by C. Vandyke
He glanced at Alban, and noticed that the man was giving him a bright grin. “What?”
“You called me the most fearsome pirate in the sector. Not the second-most.”
“I misspoke,” Madoc growled.
“So if I can’t ask this cyborg for a displacer, what are we going to do?”
“You are going to swagger aboard your ship like the fearsome pirate captain you are, sneak into your first mate’s cabin, and steal it.”
“I’m what?” Alban yelped. “I can’t do that! What happens if I run into a member of my—of his crew?”
Madoc shrugged. “Don’t let on that you’re an imposter.”
“Have you met me?” Alban hissed. “The minute I open my mouth, I’ll give it away.”
“Try not to do that,” Madoc said, “because if you die here, then my Alban will be stuck in your universe with your husband. I don’t think that’s something you want, is it?”
It was almost comical how quickly Alban’s mouth snapped shut, and Madoc knew right then that he was going to cave. A pity that it was so easy. His Alban would have fought back until both of them were bloody, even if Madoc’s plan was a sound one. This alternate Alban was so boring.
“Fine,” Alban said tightly. “But I’m telling you, this is a bad idea. Where will you be during all of this?”
“That’s none of your concern,” Madoc said. “I can keep myself hidden. Find the displacer and get back to my ship; I’ll meet you there.”
Alban stopped dead in his tracks. An odd look came over his face, and then he smiled. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant smile.
“Or,” Alban said, “you can come with me.”
Thankfully, Madoc had much better preservation instincts than this Alban. “No. That would be suicide.”
Alban’s smile only grew. “Not if you’re my prisoner.”
Alban had a ship.
He had a ship and a crew and apparently more gold than all the gods combined. It was unbelievable. In his own universe, his attempts at piracy could barely even be called that, but in this one, he’d used it to make quite the comfortable life for himself.
Bit of a lonely one, though, if he was honest.
The captain’s cabin on The Cursed Corsair took up half the first deck. It was at least twice as large as the tiny hovel on the Lighthouse that he shared with his Madoc, and contained more items than Alban had ever owned in his life.
“Impressive, isn’t it,” Madoc said when he noticed Alban gaping. His voice was full of—pride?
“I was going to say pretentious and gaudy, but sure, it’s impressive.” Alban couldn’t believe his alternate self had such terrible taste in decor. “Where should we start?”
“Since your first mate apparently obtained these displacers, I would start with her cabin.”
“Right.” Alban went over to the computer interface at his counterpart’s desk and activated it with a touch. “Computer, locate the first mate.”
“First mate Serah is not on board.”
That was a relief. “Computer, show me a schematic of this ship.”
“Her cabin is a deck below yours,” Madoc said as a holographic image of the ship materialized in the air in front of Alban. “You keep her close so you can keep an eye on her.”
“You know an awful lot about this pirate you claim to hate so much.” Alban studied the schematic. Madoc was right, but it looked like they would have to traverse several highly-trafficked corridors in order to reach the cabin. Wonderful.
He didn’t have time to contemplate that for long, however, because at that moment the door swung open and a droid strolled into the room.
“Captain,” it said, “you are needed—what is that doing here?”
Alban had never heard such dripping contempt come from a droid’s vocal modulator before. He pulled himself up straight and said, “He is my prisoner.”
“Why isn’t he in the Brig?”
“Because he is my prisoner,” Alban said. “I’ll do what I like with him. What did you need?”
The droid swiveled its smooth, eyeless head back to Alban. It glowed yellow for a moment, and then said, “You are not Captain Alban.”
“Yes, I am,” Alban said. “I’ve captured Madoc, see? My arch nemesis?”
“You are not—”
A shot rang out, and sparks flew from the sudden gaping hole in the side of the droid’s head. It collapsed.
“Time to move,” Madoc said, shoving the coilgun back in his belt and reactivating the magnetic restraints that bound his wrists together. “Now.”
