The Pirate Guild

by Steven J Shelley

  Perspiration already trickling down her forehead, Charley settled into position. A desert speeder cruised in around mid morning. It was Pedro’s personal vehicle but he wasn’t driving it today. One of his underlings stepped into the dust carrying a sack of supplies. Probably sourced from Zeba, the next town over. The man sauntered into a two-storey hovel with a red gas lamp hung outside the door. The whorehouse had its first customer for the day. Around sixteen or seventeen girls worked that business. Many of them were younger than Charley. The older women of the town had no prospects save for indentured servitude. Charley eyed the desert speeder - it would be DNA activated just as Matheson’s wrist pad had been. A bunch of youths ambled up to the vehicle and leaned on the bonnet, admiring its smooth lines. Pedro’s man shouted from an upper balcony.

  “Away, bitches!” he called. “Fuck off.”

  The gangers moved away slowly, not wanting to appear cowed in any way. Of course, it was foolish to go up against any of Pedro’s men. That just earned you a bullet to the head. Charley felt a lurch when she saw that one of the gangers carried a pistol. The thing looked old, really old. Functional pistols and blasters were rare in Sandflower Downs. Pedro Cavar himself carried pistols on each hip. It was said his pistols’ handles were carved from tarbor tusk. Charley had only ever seen a gun fired once - a visiting water carrier had dispatched a lurking thief with a bullet. The kill had seemed so clean, so neat compared to the butchery committed by local thugs. Charley considered the scarred pistol with intense interest. What if it actually worked? Would she enjoy inferred protection with one of those babies on her hip? The ganger was now standing barely yards away from her position. She was no master thief, but all it would take was a quick, light-fingered move and the guy wouldn’t even know his weapon had been swiped. In the end, opportunity beckoned and Charley extended her arm. Little did she know that the decision would set in train a series of life-changing events. She would often look back on this moment as the catalyst for everything she would become.

  Time seemed to slow as she plucked the pistol from the holster and pulled it into the shade. She only breathed out when the gangers walked away. A soft scrabbling sound preceded the emergence of a khaki scorpion from the hole beside her. Those things had lethal stings. In blind panic Charley aimed the pistol and pulled the trigger. Click. The scorpion retreated into its hole but the gangers stopped in their tracks. The pistol seemed functional - it just had no ammo. That was also a luxury item in Sandflower Downs. What was the point of ammo if there were no guns?

  The weaponless ganger worked his way back to her hovel. Every instinct screamed at Charley to escape out the back but something rooted her to the spot. The ganger dropped to a crouch and peered into the crawl space.

  “Bitch, you got my metal!” he exclaimed. He probably had only three teeth left.

  Charley began shimmying backwards. She reached the open dirt out the back and broke into a sprint over the mounds. The gangers gave chase as she careened her way through piles of toxic refuse. The sun was already reasonably high and had her drenched in sweat in no time at all. Breathing hard, she tried losing the gangers around corners and through narrow alley ways. It was no use - they were simply too fast. For starters, they wore heavy boots, while Charley wore light desert shoes. Little more than slippers, they were no protection against the sharp edges of the corrugated iron fences she leaped over in a frantic effort to escape. The gangers had made much ground by the time Charley reached the edge of town. There was nowhere to hide out there. Breathless and exhausted, she turned to face her pursuers, tossing the pistol to the dirt.

  “Take it,” she said between gasps. “I was only playing around.”

  The ganger retrieved his pistol and sneered at her.

  “Looks like we got some meat for breakfast, boys.”

  The gangers approached without stopping. Fear took hold of Charley. She couldn’t call on any of her brothers - they’d dispersed throughout town and wouldn’t be seen again till sundown. That was assuming they’d even lift a finger to help her. These gangers, many of whom were younger than Charley, looked like vicious little motherfuckers. There was only one way she could go - further into the arid, desolate salt pans.

  4

  Roasted by the sun, Charley made her way out over the hot, shimmering salt pan. On this side of town the pans stretched for miles, all the way to the White Hills. Nothing but flat, crusty plain. Many a traveler had died out there only to be stripped naked by the denizens of Sandflower Downs. She slowed to a walk, her body screaming at her to stop. A drink would’ve been heavenly. Abeya surely had the hottest, driest heat in the galaxy. She dropped to her hands and knees, almost retching with dehydration. How long had she been walking? Half an hour? Twenty minutes? The heat was quick to strike out on the pans.

  Charley chanced a look over her shoulder. Sure enough, the gangers were still there, unflinching and determined. Their black utility suits were old Navy trooper items. They may have been old and faded, but they offered more heat regulation than Charley’s linen shift. What did it matter, anyway? There were six of them. How could she hope to survive with an empty pistol? She would’ve laughed if her situation wasn’t so desperate. Meanwhile the crusted pan continued to scorch the soles of her feet. She crawled a few yards further and collapsed in the meager shade of a tumbleweed, which promptly blew away on the breath of a furnace-like breeze. Charley groaned. Was the entire universe against her?

