Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space)

by Catherine Lundoff

  Present: Bloody Pirates

  “I needed you to make sure that the wolf and the tiger can be crossed safely,” Pawan said. “I was not sure that they would recognise me in this new form with their lower capacity for smell recognition. To create them, I gave your father the brain of a dying tiger and a dying wolf, and he uploaded their memory in those machines. But you know, they were just beasts! They needed to be tested continuously. That’s why I suggested to Natwar and Vipin to fetch you from your father for this journey.”

  “You suggested that!”

  “Yes. I came to Natwar and my ex-first mate didn’t even recognise me. I told them that I was there at the deathbed of Captain Dash and that he had told me how to find the treasure. And they fell for everything I’ve told them since then”

  The monster stood like a statue. Looking at it, I suddenly had an impossible thought. I tried to reject it the moment it came to me. No, that’s crazy! That can’t be!

  “Your dad once called my idea of preparing an elixir of life a delirium. I never forgot that insult and vowed revenge upon him, which, I must say, has been sweet. But, as you can see, I successfully created the elixir. What’s the secret of long life, Sima? Continuing to live in the same body? No, that’s where everybody got it wrong. My elixir gave birth to new cells and destroyed the old ones. It gave me a new body of a teenager. Captain Dash is back in a new container, but with the same old spirit.” He scratched his neck with the dagger-locket.

  “What did you do my mom?” My voice trembled.

  Captain Dash laughed. “That bit of information I’m not going to share even with you, because you’re intelligent enough to use it against me.” He looked at the robot and ordered, “Kill her, Princess.”

  The robot’s metallic hand grabbed my throat.

  No time! Do it, you crazy girl! I must be right, or why did Dash want the brain-uploading manual from Dad?

  Before it could crush my windpipe, I screamed, “MOM! IT’S ME, SIMA!”

  Two things happened at the same time: Captain Dash shouted “No, no, no!” and the robot woman’s grip on my throat loosened as it looked into my eyes with a twinkle of sudden recognition and as much wonder as a machine was capable of displaying. I hugged her metallic body tightly and began crying like a child.

  The robot turned to the thin boy trying to hide behind his chests of gold. In a thundering voice, she said, “You traitor! You promised me that you’d spare my husband and my girl in exchange for my life!”

  The infamous pirate Captain Dash tried to run, but he was powerless against the machine. Mom caught him by the neck; I could see the anger radiating from the reddish glow of her eyes. I said, “Don’t kill him, Mom!”

  The red in her eyes softened as she lowered him on the ground. She walked us out of the cave into the sun, still holding Pawan by the back of his neck, and I followed them.

  But there were still people outside who wanted to kill us. The entrance of the cave was surrounded by the three pirates, all pointing their weapons at us. “Good job, kids,” Natwar said. “The monster looks harmless enough. You’ve done well. Now comrades,” He looked at the other two pirates, “kill them all!”

  Mom spoke and the three pirates froze. “You need to leave this island. Now. Or you’ll die.” Mom shoved Pawan to the ground.

  “You’re in no position to threaten us, junk-lady!” Vipin said.

  “Don’t talk about death, you witch!” Satish shouted.

  “Kill them!” Natwar demanded again.

  Mom did a thing that I never expected her to do. She shouted “Come on, Sima”, and grabbed me by the waist as she rocketed into the air, and there we were: a flying robot-lady with a little girl, going to the seashore. Jets of long, white smoke came from the exhaust pipe from her metal backpack.

  It must have been a sight for those sky-watching pirates! “To the ship!” I said. We landed on the boat and rowed quickly to the almost empty ship. The two or three pirates still on the ship were no problem for Mom.

  Epilogue

  “Your father invented an earthquake predictor,” she said. “You experienced a few quakes on the island, didn’t you? I detected radon emission from the rocks underneath it. The island had been gradually sinking into the sea for years; my robotic sensors were telling me so. They’re not going to make it. It will be gone within two days.”

