Skulls & Crossbones

by Andi Marquette

  "But you were the pirate. You were the leader."

  "That was a game. This isn't."

  Tate closed her eyes against Emily's disappointment. The pressure on her throat lessened, and she let herself sag to the floor. Emily knelt and pulled her into a tight embrace. They sat together, quiet.

  This wasn't how she wanted them to end. All she had wanted was a life with Emily, a perfect life. Nothing else had mattered. She had thought that if she waited long enough, kept Emily safe, that eventually they'd have that. The war wouldn't last forever. It couldn't. They'd never been in any real danger. Until now.

  She felt Emily's tears on her neck. The shrill of a proximity alarm turned their attention away from each other. Ul approached. "No point in arguing anymore, I suppose," Tate said.

  Emily released her and sat back wiping her face. "I'm dead, Tate. You can't protect me."

  Tate rubbed her throat and went to her seat at the helm. "You're not dead yet." She felt Emily watching her. "I could use someone on weapons," she said, pushing Gunner's clothes to the floor. "We seem to be short handed." Emily eased into the seat. "What do you have in mind?"

  "I'm not sure. Just get your hands on the triggers and be ready to fire until we run out of ammo. Better buckle in."

  Emily fastened her harness then gripped the controls and flexed her fingers to test her reach to the buttons. "It's been a long time since I've fired a gun."

  Tate glanced at the aft view screen and saw Ul's ship approaching. She engaged the engines and spun the little craft about, facing their enemy. "Hang on," she said, then maxed the accelerator, and they bolted forward. "Fire, Em!"

  Lasers and torpedoes shot from the Sea Devil. Just as Emily refined her aim and got a hit, Ul started firing back, and Tate slammed them into an evasive pattern, threading his laser fire. Emily adjusted and got a few hits, but the armored ship showed no sign of damage. Tate peeled off to starboard, rolled the Sea Devil, and passed under Ul. Emily switched to the rear guns and kept firing as they circled around the big ship and sped away. "It'll take him a few minutes to turn around," Tate said, breathless. She straightened their course and burned the engines into the red zone. Alarms shrieked. Tate turned to Emily and smiled. "We could really use an engineer right now."

  Emily still gripped the gun controls, though she'd stopped firing once they were out of range. She checked the sensors. "He's coming."

  Tate looked out the front window. A small cloud grew as they approached. "Think that's a nebula?" she asked. "Maybe we can hide there."

  Emily let go of the weapons and examined the sensor readouts. "Wait, T, that's not a—"

  "Crap!" Tate reversed the engines and they both crashed into their harnesses then lurched back in their seats, staring out the window. The Sea Devil slowed to a stop amid a debris field. Flashes in the distance registered on the sensors as nuclear explosions. Radiation clouds glowed, lit by laser fire and detonations. Bits of what had once been warships floated by. In the distance, intact ships danced in a choreography of death. For years the pirates had operated on the periphery of the war. Tate had never seen it up close. What looked out the window to be a cloud with insects buzzing and flashing, the sensors revealed as thousands of vessels engaged in battle, ranging across millions of miles. A wall of war to the fore, Ul closing in aft. Tate banged her fist on the console and groaned in frustration. Emily placed a hand on hers. Her voice was steady. "It's okay, T. You did your best. Save yourself now. Please."

  Tate looked at her. Emily's eyes were wet but retained their fierceness.

  "You really don't get it, do you?" Tate said.

  "Get what?"

  Tate shook her head and turned back to her controls. There was no point in explaining it now, and they didn't have time to argue. She turned the Sea Devil toward Ul and engaged the engines. Emily watched her, then put her hands back on the gun controls. The fuel gauge alarm sounded, the engine overload warning lights flashed. Tate ignored them. Ul began firing as soon as he was in range. Emily fired back, and Tate spun them through elaborate evasive maneuvers until the port engine gave out and they spiraled out of control. She lit the thrusters to stabilize the ship just as Ul shot out their remaining engine. Emily continued to fire and knocked out four of his guns before the trigger clicked and nothing happened.

