Bad Luck Charlie

by Scott Baron

  Of course, there was also the painful possibility of death by embolism as the air in your lungs tried to exit your body to the no-pressure environment of space. You wouldn’t explode, as old-timey science fiction loved to depict, but your lungs could rupture, and, if not, deadly air bubbles could be forced into your bloodstream, causing a most painful demise.

  Whatever had just happened, however, had been rectified almost immediately. For that, he was grateful. Captivity may have been bad, but death was a far worse option.

  The smell of sweat and tangy smoke grew strong as the group of men were guided down a corridor Charlie had never seen before. Up ahead a door was open. A door that seemed to lead to what appeared to be an adjacent vessel. A large ship of some type that was floating no more than ten meters from their craft.

  The lead guard stepped right out the door into the seeming void, but he kept walking. Some invisible force was creating a walkway from one ship to the other. He turned and motioned for the others to stop gawking and follow him. The prisoners did as they were bade and made their way, single-file, out of the open door.

  “I’m stepping into space,” Charlie muttered, experiencing what no human ever had.

  An unprotected spacewalk. Technically, he was surrounded by an invisible protective bubble, but the effect of the experience was that of being in space with no suit yet no death.

  “Okay, maybe this isn’t entirely bad.”

  A roughly human-looking man ran screaming toward them from the far end, rushing toward the open hole in the other ship’s hull.

  “Hokta!” one of his gray captors shouted, aiming his slaap at the approaching man.

  He crumpled to the ground in a pile. Dead.

  From within the other ship, a pair of prisoners Charlie recognized from mealtime rushed into the force field passageway and dragged the man’s body back into the other ship, clearing the way for the arriving reinforcements.

  And reinforcements was what they were, he realized as he unglued his eyes from the door ahead of him and let himself take in the scene before him.

  The ship they were boarding was riddled with holes, the hull torn open in several areas where the boarding parties had breached it. Bodies floated in the space nearby where force fields were not in use, either sucked out or thrown out before the openings had been sealed with the strange alien tech.

  Bandolier-wearing men from his own ship were fighting their way through the other craft, he could see through the jagged holes. Fighting with not only slaaps, but also short swords, knives, and clubs. They were taking over the crippled vessel by force.

  “Pirates,” he gasped as realization set in. “I’ve been shanghaied by fucking alien space pirates.”

  The guard nearest him glanced at his astonished face and laughed, then pushed him through the hole and aboard the other ship.

  The craft was beautiful. Or, it had been before the invading force had taken it by storm. The walls were smooth and flowing, a distinct lack of sharp angles making it feel almost organic, as if it had been grown and not built. The lighting was warm and bright. That is, in the parts that were not shattered and ruined by the force of the invaders’ weapons.

  The smoke he had smelled had come from one of those attacks. A handful of bodies lay smoldering against a dented wall, where some form of weapon had ended their resistance with brutal efficiency. But that would have been the initial boarding. Now that the pirates were scrambling through all levels of the ship, they’d have to switch to close-quarter tactics.

  At least, that’s what he assumed they would do. But Earth was a long, long way away, and he had no idea how these strange men would carry out their plunder.

  The prisoners were quickly herded down a long corridor, the lights flickering from unknown damage to their power source. Bodies littered the way, and the cries of close battle could clearly be heard. And it was getting closer.

  Charlie nearly jumped back when they rounded a curved section and came across an enormous hole in the hull. He instinctively grabbed for anything he could to not be sucked out into space, drawing laughter from his captors.

  Of course. It’s sealed, he realized as he forced his hands to release their grip on the bent section of a doorway he had latched onto in his panic. But this isn’t like the others. This is bigger. And it blew from the inside out, he noted as he studied the blast pattern.

  He’d seen similar-looking damage on vessels back home, typically caused by a fatal decompression inside. This, however, appeared intentional.

  They tried to scuttle the ship, he realized. That was the pressure change we felt. They knew they were losing and tried to take us with them.

  The nearest guard shoved him along. No time for sightseeing. They had work to do, apparently, but what it was, he didn’t know. His feet slipped momentarily on the slick ground, but he knew better than to look. They’d been passing bodies for a while, and that wasn’t spilled water he was walking through. The hole had sucked out most of the dead and dying before the pirates could seal it, but the blood remained.

  He only hoped the force field the pirates had put in place was strong enough to hold. If not, his next spacewalk wouldn’t be as pleasant as his first.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The bright sound of clashing blades rang out as the prisoner work group entered a large cargo area. As fighting raged all around them, the screams of men dying hung in the air. They had finally caught up to the main body of the invading force, the pirate ship’s top fighters. Men who were dismantling the resisting crew with brutal speed and efficiency.

  Damn, these guys are good, Charlie gasped as he watched the pirates clash with the defenders.

  Using their strange force weapons was a no-go in the tight confines of the battleground. Too high a likelihood of hitting your own men. So it was short swords, clubs, and knives doing the work, and despite their grubby appearances, his captors were very skilled in their profession.

