Stealing Spaceships: For Fun and Profit

by Logan Jacobs

  “Why couldn’t we have a private shower again?” the princess asked as I turned on the showerhead for us.

  “They don’t have any here,” I explained. “This is a space station, not a spa station. It’s just for travelers who need a quick rinse before they get back on the road.”

  “It seems so…” Orla held one hand over her breasts. “Everyone’s just staring.”

  “Of course they are,” I said with a grin. “I mean, look at you. You are probably the most beautiful woman anyone has ever seen. Just try to relax and enjoy it.”

  “That’s kind of hard to do with the bounty on my head,” she sniffed.

  “Well, I didn’t say that you should look at them,” I sighed. “Just don’t make eye contact, okay?”

  “What am I supposed to look at, then?” Orla demanded.

  “You can keep your eyes on the wall,” I told the princess, and then I grinned. “Or you can just look at me.”

  She rolled her eyes but smiled as she passed me the shampoo. If we hadn’t been surrounded by people in the showers, I would have liked to just stand there and study the brunette’s body as the water slid off her pale skin. From the way she glanced at me, I guessed she must have felt the same way. But there were too many people around to let my guard down, so we just finished as quickly as we could and headed back to the locker rooms.

  “Aren’t you--”

  I whirled toward the owner of the voice behind us. It was a middle-aged woman who kept looking at Orla like she was planning to throw her in a pot and eat her for her youth.

  “Trevor Onyx,” I told her grandly. “Have we met?”

  “No, I meant her,” the woman said pointedly.

  “Oh, do you know my wife?” I hurried on. “Sweet thing’s expecting our first child, and wouldn’t you know it? She just had to visit her parents before she gets too far along to travel, so here we are, showering with a bunch of strangers like you see in the movies, you know?”

  “But I thought--”

  “Yeah, I’d be surprised if you knew her,” I interrupted. “We’re all the way from Deltulu, so a long way from home, you know. Our ship told us we only had a few minutes, so we better jet. Nice chatting!”

  Orla still hadn’t turned around toward the woman, so I grabbed her by the arm and hustled her into the locker room. The middle-aged woman stared after us with an open mouth, but I hoped I had been convincing enough that we could get away before she decided how sure she was about Orla’s identity.

  To my surprise and great delight, our clothes were washed, dried, and waiting for us in the locker room. The worker drone had actually delivered, and I admitted it was nice to put on clean clothes again. Even if I still didn’t feel fully dressed without my weapons. We hurried out of the locker room to lose ourselves in the crowd.

  “Remember, money, then food,” I whispered to Orla. “And only maybe on the second one.”

  “I got it,” she sighed.

  I heard her stomach growl just before mine did. We had really worked up an appetite in the last 24 hours, and it wasn’t the kind you could just throw a meal replacement bar at and hope for the best. My mouth watered at the smell of pork fat dripping into a skillet of potatoes at the stall beside us.

  The ATM was just up ahead. It was protected by a thick plexiglass case that surrounded it in a rectangle on all sides, and two guards stood watch just outside the machine.

  “Lot of cash to guard, huh?” I asked when we reached the guards.

  “We’re here for the protection of the cash and for the protection of all Dominion citizens,” the first guard replied. His voice was so robotic that he could have been a droid.

  “Oh good,” I exhaled. “So glad to hear you’re here for our protection. Do you get to do a lot of protecting just standing around here all day?”

  “There have been several situations recently,” the second guard explained as he glared at me. “Hostage situations, actually, so yes, we are here for your protection.”

  “Or perhaps for the protection of the taxes that the Dominion has to collect,” Honey Bee suggested.

  “Look, I just need to make a withdrawal,” the princess told the guards to distract them from trying to glare me to death.

  They glanced from her to me and then back again. It didn’t look good that she had her eyes fixed on the ground, but she couldn’t look them dead in the eyes or they’d recognize her in an instant.

  “Are you making this withdrawal under your own free will?” the first guard asked.

  “Of course,” Orla snapped.

  The guards both looked at me again suspiciously.

  “You heard the lady,” I said with a smile. “You wouldn’t prevent a law-abiding citizen of the Dominion from making a withdrawal of her own hard-earned money, would you?”

  “She is more than welcome to,” the second guard said, “but we’re going to have to ask you to leave while she does. Security purposes.”

  “I’d like him to stay, actually,” the brunette declared.

  “Apologies, ma’am,” the first guard told her, “but that’s just not possible. He can come right back, but he needs to leave until you’re finished.”

  I studied the guards’ weapons before I looked up and down the station street. I hadn’t noticed anyone follow us from the showers, and neither had Honey Bee, so I figured we might be safe for a little longer. Besides, if we put up too much of a protest here, the guards would definitely hold us for questioning to make sure Orla wasn’t being held against her will.

  “It looks like we will be getting food after all,” my chip chimed.

  “Looks like it,” I muttered.

  “Sir, if you would,” the guard said as he gestured away from the ATM.

  “You bet,” I sighed. “Be right back, sweetness.”

  “Trev…” but the princess trailed off.