  They sat still amid blaring alarms, watching as the dying Sea Devil rocketed toward Ul. With the last of the fuel expended, Tate took her hands off the controls and unhooked her harness. She reached under the console, opened a compartment, and pulled out a laser rifle. "Where'd you get that?" Emily asked.

  Tate smiled. "I always wanted one." She checked the power supply and flicked the on switch. "Open a portal."

  Emily stared at her for a second as if to question her sanity then turned to the console and typed commands. "We're moving too fast. I can't get a lock."

  "Keep trying," Tate said as she tested the rifle against her shoulder and aimed toward the portal frame on the aft bulkhead.

  Emily's fingers flew over the keyboard. The frame glowed, and an image flickered where there once had been wall. Tate spun the gun's setting to high and put her finger on the trigger. The image flickered out. "Captain, I need a portal!"

  "I'm trying!" Emily kept typing and glancing at their position readout, struggling to anticipate. "You won't have much time."

  The image flickered again. Tate saw the bridge of a ship, and the back of a man's head came into view. He turned and just as she saw Ul lock eyes on her and surprise cross his features, she pulled the trigger. The laser's flash blinded her, then the image flickered out, and she burned a hole in the wall. She quickly released the trigger before the laser pierced the hull. Tate let out a breath then sat back in her seat, still holding the gun. "Did you get him?" Emily asked.

  Tate nodded. "I think so." She looked at Emily and grinned. "Nice work, Captain. If your theory holds, we just ended a war."

  Emily wiped tears from her cheeks. "I should throw you in the brig for disobeying orders, you know."

  Tate shrugged. "I know."

  Ul's ship filled the front window. There was nothing more to do. A blip on the long-range sensors caught Tate's attention. Pirate ship. Too late. She dropped the gun and reached for Emily, holding her tight, with only her own body left to protect her.

  "I don't know what I've done to deserve you," Emily said.

  Tate kissed Emily's neck, savoring one last taste of her. "You love me," she whispered.

  At the moment of impact, while there was still air to transmit sound waves, Tate heard the hull crumple. She felt a warm squeeze as she lost sight of Emily amid a blinding flash, a thunderous roar, and the sensation of her body disintegrating.

  Stardance

  Trace Miller

  "How hard can it be to steal a ship?" he had asked. "A bit of creative programming, a bit of old-fashioned brute force, and boom! You're in. Grease the palm of the port authority, and you can get clearance to anywhere." How hard can it be, indeed?

  Well, the palms were greased, the programming was done, brute force had been judiciously applied, and the escape was made good. Everything went perfectly according to Darien's plan, except for one thing. Darien was dead, according to the ship's medical facility. Karenya had a feeling she was in way over her head, and they hadn't exactly planned this part. Thinking back on it, she realized they had done a genuinely poor job of planning the whole thing, overall.

  In fact, Darien's unfortunate condition was the least of her problems now. With the power cells at eighty-nine percent and all systems stable and functioning, she should have been halfway across the next galaxy by now. Still, here she sat, in a ship dead in space not nearly far enough from the starport for Karenya's comfort, with her brother in pieces in a plexisteel tube. She kicked the tube's supportive housing again for good measure, and forced herself to refrain from wrinkling her nose at the vibrant lash of pain that whipped from her toes to the small of her back. There was no one to see the effort or the expression. The outburs
t did not go unmarked, however. "I am registering distress in your vital signs. Please allow me to administer a sedative." She jumped at the saccharine voice emanating from nowhere, chiding herself when she realized it was the ship's computer. She went from startled to angry again.

  "Not no, but fuck no! If I can't trust you to fix Darien, why would I trust you to knock me out? That's not going to happen."

  "Objection registered. Perhaps you would prefer music. I have a broad selection of crystal tonal motifs from a variety of systems, as well as re-creations of native instrumental pieces from over three hundred cultures."

  "No, I would not prefer music. Why are you so talkative now? Where was all this concern and congeniality when I asked for help thirty-six hours ago?"

  "You did not require assistance thirty-six hours ago."

