“Now that, mon amie, is a successful heist,” Serac says with an undeserved grin, whooping before giving a firm slap android compatriot’s rear. Her scowling is ignored as he grovels. “Capitaine, I know this isn’t what you wanted per se, but it’s a good consolation, right? A new prize, some coordinates, a hostage. No thanks to that computer’s terrible flying.”
The cockpit’s floor-to-ceiling windows are awash with blue-and-white lights, visual representations of the infinite particles of space that bounce across the vessel’s bow during light-speed transit. Dyle’s automated reports list the damage suffered, amounting to minor scratches, scrapes from near-misses, the odd depressurization already stabilized by his all-feeling mechanical care.
The compartment is cramped, humid from the combined nervous heat of three additional criminals.
“Well now, I thought I was quite graceful,” the AI retorts.
Dyle opens his star-map, tracking the progress of travel along the uploaded route, a daisy chain of twists and turns no doubt chosen for complexity rather than speed. Normally, you would flip through this sizzling holographic display, dragging across entire systems to view the endless multi-dimensional boundaries of space. This time, however, you are handcuffed, hurtling through the galaxy independent of your navigation.
“If you could fly as well as you run your mouth, I wouldn’t mention it. Try focusing on being a ship, eh?”
“And how could I, with the three Marx Brothers breathing down my neck?”
“Give it a break Serac, this is a pretty advanced AI,” Reggie complains, confirming your suspicion of android heritage. She lazily dips her finger into the hologram before you, its digital packets naturally contorting and flowing around her mechanic fingers. “So advanced that it externally projects itself through an antiquated personality matrix for camouflage. Bit of a rude one, at that.”
“I know, I look vaguely familiar. I have that effect on people.”
“See? Who knows, maybe I can siphon something, rather than just sending it to the scrapheap. Shame about the processing power, though. You’re right about its lack of priorities.”
The mare above you clears her throat, begetting the immediate attention of her two subordinates. She still weighs on your shoulders, nails retracting from your flight jacket. After drawing a deep breath, she once more keeps a perfectly stoic face, running her own selfish matrices behind batting eyelashes.
“Reggie, less playing and more investigating; see where we’re headed, build us a combat matrix. Serac, stay up here with the prisoner, decide if we’ll need to keep him alive for much longer.” The mare finally withdraws her digits, wiping them together with disgust before departing the bridge to explore your small craft. No doubt intent on inspecting her newest prize. “And I want progress by the time I get back.”
In the reflection, you watch as her tail turns the corner, into the rotary that hosts entrances to the Mr. Memory’s few cabins.
“Well, you heard the lady,” the android begins in the absence of her supervisor. She parses through the holographic menus and data points, pulling and pushing through Dyle’s interfaces, massaging them into non-Euclidian shapes that spew integers into her receivers. The vibrating mountain ranges of algorithms, meaningless to your human mind, entrances you.
At least until your chair spins to face her partner with a kick.
The mercenary chuckles to himself, producing a simple lighter and a pack of cigarettes. Like the stains near his armpits, the carton’s crisp edges are damp and folded. The powder-blue packaging has a dark tinge of moisture that languishes in the humidity. He rolls up his sleeves, his formal white shirt nearly a size too small for his meaty frame, sweaty hands trying to drag the pure-silk over his forearms. Savoring his cigarette and checking his antique watch, he leans against the window, taking in the view of Reggie from over your shoulder.
Finally, he unsheathes a double-edged Poignard, his fingers maliciously tracing its foiled grip with a loving touch.
“Back to work, as always,” Serac laughs. “Before we start with the business, this business, let’s make a bet or two. It can be a fun game for us.”
He looks at you with a smile, as if you’re at the brasserie together, sharing a drink or ten. Body language stocky, jovial in tonality. Almost calming, even with his blade dancing within centimeters of your face. You half-expect his questioning to be mundane, as if to pass the time for only a scorching afternoon, you both sweating, languishing at a café near the casbah.
But, the mercenary’s malicious enjoyment is as foreign as his torture.
“How long do you think you’ll last? It won’t be a cycle, but typically we get a few hours in before the lights go out. If you don’t have a guess, we can try another bet. Which of your fingernails comes off the easiest, for example. It’s normally the little finger, of course, but you never know. ”
Your cockpit is ordinarily quiet, devoid of such laughter and small talk. Churning engines make up for silence, as does the rattling of poorly fitted appendages on the ship’s exterior, shuddering and jittering through Dyle’s velocity changes. Typically, your mind can glaze over, your subconscious entering the low-power state of semi-automated transit, allowing you to achieve the subtle high of the aimless courier.
