“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.
“A pirate’s saber,” Silverton said proudly. “You might need to work out a bit before using that effectively.”
“But you have two plasma pistols,” Charley pointed out.
“Ah, but you never know when you’ll be in a tight scrap or run out of ammo,” Silverton said. “I probably use that weapon more than any other.”
Silverton also handed over a set of throwing knives set in a chrome case. The steel was polished, light and finely balanced. “They’ll never let you down either,” the pirate said. “You’ll need training, no doubt.”
The old man looked Charley in the eye. “If you ever decide to get serious about this shit, there’s a man you can look up on Danderly. Harry Teks works at the Galactic Academy there. He can teach you some of the old ways.”
“The Galactic Academy?” Charley repeated stupidly. “Isn’t that really expensive?”
“Could be,” Silverton said with a shrug. “I never said any of this would be easy.”
Silverton fell back against the bonnet, his face pale gray. Charley stepped forward but was waved away.
“Keep the pellet rack, the blasters, the sword and the throwing knives,” Silverton gasped. “The last thing you might need is this.”
The pirate produced a tattered headset with a small green holograph display.
“It’s a targeting computer,” Silverton explained. “It’s seen better days but might serve you well if you try and escape that town. Especially since you have no skills.”
Charley raised her eyebrows at that, but it was true. She might have a pair of great blasters but they were useless if she didn’t have any targeting assistance. Boss Pete’s men would cut her down in seconds.
Charley tried the headset on. It took a little while to get used to. She played with the targeting display. It registered Silverton as a potential threat, listing his predicted age, weight and possible weapons.
“Nice,” she breathed.
“Careful not to focus too much on that display,” Silverton warned. “There’s still the real world to keep an eye on.”
Charley nodded, deactivating the headset for now.
“And finally,” Silverton gasped, sounding more hoarse than ever, “here’s the most valuable thing I own.”
Silverton handed Charley a hand drawn map. That’s right - hand drawn on parchment. Charley took the tattered, brittle paper with a bemused smile. “What the fuck?
“Yeah, yeah,” Silverton said through his pain. “Pirates learn not to trust modern technology a great deal. X marks the spot, girl.”
Sure enough, an X was marked in the Meridien valley of the Dusty Mountains.
“It’s a cave,” Silverton said. “Kinda hard to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”
And with that, Silverton collapsed. Charley helped the man to his feet, but blood was already dribbling from his mouth. He smelled terrible. Charley pocketed the treasure map and laid the old pirate against the speeder. “So … do you think you might … take the call?”
It was a moment before Charley realized what Silverton was on about. He was asking if she was interested in becoming a pirate.
“Maybe,” she said, more to humor a dying man than anything else.
Silverton smiled. “That would be somethin’,” he gasped. “I never had a daughter …”
Silverton’s eyes stared lifelessly at her. Charley stifled a sob and closed the lids over. So that was the end of Silverton. Charley looked around her, wondering if all this was one big lurid dream. The salt pan was quiet save for a gathering breeze and the distant hum of a garbage barge somewhere across the flat expanse.
6
Everything had happened so quickly. One moment she was fearing for her life, the next she was given a quest by the most unlikely of characters. Charley climbed into the speeder, wondering if the guy had something practical like credits. She found two ten credit tubes in the glove box. She breathed a huge sigh of relief, kissing the tubes lovingly.
She stripped Silverton’s belt and holsters, sliding the blasters in and tucking the heavy saber through the leather. The throwing knives she pocketed along with the pellet rack. She would need to find a proper utility suit if she was gonna be able to organize all these items effectively. There were no gear stores in Sandflower Downs. She would need to assault the garbage compound in nothing but a linen shift. Fucking madness. Still, she wouldn’t have met Silverton at all if he hadn’t been stranded on the salt pan without transport. The remoteness of this place had ultimately drawn him closer to her, and for that she had reason to be grateful.
Feeling slightly
encumbered by her new gear, Charley took one last swig from Silverton’s water canteen and began her trek back to the town.
