “And don’t use that title.” She leaned back and propped one bare leg under another.

  “The only reason you and your women are still alive is that I will it. I, and I alone, am Mistress of this ship. I could have you pumped out into the void and no one would complain.”

  “Then why haven’t you done it already?” Dredge snapped back at her. "It can't be for breeding. No way in hell will any of my women submit to that. Besides, most of them can’t have kids anyway. At least not anymore.”

  Captain knew about that part of the medical report and shuddered. The real horror was that the men who’d done it would escape punishment for their crimes.

  “I want information,” Captain told her.

  “What kind of information?” Dredge demanded, the purple scar on her face, no longer covered by make-up, flaring a bright crimson.

  “I want to know about Yaldabaoth,” Captain told her. “Who is he or she and why did you swear by that name when we captured you.”

  “You'd like to know about him,” Dredge sneered. “And you will. Very soon. He’ll make all of you pay for what this goddamned civilization did to us. He promised fire and damnation. But I won’t tell you anymore. I’ll let you experience him yourself. Send me back or kill me, I don’t care.”

  Captain stared at her for a few minutes.

  “Send her back into the holding cell,” Captain told the AI. “The interview is done.”

  The door to other side unsealed and opened. Dredge stood up and padded back to the door, her naked form a profile of madness.

  “It's just getting started, Sweetness,” Dredge called back to Captain before crossing the barrier. “Yeah, I know a few things about you too.”

  “Just wait a minute,” Captain called out to her. She turned in the direction of the AI’s biometric feed. “I want to talk to Dredge some more.” The door in front of the pirate resealed.

  Captain stood up and walked to Dredge. Although she saw the warning light flash, Captain went up to the naked pirate queen and glared at her. Both women were of similar height. They looked at each other in the eyes. Captain could feel the raw heat from Dredge’s body.

  “Where did you learn that moniker?” she demanded of Dredge.

  “He told me,” the pirate snapped back, her eyebrow-less eyes flaring.

  “He also told me you would like this,” Dredge informed the other woman.

  Before she could react, Dredge had her mouth over Captain’s and thrust her tongue inside.

  Captain remembered the AI klaxon sounding.

  She was gone from the ship.

  Somewhere out in the void of space.

  And beheld the raw form of Yaldabaoth.

  The Archon of the present age, the guardian of the abyss, the madness that lies at the core of every damaged soul. Captain could remember the insane sound of piping flutes, the dancing Pan with his tremendous phallus and the insane maenads that danced around him. She couldn’t remember much more, but somehow managed to survive.

  She knew this was the alien force that tried to touch and control her and myself over the past few days. But we could resist, even if we didn’t know what it was. Dredge was its captive and apostle in the galaxy. It wanted her soul.

&
nbsp; “I wasn't out long,” Captain would later tell me. “Long enough to realize who or what the real enemy was. Not the Roka, not Dredge, not even the worst serial killer on the most wretched planet. It was that thing that wanted to destroy humanity for once and all.

  “I came to and looked down. Dredge was on the floor, the AI had zapped her the moment she’d grabbed me, but the contact was enough for me to see what tormented her psyche.”

  “Let her sleep it off,” Captain told the AI as she staggered out of the room. “Then send this pirate back to the holding cell.”

  5

  Captain made her way back to the bridge and thought about what happened with Dredge, she later told me. She wasn’t worried about any harm done to the pirate queen. The AI was top line and would make sure she’d recovered from the zap it gave her. The last pirate it hit was fine and that one took two pulses to put her town. Dredge only took one.

  It was the vision of the mad god at the center of this mess that disturbed her. This was the lion headed thing that the pirates revered. Yaldabaoth, they’d called it. She knew the name had to come from antiquity. Where Dredge had learned about it was something she needed to discover. Once that latest dance was done with the ghost ship, she made up her mind to investigate.

  She told me it took several minutes longer than she was accustomed to spending when she made it to the bridge and master control room. For a few brief nanoseconds, her mind witnessed the insane heart of the pirates and what they venerated. Someone with less resilience could never endure what she went through. They would go mad.

  Back on the ghost ship, we sat there and watched the spirits as they moved around us. I wasn’t sure if they were aware of us or not, but it seemed a better idea to keep out of their way. I felt a cold sensation as a spectral figure walked through me and went to examine a dial on the nearest board. Funny, before I’d noticed them, there were no sensations at all. I watched my crew and the marine squad move back to the wall and try to keep out of the way of the ghosts.