by Randy Dyess
The bridge crew of the Rascal watched the Anarchy place itself in front of the Rascal to ward off any security vessel launching from Candus City.
“That’s a waste of time,” the Rascal’s Captain replied. “We’re not going to get any help from that miserable company planet.”
“Another line of ships coming our way,” the sensor officer yelled out.
“What about our weapons?” Captain McKenzie asked his weapons officer as the Rascal began to shudder from the attack.
“Damaged. They went offline during the first wave,” the officer responded. “I can’t get them back up. We’re defenseless.”
“Coms are offline!” yelled the communications officer.
“Sensors, as well,” added the sensor officer.
The crew of the Rascal could feel her give a big shudder as the lights started to flicker.
“Main drives are offline. We’re dead in the water!” the pilot used an old shipping phrase.
“Okay,” Captain McKenzie replied with his head hung low. “Get everyone into the bridge and turn off everything but life support. Get ready to open the outer airlock hatch.”
Opening the outer airlock hatch had been a signal for years that you’d surrendered and would not put up a fight if boarded. Freighter captains often did this to avoid their men getting killed in useless attempts to stop the pirates from boarding and taking their cargo. Insurance could replace the cargo, but not the ship’s crew. Sullivan Shipping’s freighters had the bridge hatches reinforced to make a safe area for the freighter’s crew to wait out the pirates’ boarding and plunder. Once the pirate ships were gone, the crew would close the airlock doors and bring the ship back online before leaving the bridge. It was a game that had been played out for centuries in the outer-rim sectors—a game the pirates always won.
Once all twenty crew members of the Rascal were crowded into the bridge, Captain McKenzie nodded telling the pilot to open the outer airlock door. Immediately, the crew felt a small bump as the first pirate ship docked with the Rascal’s airlock.
“Well, it’s all up to the lawyers and insurance people, now. Let them do the fighting,” Captain McKenzie said to his pilot. He was referencing the fight that would occur between Sullivan Shipping, Peterson Mining, and Candus Corporation over the stolen cargo. Peterson Mining would sue Sullivan Shipping for the missing cargo, and Sullivan Shipping’s insurance company would sue Candus Corporation for lack of security over their shipping lanes. Peterson Mining would join that lawsuit, and Candus Corporation would counter-sue both of the other corporations for bringing such valuable cargo in lightly-armed ships and without hired security into their space, and so on. What the pirates had done to Captain McKenzie’s career was nothing compared to what Peterson Mining and Candus Corporation would do to him for letting the pirates take his cargo without fighting back.
“At least the Sullivans will have our backs,” the pilot replied. “They always protect their own—a lot better than Brant Shipping does.”
“You’re right about that,” Captain McKenzie replied as he felt the next set of pirate ships dock with his freighter to offload his cargo. Both the pilot and the Captain had used to work as captains for an outer core shipping company that just couldn’t stand when the crew didn’t die defending their ship each time pirates attacked. It didn’t matter that Brant Shipping freighters didn’t have an ounce of weapons on them. They were supposed to ram the pirate ships or do something else to defend the cargo—as if you could ram a small, agile pirate ship with a huge freighter. Both men’s careers had been in shambles until they’d met Dakota Sullivan, who knew how good people were treated by large companies. She’d offered both of them a job on the spot. Captain McKenzie had agreed to take over the Rascal, but Captain Jarvi had enough of being a captain and had decided to accept the position as the pilot of the Rascal, instead.
At this point, both men just wanted it to be over with, so they could repair the ship and get back home. “Wake me when they’re done,” Captain McKenzie told his pilot as he sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. “I’m exhausted.”
Three hours later, the last pirate ship broke its dock with the Rascal. The sensor officer had turned his sensors back on and woke the Captain to tell him it was over. All of the men on the bridge watched as the last pirate ship formed its FTL endpoint and vanished from the Candus system.
“Well, it’s over. Let’s get to work on getting this ship back in the air, so we can get home,” Captain McKenzie told everyone as the pilot unsealed the bridge’s door and the crew started making their way to their damage control stations.
“I wonder how much trouble this is going to cause?” the pilot asked Captain McKenzie. “This cargo was valuable—a lot more valuable than anything I’ve hauled in a long time.”
“I know. I just hope someone can get another shipment to those poor miners on Wethea. We had a lot of pox medicine in our holds, and I’m sure the pirates cleaned us out of that, as well as the U-981,” he answered.
“I just hope the Sullivans are the people we think they are. I’m getting too old to find another company to work for. I need more time to rebuild the retirement fund before being grounded again,” Jarvi said as he looked at McKenzie.
The Captain just nodded in agreement, “Jarvi, you have the chair. Get communications back up ASAP.”
“Aye, sir.”
