“I didn’t say I’d just sit there,” said the captain, “though, frankly, I’m not sure what your problem with sitting there is. I find sitting to be quite an enjoyable activity.” She waved at the scenery surrounding the two of them, as they sipped tea at one of the tables that had been placed on the Statue of Liberty’s head.
The contact started to splutter and pout, then thought better of it. She smoothed her sea-green dress and took a deep breath. “I thought you’d be over the moon when you heard about this one,” she said. “I don’t get it. You need money, I definitely need money, and there’s a barge that’s begging to be robbed. What’s the issue?”
“A smash-and-grab job right smack in the middle of downtown is a tall fucking order, whether the boat is guarded or not.” The captain took a deep breath and played with her eyepatch. It’d start to fray at this rate, what with all the worrying away at it she’d been doing.
The contact tossed her arms in the air, then let them fall back onto the tea table. Saucers, spoons and teacups clinked and rattled. “It’s dangerous?” she asked. “So what? You’re pirates! Violent, amoral, adrenaline-crazed lunatics! Am I right?”
“You’re not wrong.”
Oh, to hell with it, the captain thought. In for a penny, in for a pound. She smoothed out her napkin and fed Bloombito an oyster cracker before focusing on the contact. “So, where did you say the best place to intercept the shipment was?”
The first order of business was to disguise the ship. That was easy enough. Hack off the figurehead and stow it in the hold, slap a new coat of paint on the old rust bucket, hide all the guns, make sure everything was spick and span, then call it a job well done. The second order of business was to disguise the crew, which somehow turned out to be more time-consuming. Most pirates tended to look as though the contents of a thrift shop had exploded all over them. Then there was the business of the false body parts several of the crew were sporting, which were entirely too noticeable. That led to the bold tonsorial and facial hair styling that was the fashion among pirates, and was most certainly not the fashion among contracted merchant seamen.
Even the captain herself was not immune. The eyepatch was gone for this mission, replaced by a glass eye and a pair of over-sized sunglasses. It didn’t feel right at all.
“The target is late.”
This from Aki, who had been subdued since her dressing-down on the Pizza Rat’s previous adventure. The ship slowly punted up Lexington Avenue, moving in time with the traffic, looking like nothing more than yet another tramp steamer hauling a load of who-knows-what to who-cares-where.
“Yes, it’s terribly unsporting of them. If they’re going to be late they should have the decency to call ahead and let us know, so we can get a coffee before robbing and murdering them.”
Roberto always did tend to get snappish when he was nervous. It was quite endearing. Sometimes the captain felt like a parent mediating between two siblings.
“We may not know where they are now, but we know where they’re going, right? Right?” asked the captain. Her reward was a pair of strained nods from her bickering underlings, which she took as a signal to continue. “They’ll take 58th out to open water, then make for Connecticut Bay. We’ll just keep loitering until they show up.”
It was a boiling hot midsummer day, which didn’t help anyone’s mood. Every now and then the faintest puff of a breeze blew in from the east. The air was so humid that you could almost cut it into slices and spread it on a piece of bread, thought the captain. It should have been lunchtime, but the crew watched and waited for their quarry to emerge.
And then, all of a sudden, it did. Aki claimed the honor of first eyes on the prize. “I think that’s it,” she said, pointing ahead. “Orange hull, two masts, double motors at the stern?” she asked, but it really wasn’t a question. The whole crew had memorized the vital details of the ship they were hunting.
Off went the sunglasses and out came the spyglass. The captain held it to her good eye, squinted, and then slammed it shut and started barking orders. “That’s it, all right,” she said, a note of excitement creeping into her voice. “Add sail, get the sculls working, and start the engines! We’ve got to cut them off before they get to open water or they’ll outrun us with those big motors for sure.”
The Pizza Rat started to pick up speed. It swerved into oncoming traffic for a beat, edged past a few slowpokes, then slid back into its lane just in time to avoid a collision.