  The worst thing? No one would see these apes rape her savagely. Not that it mattered much. There was no law and order in a place like Sandflower Downs. She’d heard there were some rudimentary laws in Spacetown, the main port, but that was about it. The gangers stood over Charley and unzipped their pants, unwilling to waste time in the boiling sun.

  “How fucking dare you,” Charley spat, drawing on her last reserves of strength. “Who do you think you are? I’m one of Pedro’s girls.”

  As expected, the ruse didn’t work.

  “So Pedro’s girls like to steal other folks’ weapons?” asked one of the gangers. Charley couldn’t tell which was which as they were standing silhouetted against the sun.

  “Touch me and I’ll fucking kill you,” she spat, inching her way across the sand. “I mean it.”

  “I don’t think so,” said a ganger, advancing with a hand on his shaft.

  “You heard the girl,” said a gruff voice from somewhere behind Charley. “Let her be or feed the salt pans. Simple.”

  Charley allowed her hopes to rise a little. Had a hero had emerged from the haze, or was she simply delusional from the extreme heat?

  “You’d better back away, old man,” said a ganger. “Six against one ain’t good odds.”

  “They’re better when the one is armed to the fucking teeth,” said the stranger calmly.

  Charley heard a leathery sound and knew he’d drawn a weapon. The biggest ganger stepped forward, perhaps to prevent the others from fleeing.

  “You don’t scare me, nomad,” he said with forced bravado. “You think you can hit all of us if we rush you?”

  Charley swallowed. These thugs were showing more courage than they normally did. Just her luck. They probably saw an opportunity to have their way with her and loot this guy’s corpse. That kind of payload would set them up for weeks. As tense silence reigned, Charley had an opportunity to appraise the newcomer. He was tall and gaunt. His tight leather clothes were stylishly gaudy. Bony, grizzled face half shrouded in the shadow of a wide-brimmed leather hat. One thing was certain - the man had presence. He also smelled terrible. There was a corpulent whiff about him, a stench like rotting flesh. Charley wondered where he’d wandered in from. It was clear he had money. It was also clear he knew how to handle a pistol. No, they were blasters. Charley gaped at the modern tech. They were streamlined killing machines, capable of delivering rapid-fire plasma bolts.

  “You’re welcome to try, shit-for-brains,” the stranger said with slow confidence. His enemy assessment can’t have been favorabl
e.

  “On my mark, boys,” the lead ganger said. “Three. Two.”

  A weird high-pitched whine suggested the stranger had primed his blasters.

  “One!”

  The gangers rushed the stranger in a ragged line. What happened next was difficult to take in all at once. The stranger fired rapidly, beginning with the outward targets and drawing his blasters into the central corridor of fire. He didn’t waste a single charge. All six of the gangers were dropped in a cloud of red mist. Four had mortal head wounds, two had holes burned through their hearts. Charley crawled away from the stench that assailed her nostrils. Her vision darkened as her body threatened to pass out. Strong hands grabbed her by the wrists and dragged her across the pan for at least half a minute. Exhausted, Charley allowed herself to be rag-dolled. As far as she was concerned, surviving the gangers was enough for the moment. Of course, the stranger’s motivation may not have been honorable in the slightest, but there was no point wasting energy on anxiety. The movement slowed and Charley found herself deposited in the shade cast by a red desert speeder. The vehicle was an absolute beast, replete with six exhaust funnels and bulging with primer technology. It was leaking precious fuel to the salt pan. Before long it would be bone dry.

  “Hit a sharp rock,” explained the stranger.

  “Who are you?” gasped Charley, accepting a canteen. She drank deeply. The water was pure and sweet, nothing like the bilge water folks were forced to drink in Sandflower Downs.

  “You can call me Silverton,” winked the man.

  “Silverton,” Charley repeated. “Sounds posh.”

  The man laughed, shaking his head ruefully.

  “If only that were true,” he said. “I had riches once, but you could never call my kind ‘posh’.”

  “And what’s your kind?” Charley asked, curious. The water had greatly revived her.

  Silverton hesitated. “Let’s just say I take what I want, when I want.”

  “You must collect enemies,” Charley countered.

  “Aye, girl, hazard of the job. But it hones the skills.”

  “And what are yours?”

  “Full of questions, ain’t ya?” Silverton drawled. At any other time Charley might’ve found him attractive. He was lean and quite handsome in a pretty, angular way. He was also quite lethal, as he’d demonstrated earlier. What put her off him was the incredibly bad smell. Silverton leaned against the speeder as if he was having difficulty standing.