There was a spring in her step as she tackled the salt pan with fresh confidence. She felt like a badass with plasma pistols to either side and a huge, sharp blade if things got too heavy. She felt like she could take on the world. The day had begun in the most horrible way and it had taken a turn for the strange and wonderful. She was sorry for Silverton but barely knew him. He had given her a fresh purpose and perhaps even a career aspiration. She would do what he suggested and steal Boss Pete’s speeder somehow. There was no way she could sell any of this gear without it. Zeba was several hundred miles away and there was no other way of getting there. Boss Pete was responsible for filtering supplies to Sandflower Downs. The entire population was dependent on that slug of a man. It was time for a change.
Charley felt more confident with every step. The sun beat down on her back and her mouth was parched after five minutes but she was a powerful woman and she would take what she wanted this day or die in the attempt. Where else could she go? She couldn’t go back home and another night in the cold could well kill her.
Charley was glad she was wearing Silverton’s hat as she traversed the western edge of the shanty town. Boss Pete’s compound came into view to the south. A triple storey building made from mud brick and cable frame. Unlike any other dwelling in Sandflower Downs in that it was actually resistant to sand storms and other meteorological events.
A cold dread gripped at Charley’s heart for the first time and her confidence faltered as she appraised the compound. She counted five men strolling the perimeter as she approached, plus one in a little guard tower on the north west corner. Occasionally desert crawlers got too close from the open wastes and were taken down by the mounted gun on that tower. How the fuck was Charley supposed to get past that?
The pistols she’d scored from Silverton were first class for short to medium range combat but couldn’t hope to drop any of these goons from further than 100 yards.
She was gonna need to have balls of steel and get much closer first. The guard on the tower spotted her first as she approached from the salt pan. She felt ridiculous, despite the weapons she had gained. One woman on foot against the entire compound? Yeah, right. She had a death wish. The sun had gotten to her head.
Still, every time she thought about turning around she thought of the cold, frigid horrors the night would offer. There was nowhere to stay in Sandflower Downs, not even if she could pay. She had developed a reputation among the locals and no one would trust her to front up with the money.
So it was the compound or nothing.
The guard in the tower wolf whistled. Charley nervously dropped her targeting visor which duly reported two extra guards that she hadn’t seen. Great. Eight in total then. A walk in the park.
“You thinkin’ of coming closer, sister?” the tower guard drawled. “Unless you lookin’ to suck my fat dick?”
“Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t,” Charley returned, trying to sound seductive. “A girl never tells beforehand.”
The tower guard grinned and took his hands off the TT33 flak gun. That was his first mistake. The idiot frowned as Charley got closer.
“Say, where did you get that tech from …?”
Almost underneath the tower now, Charley dropped to one knee and let the targeting computer light up the man’s face. She aimed at the orange reticule projected by the targeter and squeezed off a round from her right pistol.
The guard was thrown back, a neat groove cleaved through his head. He fell back over the rail and down into the compound yard. Charley moved up against the outer compound wall and listened to the shouts of the other guards with a satisfied smile.
The sound of a jeep made her smile again - that was exactly what she was hoping for. These fucker were so lazy. Charley waited patiently in the limited shade provided by the tower. It was difficult to wait but it was the only effective play she had. Soon enough a jeep appeared around the corner of the compound. It was a small vehicle, barely larger than a dune buggy. These things weren’t built for the open salt pan but were useful enough for the men traveling back and forth from the whorehouse or the general store.
The jeep was piled with four goons. If Charley could take these guys down there’d only be three left in the yard. Plus whoever waited in the villa.
Charley raised her arms in surrender as the jeep approached. Sometimes being a woman actually paid off in this crazy world. But only because these cretins were probably more interested in raping her than killing her. The jeep pulled up close. Every single one of them had the leery smirk of a rapist. Charley smiled and made to remove her shift.
“Looks like you got me, fellas,” she purred, removing the first pellet she could find in her pocket. This one was green, whatever that meant. She was about to find out.
She thrust the thing into the jeep and watched it crack open upon contact with a man’s forehead. A yellow gas spread through the interior, making the men gag immediately. Feeling emboldened, Charley held a hand over her nose and backed away. She watched, slightly sickened as the men hung over the edge of the jeep and vomited uncontrollably. Before long the cloud had dispersed over the salt pan, carried by the midday winds. But the damage had already been done. The men clutched at their throats desperately, anything to remove the toxic scum settling there. Charley dragged each one from the jeep, laying them on the crusted sand in a neat row. The goons were simply too ill to muster any defiance.
