The girls hobbled along the large balcony
that encircled the ballroom. "Look! Look at this shit, Alexa!" Nina
held up her left hand, displaying only three complete digits. She looked more
pissed than hurt, which made sense, since Alexa could see an emergency
pain-block bracelet wrapped round her wrist.
Alexa smirked. "You always put your
fingers where they don't belong. That's why you keep losing them." She
shook her head when Nina thrust her hand toward her.
"They grow back. Eventually."
Alexa rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and what
if they didn't? What if the Ancestors hadn't fixed that before they first
headed into the Big Dark?"
"Then I'd be in deep shit, wouldn't
I?" Nina muttered around a couple of pain pills. An emergency p-block
never lasted more than a few minutes. "Now, are you gonna fix 'em up, or
not?" She waggled the stumps at Alexa.
Shaking her head, Alexa removed a first aid
pack from a pocket on Nina's right leg and began to wrap the damaged hand. Nina
winced, and Alexa commented, "Be cool, it's only a few fingers. Have Doc
do a cloning stim later."
Nina sniffed, "Well, actually, the
right term would be regenerate,
because cloning is only when you... Fuck,
that hurt, bitch!" Alexa ignored Nina as she administrated the first aid.
When she'd finished she looked at her friend with pride. "All done. And
damned well, if I say so myself."
Nina sighed. "Thanks. You know, if I
keep this up, I'll have more regenerated parts than originals."
"And what's your point? As long as you
have your original head and brain you're fine, right?" Alexa smiled at her
friend—but she still looked sad.
Nina was biting down hard, obviously trying
to ignore the pain from her hand; and in her eyes, Alexa could see the shadows
of a sadness that mirrored her own. But all she said was, "Right."
Nodding, Alexa injected Nina with a hypo
from the pack, then dosed herself with the same drug. Both shivered and smiled,
their eyes glassy, as the drug hit their systems. Once they felt they could go
on, they continued out onto a second level above the ballroom, and smiled as
they headed toward a very wide spiral staircase. By then, the sounds of
fighting had more or less ceased, and someone had silenced the alarms, too. The
lights kept flickering on and off, like distant heat lightning, but at least it
was normal-spectrum; someone had turned off the yellow warning lights.
As they swept out onto a landing, Nina
glanced at her companion and said, "Where's your blaster?"
Alexa's cheeks turned red, and she frowned.
"Um, don't ask. I'll get a new one later. By the way, Nina, do you have
any more charger mags? All of mine are useless...must have charged them wrong
or something." Nina nodded and tossed Alexa a couple of power charge
magazines with her good hand.
"You're welcome," Nina mumbled
back as she checked her own weapon for any damage. She glanced up and let out a
snort of amusement. "Look. The Twins from Hell." She gestured toward
two female aliens who appeared, at first glance, to be identical to each other.
Both wore battle fatigues like Alexa and Nina, and carried enormous magma
rifles. Their purple skins were stippled with small yellow dots, and they both
had long, prehensile tails. At the moment, those tails secured a young prisoner
between them.
"Mohama and Miska, what do you have
there?" Alexa called.
"Just a young brat," Miska
replied haughtily. "Thinks it is Oman like the two of you, but it has a
pale skin."
"We figure we could kill some time
until General Assembly," Mohama added happily. "Care to join us as we
ravish him over there?" She nodded towards a secluded area.
"Sure!"
Nina grinned. She moved close to the prisoner and yanked up his head.
"He's just a boy," she exclaimed. She started to fumble between his
legs. When she found his private parts she looked at him, impressed. "I'm
in." She glanced at Alexa. "What about you?"
Alexa rolled her eyes and said firmly,
"I like my men past puberty, thanks." The boy looked at her
pleadingly for help, but Alexa deliberately misinterpreted his look and said,
"In your dreams, kid, in your dreams." Wasn't her responsibility to
protect little lost boys.
"Still waiting for your knight in
shining armor?" Nina smirked.