  “Listen, girl, I don’t have much time,” he croaked.

  “Then you’d better start talking,” Charley said, realizing the man was dying.

  Silverton didn’t answer straight away. Instead he lifted his colorful vest to reveal a horrible sight. Half his chest had been eaten away by some kind of fungus. His ribcage was visible through putrid green flesh. Charley could only imagine the kind of pain he must be chewing through.

  “Picked it up on Glasshouse Station,” he mused. “Cheap whore got me with a tox-stick.”

  Charley gave a low whistle. Tox-sticks were among the worst weapons in the galaxy. They injected a corrosive fungus from the swamp world Amphib. As yet there was no counter-agent to the hostile substance. The victim was left to rot until a kind soul put a bullet in them. This traveler had been dealt a shit hand indeed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, unable to take her eyes off gaping wound. “How long … how long …”

  “Before I croak?” the stranger asked with a mirthless smile. “Minutes. I thought I could reach my cache before my guts opened up completely.”

  Charley blinked. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen. This man had lost his fuel and was now stuck in the middle of a salt pan. There was nothing to help him in Sandflower Downs either. Pedro controlled the medical supply. Silverton was more likely to be robbed than treated.

  “So what can you do?” Charley asked with genuine concern.

  Silverton eyed her with interest, his piercing green eyes looking her up and down.

  “You’re a tidy number,” he murmured. “If I wasn’t so toxic I’d sneak you away and ask you for a dance.”

  Charley couldn’t help but smile. Despite his affliction, Silverton was charming. She sensed he’d seen much of the galaxy and had plenty of adventures.

  “I just wish there was something I could do,” she said, feeling a peculiar sadness. An entire lifetime of knowledge and experience was about to be snuffed out. This man was clearly from the stars - he couldn’t die so soon!

  Silverton seemed to read her mind.

  “Look, girl, there’s something I need to tell you,” he said. “Couldn’t help but notice you were in a spot of trouble over there.”

  Charley smiled at the understatement.

  “Now listen. I got a cache in the Dusty Mountains and you officially have my blessing to go loot it.”

  Charley’s eyes widened. She’d heard of loot caches. A lifetime of treasures and credits stored away by men like him. Bad men. Men who took what they wanted and never looked back.

  “Are you a pirate?” she found her herself asking in a squeak.

  It sounded silly, but word had filtered through to Sandflower Downs that pirating was real. Ever since the collapse of the Empire, most space runs were fraught with danger. Many star systems needed private security forces to prevent pirates running rampant. No cargo was safe anymore. But that wasn’t all. Pirates were known to feed slavery chains, extort and blackmail rich elites, run smuggling operations and generally act like scoundrels. With so many wars erupting across known space, pirates had never had more opportunities. A veritable Golden Age.

  “Aye, girl, you smoked me out,” said Silverton with a bow. “My father was a pirate. His father before him. In my pomp I captained a heavy frigate with two propulsion bulbs and bristling with firepower. We owned the Beluga run. I had seven mistresses across four systems. Hundreds of one night stands besides. Before that fucking gutter snake cut me with a tox-stick I thought I’d live forever. It wasn’t to be. As soon as my crew saw the damage they cut me loose and all I had left was a burning need to see my cache. One last time.”

  “But why did you hide it here?” asked Charley.

  “Because Abeya is a fucking shit hole,” Silverton said simply. “No one would expect to find it submerged in a backwater. I would’ve made it all the way too if I hadn’t hit that rock and lost fuel.”

  Silverton looked genuinely distraught at the prospect of missing out on his “loot”. As for Charley, her interest was piqued. Why wouldn’t it be? She searched the strange pirate’s eyes for a 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. There may not have been a trap, but there was always a catch.

  “I want my name to live on,” he said, trying to sound casual. “You might find this difficult to believe, but I also believe in Fate. I want you to contact the Galactic Office of Names and change your surname to Silverton. The code they will 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 must 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. And yet she had to admit that being laid to rest surrounded by hard-won trophies wasn’t such a bad way to go. Pirates seemed to be a superstitious lot.

  “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 she currently was.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “Suppose I do as you say. How the fuck do I get transport to Zeba and on 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 Pedro’s, locked up tight in the compound.”

  “I can give you a few things,” Silverton said cryptically. “I meant what I said about the Silverton name. You can follow in my footsteps if you really want to.”

  5

  Charley didn’t know anything about being a pirate, but knew with absolute certainty that she would make a very poor one. She had none of the skills Silverton seemed to have. It made sense to perform his task and loot his tech, but that’s where it ended. She would sell the tech in Zeba or even Spacetown. From there she could 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. Thin and compact, it contained rows and rows of colored balls.

  “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. Seemed there was 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,” the old man 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 this weapon more than any other.”