  I had bought a hat, overcoat, sunglasses and trousers for Mom. As we walked to our house, I showed her Natwar’s sat phone. I had stolen it when they were busy fighting the tiger. She made a noise like a laugh and said, “your dad’s genius was inherited.”

  The morning sun felt refreshingly warm after so many days in the sea. I knocked on our door. The jailor didn’t get a chance to make a noise. Its severed head flew like a golf ball to the ceiling.

  “Who’s there?” Dad called from his bed. “Sima, is that you?”

  “Yes, Dad,” I announced. “I’ve brought someone with me.”

  Even from this distance, I knew that Dad had recognized who it was. The teardrops on his cheeks were unmistakable.

  Rosa, the Dimension Pirate

  By Matisse Mozer

  * * *

  Rosa didn’t learn how to pilot the ship until she was twelve, and even then, she wasn’t allowed to fly until her fifteenth birthday. Now it was two years later, and Captain Don Schaeder was trying to shoot her down.

  “Hold on!” Rosa yelled, heaving her whole body sideways and taking the ship into a corkscrew spin. She stood on the bridge, hands interfacing with the holographic controls. Two lime-green torpedoes wove through the wings of her small ship and kept going, passing through white clouds and disappearing in the blue sky. “Goose? Goose, what’s our fuel look like?”

  Goose Mackenzie sat at the navigation computer behind her. Four computer screens, six tablets, and two holographic displays all blinked rapidly, but Goose’s thin fingers whipped away at her six keyboards. “It’s about as it good as it was when we took off,” she said.

  “We’re not empty yet.”

  “Not yet, because we maybe have... And I do mean, maybe...”

  “Goose, just give it to me!”

  “We’ve got about five minutes of fuel left.”

  Rosa swore.

  Don Schaeder’s ship came into view overhead.

  “They’re activating tractor beams, Cap,” Goose continued. “I can try to hack their navigator’s equipment, but without fuel, we’re gonna fall.”

  Rosa took her hands off of the holographic controls and let her worn arms hang limp. The ship was meant to be piloted by a grown man with typical pirate muscles, not a teenager who never had enough to eat.

  She weighed her options.

  “Let them tractor us,” Rosa said.

  Goose smiled. “I’m guessing that means you have a plan.”

  “That’s a word for it.”

  The ship buckled. Goose’s displays went dark.

  They had seconds before the ship was in docking range.

  Rosa ran, pulling Goose with her as she went, leaving the bridge behind, then running down the short hallway past the mess hall to the cargo load. The rest of her crew—two older men and one man from a dimension that hadn’t developed spoken language—all looked at the cargo bay door with unease.

  “Goose,” Rosa said, “I need the smallest tablet you have.”

  The ship gave a final rumble. The cold, recycled air was suffocating in Rosa’s lungs.

  There was a BANG against the cargo door, and another, and another. Goose passed Rosa a small tablet, busted up at the edges but still functional.

  Rosa turned the small screen to the program she needed, then placed it in her hip pocket.

  The locks released with a gentle click, and the doors pulled to the sides. There were familiar faces on the other side: Barnes, the young man who towered over everyone and Jameson, with his dark skin, long gray beard, and piercing blue eyes.

  Barnes and Jameson entered the cargo room and aimed their handguns at Rosa�
��s crew. Barnes glanced at the defiant Rosa and Goose. He smirked.

  “That went on long enough,” came another low, gravelly voice from behind them. “Did you work out your little tantrum yet, Rosa?”

  He came through the doors just as he usually did: with a long-barreled gun in one hand and a cigar in the other. His height, his powerful arms, his thick mustache and even the snarl on his face intimidated his foes, but they weren’t his calling card. Don Schaeder’s remaining human eye had died long ago and calcified, but it had been left in the socket for no good reason other than that it looked terrifying. His other eye, the bronze metal one had a black hole and green dot for a sensor; it darted in his skull as he surveyed the room.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, “I’m proud, if anything. Stealing my map to the Treasure, taking a cruiser, even getting a crew—it’s all good stuff. You’re a lot like your old man.”

  He was not Rosa’s father but he liked to think that kidnapping someone earned him the title.