Suddenly irritated, Alexa stopped and
turned around. She walked back to her friends and glared at the prisoner.
"How old is he?"
"Who cares? He's as tall as we are,
and check this out." Miska
sliced through the boy's trunks with her razor-sharp nails, exposing his
privates. Alexa raised her eyebrows but failed to whistle, given her missing
front tooth. "Hell, he's still too young. He'll explode before we can have
any fun with him."
"Not if you do that nerve thing you so
happily brag about," Nina mused, while looking over the boy and licking
her lips.
Alexa shook her head and said, "It's
just waste of time. Besides, he's obviously an Orchid Oman, since he's been
circumcised. His end nerves are ruined, and that would block the impulses from
his sexual nerve."
"He better be worth it, girl, or
you'll be out of power batteries for the next galactic year."
Everyone but Nina started to laugh,
including the victim. The victim! Nina stuck out her tongue at Alexa and the
twins.
The girls went wild around their young
trophy, and hurried him away toward a small, secluded area behind a staircase
while they danced around him and tore off his clothes. The boy's eyes grow
larger and larger as the four girls informed him what each one of them would do
to him. He didn't really look that scared; it was obvious, in fact, that he was
quite excited. They hurried towards a hatch near the staircase, leaving a long
trail of equipment and clothing behind them.
But their fun wasn't to be. Suddenly,
unexpected, the bulkhead erupted with a deafening roar right beside them,
tossing them all head-over-heels from the pressure wave and filling the air
with debris and billowing smoke. The boy's body acted as a shield, protecting
the girls; Miska and Mohama fell back, with the boy on top of them. Nina fell
down the stairs and Alexa slammed hard, head first, into a bulkhead, losing
another tooth.
After a dizzying moment she looked up,
holding her head in both hands as she cursed with a bloody mouth. She was
disoriented, and she could feel blood oozing out of her ears. She tried to get back on her feet
and into the fight, and then time stopped.
She looked up into a pair of dark blue eyes
staring down at her. There he was. The knight—her knight.
Ever since Alexa had been sold to the
pirates at the age of ten, she'd had only one dream: To be rescued by a knight
in shining armor. That dream was silly, and it hadn't really lasted long. Once
she'd turned fifteen she'd been adopted by the Captain as his daughter, and
automatically received second crew shares. Now she was looting for her freedom,
to get enough credits to manumit herself. She hated piracy with a passion, but
she had no choice in the matter: so she dove into the life with a vengeance.
Still, every time a shot was fired, her heart clenched and her soul was forever
scarred. She knew she had to leave this horrible life, or she would end it
herself.
Alexa stared, paralyzed, at the most
handsome young man she had ever seen—and she let her guard down in the process.
An iron-hard fist struck her in the face, followed by another in the gut. She
went down like a poleaxed sheep, crashing into the bulkhead she'd just crawled
up from and breaking her third tooth of the day. She hit the deck in a still
heap, dead to the world.
A dozen young men and women, all dressed in
light blue formal uniforms, charged out of a hallway armed with slug-throwing handguns
and blasters. They quickly removed the girls' weapons, and made sure they
stayed unconscious for a while with their own version of the pirates' slave
collars. Then they began to advance against the pirate positions in two-by-two
formations. Unlike the pirates, who had been reveling in their victory and were
shocked by the unexpected attack, the newcomers were very organized, very
professional, and very well-disciplined. They fired short, controlled bursts
and advanced fearlessly against their enemy, who substantially outnumbered
them. Their facial expressions were invariably ironclad masks of hatred.
It was a suicide mission, and they all knew
it. But they didn't let that stop them for a moment.
The word send cold chills down many of the
pirates' spines, and confusion erupted among them.
Zuzack stood at the center of the ballroom
shouting out orders to his pirates. "Get them, lads and tramps, give them
all you got, and don't damage them too much! They're worth more alive than
dead!"
