The Star Pirate's Folly

by James Hanlon

  She shut the door behind her and nearly plowed into a tall, square-jawed man in the hallway. He wore an oversized brown trench coat and made no effort to move out of her space. For a moment she thought she recognized his face. Then the man’s stench reached her nostrils—stagnant sweat and something like pickled vegetables. A glint of metal underneath his coat caught her eye—a black armored nullsuit.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, trying not to breathe. She didn’t think it was possible to stink through a suit of armor.

  “I’ll bet you can.” The man’s lips parted in a lecher’s grin, and his beady brown eyes spent too much time looking her up and down. “Full service, eh?”

  Bee glared and crossed her arms. Spacefarin’ types, Slack Dog had said. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She wished she still had the safety of the locked door between them. She’d dealt with men like this before in her old life—but she’d stopped carrying Janey’s knife during her shifts a long time ago.

  “This room’s occupied,” she said.

  “Oh, I was just looking for something to eat,” he said. He leaned closer to her and drew in a deep breath through his nose as he put his arm out to block her in. “I smelled something delicious and savory. You wouldn’t know where I could find something like that, would you?”

  Bee gagged as he leaned closer, waving his stink away from her face as she backed away as much as she could. The muscles in her gut clamped tight as she retched and yelled, “Ugh, did you shit yourself?”

  Caught off guard, he backpedaled as if she’d struck him. “Wh-what, no?”

  Bee sidestepped out of the doorway, well out of his reach, thumbed the button for the elevator without looking, and kept her eyes locked on him. She knew his face. The doors slid open with a chime.

  The man stood outside Slack Dog’s room, shaking his head with envy, leering at her chest and legs even in the more or less formless magenta uniform. Bee committed his face to memory, searching for defining characteristics—a chipped front tooth, crooked nose, and a naked patch in one eyebrow from scarring. She’d seen that face somewhere before. His eyes finally made it back up to hers and he straightened up a bit when he saw the look on her face.

  Bee grinned at him as the elevator doors slid shut before he could move. She selected the ground floor and her stomach dropped a bit as the elevator started with a slight jolt. She took a deep, trembling breath. The Midtown had its share of shady customers from time to time, but generally the clientele was pretty mellow.

  She’d gotten used to the relative safety of the hotel and felt a twinge of wounded pride. A few years ago if a guy had gotten in her space like that she’d have been more than ready to defend herself. But it had been weeks since she even set foot on the city streets. The hotel had everything she needed, had become a kind of sanctuary for her.

  First Slack Dog, and now the man in the black nullsuit—outliers in the boring existence she’d come to enjoy. As the elevator doors opened to the ground floor she resolved to find Hargrove. The old bear had chased out belligerent guests before. She didn’t think it would come to that, but worry gnawed away in her gut as she thought about the way he wore that coat to hide his armor.

  As close as they were to the spaceport, it wasn’t exactly uncommon to see people walking around in nullsuits. But the only people she’d ever seen wearing them were from the Core Fleet, which she suspected the man she’d met was definitely not. The ones she’d met never tried to hide their armor. Whatever the case, Hargrove would know what to do.

  ***

  As Bee passed the bar area on her way to the front desk, she glanced over to see if any other guests had wandered in. Something on the bar where Slack Dog had been sitting glinted in the light.

  Upon closer inspection she saw it was a datapad. She hadn’t noticed it before while she was behind the bar, but Slack Dog must have left it. Bee pocketed the thin palm-sized device and turned back to the lobby, figuring she’d take it up to him once she found Hargrove. She’d make him go in and actually give it to the old man—she shuddered at the thought of seeing Slack Dog’s… slack dog.

  As Bee left the bar, she waved down Hargrove while he was escorting a guest out the front doors. He motioned for her to wait and Bee followed him through the lobby to the entrance, standing nearby while he gave the woman his usual jovial goodbye treatment. A young doorman took the woman’s bags and Hargrove came back inside.

