about the curses for bilged rats, or the proper liveliness needed for pillaging your guts out?
"Find 'er," said the pirate she’d bumped into. He had to be the most cut-throat soul aboard if no one else dared speak around him.
Aiyela found a panel, popped it off, and was diving into a dim lit crawlspace when an alarm sounded and a terrible wind blasted her back into the bay. Then she realized the wind wasn’t pushing, it was pulling. Someone had opened the outer doors! She was being spaced! The piled fog vanished like a sneeze, the open of space gulped her faster and faster towards it, when—bzzzt.
An energy field went up, and she flailed into it then bounced off. The doors closed with finality as she groaned on the deck, which was now open and clear under normal light, steel boots gathered around her. So ends the whimsical tale of Aiyela Beniston. That figures.
"Get ‘er up." Back on her feet, but securely held, Aiyela finally got a good look at her captors. One of them had a bit of a spasm in his neck, he kept dropping it to one side, over and over again, almost . . . mechanical. Come to think of it, they were all about the same height and build, and they either had the discipline of a Tevuri mystic or none of them were actually breathing.
Robots. And not even built for the job. The twitchy one was probably her fault, but a real security droid couldn’t have been hurt so easily. That could be useful to know if she kept it to herself.
"What be yer name, Miss?" With a better look at him, Aiyela thought he could have been the most cut-throat soul even if he wasn’t surrounded by robots. His hair was scruffy, short and black, his left eye patched. He wore a black shirt with a ragged black jacket hanging over his shoulders. On his dark blue slacks, one leg was tore off to reveal a prosthetic leg. Not the kind you got when you’d been in an accident and wanted to move on with a normal life. Not unless your normal life was sacking ships and fending off shock troops. Where a civilized fake leg should have been, was a three-toed robotic one with a hydraulic knife, a gazillion-caliber mini canon, and about a dozen interchangeable options of death on the shin and lower thigh—not to mention a pistol strapped above where the pant leg was.
"Uh, Aiyela . . . "
"And where do you come from?" He leaned in, pointing his patch at her, at its center was a tiny kind of glossy tiling.
He was obviously trying to intimidate her. It worked. It worked very well. But she’d been intimidated before, this wasn’t her first orbit. She knew the last thing you did with a bully was show your intimidation. She wasn’t about to blubber all over him.
Probably the second last thing to do was mouth off. And sadly, the first thing that came to mind were the words of her favorite plucky detective, Charlotte Emil. "Keep talking sweet to me, and I’ll lend you my dress and buy you the dinner." Then she hit him with her best whatchya-gotta-say-about-that-face.
Thank you, Charlotte Emil.
The guard droid shut the cell door.
Thank you, very much.
Fortunately, she’d had enough time between the Captain’s "Throw 'er in the brig," and the robot’s "get inside." To think of a better plan than bawling—which she’d managed to avoid doing in front of the Captain.
When the guard turned around, she quickly produced the All-Tool, slipped it through the bars, and jammed it between the droid’s armored plates, right where its interface port should have been. "It’s time to get a little bit orn'ry."
Thinking it was receiving maintenance, the droid opened its heart to her, in a manner of speaking. Staring at the tiny screen inside its chest cavity, being a mechanic rather than a computer technician, she was a little rusty on basic machine speak. Normally she would’ve had a higher computer for translation, but she recalled enough to find out that each of these droids were sending a feed to a hub computer. Probably the Captain’s. A little haphazard garble and she put a stop to that, as far as the one guard was concerned.
Moments later, she had disguised herself with the robot’s armor—more or less. Mostly less. About a foot and ninety pounds less. Hopefully, shape was more important than height to the robots. At least she hadn’t seen any other people. Still, it seemed best to stick to the maintenance routes rather than be seen by droids.
Going through the crawlspaces was like being sifted through a funhouse. Every twenty or thirty feet, the configuration would change as she entered another ship that had been welded onto the original. It was anyone’s guess which of the eight she’d been through was the original. It must have taken a puzzle-solving genius to put this place together.
