Smuggler's Legacy

by Bradford Bates

  All of the pirates were looking towards their fallen comrades as I ran out of the ship. At vampire speed, I doubted that anyone caught more than a quick blur moving out of the corners of their eyes. It would surprise me if any of the pirates would have gleaned enough out of their peripheral vision to turn and look. Not with the shower of bolts the crew was firing into the pirates. It wouldn’t matter if they looked anyway. By the time they turned their heads around I’d already be gone.

  I heard the first shots pinging off the hull of the Star Talon as I left the docking bay of the larger vessel. Drake had told me what the most likely layouts were, so I had a general sense of where to go. Gunfire was out for now, at least for as long as I wanted to stay stealthy. I pulled my swords free and continued to move as fast as I could. Moving this quickly for long periods of time would drain my energy, but that wouldn’t matter as long as I had someone to feed on. From the size of our greeting party I had a feeling finding an unwilling donor or two wouldn’t be an issue.

  I slowed as a door opened on the right side of the hallway. Three men ran around the corner, guns pointed towards the deck. I ran up the side of the wall watching their mouths open in shock as I jumped off and brought my swords down into two of their chests. I let the blades go spinning around the falling bodies so I ended up behind the third man. Pulling the struggling man tight against me almost made me gag as the smell of his unwashed flesh wafted over me. Despite the smell, my lips caressed his neck a split second before I plunged my fangs deep into his throat, the fresh blood washing away the bitter taste of dried sweat in an instant.

  The man’s back arched and he let out a deep moan as if he were in the grip of an intense orgasm. The gross fact was he actually might have been having one, the bite affected people differently from time to time. His legs started to spasm as more of his life force poured down my throat. Slightly disgusted I pulled away from his throat making sure to rip out a huge chunk of the veins in his neck as I did. I spat the remains of his neck out and stepped over his corpse to reclaim my swords from his friends’ chests. Only three kills so far, I had more work to do if I was going to catch up with the boys.

  A quick check of the room the men had exited revealed a few soiled mattresses lying on the ground. By each mattress, there was a woman. All of them had a cuff on their ankle and a chain running from the cuff towards a bolt attached to the wall. It took a moment for it to dawn on me that they were trapped here, and a whole nother second for it to kick in what they were being used for. I felt the rage wash over me. None of these men deserved to live. It didn’t matter to me if you started out as a hooker or as a girl in flight school. Once someone took away your right to choose, it was slavery and rape.

  The women moved away from me as I entered the room, each of them moving towards the wall and hunkering down with fear. I sent out a wave of calming energy as I moved towards the first woman. I raised my sword, and she screamed in fear. Realizing how stupid I had been, I took a step back lowering the blade.

  “It’s ok. I’m just going to cut you free from the wall. We can work on getting you out of that manacle later.”

  The woman didn’t respond, at least not verbally. She looked up towards me with just a hint of hope in her eyes before the look faded into one of deep mistrust. I guess being covered in pirate number three’s blood was making me out to be a less than credible source for emancipation.

  She took a few hurried steps back and tried to press herself into the wall. That simple action reminded me of a time in my life that I would rather keep locked in the past. It was easy to see that she had been traumatized. They all had. Somehow it made it worse for me knowing that these women would never be the same.

  Being imprisoned and raped wasn’t a trauma that just faded over time. Something like that left you with scars that would never heal. All you could do was try and move forward, even when it seemed impossible. If she ever wanted to have a shot at a normal life, it was going to take work, lots and lots of work, and even then the outcome was less than guaranteed.

  Before she could think to react or scream, I slashed out with my blade cutting neatly through the metal chain. When I didn’t follow up with a killing blow, the woman slid to the floor face buried in her hands. Her chest hitched as she sobbed. While the other women were focused on their friend, I moved to quickly cut them free as well. I left them there in stunned silence and headed towards the door.

  Stepping out into the hallway, I collected the guns from the men I had killed. Bringing them back into the room, I set them against the wall before turning back towards the women. All of them were watching me with rapt, albeit somewhat vacant, looks. It was going to take more than a few minutes for it to settle in that they were actually free.

  “Arm yourselves and wait here. I’ll come back for you once we’ve dealt with the rest of them.” I didn’t wait to see if they understood. I was behind schedule, and my team was counting on me. I kicked it back into vampire speed and started running towards what I hoped was the bridge.

  Two lefts and two right-hand turns brought me to a long straight hallway. I was pretty sure that I was in the right place because eight men were guarding the door. This time I didn’t slow down as I charged the waiting guards. Instead I ran up the side of the wall until I reached the roof and continued sprinting forward. Hopefully, I could kill all of these men without a sound. The last thing I wanted to do was alert the bridge to my presence, and gunfire from right outside the door would surely do that. If that happened I’d have to find a way to cut through that giant fucking steel door, and that wasn’t going to be easy.

