Harry gulped, craning his head up at the massive ginger pirate.
Captain Cass placed a hand on Redbeard’s arm. “That’s enough. If it’s not a threat, we can deal with it later.” She stepped back and looked to the green-skinned pirate. “Spiner, there’s no chance any of us could become infected with the symbiotic life-form, is there?”
Geenskin tapped at a few buttons on his device. “Unlikely, Captain. I would have to study it further to answer definitively, but from the biological readouts I have here, it does not appear to have quick-spreading abilities.”
“Good.”
Redbeard bared his teeth at Harry and made a small lunging motion, causing Harry to skitter back. “Eh heh, don’t look like much of a threat.”
Harry heard a squishing sound behind him. Oh, no… He turned his head to the side to peer at his left rear hoof with his eye. Oh crap! If I stay quiet a moment, maybe they won’t notice.
As he looked up again, he noticed Kitt still staring at him. Her lips twisted into what appeared to be a bemused expression.
Harry let out a sigh. Where the pirates were all cool, calm, capable badasses, he was just an ass … an awkward outcast apparently destined to fail at fitting in anywhere.
6
For the next several minutes, the pirates ignored Harold and the rest of the livestock. They were in the process of debating what to do after the repairs to the SS Bray were complete.
“If we run out of food supplies for the livestock, I say we space ‘em. There’s no telling wha’ we might get for ‘em, but we can’t afford to be buying food ’n’ supplies for ‘em all.”
The captain shook her head. “Really now, Redbeard. If it comes to that, we’ll drop them off somewhere. If you’re so worried about it, why don’t you go check on their food supplies now? We’ll need to know how long we can last before we dock or land somewhere.”
Redbeard grumbled and pouted, for a moment almost looking not scary. “Aye, arrr, Cap’n.” His shoulders drooped as he walked away toward the opposite end of the hold.
Harry watched quietly, still scraping his hoof on the floor, hoping to dislodge the fecal matter and regain a little dignity. As he looked past the pirates, who had their backs turned to his favorite viewing wall, he noticed Node’s telltale red eye.
Node winked at him with an exaggerated animation and then blinked out of existence, before a turning Kitt could see him.
She padded toward the breached ramp.
Greenskin—Spiner was actually his name, Harry reminded himself—spoke up then. “Someone should be on the bridge to keep an eye on the comms and scanners, just in case someone enters the sector.”
The captain nodded. “Make it so. Keep the systems warm, in case we need to make a quick getaway.”
“Aye, Captain.” Spiner stepped away and left the hold.
Of all the pirates, Greenskin—er, Spiner—reminded Harry the most of Node. He was almost like a computer, except he could walk. There was something precise about everything he did, from his measured footsteps to his unhesitating use of language.
Redbeard grunted as he approached the captain again. He was still muttering under his breath. “Filthy, filthy animals.”
Captain Cass broke into a big grin as he approached, shattering her cool, commanding demeanor. “We should do this more often, make our niche in livestock pirating.”
Redbeard gave the captain a fierce glare for a long moment, worrying Harry that a fight might break out. But then, unexpectedly, Redbeard’s face also morphed into a grin, though one far uglier than his captain’s, and he rumbled with fits of laughter.
Harry couldn’t help but start to laugh, too. The sight of the ebullient warrior and his mirthful captain was as amusing as any scene on DS-9 featuring the little wrinkled character with big ears known as Quark. “Hee-haw, hee-haw-haw-haw!”
Redbeard stopped in mid gut-bust, his face instantly hardening as he drew up to full height and turned on Harry. “Who gave you permission ta laugh, idiot donkey?”
The captain crossed her arms and also stared at Harry, unreadable.
“He-haw-haw-ehh-hrmm.” Harry made an effort to sober up. “Sorry? I wasn’t laughing at you … I was laughing with you.”
Redbeard frowned, taking a step toward the pen.
The captain reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, stopping his forward momentum. “Come on, Red. It’s just a donkey.”