However, with a knife waved in your face, your stress grows, childish adrenaline evaporating. This isn’t a forgotten or skimmed delivery. You haven’t taken a wrong turn. A client won’t simply leave a critical review.
For the first time, from the safety of your captain’s chair, you fear what you’re transporting.
“Hold on Serac, I’m getting strange energy spikes from the ship,” his android partner winces.
“Since when?”
“Since you started discussing flaying the pilot alive. The nav’s threatening to send us right into a star.”
“You sure?” The man presses his dagger against your gut, offering to disembowel you with a single forward motion. He glances up from his cigarette. “What’s it saying now? Is it going to try and kill us?”
“Yes, I’m a dangerous assassin. I’m a mad killer on the loose,” Dyle interjects with a pre-programmed sarcastic tone. All at once, his data banks turn red. Warning screens interrupt Reggie’s ministrations and send waves of crimson numerals cascading against her body, the tendrils of information maliciously tracing around the room.
“Serac, cut the fun,” she growls. Her manicured hands vibrate uncontrollably against the interference. “It’s threatening to shut off life support and overheat me.”
Dyle’s holographic appendages and plumes of file directories, while menacing in vision, waft impotently through you and the mercenary. Whatever electromagnetic violence occurs is harmless to your fleshy forms. Serac watches with a naive curiosity, lost in the light-show that contorts around the android’s shrill voice as she cries out with fear.
“Get the knife away from the clown already, his vitals are tied to the ship’s mainframe,” she screeches.
With a shrug of shoulders, the mercenary sits back. His grin disappears as Dyle’s internal systems chug to normal, visual extremities cascading from red to yellow and finally a calming torrent of blues. With an air of contempt, Serac grabs his handkerchief, dabbing his cheeks and chest before stuffing it into his pocket, pensive about his next move. He stares at his compatriot, her gyrating body gradually returning to her semi-human stillness. No longer at risk of an overload, Reggie scowls with frustration.
“What if we just kill him outright?”
“For heaven’s sake, Serac. The ship nearly spaced me!”
“Okay, okay. A joke,” he contests. His cigarette dances between his lips, the mercenary almost uncaring of your presence, placid in his problem-solving. Unsurprisingly, he attempts to outsource his concerns. “If not torture, then what do you suggest?”
“Negotiate,” she growls, more interested in Dyle, forcefully re-inserting herself into the calmed streams of data, their surface tension breaking with an unfamiliar magnetism.
“Negotiate? Sounds like your forte, no?”
“Serac, please. Try finishing your job for once and spare me the complaining.”
The android’s posture is subtly convincing. Bending at her hips, two hands held up in defiance, a perfect nonverbal representation of aggressive passivity. She remains unflinching, at least until the mercenary turns to you.
Robbed of his fun, he phones it in.
“Alright clown, how about you tell me who you are, and how you got the datapad.”
“How about you uncuff me first?”
“What? Absolutely not,” Serac scoffs. Whatever respect he has for your audacity is void as he flicks the knife in your direction. Once more, a screen mutates into a threatening red and a shrill chastising escapes his partner, a litany that only empowers you further. Irritated, he reaches behind you and undoes your restraints, rolling his eyes at the dismayed reactions of his android friend. “Listen, I’m too tired for this. And look at us, we’re both the victims here. So start talking, eh?”
“Well, my name—”
Reggie cuts short whatever paltry lies you’re about to concoct, unable to hold back her irritation.
“He’s Anonimo Ignoti, part-time contracted courier and deliveryman. This is the Mr. Memory, Gamma-Class freighting designation. The AI, propulsion, and cargo handling were all refitted seven, five, and four years ago, respectively. All these refurbishments coincide with the sale of the ship to our pilot here from a scrapyard on Alessandria D’Altair,” the android rattles off the information as she carefully continues her calculations. “Do you want to know his uplink history, too, Serac? Or do you think you can talk something out of him?”
“And you were going to let me torture him for what you already found? Every day you get colder,” the mercenary shakes his head, bemused. His grin tells you that, for all the tormenting, the bloodshed is in good fun. A hobby. He replaces his Poignard and once more produces his carton of cigarettes, further crumpled and dampened. “Un point, c’est tout. But, are you ready for me to take all the credit, Reggie?”