“Turn east on 56th!” the captain shouted down to Fouad at the helm. It was narrower than 58th, but there wouldn’t be nearly as much crosstown traffic. They turned hard a-starboard on 56th Street, which thankfully was quiet. Only a few personal canoes and kayaks plied the quiet residential way. Their passage was rudely interrupted by the Pizza Rat, which roared down the street, leaving a trail of whitecaps in its wake.
“Left on 2nd Avenue!” roared the captain, caught up in the thrill of the hunt. “Clear for action!”
Second Avenue was much busier, and the traffic was heavy. They were still about two-thirds of a block shy of 58th when the captain saw the target starting to negotiate the intersection ahead. She wasn’t the only one to notice. A muffled groan was audible from bow to stern.
“They’re going to get away,” warned Roberto.
“Not if we blow our cover,” said Aki. “How about it, Captain?”
She pretended to consider the situation for a moment, though of course she’d already decided what to do. The Pizza Rat would have had to announce its presence soon enough anyway. It was time to start the dance.
“Raise the Jolly Roger,” she said, “and run out the guns. Fire a warning burst at those sluggards ahead of us. That should speed them along a bit.”
The staccato rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire punctured the drone of motors and horns. Chaos reigned in the street, as the traffic struggled to process the situation. Some boats fled to port, others to starboard. Still others opened their throttles in an attempt to flee. The result was total gridlock.
“Keep firing!” said the captain. “They’ll move out of our way, or we’ll move them to their graves!”
The pirates plowed through the wreckage of the morning traffic, guns firing as they approached the cargo barge. It had gotten stuck in a knot of ships trying to escape the scene, all tangled into a crazy quilt of desperation at the corner of 2nd and 58th. Horns and screams sounded in a crashing wail as the Pizza Rat bore down.
The captain was an island of calm in the storm. She thumbed on her megaphone and said to the crew, “All hands, prepare for boarding. We’ll only have about five or ten minutes before the cops show, so don’t play around. Find the valuables, take them, and get the hell out. If anyone looks at you funny, kill the bastard, but be quick about it. You’re on the clock.”
They’d slowed down now as they approached the target and there was a hiss-whistle of grappling hooks, lashing out and binding the two ships together. There were a few crewmen scuttling around on the deck of the barge, milling about in confused circles like lemmings that couldn’t find a cliff to leap off. So few, thought the captain. Why not more? Where’s their crew?
The pirate crew started to jump from the Pizza Rat to their prey now, guns and axes held aloft, singing dreadful sea shanties as they leaped. They plunged onto the deck, swiftly clearing it of resistance. The demolition crew was preparing to blast the hatches open and roust the leftovers from their hiding places when someone started screaming. This was not an uncommon happening on board the Pizza Rat, and the captain didn’t really pay it any mind until it dawned on her that it was the lookout in the topmast who was screaming. Then there was a smash and a bang, and all of a sudden she was lying on the deck.
The captain levered herself up with one hand to a sitting position and wiped the blood off her face. Three undercover Police Navy gunboats, which had been hidden away somewhere in the traffic, were raking the Rat’s stern with controlled bursts of machine-gun fire. On the barge, supposedly as helpless as a b
eached whale, the hatches had burst open and a full platoon of action troopers had flooded forth onto the deck. The boarding party was being quickly and efficiently slaughtered.
It was a trap. The contact had sold them out. She’d been played.
She took a deep breath, opened her mouth to issue the orders that would set everything right, and then stopped short. The bridge was on fire now. Thick clouds of smoke were pouring from the engine room as the gunboats continued to tear at the Pizza Rat, hungry predators satiating themselves on wounded prey. The troopers were mopping things up on the barge. There was only the Captain and what was left of Roberto on the quarterdeck.
It was already over. Everything ends so fast.