  The scarred man called Marban he recognized immediately. His other captors were there as well, working as a team, the three of them fighting twice their number but quickly reducing those odds as their blades flashed through the opposing crew members. Spinning and dodging, the trio covered each other’s flanks while they engaged the enemy, denying them an exposed target.

  They’d spent a long time fighting by one another’s side. That was obvious by the fluid way they fought, each of them instinctively knowing where his friends were, the three working as a single, deadly unit, slashing and stabbing their way through those foolish enough to stand against them.

  The other pirates fought similarly, utilizing unconventional techniques that seemed to confuse their opponents. They fought hard, and they fought dirty, because at the end of the day, survival was what they cared about. Honor had no place in this battleground.

  Charlie and his fellow prisoners were guided to the area of the cargo hold that had already been cleared. Bodies littered the ground. Most wore the sleek uniform of the invaded ship, though a few of the pirate crewmen lay dead or dying as well. The guards paid them no heed.

  “Impezu Ovusk,” the pirate leading his motley band of men said, activating the prisoners’ translators. “Okay, you lot, listen up. You are to carry as much as you are capable of back to the Rixana.”

  So, that’s the name of the ship, he noted. A rare piece of information in a captivity that had been devoid of any.

  The pirate gestured to the fighting. “Steer clear of the fight. If you get injured, you will be left behind. Now load up and form a line. You only stop when I tell you, and that’s not happening until there’s nothing left to take. You got that? Now, get moving,” he growled, then canceled out their translation once more with a single command. “San ovusk.”

  All the chatter and yelling assailing his ears immediately switched back to gibberish.

  What if my old collar weren’t dampened? Maybe that one’s translator still works, Charlie wondered as he shouldered an enormous load.

  The pirate gu
ard took note of the particularly heavy burden he had lifted and nodded approvingly, then gestured for him to get moving back to their ship. Apparently his brief stint carrying heavy loads as a porter slave for Captain Tür was doing him some good in his new circumstances. The one good thing to come from that whole ordeal. Of course, he wondered why they didn’t deactivate the artificial gravity to make it easier to transport their captured goods, but Charlie wisely kept that thought to himself.

  He kept his head down and silently followed the others back to their ship, returning via a parallel force field connector, allowing a more efficient transfer of plundered goods. Say what you will about the pirates’ hygiene and living conditions, they were very efficient at what they did.

  Charlie followed the others to the Rixana’s cargo hold and handed off his load, then turned back to gather the next batch. As he walked, he tugged at the fabric covering his collar. The knot had not once budged, but for some reason, this time it seemed to be slightly more pliant to his efforts.

  Whatever they did to this, it seems to be wearing off. Maybe too much other stuff going on that it’s interfering with it.

  He continued to pull at it as he walked back to gather his next two loads, the knot gradually easing, if only fractionally. He had stumbled over a body on the second trip, drawing the laughter of the guards as he scrambled back to his feet. What they hadn’t seen was the small piece of sharp debris he had hidden in his hand, snatched up from the blood-soaked ground. Charlie hid it carefully in his clothes, then continued his labors. There would be time to put it to good use later. This was not the moment.

  On his third trip back to the captured ship, the sounds of combat had finally ceased. The vessel, he gauged, was a loss, given the amount of damage done to it, both by the invading pirates as well as its own crew as they desperately tried to scuttle the ship. Victorious, the pirates were ransacking the craft for smaller valuables, while the prisoners carried the cargo back to their own craft. Fortunately, that task was near completion.

  What he saw as he gathered up his final load was that instead of fighting, a line of a dozen bloodied crewmen now sat kneeling in a line in the nearly empty cargo bay.

  Captain Saramin paced in front of them, placing a thin collar on those he deemed worth keeping, executing those he found too weak or injured to be of use.

  Several Drook captives were also present, he noted, and they all still wore the collars of their ship. Captain Saramin pulled a wounded man who was wearing a more ornate uniform than the others to his feet and led him to the captive Drooks.

  Probably an officer of some sort, he guessed.

  They exchanged words, and after what appeared to be a very lopsided negotiation, the wounded man was handed a thin golden band. Captain Saramin never took his hand off of it, though. He merely allowed the man to touch it.

  Charlie couldn’t hear the words spoken from that distance, but he saw the effects of them when the Drooks’ collars briefly glowed, then clicked open, falling to the deck. The injured man had said the release phrase.

  That’s why they used that Faraday material, or whatever it is, on my collar, Charlie realized. They don’t have the release word for it.

  Captain Saramin smiled and affixed his own collars to the Drooks, then turned back to the wounded man. They exchanged a few more words. The officer gestured to the remaining captives. Captain Saramin nodded his agreement and uttered something to his crew. The injured were not killed, but rather, pulled to their feet and assisted to the Rixana.

  The captain and officer watched them leave. Saramin paused a moment, until the spared men were gone, then in one swift motion, drove a dagger straight into the man’s heart, killing him instantly.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Back in his cell, Charlie washed the traces of blood from his garments in his crusty sink. He’d tried to steer clear of the more gruesome battlegrounds, but even so, he had brushed against a few bloody bulkheads during his labors.