Alban grabbed Madoc’s elbow and hauled him out of his cabin, hoping that he looked like a confident pirate captain escorting his prisoner to the Brig rather than a frankly useless pirate who was completely out of his depth. He schooled his expression into something he hoped was impassive and marched Madoc through the corridors. Most of the crew seemed to be on the Lighthouse, and the ship was fairly empty. The ones who were on board seemed unfazed by the sight of their captain escorting a prisoner. Alban’s heart was hammering against the inside of his ribcage so loudly, he was surprised it wasn’t echoing down the corridor.
They made it to the first mate’s cabin without anyone else discovering that Alban was an imposter, though he didn’t know how much time they had before the droid’s body was found. The cabin door was unlocked—that was probably a bad sign. Nonetheless, Alban opened it and dragged Madoc in after him.
“Right,” he said, undoing the restraints on Madoc’s wrists. “You take the bedroom, I’ll take the main room, and we’ll—”
“Well,” a voice drawled from behind him, “isn’t this a pleasant surprise.”
They both whirled around, Madoc with his coilgun already drawn, Alban with oh shit on his mind and nothing else. He didn’t recognize the woman sitting in the chair, but he could only assume that she was the first mate. The cyborg. An apt name, considering that she seemed to be made out of more chrome than flesh.
“Serah,” Madoc said tightly.
Serah got to her feet, her coilgun still pointed at Alban’s forehead. “You, in league with Madoc? I wasn’t expecting that.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” Alban said lamely.
“I’m sure it isn’t.”
“The computer said you weren’t on the ship.”
“What makes you think the computer’s loyal to you?”
“Look.” He took the coin purse out of his pocket and tossed it on the floor at her feet. “I want the displacer. Give me that, and you’ll never have to see me again.”
She didn’t even glance at the coin purse. “You know the displacer is more valuable than a sack of gold.”
“I need it,” Alban said, a little desperately. All right, a lot desperately.
The coilgun discharged. Before Alban could react, a thin bolt of blue light had sliced through his jacket and the shirt underneath and burned a gash into his flesh. He hissed, falling back several steps. “What the hell?”
“You’re not Alban,” Serah said. “Alban would never beg. Who are you? What is this?”
“I’m your captain,” Alban said, but through the pain and his desperation, it came out sounding more like a question.
“You aren’t.”
Lightning-fast, Serah fired off two more bolts of light. One left a charred gash on Madoc’s torso. The other hit him square in the shoulder. He fell back with a cry, dropping his coilgun. Alban grabbed his own coilgun out of its holster, but before he could raise it, Serah shot it out of his grasp.
Something moved in Alban’s periphery, and he instinctively ducked. Just in time, too—a vase sailed through the air where his head would have been and smashed into Serah, shattering on impact. Serah didn’t so much as sway with the force of the blow, and she fixed Madoc with an unimpressed look.
“Was that supposed to hurt me?”
“No.” Madoc raised Alban’s coilgun. “It was supposed to distract you. Tell us where the displacer is, and we’ll leave.”
<
br /> “Or what, you’ll shoot me?”
“I doubt it will come to that. There are other ways of extracting information from someone. Even a cyborg.”
“True,” Serah said. “But you’re forgetting something important.”
“What’s that?”
“Computer, activate the ship’s self-destruct sequence,” Serah said.
“Authorization code required.”
Serah opened her mouth and emitted what sounded like a high-pitched burst of static. Alban clamped his hands over his ears.
“Authorization code accepted. Self-destruct sequence has been activated. Five minutes until self-destruct. Repeat, five minutes until self-destruct.”
Alarms started to blare. Madoc gave Serah a look of disbelief.
“What are you doing?” he demanded over the wailing alarms. “Now you’ll die, too!”