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“Try it and I gut you,” she says with a confusing appreciation.
Stillness returns as the android pilfers, caressing Dyle’s arithmetic with a resting serious face. The mercenary brings a finger to tap his wristwatch, peering past his shades to investigate some perceived slight. He takes it off, pressing it against his ear, eyes darting around in hope of a distant ticking.
They’re quiet, for pirates.
“Wait,” you start, Serac grunting with surprise, still fiddling with his watch, spilling ash onto his pants with a groan.
“What’d you say?” He bellows.
“I was saying, if you don’t know who I am, or what’s on this, then why are you here kidnapping me?”
“Because you’ve got the datapad,” the android replies, flicking through your uplink memory, reviewing your previous delivery jobs and nonexistent savings and digital entertainment preferences and terrible credit history. A string of middling client reviews appear on the center console for public enjoyment.
“But why do you want the datapad?”
“Why? Well, because the Capitaine wants it,” the smoking man gestures to the hallway behind. The one where the mare sulks out of earshot, lurking from room to room. “If she tells us to ‘space’ some corporate, ‘deconstruct’ some orbital habitat, or ‘assassinate’ some stooges, we do it. Whatever the Capitaine wants, she gets.”
“So she’s a captain?”
“Are you serious? Only what kind of courier wouldn’t recognize one of the most feared privateers in the middle of a galactic conflict,” Reggie scoffs.
“Well, she looks familiar,” you lie.
The two kidnappers give each another a look of pity before the human leans in close with a low tone, filling your face with smoke. He smells of hariss and sweat, a natural cologne. Even at this distance, putting on an air of secrecy, he’s speaks above yelling.
“The Capitaine, our Capitaine, is Our Girl Saturday C-X-L-I-I. Ever heard of her? ‘The Nightmare,’ ‘The Galactic Gladiatrix,’ you know, the clone that tore up the Greater Somalis in the Okapi Wars? Signs her name with a big ‘Ø’ because she used to be a slave? She’s a pretty serious deal. Her bounty could buy you a whole planet. Well, a dwarf planet, but you understand.”
“I don’t think the clown knows her. It’s tough to be this out of touch, you know,” she sneers. “And it’s one-hundred-forty-two, Serac.”
“Why would I know that? I let you do the thinking for a reason. Now, can we get the datapad without the clown, or are they too far linked?”
“From what I can tell, the tech is corporate. The clown may be a nobody, but the security is too quality for me to splice without risking data integrity. That is, unless our strapping AI friend wants to figure something out with me.”
“You started this business without me, you finish it without me,” Dyle responds, causing the android to give up, cross her arms, and take a seat on the nearby life support console.
“Can’t do much with your brute force if the kid’s protected, or the ship if he’ll space us. Even if I could get at the data, it’s not like we can space the clown until the flight plan’s complete.”
“The datapad has a navigational override?”
“Sharper every day, Serac. I only assume the Doctor was in a hurry to arrive at his destination. May have been a straightforward job for our courier if not for our intervention, come to think of it.”
Stillness continues, the two captors content to lounge around your cockpit. The android investigates unimportant diagnostic terminals, prying for overlooked points of weakness. Opposite, the mercenary fiddles with his knife again, picking at his nails. With nothing to do, you take a chance at interrogation.
“Anything your captain wants?”
“Of course, I owe her. We all owe her,” the man declares, happy to cease his fidgeting. “She busted up the prison I was in. Only served seventy cycles of a lifetime sentence because of that frightening mare out there. Said she needed a maquis, and I said give me a rifle.”
“Oh, but aren’t you going to tell him what you were in for? You always enjoy mentioning it.” The android lets a smile escape through her aura of disdain, an unconscious mechanical oversight.
“Well, since you’re all asking, I destroyed seven terraforming installations on Port-Petain. Personally set the clock back a good thirty years for the cause. If I knew I’d break out so soon, I would’ve just blown up the whole colony.” He brings his hands behind his head with a self-satisfied grin. “You’re not going to tell the clown your story now, Reggie? What about for that computer friend of yours?”
“How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?” Dyle joins in, egging on the bored privateers. She rolls her eyes and turns to face her audience, keeping her professional posture.