Laser and magma bolts rained down like a
hailstorm all around, but Zuzack just stood there as if he were immortal,
displaying no sign of fear. The pirates advanced, unorganized, and several of
them were killed or injured from the effective fire laid down by the cadets
from the Nastasturus Federation. Lieutenant Hughes grabbed his weapon and aimed
it at the oncoming threat, but Zuzack only laid his large hand on his
lieutenant's shoulder and said calmly, "Fewer crew members means more
spoil for the survivors. Remember, we're done in this sector and heading
home." Hughes gave his Captain a strange and questioning look, and after a
few moments he lowered his weapon and smiled uncertainly.
The fight was bloody but short, for the
Nastasturus soldiers soon began to run out of ammunition. At that point, Zuzack
ordered his troops to charge in and capture them alive. The pirates swarmed the
cadets, and the hand-to-hand fighting was fierce.
One of the pirates aimed her rifle at one
of the cadets' backs and was about to press the trigger when her head was
separated messily from her body. Zuzack wiped his sword on her quivering form
and snarled, "I told you, fools, I want them all alive!"
Zuzack gestured towards his third officer,
Major Grotech, who snapped out an order through his helmet communicator.
A moment later, four huge lizard-like dogs
charged from the boarding tube into the civilian ship. The Tilters rushed the
young cadets before they noticed the new threat from behind, and it was all
they could do to fend off the huge animals. Meanwhile, pirates approached with
net-throwers, discharging the weapons when they got within range and capturing
several of the cadets that way. The Tilter dogs themselves spat a web-like
substance that immobilized the remaining cadets, and suddenly it was over.
Alexa and Nina helped each other to their
feet, and supported each other as they picked their way through the cadets.
They stopped long enough to kick a couple, but not too hard, so they wouldn't
piss off the Captain too much. The twins Miska and Mohama followed angrily,
after they noticed the bloody emasculated mess their fun-toy had become. Along
the way, they took back their weapons from the captured cadets.
"What a waste," Miska growled.
"The poor thing could at least have been allowed to die with a smile on
his face."
Alexa ignored her; her attention was
elsewhere. There he was again: her Knight. No shining armor, though. He was a
young man in his early twenties, with short dark brown hair, his face bruised
up from the fight. Knight or not, he needed to be taught who was in charge. She
smirked. Time to break him in. Then
her gaze snagged on his deep blue eyes, and an odd weakness seemed to overcome
her. Dammit, knees, don't you mutiny on
me now!
Alexa kicked towards his face, coming as
close as she could without actually touching him, and lisped through her broken
teeth, "Anybody ever told you it's not nice to hit a lady?"
"You are no lady. You are a whore and
a pirate." He said it through clenched teeth, a menacing gleam in his
eyes.
Alexa glared down at him, frustration and anger
roiling inside her. Bastard. Her long-lost knight had made her feel weak,
something no male was allowed to do. This was no way for a knight to treat his
damsel in distress. She aimed another kick at the young soldier's pretty face,
and her toes struck the wall hard when he jerked his head away. Pissed, her
foot throbbing, Alexa lost her cool. Knight or not, it was time to kick some
serious ass. Literally. She was about to kick him again when something snagged
her ankle from behind and, to her horror, lifted her up in the air upside-down.
Hanging helplessly, she twisted around to
see what had her. The large saurian woman holding her up shook her head, the
razor blades woven into the ends of her long dreads clinking and rattling. The
saurian grunted, "Cap'n said no damage, Brat."
"Let me down, Myra, or I'll turn you
into a pair of boots."
Hissing in laughter, Myra tossed Alexa over
her shoulder and smacked her buttocks a few times. "Now, now, my little
princess, you are no longer a member of your Royalist Clan. You will obey, or
Cap'n will have his way with you—again."
Alexa started screaming and protesting, her
legs kicking holes into the air and fists punching Myra's back hard. The
saurian barely noticed. "Like hell he will, you lizard bitch!" she
screamed. "Like hell he will! Let me down, I'm warning you! I mean it,
Myra, you'll be the start of the next fashion statement to sweep the galaxy—and
dammit, stop spanking my ass!" She was not going to put up with this crap.
