by C. F. Harris
Rachel
I really didn’t like the way that plasma lance was cutting through the bars like butter. Once those assholes got through those bars bad things were going to happen to yours truly.
And here I’d thought being on comm relay repair duty in the far reaches of human space was the worst thing that could happen to me. Oh how I would’ve loved to go back to a couple of hours ago when the worst thing I had to worry about was being a glorified interstellar telephone repair girl.
I mean don’t get me wrong. These Vosk would’ve been lookers if we met in a bar on a layover. Not that there were many Vosk tooling around human space to be in those dive bars to begin with. But we weren’t meeting at a bar. I was stuck in a brig and they were looking at me like I was a delicious piece of meat and they wouldn’t mind getting a piece of me thank you very much.
Context, as always, was king.
“I don’t suppose you guys could go bother everyone in the cargo hold?” I asked, squinting even behind the hand I was holding up to block out the brightest light from the plasma lance.
They looked at me and grunted. If anything that single minded focus on getting in here was more disturbing than anything. When they’d started their cutting they were joking and having a grand time of talking about all the things they were going to do to me.
I could’ve done without some of that talk. The fact that they were so focused on unwrapping their present now instead of joking about it made me feel more nervous than before.
The door on the other end of the room slid open. I felt a moment of hope. Visions of Vrath stepping through to come my rescue danced in my head.
A ridiculous thought. Things like that didn’t happen. These were a bunch of pirates, and for all that pirates had been glorified in countless pieces of entertainment over the years they were really nothing more than rapists, murderers, and thieves.
It looked like they were about to give me a bit of number one and number two. The only reason I wasn’t getting number three was I didn’t have anything worth stealing.
Two more aliens stepped in, their golden skin shimmering in the artificial light. They certainly weren’t part of a rescue party. Damn it.
One of the bars fell through into the cell. The thing was big and thick, and it glowed a bright orange at both ends where the plasma lance cut through it. Though it quickly started to cool once it hit the deck.
The thing looked large enough that it could do some serious damage if someone had half a mind to wield it as a weapon. I had half a mind considering the situation I was facing. I reached out, but the heat from the plasma lance was so intense that I had to take a step back.
There was no vacuum of space all around to absorb that heat like when I’d been working on the comm relay.
“Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider boys?” I asked, hoping against hope that they might listen to reason.
Though the more likely scenario was I might distract them long enough for someone to come along and shoot them. We were in the middle of a mutiny, after all, so it was possible there were still Vosk out there opposing said mutiny. Though the fact that they were concentrating so hard on getting at me instead of shooting anyone who might try to shoot them probably meant there weren’t many Vosk left on the ship who’d want to shoot the mutineers.
Fuck.
From the looks they gave me I didn’t think renegotiating was in the cards either. Damn. More’s the pity, because I would’ve liked to renegotiate with terms that included letting me shove that hot bar up their asses.
It wasn’t going to do any good, but it would give me a moment of satisfaction before they got down to what they were obviously getting ready to do. I shivered and wished, not for the first time, that I was back on my ship in my bunk looking out at the wonders of creation and being bored by it all.
The door slid open again and inside I despaired. Another one of those bars fell down and the opening was wide enough now that I probably could’ve wriggled through the thing if I wanted to.
I had no desire to do that though. Those guys were big enough that there wasn’t a chance they were getting through the bars, and I figured the more time I spent in here where they couldn’t get at me the better.
That gave me another bar to weaponize too. If it took them long enough to get through then maybe those two bars would cool to the point that I could two fist them.
I didn’t have any illusions that it was going to save my ass if I two fisted those bars. These guys were way stronger than me, and if there were more of them coming in then I was well and truly fucked. Literally and figuratively.
Only it wasn’t two more aliens stepping into the room this time. It was only one, and my breath caught.
It was Vrath, and he looked furious as he took in the scene and realized exactly what his men were up to. That or he was furious they hadn’t bothered to invite him. I suppose it could’ve gone either way, to be honest.
It took a moment for the ones trying to break into my cell to realize it wasn’t a friendly face that’d just stepped into the room. One dove for Vrath, which pretty much backed up the whole “stuck in the middle of an alien mutiny on top of all the other bullshit” theory I’d been operating under.
The crewman’s fist came up and he was about to connect when Vrath raised a plasma pistol and let loose with a couple of energy bolts. His would-be attacker flew across the room and slammed into the bulkhead out of view on the other side of my cell.
Damn.
Vrath hit a second attacker with a blast from the plasma pistol, but there wasn’t enough time to get off a shot at yet another before he hit, and the hit meant that the second shot was off and only took off the latest attacker’s arm.
“Only.”
It was a reminder of what those weapons could do even if they only hit someone with a glancing blow. The wound cauterized, but that didn’t stop the Vosk from bellowing in pain and going down for the count. He wasn’t going to be much help in the fight, and it looked like it was still a fight as the one with the plasma lance turned towards Vrath with the cutter held out in front of him like he intended to use it as an improvised weapon.
