Stealing Spaceships: For Fun and Profit

by Logan Jacobs

  I corrected the extender a bit more until my chip was satisfied. There was no way to tell for sure if the extender would work exactly right until I powered up the Skyhawk, but I needed fuel to do that. Until then, I just had to trust Honey Bee knew what we were doing.

  “We do,” she chimed happily.

  I rolled my eyes behind my glasses, flipped the safety switches back on the heat gun, and reached up to rest it on the metal grates of the main hold. It would have to cool off before I stuffed it back in the tool bag. I threw the rest of the bag up onto the grate beside it, and then I pulled myself up into the hold. I offered a hand down to the princess.

  “Coming?” I asked.

  Orla sighed but held her arms up, so I picked her up underneath her shoulders and hauled her to the grate beside me. Then I chuckled as she adjusted her white dress where it had started to ride up around her hips.

  “I could have gotten out myself, you know,” the brunette told me.

  “Oh, I have no doubt,” I said seriously. “Now come on, we’ve got places to go.”

  The princess held her chin high but followed me to the boarding ramp. I needed to try another scan of the area before we headed off into the jungle around us. Otherwise, we would run out of supplies long before we came across anything that might help us get off-world.

  The Skyhawk was as fixed as she could be until I found us some fuel and a coil for the stabilizer. There wasn’t anything I could do about the beating she’d taken in our rough landing, but I hoped Grith would overlook that. Most of it looked like superficial damage, anyway. If I’d had more tools or more time, then I could have done something to fix her up a little nicer, but I was more concerned about getting the fuck off this planet at the moment.

  We reached the end of the boarding ramp, and I walked forward to the edge of the clearing.

  “What’s the word, Honey Bee?” I asked quietly. “Any signs of life?”

  “Not human,” my chip answered. “The terrain shifts a few miles to the southeast. A clearer signal may be found there, with fewer trees.”

  “That may be our best chance to find a city,” I said. “Southeast it is.”

  “Southeast?” Orla appeared at my elbow.

  “That’s where we’re headed,” I told the princess. “Unless you have a better idea.”

  She shook her head, and I glanced at the high slits in her white dress. Much as I hated to admit it, it was not the most practical outfit for trekking through the jungle. I didn’t want to suggest anything to cover up the slope of her generous cleavage or her long legs, but I also sure as shit didn’t want to have to carry her for our whole trip because she found it too difficult to walk in her tight princess dress.

  “I don’t suppose you brought a spare outfit?” I asked.

  “I might have brought a few,” she answered.

  “Oh, that means you brought plenty,” I laughed. “If you have one that’s less of a dress, go change into that.”

  “This dress is--”

  “I’m sure,” I cut her off. “Expensive, one-of-a-kind, designer, blah, blah. It’s also only gonna slow us down out there. So unless you want to be caught by Daddy Dearest’s troops or mauled to death by a wild animal because you couldn’t run fast enough, I suggest you go put on some kind of pants.”

  “What, you wouldn’t save me?” Orla crossed her arms over her chest.

  “I could,” I agreed. “I even might. But one thing you’d better get straight right now, princess-- I don’t have to.”

  “You are such,” she emphasized, “a jackass.”

  “And you are such,” I imitated, “a princess. Now go get changed.”

  The beautiful brunette left in a huff back up the Skyhawk’s boarding ramp. I almost went with her to make sure we had the same definition of what a practical outfit looked like, but I decided to get our gear together for the trek instead. I headed into the cargo hold to see what I could find.

  I was surprised no Dominion troops had come after us yet, but I knew they had to send out scouting parties for their missing fighters soon. I hated to leave the Skyhawk unattended, but without any fuel, we didn’t have a choice. She would just have to wait for us to come back.

  At least the Skyhawk was such a piece of junk that nobody would want anything to do with her. Even if the Dominion tracked their fighters to this area and managed to find our ship in the middle of this forest, they would scan it for signs of life and then go on about their merry way. The ship itself held no attraction for them. They would only be interested in its human element.