Damn, she was strong. Harry couldn’t help but admire her with his own grin. I want to be a badass pirate like her. “Say, you wouldn’t mind letting me out of this pen, would you?”
“What, so you can run amok on the ship?” Redbeard blinked, indignant.
“I won’t get in the way, promise.” Harry gave his best smile, his ears drawn up into points, his shiny white pearls gleaming innocently.
The captain drew up alongside Redbeard, her arms crossing again. “Why should we do that? He’s right. You could get in the way. We’ve got a serious operation to run, here. I mean, do we look like we just let anyone run around free?”
Harry stuttered, searching for the right words to convince them of his worth. “Uh, umm, I’m really helpful back home. I do all sorts of helpful things.”
“Like what?” Captain Cass asked. “What can you do that would possibly be valuable to a pirate crew? …You do know that we’re pirates, right?”
Redbeard grunted. “Unbelievable. Yer not seriously considering this, are ya?”
The Captain shrugged. “I’m kinda interested in what he has to say. He’s the first of his kind we’ve ever met. You’re not even just a little interested?”
Redbeard frowned, but kept his mouth shut.
“Well, uh, I dunno. I can, uh…” Harry tried and failed to think of any skills that might be transferable from donkey herding to space pirating.
“Might I make a suggestion?” Node said suddenly, his red eye blinking into view behind the pirates.
“Node!” Harry exclaimed, excited that his friend was coming to his rescue. He really is a good friend, wow!
Redbeard and Captain Cass were quite impressive, Harry noted, as in the blink of an eye they were able to reach up for their rifles and spin about to face in the other direction. Rifles leveled, they looked about with expressions of confusion on their faces.
“Relax, will you?” Node said with a vocal note of irritation. “Haven’t you caused my ship enough damage already?”
Redbeard continued to look around, confused.
The captain, however, was smarter. She stared at the wall and realized there was a red, digitized eye looking back at them. Slowly, she lowered her weapon. “You’re the ship’s computer.”
Harry called out, a quiver of excitement in his voice, “His name is Node and he’s the best! He lets me watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on the viewscreen. It’s a TV show, he says.”
Redbeard finally noticed the red eye and let out an audible groan. “Yeesh, ya fixin’ to give someone a heart attack? I knew there was something off about this ship from tha minute I stepped foot in here. The blimey computer’s a creeper!”
Node’s red eye narrowed. “Really, is that entirely necessary?”
The captain shook her head and slung her rifle across her back. “My XO is right. You should have announced yourself as soon as we secured the vessel.”
“My programming only compels me to speak to the ship’s crew. Your intentions to crew this ship have only now become obvious.”
Redbeard grunted. “I can’t believe this. A talking arse and a smart-talkin’ computer. Cap’n, we should leave this miserable hunk of junk behind and just write it off as a loss. There’s nothing here that can possibly be worth tha trouble.”
Cass lifted an eyebrow. “You do remember the going rate for non-synthetic meats, don’t you?”
Harry’s ears turned sideways. “Meat? Like, to eat?” He didn’t know which fate would be worse, ending up as someone’s meal, or being abandoned. If the pirates left the ship, what would happen to
him and the rest of the donkeys? His job was to keep them safe. If they left, eventually they’d starve. Harry was determined to not let that happen.
Redbeard made a face like he was gagging. “Who eats donkey meat?”
Worried now, Harry began to grovel. “Node, tell the Gods, err … pirates? Please tell the benevolent God-pirates to please have mercy on me and the others. We’re valuable, I promise! And not just as food! Let me out and I’ll be a good space pirate helper. I swear! I’m very helpful.”
Kitt called out from the breached doorway, where she had protective goggles on and was holding some sort of torch-like device. “If you want these repairs to get done quickly, would you please tell that donkey to quiet down?”
The captain gave Redbeard a long, quizzical, sideways glance.
Node broke the silence. “He’s right, you know. The donkeys could prove to be a valuable asset. A very valuable asset.”
Captain Cass chewed her lip. “Say more...”
Redbeard broke out into a string of curses as he tossed his rifle onto the floor, causing a loud clattering sound to echo around the cargo hold.