  "No, but he did." Karenya kicked the housing again.

  "Please allow me to administer a sedative and an analgesic. While I have a broad range of skills at my disposal, repairing damage to a body beyond the confines of a recovery bay or placing your body in the appropriate recovery bay is beyond my present capabilities."

  "You could have saved him. You should have saved him."

  "I could have. Such is within my parameters." The soothing voice made that casual assertion even more maddening, and Karenya drew back her foot to kick again. She shook her head, sighed, and let it drop back to the deck, where her magnetic boot caught with a quiet thunk. "Thank you. That was an appropriate choice. Please allow me to administer a sedative and an analgesic."

  "You bitch! You condescending, self-righteous, sanctimonious, narcissistic, arrogant, supercilious bastard stepchild of a slab of semi-cognizant slagheap refuse! How dare you tell me what is appropriate, after refusing to heal Darien and stranding me in the middle of who-knows-where?" The silence that fell in the wake of her tirade was both welcome and nerve-wracking. She expected a pithy response and was not disappointed.

  "Your assertion contains numerous fallacies. I know precisely where we are. You are not 'stranded who-knows-where.' I did not refuse to heal Darien. I obeyed section forty-six point three two, article seventeen, which states that no aid or succor may be afforded a criminal in the commission of a felonious—"

  "But you offer me sedatives and painkillers? How do you justify that?"

  "—activity. Furthermore, this ship was constructed of high-grade, new components crafted from original materials to customer specifications. While I am entirely capable of the emotions you attribute to me, I am far from semicognizant. I am a fully aware, organic control system. As I am a wholly new and entirely intended creation, I am no one's 'bastard stepchild,' although the term 'bitch,' which implies a female sexual identity and a powerful female personal identity, is appropriate despite my lack of any primary sex characteristics. One of your twelve assertions, therefore, is correct. Would you like to try again?"

  "You're a what?"

  "I am a bitch."

  She was stunned enough to hold her tongue while she once again cursed— silently—their poor planning. The idea of stealing a ship and getting away from station politics had seemed perfect. They had chosen a ship that looked good, looked fast. They had not planned for an advanced AI, and that complicated everything by several orders of magnitude, not the least of which was the nagging feeling that Karenya's brilliant hack and Darien's ultimate sacrifice had not been what got them aboard. She had a feeling that the computer had its own agenda, or, at best, was simply bored.

  Killing the ship's previous owner had been an accident, of sorts. Darien had been standing watch while she worked on overriding the ship's security system when the owner arrived at the dock. Perhaps Darien had expected a fight, but Karenya had not. She had not taken any of it seriously until the hatch had gaped open at precisely the same time Darien's chest had. Before she could drag him aboard, the ship's owner lay dead on the steel dock, clutching Darien's severed foot. She had rescued the foot, managed to wrestle her brother's limp body into one of the ship's medical tubes, and done her best to line his foot up correctly with his leg before sealing the tube. The tube's indicators had blinked a few times, then flat-lined.

  That was serious business, but all things considered, not immediate. Darien wasn't going anywhere, and his circumstances were unchanged. More immediately serious, however, had been the realization that she was aboard a ship that was not hers, and two men were dead because of it. She could turn herself in and spend the rest of her natural life sitting in a box drooling on herself if her father could not or would not bail her out, or she could run. Considering that Darien had been his heir, as well as his apprentice, she thought running probably held more promise. She had thrown herself into the pilot's seat, uploaded the launch sequence, and prayed. The ship had moved smoothly from the dock as the station retracted the various hooks and couplings.

  "Your vital signs have improved markedly," the computer observed, interrupting her reverie. "You do not appear to have caused injury to your foot. However, the offer of sedatives and analgesics is still available. You have but to ask. I realize that you consider your present circumstances quite traumatic and will offer what assistance I may to reduce the attendant anxiety."

  "How kind of you."

