by Joe Canzano
“Yeah!” Suzy said. Ricardo just grinned, as if to say, “What the fuck—let’s do this.”
He also started maneuvering the spaceship away from a possible counterattack.
Unfortunately, the Heartbreaker hadn’t come too close yet, probably because they could see their prey hadn’t powered down their weapons. But they’d come a bit closer than they should have—a sure sign of arrogance or stupidity.
The Heartbreaker took evasive action; it fired a defensive salvo of computer coordinated energy guns that destroyed one of the missiles—but the other missile detonated with a blinding splash against her forward deflector shield. Suzy whooped and put her fist in the air as Ricardo started closing in for another shot.
“Fire them all at once!” Suzy said.
“Bad plan, Suzy. We could miss with all of them at once.”
But he fired two more. Then he spun the ship downward before soaring back toward their enemy and firing another sizzling pair of AGMs.
For some reason, the Heartbreaker wasn’t responding very fast. They hadn’t even counterattacked. Instead, the ship tried spinning away from the missiles while launching more blasts of defensive energy.
The cockpit lit up with the blazing explosions from three missiles destroyed by the Heartbreaker’s guns. But the fourth missile exploded in a confetti-colored ball of light against the Heartbreaker’s starboard deflector shield.
“Oh, yeah!” Suzy said. “Nice shot. Hit them again!”
“We better,” Ricardo said. “We’ve only got two missiles left.”
They were roaring at full throttle toward the enemy, but the enemy seemed to be waking up. The Heartbreaker was taking evasive action, firing an offensive attack of its own—and sending two searing blips of death toward the Correcaminos.
“Crap!” Ricardo said. He tried to jerk the ship out of the way at the last possible second—but without the full oomph of the engines, the ship was too slow. Meanwhile, Suzy launched a defensive blast from the ship’s energy guns.
One of the missiles was destroyed in a blast of light less than 1000 meters away. The other one crashed into their forward deflector shield and exploded.
Suzy was thrown back hard in her seat. The ship shook and shuddered. The lights went out, and everything that wasn’t tied down went flying.
“Crap!” Ricardo said again.
“Motherfucker!” Suzy said.
The emergency lights came on, shining a color like blood. Suzy stared through the hazy glow and groped for the controls to launch the final two missiles. But Ricardo’s hand was on top of them.
“No!” he said. Then he grabbed her wrist and looked into her eyes. “No, Suzy. We can live to fight another day. It’s not such a bad way.”
Suzy caught her breath—and then relaxed.
Maybe he was right. After all, she had to live long enough to kill Blurr.
“All right,” she said. “But you tell Captain Orange that my knickers aren’t moving.”
Ricardo gave a short laugh and hit the radio button.
“Hello, Captain Orange. This is the Correcaminos Rojo. We’re ready to surrender.”
There was a long moment of silence—and then a voice roared with laughter. “Oh, so now you want to surrender? After you tried to kill us? I should blast you arseholes into a million pieces.”
“Fine!” Suzy shouted into the speaker. “Bring it on, motherfucker!”
Ricardo scowled and shot his hand over the mic, but obviously her voice had been heard.
Captain Orange growled and then laughed again. “So, you’ve got a feisty little lady on board. I can’t wait to meet her. Power down your deflectors and your weapons and prepare to be boarded.”
Ricardo hit a couple of switches. “Okay, we’re powered down.” He turned off the radio.
Suzy was busy once again checking her gun.
“What are you planning to do with that?” Ricardo said.
“Is this a trick question?”
“Suzy, you’ve got to behave.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Ricardo gave her a hard stare. “I’m serious. They don’t want to destroy us, because that’s not how pirates make money. But then again, we don’t have anything valuable on board, so they aren’t going to be too thrilled. This is a small ship, and I’m surprised they even stopped us. So don’t do anything crazy, okay? Let me handle the talking.”
“Oh, the little lady can’t talk?” Suzy snapped. “Is that it?”