Well that fucker wasn’t the only one who could improvise a weapon. Besides, I owed him for using that plasma lance to try and peel me out of this cell like some tuna in a can. Or something. I didn’t like thinking of myself as tuna, and it was a little odd using that metaphor since the fish had gone extinct centuries ago, but whatever.
The point is I owed this asshole an ass whoopin’, as my granny used to say on the farm back home. So I grabbed the first bar that’d been cut loose. It was still warm to the touch, but not so warm that it was painful to hold.
I hefted it and enjoyed the feel of its weight in my fist. Then I slipped through the small opening in my cell bars. It was time to show these aliens what happened to pricks who tried to break me out of a cell so they could have their way with me.
13
Rachel
I’d intended to go after the one with the plasma lance, but I caught movement against the far bulkhead that pulled my attention to the first fucker who got blasted when Vrath stepped in. He was wounded, but not dead.
My eyes narrowed. I could take care of that.
That was one of the first lessons we learned in the one and only combat course offered at the Tech Academy: there was no such thing as a fair fight. Whether you were talking about on a galactic strategic level, or in a one on one fight with the enemy.
Sure these assholes weren’t exactly flying the flag of the Vosk Imperium, but they were fighting us so that was close enough as far as my personal rules of engagement went.
I looked down at the very confused alien. He was still very much alive, but again that wasn’t something that was going to bother him for long if I had anything to do with it.
He stared up at me, his eyes wide. I almost felt bad for the motherfucker. Almost, but I had no doubt if he’d managed to get through those bars he would’ve done some very
unpleasant things to yours truly.
So I didn't feel all that bad as I raised my improvised weapon and slammed it down. The bar landed with a soft thunk, and I kept hitting him until that thunk became a sickening crunch. This asshole was still going to do terrible things to me if he managed to get up, and I was going to do what needed to be done to make sure that never happened.
If you can't win in a fair fight then find a way to make the fight unfair.
This guy’s blood was a thick blue nasty business. A sharp contrast to the almost golden outside on these assholes. Again and again I brought the bar down on him. Again and again there was that noise, and then finally it was over.
I stood there, my shoulders heaving, and as I looked down at the the mess that had been this alien’s head, I felt sick. Like I needed to puke.
I'm sure it didn't add to whatever dignity this dead alien might have left that I puked all over what was left of his face, but I was beyond caring.
Though I really hoped he was well and truly dead, and there wasn't some spark of life still in there that could feel the indignity of getting puked on after he'd had the crap beat out of him by a woman he'd been on the verge of raping.
Actually? Now that I thought of it in those terms I figured this asshole deserved the indignity of getting puked on by a woman he had every intention of raping. Fuck him. So I spit on his face for good measure. I wasn’t above one final “fuck you” to a prick who deserved it.
The distinct sounds of fighting from the other side of the small brig drew my attention to Vrath and asshole who’d been working the plasma lance.
They were grappling with one another, weapons tossed to the ground at some point in the fight, but the asshole I wanted to take out had conveniently presented his backside to me. Which meant it was a simple matter for me to walk up behind him and slam my bar into the back of his head.
It wasn't enough to knock him out, the Vosk were tough, but it was enough to get his attention. He tried to wheel around, but maybe that hit had done more damage than I’d thought. The dude seemed a little wobbly on his feet. Still, even wobbly he looked furious.
Okay then. So taking one of these pricks on when he wasn’t injured and disoriented by a plasma blast was definitely not the same as facing one who seemed to mostly still be intact and possessed of his fighting ability.
The guy lunged at me. It was as though he'd completely forgotten that there was another golden skinned Vosk behind him. Weird, that, but I guess it didn't have to make sense. The only important thing was I was under fucking attack, and I needed to get the hell away from this asshole like ten minutes ago!
Actually if I was invoking time travel then ideally I’d figure out a way to get away from these assholes before they attacked the Linda, but so far no one had been able to invent time travel that didn’t involve hopping into a powerful gravity well and traveling to the future via the magic of relativity, so that wasn’t really in the cards.
The alien lunged for me again and I backed up, though I was well aware I was going to run out of space and run up against wall very shortly. I swung my bar at him more out of instinct than anything, and that proved to be a very bad instinct. The bar landed in his meaty palm with a loud smack that echoed through the small brig. I stared down at the pipe, wide-eyed, and then back up at him.
"Son of a…"
He ripped the bar out of my hand, causing me to fall forward against him. He wrapped his arm around me and looked down at me with a grin. Then he whirled around, holding the bar up and interrupting Vrath who'd just picked up his plasma pistol and brought it to bear on us.
Which, of course, meant he was now pointing his weapon at me. Damn.
"Don't shoot!" I said.
The one behind me laughed. Leaned down and sniffed at my hair which was totally creepy whether it was a human or an alien doing it. Then looked up at Vrath.
"You seem to have a thing for this Terran," he said. "So I'll make you a trade. You give me the weapon and I'll give you the girl."