  When I got to the cargo hold, I took one brick of murisia, stuffed it into a hiking bag, and hid the rest of the Mother’s Mercy as best I could. If we did come across any prospective buyers, I wanted to have a sample for them, but I wasn’t stupid enough to try to bring a whole shipment with us. For one thing, it would be impossible to carry and still move fast. And for another, that was a sure-fire way to get ourselves killed and robbed. Or robbed and killed. Either way, we’d end up dead if we tried it.

  I looked through the rest of the cargo hold for anything else that smug asshole had on board that might help us out. I found plenty of ammunition, a few spare magazines, and a machete with a holster strap. I slung the strap across my back, buckled on the machete, and reloaded all my weapons. Then I put as much extra ammunition as I could fit into the hiking bag, and I threw in a few flares for good measure.

  There wasn’t much food or water left on board, but I packed what I could from the galley. We’d have to get more food wherever we found fuel. When I had put all I could in the bag, I slung it over my shoulder and checked in with Honey Bee.

  “Anything I’m forgetting?” I asked.

  “Just the princess,” my chip answered gleefully.

  “Very funny,” I muttered. “You’re a goddamn riot, you know that?”

  “We are,” Honey Bee chimed brightly.

  I waited at the end of the boarding ramp for the almighty Princess Orla Medalla. She took her sweet time changing, that was for sure, but I guessed it must be hard for a princess to change without the help of half a dozen servants or woodland creatures.

  Maybe I should have offered to help her change, after all.

  Just then, Orla came down the ramp in her new clothes. I didn’t know if I was more surprised by how functional they were, or by how she still managed to look every inch the princess even in hiking gear. The brunette wore a soft green and brown jacket pulled over her head, and her long legs were still shown off in light-colored hiking pants. Her thick brown hair was now in a long ponytail she wore high on her head, and in her hand was a massive shotgun.

  “I thought I locked that thing up,” I told her.

  “I had another one,” the princess said simply.

  “Well, I’m glad to see we’re past the point where you want to aim that thing at me.” I grinned. “I must be growing on you.”

  “You wish,” the brunette scoffed. “So, is this acceptable clothing?”

  “I don’t know,” I teased. “Can you run in it? Or fight? Or is this a ‘fashion’ hiking outfit?”

  “I’ll have you know, this jacket is made of temperature-sensitive fabric,” Orla defended. “It will cool me down if the fabric senses I’m hot, and it’ll keep me warm if I get cold.”

  “I’m aware of what temperature-sensitive means,” I said dryly. “But I’m glad even the hiking clothes you brought still manage to be expensive. Do you know how much that fabric sells for?”

  “Um,” the princess hesitated. “A lot?”

  “At least you managed to put on something practical,” I sighed. “Let’s move out.”

  “So, I look okay?” Orla asked.

  “I’m touched my approval means so much to you,” I laughed.

  “Oh never mind,” the princess hissed. “I just wanted to know if this was okay for going through the jungle. I don’t actually care what you think I look like.”

  “Sure you don’t,” I laughed again. “Just don’t s
hoot me if you don’t like my answers, alright?”

  “I know how to use a shotgun,” the princess muttered.

  “Oh, I’m aware. That’s half the reason we damn near crash-landed here in the middle of nowhere, remember? As long as I’m with you, I’ll be safe from any of the other dangerous landing gears we might encounter in the jungle.”

  “Are you done?” she growled as her pretty eyes flashed dangerously.

  “Sure.” I shrugged.

  “Let’s just go,” the brunette huffed.

  I grinned and led the way as we moved southeast. Honey Bee was convinced there was a clear spot in the forest up ahead, but a few miles in the jungle may as well have been a marathon. We had only gone a quarter of a mile before I had to pull out my machete to clear our path. I didn’t want to leave a trail for anyone who might come across the Skyhawk to follow us, but the forest undergrowth was so thick in places that we couldn’t even push past it.

