The Space Pirate 1 (3 page)

Charley dared a look over her shoulder. The gangers were still there, unflinching in their black utility suits. Those suits were old and faded, but they still conferred much more sun protection than Charley’s linen shift. Even though the black color was heat-absorbent, they were old trooper suits of the Abeyas Navy. Charley wondered if the temperature controlling diodes were still working. What did it matter? She was thinking like she could loot these fuckers. The reality was there was six of them. How could one silly, silly girl hope to beat them all? With nothing but a pistol that fired blanks? Charley would’ve laughed if her situation wasn’t so desperate. The crusted pan under her hands and feet felt scorching to her pink skin.

She crawled a few yards further and collapsed in the meager shade of a tumbleweed. The weed was promptly shifted away by a tired gust of wind. Charley groaned. Was the entire universe against her?

The worst thing was no one would see these gangers rape her savagely. Not out here on the pan. Not that it would matter much. There was no law and order in a place like Sandflower Downs. She’d heard there were some rudimentary laws in the Spacetown, the main port, but that was about it.

The gangers stood over Charley and unzipped their pants, unwilling to waste time out here in the boiling sun.

“How fucking dare you,” Charley spat, drawing on her last reserves of strength. “Who do you think you are? I’m one of Boss Pete’s girls.”

The ruse didn’t work, just as Charley knew it wouldn’t.

“You mean Boss Pete’s girls make a habit of cowering under hovels and stealing other folks’ weapons?” asked one of the gangers. Charley couldn’t tell which was which when they were standing silhouetted against the sun.

“Touch me and I’ll fucking kill you,” she spat, inching her way backwards over the hot sand. “I mean it.”

“I don’t think so,” said a ganger, already preparing himself.

“You heard the girl,” said a gruff voice from somewhere behind Charley. “Let her be or you feed the salt pans here. Simple.”

Charley allowed her hoped to lift a little. Was it possible a hero had emerged from nowhere, or was she just delusional from the extreme heat?

“You’d better back away, old man,” said a ganger. “Six against two ain’t good odds.”

“They’re better when one of the two is armed to the fucking teeth,” said the stranger. Charley heard a leathery sound and knew the stranger had drawn some kind of weapon.

The biggest ganger stepped forward, perhaps to prevent the others from fleeing.

“You don’t scare me, nomad,” he said with forced bravado. “If we rush you at once you ain’t got us all covered.”

Charley swallowed. These gangers were showing more courage than they normally did. Just her luck. They probably saw an opportunity to have their way with her and loot this guy’s corpse. Such a payload might set them up for weeks.

Charley risked a look at the stranger. Tall, gaunt, with fancy leather trousers and a gaudy vest. Bony, grizzled face half shrouded in the shadow cast by the wide-brimmed leather hat, tilted fashionably at an angle. The man had presence, that was for sure. He also smelled like a dead man walking. There was a corpulent whiff about him, a stench like rotting flesh. Charley wondered where he’d wandered in from. It was clear he had money. It was also clear he knew how to hold those pistols he brandished. No, they were blasters. Charley gaped at the modern tech. They were streamlined killing machines, capable of delivering plasma bolts in quick time.

“You’re welcome to try, shit head,” the stranger said with slow confidence.

“On my mark, boys,” the lead ganger said. “Three. Two.”

The stranger primed his blasters with a weird high-pitched whine.

“One.”

The gangers rushed the stranger in a ragged line. What happened next was difficult to take in. The stranger fired rapidly, starting on the outward targets and drawing his blasters into the central corridor of fire. He didn’t waste a single charge. All six of the gangers were dropped in a cloud of red mist. Most lost their heads in the plasma fire, two had holes burned through their hearts.