  I walked away from Orla and the guards, and I had to resist the urge to look over my shoulder every two seconds to make sure they hadn’t figured out who she was. They’d ask her if she was alright or in any trouble, and then they’d ask if she was there of her own free will. I was sure that she’d answer all their questions beautifully, but I honestly didn’t know what she’d do when they inevitably asked her to look them in the eyes to confirm that she was not a hostage of any kind.

  I would have liked to go back to the stall with the syrupy pancakes, but I didn’t want to be that far away from the princess if something went down. Instead, I settled for two fried cones, each made from a thin waffle batter and stuffed full of every kind of meat I could imagine. I stuffed one of them into a take-away container and started on the other one myself.

  I looked back up the street toward the ATM. From what I could tell, the guards and Orla seemed to be having a grand old time. She laughed at something one guard said, and then she laid her hand on the other guard’s arm before he started laughing too. I guessed she had decided to let them see her face, and I wondered how she had managed not to be recognized yet.

  I was over halfway through the fried cone before I realized that I hadn’t even tasted it. I thought it might just be because I was too hungry, but then I realized it might be something else completely. The princess laughed again at something the second guard said, and I felt a little pit of anxiety in my stomach.

  Orla knew what I was now. She knew I had been part of the Vespidae, that I was still connected to them through my chip, even though they thought I was dead. The princess could hand me over in a heartbeat to her father’s forces, and then just find another way to join up with her precious rebels. I knew the stories that the Dominion spread about the Vespidae, and I knew that they were almost all true and that all of them were terrifying enough to justify handing me over.

  But as I watched, the princess just laughed again and grabbed her money out of the machine, and the guards chuckled to themselves as she stuffed the money into her pockets. She wasn’t going to turn me in, after all. I grinned. I must have made quite the impression in the last
twenty-four hours.

  Making a woman orgasm a few dozen times tended to do that.

  But then I noticed something strange about the steady stream of people along the station street. There were too many nods and whispers between different clusters of people to make me comfortable, and I saw that they had all started to move in the same direction.

  Toward Orla.

  She glanced over her shoulder, as if she sensed the movement of the crowd at the same time I did. That was all it took. The crowd of people saw the princess turn around, and as soon as they spotted her face, they ran toward her in a solid wall of human bodies.

  That woman from the showers must have spread the word, and now these fuckers all wanted to claim the princess and her bounty for themselves. They would end up killing each other in their efforts to each claim the princess.

  Or worse, they would end up killing Orla.

  Chapter 15

  “Trevor!” the princess screamed as the crowd reached the plexiglass of the ATM.

  I cursed and dropped the rest of my cone and the takeaway container, and I set off running back to the ATM. To their credit, the guards stepped in front of the princess to try to keep the crowd back, but I didn’t want to rely on their skills or their good will for longer than we had to. I elbowed half a dozen people out of the way as I raced through the crowd.

  By the time I reached the ATM, the mob had thickened in size, and they all pounded fists and cutlery against the plexiglass. The guards had sealed the doors of the ATM, so they stood shoulder to shoulder inside the plexiglass with Orla. I yelled with the crowd so no one looked at me twice, but I really just wanted to buy myself some time to figure out my next move.

  This was not good. For one thing, the princess was trapped behind the plexiglass and two burly Dominion guards, and then there was the small matter of the money-hungry mob all around her. The Skyhawk seemed an eternity away at the moment.

  “Any ideas?” I asked my chip.

  “A significant distraction seems advisable,” Honey Bee responded.

  “Fair enough,” I exhaled. “Care to offer any suggestions?”

  “The fueling docks seem to be the most obvious answer,” she chimed.

  I rolled my eyes. Honey Bee seemed extra testy today, but there wasn’t much I could do about it now. Besides, she was right about the fuel docks. If there was one thing people valued more than money, it was their ships. Especially on a space station. They could have all the money in the world, but if they ended up marooned on a space station in the middle of absolutely nowhere, it wouldn’t do them much good.

  I elbowed my way to the front of the crowd to try to catch Orla’s eye. She was hidden by the Dominion guards, and I realized it would be pointless to bang on the plexiglass of the ATM. Everybody else was already doing that, so she wouldn’t be able to distinguish my knocking from every other asshole’s.

  I just hoped the guards could keep her safe until I got back. I turned around, pushed my way back through the mob, and ran toward the fueling docks. A worker drone tried to ask me if I needed assistance on my way back to the Skyhawk, but I politely thanked him to avoid suspicion and then just hurried onto the boarding ramp of the ship.

  I unlocked the compartment on the boarding ramp and grabbed my laser gun. I couldn’t leave the ship with my weapons in tow, but no one said anything about staying on the ship with my weapons.

  Then I aimed my laser gun at the fuel station across from the Skyhawk and three docks down and took a deep breath. I fixed my sights on the hose that connected the ship to the fuel pump and fired three rounds into the same spot.

  It sparked immediately, but I didn’t wait for it to catch fire. I aimed at the fuel hose at the next station over and fired again, and then one more time at the fuel station beside that one. Then I put the gun away again and raced away from the Skyhawk back to the main street of the space station. As I ran, I felt the heat from the three fuel stations as they exploded beside me.