Chapter 2
King Antonio Florres stood in front of one of the full-length mirrors he had installed in his luxury bathroom. As the King of Pirates in two sectors, he had earned a full suite of rooms on his ship, including a bathroom with an actual bath and dozens of mirrors. The other crew members were nothing compared to the King of Two Sectors, and they would squeeze into whatever living space was left.
A small ship that had used to house forty-five crew members now had to house twice as many in a third of the living space. King Florres and his crew were never out for more than a few days, however—not multiple weeks, like the ship’s designers had in mind. Dozens of crew members would sleep on the floor—it didn’t bother King Florres. Besides, he was the only one who lived on the ship full-time; the rest of the crew lived on Pirate’s Bay. He didn’t like anyone around him while he was sleeping, except for the space wives he captured from time to time. He was the king, he had captured the Anarchy with a fraction of the crew he needed, and he’d fought his way to the top of the pirate food chain: he deserved to live in style.
King Florres wiped the steam from the mirror to get a better look at himself. A full hot water shower was another benefit he enjoyed that was unheard of for ships the size of the Anarchy. He turned his head from side to side before reaching up and stroking the graying hair on his temples. He briefly considered dying it, but in the end, he decided that a little gray added to his character. Modern medical nanites could get rid of any signs of aging or injuries, including the large scar running from his left eye to his chin—a memento of one of his battles. He didn’t want it gone, though: it added to the pirate king persona.
A pirate king needs to look respectable, but frightening at the same time, King Florres thought, as he ran a finger along his scar.
The King didn’t want blue hair or anything strange-looking, like other pirates often utilized to scare their opponents. He needed to look dignified enough to demand respect from both his crew and the wealthy people he took hostage. Besides, the scar was enough of a message: running a finger along it meant a crew member was crossing the line and would soon end up with a scar, themselves if they didn’t shut up. It was a highly effective way to get his point across without losing control of himself. Being in control was all about appearances.
King Florres turned to his side and looked at his profile. I still look good for a man in his fifties, although I could use another round of fat-nites. Might as well do another round of strength-nites, as well—got to keep up my strength.
Most core world inhabitants had access to nanites that were unheard of in the rim worlds. Those l
ucky core world humans had access to hundreds of different types of the small, robotic devices which took care of everything from coloring hair to curing devastating diseases. There were even rumors of senate members using a highly advanced form of medical nanites which kept them perfectly healthy, extending their lives by decades. King Florres’ secret desire was to raid a core world one day and find out what their nanites could do for him. For now, however, he would make do with the limited nanites he stole from private yachts he attacked.
The King flexed his muscles. Battles in space didn’t require much strength: all he needed to do was push a button and the ship’s artificial intelligence would take care of everything. Very rarely did you ever make physical contact with an enemy; when you did, it was about fighting skills and speed, and not about strength.
But, he thought, I still need to look good when I work out. His muscles had to be developed and the scars on his body needed to remain. He wanted to give off an attitude of “I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I’m still in good enough shape to do it again” appearance to his men whenever they saw him in the gym or without his uniform.
King Florres was still looking himself over when he heard a soft voice from his stateroom, “Come back to bed, my King.”
My King. I like that, he thought. He’d had over thirty space wives in the last two decades, but this one was definitely his favorite. She knows her place and how to give me the respect I deserve.
“Tell me the story of the pirate king,” she begged.
“You’ve heard that story a dozen times,” he replied as he walked back to her.
“I know, but I love hearing it each time you tell it, my King. It’s so exciting to hear how you came from nothing and became the most powerful person in two sectors,” she cooed.
“Where do you want me to start?”
“Start at the beginning. I want to hear it all—I want to know everything about you, my King.”
After crawling back into bed, King Florres told her his life story. “It all began twenty-five years ago on Vaspolla, where I grew up poor on that damned Candus planet as the fifth son of a tenth-generation hog farmer. From the time I could walk, it was a miserable life of work and more work. I never really had a childhood.”
“Oh, poor baby,” Carmina whispered. She hated acting like she wanted to have anything to do with this piece of scum, but she knew better than to resist. Ever since he’d kidnapped her from her family’s private yacht over Taurus Prime, she’d had to endure things no one her age should have even known about, let alone endure. She had to play her part, however, until her family could rescue her or she could find a way to escape.
“As I’ve told you before, growing up on a corporate world sucked. No one there had any hope of becoming anything other than what their parents were. Sure, a few managed to escape the place either by joining the marines, becoming a cruise ship steward, taking an independent mining contract, or being a colonist when they found a new planet, but none of those things were available to me. I was just a fifteen-year-old pig farmer with a knack for fixing farm equipment.”
“How did you get out?” she interrupted, even though she knew his story word for word. Carmina might have been young, but she was smart enough to act dumb around this arrogant man. He held her life in his hands, though, and as much as she hated being with him, the thought of being given to his crew was a nightmare beyond comprehension. She wanted to trick the idiot into telling her his secrets—anything she could use against him, in order to escape or help the authorities find his base when she finally got rid of him.