I rolled my eyes. First I'd been stuck in a bad sci-fi horror movie this morning, and now I was stuck in a bad crime drama? Could this day get any worse?
Vrath shrugged. Okay then. So much for me thinking I’d maybe had a moment with this asshole. So much for my attempt to save his life, because from the way he held his weapon steady he didn’t care for saving mine.
Motherfucker!
My captor tensed, followed by a blinding flash as plasma shot out from Vrath’s weapon across the small brig.
I should’ve learned a long time ago to stop asking the universe if it could make things worse for me, because it seemed more than happy to oblige those stupid requests.
14
Vrath
I looked at the girl. Then looked at Kfar. He was big and meaty, and unfortunately for him that meant the big beefy muscles were about the only thing his body had room for. They'd long ago crowded out any brains that he might have.
I thought about the offer. My gun for the girl. I didn't even know this strange Terran woman aside from our fight outside the ship. Yet this alluring creature still caused a stirring down in my gut that moved down between my legs.
It helped that I knew how this would end. It wouldn’t matter if he held the Terran woman or my aged grandmother.
If I gave Kfar my weapon that would be the end of both of us. I'd never known of a hostage situation that ended with someone demanding a weapon and that demand resulting in anything other than the immediate painful death of whoever was stupid enough to give away said weapon.
The girl looked more pissed off than terrified. Then again I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she wasn't terrified. After all, we were talking about a woman who’d just attacked my attacker with one of the cut off bars from her cell. She’d hit him with so much force that it distracted him from grappling with me, and then she’d tried to fight him when he turned on her in his rage.
The woman held my gaze for all that she was being held hostage. Which is what I’d expect from a woman crazy enough to launch a one-person attack against my entire crew with nothing but a plasma lance.
Amazing. It only made me desire this Terran more. I had to get her free from Kfar.
So I took the only option I had. I could only hope this Terran was intelligent enough to stand still. She looked like she was willing to take whatever fate threw at her, and admittedly already this day had thrown her quite a few twists and turns.
I pulled the trigger. Plasma shot out.
Kfar didn't have time to react. I was the best shot on the ship. When you were the captain of a privateer crew, a profession that had only thinnest veneer of legitimacy depending on how much you brought in and how much the government official cataloging your haul wanted to skim from what you hadn’t managed to hide, there were all the risks of working with the nastier elements of our society.
The kind of people who would as soon join an actual pirate crew as a privateer if they had the option.
Walking and talking big and also carrying a large weapon you were more than capable of wielding to back up your boasts was a good idea going into a management position in the plundering field, is what I was getting at.
The shot hit Kfar between the eyes. It was a low enough yield that it didn't go through the back of his head and create a mess behind him or get anything on the Terran woman. She didn’t even jump, though at this point I’d expect no less from her.
His eyes glowed for a moment as the plasma scrambled his brains, and then his body went limp and he crashed to the ground behind the Terran woman. A satisfying conclusion to the hostage situation, and she barely looked mildly unsettled by the whole thing.
She stared at me, and for a moment I thought she might collapse into shivering terror. I'd been told that was a reaction humans sometimes had when they were stuck in a stressful situation. Even the ones who looked like they were made of the same stuff as a dense neutron star could supposedly collapse when you least expected it.
S
he looked down at Kfar. Then over to the other dead. I realized with a start that Torel had also been killed. Some ruthless bastard had taken a blunt instrument and slammed it into his head over and over again. Then that someone had vomited on the mess that’d been Torel’s head moments ago.
I looked at her as she stood straight. Then leaned down and picked up the bar she’d presumably used to bash in Torel’s head. She held it up and hefted it in her hand, then stared a challenge at me.
There was no fear there. She was confronting someone carrying a plasma blaster with nothing but a bar that’d been cut loose by a plasma lance, and she didn't seem afraid at all.
"The assholes had it coming," she said in Galactic Standard. "Now how are we getting the hell out of here?"
"The main corridors are too dangerous," I said in Terran, never once stopping to consider how ridiculous it was that I was speaking to a Terran captive as an equal or that I’d switched to her language which I hadn’t used in years.
When my crew had mutinied against me that made everyone on this ship equal. We all stood the same chance of being reduced to stellar dust when all was said and done if I couldn’t figure out a way to get back into the ship’s systems and disable the autodestruct.
She blinked in surprise. “You speak Terran?”
“I could go back to Standard Galactic if you’d prefer?” I asked. “I figure this way the crew won’t be able to understand what we’re saying. They don’t all have the education I did.”
“A pirate with an education,” she muttered, looking me up and down with interest. “Interesting.”
“And not important,” I said, not wanting to get into my past. “We have more pressing concerns.”
“Right. You were saying the corridors were too dangerous?” she asked.
"My crew has mutinied against me, and their idiot leader has unintentionally activated the self-destruct. They’ve also locked me out of the systems so there's no way to get in and stop it."