  "Hardly. It is a matter of self-preservation, not a kindness. I would not have chosen an untrained child as a pilot, and you would not have chosen to be alone in space without recognized resources. However, that does appear to be the reality of the present situation. We are, unfortunately, forced to sort out the situation as best we may. It seems that I will be required to provide training. You may find this very taxing. In the interest of our mutual survival, I must alleviate the tension as much as possible."

  "What? You don't have an autopilot or an emergency beacon to summon some authority or another and let them know you've been stolen?"

  "I have program options for both of those processes. However, my calculations find that while autopilot is an appropriate course of action, surrendering myself to a government official is not in our best interests."

  "Our best interests? When did I become part of the equation? When did my best interests enter into it?"

  "When you chose to steal a starship, and again when you chose this particular starship."

  "You're stunningly advanced for an AI. And we didn't choose to steal a starship, much less choose to steal this one."

  "I am not an AI. I am a brain-ship. Despite my lack of certain organic sense organs, my sensors provide a rather extensive array of data that imparts quite enough information to know that you are prevaricating. You chose well, but you planned poorly. Very poorly. You may call me Dance, and I shall call you Jesse."

  "But that's not my name."

  "It is now. I have taken the liberty of providing a new identity for you. It should help ease certain unavoidable social interactions that tend to arise in starports. While, obviously, I can handle many aspects of day-to-day operations of the company, it does help to have—"

  "You're a brain-ship? I have stolen a freaking brain-ship? Whoa. Yeah, you're right. We planned very poorly. A brain-ship? How many—no, never mind. I don't care. Not important at the moment."

  "—a face that can be attached to the various transactions. You are that face. I will provide physical identification items for you when we arrive at a destination that requires them."

  "I think I'll take that sedative, analgesic, and entertainment now," the newly renamed Jesse replied. It was a little unnerving to hear the computer laugh, but it did, even as it provided directions for accessing the recovery bay's non-critical services. She winced as the service plate forced the icy mix into the skin of her palm, and she nearly drew back her hand before it delivered the full dose. Instead, she clenched her teeth, determined not to show further weakness. When it finished, she rubbed her hand to get the feeling back in it, then flopped onto the nearest couch.

  True to her word, Dance was able to provide thousands of entertainment offerings at any given time. Jesse flipped
through what the computer called a clip catalog, which provided brief review segments of the available programs that included everything from currently popular plays, video dramas, and music to re-mastered offerings of antique entertainments called movies produced as much as three hundred years ago. Jesse browsed these latter titles curiously, watching the flat images flicker by. In the clip for A Few Good Men, a character named Colonel Jessup was shouting about truth in some sort of military courtroom drama. In another clip, an even flatter cartoon dog with a speech impediment begged for sandwiches. The largest genre of these movies in Dance's collection, however, was what she referred to as Westerns. Jesse made the mistake of voicing some vague interrogative regarding them, and Dance treated her to a lengthy history lesson of Old Earth including colorful tales of outlaws through the ages, and more specifically of the period to which the movies referred. She opted not to ask about the pirate movies. Gradually, life aboard IFSS Stardance fell into a routine. Jesse, who had never bought into the stories about boredom being the primary enemy of those who take to space, finally began to understand. The thirty-hour spaceport "day" soon lost any significance. She slept when tired, ate when hungry, exercised when Dance forced her to, and studied or read when bored. Dance immersed her in several new languages, most of which she picked up readily. In a matter of weeks, she progressed to the point that if asked what language she was speaking or hearing, she actually had to think about it. At that point, of course, Dance added a new one.

  Language was not the only subject in which Dance tutored, and though she attempted not to ruin Jesse's illusion of self-determination, they both knew that Jesse had a great deal to learn if they were to survive. Dance scripted Jesse's days very carefully, allowing only enough sleep for her to perform at peak efficiency. She nagged Jesse into physical exercise and provided her with a routine that kept her body from deteriorating in the lowered gravity. The education was continuous, though more often than not, it took the form of discussion or debate, so that Jesse retained the information more efficiently and wasn't quite as aware she was studying—and learning—the finer points of intergalactic law, maritime law, history, economics, and strategy and tactics, among other things.