Imagine, being treated like this in front of her knight!
But the more she struggled and shouted
threats, the harder the smacks fell on her firm, unprotected buttocks. A few of
the pirates standing nearby started to laugh at the display. Instead of
breaking up the fight, they started cheering Myra and Alexa on.
But soon the cheering stopped like someone
had cut it off with a switch, and so did the spanking. A large, strong hand
grabbed hold of Alexa's dreadlocks, pulling her head back, interrupting her
complaints.
"You again. Let her go, Myra,"
Zuzack ordered. He held Alexa up by hair, with her legs kicking several feet
from the ground. It hurt amazingly badly, so she shut up. "Now, young
lady," Zuzack growled, "you will obey me, or I'll sell you—but only
after the entire crew has had their way with you. Is that understood,
Brat?"
Alexa looked at him in horror. She tried to
nod as she grabbed onto her hair and the Captain's long, muscular arm in a
futile attempt to stop the pain and pressure from her scalp and hairline. She
felt more than heard the sound of tearing flesh near her newly-acquired bald
spot, and she realized that if she didn't respond quickly, she was about to
lose her whole scalp.
"Yes, Captain, I swear I will never do
wrong again, I swear!" Alexa shouted sincerely. She didn't plead or ask
for any mercy, even when he gave her a little shake. Dammit, would she lose all
her hair? She ground her teeth. Well, be
that as it may. She would at least be alive, and it could be fixed. But she
felt sure that if she begged for any mercy, she would die for sure—or worse, be
scalped alive.
Zuzack stared at Alexa, and there was
madness in his eyes. The ripping sound of Alexa's scalp giving away turned him
on, apparently. Well, she knew that other people's fears turned him on more
than sex did. But there could be, no fear in Alexa's eyes. She bit down hard on
her lower lip, preparing for the excruciating pain that would soon follow, when
her entire scalp and all her hair would be lost forever. She figured Zuzack
would never allow her to have it regenerated. He and most of the other older
pirates treasured their battle scars almost as much as any normal treasure.
To her amazement, Zuzack's expression
changed and he begun to laugh, as he put Alexa down very slowly. Then he was
patting her on top of her head like some animal. "Kids!" he roared.
"That's my little princess! Be nice, and I might reclaim you as my
daughter again!"
Zuzack laughed hard, and bore the look of a
proud father as he walked over to the Nastasturus cadets. "You boys and
girls better be officers from wealthy families or Clans," he told them
brightly, "because if you're not, you will be sold off as food. Hell, I
might just let you have dinner with some of my crew later." He laughed
loudly, rubbing his large belly. The cadets only stared back at him
hatefully—except for one, who was trembling and covering his face, trying to
conceal his tears from his friends.
Zuzack ignored the whimpering young cadet,
his eye caught by another young man with red hair who stood out from the rest
and glared defiantly at him. More hatred radiated from the redhead than from
any one of the other cadets, or even any of the prisoners in general. "I
take it you're the leader of this little group?" Zuzack asked coolly.
The young cadet didn't answer; he just
continued to glare at the enormous pirate Captain with defiant eyes. His stare
made Zuzack feel a bit of unease; but hell—no fear, no fun. He walked up to the
cadet, grabbed his arm, and pulled him to his feet, ignoring the boy's
struggles.
"I don't like the look in your eyes,
boy. I think it's time to teach you and your fine friends a valuable lesson in
manners and respect toward your new owner."
Zuzack looked more or less human—but he
wasn't, not entirely. He smiled and opened his mouth wide, lifted his tongue,
and a barbed feeding tendril flashed out with lightning speed. It struck the
cadet in the left eyeball, and before the kid could even feel it, had yanked
out his eye and disappeared back into the Captain's mouth. The cadet dropped,
screaming, blood oozing from the black hole where his eye had been. He screamed
and cursed, threatening the pirate and all his followers with vile fates that
he had no means of carrying out.