  Once the men were below me I dropped from the roof into the center of them killing two men as my feet hit the ground. Pulling my swords free from their backs only took a simple flick of the wrist. The same quick motion killed the two men standing next to them. Spinning as I pulled the blades free this time I killed the two on my left, before turning back towards the last two remaining men on my right. My blades flew towards them just as their faces scrunched up in anger. They had finally realized that something wasn’t right and that death was walking among them. One of the men went down without a problem, but my left sword caught the edge of the last man’s rifle and I missed his heart. He fired twice into the floor before I could drop the sword and slam my dagger under his chin.

  His comm started to squawk. “Derick, what in the hell is going on out there?”

  The dagger made a slurping sound as I pulled it free. I wiped the blade off on the man’s clothes. There was no way to tell for sure, but I think that wiping the blade off on him might have actually made the blade dirtier than it had been. What was with pirates thinking it was ok to shower once a year and never wash their clothes? Slipping the dagger back into my belt, I searched for scraps of cloth on the deceased that were clean enough to wipe my swords on. Once that surprisingly difficult task was complete, I slipped my swords into the harness on my back. One quick look around confirmed that the hallway was still clear and that no one was coming to help the fallen. The man on the comm continued to ask his team for a status.

  The door didn’t open when I tried it. I wasn’t really surprised, but I had hoped that this would go easier. How much time would it take me to hack through the steel door with a sword? The answer was simple. More time than we had. That meant I was going to have to count on Ice if we were going to have a chance to make it through this. I pulled a small device out from my armored vest, thanking the stars it was still there and in one piece. Fighting at vampire speed tended to destroy a lot of electronics, not to mention clothes. I placed the device against the lock and hit my comm.

  “Baby girl, I’ve got a job for you.”

  “You know I love it when you talk sweet to me, so lay it on thick,” Ice replied, relishing the byplay.

  “Oh, I’ve just got a simple job I need help with. Nothing the best hacker in the verse can’t handle with relative ease, I’m sure. But if you could lower yourself to the demeaning level of opening the door in fr
ont of me, I would be forever in your debt.”

  “I knew someone understood the epic level of my genius. And because you asked so sweetly, I’ll help you out. Just know that a job like this doesn’t even scratch the surface or make a splash in the depths of my talent pool. In fact, it’s so far below the standards of the pure awesomeness that is me, that when you get back to the Talon I’ll modify that chip so it will bust any lock you put it on automatically.”

  “But then I wouldn’t get to hear your sexy voice. I’m convinced that it’s not worth the trade-off.”

  “Now you’re just laying it on so thick it’s losing the appeal. Kind of like when you dive into a piece of that Reese’s Cheesecake from Galaxy Factory. You start off thinking this is the best, but maybe a little too rich. After half a slice you’re begging God to take the sugar back out of your body so you don’t die or throw up. After you finish the whole thing you’re oddly satisfied but on the verge of going into diabetic shock or falling asleep and never waking up again. So I’m going to save you from becoming that piece of cheesecake right now by opening that door.”

  The door opened, and I grabbed the device. “Thanks, sweetness, I owe you one.”

  “Can that one be a slice of the aforementioned cheesecake?” Ice said with a laugh.

  “You mean the cheesecake so rich you don’t know if you’ll live or die?”

  “Yeah, but it’s totally worth it,” Ice said with a snicker.

  Shaking my head, I walked onto the bridge pulling my pistols free from my thighs as I did. A beast of a man turned away from the console in front of him to stare at me. He had flaming red hair that was shaved on the sides. The sides of his head were covered in tattoos that ran down his neck and onto his hairy chest. His shirt was ripped open from the collar down to his navel, but oddly enough was still tucked into his pants.

  “You made a big mistake in coming here,” he growled.

  My hand moved up into a shooting position just as he finished saying the word mistake. I felt my wrist move just a fraction as I pulled the trigger. The slight correction made sure my aim was spot on. The man’s head snapped back as the bullet tore through his skull. The console behind him was covered in blood and bits of skull. His body bounced and slammed into the console before crashing to the floor. “Not as big of a mistake as only bringing words to a gunfight.”

  I kicked his body out of the way and slid into the chair. I placed Ice’s device on the console and commed her again. “I’ll buy you a whole damned cheesecake if you can hack their system and take control of the ship.”

  “Now you’re just being lazy,” Ice said with a smile you could hear a mile away. “Then again, it’s always nice to be appreciated.”

  “Hey, you’re just kicking back in your favorite chair right now. You don’t even want to know what I’m standing in, and to top that off, I had to drink from one of these unwashed heathens.”

  “Gross.”

  “Tell me about it. You don’t even want to know. That guy smelled like that sewer we crawled out of during the job in Dusktown.”

  Ice made a slight gagging sound over the comm before continuing. “Ok, you win. Drinking from unwashed pirates is definitely worse than drinking a cup of Drake’s coffee, although not by much.” A few seconds of silence was followed by a squeal of delight. “I’ve got control of the entire ship, nice job Night Angel.”

  “Night Angel, you can do better than that.”

  “You’re right, you are covered in blood a little too often to be called an angel.”

  At least you’re starting to conceptualize your limitations.” I moved off of the bridge and back into the hallway. “Seal the bridge. I’m going to check for survivors.”

