The immediate exterior was pretty much as neat and clean as it had looked from the air. Everything was a pleasing front for some business, or the odd apartment building with no doubt absurd property values, and the public infrastructure was quite good. There were two levels of walkways and bridges above the ground-level streets themselves. Most of them were wide, with lanes set aside for tiny personal vehicles like mag-bikes or those chair things that always looked utterly ridiculous to Gaylen.
But mankind’s problems were never that far away, and the less shiny district the pirates had set down in was lurking behind mere two city blocks. There was a bit of a border area, where two worlds met, and it was dominated by a large public square. At the centre of it stood a tall pole with decorated laser carvings. It didn’t look old, but its subject matter sure did. It was all ancient guns, people in strange hats and jackets, and a few images that Gaylen didn’t have the cultural context to make any sense of.
It was there, beneath the pole and the camera sphere on the top of it, that Gaylen, Jaquan, Kiris, Herdis and Bers stood.
An automated snack kiosk hovered a slow, endless circle around the square. It looked more at home on the wrong side of this unofficial border, but sugar and fat had a powerful lure, no matter where it came from, and so they all munched on tasty little bread abominations as they waited.
Herdis touched her belt, and made a slight adjustment. There were plenty of places on the Fringe where one could just step off a ship with a rifle on one’s back. Places that were either so overcrowded and vicious, or too sparsely populated, for anyone to expect the law to save them. In more stable and orderly locations it all varied, and checking before you stepped off ship was right up there with being sure you’d turned off the thrusters.
Local law allowed women, specifically, to carry self-defence stunners, so Kiris and Herdis each had one in a small holster. Kiris also had a decorated walking stick, and there was no outward sign that it was weighted and balanced for cracking skulls. No one could fault an engineer for carrying a tool belt, even if a couple of the tools were big and heavy and ended in nasty heads. Gaylen had a knife, folded and tucked away, as well as a pair of gloves that, again, one needed to examine closely to see were for combat. And, finally, Bers had his two lumpy beast fists, as well as a knife of his own.
The man had the tool out, using it like a fork to hold the bread snack. He’d grumbled about the legal length allowed off-ship, and even now regarded the blade with distaste, like it insulted him.
“Eh?” the man barked as he noticed Gaylen watching him. “See?”
He wagged the knife.
“For EATING. Not killing.”
“You kill just fine without a weapon, Bers.”
“Kill better!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I think I see them,” Herdis said.
Everyone followed her gaze. There, on the edge of the square, was a six-person group that most folks seemed to swerve around a bit.
“Yes,” Kiris said. “That’s them.”
Gaylen took a monocular out of his pocket, put it against his eye and zoomed in.
“Yeah, those are pirates.”
He looked just long enough to assure himself that they weren’t any more armed than his own group, then did a quick scan for any possible accomplices that might be using the six as a distraction.
Finding nothing, he pocketed the thing, and stood his ground. He took them in as they came closer, estimating the danger each one posed through size, body language, confidence, and all the other little tells. He knew that Kiris was doing the same, only better, but he wasn’t going to let the eye he’d developed for these things go to waste.
“I wouldn’t say they’re planning to attack us right away,” the Chanei said to everyone in a low voice. “But they are definitely aggressive. No hidden weapons, that I can tell.”
Kiris was always quick to remind everyone that the that I can tell part was important. As observant as she was, she still wasn’t literally a mind reader. Still, her words made him all the more confident for this encounter.
There were two women, clad in black, with matching black bowlcuts. Gaylen thought they might be twins, but the burns on one of them made it hard to be sure. There was an androgynous figure in a brown suit and some sort of metal mask. There was a man with a deeply red face; marked by bad living, or hazardous exposure, or both. The display was topped by a mohawk, held in place with gel. Another man was short and hunched, with a pinched face and mean eyes.
And then there was the leader.
There was no mistaking the way he strode right at the front of the whole group, or his general air of broadcast importance. He had a feral face, scarred by fighting, and angry eyes. He wore a black chest piece that was almost certainly armour of some sort, black boots and pants that shone in the same way as the chest piece, and fingerless gloves that stopped just below his elbows. The rest of each arm was completely bare, giving a glimpse of his physique.