Eventually, through a vent, Aiyela saw a room that looked like some kind of crew quarters. Once she was sure there were no active security systems, lowered herself inside to get her bearings. It was definitely quarters for someone, or had been. Two pair of bunk beds were against the far wall that lead to a small washroom.
Free water! She bolted for the sink and turned the spigot. She wrinkled her nose as it coughed rusty snot before it finally turned clean. It just hasn’t been run in awhile, that’s all. She washed her face and hands, then her eye caught on a shower stall—No, Aiyela. No! That’s a pirate shower stall. Pirate!
Defeating herself, she found a washrag. It had a layer of dust on the top, but the underside was fine. She wiped away the newest layer of grease from her wetted skin, clean again for the first time since leaving Bird’s place a week ago.
This place hasn’t been used in a long time, she examined the rag’s dusty up-side. Around the room, there wasn’t much to look at, but Aiyela guessed it looked like it had once been a pirate’s room. There were no human bones as trophies from some poor plundered victim, but there were some trinkets. Small pieces of jewelry, a simple gold bracelet, a blue gemstone necklace on a leather strap, and a brass compass. What good was a compass in space? She lifted the lid, the needle waved about seeking whatever happened to be the strongest magnetic field present. Hmmm, that might be pointing to the engineering section.
As she picked up the compass to put in her pocket, she saw a faded photograph fit into the underside of the lid. People rarely had an actual chemically created photograph anymore because they faded with time. Modern spectral capture prints did not fade—or at least the owners never lived long enough to challenge the claim—and they were three dimensional. On the picture were four people. Two men, a woman, and another man. They were all dressed in the same kind of uniform with medals pinned to their chests.
This wasn’t much of a treasure horde, and except for these pieces and the basic furnishings, the room was empty. What did two pieces of jewelry, a useless compass and an antique photograph have in common? Wait a second . . . If she imagined the last man with a patch and an armory for a leg, this wasn’t some plundered knickknack, it was a picture of the Captain and some friends—old crew?
Aiyela popped the photograph out with her fingernail and read the back. "Roberr, Janus, Marsell, and Retinbour at the company mess. Hmm . . . "
The ship shuddered under her. It was nothing but a course change, or the passing of a star’s gravity well, but it reminded her that she was escaping. She pocketed the compass and climbed back into the crawlspace above. The magnetic tugs were stronger inside of the insulated space so the compass got confused so as she went along, she would pop open other vents and stick the compass down into a room to get her real bearing before making a turn.
She was getting close now, the pull of the ship’s strongest source was clear even inside the crawlspace. Aiyela didn’t need to check through any more vents, but one caught her eye just before where she suspected the engine room was. It caught her eye because the grays and almonds of the ship’s tones were covered with rich velvets and satins of red and orange lit by a fireplace.
A fireplace! Now that was an odd thing to have. It wasn’t like you could just stick a stove pipe out into space, you needed the air to stay in. The ship would have to waste environmental resources just to clean air when it was already comfortably warm.
Aiyela was tempted to pop in and take a lo
ok around, but she froze when she saw a high backed chair on the far side of the fireplace next to a small brass-rimmed table. It was Retinbour watching the fire and nursing rum in a large silver mug. She assumed it was rum. Everyone knew that was pirate water.
His room was very quiet. Like the rest of the ship. No music playing. No audio warnings that they were all about to die, like on her ship. Well in this case, he was the only one who would be in danger of dying. Robots weren’t alive and, when she thought about, also not any good for conversation. What a lonely soul. No wonder he’d gut a person as quick as look at them.
Time to leave, Aiyela.
She hurried—but quietly—on to the engine room. There were plenty of droids to avoid, but they didn’t seem to be looking for her. Mostly just standing in front of various control panels waiting for something that needed fixing. Aiyela had a mind to help them with that. She didn’t need to blow anything up, just something simple like a cascading loop failure in their special shift protocol. Nothing a program reboot wouldn’t solve, but the equivalent of tying their shoes together. It would buy her time to boost to somewhere with a garrison.
Finding her way back to her captured ship, Aiyela was delighted to find it still in one piece. And surprised. It looked like