‘You have no supplies or fuel to offer ships accessing this station?’
‘Ah, not much of that, no.’
He launched out of his seat. ‘You are lying to me,’ he yelled.
I flinched and covered my ears. ‘Not lying. I’ll show you.’
‘Oh, there is no need for that. I scouted around last night and did a sensor sweep. You are in serious trouble, Ms Stroder.’
‘I am? Why? What have I done?’ I hated the way my face heated.
He drew closer, almost nose to nose. ‘Embezzled funds, stolen supplies, destroyed AllEarth Corp property. Need I continue?’ He retreated backwards, nodding his head knowingly.
I stared open mouthed for a bit. ‘What does embezzled mean?’
‘Theft, Ms Stroder.’
‘We haven’t stolen anything. We’ve had no supplies for years I tell you. I don’t even have clothes.’ I plucked at my body stocking. Unfortunately, a piece tore off in my hand. ‘See,’ I said waving it at him. He peered at it, revulsion etched on his face.
My outburst stalled him. Then after a few moments, his brow furrowed and he added, ‘Embezzled means you took money, the Corp’s money, and took it for yourself.’
My eyebrows shot up. ‘You’re kidding me. Aren’t you?’
‘No. Here, look at these transactions.’ He turned a storage wafer in his hand and passed it to me. I stared at it uncomprehendingly at first and then I saw it. Money transfers to Captain Stroder, salary, supply purchases, crew bonuses and more. Then there was even a list of supply deliveries. I scrolled through the list, shaking my head. There were hundreds of them over the years.
A tear of fear escaped. ‘None of these supplies ever came here, Mr Anton.’ I handed the list back and gulped. ‘But I’m worried about what happens now.’
‘You will be taken back to Earth for trial.’
‘But I haven’t done anything. I don’t know about these supplies. Surely your link to the datacore told you that? Haven’t you scanned the supply holds…what’s left of them?’
‘Yes.’
‘And were there signs? Even a drop of grain or a smattering of fuel or a crumb of bread?’ My hands had near ripped the padding off the seat. I don’t think I’d ever been so scared before. I had thought Mr Anton would make a handsome vidmovie actor. At that moment, I decided that I didn’t like him at all. He wasn’t nearly good looking enough for the job.
Chapter Five
Identity Crisis
Mr Anton looked down at his wafer, appearing to scroll through it and then he looked me in the eye. ‘No. There were no signs. But perhaps you sold them on to these pirates. I mean your story doesn’t ring true, Ms Stroder. If that is who you really are.’ His voice became a knife, making me flinch.
Right, I was sick of his accusations and his tone.
‘Who else would I be?’ I was interested to hear, as being Rae Stroder hadn’t been too much fun so far. I had no memory of my mother or my life before I came to the outpost.
‘Captain Stroder was never married and had no children according to our records.’
I blinked. ‘Really? So what if they never married. A lot of people don’t bother.’ He was glaring at me, so I drew my eyebrows down into a frown. But I couldn’t keep it up and I began to twist my grimy hands.
‘Yes. You are a liar and a thief. The condition of this station is a disgrace to AllEarth Corp. Thank god I implemented this series of random audits or the company would… Never mind, I can see you are not interested.’
I was shaking my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a light flashing on the command console. At first, I ignored it, as I was lost in my own misery. This wasn’t how I dreamed of leaving this place. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
Remorse got the better of me. ‘Yes,’ I admitted, hanging my head in shame. ‘The outpost is a disgrace. Dad would be very angry if he saw it.’ I looked at Mr Anton then, into his dark fathomless eyes. ‘But what choice did we have? We had to trade scrap for a bit of food now and then. There is nothing of value here so the pirates leave us alone mostly. Like I said there have been no supplies, for years.’
‘But the records show these transactions. More transactions than are reasonable. Why do you think I’m here? I had to investigate. A lot of money has passed through your father’s account.’
‘But I tell you he’s dead, taken by the pirates, really mean pirates. Someone else must be behind these.’
‘Ms… Rae. Do you consent to a gen scan?’ Already he was readying his equipment.