  “Hey,” she said to him.

  “Hey yourself, Bee,” he replied, and jerked a finger toward the empty bar. “Are my customers supposed to serve their own drinks around here?”

  “Actually I need to talk to you,” she said. “You saw that guy at the bar earlier, right?”

  Hargrove curled his lip. “What is it? Pirate?”

  “Ex-privateer.”

  “Phah!” he waved a hand. “I knew it! Pirate, privateer—if there’s a difference I have yet to see it. Bunch of ruffians!”

  Hargrove harbored a deep-seated distaste for anyone who, as he said, reduced themselves to such barbarism. The thin line between piracy and privateering was merely a legal distinction—the latter was authorized by the government, the former was not, but the work they carried out was the same. Pillage and plunder. Pirates just didn’t follow the rules on who to target.

  “Well, some weird guy was hanging around his room when I went to bring him some food he ordered,” Bee said. Then she added, “Oh, and the guy—Slack Dog—he didn’t pay his tab. He kept trying to use these. Says he’s from past the belt.”

  Bee showed him the coins Slack Dog had given her. Hargrove retrieved a pair of inspectacles from his inner jacket pocket. He slid them onto his nose and poked at the coins in her hand with one thick finger as the computerized lenses analyzed the coins’ markings and composition.

  “From Styx, eh? Hmmm,” he said. “Don’t see this stuff here much. Beltway folks don’t trust digital money like we do—they make physical money from nullsteel. See the band of metal around the edge? That’s to give it weight, so they don’t just float away on you.”

  Hargrove removed the inspectacles and replaced them in his jacket pocket. Bee put the coins away.

  “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know. Pretty valuable then? I mean, they make ships out of it, right?”

  Hargrove shrugged. “Well, each coin only has a small amount. Depends how much he’s got. Why?”

  “Well I’m pretty sure that guy I told you about wanted into 302—”

  “Whoa, whoa, what kind of weird guy are we talking about here?”

  “Tall, ugly, kind of a jerk. Scar on his left eyebrow. He was wearing a nullsuit under his coat,” she said, and Hargrove stiffened. “Stank like he’d been wearing it too long.”

  Hargrove pointed over her shoulder.

  “That guy?”

  Bee followed his finger and caught a glimpse of the man in the brown coat before he disappeared around a corner. He was headed to the hotel’s back exit—it was the only thing down that hallway. His face nagged at her again. He wasn’t someone she’d seen at the hotel before. But she couldn’t quite place him. Why would she know his face?

  “That’s him,” she said.

  “Well, he’s gone now. Problem solved.”

  “Let’s go check on 302,” she said, and moved to the elevators before Hargrove could argue. He followed her anyway with an exasperated huff.

  “You shouldn’t let your imagination get the better of you,” Hargrove chided her as they entered the elevator.

  She punched the button for the third floor.

  “No, I’m not imagining things, Hargrove,” she said. “You just don’t like dealing with stuff like this. Something’s up. I know that guy’s face.”

  The elevator rose with a lurch.

  “Something’s up,” he repeated. “Something’s always up.”

  Bee opened her mouth to say something else, but was silenced by a thump in her chest followed by a deafening roar. The elevator stopped with a violent shake, and
she was thrown against Hargrove. He grabbed her and pushed her into a corner, protecting her with his body. All she could hear was the ringing in her ears.

  Hargrove was already dialing the emergency number into his pad. She could see his lips moving from frantic shouting, but couldn’t hear him. He wasn’t talking to her anyway. Bee shook her head to clear it and wondered if it was a bomb. Then it hit her like a slap in the face: the man in the nullsuit had outstanding bounties. That’s why she’d recognized him—she’d flicked past his face on the bounty boards before! Stupid. If she’d made the connection sooner she might have warned Hargrove.

  “Hargrove I know him,” she said. “He’s wanted. He’s got a bounty.”