  “The only problem here,” Don Schaeder said, “is that you recruited a crew from prisoners.” He clicked his tongue, then turned to Rosa’s crew. “You all could have had lives when we returned home. You all blew it.”

  “Slavery,” said the oldest crewman. “Slavery is not a life.”

  “Sorry you feel that way,” Don Schaeder remarked.

  He aimed his gun and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet caught the crewman between the eyes. The man fell backwards with the gunshot, his eyes still open.

  Rosa’s agonized scream echoed around them.

  Don Schaeder turned his weapon to the younger man. Rosa understood his grunts and panicked gestures. Any human being would have. But Schaeder didn’t care. He fired.

  Rosa closed her eyes. Counted the seconds. She could still get away. She had to get off this ship and make it to the Treasure. She just had to wait...

  The final crewman’s final word was a curse. Then he, too, was gone with a blast.

  She’d failed them. Good men, all of them. But Rosa’s plan was almost complete...

  Then Goose screamed.

  Rosa opened her eyes. Don Schaeder had Goose’s head in his gigantic hand, gun at his side.

  “Those idiots betrayed my kindness,” he said. “But you, kid?” He nodded at Rosa. “You need to learn a lesson for all this, I think.”

  He aimed the gun at Goose’s head.

  Rosa took a quick breath and tapped the button on her tablet.

  The ship’s lights went out. It was pitch-black now, save for the BANG of the next gunshot, but Rosa had tackled Goose, and the two girls fell to the ground unharmed. Goose opened her mouth and struggled to breathe, but the life support was out, along with everything else. Barnes and Jameson began choking.

  Rosa got up and ran like hell.

  She got to the bridge and activated the holographic displays. She hit the ignition on the ship. Everything came back on, but the life support wouldn’t turn on again until they were well out of range.

  She made sure the cargo bay was still wide open, then she flipped the engines to overdrive.

  The tractor beam was good, but not that good. Rosa’s cruiser tore away from its captor. She dared to look behind her: the cargo bay was empty, bodies and inhabitants shifted and thrown by the chaos. Goose would be okay, Rosa told herself. Goose had to be okay.

  She swallowed the pit in her throat.

  Goose would forgive her. She hoped.

  The holographic displays flickered on and off. Goose had been right: they were out of power. Rosa set the steering to autopilot and went to the navigator desk, feeling herself go weightless as the gravity went offline. She saw the one device she needed and caught the small glass mechanism in her anxious hands.

  Only thing left to do: get into an escape pod. Outside, the ground got clearer and clearer. Buildings, trees, even roads. She wasn’t going to make it.

  Jack Hurwitz was living through the worst summer of his life.

  Okay, so maybe he was exaggerating. He’d failed his classes, sure, and he wasn’t going to a four-year college right away, but what did that matter? He would go to community college, move out, get a job, live like everybody else.

  The future would suck. It didn’t mean he had to hate the present, too.

  Jack sat in the backyard of his stepmother’s home. After his grades came back, he’d gotten the cold shoulder for two weeks straight. Jack wondered how people managed to be pissed off at someone 24/7. Didn’t that get exhausting?

  At any rate, he wasn’t going to get bored. A stolen beer from his father’s stash and a view of the afternoon sky told him that much.

  And even better, there was a plane with one of those smoke trail things, probably about to write something in the sky. That was Colorado for you: a beer and an artist in a plane, and you were good.

  Except the plane wasn’t changing direction. It was heading straight down, at a ninety-degree angle, as if his trigonometry teacher had drawn the damn thing. It caught fire and accelerated, landing past the town’s main street and clear west of the Thompsons’ property.

  Another piece of the—what, maybe a satellite?—broke off, this one curving and shooting upward first, then coming back down with a vengeance. Jack stood up, cold beer freezing his hand.

  It was coming right for his backyard.

  Jack ran into the back porch. He put the beer on the windowsill and clapped his hands over his ears.