‘What’s a gen scan? Does it hurt?’ I began to scratch. I’d probably developed a nervous rash.
‘It won’t hurt, though it will identify you, if your parents are in the database, that is.’
‘Sure, but I already know who my father is and my mother died when I was little.’
Mr Anton fired up the scan and he held the scan gun over my hair, hands and eyes. It didn’t hurt but I felt weird. This situation wasn’t on my checklist and his ship’s on-board gravity was making me feel ill. It wasn’t what I was used to as it was lighter than the outpost.
He had his back to me as he read the results. ‘There, I knew it.’
‘What?’ I edged out of my seat.
‘You are not Stroder’s daughter.’
I fell back into the chair as my heart did a flip-flop. ‘I’m not? Are you saying my mother was unfaithful?’ My heart sank. My life was just like a vidmovie.
‘No. Your parents are both alive and living on Earth. Wait a minute, I will correlate the results with the news codex.’ The light still flashed on the console almost in time with my heartbeat.
‘Interesting. Now this does put a different slant on things.’ He looked up, his black eyes comparing my face to his readout. I felt uneasy as he studied me quite closely.
‘Why are you looking at me like that? It doesn’t say my parents are aliens or something does it?’ I didn’t know much, but being associated with aliens or being part alien was pretty bad. Or so the vidmovies said.
‘No. I don’t know how to break this to you. According to the newscast archives, you were kidnapped years ago on Earth. It doesn’t say much here but your parents must have been important or rich.’
He stilled as he began to mull things over. I could tell because he was rubbing his chin again. He turned slightly and noticed the light flashing on the console. He went over to it. ‘That’s strange,’ he said as he fired up his scanners.
‘What?’ I asked, still stunned by what he had told me. I only remembered Captain Stroder. I only knew him. He was my only parent.
‘Another ship,’ he said but his tone was different, curious. Not the hard and concise auditor I’d come to know.
He fired up the view screen and zoomed in. The ship looked very similar to his. He frowned, and I became nervous. Two ships in such a short space of time, that was more than a coincidence, it was downright suspicious. Mr Anton must have thought the same because he threw himself away from the command console while I stood mesmerised.
‘Move,’ the auditor shouted. He grabbed me by the elbow, dragged me down the corridor and shunted me out of the hatch.
There was a flash of red and Lollydrop’s hatch snapped in place, severing me from the ship and Mr Anton, who knew so much and told so little.
The planking under my feet shuddered. The outpost was under attack. I ran, dodging falling pieces of ceiling and severed cables. There was a hiss as Lollydrop’s manoeuvring thrusters fired and the tie lines disconnected. The ship lurched once then steadied.
The ship was on emergency launch, and I had to find Gris.
I ducked through to the main corridor and hit the internal comms. ‘Gris. Gris.’ Static bubbled out of the speakers. ‘Come in.’
There was more crackling and Anton’s voice came over the comms. He was swearing like a pirate. ‘Rae take cover—I’ll try and lead them away. Rae?’ The comms died.
I was left to guess where Gris was. I ducked into shadows and c
rept towards the control room, using my mask to help me breathe. The smell of ozone was strong and the air, not good at the best of times, was heavy with smoke. Three corridors short of my target I saw shadows and heard boots scraping on metal planking. My breath caught in my throat. Gris’ familiar face loomed out of the shadows.
I ripped off my face mask. ‘Gris,’ I cried, launching myself at him to hug him close. His huge arms came around me and squeezed. ‘Oh Gris, I thought you were hurt.’
The squeezing didn’t stop. ‘Gris,’ I said through clenched teeth. ‘You’re hurting me.’ I looked up and saw the blood leaking from his scalp. His face was blanker than usual and there was no sign of recognition. ‘No, Gris it’s me.’ His hold didn’t let up. Darkness grew on the edge of my vision and swallowed up my consciousness.
Chapter Six
Pirates’ Pleasure
Cold, hard planking under my chin brought me to wakefulness. A headache thumped in my temples, the after effect of oxygen deprivation. My ribs didn’t feel too good either. I felt my head. It was whole and wasn’t leaking blood but that was the extent of my good fortune.