After crunching up and swallowing his
prize, Zuzack assured the prisoner, "I know what you're thinking, lad:
that we'll clone it back. But we won't. I see by your insignia that you're a
cadet pilot. Well, you can never pilot a craft with only one eye—at least, not
a military craft. By the time you reach a safe port, it will be too late to
clone it back...if you make it back alive, that is."
Lieutenant Hughes sidled up to his Captain and whispered,
"Sir, with all due respect, he is worth more intact."
The Captain pulled Hughes aside and
whispered, "Listen, Lieutenant, they're all officer cadets. Remember last
time we had some, and what they did to my old ship? The damages and the loss of
good fellow pirates' lives weren't worth all the trouble. Not again! This time,
I intend to make sure they don't start anything funny."
"Don't worry. If he is, then we'll fix
him up as good as new. But if he's just an everyday cadet, or no one of
importance, then..."
Zuzack leered at Hughes and murmured,
"Wait till supper." He turned back to the prisoners. "In the
meantime, put them on the slave blocks, just in case they get creative."
The two pirates looked at each other and began laughing.
The prisoners were rounded up like cattle,
and most of the pirates gathered with them in the huge main ballroom. There
were over three thousand people present, and at least half of them were
prisoners. The prisoners, exhausted in mind and body, sat and lay down on the
floor. Many of them were injured, and most were bruised from the fight. Some of
the prisoners were in shackles, but most were not. What they all had in common
was the collar each had around his or her neck, engraved with a number or sigil
that represented the individual pirate or clan who had claimed the prisoner for
further trade.
Zuzack snapped out an order and the wall on
the far end of the ballroom peeled back, revealing two large airlocks flanked
by wide viewports. No doubt they had been used to load large items and passengers
directly into the ballroom. Visible through the ports were the long barrels of
the anti-fighter guns attached to the ship's hull. Zuzack stepped forward and
pressed a control on a computer console, and two sets of controls morphed out
of the wall. He took up station at one while the saurian woman, Myra, took the
other. Both grasped a joystick with a pistol handle, while peering through the
port into space.
Two pirates pushed a well-dressed elderly
man into the airlock and slammed the hatch shut on his screams. He pounded on
the inside of the hatch, and his face, bright red and contorted with fear, was
visible through a small window near the top. A pirate turned a knob on the
wall, and the old man grabbed his head and seemed to be screaming from pain. A
whisper of horror swept through the crowd.
One of the pirates by the airlock pulled
down a handle, and the old man was spat out into space as the remaining air
went screaming onto the void. He was still alive, kicking and screaming, as
Zuzack and Myra opened fire, cutting him into pieces. During the entire
atrocity most of the pirates cheered the events, though some looked on with
less enthusiasm. Bets were made, and money, jewelry and prisoners exchanged
hands.
The crew began to chant, "One more,
one more."
The Captain looked at Myra, who shrugged,
and then pointed at an old woman wearing a dress that would have cost a normal
person a year's salary. "That was your old man, wasn't it?" Zuzack
asked innocently. The woman, crying silently, simply nodded. "I take it
would be to cruel of me to part two loved ones."
For a long moment no one spoke; then the
old woman lifted her head high and said proudly, "Do what you will,
monster."
Zuzack gestured sharply, and two pirates
moved on the woman. In seconds they had her shackles off, and had forced her
into the airlock; the entire time she fought as hard as her husband had. Her
face twisted in fury, she pounded on the port so hard that her fist left smears
of blood across the thick crystal.
The pirate crowd had a frisson of extra
amusement when a little boy leapt up off the ballroom floor, escaping the
clutches of his mother, and rand toward the hatch shouting, shouting,
"Grandmother, grandmother! No, NO, I'm coming!"
He reached the door and tried to open it as
the pirates roared in laughter; when it became clear he had absolutely no
chance of succeeding, he, too, pounded hard on the glass, his face a mask of
fear and pain. His grandmother mouthed "I love you" from the other
side of the port.
Zuzack grabbed the boy from behind.