“I’m sorry, I know you’re just doing your jobs,” she announced. “But I’m a fucking space pirate and you’re standing in my way.”
7
And with that she blasted them all neatly through the chest. Charley didn’t have a sadistic bone in her body and was keen to make their deaths as clean as possible. Besides, apart from being power-addicted thugs, they’d done nothing to Charley directly. They were just victims of a bad, bad system.
“Blame society,” Charley muttered as she sat in the jeep and gripped the wheel.
She was skidding over the salt pan in seconds, eager to hit the front gates at high speed. She was pleasantly surprised to find the gates were still open.
“How’s one girl gonna beat four big guys, right,” Charley said bitterly as she crashed into the guard waiting at the gate. He was thrown several yards into the compound and didn’t move. Charley leaped from the jeep and put him out of his misery. Just in case he needed it.
Using the jeep as cover, Charley peered over the bonnet with both pistols poised. Her targeting computer pointed out three men. Two had scrambled for cover behind a sheet of tin and a pile of wheel caps respectively, while the third peered down imperiously from the villa’s third storey balcony. That man carried a crude, home made shotgun fashioned from piping tube and rusted circuitry. It was only capable of firing one round but it was enough to remove a large chunk from the front of the jeep.
“You’re done, asshole,” Charley muttered as she fired at the red graticule her computer offered. The balcony guard fell back, bounced off the window and tipped over the rail to land awkwardly in the dust.
The other two goons cowered beyond view. Most of these guys just weren’t prepared for a heavily-armed girl from the local shanties. Charley stepped forward with confidence, knowing that taking these two down was a simple matter of flanking them. She picked off the first one as he tried to make for the villa entrance. The second rushed her with a pickax and was thrown back by plasma bolts from both of Charley’s pistols. The yard was clear. Charley checked the battery pack levels of both blasters - medium. More than enough to take care of Boss Pete inside the villa, but it also meant Charley would need to source fresh energy cells after the fight. Silverton had given her plenty, but in hindsight she wished he had more in the way of support supplies. But then again, carrying them across the salt pan would’ve been difficult anyway.
The front entrance to the villa was secured by two old-fashioned cross beams on the
inside. Boss Pete had never had need to protect against energy attacks. Until now.
Charley unleashed several bolts into the lock mechanism and turned it into scrap metal. The inner bolts themselves took a little longer. When the doors finally burned through and swung open noiselessly, Charley took an instinctive step back and waited. Whoever was inside would’ve had plenty of time to prepare for her attack.
There was no sound or movement from the living space on the ground floor. Charley moved through a stylishly decorated open plan kitchen and dining area. Having come from the rotten slums of the shanties below, she’d never seen such a well appointed home. A broad-shouldered bodyguard leaped out from behind a counter and threw a knife at Charley’s head. The targeting computer saw it first and Charley fired in reflex, splitting the projected orange graticule and diverting the knife into the wall. She deflected a second knife with the other hand and send a bolt into the man’s armored vest with the first. The vest melted through but not enough for Charley’s liking. A second bolt through the man’s jaw did the trick, splattering the spotless white kitchen with dark blood.
The patter of footsteps spun Charley around. A man rushed her with a pool cue, striking her hard across the temple with the improvised weapon. Charley saw stars as she hit the ground. The targeter suggested shooting the man’s knee out through a blue, non-lethal graticule. Charley obliged, splitting the graticule from point blank range. The man’s knee splintered like a tree trunk and he went down with an anguished shriek. Charley popped him in the chest to finish him off.
She looked up a spiral staircase, adrenalin coursing through her veins. She felt alive with action. She regretted the loss of life, but it was nothing she hadn’t been exposed to on the streets of Sandflower Downs on a daily basis. It was part of her life. The same cycle of life and death threatened to consume her until she decided to do something about it. Until she decided to take her opportunity with both hands and never look back. She didn’t know these men, well, not really, but the chances were that these guys were on the wrong side of the spiritual ledger. At the end of the day they were just trying to survive, just as Charley was, but not everyone could survive on a planet without resources. That was just a harsh fact of life.
The Space Pirate 1 Page 3