  I hacked at the dense vines and shoved them aside. To her credit, Orla didn’t complain when the undergrowth scraped and smacked us with every step we took forward. She gave an awful lot of sighs and huffs behind me, but I found it amusing instead of irritating.

  The jungle was so thick that I couldn’t see the sky through the trees above us. Every now and then, a hint of sky appeared, but it was only ever for a second, so it wasn’t long enough for me to tell what time of day it was. I wasn’t even sure if it was cloudy or clear.

  I hacked our way through the forest for a solid two hours before I decided I needed a break. Honey Bee estimated we had only traveled two miles, and I needed some water. I sat on the fern-covered ground and chugged as much water as we could spare, and then I offered the princess a drink.

  “Thank you,” Orla said shyly as she took the bottle from me, glanced at my lips, and then carefully raised the container to her lips.

  I reclined on the bed of ferns and stretched my arms up. My fingers brushed against something round, and I leaned my head back to see a bush with low-hanging berries behind me. They were plump and reddish-purple, so I plucked one and sniffed it.

  “Oh, I love those,” the princess said eagerly.

  She snatched it out of my fingers. It was just about to touch her lips when I saw the ring of sand-colored mushrooms around the base of the fruit bush. I jumped up and smacked the berry out her hands.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the brunette accused.

  “Saving your life,” I fired back, “so you’re welcome.”

  “I thought that was--”

  “It only looks like it,” I explained. “See those mushrooms? Those, we can eat. But they like to grow around poisonous berry bushes, this one in particular.”

  “How do you know that?” Orla breathed.

  I shrugged. Sometimes it was hard to remember what knowledge was mine and what was the Vespidea’s, so it was usually just easier to think of it as ours.

  Even though it was probably theirs.

  “We could always go back,” Honey Bee chanted in my head, and her voice sounded like millions as they started to echo in my brain. “We are one. All of us. Let us go back.”

  “You saved my life,” the princess whispered. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah!” I choked out as her words pulled me away from Honey Bee’s echoing siren song.

  The princess sounded suspiciously sincere, and she bit her lower lip as she stared into my eyes.

  “Perhaps she loves us,” Honey Bee laughed.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I muttered.

  “It’s not ridiculous to thank you,” the princess groaned as she rolled her eyes.

  “Oh, um-- well, you’re welcome,” I said quickly. “Let’s just eat some of these mushrooms and get going.”

  As soon as we had eaten enough of the nutrient-rich mushrooms to sustain us, we headed southeast again. I managed to go a whole ten minutes before I had to pull out the machete again. Orla offered to take over at one point, but I told her no. My arms were tired, but we were making decent time through the jungle, and I didn’t want to risk anything that might slow us down.

  The jungle slowly grew darker as we hiked forward. I hadn’t been sure what time it was before, but once our path became darker, I figured out pretty quickly that the sun was setting on this part of Orpheus.

  “Nothing like being stuck in the jungle when the sun goes down,” I muttered.

  “We will keep alert for life forms in the area,” Honey Bee chimed.

  “That’s comforting,” I exhaled.

  It only took a few minutes for the darkness to really settle into the forest. The light had already been dim, but now it was positively treacherous. I thought about stopping for the night before we reached the clear space Honey Bee insisted was still ahead.

  A fierce growl echoed around us in the darkness, and we both stopped dead in our tracks.

  A half-second later, Orla pressed up against my side and grabbed my free arm to wrap it around her waist. I smiled but pulled my hand away from her so I could unholster my gun. Then I pointed the gun to my left and held up the machete on my right.

  “What are you--”

  “Hush,” I told her. “I’m trying to listen.”

  That was partially true, but I was also trying to let my chip scan the surrounding area. I didn’t know what kind of hell-beasts were in the forests of Orpheus. All I knew was that it would be sorry if it tried to eat either of us.

  “It is not an immediate threat,” Honey Bee told me.

  I started to lower my gun.

  “But it will be soon if you do not move,” my chip added.

