Chapter One: Here be Monsters

“They can’t be of use,” Captain Zas said, a wicked gleam in his eyes.

A slash of vermillion light burned through the void between Runner and the crippled Right Attitude. Jonica bit back a sharp rebuke of Zas while he laughed. His finger slipped off the button that fired the attack. She turned her head back to the display, watching the successive explosions caused by the destructive beam striking the wounded Right Attitude’s reactor core.

“I swore I’d protect them! They’d be safe!” Jonica shouted. “To their faces.”

“And?” Zas asked, a smirk on his dark face. “Shadow Marauders lie.”

Balling up her fists, she lowered them to the console, suppressing a round of oaths. Or worse, to go for her own thrower, attacking Captain Zas. I have to watch this, she thought, knowing that, with that smirk, Zas dared her to attack. It was part of his cruelty. She shuddered inwardly, not wanting to give anyone in the cockpit the notion she was shaken by what she’d witnessed. 

She bit her inner cheek to stop an outburst when Zas asked, “What did you think of that?”

Leaning back in his pilot chair, still chuckling while folding his hands over the slight bulk of his stomach, an easy smile of gleaming white stretched in his mahogany-dark face. Sharp, predatory eyes raked across the three other pirates in the cockpit of the Ransom Runner. No one answered until Zas’ eyes set upon Jonica.

Say something, she said to herself. “That wasn’t necessary, Zas… It wasn’t necessary,” she said in a sharp tone. Jonica gripped her console, keeping her hands from her weapon. Calm down. He’ll think you’re hysterical if you shout. Flicking her head away from him, her shoulder-length, pale, milk-colored hair rippled over a shoulder. She didn’t dare meet his eyes. Already on the edge of insubordination, she stopped talking.

The laughter and mirth disappeared from his voice when he asked, “Oh? Why is that?”

“We crippled them. Took the cargo. Left the crew locked in their cabins,” Jonica said, not looking at him. If she did, she’d lose what little self-control she held onto. Without it, she’d attack—tantamount to suicide. She turned her gaze to Krag and Rister instead. Neither of them met her eyes while she looked at them for support. They simply stared at the deck. Krag was fidgeting with one of his little silver fetishes while Rister shifted from one leg to the other, swaying side to side.

“And?” Zas asked, his thick body leaning forward. His mouth pursed in a line as he studied her, waiting for a response. He’d pulled his oddly curved blade, stroking the wire-wrapped hilt with his thumb.

Jonica swallowed hard. Sod it! She turned in her chair to pin him with a look. “You told them we would let them live. I told them they’d…”

Zas’ face remained neutral, then shook as she trailed off. Slag, Jonica thought, I went too far. He’s—

“I lied.” Zas laughed, louder and louder. “It’s what we do.” Settling himself, wiping a small tear from his eye, he gave a small shrug. “We’re pirates, Jonni. We lie, we cheat, we steal— we kill.” He purposely looked into her eyes to punctuate the last words.

The frigid tone of his voice sent a shiver down Jonica’s spine. The way he gave a small shrug of his shoulders when he said it rankled her in her core. Especially using his pet name for her in front of the crew. Asshole. She tried to bury it and couldn’t. It wasn’t possible anymore. “You gave them your word, Zas. I gave them my word.” She shouted and stood up, hand going to her thrower in its holster.

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He said nothing, simply turning back to his console, ignoring her. He watched the last of the Attitude flare into tiny bits of metal and detritus; the smile creeping across his face disgusted Jonica. Still watching the ruins of Right Attitudebeing flung about, a smile grew wider on his rich, mahogany face.

“You know, I am a liar,” he said, still not looking back at her. “Set a course home,” he ordered. When he issued the order, his head snapped back to look at Jonica. The predatory grey eyes stared at her, daring her to do something. “Problem with my order, XO?”

 “No sir,” Jonica said to the deck, sitting down and turning to prep the return route without thinking. Her hands trembled. “Plotting a return course home,” she said in a whisper. The Ransom Runner was a small enough spacecraft that two were redundant to pilot. Zas could have programmed the course back with micro-jumps and hard burns to get back to Poveglia on his own.

Jonica knew what he was doing: showing he’d won their brief exchange and flexing his power and authority over not just her, but Krag and Rister as well, both of whom would tell of what happened to the rest of the crew on the four-hour trip back to Proxima Centauri, five AUs from their current position.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she watched and then heard Zas bark at Krag, “Don’cha gotta do da break down, Krag?”

Krag’s face blanched under his dreads. He shot out of the cockpit to do the actual work of breaking down the haul from the Right Attitude into raw materials, consumables, and miscellaneous trinkets and treasures.

Rister stopped rocking, only staring straight ahead. His skin was already as pale as Jonica’s hair. The lithe, slender Ionian trembled for a second. “Wan I go and—”

“You stay, Stumpy.”

You didn’t use to be this way, Jonica thought. You used to have some kind of honor. Before that, Peeper of the Bloody Bitch’s Empress ship. “You used to have a code,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

Zas let out a barking laugh. “And, if you remember, we almost got killed because we let that captain and his crew live.”

Jonica closed her eyes, not wanting to remember that trap.

Zas continued. “They had the slagging Confedrats hidden, waiting for us to leave the ship and crew alive. Had we killed them, they wouldn’t have signaled the slaggin’ troops in the hidden cargo hold. We’d be dead. Right, Stumpy?”

For a heartbeat, Jonica replayed the trap sprung on them. The Confedrats spilling from crew quarters and two of their ships jumping into positions to fire on the Xi Targan, the ship Jonica was commanding while Zas led the raid on the “disabled” ship. They’d lost the Good Richard, and half the raid crew of Good Richard died in the pitched battle; the other half languished in a Confederation prison, waiting for execution.

“Well?” Zas asked.

Rister swallowed hard. “Da was three month ago, Zas-man,” Rister started. “I—”

Zas smirked at Rister while standing faster than Jonica thought possible. “The one you said wasn’t big enough to hide anything.”

Rister let out a small cry. Rubbing at the stub of his left pinky finger, he said, “Captain. I-I-I been wrong. I paid da butcher—”

Zas took a step forward. Rister stepped back, smacking into the bulkhead of the rear of the cockpit. Ignoring his frightened man, he reached over and touched Jonica’s hand as she finished programing the navigation brain for home. “A chance for glory and adventure, little one. That’s why we can’t be lax,” he’d said in a voice smoother than Europan ice. “To live, others… must die.”

She looked at him, a little startled that he had touched her in front of Rister. Frightened or not, they’d whisper about that as well. Looking up, she saw that he was giving her his best and most sincere smile. For a moment, she saw the man who’d stolen her already wounded heart, filling her head with tales of adventure and treasure.

“Let’s head home, Jonica,” he said, grinning sweetly and patting her hand again. Then, the glint in his eyes held a maniacal glint, watching the last bits of the Right Attitude float away into the void. “It’s much more fun to lie and kill, eh?”

As he sat down smirking, she wanted to say something; to ask what had happened after the attack by the Bloody Bitch’s Peeper, but it wasn’t the time. Rister was still there, even though he looked ready to rabbit. Then she looked to the screen to where the Right Attitude had been. No, not the time at all. Get back home, figure out your next plan. There is nothing you can do out here.

She took a deep breath, nodded, and said, “Aye, Captain.” She programmed the last jump point and started the sequence.