The Terran Privateer

by Glynn Stewart

  “Your Captain kidnapped my crew and killed one of my people,” Annette snapped back.

  “A point of minor correction, Captain Bond,” Ridotak interjected calmly. “Your Lieutenant Mosi is now in the care of the Crew. Luckily, we appear to have a physiological profile on your species, and she is responding well to treatment. I am told she will live.”

  That stopped Annette’s rant in its tracks and drew a sigh of relief. She hadn’t expected Mosi to live.

  “Thank you,” she told Ridotak.

  “You’re treating their wounds?” Cawl demanded. “Wounds acquired attacking my people?”

  “Actually, no,” the High Captain replied mildly. “We are treating wounds acquired when one of your people attempted interspecies rape on a female who had been kidnapped by armed force aboard my station.”

  That finally silenced Cawl.

  “We have permitted that disgusting trade to continue on our station due to the high overlap between slave traders, smugglers, and pirates,” Ridotak continued. “Part of the deal, however, was that there would be no slave-taking on the station itself.”

  He turned to Annette with a wide, expansive gesture of his closer claw.

  “That said, Captain Bond, it is also the rule of this station that orders given by Crew are to be followed,” he reminded her. “You were ordered not to get involved, as we try to avoid this scale of violence. Your actions, while understandable, were a violation of the peace of this station. You will be required to pay a penalty of one million A!Tol Imperial Marks or an equivalent amount in trade or alternative currency before you will be allowed to recommence trade on Tortuga.

  “Do you understand, Captain Bond of Tornado?”

  Annette swallowed hard. That was actually more than was currently in Tornado’s accounts, even with her own funds included. Once they sold the remaining prizes and cargo, though, they could cover that and still probably fund their upgrades.

  “Yes, High Captain Ridotak,” she told him. “Will my agent be permitted to continue selling my cargo to help us raise the funds?”

  “Yes,” Ridotak replied with a tossing gesture with his arm. “But wait before you make plans, Captain Bond. I am not yet done with you.”

  Cawl clearly wasn’t sure what to make of this. Annette suspected that the punishment was severe enough that he probably did think it was enough, but he was also furious that his Captain and crewmates were dead.

  “Sir, wait one moment,” one of the other Laians suddenly said, just as Ridotak was turning back to Cawl. He slid what appeared to be a flimsy across the table, suggesting that the High Captain didn’t have a communicator with him.

  Something in Ridotak’s manner changed. Annette wasn’t entirely sure, but she’d guess from his gestures that the High Captain had been more amused than anything else up to this point. Now his upper claws snapped together and then rested on the table in front of him as he leveled his gaze on Waltan Cawl.

  “Did you think that I was stupid, Oath Keeper Waltan Cawl?” he demanded. “Did you think we were blind in our own station? Crawling fools you could befuddle with one claw and betray with the other?”

  Something had happened, and it was not to the Kanzi’s benefit. He also clearly knew exactly what Ridotak was talking about, and quivered back in his chair.

  “Since you have been blocked from communicating since you arrived here, it falls to me to explain the result of your attack on Captain Bond’s people,” the High Captain continued. “None of the humans or the other races serving Bond were injured. Your entire team of slavers was killed.

  “But not,” Ridotak noted, the mandibles on his jaw started to click rapidly as they trembled with rage, “before you killed one of my people. Do you know the penalty for the murder of Crew, Oath Keeper Cawl?”

  “I didn’t kill them!” Cawl snapped, but if his body language was as human as his appearance, his half-bowed position and trembling frame suggested that he was utterly terrified. “Mercy!” he whimpered after a moment.

  “Your Captain broke a longstanding Crew decree,” the High Captain told him. “The punishment for that alone would have been legendary, but now? Now you will be an example, Oath Keeper Cawl!”

  Ridotak rose to his feet, all four arms in front of him as the two-and-a-half-meter tall insectoid stretched the full length of his carapace. The old Laian was huge; only Ondu’s bodyguards and Ki!Tana had been larger among the aliens Annette had met.

