The Gilgamesh suit augmented the titanic strength of the Y’All to an almost unimaginable level. It became evident as he didn’t use any tools to rip the strong airlock door out of its socket.
My suit computronic reported communication activity from within the Bolgar and reported that there were still functional energy sources and energy shields within the ship. Apparently, our tech stop rays didn’t do the trick. Tech stop was very effective against unshielded electronic equipment but completely ineffective against shields. It was not completely unexpected, as many ships, especially of Union origin, had internal shields to protect key components and areas. This, of course, would also mean the paralysator rays did not incapacitate everyone aboard. I tuned into the communication channel of the civilian Union trader and heard screams of panic.
Someone in that ship screamed into his audio sensor. “Y’All! We are attacked by the Y’All!”
I went in right after TheOther, arm cannons ready and with two Marines at my flank, while the rest breached the ship in small teams on different spots as per my orders. These two Elite Marines were like living shadows. There was nothing to fight. However, we simply followed the path of destruction our Y’All friend had left behind, bulkheads crumbled and torn like paper, a man in some sort of battle armor cut in half.
TheOther was a whirlwind of doom, and he marched unstoppable shrugging off a few sporadic blaster beams. He held a TKU mini cannon, normally used as a direct fire artillery piece mounted on landing tanks or battle walkers with his lower arms, while he held a brand new QGP Rifle in the upper left and a weird and truly massive power sword of weird shape in his upper right fist. With it, he cut down a few of the ship’s crew who dared to resist.
Forcefield curtains collapsed as he simply marched into them, the aggressive ParaDim shields of his suit interrupting their field cohesion and closed air locks he cut, ripped, and stomped into twisted metal holes.
I reached the ship’s bridge without firing a single shot.
One of the Marines at my side turned out to be Pure and while he very rarely talked, he was compelled to express his amazement. “Beasts of Tarnak, can you imagine an army of these?”
The other Marine, a Perthanian giant, also with two arm pairs was less impressed. “I’ve seen Perthanian platoons in action. There isn’t all that much difference, I would imagine, and yet an entire army of us was defeated in the Battle of Gabthrt in 4319 by a Union Marines Battalion led by Admiral Stahl.”
I elbowed him in the side as I stepped on the ship’s bridge. “There isn’t much that impresses you Perthanians, now is there, Lt. Hrrtew?”
“Oh, there is, Captain, there is. You should see what happens if our Security Chief really lets loose.”
TheOther said, “The captain fought two of us in hand to hand combat and won.”
The Pertharian almost dropped his gun. “Captain, consider me impressed.”
“It didn’t exactly win and… now let’s get on with the business at hand.” While I said that, I wondered what it would look like if Hans fought without holding back? I looked around the bridge. It was a standard Union bridge layout like it was done half a century ago, with all the duty stations behind a bridge dividing chest-high barrier and only the helmsman having his station before that barrier and behind armored viewports. It was all well-maintained from the looks of it. There was even a civilian GalNet terminal. The bridge crew was hiding behind the barrier. I counted six humans and two Togar. Narth popped out of thin air right next to me, in his Alvor’s Cove dust mantle disguise and held out his hand. The captain of the ship started floating.
Narth explained his sudden appearance to me, “He was about to destroy his cargo. I could not let this happen before you all seen what he is shipping to Togar markets. It is the first time I feel disgust so strong I have the impulse to kill.”
I was quite surprised by his statement but a stomach-turning suspicion spread from the bottom of my gut, as I knew what the Togar liked to buy.
Narth nodded, “Yes, Captain, your notion is quite correct.”
Har-Hi’s voice came on the command channel and said, “Pirate ship secure, we won!”
I said to him, “Acknowledged, strip the valuables, secure anyone alive in stasis boxes, and have Shea look into their files.”
The ship’s master came floating toward me, and he looked back between Narth and TheOther, obviously not sure who he had to fear more. He said to me, “Are you Black Velvet, the pirate?”