  “Did you just smile creepily as you said that? Cause I imagined it kind of like one of the horror vids. A smile spread across her face as she waded through the fallen, making sure each and every one of them had been properly extinguished.”

  “How much of Drake’s coffee have you had?”

  “I’m on the border of hand tremors, Fang.”

  “That might even be worse than Night Angel,” I said with a sigh.

  “Hey, it’s still a work in progress. I’ll come up with something you like eventually,” Ice tried to reassure me, but she had just a hint of frustration tugging at the edges of her humor.

  “Why do we even need call signs?”

  “In case we feel the need to go incognito.”

  “Whatever. Just don’t name me after my hair or my teeth, in fact, try and keep my body parts out of the description.”

  “Be careful, or I’ll make a name like Honey Nips stick to you like glue.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Imagine the surprise on someone’s face when they were killed by Agent Honey Nips. “You win. Just come up with something good, or I’m going to stare into your eyes and make it so you like men.”

  “Those big sweaty things, not a chance. There is no need to go cruel and unusual. I won’t let a girl down. I mean especially not one that buys me cheesecake. Granted, that does mean you're also forcing me to work out while catering to my indulgences. So it’s a doubled edged sword.”

  “I think next time I might just call Kyra and have her relay the information to you.” I let out a little chuckle as I closed the line. Ice was a real character when you got to know her, and when she was under stress it got all kinds of worse. Still, nothing cut through the pain like laughter, and she had plenty of that to share with all of us.

  Heading out into the hallway, I wondered what it would feel like to eat real food again. Whenever I held a man in my arms now, my first thought was always what he tasted like instead of what I wanted to do to him. There would be time to indulge in the joys of manflesh later. Now I needed to do a room by room search as I made my way back towards Drake and the boys. I had a feeling there were more women trapped on this ship, and I wanted to free them all as soon as possible.

  Chapter 8

  Drake

  The total count of survivors that mattered was thirty-six. The total number of surviving pirates was two. Most of the rescued were women the pirates had stolen or purchased, although it wasn’t just women that we found. A few were young men that had been taken and forced to work cleaning up after the disgusting animals we had just spent the last few hours killing.

  It seemed that none of the victims had escaped untouched by these men’s cruelty. Some of them would find a way to put this behind them and move on, others wouldn’t. For those that couldn’t find a way past their trauma, life was going to be a battle between hatred and self-loathing, probably tied tightly together with a pretty healthy drug habit. That was until they decided to end their lives or the drugs did it for them. Not everyone was cut out to put this kind of thing in the rearview, but I hoped that what we did today would bring them just a tiny sliver of peace.

  Earlier I’d decided to jettison two of the escape pods from the ship. It would lower the value I received when I sent it back to the mercenary’s guild to be sold, but for this, it was worth it. Nothing said you’re a prisoner that’s about to die like being shoved into an empty airlock out in the black.

  Some people would have said what I was doing was wrong, but they hadn’t seen how the women here had been tied up and used for these men’s sadistic pleasures. They didn’t see the buckets they were fed out of or the fact that they hadn’t been allowed to wash for weeks. That was the thing with the do-gooders. They always wanted everyone to have their day in court, but me, I was willing to save the N.E.A. a few bucks in prison bills to end these men right here.

  Marching the two men into the airlocks had been easier than I expected. Apparently, getting your ass kicked by a vampire and a woman with a rather large rifle had taken all the fight out of them. Frankly, I was kind of shocked that they had been left alive, but now that we had a chance to give something back to the victims, it just felt right.

  Two women and one young boy silently walked up to the hatch on the first escape pod. We had been ab
le to scrounge up some clothes for them, but they had refused to put them on until they had a chance to wash up. It broke my heart to see them walking forward covered in filth, dirty clothes hanging from them in tatters. They stopped almost as one and looked through the glass at one of the men that had tortured them. The man screamed and banged against the glass, finally realizing what was going to happen. The two women put their arms on the young man’s shoulders. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen, and it sickened me to think of what they had done to him. His shoulders slumped at the women’s touch, and his body started to shake with sobs.

  I felt a tear streak down my cheek, and Maze put an arm around my waist and leaned into my side. Her presence hardened my resolve and took the edge off of some of my emotions. Getting launched into space was too good for this man. Not that having your eyes burst from the pressure before the air in your lungs froze was painless, but it almost felt like it just wasn’t painful enough.

  One of the women whispered something to the young man, and his shoulders stopped hitching. It took him a few moments to finish his sobs, and he used part of his filthy shirt to wipe his face before he moved forward. He looked through the glass, and his posture changed. I knew he had decided to act. The two women tightened their grip on his shoulders as he reached up and hit the manual release for the escape pod hatch. The man inside screamed and banged his hand against the glass viewport once more before he was sucked out into the darkness of space.

  The boy turned around, and for a brief moment I thought I saw a smile on his face. The two women stayed close to him as they walked back towards the others. It was almost as if they had claimed him as one of their own. I knew those two would protect him at any cost. As he passed me he stopped and looked up into my eyes.