As the haze cleared, I noticed there was someone sitting on a chair in front of me. Whoever they were, they were hard to distinguish from the grey fuzz I could see all around me. I tried to focus, but that just made my head spin.
‘Hello, Rae,’ said my father’s voice.
I sat up, wincing. I had to hold my ribs with my arm to ease the pain. ‘Dad?’ I said, throatily. Fire and screaming had worn my voice thin.
My vision cleared as I blinked rapidly. My Dad was tied up. He had a slight cut on his forehead and his hair was messy, although his uniform looked fresh and clean. He was almost like I remembered him. Although there was something in his eyes, a rheumy redness, that wasn’t there before and his hair was almost white.
I crawled over to him, though I felt like retching. Using his lap to climb up, I nudged around looking for his bindings. ‘Let me free you. I thought…you were dead. I don’t understand.’ My eyes misted over and I sniffed. So much pleasure and pain mixed together on seeing him.
‘I thought I was dead, too, sweet. But they kept me alive. I was so worried about you,’ he said in that familiar voice. It was too much to take in. It was like talking to a ghost. I had a hard time believing that this was really happening.
I undid the bindings, but he still sat there with me up close. His tired old eyes looked me over and he said, ‘Did the AllEarth Corp guy send any transmissions, Rae?’
Puzzled, I eased myself up to stand and looked around. ‘Where is Mr Anton?’
‘Dead I think,’ said my father, though he didn’t sound confident.
‘Dead?’ I stared at him in disbelief and backed away. This had to be some kind of nightmare. ‘Oh, no this can’t be happening.’
‘I asked if he sent any transmissions.’ My father’s voice hardened, and he sprung out of the chair to tower over me.
‘How would I know?’ I gaped at him, looking at his familiar and much mourned face. I felt so guilty about the outpost but I was confused, too. If he wasn’t dead why hadn’t my Dad come for me? And what about what Alwin Anton had said. Was he lying? What was the truth?
My father leaned in closer his words sharp and demanding. ‘Rae, it is standard procedure to monitor transmissions of docked ships.’
I was riveted to the spot. ‘Really? But no ships ever docked while I’ve been in charge. It wasn’t on your emergency checklist.’ My fists curled up, tight with tension. Something wasn’t right. I found a focus for my anger. ‘That was a stupid list by the way. How come you never let me know you were alive? Gris said he saw your body. Where is Gris? He…’
The door slid open and Captain Stroder turned round at a leisurely pace. Another man walked in, a pirate by the look of him, his dark greasy eyes looked me up and down. No one had ever looked at me that way before and I instinctively didn’t like it.
‘Well, Captain, what have you found out?’
‘Nothing of importance,’ said my father. ‘I told you she was useless and as thick as solid, titanium-plate shielding. What about the AllEarth Corp investigator?’
He turned away from me and started to walk out with the pirate. They didn’t even spare me a glance. A knot of boiling anger rose, dampening my fear. The realisation that the auditor had been telling the truth hit me. Stroder wasn’t my father. My whole life was a lie.
‘We haven’t got him yet. Managed to slip behind the asteroid and blind our sensors,’ said the pirate half in and half out of the room.
‘We have to make sure he doesn’t get away.’
‘Excuse me,’ I said, my voice choked with emotion. My fake father swung around, his eyes, once kindly, were now hard.
I squirmed as he looked me up and down, sneering at me like I was scum. If he had punched me in the gut, he couldn’t have hurt my feelings more.
‘Mmmm I guess we will have to do something with you. You’re old enough for the slave market. I can recoup my costs and get some compensation for the years of boredom of being with you.’
‘She’ll get a good price once we clean her up.’ The pirate leered at me. I cringed away. Captain Stroder’s eyes lingered on my breasts and my legs. The look on his face made me want to puke.
‘Mmm, yes never noticed the potential before.’
I found a wall inside me that wouldn’t let me back away. I straightened up and ignored the way they ogled me. ‘Mr Anton said I was kidnapped. But you’re the only Dad I remember.’
The slap on my cheek made my face burn. ‘Shut up.’ Stroder grabbed my arm and dragged me along. Still dazed I heard him say to the pirate, ‘Jackal, find the auditor and kill him and while you’re at it set up a rendezvous with the slavers. I’ll be wanting top price.’