The skin had ripped in multiple places years ago, unable to keep up with the growing muscles. The pirate effectively didn’t have a neck; it was completely swallowed up in muscle. It might all have been impressive if not for the damage, and all the burst, dead veins that made him almost as red-faced as the one with the mohawk. He’d bloated himself through chems, and surely shaved years off his life. Of course, he could surely crush throats with one hand while eating a sandwich with the other.
They didn’t wear their pirate markings openly, but a seasoned spacer wasn’t going to take them for anything other than what they were. And no one was going to overlook the general air of trouble and menace.
The leader was showing his teeth, breathing rather heavily, and came to a quick stop a few paces in front of Gaylen.
“Hhnn…” the man vocalised out through those choppers, several of which had clearly been replaced. “I am Chief Horruk!” he announced in Otuka. “Of-”
“I heard you the first time,” Gaylen told him coldly.
He disliked bluster and banter in equal measure. When forced to have these conversations, he preferred to just refuse the game rules and stay cold. That it tended to bother them didn’t hurt.
“Of War Clan Birok,” the pirate finished, biting the syllables out. “And you also heard me offer the chance to end this without blood.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“You wanted me to let you board, with guns and armour,” Gaylen said. “When you could have just demanded I dump cargo. That is not happening.”
“Huh! You are the Addax, flew out of Black Brayer, with a shipment meant for Arris-Beyond-White.”
“So?”
“I want the box.”
“We have a lot of boxes.”
Horruk snorted.
“I want the Gilded Box!”
Gaylen was silent for a few seconds, and fought down a momentary urge to chuckle.
“Yeah, so do I.”
“It is on your ship,” Horruk said, and pointed a thick finger at him. “Disguised.”
Gaylen cleared his throat.
“You believe the Gilded Box itself is being used to move produce?”
“Disguise, like I said!”
Gaylen let out a soft, slow groan of exasperation.
“I guess this is pointless…” he said. “So I’m only going to say it once: I do not have the Gilded Box.”
The pirate leader, predictably, was unmoved.
“You can give it over here, or we can take it in space, through battle and blood.”
“Goodbye,” Gaylen told him flatly.
Horruk’s default sneer widened, putting Gaylen in mind of a snarling predator.
“It’s blood, then.”
“Fighter?”
It was Bers. As Gaylen turned to look at him, he found the man tensed up. It was a different sort of animal behaviour. Not so much a threatening display as a readiness to pounce at any second. There was a cruel excitement to the man.
“You a fighter?” Bers asked Horruk, his voice unusually soft and focused.
“Like nothing you’ve known, old man,” the Scorchspacer said back.
“Hah.”
Normally it would have been a loud bark. Now, like Bers’s speaking voice, it was at a low volume and slow speed.
Gaylen saw a darkness in the man, and he thought of wild, myth-shrouded places, far beyond the light of what Gaylen considered civilization… steeped in whichever forces shaped a culture that shaped someone like Bers. Places of death, primal violence, and otherworldly mysteries.
Now Bers growled, still softly. His eyes were fixed on the pirate, glinting with a desire for violence. Gaylen worried he might actually go into one of his fits.
“Home? At home? Just kill you right here. Take skull.”
Bers raised a hand high above his head, as if he were indeed holding a severed head, and shook it a little.
“No talk. No playing.”
The pirate just glared back, with the immovable spite and confidence these types needed to stay in charge.
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll get the opportunity.”
Bers banged his knuckles together, with force that would have made a sane man wince.
“Good.”
Horruk swept his index finger over Gaylen’s group.
“You all had your chance. From now on, it’s blood. This I swear, by gods and kin. I will wet my shrine before this ends.”
The pirates started walking away, but kept their heads turned so they could keep glaring.
Why are they always such goddamned children?
“He meant it,” Kiris said, once they were finally far enough to make the showy glaring pointless.