  “Hang on,” Hargrove said to the dispatcher, covering the receiver. “The name, Bee, give me the name!”

  “Jensen Lee!” she said. “His name’s Jensen Lee!”

  Chapter 4: Bounty

  While Hargrove dealt with the police, Bee slipped up the stairs to her room and sat in front of the projection display in her room. It woke at her presence and a keyboard appeared on the desk. Bee ticked her password in with a familiar flurry and opened the Hotel Employee Portal program. She used Hargrove’s administrator credentials—she’d learned long ago that he never bothered changing his password and he had more permissions in the system than she did.

  She clicked through some files and folders until she found the security footage from the camera outside Slack Dog’s room. She sped past her confrontation with Lee and watched herself walk into the elevator. When the doors closed Lee used some kind of device on the lock to open the room. A few minutes went by and he emerged from the room with Slack Dog’s luggage, took the stairs down to the ground floor, and made his exit.

  Bee thought again of Lee’s bounty and cursed herself for not recognizing him. He’d been wanted for years in the belt—piracy, kidnapping, murder. And now this. Slack Dog must have had something valuable in those cases for Lee to have come all that way, but what? And why the bomb?

  She’d heard the pirates were growing stronger and bolder every year, but Hargrove dismissed such talk as bad for business. This was different. Brazen. They’d never come to Surface before. It was always quick strikes on the shipping lanes, one or two vessels captured or looted, and then they would vanish before anyone could respond. Or they’d blockade some outlying moon base and ransack it. Why a bomb? He could have just shot, stabbed, or strangled Slack Dog—the old fool was in no state to defend himself. It didn’t make sense for Lee to broadcast his presence when he still had to get off-planet.

  But then, Lee hadn’t been expecting anyone to see him. And certainly not anyone who would recognize him. A bounty hunter wouldn’t be looking for him where they weren’t expecting him—most of them stuck to the belt, where the biggest bounties were. Maybe the bomb was supposed to be a distraction, to allow him to escape.

  If that was his intention it backfired in a spectacular way. There was no way he had time to get back up to the station where his ship was docked. They’d flag it and alert the station’s guards that Lee was headed their way. Most likely, if he hadn’t been caught already trying to get offworld, Jensen Lee was stuck in the city somewhere—her city, she thought—with his stolen suitcases.

  And he’d just kicked the hornet’s nest. Half the police force would be after him. With its domed roof and airlocks, the city was practically a prison already. The police would post guards at all the exits and comb the city for him. It would only be a matter of time until Lee was caught. Bee opened a browser window and searched for news on the incident.

  The local media was having a field day—this was the biggest story in years, even bigger than the Fated Lovers. Bee swiped through news video after news video, talking head after talking head, and learned nothing more than she already knew. Then she landed on a live feed where the reporter was standing with his back to one of the sealed-off airlocks. Two Overlook City officers leaned against the airlock in the background, protected from the gathering crowd by police barriers.

  Jensen Lee’s face leered at her from a graphic next to the reporter, the same picture she’d seen on his bounty page. The one she failed to recognize. Above his face: WANTED. Below it: 20,000 REWARD. They’d quadrupled the bounty after the attack.

  “—also a two thousand credit reward for information leading to the capture of Jensen Lee. Viewers, please don’t hesitate to call. This man has been on the run from interplanetary authorities for more than five weeks and Overlook City’s Commissioner Norton has warned us that the fugitive will not hesitate to kill again. Until further notice, the city’s walls are closed to pedestrian traffic, meaning the cancellation of tonight’s Fated Lovers festivities. We can only speculate what will happen from here—perhaps this is just the prelude to a larger, more devastating attack.”

  Bee closed the window and leaned back in her chair, bathed in the cool glow of the projected monitor. She realized she’d been sitting in the dark, and as she got up to turn on the lights Slack Dog’s datapad vibrated in her pocket. She’d completely forgotten about it. Startled, she grabbed for the pad and the screen lit up as she brought it out of her pocket.