Charley crawled away from the stench that assailed her nostrils. Strong hands grabbed her wrists and dragged her across the salt pan for at least half a minute. Exhausted, Charley let herself be pulled. As far as she was concerned, surviving the gangers was enough for the moment. Of course, the strangers’ intentions may not be honorable at all, but she couldn’t let such thoughts invade her head. The movement slowed and Charley found herself deposited in the shade cast by a red desert speeder. The vehicle was an absolute beast, replete with six exhaust funnels and bulging with primer technology. Unfortunately it was leaking fuel to the salt pan. Before long it would be bone dry.

“Went over a sharp rock,” explained the stranger.

“Who are you?” gasped Charley, accepting a canteen from the man. She drank deeply. The water was pure and sweet, nothing like the bilge water folks were forced to drink in Sandflower Downs.

“You can call me Silverton,” winked the man.

“Silverton,” Charley repeated. “Sounds posh.”

The man laughed, shaking his head ruefully. “If only that were true,” he said. “I had riches once, but you could never could my kind ‘posh’.”

“What is your kind?” Charley asked, suddenly curious. The water had greatly revived her.

Silverton hesitated. “Let’s just say I take what I want, when I want.”

“Must leave you with a few enemies,” Charley countered.

“Aye, girl, that it does. Which is why it’s good for a man to have skills.”

“And what are yours?”

“Full of questions, ain’t ya?” Silverton drawled. At any other time Charley might’ve found him attractive. He was lean and quite handsome in a pretty, angular way. He was also quite lethal, as he’d demonstrated earlier. What put her off him was the incredibly bad smell which was only getting worse.

Silverton leaned against the speeder as if he was having difficulty standing.

“Listen, girl, I don’t have much time,” he croaked.

“Then you’d better start talking,” Charley said, slowly realizing that the man was dying.

Silverton didn’t answer straight away. Instead he lifted his colorful vest to reveal a horrible sight. Half his chest was being eaten away by some kind of fungus. Some of his ribcage was visible through the putrid green flesh. Charley could only imagine the kind of pain the man must be chewing through.

“Picked it up on Glasshouse Station,” he mused. “Fucking cheap whore got me with a tox-stick.”

Charley gave a low whistle. Tox-sticks were one of the worst weapons in the galaxy. They gave the victim a corrosive fungus from the swamp world Amphib. There was no counter-agent to the fungus. The victim was left to rot until some kind soul put a bullet in them. This poor man had been dealt a shit hand indeed.

“I’m sorry,” she said, unable to take her eyes off the man’s gaping wound. “How long … how long …”

“Before I croak?” the stranger asked with a mirthless smile. “Minutes. I thought I could reach my cache before my guts opened up completely.”

Charley blinked. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen. This man had lost his fuel and was now stuck in the middle of a salt pan. There was nothing to help him in Sandflower Downs either. What little medical supplies there were was controlled by Boss Pete. Silverton was more likely to be robbed than treated.

“So what can you do?” Charley asked with genuine concern.

Silverton eyed her with interest, his piercing green eyes looking her up and down. “You’re a tidy number,” he murmured. “If I wasn’t so toxic I’d sneak you away and ask you for a dance.”

Charley couldn’t help but smile. The man was charming, she had to admit it. She sensed he’d seen much of the galaxy and had plenty of adventures.

“Yeah, I just wish there was something I could do,” she said. She felt a peculiar sadness - this man had been around the block quite a few times and it seemed a whole lot of knowledge and experience was about to be snuffed out. How could she possibly do that justice in just a few minutes?

Silverton seemed to read her mind.

“Look, girl, there’s something I need to tell you,” he said. “I couldn’t help but notice you were in a spot of trouble over there. Feels good to get a few more kills under the belt before I croak.”

Charley smiled at that.

“Now listen. I got a cache in the Dusty Mountains and you officially have my blessing to go loot it.”

Charley’s eyes widened. She’d heard of loot caches like the one Silverton was talking about. An entire lifetime of treasures and credits stored away by men like him. Bad men. Men who took what they wanted and never looked back.