His helmet peeled away from his face like the skin of a fruit. The tough material of his armor ripped like tissue paper and Narth answered for me. “You are in the presence of Captain Black Velvet, and it is not me you need to fear and not the Y’All, but her.”
I said, “What is your cargo?”
His eyes shifted, and his mouth became a thin line. “Nothing you pirates would be interested in.”
One of my Marines came onto the bridge; even through the faceplate of his helmet, I saw his pale white face and an expression of shock. “Captain, the vessel is secure, but you better not go inside the vessel’s main cargo hold. It is the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.”
What was the freight consisting of that shocked an elite Marine and a Narth?
I said to TheOther, “Hold him and make sure they don’t touch anything. Have Cirruit come over and disable any self-destruct mechanisms.” To the Marine, I said, “Show me!”
We used the ship’s functioning ship elevator, and it took us down to the cargo hold level of this armed freighter. As we approached the cargo bay access doors, two more Marines came out, and both looked as pale and disgusted as the one with me.
Moments later, I stepped through the door and stopped in my tracks. The cargo hold was laid out like a freezer meat locker. There were rows of long steel racks from the floor to the ceiling. On steel hooks hanging packed in transparent plastic were human bodies. Headless, arms and legs tied to the body, like hams in a butcher shop.
Large shipping crates were stacked three rows high with labels like; 250 human heads, fresh frozen, and 200 human legs fresh frozen. An open crate labeled Human Hearts Individually Packed, made me want to gag. Even a rough estimate made me think there had to be at least 5,000 of these frozen bodies! I had a hard time keeping it down.
The Marine said, “There are four cargo holds like that, ma’am! And there is one up front with live human prisoners kept in nightmare conditions.”
I had to see it for my own eyes. He was right. The conditions on the cargo hold with the live slaves were an impression of horror. I was certain it would follow me for the rest of my life.
They were stacked on metal shelves, wrapped tightly in plastic up to the head with hoses attached to body orifices to siphon body waste and to feed them garish-looking slurry. The groaning and muffled crying of at least 3000 victims was perhaps even more disturbing than the stench.
I actually ran back to the bridge of the ship and grabbed the ship’s master by the throat. I tried to find words that could adequately express my feelings to him. I failed and said, “You will pay for this like no one has ever paid!”
He tried to shrug and said, “What is it to you? You are a pirate and these are all Union humans. It’s just business, very good business, too. Let me go, and I’ll split the profit with you.”
I didn’t even recognize my own voice as I asked, “Is this your company’s real business? Are there more ships like this?”
His eyes glared at me. “The Togar are waiting for this ship. It is unwise to make the Togar and my company your enemies, Pirate. I have a GalNet terminal, and I called for help and described you and your ship. Help is on its way, so you better make a deal with me.”
I still held him and said to Narth, using our mental connection, “Tell Shea and Three-Four to come over here and have them copy every bit of information off this ship’s computronics. Tell Krabbel he has the Conn, and you man your sensors and make sure we know when something or someone approaches.”
Narth
responded with, “Aye, Captain,” and disappeared.
To the ship’s master, I said, “I really hope you called them because I’ll send them all straight to hell.” My mind was still seeing the images I had seen in his freight bays and the knowledge that I could not punish him accordingly filled me with a cold, different rage than I had ever felt before. It was not the sudden anger I often cursed and could quench with plunging myself head over heels into the fray. It was the realization that death was not enough, that the only thing that would satisfy me was to torture him, to make him suffer a long time.
I said to him, “I am going to sell your load of human flesh to the Togar myself. I am going to fill them with disease, and when your filthy cat friends eat, the disease will spread, and they will die.”
One of his bridge crew officers was a Togar and, like the rest of the survivors, restrained with memory tape and held like a weightless toy in TheOther’s fist. She hissed with wide-eyed panic, “You can’t do that; it would be genocide!”
“Yes, Cat, you are right. No mercy. No remorse. I will descend upon your kind and make you pay! You Togar shall perish to the last, as my wrath knows no limit!”