“I figured,” Gaylen said. “Anything else?”
“No subtleties at all. He’s convinced, and I don’t peg him as the sort to change his mind.”
“Too proud,” Gaylen said. “Which is to say, too sensitive.”
He sighed.
“We need to do some homework.”
# # #
There was regular, everyday scanning, built into the cargo bay opening and most docks as well, to make sure he wasn’t taking on a cargo that was going to explode or get him arrested in more civilised areas. Then there was scanning, done with powerful handheld tools, to each individual container. It wasn’t standard practice, because it would slow galactic trade to a crawl. But these weren’t standard circumstances, and so Gaylen, Kiris and Bers each went over the produce boxes with their own scanner.
Jaquan kept himself busy with the early parts of the overhaul the Addax needed, and by the time the scanning was almost done Herdis returned from her own task.
“Alright. I’ve been everywhere on this dock I’m allowed, and talked to the employees about the places I’m not. Security does seem to be pretty solid. They have cameras everywhere, a small security team, and quick access to the police. If our new friends are going to pull something, they’re going to have to be very clever about it.”
“Or just patient,” Jaquan said, his voice just barely audible from the engine room.
“Yeah,” Kiris said. “It’s like he said: Once we take off they can just follow us and try again.”
“With fully restored guns,” Gaylen added.
“But what is this about, anyway?” Herdis asked. “You promised to explain.”
“I did.”
Gaylen finished his own stack of boxes, and the scanner gave him yet another soft beep that indicated nothing out of the ordinary. The box really did contain nothing but produce and plastic. Kiris was also about to finish with her last one, and Bers was just a bit behind.
Gaylen set the scanner aside and leaned up against the stacked boxes.
“The Gilded Box is this old spacer story. Supposedly, when the Mawan Union was formed some rich folks lost out in the new order of things. To get out of paying their dues, they had a lot of wealth converted into digital currency encoded on golden microcircuitry, which was then hidden on the inside of an unassuming box, largely invisible to the naked eye.”
Kiris’s scanner made its final soft beep.
“The stories diverge after this point. Some talk about betrayal from within the group of rich bastards, others bring runaway lovers into the mix, a ship crash, a lane failure, pirate attack… the point is, the box is supposedly bouncing around somewhere in the Nearer Fringe, passing from one set of unsuspecting hands to another. Or sitting in a dusty storage room somewhere.”
“Hm.”
Kiris crossed her arms.
“Mawan Union… that was decades ago. I think if someone had found this thing in the meantime, they would have kept quiet about it.”
“And with just those words, you’ve already put more thought into this than Chief Horruk of War Clan Birok,” Gaylen said. “Whoever told him the box was to be found on this cargo shipment… I wonder if they also offered him real estate on Greater Eden.”
“Heh. Now I’m picturing those people rubbing elbows with aristocrats.”
“Hmh.”
The sound barely counted as a laugh, but Kiris’s smile was louder.
“The aristos would faint in horror at just the proximity.”
“Do you believe it exists, boss?” Herdis asked.
“No. It’s just a treasure story. There are plenty like it, all of them vague and varied.”
“Then why the scanning?”
“Just in case.”
“Anyway. Now what?”
“Horruk thinks we are sitting on a treasure that will take him from chief to king overnight. Anything we say to the contrary will just be taken as an attempt to keep it for ourselves. We can’t placate him, because we don’t have what he wants. This won’t be resolved with words.”
“And yet this isn’t a planet for gunfights,” Kiris pointed out.
“Gunfights in the open,” he corrected. “But let’s get a better feel for things before we resort to that. Jaquan!”
The engineer arrived, with wiring in one hand and a set of pliers in the other.
“How long will all this take you?” Gaylen asked.
“Fifteen hours, if I have Kiris with me to help,” his friend replied.
“I want Kiris with me out in the city. This place does offer by-the-hour engineering help. We’ll put up with the price tag for the sake of finishing the run on time.”
“And us?” Kiris asked.
“We need to either deal with them here, planetside, or find some edge for when they follow us out into space. Let’s make plans.”