  The impact shook his world. Laundry fell off the machines, plates fell from the kitchen cabinets and shattered, pictures in the living room dropped and exploded into glass shards. His parents were definitely gonna kill him now.

  Jack lay on the linoleum tile of the back porch and watched the smoke trail rise up. He got to his hands and knees slowly. He glanced out the window. The satellite piece had formed a straight-up smoking crater where the tool shed used to be.

  A loud banging noise came from inside the crater. BANG. BANG.

  Satellites didn’t usually have people fighting to get out, right? Jack’s mind went to the first thing he could think of. It was an alien. Definitely.

  He knew that aliens probably could do better than attacking Beaton, Colorado on their first invasion, but still. He had to see it. Jack took his beer from the windowsill, took a deep breath to give himself courage, and went to the smoking ruins.

  A final BANG and a blue-and-green metal door fell off of the very-probably-alien-ship.

  If they said, “Take me to your leader,” Jack was totally going to say he was the President.

  The alien emerged. The alien looked an awful lot like a teenage girl.

  “Holy shit,” Jack said. “You’re like a kid, aren’t you?”

  She held a hand to her head and she was staggering as she walked out of the crater. Her skin was a tanned honey color, and she had a jet-black ponytail of thick curls. Jack didn’t know what he expected at this point, but her chubby cheeks and short, round legs weren’t part of it. And what the hell was she wearing? They looked like tattered rags.

  She opened her mouth to speak.

  The words that came out were the fastest, fiercest gibberish he’d ever heard.

  “Sorry, I can’t understand you,” Jack said. He pointed at his mouth. “Are you an alien?”

  The girl’s brow furrowed.

  “You’re on Earth,” Jack said. “This is my parent’s house.”

  “Earth,” the girl said. “Earth.”

  That was a start. “I’m Jack,” he said. “Jack Hurwitz.”

  The girl pointed to herself. “Rosa.” She held up a finger, like she wanted him to wait where he was, before going back to the crater.

  The alien girl—Rosa—came back with a flat piece of glass in one hand, and a small black tablet in the other. Like an iPhone, Jack thought.

  Rosa pressed a few buttons on the tablet’s screen. A piece of it detached, and when she removed it, it looked an awful lot like one of those micro earbuds. She offered it to Jack.
/>
  He mulled it over for about two seconds, then stuffed it in his right ear.

  “Can you understand me?” Rosa asked, in clear-as-day English.

  Jack nodded. “Sure. Welcome to Colorado. Is that your ship?”

  She pulled a huge, long-barreled gun out of her back pocket and aimed it at his chest.

  Jack dropped the beer.

  “Is Don Schaeder with you? Is he here?” she asked.

  “Don what? Is that a drink, or something?”

  “Is he with you?” Rosa looked past him, at the house, back at the rubble, then up at the sky. Jack could basically feel her anxiety in the air. “Does he have the Treasure?”

  “Treasure? What the hell are you talking about?”

  Jack did a mental back-up. If this was a smaller ship that came from a crashing one, it was probably an escape pod. She had a gun, she had worn-out clothes, and now she was asking about treasure.

  “Are you like, an alien pirate or something?”

  Rosa kept the gun trained at him, but her features relaxed. She finally took a breath, then the gun lowered. “Where is this?” she asked.

  “Colorado. It’s like, in the middle of the USA? Part of North America?” But then, when she showed no reaction, added, “You have no idea what those are, do you?”

  “Colorado’s supposed to be by the waterfront.”

  “No, I guarantee you, there’s no beaches around here. I mean, if there were, rent would be so crazy...I mean, I have a cousin out in Cali? That rent is insane, and you’re not listening to me, are you?”

  She had the flat glass thing held up to the sun now. “Tell me something. Do you have wireless computation on in this reality?”

  Jack tilted his head. “You mean like the Internet? You’re from another planet and you’re asking about the Internet?”

  “I’m not from another planet. I’m not going to ask for your leader, Jack. I need an AC adapter.”

  Jack snapped his fingers. “I have that! That, I do have.” He started toward the house, but stopped and said, “Come inside. I have, like, six phone chargers.”