The shipmaster I was still holding struggled and screamed, “Please take away those black flames. I am sorry! I am so sorry, I had no idea hell existed. Please have mercy!”
As if there was a vacuum inside his body, his eyes were sucked inside his skull, and his cheeks pulled in around his teeth and jaws. He screamed, and then he gargled with a dying voice, “The flames, the dark flames, please don’t…” His last words died on his bloodless lips, and he looked like a thousand-year-old freeze-dried mummy hanging from my fist. I felt like I had been a bystander and someone else had taken my place. It was like waking from a trance.
TheOther who was holding the Togar said, “Captain, are you all right?”
I dropped the corpse and said, “You better check the suits of these other officers. This one had some sort of suicide device on him.”
He held the Togar up and before me and the cat struggled, trying to get away from me even while bound and held by a Y’All.
TheOther said, “You sure impressed him as you can see!”
I shrugged and said, “I wish we could really do that, spoil their food, but I doubt the admiral will let us.”
I stood in one of our empty freight bays and watched my crew pile the spoils of our raid on the floor, while Sobody held a PDD in clipboard mode and took meticulous stock. There was a deep smile of satisfaction on his face, and I said to him, “You have a bazaar full of the rarest wares in the galaxy, and you look like a Viking boy in a harpoon shop tallying this plunder.”
“Captain, this is so much more fun. It’s like opening a present and you don’t know what’s inside.” He pointed at the pile and said, “Seven rolls of Archa silk, nine barrels of Bandurian fragrance oil, an entire case of Saresii tea, porcelain, quite valuable antiques. Six boxes of highly illegal drugs, including at least a pound of Califerm and there is more, of course.”
I was about to ask where the Holdian was when I noticed an open trunk and a fast-moving tail. “Mr. Warner, anything interesting in that trunk?”
He appeared holding a small fancy blue bottle in his left paw and a peach-colored vial in the other. “Perfume and female underthings but no jewelry so far.”
Sobody said, “Looks like Jaspan perfume. The perfume might be stale, but if the bottle is genuine, it’s at least two-thousand years old and quite a collectible.”
I shook my head. “Is there any merchandise you are not able to identify?”
He looked at me and then smiled. “Probably not, Captain. I have been doing this for a long time.”
“Well, carry on then.”
Sobody said, “Captain, can I make a suggestion?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
It would really help our reputation as pirates if our deeds became known. I mean we should tow the pirate ship to Brhama Port and sell it. The Mighty Nine is a well-known ship and us bringing it in would be a bold statement, not to mention make a nice profit. Would be a shame to let it drift or blow it up, you know.”
Elfi called me over the intercom and said, “Captain, I have the admiral, as you requested.”
“Pipe it down here, Elfi.”
A field screen established itself before me and showed both Cherubim and the admiral, sharing half of the screen each. Even though Elfi had sent them a detailed report and visuals, I gave them a short oral report.
After I was done, Cherubim said, “We think we know where Klotzky & Harris Freight and Export gets these humans. They run advertisement campaigns on GalNet, offering good-paying easy jobs to non-citizens, GalDrifts, criminals, and other similar groups. They promise them a new life with good conditions on a corporate colony with paradise-like conditions that sound too good to be true. It appears it is a trap to lure the fringe groups. We have alerted Federal Police and they going to execute a search warrant in short time.”
The admiral clenched his fist. “Even though I think your plan has merits, I can’t condone it. We can’t poison the Togar, as much as their practices disgust us. Not a single Togar ship has ever attacked a Union ship or a Union target, as they know what will happen if they do. As far as we know, the humans they consume have been sold to them by others, and neither our morals nor our laws apply in their society. If we ever catch them on our side of the fence and doing anything of that sort, then we can act.”
Cherubim said, “But this is why you and the other Chimera units are out there, working in secret to eliminate as many of the slavers, pirates, and traders as possible.”