Node ignored Redbeard’s tantrum. “As I was saying, the donkeys could be valuable.” Next to his eye, the galactic symbol for money began to blink on the wall. Gradually, it multiplied and took over the entirety of the viewscreen. “You said you’re pirates? Well, congratulations, because you’ve just hit the jackpot, my friends.”
Redbeard swore again and spat on the ground. “Ya ain’t my friend.”
Harry kept his mouth shut, restraining himself from blurting out his overriding sentiment, Node is a great friend! Harry had no idea what Node was talking about, but it seemed to be having an effect on the pirate captain.
“Is that so?” Captain Cass drawled slowly.
Node expanded into a red smiley face. “Oh, yes, very much so. If you release the talking donkey from the holding pen, I’ll tell you all about it.”
The captain stared at the wall in silence for several moments as Harold held his breath. “Fine. Redbeard, release the donkey.”
Redbeard muttered under his breath. “Okay, fine, whatever ya say, Cap’n.”
Harry couldn’t contain his excitement anymore. “Oh, yay! Hee-haw, hee-haw, hee! You won’t regret this, I promise.”
As Redbeard stooped over the fence controls, Spiner’s voice blared out over the ship intercom. “Captain? You’re going to want to get up here.”
Harry hurriedly scooted past the deactivated boundary of the holding pen before anyone changed their mind.
Node blinked out of view on the wall.
“Acknowledged, Spiner,” Captain Cass called out in response to his summons. Then she turned a hard stare to the wall that had just contained Node’s red pixels. “Ship’s computer … Node. Whatever your name is, I fully expect the rest of your report on this so-called jackpot as soon as I deal with whatever’s coming our way, understand?”
“Of course, Captain,” came Node’s voice.
The captain sighed and faced the cat being. “Kitt, you stay down here and finish the repairs. Redbeard, with me.” She gave Harry a hard look. “I don’t care what you do, as long as you stay out of the way.”
Harry affected what he hoped was an innocent look. His excitement had Buddy’s heart thudding hard in his ribcage. “You’re the best, Captain. I won’t get in the way, I promise. You’re my hero!”
Captain Cass ignored Harry’s comment and looked to Redbeard. “All right, let’s get to the bridge.”
Redbeard stared at Harry and muttered again before turning to follow close behind the captain. He stooped and picked up his rifle along the way.
What do I do now? Harry wondered. He gave a quick glance to Kitt, who was again regarding him with those predatory eyes. He gulped. “Right, then, I’ll just, uh, I’ll just be following them up to this bridge, whatever that is.”
He turned and all but ran out of the cargo hold.
Harry managed to trail behind the pirates without catching their ire. In fact, they seemed to be so preoccupied with getting to this so-called bridge that they failed to notice Harry at all.
They passed through a doorway into a large, enclosed semi-circular space, with what might’ve been a large window or viewscreen on the far end.
Tail swishing with excitement, Harry trailed in a few moments later, halting abruptly on the other side of the door with a sharp intake of breath. Space spread beyond the window, vast and dark, never-ending, scattered stars twinkling in the blackness. Holy Overlords! It’s space! I’m really in outer space! It looked even more amazingly full of detail than the space scenes on DS-9.
His chest swelled with pride as he stood there, surveying the rest of the room. The first Assrider of Cern chosen by the Gods! The first Assrider of Cern in outer space! Wow, look at me! Surrounding him, lights blinked next to various levers, gauges, and buttons.
Spiner was hunched over one of the consoles to Harry’s left, and the captain and Redbeard had moved to look over his shoulders at whatever he was looking at.
Harry trotted over and inserted his snout in the space beneath Spiner’s armpit, doing his best to see what everyone else was seeing. It was just a small viewscreen with several lines of text. Even with his ability to read, Harry found the words impossible to decipher.
“Well, what is it?” the captain asked.
Spiner opened his mouth to answer, and paused. His chin tilted down and those distressingly black eyes stared at Harry for a long moment. Harry thought he would say something, but then he merely turned back to the screen and spoke without inflection. “We’ve received an alpha-priority message from Haven. They’ve received a tip-off that a Federation Naval cruiser will arrive in our sector in a matter of minutes.”