  Bee saw with horror she’d answered a video call. An older man with a red floral-print bandanna on his head squinted at her from the tiny display, trying to make out her face. She covered the camera with her thumb, thankful for the darkness. It looked like he was in a kitchen. She hovered a finger over the “end” button, but didn’t hang up.

  “Well, you’re not Slack Dog,” he said. “You’re far too pretty.”

  So he had at least gotten a look at her. Bee considered ending the call. She was still wearing her uniform—the gaudy dark magenta outfit was unmistakably that of a hotel employee, and it even had her name on it. She had no idea who the guy was, or what connection he had to Slack Dog, but she didn’t want him to know anything more about her than he did already.

  “Who are you?” Bee asked.

  “An old friend of his,” he said. “And you?”

  “No one. I’m sorry to tell you this, but he was the one killed in the explosion. I guess this is his pad—I found it, I didn’t steal it or anything. I was going to return it.”

  Silver shook his head. “I called as soon as I heard about the bombing. Damn shame. He was a decent man.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  Bill frowned. “Why so interested?”

  She didn't want to reveal that she worked at the hotel. Between her face and her job, he'd be able to find out who she was for sure. She considered hanging up. Whoever the guy was, it wasn't her business. She could feel the silence after his question growing, and a flutter of panic brought the first thing that came to mind tumbling out of her mouth.

  “I’m a bounty hunter,” she blurted. “Looking for Jensen Lee.”

  Bee had to cover the speaker as the man howled with laughter. Embarrassed, she felt her cheeks flush. Her mouth had a way of working on its own when she was flustered. The man wiped tears from the crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes as he shook with mirth.

  “Goodbye,” she said, and went to end the call.

  “Wait, wait,” the man said, still chuckling. “Please, I’m sorry. I’m a very rude man. Name’s Bill Silver.”

  “I’m not telling you mine,” she said. “Now tell me what’s going on. Why was Slack Dog killed?”

  Silver hesitated for a moment. He looked deep into the camera, and even though she knew he couldn’t see her, she understood she was being assessed somehow. Calculated. Again she felt the urge to remove herself from the situation, but she didn't hang up.

  “He had something very valuable,” Silver said.

  “What was it?”

  “A map.”

  “A map of what?”

  “Buried treasure,” he said with an adventurous growl.

  Bee snorted. “Really.”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of Dreadstar.”

  “Dreadstar,” Bee said. The name brought a ba
d taste into her mouth.

  The body of the ruthless space pirate Dreadstar was on display at the public museum in Overlook City. She only saw it once as a child, accidentally. Back when everything was still normal. Mother didn’t know what they were walking into.

  The image flashed in her mind. Every visible inch of his pale body was covered with tiny black numbers in intricate patterns—his infamous tattoos, the still-unbroken code that hid the location of his treasure hoard. The Governor of Overlook had ordered his corpse to be put on display at the museum and contorted into a snarling battle pose like some kind of morbid action figure. He held a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other, his bionic eye still blazing with a red light—his namesake. Everyone in the city had seen him at least once.

  People said Dreadstar was a code breaker for Earth’s Interstellar Fleet who got stranded when the gates went down during the war. His vessel was forced into hiding in the asteroid belt Styx, where he went mad and murdered the entire crew before piloting the ship, alone, into pirate territory. No one knows how exactly he brought the pirate clans under his heel, but when they joined forces they claimed nearly the whole system as their territory. It took more than a decade for the Core planets to bring him down and contain the pirate fleets within the asteroid belt.

  Dreadstar’s body was mounted in a display case just inside the museum’s front doors. It was the first thing Bee saw after she walked in. He seemed to be charging forward, straight for the door, posed as though he were perpetually in the midst of staging an escape. Six-year-old Bee immediately vomited from sheer terror, making for a short museum trip.

  That was the same day Mother left her in the crowd.