  Charlie put his fingers to work on the knot again as he replayed the brutality he had witnessed in his head over and over, pulling at the material tightly bound to his collar as he did.

  “So, this is a pirate ship,” he muttered. “I guess that explains a lot, actually. So now I’m part of a pirate crew, I guess.”

  He sat quietly a moment as his sore fingers tugged and pulled at the stubborn knot. It had moved, but only a fractional amount. The shard of sharp debris he had secreted back to his quarters had proven useless against the seemingly delicate fabric. Every time he attempted to cut or fray it, he would receive a hand-numbing shock for his trouble.

  He tried wrapping the end of the shard with his shirt, but that provided no insulation. Pretty much whatever he did, if he attempted to cut the material, he would wind up on his ass, and facing a ten-minute wait before sensation would return to his hand. It took three attempts and their subsequent unpleasant results before he finally decided maybe it would be better to forego the piece of metal in favor of his hands. His fingers ached from it, but at least they were functional.

  “If I could just get this stupid thing off, maybe I could understand what’s going on around here,” he grumbled to himself. Quietly, though. His translator may not have been functioning, but that didn’t mean the guards’ units weren’t operational.

  Not long thereafter, the new captives were ushered down the corridor to their waiting cells. Fresh bodies to replace the ones lost in battle. Charlie realized that was probably an ongoing pattern aboard the ship. Fight, capture, dispose of the dead, and replace them with new fodder. And that’s what he was. Fodder.

  Not if I can help it.

  For the better part of the next hour, Charlie worked at the knot around his neck with raw fingertips. Amazingly, after all of that effort, it seemed his labors might finally pay off.

  A shadow filled his doorway, and before he could pull the loosened knot free, Marban opened the force field door and dragged him out to join the others queueing up for mealtime. The scarred man then moved on to the next cell before finally rounding up the newest captives.

  It was interesting to watch now that he had a different understanding of the dynamics at play. The men who had been aboard the longest were served first, while the newest ate last. It was Alpha Dog territory, but with prisoners instead of canines. It made sense, though. Those who had survived long enough to start at the front of the line had earned that privilege. This was not an easy life.

  Charlie gathered up his plate of slop and made his way to his favorite seat, eating by himself as he always did, unable to communicate with the others. The food was unappetizing, as usual, but he had learned to force it down quickly, before his tongue and brain could argue over whether or not it belonged in his belly. The weak tea they were served actually wasn’t all that bad, and he found it washed the residual taste from his mouth quite effectively.

  The new prisoners were a mess of bruises and other minor injuries, the walking wounded staring wide-eyed at their new surroundings. Unlike Charlie, they knew full-well what fate had befallen them. In that, at least, they were starting their imprisonment with a slight advantage. Even so, without translators to aid in their conversations, they, too, split into the usual divisions based on species and tongue.

  The pirate crew seemed to have thinned a fair amount, but as he scanned the men’s faces, Charlie realized he knew several of them. That, in and of itself, was to be expected after his time aboard the ship, but the faces he saw wearing pirate garb had just the other day been prisoners like him.

  The most senior ones, he realized. They’re fleshing out their ranks with the ones who have been aboard the longest. The ones who are institutionalized and used to this life.

  Charlie took new interest in the newly minted pirates, picking at the knotted material wrapped around his collar absentmindedly as he noted the attire and accoutrements afforded the newest members of the crew.

  They had the same basic uniform as the others. Plain clothing, often what they had al
ready been wearing as prisoners, but now with bandolier pouches strapped across their chests and heavier boots on their feet. They also bore arms, though from what he could see, the new pirates didn’t seem to be sporting any of the power-wielding items. Only knives, clubs, and short swords adorned their belts.

  Of course, he didn’t know what was in those pouches, but he suspected they would become filled with tools and plunder over time as they proved their worth.

  A strange sensation tingled across his fingertips as the knotted fabric around his neck slowly slid loose in his grip.

  Holy shit. I finally got it! he silently exclaimed. And it’s about time. Now let’s see if that translator is still functional.

  Charlie undid the rest of the knot, then pulled the fabric free from his collar. For a moment, he felt nothing. Then the collar Captain Saramin had put on him touched his original one, and the world ignited in pain.

  Charlie dropped to the filthy floor, writhing in agony as the collars fought for control of his body, shocking him mercilessly in the process. He thought he heard one of the guards swearing, but with the pain, he couldn’t be sure if it was his old collar translating, or if it was all in his mind. What he did know was he would do anything to make the pain stop.

  Marban crouched over him, an annoyed look spread across his scarred face.

  “Idiot. Now look what you’ve done.”

  There it was. Confirmation. He could understand.

  The old collar still worked. Charlie almost felt a flash of excitement at the realization, if not for the continuous charge shocking his neck.

  Just as when he had first captured him, Marban took the fabric Charlie had worked free and quickly wrapped it around Captain Tür’s collar once again.