  I holstered my weapon and grabbed Orla by the hand. She didn’t even protest. She just ran along behind me, and I hacked the forest out of our way. The growl sounded in the darkness around us again, only this time it seemed more concentrated on our left.

  And bigger. It definitely sounded bigger.

  I’d thought it was hard to move through the jungle in the daytime, but it was damn near impossible at night. As soon as I chopped one vine out of our way, another one grew up to replace it, and thick branches grabbed at our arms as we pushed past them. The forest was pretty flat, but there were enough little dips and hills that I half-expected the ground to just disappear from underneath me with the next step.

  If it hadn’t been for Honey Bee, I might have, but the chip scanned the area as quickly as my brain could process it, so my steps forward were as calculated as they were fast.

  Orla wasn’t quite so lucky.

  The princess tripped on a ground vine behind me and went down with a little shriek.

  I spun around to pull her up, and the brunette clung to me with a little whimper. I tried to slip out of her grip, but the princess just spider-monkeyed to me even tighter as she started to hyperventilate.

  The growl sounded again, and this time, I swore I could almost feel the breath of the creature rushing through the jungle toward us.

  “Time to go,” I whispered.

  We ran forward together again, but I noticed Orla was a little closer on my heels this time.

  “Evidence suggests a high probability that she does love us,” Honey Bee repeated her guess from earlier.

  “Fuck, do princesses always fall in love this fast?” I wondered out loud to Honey Bee.

  “Entertainment videos suggest this may be true,” my chip responded. “Especially if you save their life at least once.”

  I shook my head and plunged ahead through the dense undergrowth. Honey Bee said the clear space was just a quarter of a mile ahead, but that felt like an eternity away. I was doing fine, but I could feel the princess slowing down behind me in spite of her best efforts.

  When there was just a tenth of a mile between us and the end of the forest up ahead, I felt a hot wind blow directly on my face. It smelled like rot and dead leaves, and it was followed by a growl loud enough to rattle the bones inside my body.

  I felt the princess glue herself to me, and I held my machete up like it was a
torch. I heard the trees break apart in front of us, but when the hot breath of the creature blew against us again, I realized it was coming from three different directions.

  I wrapped one arm backward around Orla so that the princess wouldn’t run off into the night in a panic. We stayed completely still, and I hoped the animal might just pass on by. Honey Bee chimed with laughter in my head.

  “No chance,” she told me. “It is one creature but has three heads, to your front, to your left, and to your right. Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  I dropped my hand from the brunette’s waist and pulled out a flare from my pack.

  “Trevor?” the princess murmured.

  “Here’s what we’re gonna do,” I whispered. “You’re gonna stay exactly right here and do not move unless I tell you to. You’re also not gonna shoot that shotgun unless I tell you to, or you’ll end up splattering me all over this jungle, and then you’ll be on your own. Got it?”

  “What are you gonna do?” Orla breathed.

  “What I do best, sweetheart,” I said with a grin. “Win.”

  I uncapped the flare, struck it into life, and ran straight ahead with the glowing red flare in one hand and the machete raised high in the other. There was a fallen tree trunk ten strides ahead, but one of its branches had caught on another tree when it fell, so I raced up this branch until I was far and away above the jungle floor, and that was when I saw the creature.

  From out of the trees, a huge head emerged with an earth-shaking snarl. It looked like some prehistoric hellhound had bred with the galaxy’s biggest lizard, and then someone had dunked it in a whole vat full of ugly. And to top it all off, the animal’s head alone was easily as tall as I was.

  The creature turned its ugly head toward the flare that I held, just as I planned. I let it track me as I ran further up the massive fallen branch, and I adjusted my grip on the machete so I could stab it straight down on the growling animal’s neck.

  Just as I leaped off the branch toward the creature’s face, the second head emerged from the surrounding darkness. It came from Orla’s left and was a carbon copy of the first head, only this one was followed by a massive paw that clawed at the princess. She jumped out of the way, but I knew she wouldn’t be so lucky a second time.