All of a sudden, she remembered the beginning, back when she wasn’t the captain, with a brace of pistols, an eyepatch, a pigeon on her shoulder, and a ship at her command. In the beginning she had been Teresa, or Ms. Cheng, to her supervisor at the fulfillment center to which she’d been subcontracted. They all dreamed of running away and joining a pirate crew, all the young drones processing orders and taking gigs, but Teresa was the only one who’d actually done it.
She’d signed on to the Credit-Default Swap, a sturdy barque that sailed out of Red Hook Cove, and old Captain Queenie had taken a shine to her. She was a great grey slab of a woman with a nose that looked like it’d been carved out of granite. Teresa hadn’t been with the Swap long before they made a big score running down a merchie crammed to the gills with product in Jamaica Bay. That night they made anchor in the bay and celebrated. It was almost dawn, when the sky shifts from black to grey, and everyone was passed out round the embers of the bonfire except for Teresa, still savoring every moment of this strange new world she had fallen in to. Then Old Queenie had appeared, as if from nowhere. She looked at Teresa and said, “This life is short and sharp and beautiful. Enjoy it while you can.”
The captain pulled herself up. Everything stank of blood. She fitted two pistols carefully into her hands. The troopers were starting to come over to the Rat now, wiping up the last scattered pockets of resistance. She couldn’t help but wondering, in a little corner of her mind, here at the end, how they’d remember the ship and her. Would they tell stories about the fights she’d won, the treasures she’d stolen, the lovers she’d had, or the escapes she’d made? Would they even sing songs? The captain thought about it, just for a moment.
Then, with a shout, she launched herself into the fray.
Tenari
By Michael Merriam
* * *
The thing that surprised Captain Kathleen Reed the most about commanding a pirate ship was the amount of paperwork it involved.
She set her data pad on her grey metal desk and closed her eyes. Pain was starting to set in behind and between her eyes, the kind of pain that only the master of a marauding space vessel knew. Too much paperwork, not enough plunder, that was the problem. If only she had stayed sober, she would never have gotten into this mess.
The ship’s intercom buzzed on her desk. She barely recognized the voice over the static. She thought it might be her executive officer, and he might have said, “Captain to the bridge,” which was reason enough for her to leave the ship’s accounts unfinished. Captain Reed stepped from her ready room onto the bridge of her ship, The Black Manta.
She looked at her executive officer. Roger Baldry was well into his seventies. Most thought him far too old for this life—and he did have grandchildren back on Pegasus—but she knew Roger Baldry could out-fight, out think, and out-drink any two of her crew.
“What have we got?” she asked.
“Civilian bulk freighter,” Baldry said. “An old Savros, probably a second series model three.”
She raised an eyebrow. “All the way out here and all alone?”
A throat cleared. Captain Reed turned to her chief of gunnery and ex-wife. “Yes, Janet?”
“It’s a trap, Captain. That’s a Melpomene cruiser disguised as a freighter. There’s no other explanation.”
Captain Reed nodded. Janet Sobrinski thought everything was a trap, up to and including the food served in the mess. The annoying thing was, sometimes Janet was right.
“Orders, Captain?” Baldry asked.
Reed looked out her window at the freighter. “Fire a laser burst and transmit an order to cut their engines and prepare to be boarded. Tell them if they cooperate, no one gets hurt.”
“Aye, ma’am,” Janet said.
Captain Reed felt the low hum of her ship’s cannon powering up. The lights on the bridge dimmed and the ship gave a slight shudder as the weapon discharged.
The engines on the big freighter glowed white-blue and the ship turned starboard and down.
“They’re running,” Baldry said.
“So it seems,” Reed sighed. “Match their speed and course. Stay with them, Helm.”
“Aye, ma’am,” her helmsman said. “They won’t get away.”
Captain Reed wasn’t worried about her quarry escaping. Old her ship might be, but there was no way a freighter would be able to best The Black Manta’s speed and maneuverability.
“XO, get the boarding party together and down to the airlock, I’ll join you after we’ve docked,” Captain Reed ordered. “And Roger, tell everyone we’re going to be extra careful over there. They might be smugglers, this far away from normal shipping lanes.”