“No! But the lady who talks before she thinks—that girl needs to shut the fuck up!”
Suzy was about to respond when Maria’s voice said, “Suzy, listen to him. We’re outgunned here. Let’s not be outsmarted, too.”
Maria was standing in the cockpit, looking taller than her diminutive height. She also looked stern. A real party killer, Suzy thought.
Suzy sighed. “All right, I’ll be smart. But don’t expect it to last.”
“Good,” Maria said with a smile. “But I do expect it to last. Now keep your eyes open and stay on the lookout.”
“For what?”
“Our chance.”
Suzy rolled her eyes and turned her head back to the view from the cockpit. The Heartbreaker was off in the distance, not getting too close now. This was a good move on their part. While Ricardo had powered down the ship’s weapons, they could be reenergized quickly. The Heartbreaker would likely send out a transport ship to board the Correcaminos Rojo and take the crew back as prisoners before towing the ship to their flight deck.
Sure enough, a small ship was coming toward them, and it looked like a slithering lizard. It dangled a docking tunnel toward them in a decidedly phallic way that seemed to make their defeat even more humiliating.
There was a clanging sound as the two ships were connected.
“Let’s go,” Ricardo said. He headed toward the airlock in the rear of the ship, down past the lounge and the cabins.
Suzy and Maria followed. When they got to the wide metal door, Ricardo wasn’t there. Suzy frowned and walked back down the passageway toward his cabin. She was about to hit the button for the door but paused when she heard him talking inside. She couldn’t make out the words. Then the door opened.
“Suzy,” he said with obvious surprise. “Are you ready to go?”
“What were you doing, Ricardo? Who were you talking to?”
He paused. “I sent a message to Earth. I reported our capture.”
“To who? Weren’t the authorities from Earth chasing us?”
He shrugged. “I sent it to my family, okay? I’ve been sending them messages. I wanted them to know we were captured but we were all right. It takes about an hour for the message to reach them. Hopefully by then we’ll be free.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
She searched his smiling eyes and it wasn’t fine. She felt her heart pounding. Her instincts told her something was wrong.
Ricardo reached forward to hug her and she resisted. His eyebrows went up.
“What?” he said.
“I think we better go, that’s all.”
She turned fast and headed back to the airlock. Her chest was heaving as she stood in silence with Maria in front of the metal door.
Maria glanced at Ricardo as he arrived. Suzy watched, and Maria’s look said a lot. It said, “What is going on, Ricardo?” But Ricardo just shrugged again.
Suzy decided to block it out of her mind. It was probably nothing, anyway—and right now she had other worries, like this pirate thing.
So forget about Ricardo’s bullshit and focus.
Pirates—right. What could the three-person crew of the Correcaminos Rojo do? She wondered how many people were on the transport. Of course, shooting them all wouldn’t do much good since they still couldn’t outrun the big ship. But how about a few hostages?
“Hey, Ricardo,” Suzy said.
“No.”
“What?”
“I don�
�t want to take any hostages.”
She cocked her head. “How did you know I was thinking that?”
“I know you now, Suzy. And that plan could turn into a messy shootout and we’d all get killed—or at least some of us would. And even if we were able to pull it off, there’s no guarantee it would matter. These pirates don’t necessarily care about each other all that much. Hostages aren’t as valuable as you might think.”
“But how do you know they won’t just kill us and take the ship?”
“We don’t. But most pirates don’t do that because then everyone they stopped would fight to the death and that would make things hard for them. They’re usually not looking for a fight. They usually just want to grab whatever they can and go. And we don’t really have anything.”
An alarm sounded to announce that the airlock was now pressurized. A man’s voice came over the intercom and said, “Open the inner door.”
Ricardo hit a button and the inner door of the airlock slid open.
The voice said, “Drop your weapons and get into the airlock. All of you.”