  “Your ship, Faces of God, and all associated accounts will be seized,” he mandated. “The personal accounts of Captain Ikwal and Oath Keeper Cawl will be seized. All crew from the Faces of God have sixty-six hours to leave Tortuga or will be sold to whatever other slaver scum are left on my station.

  “The only mercy I am prepared to offer is that you will be spared to suffer under the same order,” he concluded. “I hope you have friends who value you enough to buy you a ticket home, Waltan Cawl.”

  The Kanzi was now melted into his chair, barely swallowing what would have been hyperventilating sobs in a human—and didn’t look much different on a Kanzi.

  “Captain Bond,” Ridotak addressed Annette again. “As the victim of the violation of our degree, Faces of God and one half of the confiscated accounts will be turned over to you as compensation, less the one-million-mark penalty for your own violations of our orders.

  “Money does not wash away blood in my experience,” he noted, “but I must ask you to promise that this suffices as punishment for your purposes and you will not pursue further action against Ikwal’s crew except in immediate self-defense.”

  Annette paused in shock. That hadn’t been expected. If they planned to deduct the fine from the seized accounts, the accounts would likely still make a noticeable contribution to her little squadron’s needs.

  “Yes,” she finally agreed. “I accept this as sufficient punishment and will pursue no further action.”

  “Good,” Ridotak said briskly. “We must talk in private, Captain. This hearing is dismissed!”

  The massive Laian moved slowly and carefully but with the momentum of a falling mountain. Annette’s escorts chivvied her to her feet and gestured for her to come with them as they followed the High Captain.

  Cawl’s escorts were having a much harder time mobilizing him.

  #

  Ridotak’s path took him out the other side of the meeting room, past a second set of security hatches presumably leading to the same place as the first, and down another gently curving and sloping corridor to a set of offices tucked away from the main bustle.

  At the door to what looked like the largest office, Annette’s escort waved off and Annette stepped through to find herself alone with the unquestioned ruler of the largest pirate port in her arm of the galaxy.

  “This was not done for your benefit, Captain Bond,” Ridotak noted. “Please, have a seat.” He gestured to a quartet of chairs organized around a table. Two were clearly designed for Laians, but the other two looked to have been swapped out for ones suitable for a human-sized biped.

  The room itself looked surprisingly plebeian. The walls were a soft gray tone, the furniture in black metal. A massive desk with what looked like half a dozen adjustable screens filled a good third of the office, but the chairs looked comfortable even to Annette.

  “You just handed me a ship—that I know nothing about, admittedly—and a currently undetermined amount of money,” she replied. “If it wasn’t done for my benefit, I have still benefited.”

  “The Crew generally allows the public areas of the station to sort out their own affairs unless they interfere with ours,” Ridotak explained. “Corpses in the street are not uncommon. People sell themselves into slavery or various lesser forms of indentured servitude every day. There is no other recourse for the desperate here but death.”

  “This doesn’t bother you?” Annette asked.

  “It did once,” he admitted. “But the Crew are a small force in a large universe, Captain, adrift because no one helped us. T
hose of the lost and desperate who come to us with value, we recruit. The rest must choose their own paths. We of all beings are not qualified to guide them.”

  Fatalistic and stupid as the philosophy sounded to Annette, she could see how that, combined with the Crew being utterly without nation as she understood it, allowed Tortuga to function as it did.

  “You did all of this just to tell people not to cause you trouble?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he confirmed. He tossed a flimsy across the table to her. “I believe that should be readable for you,” he told her. “I am uncertain of the reliability of the translation software the A!Tol had nineteen months ago.”

  Annette glanced it over. It was a summary of the accounts seized, the amount deeded to her, the deduction for the fine, and the—significant—remainder deposited to her flotilla account.

  “Realize that, as Captain, the accounts for your flotilla are extensions of your personal account,” Ridotak observed. “If you are wondering, that sum would be enough for you, at least, to purchase a mansion in a quieter Core system, stock it with food custom-made to your biology, and live like a queen for the rest of your life.”