“Are you a pirate,” she found her herself asking in a tiny squeak. It sounded silly to voice the word but word had filtered through to Sandflower Downs that space pirating was all too real. Ever since the collapse of the Human Empire any kind of space run was fraught with danger. Most star systems needed to run their own security as pirates ran rampant.

No cargo was safe in the galaxy anymore. But that wasn’t all. Pirates were known to feed slavery chains, extort and blackmail rich elites, run smuggling operations and generally be the scoundrels of the new galaxy order. With so many wars erupting across known space it really was the Golden Age of the Pirate. Or so they said.

“Aye, girl, you smoked me out,” said Silverton with a bow. “My father was a pirate, and his father before him. In my pomp I captained a heavy frigate with two propulsion bulbs and plenty of firepower. WE owned the Beluga run. I have seven mistresses in four different systems. Plenty of one night stands besides. Before that fucking gutter snake cut me with a tox-stick I thought I’d live forever. But no. As soon as my crew saw the damage they cut me loose and all I had left was a need to see my cache one last time.”

“But why did you hide it here on Abeyas?” asked Charley.

“Because it’s a fucking shit hole and no one would expect to find it here,” Silverton said simply. “I would’ve made it all the way too if I hadn’t hit that rock and lost fuel.”

Silverton looked genuinely put out that he wasn’t able to see his loot one last time. Charley was definitely interested. Who wouldn’t be? She looked into the strange pirate’s eyes, looking for some kind of trap. There was nothing there but pain and regret. Perhaps this Silverton character couldn’t bear to die without someone knowing the sheer immensity of his cache. Scumbags like him were probably vain enough to think that way.

“What’s the catch?” Charley asked with suspicion. There was always a catch.

“I want my name to live on,” he said, trying to sound casual. “I want you to contact the Galactic Office of Names and change your surname to Silverton. The code they give you is the only way you can unlock the security hatch over my cache. There’s another thing. I want you to cart my body there and leave me with my riches. You can take weapons and other gear but you need to leave the valuables.”

Charley grimaced. She knew it. This guy was on some maniacal ego trip. He couldn’t bear the idea of dying out here so far from his treasure.

She had to admit that being laid to rest among one’s life trophies wasn’t such a bad way to go. Pirates must be a suspicious lot, believing in the afterlife and all that.

“And why do you think I’d just up and leave Sandflower Downs?”

Silverton looked at Charley and laughed. She had to laugh too. It was a preposterous attempt at convincing him she had a life here. The ganger attack proved just how worthless her life currently was.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Suppose I do as you say. How the fuck do I get transport to Zeba and then out to the Dusty Mountains?”

Silverton coughed a gob of blood into the dirt. He didn’t have long to live.

“You’re gonna have to steal a speeder.”

“Impossible, old man. The only speeder here is Boss Pete’s, and it’s locked up tight in the compound.”

“I have a few things I can give you,” Silverton said cryptically. “You know, I meant what I said about the Silverton name. It’s not just bullshit. You can follow in my footsteps if you really want to.”

5

Charley didn’t know anything about being a pirate and but knew with absolute certainty that she would make a very poor one. She had none of the skills Silverton seemed to have. No, she would perform his task and loot his tech, but that’s where it ended. She would sell the tech in Zeba or even Spacetown and try and establish some kind of career as a water supplier or some such. The thought of becoming a real, genuine space pirate was ludicrous.

“Check these out, girl,” croaked Silverton, lifting his vest to reveal a wooden rack strapped to the inside of the material. It was thin and compact. Charley took it and inspected it closely. There were rows and rows of different colored balls in there.

“Flashbangs, poison clouds, gutrot capsules, corrosive pellets, EMP buds. A pirate’s bag o’ dirty tricks.”

Charley fingered one of the small balls with rapt attention. There was much more to being a pirate than met the eye.

“And this,” Silverton said, lifting a glinting steel blade from the back of the speeder. It was a beauty, curved and deadly.