Suzy, Ricardo, and Maria got into the airlock. The readouts on a wall screen inside showed that there was now normal air pressure beyond the outer door, presumably because the pirates had connected a self-sealing passageway. So now they just had to open the outer door and see what waited for them inside that tunnel.
The voice said, “Close the inner door and open the outer door.”
Ricardo once again hit a button and Suzy pulled out her pistol. Maria did the same. After all, if the pirates were going to shoot them, she’d go down fighting.
The door slid aside. No one was there.
Instead, there was a short, well-lit passageway that led to the outer door of the pirate ship. There were cameras mounted on the door so they could view everything inside the passageway. Obviously, the pirates weren’t going to walk into a trap.
The voice said, “Drop your weapons and raise your hands… That means you too, dear.”
Suzy smirked and dropped the gun close to her feet. She glared at the camera and lifted her hands. But each hand had a raised middle finger.
Ricardo said, “Suzy, please.”
She laughed. She had to admit that Ricardo looked sexy, even in a situation of pathetic surrender. She was waiting for the pirate’s voice to bark and complain again but instead the closed door shot open and there were five people with rifles standing there.
A tall, bearded man grinned and spoke in a London accent. “Behave yourselves and no one will get hurt. We’re business people, not killers. Unless you make us into killers.”
A million possibilities whirled through Suzy’s brain. But were any of them good?
She looked at Ricardo again and saw him shaking his head—really, just his eyeballs.
Maria whispered, “We wait for our chance, Suzy.”
Suzy glared and scowled, and then three pirates lunged forward and snatched their guns. One of them, a hummingbird of a woman with a pompom of pink hair, patted Suzy down and checked her for other weapons. She took a folding knife from Suzy’s boot that she never really used for anything other than cutting apples and avocados. Meanwhile, the same treatment was being given to Ricardo and Maria. Then they were marched into the other ship.
Chapter 15
Blurr had a headache.
He was threading his way through a throng of shoppers and vendors on the streets of Diego Tijuana, and while it wasn’t the ritziest part of town, it was definitely one of the most flavorful. The air smelled like spicy fish tacos and garlic beef enchiladas, and the shops, stores, people, and noises blended into an aromatic canvas of color. Unfortunately, he was still rubbing his throbbing temples. Maybe it was from the hot sun splashing down, or maybe it was from something else—whatever. That guy he’d killed from Los Pocos had deserved it.
He forced himself to smile; he had to get his act together. Then he spotted the local police captain who had agreed to meet him in a bustling outdoor café called Buena Gente.
Blurr sat down and ordered some ice water. He sipped it under the shade of a yellow umbrella that sprouted from the tabletop. The sweaty police captain sipped his iced coffee and appeared to be trying his best to stay in control of the situation. But Blurr knew that wasn’t going to happen.
“So we busted into that safe house,” Blurr said. “And we took one man alive. He told us he paid you twenty thousand earthos. He told us you were helping to harbor people dangerous to the government. Is this true?”
The captain wrinkled his nose and scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We didn’t take any money and we didn’t ’harbor’ anyone. And besides, you government people are out of your jurisdiction.”
Blurr laughed. “I’m the kind of special agent who is never out of his jurisdiction, and my jurisdiction includes everything around here, Captain—right down to that little baby dick between your legs. If I decide you’re a threat to this project you’ll disappear tonight. Your sewer of a precinct will be raided, and your knuckle-dragging toilet goons will be locked up—and I’m sure half of them will be caught with wads of cash stuffed up their assholes. If you’re lucky I won’t name anyone in your family as a co-conspirator. Are you paying attention?”
The captain’s face was blank. “I hear you.”
“Great,” Blurr said. Then he leaned back in his chair and smirked. “The problem with being a big, bad shark is that you’re always going to run into another shark who’s worse than you—or better, depending on the way you look at it. I guess I’m a little of both... So here’s the situation, pig—I want that money. Yeah, you heard me. And if I don’t get it your fat ass will be a blubbery wet spot in the bottom of a ditch. I’ve got all the proof I need from the man we captured, and it wouldn’t matter anyway.”