Chapter Seven
Pirate Women
I resisted the attempts to beautify me as long as I could. Mostly I did it on principle. I felt so bad, so depressed, that most of the time I didn’t care what happened. I was still dealing with the fact that my life was a lie. I wasn’t Rae Stroder. The man I had loved as a father was not dead, or my father, and was making very firm plans to sell me on an illegal slave market.
At least a few of the female pirates gained bruises in their attempts to bathe me. Warty, a particularly nasty pirate woman, bound me to a hook on the wall and ripped my clothes off my back. She brought pliers to cut the metal reinforced ties that held the metal plating.
‘You’re disgusting,’ she said, as she let scraps of my body-stocking drop from her hand. She was shorter than me, much older and had three warts on her face. That didn’t really make her ugly, but I guess that’s where she got her name. Her ship suit was red and her breasts bulged out of the split at the front that went all the way down to her navel. She didn’t have much to hide, I thought, when I saw almost all of her white breasts float around, barely constrained by her suit. I could even see a small trace work of blue veins.
I wouldn’t be caught dead exposing myself that way. Lush, a tall thin woman with a purple scar from the tip of her chin to the top of her collar bone came over to stare at me, strung up and naked. Her lips were large and glossed. I didn’t like the way she looked at me. ‘Better wash her real good. I’ll help you.’
‘Bugger off,’ I yelled. Both Warty and Lush thought that was hilarious, if their laughing and slapping of thighs was anything to go by. I hated being hung up, naked and dirty with them looking at me and making comments. More pirate women came in.
‘Hi, I’m Case,’ said a girl only a few years older than me. Her eyes were clear blue and hard and her lips were thin. Her head was shaved and she was flat-chested. But it was the way her face twitched that unnerved me.
She was shoved aside by Venus, a huge dark-skinned woman, with hands bigger than Gris’. Next to her was a swarthy girl, pretty and slim. She didn’t smile, and the others called her Nipper.
Warty walked up to me again. ‘I’m going to unhook you and then you bathe.’
‘No way,’ I shouted, cursing them, and brought my foot up to kick her in the gut. Venus grabbed me from behind and lifted me off the hook. They all grabbed bits of me and stretched me out so I couldn’t kick, scratch and bite. They managed to hold me in the san cubicle to wash me in real water for a whole 10 minutes. Afterwards, my voice was hoarse. I must have screamed the place down.
I watched the water sink into the hole in the san unit. I’d never used so much water in my whole life and had never washed in it as far as I could remember. Even on Earth, it was a luxury only the rich could afford, or so I’d heard.
I did feel better afterwards. I didn’t even cry when they trashed my clothes in the garbage chute. I had hated those for a long time, though I did balk at the ones they wanted me to wear. ‘I’m not wearing those,’ I said, shaking my head. I was huddled naked near the san unit. ‘Give me a ship suit and I’ll wear it, but not those.’
All that time I had been craving a real ship suit, just like the ones in the vidmovies and what they gave me to wear was something else all together.
Lush grabbed me by the hair and shook me. ‘Put them on sweet, or you’ll tempt me to beat the defiance out of you.’
I turned, clutching my hair to ease the pull, and saw her lips close to my neck, tongue ready to lick my skin. Eww, I thought. That woman was disgusting. They all were.
‘Okay,’ I said, turning to the others. I didn’t like Lush at all or the way she looked at me. I seem to remember a character like her in one of the vids I had watched. The character did bad things and I expected Lush would too. ‘Give them to me.’
Lush let me go, and I escaped into the hands of the others. They draped me in pieces of translucent cloth, a mixture soft blues, whites and mauves. The sheer fabric was tied together and hung in layers. It felt kind of strange, like I was still naked and yet not. When I took a step, the clothing floated and moved around me, caressing my skin.
Then they sat me down and brushed my hair. While the last strokes drew down my back, I studied myself in the mirror. My hair shone like starlight. I never knew my straggly locks had auburn lights in them.
Rayessa and the Space Pirates Page 3