Baldry nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Reed turned to her gunner. “Target their engines. Use a missile. I want them to know we mean business.”
There was a metallic clank from deep in the ship, and The Black Manta rocked.
“Missile away,” Janet reported.
Captain Reed watched the chemically propelled weapon close rapidly on the target. She was surprised at the lack of any counter-measures by the freighter. The warhead on the missile exploded before impact, sending a shockwave into the back of the big ship. The old freighter’s engines dimmed. “Helm, take us in.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Captain Reed sat in her chair and grabbed the armrests. Roberts, her helmsman, made the landings hard and noisy to frighten the occupants of the ship they were raiding. She watched the freighter fill her view screen.
There was a jolt and a series of loud clangs as The Black Manta’s landing gear slammed into the hull of the freighter and gripped it magnetically. There was a second loud thump.
“Lock and seal,” Roberts said.
Reed stood. “Good. Mr. Roberts, you have the bridge. Janet, you’re with me.”
Captain Reed smiled as she rode the lift to the lower decks. This was exactly what she needed to take her mind off her troubles. Two minutes later she was standing among a dozen members of her crew, her pistol drawn, preparing to board the freighter. “Open it,” Reed commanded.
A pair of crew members stepped forward: Jeffers, a young blonde man carrying a small electronic device and Tilly, a brown-haired woman nearly as old as the captain, holding a large wrench. The young crewman placed his piece of equipment near the joined airlock and started punching buttons. After a minute the lights on the device and the airlock control both turned green.
“Ready, Captain.”
Reed looked at Tilly and nodded. The woman jammed the wrench handle through the airlock turn-wheel and, with a grunt, gave it a tug. There was a hiss of air and she withdrew the wrench and spun the airlock mechanism. The hatch opened. The smell of stale air and food past its prime filled their noses, and no one was shooting at them. This came as a pleasant surprise to Captain Reed.
“Go!” Reed shouted.
Janet Sobrinski charged into the vessel, screaming at the top of her lungs. Behind her a dozen of the crew followed, each brandishing their weapons and yelling a battle-cry.
Baldry snorted and stepped through the airlock onto the freighter. “Janet likes doing that entirely too much.”
Reed laughed. “All the youngsters do, too.”
“No sound of gunfire. Maybe this will go off clean after
all.”
“One can hope. So, what do we have on the chief’s wish list this time?” Reed asked.
Baldry pulled the pad from the pocket of his flight suit. He poked at it a couple of times, shook it, and then slapped its side. The pad whined and gurgled and made a noise like a hissing cat.
“Induction couplers and coils. Targeting sensors. Circuit boards of any kind. Soldering wire. Copper tubing, fresh water, and yeast—”
Reed smiled at the last. “So that’s what he plans to do with all that wheat grain he’s been hiding in the engine access tubes.”
“It’s supposed to be a secret.” Baldry paused. “Smithwick will brew up something that won’t kill the crew or make them go blind, unlike some other idiots we have aboard.”
The captain’s reply was cut off by screaming ahead of them. Drawing her pistol, she set off at a jog toward the voices. She turned a corner and pounded down a metal staircase toward a narrow corridor as the young blond technician started up it.
“Report!” she barked.
“Captain, there’s...well, I think you’d best see for yourself, ma’am.”
“What is it, Jeffers?”
“Children.”
The captain looked up at the sound of her gunnery officer’s voice. Janet stepped around a corner and into the corridor. A brown-haired girl, no more than ten years old, clutched Janet’s hand as if it were a lifeline. The girl’s face was flush from crying and she stood slightly behind Janet, barefoot and shivering in her faded floral dress.
“There’s nothing but children on this ship,” Janet said.
Captain Reed holstered her weapon. She squatted down and looked at the little girl and smiled. “Can you tell me where all the grown-ups are?”
Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) Page 22