Again, McElligott spoke and said, “The Togar, so I have learned from the small community of these cats that live as Union citizens, actually prefer pork. Your friend Axel Enroe does his part to diminish their demand for human flesh by delivering pork to the Togar. Of course, he also makes a nice profit out of it, I am sure.”
Cherubim said, “I am sure there will come a day when the Free Space Treaty is no longer valid, and we can freely send Fleets to patrol, and then things will change.”
I had to agree, and I did remember Captain Lethra, the female Togar and Captain of the American Spirit and Axel Enroe’s private yacht. It was not so long ago and yet it felt as if it happened a lifetime ago.
The admiral said, “I have been in contact with your rich friend, and since the Galveston shipyards aren’t that far away, he will send three of his ships. One of them will tow the horror ship back into Union space, and we will take it from there. As soon as you see the Enroe units on your scanners, I want you to leave that area, as you are a pirate even in their eyes, of course. They do have strict orders not to engage anything and simply tow that ship back. However, they are corporate private units and are not under Fleet command. Corporate captains don’t like pirates at all, and your reputation is growing.”
I told him about Sobody’s suggestion, and he said, “It is a good idea, and I think he is right. It would make your reputation more solid than the rumors we have spread. Go ahead and tow that ship to Brhama Port and sell it. Put the captured pirates in stasis boxes aboard the Bolgar ship so we can deal with them as well.”
I acknowledged his orders, and he smiled at me. “Tell your crew you already made a difference, capturing the Mighty Nine and that K&H Corp ship and that we are quite proud of you all. How is that Golden passenger of yours working out?”
“He has quickly become a valuable and reliable member of my crew, and I have changed my mind about him completely.”
“Good to hear, carry on and good luck.”
The Enroe ships had arrived, and we were on our way seeing them on the horizon of our sensors. We also noticed a group of four ships speeding toward the same location. Shea identified them as ships registered to the K&H Corporation. Most likely, the help called and mentioned by the dead shipmaster. I was tempted to turn around and shoot them all to pieces, but Har-Hi did his job well, keeping me in line and Hans was certai
n that the K&H ships didn’t want to mess with the Enroe ships. I hoped Dawn herself would execute everyone involved in that vile business and make sure they dangled a while before they died. This time, I actually wished I could be there as her assistant and would volunteer to push the switch. I didn’t like GalDrifts, but I knew from experience not all of them had chosen this lifestyle. Like my little Exa, who was born into it and had no choice. I was sure there were many more like her, who somehow fell through the social net of our society. They became prey of those with false promises, who lured them into a trap and sold them as meat. It was worse than slavery.
It was almost scary how much my view of the world had changed since I left Nilfeheim. Was I really the same person? On the outside, I had changed so much that I was certain no one on Nilfeheim would recognize me, perhaps with the exception of Elena, who was among the first I shared my secret with. Looking down at my own chest, that now sported a set of female breasts, tightly arranged under thin black leather, I remembered the conversation I had about these with my stepsister in the yard of our Burg while we crossed blades.
I realized it was the first time in my life I had a feeling of homesickness. I wondered if it was time for breakfast at the Burg. I could almost smell the fresh bread Midril would bake, and I could hear the sharp claws of the Nubhir Wolfs clacking over the stone floor in the High Hall for the best places under the big table. In all this time since I had left, it was still winter on Nilfeheim and Shortsummer was over two years away. The coldest period, however, was over, and our blue cold planet was now on its path closer to Solken, our sun.
Yet I knew at the bottom of my heart that Nilfeheim was no longer my home. I could visit, I was certain, but I would never fit in again and never be more than a guest in my own home world.
Narth entered my thoughts, not intrusive but like a welcome diversion. Even though the Narth society was alien to me, his mind was not. It had become a part of me, just as my Eric persona and Freya, as I called my female side. In many ways, the female side of me was more alien to me than Narth. Especially now that I lived and was perceived as a woman.
Eric Olafson: Space Pirate Page 42