Redbeard swore. Harry was beginning to think he liked to swear. “Already?” the man blurted. “How in hell’s name did they know we’d knocked off this ship so soon?”
“Spiner,” the captain asked, “did any emergency transmissions make it off the ship while we were boarding?”
Spiner touched a few buttons and gave a curt nod. “Affirmative, Captain. The crew was indeed able to send out an emergency alert via H-Tran despite our jammer.”
Captain Cass hissed a breath through her teeth.
Harry jumped as the door to the bridge slid open and turned to see the cat creature enter. He side-stepped toward the captain’s mechanical legs as Kitt approached.
“Repairs are complete,” she announced.
“That was fast,” Captain Cass commented.
“Yeah well good,” Redbeard spat. “Cuz yer jammer is shite. Didn’t work. The Uckin’ Feds are gonna be here any minute.”
Kitt’s yellow eyes narrowed and her ears laid back. “What? It should have worked. I double-checked to be sure it was operational before we left Girlboss!”
“Well it didn’t work,” Redbeard said again. “So something went wrong.”
“I’ll have to check the logs on Girlboss to find out how a transmission got out with this ship’s accurate coordinates,” Kitt said, ears still flat. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
Harry’s ears turned out sideways as he quickly got lost in the conversation. But one word stood out as the strangest yet. “Uckin’?” He repeated the odd word.
“Yarr,” answered Redbeard. “The “F” is silent, cuz to say otherwise would be profane.” He paused to hurl a string of expletives that ended with “Uckin’ Feds” and spat.
“About that jammer,” Node’s voice spoke up from everywhere at once.
Redbeard’s hands went back for his rifle, but then he relaxed, face twisting in irritation as he rolled his eyes.
Harry bit back a giggle. It was funny to see such a big, scary-looking man get startled by a bodiless voice.
“I have not experienced a jammer quite like that one before,” Node continued. “How does it work?”
Kitt’s ears went up again at the question. “Ah! Well, you see, accurate Hyperspace Transmissio
ns require a real-time computation of the source’s space-time coordinates and current vector, along with the calculated destination coordinates.”
Harry blinked. He had absolutely no idea what any of that meant. None of the other pirates seemed the least bit interested, either.
But Kitt was oblivious to the rest of them. She went on. “The jammer creates a local distortion, which will mess up the source coordinates, giving the appearance that the message is coming from somewhere else.”
“Indeed?” Node asked. “That is very clever. Did the android come up with that?”
Kitt’s ears flattened again, and a ruff of hair around her neck bristled, making her look fearsome. Harry shrank back from her as she bared tiny sharp teeth, answering coldly, “No. I did.”
“Oh. My apologies. You are a very clever Homo Lyncis Sapius to invent such a thing.”
The ruff of fur around her neck lowered slowly.
“Yes, well,” the captain interjected, “as enlightening as this conversation has been, we’ll have to figure out the problem with the jammer later. We need to get out of here. The question is, do we go back to Haven with Djerke and all this livestock, or head somewhere else?”
“Haven ain’t equipped for feedin’ this much livestock, so far as I know,” Redbeard offered. “We gotta find somewhere to offload these filthy things before we end up spendin’ the last of our money on feed. I’m not keen on spendin’ money to make money. Ain’t that why we’re pirates?”
The captain’s face grew distant. “Some of us,” she said quietly.
Harry cleared his throat. “Ah, excuse me, but … why do you need to run from the Feds? I thought the Federation were the good guys?”
Redbeard barked out a thunderous laugh and clapped Harry on the withers, making Buddy flinch at the unexpected contact. “Ha! Ha, oh, there’s a good one, arr, haha!”
Harry didn’t understand what was so funny, but Redbeard turned away and walked across to the other side of the bridge, doubling over in laughter.
Captain Cass only looked down at him with a wry smile. “You have a lot to learn about pirates, Donkey.”
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