  Sirens suddenly wailed throughout the whole space station. I knew I had only minutes before this whole plan would go up in smoke. The Antioch would probably have enough fire safety systems in place to extinguish the dock fires before they spread and before they had raged long enough to provide a distraction. But if they didn’t, I still only had minutes before the fire spread quickly enough to catch the Skyhawk herself on fire.

  If that happened, we’d really be fucked.

  When I reached the ATM again, the crowd had lost their focus. Many of them were still trying to get to the princess, but just as many had panicked when they heard the sirens and now milled about like chickens with their heads cut off. Some fled back toward the fueling docks, and others just ran around and hoped someone would just tell them what to do.

  I fought my way through the mob again and banged on the back of the plexiglass booth. Orla turned toward me, and her green eyes filled with relief when she saw me. The two guards followed her gaze but shook their heads at the princess.

  I rolled my eyes behind my shielding glasses. These fuckers wanted to protect the princess, alright, but I would have bet that asshole’s piece of garbage ship that they only wanted to protect her so they could claim her reward for themselves.

  “What’s one more complication?” I muttered.

  “Just another challenge,” Honey Bee chimed happily.

  I studied the plexiglass case to try to find a way in. If I’d had my weapons, it would have been no problem, but it was a tad harder to bust into a plexiglass booth without so much as a hunting knife.

  The first thing I noticed was that it didn’t lock. It just slid shut, probably so no one could barricade themselves in it for very long. The booth was small enough that when the guards stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the sliding door, there was no way for anyone to bust into it. At least not without some sort of battering ram.

  Inside the booth, Orla tried to slip past the guards and take her chances with the crowd. The guards both adjusted their stances to keep her from passing, and one of them grabbed her by the shoulders and moved her toward the back of the booth. She winced at the strength of the man’s grip, and I growled.

  “One battering ram, coming up,” I muttered.

  I elbowed the man beside me. He seemed unconcerned by the sirens of the Antioch, and he was a big fellow, so I figured he might do the trick.

  “What?” the big man thundered.

  “See that roasting spit down at the meat stall?” I asked. “Don’t you think it might make it easier to break this fucker down and grab her?”

  The big man glanced at the huge roasting spit down the street and then back at the princess in the booth.

  “Might do,” he answered with a nod. “I’ll split the bounty with you, if you help me get her.”

  “I’ll help you get her, if you help me bust down this booth,” I promised. “Just grab that roasting spit, would you?”

  The man grinned and ran off, and I rolled my eyes again. Most people really did prefer someone to tell them what to do. But then, most people were suckers, so if they couldn’t tell when someone was lying straight to their faces, then fuck ‘em.

  The big man shoved aside the stall vendors and ripped the roasting spit free. He had at least grabbed some cloths so that the heat of the spit wouldn’t burn straight through his skin, but he didn’t even bother to take the meat off the spit. Instead, he just ran back toward me with the sharp end of the spit pointed forward, and every few feet, another hunk of tenderized pork shook loose from the spit and fell to the ground.

  It was damn near tragic.

  “Step aside, we’ve got a plan!” I shouted.

  The mob parted as the big man bulldozed forward with the spit in tow. He slammed the sharp end into the plexiglass, and the tiniest of cracks appeared on the sliding door. Again and again, the big man pulled it back and slammed forward. The cracks spread across the booth door, and the guards whispered back and forth inside the ATM to try to figure out what steps to take next.

&
nbsp; The cracks continued to spread. Finally, the first guard shifted to the back of the ATM, unlocked the machine, and grabbed a few fistfuls of cash. He handed the cash to the second guard. As soon as the big man reared back from the booth to gear up for another hit, the second guard flung open the booth door and threw the wads of cash into the middle of the mob.

  It was a clever move. Of course, the crowd was so distracted by the free money that they forgot all about the princess and the bigger payday she offered. After all, it would have been a lot of trouble to kidnap Orla and then sell her back to the Dominion. It was much easier to just go down on your hands and knees and scrounge for the free cash someone had just thrown at you.

  The guards took advantage of the crowd’s distraction. They each grabbed one of Orla’s arms and hustled her out of the booth. Even as they moved her away from the mob, I saw that the big man with the roasting spit was not going to be so easily distracted.

  He ran straight for the guard on the brunette’s right, and I ducked through the mob on their hands and knees, but the big man had a head start. He skewered the guard from behind and ran the pointed spit straight through the man’s stomach.

  The guard dropped with a little cry. Orla screamed as the big man dropped the spit and grabbed at her instead, but by then, I had caught up to them. I leaped toward the big man and smacked him across the ear with my elbow. He reeled backward, and I slammed my fist into his throat. He gagged and wobbled away in such a zigzag that I figured if he could see anything right now, it was just a bunch of starbursts across his vision.

  I turned toward Orla and the remaining guard. He pulled the brunette behind himself and raised his nightstick.

  “Hiya, princess,” I said with a grin. “And here I was, thinking you and the boys here were getting along just great. You all looked so chummy, and I thought, how nice, we’ve finally run into some decent humans.”