“I’m getting to that, my love,” he continued. “I never wanted to be a pirate. In fact, I had always wanted to own a ship repair yard, but how would a pig farmer’s son ever start up something like that? So, the only way for me to get off that dirt planet was either becoming a smuggler—and I didn’t have a ship, back then—or joining a pirate crew. Smuggling didn’t pay enough, so I became a pirate.”
“It’s horrible to think that someone would have to turn to crime to improve their life,” she told King Florres. Carmina had grown up on an inner-core world in an extremely rich family—she couldn’t have cared less about the lives of anyone on a corporate world or who had less money than she did.
King Florres taking her prisoner only made her wish that all the outer-rim scum would be treated as slaves and not humans. If they turned to crime, they deserved to become the property of those they stole from. She often fantasized about having King Florres and his crew as her slaves. In her fantasies, the King had more scars on his body. She made sure he paid for everything he ever did to her.
King Florres broke her inner thoughts as he continued, “One day, I heard about a bar outside of Chada, which was used as a recruiting station for a local pirate band operating out of the Taurus sector.”
“And?” she asked, knowing he liked to pretend his life history was some mysterious thing. He thought it added to his persona as the invincible Pirate King, and he became so involved in telling it that he wouldn’t remember Carmina had heard the story dozens of times.
“So, I left that smelly pig farm one night and walked all the way to Chada—it took me three days of walking all day and sleeping in the dirt at night. By the time I got to that dirty, little bar, I was hungry, smelly, and mad as hell. I walked into that damn bar and knocked the crap out of the first three people I saw,” he said with a huge smile on his face. “That’s how I got this scar,” he pointed above his right eye.
“I bet that was a fight to remember,” Carmina replied. “I can just see you walking in, like some superman. I bet all the pirates in that place were frightened to death of you.”
“I don’t know about that, but after the third piece of garbage hit the ground, the third mate of the Reaver yelled out and asked if I could do anything else besides knock out drunk idiots. I stared that moron down and gave him a look that said how lucky he was I didn’t do the same to him. I started to walk toward him to do just that, but instead, I yelled back at him that I could fix ships better than I could fight.”
Carmina squealed as she always did at this part of his story to encourage him to go on. She always wondered just how drunk those three had to have been in order for King Florres to beat them up when he was so young. She’d seen some of the pirates on his crew and knew the King couldn’t have taken on one of them, let alone three, forty years ago, when he was only fifteen.
“He ended up offering me a job as a grease monkey on the Reaver. It seems that one of the drunks I’d just beaten the crap out of had lost his job. I took the position immediately and started my career as a pirate.”
“I bet you became captain right away, my King.”
“No, sweetling, I had to work hard to work my way up the ladder. Five years in the engine room, four as leader of the boarding party, and six more as a member of the bridge crew, before I had my chance and enough friends in the crew to make my move. I challenged the captain and took over the ship.”
“How brave. How did you do that? Did you fight him, too?”
“I invoked an old pirate tradition, and we fought with knives,” he replied. Pointing to a scar running along his belly, the King said, “This is the reminder of my victory.”
“Did you kill him?” Carmina asked in a small voice. She knew pirates often killed people, and she knew King Florres had to have killed many people to get where he was today. She always liked the answer he gave, though, because it was the one thing she thought was human about him.
“Kill him? No, I respected the man, so I wounded him enough to make him surrender. The crew wanted me to put him away, but I had made an agreement.” King Florres quickly corrected himself, “I mean, I wanted to make him suffer.” Carmina had also wondered how he’d beat the previous captain; his crew had always talked about the man like he’d been the greatest pirate alive. Now she knew that King Florres had made a deal with him to take over the ship. She guessed that having everyone believe you were dead was about the onl
y way a pirate could retire.
“I had that old man stranded on a small moon off Drao,” King Florres replied, wondering if the old man had ever made it off the moon. He had agreed to slip Captain Itsuki a com device and extra oxygen before leaving him. He still missed the old captain, but he had a role to play and he’d needed his crew to think he would strand them on a barren planet to die slowly if they ever crossed him.
“And that made you the Pirate King,” she squeaked.
“I’m still getting to that part, my love. A few years ago, we had just finished selling the cargo from a Sullivan Shipping freighter we captured over Wethea and we were celebrating at that same bar on Vaspolla where everything started. My men raised their mugs and shouted ‘Hail the Pirate King of Taurus!’ That was when I became King. No one has dared to call me anything else since.”
“Why are you not still on Vaspolla?”
“Well, a king needs somewhere to rule other than a bar, so I started looking for a place to call my own. Eventually, I heard about an abandoned mining station in the Archimedes Asteroid Field, named AMS-245. I made a quick trip there and used a few captured construction bots to turn it into a base of my own. Pirate’s Bay sounded like a good name, so I had it painted on the side of the station in large, blood-red letters. In fact, if you look at the view screen, you can see the name from here.”