  “But not enough for my entire crew to do so,” Annette guessed.

  “No. Your loyalty to your crew does you credit, Captain Bond, as does your alliance with Ki!Tana. But tell me, are you not tempted? To just…walk away from the impossible course your oaths have set you upon?”

  “I do not yet believe the course is impossible,” she replied firmly. Her doubts were a private thing, better studied in the dark of her own office, not this softly gray space controlled by this strange sapient. “Even if it was, I swore an oath, High Captain.”

  “Ah,” he breathed. “So, it is not merely Ki!Tana’s influence. You are this stubborn.”

  “Ki!Tana’s influence?” Annette asked. “She did say she knew you. Worked for you.”

  “Do you have any idea, Captain Bond, what kind of trickster demon you have bound to yourself?” Ridotak asked. “The Ki!Tol are wise and knowledgeable, but realize that they are all, to a being, utterly insane.”

  The Ki!Tol? Annette had assumed that Ki!Tana was a name, but it was starting to sound like the Ki! part meant something else. Something she was going to have to ask the alien about.

  “She has been of great help to us,” she said carefully.

  “As she was once of great help to me,” the High Captain agreed. “Understand that however old you think your friend is, she is older. Understand that whatever you think she is at all, you are wrong. It is not my place to share her story. Ask her, if you must know it.”

  “A trickster demon, though?” Annette asked.

  “Ki!Tana will never lie to you,” Ridotak told her. “She will never do more than present options—honest ones. She will never mislead you or deceive you or fail to answer a direction question; these are not things the A!Tol have in them.

  “But her advice has layers within layers, Captain Bond. Those the Ki!Tol attach themselves to are never meant for ordinary things. If you stand with her, you will end a criminal, a king, or a corpse.”

  “It seems she delivered both of the first two for you,” Annette pointed out, and Ridotak’s mandibles clicked rapidly in chittering laughter.

  “Age and fine food will arrange for the latter more quickly than anyone not familiar with my race would guess,” he noted. “If you accept that your life will never be calm, then stay with Ki!Tana, Captain. It may well kill you, but it will not be boring.”

  He gestured toward the door, a clear dismissal, but Annette stopped, eyeing him.

  “Sir, one final request, if you will permit,” she said.

  “From one of Ki!Tana’s students to another, I can at least listen,” he allowed.

  “I understand that the Crew have repair docks and technology unrivaled by any in this sector of space. I want to buy that tech and pay for what I fear may be the only reliable docks on this station to install it.”

  Ridotak lurched to standing, looming over Annette with every kilo of his impressive bulk in silence for a long moment.

  “You have courage, honor, and fight for your crew when they need you. I would be proud to have you as a Captain of mine,” he told her. “I will put you in touch with our Dockmaster. Be warned, however,” he concluded with that chittering laugh, “if you wish to buy our systems, Captain Bond, you will probably be selling that ship I just gave you back to us.”

  Chapter 37

  James and Kurzman were sitting outside the ship when the Captain returned. Theoretically, James had assigned himself command of the guard detachment—currently inside the ship, with plasma rifles—but once he’d got Captain Bond’s update, he’d relaxed significantly.

  Instead, he and his boyfriend were sitting on lawn chairs, drinking beer and watching the aliens go by.

  Those aliens didn’t need to know that James’s beer was non-alcoholic and there was a plasma rifle under his chair.

  The Captain and Ki!Tana arrived together, via a floating hover platform driven by a four-armed Tosumi in Crew red. He stopped, letting them off, and then whizzed away again without a word.

  Ki!Tana’s skin had gone pure black and James was on his feet immediately. He’d never seen the A!Tol that color.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded.

  “I need rest,” the alien replied. “That’s all.” She paused, one support tentacle half-buckling under her. “I would not object to assistance,” she admitted.