“I’m a former diplomatic android, set to be forcibly decommissioned before the captain took my embassy hostage. Mundane, really, in comparison to trillions of credits worth of biological terrorism,” she declares with a tone of superiority. Serac returns a look of recognition as he places yet another cigarette between his lips. The mercenary theatrically ambulates.
“Yes, but why, why were you going to be decommissioned? Why would they get rid of you, of all their beautiful androids?”
“You always want me to say it.”
“I do? Of course I do.”
“Because I was too undiplomatic,” the android chides. She snatches the lit cigarette from the mercenary’s mouth and steals a sarcastic drag, blowing smoke into the ceiling, intermingling it with the holographic displays. “But it’s much better than being too serious, isn’t it?”
“When a man gets to be my age, that’s the last word he ever wants to hear,” Dyle interjects, circulating the cabin’s air to dilute the growing plumes of smog.
The firm clacking of hooves announces the imminent arrival of the captain herself. Reggie stands, straightening her blouse. Serac snuffs his cigarette on one of the blinking consoles, careful to place the other half back in his pocket before running an idle hand through his thinning hair. Once more they’re piratical, exuding the professionalism their career demands.
Ø’s stoic reflection gives way to a look of anger as you, too, spin around to greet her. The mare narrows her eyes and spots the discarded tobacco, unused restraints, and still-functioning AI system. Her arms cross with confusion.
“Reports?”
“Ma’am, the ship is tied to the vitals of our hostage, so any harm that comes of him directly affects the ship’s performance. For example, if we cut off a finger, an engine would shut down. Shot to the head, catastrophic light-speed landing. Compared to how it looks, the shipboard AI is quite advanced.”
“Well, you’re honest, anyway,” Dyle chirps, eliciting a flinch from the mercenary, beginning his debrief, trying his best to retain honor in the face of defeat.
“The clown’s a courier, nothing more. Datapad is unreadable, and the dual encryption makes us hesitant to space him. He’s not a merc or corporate. Just the wrong place at the wrong time. Un etranger.”
The mare impatiently taps the crude metal floor, letting an idle tongue edge across her lips. She stares intently at the android before straightening her back and once more shooting a heavy sigh. This unspoken disapproval holds the next order in the air, threatening to come crashing down on her two underlings.
“Any word from the Cimarron?”
“No idea if she made it after the security forces swarmed, ma’am. We won’t have a way to contact her until we exit transit.”
“So you haven’t tried to find her?”
“No,” Serac explains. “We’ve been focusing on other tasks.”
“Pull us out of light-speed and raise my ship,” she points towards the hallway. “Use the central communications array. It’s in the hidden panel next to the cargo entrance.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the two disgraced kidnappers mutter, scurrying to place the distress signal, shuffling past one another in the cramped cockpit, dodging floor wiring and jutting machinery.
A subtle white light activates. A notification that Dyle has shifted his processing power elsewhere. No doubt to watch over the integrity of his own internal components as the pair of thugs probe the craft.
Your AI leaves the two captains on the bridge, the pirate staring idly out the cockpit window, watching the blue-and-white particles arc past your view.
You haven’t been able to look at her without the burning stench of plasma explosives. Your eyes trace her amber mane, down the contours of her bodysuit that emphasize each equipped firearm. The modified Astra Z680 with its nuclear-tipped rounds, a Star INM2 with gyroscopic handling, an antiquated Glisenti with a simple heart carved into the sandalwood grip. Every curve hints at yet another concealed weapon with enough firepower to take down a full-grown iaculus.
Once more, you instinctively stare at her chest, the cleavage of her bodysuit revealing a single cream-colored diamond. From this distance, you spy the smallest of body modification; a barcoded slave’s tattoo beneath an unknown symbol. Her neckline flinches, and a pair of commanding eyes bear down on you, studying your every misstep.
While standing, she’s a full head taller than you. While sitting, she dwarfs you. With a murderous step forward and she lowers herself, daring you to get a better look at her unidentifiable chest markings.
She effortlessly kicks your right, then left leg open, leaving you exposed to any sort of attack. Sinking to her knees, she forces her snout within centimeters of yours. Her fingers trace the armrests of your captain’s chair and drag to the now-unprotected area between your legs, gripping your seat. She presses herself forwards, forcing your head back to avoid contact. The pirate draws another deep breath, one that sucks the oxygen out of the cockpit.
With a firm clink, you hear the concealed strap beneath you open. The mare produces your antique sidearm with a disinterested look. After checking that it is indeed loaded, she holds it in her left hand, testing its weight before turning it on you.