Alban moved on instinct. He saw Serah’s left hand twitch, and knew what she was about to do. He kicked the chair out of the way and threw himself over the desk that separated them, his hand closing on her wrist as her body started to dissolve. He snatched the blue wristband out of her fingers, flinging it away. Serah’s vocal cords, caught halfway between this location and her destination, let out one long, echoing scream. Her body vanished entirely, except for her hand, which fell to the deck with a dull thud.
For a heartbeat, neither of them spoke. Alban struggled to draw air into his burning lungs, and he shook with the sudden burst of adrenaline.
“Found the displacer,” he said, and Madoc let out a surprised laugh.
It was then that they both registered that the alarms were still blaring. Madoc’s face fell, and Alban groaned. Great. After all that, he was going to die in this hellish alternate universe beside a poor facsimile of his husband.
“There’s got to be a way out of here!” Alban went over to the door, knowing it would be locked. The activation of the self-destruct sequence automatically sealed every door and bulkhead on the ship. It was only ever meant to be used if a ship was compromised, and anyone left on board would be doomed along with the intruders.
“There is,” Madoc said, but when Alban swung around hopefully, he added, “You need to shut it down.”
Alban gaped at Madoc. “I don’t know how to do that!”
“This is your ship.”
“No, it isn’t! I’m not even from this universe!”
“What would you make the passcode?” Madoc demanded.
“It doesn’t matter what I would make it, I’m not him!”
“You’re the closest thing we’ve got!”
Alban closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. He knew what he would use as a passcode, but this universe’s Alban would never…
Except maybe he would. Given the utter obsession these two pirate enemies had with each other, perhaps it wasn’t out of the question. Besides, they had nothing left to lose now.
Alban opened his eyes and keyed the code into the computer. The alarms continued to wail—
And then they stopped.
Madoc and Alban stared at one another for a moment.
“Guess you’re not so useless after all,” Madoc said, and Alban snorted.
Alban stood in the cargo hold, in the same spot where he’d woken hours ago.
“Are you sure this is going to work?”
“No,” Madoc said, because he was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar. Well. Not to Alban, at least.
“Great,” Alban muttered. He set his jaw in a resolute line and thrust out his arm. “Let’s do this, then.”
Madoc fastened the displacer around his wrist. He’d had his astrogator hack into the device and tamper with the settings, so that it would resonate with Alban’s universe. Once activated, it should pull Alban back to the universe he had come from, and once there, he could send the true Alban back to Madoc.
At least, that was the idea.
Alban stood on the spot where Madoc had found him, between two crates of equipment. He drew a deep breath and mustered a smile.
“Well, here goes nothing,” he said. And then, because this day wasn’t strange enough, he said, “Thank you.”
Alban had never thanked Madoc. It was jarring.
“You’re...welcome,” he said awkwardly.
“Oh, one last thing,” Alban said. “You know that passcode, the one that stopped the self-destruct sequence?”
“What about it?”
Alban gave him a shit-eating grin. “I knew the code because it was one I would have used.”
“And what is that?”
“Your birthday.”
Alban pressed his thumb down on the displacer. The air rippled, and he vanished.
Madoc was still sitting in the cargo hold six hours later when a breeze stirred the hair on the back of his neck. He blinked, and suddenly Alban was standing in front of him.
His Alban.
Madoc knew the man immediately, without having to confirm it with a scan. He knew the slant of Alban’s mouth, the way his smirk caught on his eyeteeth, the jut of his hips. Confidence, arrogance, all of it well-earned, bled from every pore.
“Madoc,” Alban drawled. He pocketed the displacer and glanced around the cargo hold.
“Alban,” Madoc said, his mouth dry. “Had a bit of an adventure, did we?”
“Indeed.” Alban’s fingers twitched, but Madoc was faster, and he had his coilgun in his hand before Alban could draw. Alban gave him a sardonic smile. “Well. You’ve caught me at last.”
“So it would seem,” Madoc said.
Alban’s smirk took on a feral edge. “What is it you plan to do to me, Captain?”
“Nothing.”
Alban faltered, wrong-footed for a moment. “What?”