  The Captain was already there, but James joined her immediately, the two of them slipping under Ki!Tana’s manipulator tentacles to help support her. He realized, as the leathery limbs settled onto his shoulders, that it was actually the first time he’d touched the A!Tol.

  The unconscious part of his mind had expected the squid-like alien to be wet, slimy and cold. Instead, her tentacles were warm and leathery as he grabbed hold to support her. She was also huge and a lot denser than he’d have guessed.

  “Thank you,” she told them. This close, it was a lot easier to hear her actual speech, a mix of sibilant vowels, harsh consonants and beak-snapping clicks normally blocked by his translator earbuds.

  “I’ve got the outside,” Kurzman told them, and James gave his boyfriend a grateful smile. “Get her in.”

  Slowly and carefully, they eased the big alien through the cruiser to her quarters.

  “Are you going to be all right?” James asked, hitting the panel to open the door.

  “Yes,” Ki!Tana told them. “Today was a bad day and I pushed too hard. I need rest, but I will be fine.”

  “If this is a recurring condition, I need to know,” the Captain told her. “Especially if there’s something we can do.”

  The tiniest flecks of red appeared in the black of her skin for the moment as Ki!Tana turned her gaze on Captain Bond.

  “We need to talk on several things, Captain Bond,” she finally said. “But not tonight. Soon.”

  The alien carefully lurched into her quarters and James looked over at the Captain. She met his gaze levelly, then quirked her lips in a half-smile.

  “You and Pat didn’t need to wait up for me,” she told him. “I sent you an update.”

  “We saw,” he acknowledged. “But…I wasn’t going to believe it until I saw you with my own eyes. You’re all right?”

  “I am,” she confirmed. “So is Mosi. I checked in on her before we left; she’s responding well to their treatments. And while the price was very nearly higher than I’d be prepared to pay, we also have an appointment with the Laian Dockmaster in the morning.”

  He knew she wasn’t talking about money. The appointment with the Laian Dockmaster would cost them money—a lot of it, as he understood it—but the price of the appointment had nearly been the lives of their crew.

  “So, don’t plan on spending any of the ship’s money until that deal is closed, huh?” James noted consideringly.

  “I’m not even planning on spending my money,” Bond said dryly. “Wh
y?”

  “I want some bloody power armor,” the British officer said flatly. “This morning would have been preferable; tomorrow will have to do.”

  Without power armor, he was forced to resort to massive overkill to stand a chance, a stance that was dangerous aboard a space station and offended his own sense of elegance.

  “I can see your point.” The Captain sighed. “We should be able to afford it when everything settles, but the ship upgrades have to come first.”

  “I get that,” he admitted. “But we’re looking at being at an ugly disadvantage if we ever have to board an A!Tol warship—not to mention landing parties when we return to Earth.” He sighed. “I’ll pool funds with the Troop Captains; we’ll see if we can afford it ourselves.”

  “If you do, we will repay you,” Bond assured him. “Either from sales or from our next operations.”

  “If the Laians charge what I think they will, the next operation is going to need to be impressive,” the Major pointed out. “And after the last one, impressive may get harder.”

  “Believe me,” his Captain said fervently, “I know.”

  #

  Their Rekiki did have power armor, which meant that two of Tellaki’s troopers were assigned to Annette’s escorts the next day. Wellesley didn’t, however, remove Sergeant Lin or her human companion from the escort, which left Tornado’s Captain feeling like she was leading a small army through Tortuga’s corridors.

  Ki!Tana’s absence helped reduce the impact, as the two Rekiki, while larger than humans, didn’t match the A!Tol female’s massive bulk. After her poor state last night, Annette hadn’t been surprised when the alien didn’t respond to being pinged for the meeting, and had coopted Kurzman to act as her “informed backup”.

  The two humans might not know as much about what counted as top-tier weapons and shields in the galaxy as they’d like, but they had a pretty solid idea of the numbers they wanted for Tornado. If the Laians could offer improvements from there, great. If not, they were reasonably sure the Crew could still get them what they wanted.