“Tell me how I knew there’d be a holdout under your chair,” she demands in a hushed tone. Confused at her question, you observe her snout twitch with unintelligible emotion. Her whisper is venomous. “I said, how do I know where you keep your gun?”
“Don’t know,” you mumble, only convincing her to pull the slide back and force the firearm to your throat.
“I knew where your comms were, found your stash of spezie in the cargo, and felt this would be an unmodified 418 with shredder rounds. Don’t even have to check. How do I know this?” She grits her teeth with the final syllable. Her other hand grabs you by the collar, setting off a subtle warning notification on the main console. “I don’t play these games with clowns like you.”
In a single movement, the cockpit lights dim to a nonresponsive red, alarms blaring to signify danger. Diagnostic tables swirl around the room, colliding with other meaningless data as she props the gun against your windpipe. A combined yelling from across the ship claims that the blast doors are opening and shutting on their own, the stars streaking against the window as your only lighting.
“You’re familiar,” she spits. “Let’s guess. A diplomat from the Yuan Shih-kai before I scrapped it? No, Serac says you’re a courier. Probably a spy from the Offworld Pan-African Conference, you faraq. Either that or you loaded me up as cargo on Alta Floridia in between fights. So, another slaver? No, you’re not scared enough.”
Her mane lifts, weightlessness taking hold as the artificial gravity oscillates. A floating graph shows life support threatening to shut down entirely. The mare heightens her breathing, panting with a rage that few live to recount.
“The Cheyenne Bombing? Nova Brasilia? The D’Inzeo jobs? Answer me! How do I know you?”
“Capitaine, let go of the clown already,” a bumbling voice squeals, no doubt clawing against the failing gravity. Conversely, the android fights with the lack of friction in silence, using her magnetic appendages to maintain a balance against the ceiling. Their bumbling silhouettes are like vaporizations along the rotary walls.
With a last flourish, the cockpit’s blast door initiates locking mechanisms, sealing you both inside with a thud. Dyle’s circulation reverses, slowly depressurizing the vessel, cabin by cabin. Admirably, he saves yours for last.
“I should have killed you by now,” the mare whispers in confusion as her finger dances on her trigger. The flashing warning signs and multi-dimensional modeling bear the same threatening vitals. They obscure her oblong face, which contorts in a foreign, girlish embarrassment. Her furrowed brow softens as her body floats off the floor, sending the both of you hovering from your positions.
Her grip on your neck hesitates. The muzzle at your carotid artery rotates, nuzzling against your skin. Exhaling, the mare removes the gun from your trachea, attempting to decipher her next moves. The threatening messages subside, the cockpit returning to normal as gravity reasserts itself, bringing you back to your seat with a dull thump.
Her subordinates, crumpled on the floor, gasp for breath as the lockdowns are lifted and oxygen once more floods their lungs.
“Captain, I said the pilot’s vitals connect with the ship’s interface,” the android yells from the doorway, focused more on fixing her blouse than her tone. “I suggest—”
“I understand the situation, Reggie,” the mare bellows. Throwing you by the collar into your seat, she stands before her subordinate, gun pointed towards the ceiling, hands shaking with frustration. “If I need your help, I’ll call for it! Now get back to the comms and raise my ship!”
With a huff, the android sulks to her post. The mercenary picks himself off the floor in tow, visibly nauseous. His sordid laugh reverberates through the expanding artificial atmosphere, no doubt at the expense of his partner. Looking down at you once more, the mare gives an aggressive nicker before departing, off to rearrange some other part of your vessel in her lonesome.
“I wouldn’t take that too seriously,” Dyle says, rebooting himself after an intense display of processing power. He’s earned it, after nearly generating another brownout or ripping the ship in half.
“What makes you deduce that?” Your neck is tender. Bruised, but not full of holes. Marked with a dark chalky residue not easily removed.
“I don’t deduce, I observe,” he quips before sending his consciousness to a different corner of the vessel, white light blinking away, leaving you alone with your wrung pride.
The arcing stars command your focus. Dyle’s displays, chugging along, show at least another four and a half cycles until your destination. And that’s without the intermittent stops for external communications to some far-off pirate base. As a pair of haphazard footsteps re-enter the cockpit to keep you under guard, you idly wonder whether the timer also counts down towards your expiration.
You also wonder if that hiding spot of yours was a bit too obvious.