Madoc dropped his coilgun to the floor. “I intend to do nothing to you.”
“But you’ve captured me.”
“I captured your alternate, not you. It was pitifully easy. I should have known that man wasn’t you.”
“So you’re just...letting me go?”
“I’m giving you a head start,” Madoc corrected. “You’ll have three days. Then, I will pursue you. And Alban—this time, I won’t hold back.”
“I would expect nothing less.” Finally, Alban crossed the distance between them. “I do so enjoy the chase. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” Madoc breathed.
They were close enough that Alban could have drawn his knife and slid it between Madoc’s ribs. Madoc might even have let him.
“Alban.”
“Madoc.”
Madoc leaned close, his lips brushing the shell of Alban’s ear. “Run.”
He felt the curve of the other pirate’s grin against his cheek, imagined that their hearts beat as one as the thrill of the upcoming chase thrummed through their veins. A puff of hot air brushed against his neck as Alban laughed, and then he was gone, as swift and silent as the night.
The Wolf and the Kraken
Craig Rathbone
“There are three variants of Assassin: one hides in shadow, one hides in plain view, and the third kind, followers of the Ludan Code, do not hide at all.”
Ludan Brood Mother Xbraxes XXI
Through the roiling clouds of twisted space junk, collected via solar winds over centuries to make up the Maelstrom, a single vessel carefully travelled. It moved with deliberate purpose, boosters flickering periodically in order to avoid chunks of ship, space station, and whatever other long-lost debris occasionally rolled toward it. The ship was a small combat skiff named The Salem, and it was wanted across the sector for acts of piracy.
The Salem’s captain, Akwesi Boateng, stood on the observation deck, surveying clouds of broken ships and equipment that his helmsman were working hard to avoid. Boateng should have been doing it himself, except the crew, being superstitious, had asked him to talk to their current client, Wulf.
Boateng didn’t know much about Wulf, other than it had the coin to employ The Salem for this folly of a job. That, and it rocked enough a
rmour and high-powered weaponry to take on an army, which included two huge Gloster hand cannons holstered in the webbing of its armour, and two large automatic coilguns, attached to metal arms folded at its back. It could easily wipe out Boateng and his crew, should they try to back out of the deal, but then The Salem really needed the considerable sum Wulf was willing to pay, so there was no danger of that happening.
“Shouldn’t you be on the bridge, Captain?” the creature growled. Its voice, languid and dripping with irritation, was tinny through the helmet’s speaker array.
Clearly, their passenger wasn’t the social type, Boateng thought to himself. “I don’t need to be at the helm all of the time. My first mate is perfectly capable of steering us through the Maelstrom. She’s the best in the system,” Boateng said patiently. He tried to think of the prize money for putting up with The Salem’s passenger and their insights for a few more hours. If nothing else, the ship’s shield generator and oxygen filtration system needed work; the air tasted like copper.
Wulf turned its long, snouted helmet to face him, expression inscrutable beneath its dark visor. “I am glad that you maintain your crew with more care than this box, Captain. What do you want? Restless Home still looks to be on the horizon. So I assume you aren’t here to tell me it’s time to dock?” It tapped the thick viewport window with a metal-clad finger, pointing to an asteroid.
Boateng bit back a reply as he stepped next to the enigmatic alien. “My crew don’t like you. It’s not every day we take on contracts like this.” The system’s nebula reflected hues of reds and purples on the Captain’s dark skin and tatty uniform. “And, well, we don’t even know what you are, or what you want on Restless Home. It is a portentous place, many consider it to be cursed.”
“I don’t care about curses, Captain. I have absolutely no interest in explaining my mission to you.” Wulf crossed his arms before continuing, “I am a Ludanite Assassin. A member of a millennia-old warrior pack devoted to providing a very efficient service, for a very handsome sum. We’re used to the best equipment and weaponry, and usually the best ships too. So imagine my disappointment when this wreck was the only ship left in Cold Harbour.”