"What is this, a mutiny?" He smiled at the young boy, reveling in his
fear. "Say goodbye to your granny, lad. PULL!"
The old woman shot out into the darkness
and Myra opened up, cutting her into pieces with .50 caliber slugs.
Zuzack turned to his jolly crew and
hollered, "Enough! Start processing the prisoners. Never mind cleaning
this old ship of anything of value and supplies—we'll do that later. We'll have
our regular auction over any unclaimed spoil when we return to base, so finish
up here as quickly as you can." He turned to his officers. All saluted him
and nodded; they needed no further details or instructions. Everyone knew what
needed to be done.
The crew cheered their Captain and their
success and then went back to looting the ship, despite their Captain's orders.
The officers and the more experienced pirates concentrated on processing the
prisoners.
Zuzack held up the young boy who had just
lost his grandparents. The boy tried to hit Zuzack, but to no avail. Zuzack
crowed with delight. "As for you, my little mutineer, I'm going to have me
some fun with you." Zuzack
tossed the boy over his shoulder, laughing, and walked down the corridor toward
an empty stateroom. Soon, a hatch clicked shut behind them, and the boy's
horrible screams cut off.
Two starships hurtled through space,
leaving debris and bodies floating behind. The first ship was the Bitch,
an old, modified destroyer—class vessel from the trading wars that could carry
a crew up to three thousand. The Bitch had been upgraded and repaired
several times, and far more weapons had been attached to her than were normally
used. When she was underway, the cannons and missile turrets were lowered back
into the deck, and hatches covered their emplacements.
The Bitch was followed by a vessel
ten times larger. It was a more modern vessel and quite beautiful, except for
some hastily repaired hull damage. She was the Bright Star, a vast
Transport Cruiser that could handle over twenty thousand passengers in comfort.
Five thousand were active at any one time, while another fifteen thousand
people were stored in the coolers. The crew was—had been—about fifteen hundred
strong, and less than two hundred were security and officers.
The coolers made the trip inexpensive for
the people who chose to ride that way; they were frozen in stasis and basically
stacked like cordwood in the hull. On the Bright Star, four types of
berths were available: First Class, Diplomatic, Second Class, and Third Class,
which were the coolers. Nearly all the money was made from the first three
classes; the cooler travelers were just gravy. Most Civilian Transport Cruisers
were owned and operated by The Federated Merchants (T.F.M.) or The Commercial
Traders (T.C.T.). The Federated Merchants happened to own the Bright Star.
The Bitch was as busy as a kicked
beehive. Most of the crew was repairing the ship, while others were busy
locking down and guarding the prisoners, now that they'd been processed and
selected for the different types of Blocks. Males were parted from females;
different species and families were also selected into different blocks.
The slave block was the preferred tool of
slave traffickers and prisoner transporters throughout the galaxy; it made
transporting unwilling humanoid cargo a lot easier. A smaller version was a
very popular toy item among children on several worlds; they used it when they
played games like Traders and Slaves, or Prisoner and Warden.
To Zuzack's surprise, Alexa and Nina
volunteered to take care of all unclaimed prisoners—something most pirates
couldn't care less about. Alexa did it to keep herself near her fallen knight.
With help from Nina, she removed his uniform and placed him on a block, sitting
him gently down on a bench. They put his ankles onto two half holes in the
center of the stock device, and his wrists on the sides at the same level. The
upper part of the stock was placed on top, locking him down. When they were
done, they pushed a button on the stock, and air filled the rubber bladders
lining the arm and leg holes, rendering the wrists and ankles immobile. Alexa
attached a controller to her sleeping knight's neck—it logged information about
the prisoner's health status into a computer built into one side of the
stock—while Nina lowered the bench. It was now impossible to escape without
help.
After they'd finished with Alexa's knight, they did
the same thing with the rest of the Nastasturus cadets, though perhaps less
gently. Later, they moved on to the other unclaimed prisoners. For some of the
larger aliens they altered the block, aided in their work by colorless little
androids.
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