The captain looked away and lowered his voice. “The man you captured is dead.”
“You’re damn right he’s dead!” Blurr snapped. “And that’s your fault for letting these scumbags operate. Did he leave a family behind? It’s always the kids who get screwed.”
The captain was quiet. Finally, he said, “I need time to get the money.”
“Why is that?” Blurr said. “Are you saying you already stuffed every snout in the pigpen? Well, get it back, fuck face. You’ve got six hours. And be glad I won’t be coming to take any more. I’m not looking to go into business with you, Captain. I’m too good to be in business with a piece of shit like you. I just want to teach you a lesson.”
“All right. I’ll do it.”
Blurr stood up and puffed out his chest. As he walked to his car, he was bursting with exhilaration, like he’d just skied down a mountain.
He also felt confident the captain would give him the money, especially since he’d said it was only a one-time payoff. As scared as the cop was right now, Blurr knew the fear would fade if it became a regular bit of extortion, and that would lead to complications. And if there was one thing Blurr hated, it was complications.
He checked the time. Damn, he had to get home and see his wife and kids, and then he had to get over to the spaceport and meet Banks. He also had to catch Suzy Spitfire and find that AI.
But first, he had to make a call to a certain official on the faraway city-state of Choccoban. He had some important business there, too.
Chapter 16
When Suzy, Ricardo, and Maria reached the Heartbreaker, they were paraded into a spacious crew lounge. Suzy noted the room was on top of the ship. She immediately scanned the lounge for possible escape routes.
Okay, there were a few exits. There were also a few fuzzy green pool tables, and a blurry tank of water filled with orange fish, and a bar with three silver taps. Meanwhile, the walls were lined with broad windows that showed the kaleidoscopic universe outside. Nobody here is living a rough-and-tumble life, that’s for sure. And what was with all the electric guitars lying around? This seemed more like a tour bus than a pirate ship.
Their captors were a jolly bunch,
an ethnically diverse group of guys and girls who liked their cosmetology products. Some of them were light-skinned with pink hair, and some of them were brown-skinned with red hair—but all of them had the same London accent. They wore slinky dresses bursting with color, and biker boots that had probably never seen bikes, and sharp-fitting black leather jackets. They were laughing and friendly.
The tall, bearded one who’d been the first to speak in the airlock turned to them and said, “I’m Ned, the first mate of the Heartbreaker. And this here is Captain Orange.”
Another tall guy who was clean-shaven appeared through a passageway. He was handsome and smiled like someone who knew it. He wore tight black jeans, a pressed white shirt, and an ebony-colored tie that matched his leather jacket draped with gold braids. Suzy hated him, of course, because he’d captured their ship—her ship, at least in her mind—and she was determined to be as hostile as possible.
He looked them over and grinned.
“Hello, there,” he said in a proper London accent. “So you’re the ones we’ve accosted today. How nice.”
“Yeah, and how pathetic,” Suzy grumbled.
“What’s that?”
“I said it’s pathetic we were beaten by a guy who looks like he’s afraid to get his hair messed up.”
Laughter rippled through the room. “She knows you already, Bob,” said a nearby curvy woman with dark hair.
Captain Orange gave her a snide glance but then grinned again in Suzy’s direction. “So you must be the one I heard over the speaker. The troublemaker.”
“She’s no trouble at all,” Ricardo said in a rush. “She’s not trying to cause problems.”
“That’s true,” Suzy said. “I do it without trying. And by the way, Captain, you sounded different over the speaker—your voice.”
The captain laughed and then spoke in a gruff tone. “You mean like this, lady? This is my ‘pirate radio’ voice.” Then he lapsed back into his smooth-sounding banter. “And this is my real voice. I was an actor before I became a pirate. My talents come in handy.”
“Really?” Suzy said. “Can you act like a waiter and get me a drink?”
